 Good afternoon and I want to welcome you all to the August 2018 meeting of the Housing Authority of the City of Santa Rosa. Now I assume this is the first time are we being videoed in this session? Yes, a reminder to the commission this is the first meeting where in addition to recording you're also being televised. Go on demand afterwards right? This is part of the general move to greater transparency in government right? Yes, that's a question for staff it's true any meeting that's taking place in these chambers are now both recorded and televised. Thank you. Okay so let us proceed with the roll call. Commissioner Bullock. Commissioner Burke. Commissioner Downey. Here. Commissioner Johnson-Morgan. Here. Commissioner Olson. Here. Vice Chair Lemke. Here. Chair Harris. Here. Let the record reflect all commissioners are present except Commissioner Bullock. Okay and the next item on the agenda number three is a study session so I will turn to staff yeah executive director to proceed with that. Okay yeah we put together a slideshow to go through the presentation of Santa Rosa's housing recovery bond that was approved by the city council recently it's a compilation of really two presentations down into one in the hybrid for the housing authority to preview today and so by way of background this slide makes a point that a discussion of a housing bond was taking place as early as May of 2016 because it was a component of the housing action plan adopted by the council and then in August the following year the council voted to support all the state housing measures and then in June of this year directed staff to return with the housing recovery bond ballot initiative which we did and they voted on that in July and by August this year they adopted some program guidelines that will also go through. So just quick analysis the association of bay area of governance puts forward our housing needs assistance we have a need in this time period of 2015 to 2023 to build over 5,000 housing units we make the point that the Santa Rosa housing trust has an active pipeline and an administrative system in place to manage this resource should it be adopted by the voters sort of what I call a plug-and-play it would fit right into your current system. When the council discussed what the levies should be they were relying on polling results they ultimately selected $29 for every $100,000 of assessed value and that is expected to raise $124 million dollars and we make the point that assessed value is different than market value so for an average single family dwelling in Santa Rosa that would come to about $110 a year then they acted on an expenditure plan it hits five primary areas there's financial assistance to those who lost their homes there's a way to resource a down payment assistance program for first-time home buyers that we haven't done in quite some time. Housing for households at or below 80% of the area meeting income permanent supportive housing to serve homeless populations and to preserve affordable housing. Other aspects of the expenditure plan they did decide on an oversight committee they haven't talked any further about that about its size or its composition funding would go to the senator was a housing trust they make the point that we leverage additional federal state and private capital to construct affordable housing and that your project selection would be as it is currently your program guidelines based on project readiness depth of affordability location etc. There's two primary funding categories at least 75% of the bond revenue is to serve folks at or below 80% of area median examples include rental housing permanent supportive housing even allows for manufactured home and accessory dwelling units and then up to 25% of the bond revenue can serve populations up to 120% area median income and that's for the home ownership component of the program whether that's a down payment assistance or other here's the ballot language I won't read it verbatim but it basically is what they settled on to reach 124 million in bond proceeds and they added some program criteria this was their discussion after they passed the ballot language the first is that these projects will require prevailing wage except where there's a safe harbor provisions and state law it also asking you to prioritize a review of hiring local labor from Sonoma County and adjoining counties. An emphasis will be for projects that utilize net zero climate smart construction standards that are near transit within priority development areas and we'll talk more about PDAs that's those are basically transit corridors in the Santa Rosa area and then this was important to some environmental groups that no bond funds support projects outside the urban growth boundary or within community separators which current city law does not allow us to do anyway. There's also a keen interest to spend the money quickly so we have a five-year time frame by which if funds are allocated to a project developer they have to be expended and if not you have the ability to claw back so to speak those resources from the developer. That speaks to kind of what environment we've been in at five years it's fast right? Yeah that's right. And so then there's a clause in there about maximizing housing units to obtain the best results for the taxpayer these public benefit principles shall guide all decisions not in conflict with matching funding opportunities so in other words there's a recognition that this is your local match resource to try and leverage four percent nine percent tax credits housing bond specific to a project or any other resource that might be coming in from federal state agencies so they acknowledge that those those resources we would want to be in conflict with any of their rules as well and then of course the oversight committee and an emphasis that at least 75 percent of the resource helps folks out are below 80 percent of the area meeting income. So that was the discussion many of you've been monitoring over the last couple months if not longer and be happy to answer any questions. Commissioner Lemke. On the 75 percent of the funds going for 80 percent or less of median average median income so is that multifamily rental housing? It can be multifamily housing construction preservation acquisition rehab things like that but it's rental. Yes yes it's contemplated that home ownership you have to go to 120 percent of median to qualify the family but for the 80 percent it could be rental. Could be or will be do you think? It's a good question I think it probably will be based on what we know how the program operates it said it was low on power needed to be plugged in okay. Any other questions? I just have on the oversight committee oversight board where is that going to fit in Dave is that going to be under the city council or point about how do you suppose that's going to work? To be determined yeah the the reason that's in there it pulled very well with the likely voter that it needs an oversight committee something that was a mirrored the measure o for gang violence of a few years ago so as staff we made the point that you have a city council overseeing this you have a housing authority overseeing this we have finance and auditors that that might be sufficient oversight but still there's this interest to assign a committee there so how that looks right now I can't tell you. Thank you just a question so in a situation like this we have a role as housing authority commissioners for the city of Santa Rosa we're also private citizens and I know there's going to be this measure before the voters if we're out in the public and we're asked about our position is it important to separate those two roles? I think it I think it is to it's obvious that the city council voted to put it on the ballot but we shouldn't be from a campaign standpoint advocating on from an official standpoint so we shouldn't be using city resources or using your official position but certainly at a personal level you're free to speak us to your opinion. Molly I have another question about that so are we able as the housing authority to take a position on the bond? I think it would not be advisable I don't think we're asking for the housing authority to take an official position it's on the ballot so the council has acted in that respect to say this is what we want the voters to decide on and now it's up to the voters to make that decision. Would you mind explaining a little more why you think it's not advisable? You know I'm sorry I'm not an expert on the campaign rules but that's this my general understanding is that we are not to use public resources to support a measure like this so I think it's legal requirements I can't elaborate on the details I'm sure we could find out more detail if you're interested and where exactly that's housed and how it's stated I don't know how my fellow commissioners feel but I I know we've had conversations and study sessions wanting to be in more of an advocacy role so I guess I would like more information I don't know if anyone else would. Yeah I mean I'm not an expert either nor an attorney but my recollection is is that when there's a measure like this this the city generally is in a position the city of Santa Rosa is in a position of providing factual information about the measure but not to show support for for one position versus another I would suspect that applies to housing authority but I don't know. I think it would also apply to the housing authority yes that's correct I think the concept and again I'm happy to we can provide more information from the city attorney's office to the housing authority and probably the city attorney is more up to speed on some of the details as she's been advising the council on these issues but the concept I think is that it is a voter initiative even though the city council acted to place it on the the voter rolls now it's in the hands of the voters and it's I think legally not allowed for the city to use public resources to advocate for something that's in front of the voters like that yeah I think that kind of begs the question of whether us just passing resolution that we are in support of it as the housing authority whether that's using city resources inappropriately or you know that's well again I'm it's on it's already been maybe prior to council action but it's already been placed on on the on the ballot now so it is a ballot measure no need for the housing authority to weigh in and now that it is a ballot measure I actually think that it would not be appropriate for the housing authority weigh in but again we can follow up with more information if you're interested in that I think it would be helpful some guidelines maybe that's been provided to the city council if it applies to us it would be good to know how to respond appropriately when those questions come up which they will and to a degree we can be an advocate and if we are what do we need to preface that with right and again I am pretty I'm very clear that from a personal standpoint from your your own as a voter and also you don't leave your free speech rights aside even though you have a official position from a personal standpoint you're certainly free to advocate and support a measure that's on the ballot it's the use of your official position and official and public resources that I think the question comes into play in those circumstances not as an individual so yes we'll follow up the city will have an educational piece on its website shortly about both measures there's a sales tax measure in the housing bond we're developing frequently ask questions to also post the city's website as education and we're making offers to community groups if they want to be learn more about the measure to invite us as speakers and things of that nature probably modify this presentation a bit and by who would they be asking to provide speakers the public it's a public it would go through me the city manager I'm not using city resources well that's that's not advocacy though that's that's answering questions objective questions about the measure so there's there is a distinction okay the one statistic that you said that the council decided on that $29 per 100,000 levy rate in that statistic of 58 percent positive response from polling can you give us a little more details of when that polling was or whether there's been you know more than one testing of public support over time and yeah there's been several polls conducted over time you might recall at first this was going to be a countywide housing bond so there was some polling data that was done before the disaster that showed strong support after the disaster I think it was in the February time frame there was another poll conducted same but then when the county decided not to place it on as a countywide measure the city quickly did a poll and that's where that particular statistic comes from so this isn't just the pulling the city out from that earlier survey this is a more current survey correct that was commissioned by the city correct and will there be further polling before the ballot not by the city the the group that is actually leading the now campaign part of it now non-profit housing may but I don't know in some in some people's minds there's polling fatigue so so what resources are used to pay the group that is doing the campaign the non-profit group that's a private campaign they do their own fundraising okay okay any further questions well thank you for that presentation I mean this is the closest thing we've gotten to replacing the funds that we lost when redevelopment went away and I guess is there anything that may be happening in Sacramento I mean there are other state-level funding avenues but I don't know much about them I mean what what are you aware that you know whether there'd be significant amounts of other funding sources that this could be leveraged for well I'm aware that there's a sp2 that's a housing bond placed on a statewide ballot that would be something to watch for no place like home I think they that's being referred to as and that's going to be in a November ballot also that's correct the state legislature voted to put some emergency funding forward for the homelessness crisis and so those information about those resources are becoming available now notice of funding availabilities etc so if there's a project that was ready to have those funds committed by I think it's January of 2020 that might be something the housing authority city council would be interested in so those are the two I'm aware of then finally the city of Santa Rosa and the county of Sonoma have advanced draft legislation through McGuire's office to reintroduce tax increment financing and I don't know where that sits right now with the recess but the if you follow the candidate statements for governor everyone is on record saying that they would like to reintroduce some form of tax increment financing when if elected and specifically or generally for redevelopment or are they changing the focus that tax increment would be more directed toward housing too soon to tell just the principles of financing things with tax increment Dave on the expenditure plan it does specify the city council and the housing authority oversight and accountability and funding affordable housing via Santa Rosa housing trust that has been a decision by the city council or that's yes okay yeah the description of this oversight committee it seemed to me that it didn't kind of add some additional roles that beyond what the housing authority or city council would would normally be doing so I mean ideally that that would all be possible to be complementary okay so any further questions thank you very much for giving us this opportunity to try and catch up with what's going on with this bond issue okay so mr. DeWitt yes on the subject of the bond is a disadvantage on your server over a thousand thousand units in production there now and people who want to talk about it especially veterans they're quite concerned the way this plays out they need to be even more willing to come housing the intensity back then you are all for the neighborhood specifically on the plan may not be veterans especially poor from class homeowners they're quite concerned about this other things that I've spoken about in over 20 years I've come here to speak to you is that there's not a good sense of accountability for the public right there's little fine information from you staff nice people I've talked to all of them they don't really interact with us well the US information that we can use to basically help our community redevelopment didn't help Roseland even though we had a redevelopment project area from 1984 all the way through the 2012 uh dissolution of redevelopments it paved one road and it paid lots of money to staff over all those years so tax increment financing is an interesting thing it may be more successful than this bond I volunteer right here and right now in public to be on an oversight committee should this pass so that we in the community could have better communication and better oversight than has ever been experienced here before in the city of Santa Rosa where since 1958 urban renewal has been in practice and in theory would have made things much better so I'm really quite concerned especially how many of you are already looking out like you're supposed to advocate for this and not understanding the role of a initiative process in which voters are given objective information I'm really hopeful that you folks will do your best to spread the information far and wide about just how this will be handled especially if concerned to veterans is this process where you're using project based vouchers from the hud bash program to allow people to build projects that take four or five six years to build while homeless veterans are out there on the streets tonight waiting for a spot we've already overly burdened the sam jones hall we don't have any emergency centers elsewhere and we've been told you may close sam jones so people aren't really trustful of what's happening with not just you the housing authority the city council or the housing trust they think this whole thing may be just a way to get more money to play the fiscalization of land use game that goes on thank you for your time looking forward to speaking you on the next item also okay any other public comment on this item okay hearing none let's proceed to number four statements of abstention are there any commissioners making statements of abstention okay seeing none let's proceed to the presentation number five engaging the community is its title and i think mr greg gregory farron is going to make a presentation just push okay thank you chairman harris and members of the housing authority board my name is gregory farron most of my friends know that i have among other things three strong passions one is to engage the community get people involved in their government get people to understand what the issues are and to be able to comment and to be able to participate that's the first the second is i'm a technology nerd i love trying to figure out ways of using the latest technology to help people understand things and the third and the longest is i'm a low-income activist i've been all my life working to try to help people get the services they need in order to to live in our society effectively i'm here today before you uh suggesting a tool that i think you all if you advocate that the city adopt uh can do all three can help people understand your housing development your business what you're trying to do and what the city is trying to do because the planning department and the rest of the city are deeply involved in trying to build housing and so housing and what happens in this city is of interest to all of us but it's actually pretty hard to figure it out as a resident i'm a geek i can dig down in and find those pieces of information i can get to the videos i can figure out what's happening but you have to look really hard and be very attentive and it's not very easy so i'm here today to suggest a way in which it might be easier to the folks out here who don't follow as closely as i do what's happening and i think that a key to that is maps now google maps and other maps are becoming very very popular in our society my little cell phone will tell me everything that's around me and it'll help me know my neighborhood and i'm hoping you will help your residents do the same using their cell phone okay and here's how it can work uh cell phones and maps are becoming easier to populate with addresses and addresses are the key to when we build a development over in the planning department there's a list the latest one uh dated march of 2018 that has all of the planning developments all of those permitted developments that the city has given authority to do and all those that are in process of getting approved they call it the pending developments list and they published it and i found it and said oh this is the four or five or six or seven or eight hundred units spread throughout the city by address that the city is working on to probably to meet the housing need and it was terrific i saw some that i knew about some that i didn't know about and it was a great list and then i had to take the list and look on a map and try to find out where they are and you know it was a little harder for me to do that but i realized that by taking because i'm a kind of a google engine map fanatic all those addresses and put them in a simple little spreadsheet just the address and i could put them on a map i could populate a google map with a place mark at every location where there was a development and if i included in the spreadsheet the link that went back to the video or the staff report or the the meeting which are all available on the on the city web then in that place mark when someone looked on the map they could see and click to and get all the information about what happened they could watch the planning commission video and see what the issues were they could see when it went before the city council if it was appealed they could follow pretty interestingly the story of that development and if it was right down the street from where they live you can imagine how lots of people would find out what's happening down the street and why and what the issues were i believe that by giving the citizens that kind of tool both early in the process and as it goes along they can learn more about their neighborhood they can understand what they what their maybe neighbors said at hearings and they can better grasp the city so i went over to the city planning department and i asked for the actual list in a spreadsheet the staff of the planning department were excited about it they have a lot of people coming in the door asking for the same thing trying to figure out what's happening with this development they saw down the street because a blue sign went up or somehow they learned about it uh so when i said well can you guys just every month give me that information they kind of blocked and said who are you and why should we help you and that's where we are right now i've created a little three slide presentation that simply takes what i've just said and shows you the reality and i don't know whether you can see let's see if i can yeah this map that i'm showing you now is simply the result of what i did taking a spreadsheet with the list of the street addresses which you can see on the left it creates place marks which you can see on the right and in every one of those place marks you can't see it on here but if i clicked on these place marks you can't do it on this one because it's not live it would open up into a box which would have the links as to this is the staff report this is the video of the of the meeting so an individual could look at every one of those and on their computer or on their cell phone get the information about what happened to that development how did it get started what were the issues what was it all about who voted for it and when is it going to happen all right now that's what i'm asking you to make available to the public and i think your role is obviously not to tell the planning department what to do but i'd like you to ask the city council to ask the planning department to embark on this to among all the tools that are on the it website and there are many of them that are very valuable add this one make it so that people who go to the city website can find out easily about all the housing projects in the city that way when we have bond issues or any other thing and we're trying to decide have we been doing a good job where else is it needed do we have housing we can all have a an active discussion knowing the past and knowing the present and hopefully building the future because every one of the every dollar that we raise in that bond and every dollar we match against the state is going to end up in a place mark it's going to end up in a process that we will have to decide where they go and how many units and what they're done it's a process you're all deeply aware of having funded a lot of it in the past you're going to have a key role in the bond and in the the expense that comes from the bond and it's matched to every other state and federal dollar so i want you to be able to say to your constituents here's what we're doing with the money here's how you can find out about it here's how you can track it all the way to the open house of the place that we funded and i think that maps helped do that i don't think many of my friends can spend the time waiting through it all and that this makes it easier for them to do that thank you thank you any questions comments i have a comment perhaps here's an illustration by the way i forgot there's a last slide shows you one of the windows that open up thank you you know billers exchange has some of this rudimentary available i i don't know how much but uh how much help they would be but they have they track the permits and they track the process and when i used to do development i did the same thing they do but it takes going to the you know planning department over the counter doing the kind of work that it takes to be able to track the results it's not difficult to take all of that and put it out in the public like this and actually keith woods and i talked about this and you know he was kind of excited about it too you know they obviously have to tell the neighbors about development they have to have hearings all of that is made possible by an educated populace who's already gone through development so the more of us who understand the process the more of us who know how we can find out information the more of us who can watch the hearings or you know read the staff reports i think the easier it will be for development to take place because it'll become normal for people to know i have a question in a common i i can see how the city might be reluctant to turn information over to a private citizen um so i'm wondering and i'm not promoting that i don't want to do this i want the city to do it and i agree with what you would like to see happen i mean i think it's a great tool i think it's totally in line with a city priority of promoting greater civic engagement and transparency i am curious when you were talking with the planning department whether you said to them at some point well i can see where you don't want a private citizen to do this would you be willing to do it no um because i frankly want to find out if anybody else supports what i'm trying to do i think it would be more powerful to ask the question from you from you know the rest of the city to be able to say hey this looks like a good idea what do you think um it knowing the technical capability of the planning department and the it department this is a piece of cake this is not very difficult for them to do um but it is more work it is a different way of working than doing everything over the counter or for folks like us who can wade through the city it department to find it i think the value is there and i would like to be able to have you and i and everybody else pose that question uh i think it's finally going to end up with the city council because they're the ones that really guide the work of all the departments but i would love to see a time when the housing authority and the planning department and the city and all of its residents are looking at the same thing and understanding our own system i'm not proposing we change the system radically i just want to help people understand it better well i guess my next question of all of us would be if we want to support this or at least investigate it further how do we best do that do we have conversations with individual city council members do maybe the chair talk to the planning department do we pass a resolution um what are everyone's thoughts well those are all the obvious questions we think about i mean to me that there's a question also of you know we're one of how many thousand cities that this there has to have been something done in other places that would be of use in understanding you know how it might be done more efficiently than starting to do it in-house in the vacuum i sure haven't found anything just for as long as i can remember um there's been a desire request to map this information and it's been done and i think what's changed and there's a desire to have that and it's it exists in certain forms it's in reports it's in you know different documents you know what i think i'm hearing is a different technological approach to mapping that so it's more accessible and i don't know to what degree that information's already available i mean i just don't know enough about what community you know developments doing in respect to putting this information out there to the public i know there's been huge advances um but this information came from them so the next step is i guess what you're saying is to have a kind of real time i mean i i until i guess i knew more about what we're doing and what the capacity is to take that next step i i wouldn't know but that might be the question is you know when could we could we get information from the people that are responsible for keeping this kind of data what it would take and the city maps lots of things the police department maps every you know incident there's the capital improvement budget is hugely mapped i can find every possible next use of the 41 million that's in your budget every project where it is i mean there's a tremendous amount of mapping capability being exhibited on your website right now it's just not very well as far as i can see focused on housing i mean you're talking specifically about the development phase not the the rental phase i mean i was surprised yeah yeah and again my priorities are trying to help generate more housing especially for low income so yes this is focused on the pending developments you have a huge list of rentals i made a map two years ago taking your rental properties and putting them on a map and distributing them to the homeless just so they could figure out where everything was and there's a endless amount of possibilities using google maps and a spreadsheet to map things but right now my priority is trying to help the city grow and develop its housing and especially for low income folks and that's what i'm that's where i'm looking at help but any uh and so for this i'm requesting all pending developments we used to have a time when all the low income developments were at one part of the city and it wasn't really you know a map wouldn't really help i knew where they all are i was building them all down in southwest we're spreading them around the city we have a lot of the city all of a sudden saying that they're going to have some low income inclusionary and other zoning and so i'm open to just any development as long as the development's taking place and as a neighbor as a person in the neighborhood and i see something being done or i see a sign i'm not immediately thinking that's low income it's a development i want to learn about it so i'm not trying to say just make a map for low income make a map for all the development that's taking place in the city i might you know make a kind of a differential between a you know a commercial project and housing because i'm focused on housing but right now the list that's put out by the planning department is everything they're working on and i think for the start that's what you need to map i sense a desire on the part of this group to get more information and be more educated so i would like to suggest that the chair um appoint he and one or two others or appointed subcommittee that actually asked to meet with the staff at the planning department and they could report back and then we could decide if we want to take further action so the so there was a process to follow so we can't act on this today well understanding that's correct it's not it's scheduled as a presentation it's not an actionable item so what would the city council do if requests like this came up came before them what would the steps be if i'm understanding your question is how they put things on the agenda you know if the city council says oh this is interesting you know we would like to take a vote to see if there's support for spending asking staff to spend more time and energy on that yeah the chair could probably form an ad hoc committee to investigate this i there is much more information i don't know if it goes to this extent that jeffrey's mentioning the the planning department has a similar tool tracking units rebuilt during recovery they have a tool to track where cannabis businesses are going so there's it's it's probably something if you want to understand it an ad hoc would be the way to go right so i would be you know amenable to appointing uh helga and anyone else interested in serving on a ad hoc committee to explore this with uh other branches of the city government and i see okay wane is expressing interest so for this point you don't have to do it all right now no we don't have to do it now but it does remind me though that i have noticed it on the city council's agendas and one of the items is always uh future agenda items and i would suggest we might want to add something like that so that it does question like this results in the next agenda having this as a an item to to be calendar it's to use the agenda to help tracking this tracking these kind of questions that have come up and we haven't quite got a route established for them so is that a request that the chair can make to have an item on the agenda like the city council does it says future agenda items can be brought up at that point so the process i'm sorry if i may the process um is for a member of the board or commission or council to make a motion and then one other member of the board or commissioner council would second that that would be um to place an item on the agenda for the full board commissioner council to vote on as to whether they wanted to come back and then and then the staff um your director here would decide the appropriate process staff report or staff briefing or study session um and then putting putting the item on the agenda today through this process then would allow for the next meeting to have a more robust discussion about the parameters of what the interest was so that staff could try to respond to that request is that helping through the question yes i mean it does show up as a a numbered agenda item on the city council's agenda every meeting that's correct and that that that happens through a first motion and a and a second or one member of the board of the second saying yes i'd like to see this on their second somebody seconds it that it's on the agenda for discussion for the next meeting and a full vote of the full board as to whether they want that to actually be agendaized as a full item right but the question we're asking is can we just have that there as a blank in the future on our agenda so that we are prompted to to have a time well those those items that show up on the agenda are triggered by a member of the council saying i'm what i'm saying is always there was a item on the agenda if this is the point at which we will receive any motions of the body to put something on a future agenda i would i would recommend chairman that you do that under item eight chairman commissioners reports that would mirror what the council does the other thing that we learned um with with this request for the presentation is an assumption i made that the vice chair or the chairman could place something on the agenda without checking in with the colleagues your bylaws are silent on this we checked in with the mayor the mayor doesn't put anything on the agenda he just organizes the agenda and so if there's an opportunity for this commission to have a discussion about those topics about how you place items on the agenda because even if you vote today to and get a second you're not it's one month until you're voting on whether you want to actually hear the item and then the following month at the earliest that you would act on the item so maybe there's something we should all be discussing about a process question i don't want to lose track of this particular item and it seems to me the most expedient way would be i forget who made the original suggestion oh i guess i didn't work would be this to have david appointed committee that meets with staff and comes back with the report and then i assume the report would happen under commissioner reports at the next meeting and then if i'm following you we couldn't take an action at that meeting or is that i guess that's a question no you would not if it comes out under commissioner reports committee reports which is right committee reports excuse me the other way to do it would be now to have a vote on having this be an agenda item which would enable us to um take a vote next time correct uh one member and a second would be able to place the item on the agenda for a full vote for the next meeting and that's what my suggestion was as you do it when we get to animate on the current agenda can we do a hybrid of that where we um go ahead and select a committee and also put it on the agenda to vote on it for next next meeting since it's a study item uh it's not an action other than to gather information so um you're you're prepared to serve on a committee right yes i'm i'm yeah i'm not sure whether a month is enough time depending on staff availability um but yes i am prepared to serve on a committee i think it should be more than a committee of one and um i think you're done you said that he would join the commission or the committee okay okay so i'm can still confuse we still have a choice of your suggestion a hybrid asking that it be put on um the agenda for next time for possible action and no for a report really no but that's the issue whether it's just a report or we're talking about having it on the agenda with possible action well even if we put it on the agenda to have an action on it if we don't if we don't have enough information we just pushed out yes so that's what i would i would vote to have it be on the agenda for the next time but which uh i move that that means that needs a second right and i would second that so that would be a motion that would also it would say that there's support for a committee and to put an item on the agenda that would would launch an exploration of the idea okay that's my understanding is that launch an exploration and possible action in terms of you know taking let's say having a resolution to support so the committee has something concrete to propose it might go beyond exploration yes okay so i've heard a motion and a second so that means we have something to vote on and that is appointing the committee and having that as an agenda item so back under the committee reports if i'm just to clarify i know this is a complicated process there's no vote today um that the ad hoc committee is something that the chair can appoint and and call the need call the the need for so as i understand it chair heresy you have asked for an ad hoc committee to be formed to investigate this issue um vice chair lemke and commissioner downey have volunteered so that's the creation of the ad hoc committee at your direction as the chair and then the second item would be a call for this to be agendized to be considered by the full commission there's a second that's all that's required under the council procedure that we're following here so on the next meeting agenda you'll see the item placed on the agenda for full board discussion that complies with the brown act having it on the board um agenda for full discussion and a vote as to whether a full item would be placed on the agenda arising those correctly i don't understand the the last piece of that so the council process in order to determine whether something should actually be placed on the agenda as a full item is for there to be a request by one member and a second by another member that action alone by itself then triggers staff to place an item on the agenda for consideration by the full council and then the council would have um the opportunity to discuss what it is that member's interest is um uh directed towards what that would look like staff can have some um ability to um discuss with the board at that time um what the item would look like and then the whole council would vote yes we want that item to come back on on the agenda as a study session or as an item for us um so this is just the process of the council has put into place for um the purpose of determining what should come on a full as a full agenda item so that only requires a first and a second of the council members to put uh an item on the agenda for consideration so it's a first step and then a second step would be the item comes back on the agenda if the whole board votes for it does that make sense and just to clarify I think so and then to clarify all it takes um to get that item on the next agenda would be a motion and a second without a vote that's correct it's just a one person wants to to see it on the agenda and there's a second person who says yes me too and then that comes back just as um for purposes of the whole board to consider by a whole vote of the whole board then yes we want to proceed with this item or no we don't but at that time but we are my original thought was action could be taken at the next meeting and what I'm hearing you say it has to be another month beyond that that's the only action that can be taken at the next meeting is for the full board to consider whether they would like this item to come back on as a full agenda item now you've also in the meantime done a second done the first process or the chair has decided to form an ad hoc committee there could be uh some activity by the ad hoc committee in the interim there could be a report um at the next meeting from the ad hoc committee under committee reports in conjunction with this full board vote as to whether or not to bring this item back as a full agenda item this is the council process which therefore we should be following pursuant to the bylaws you've also adopted yes well the understanding headed the bylaws are kind of silent right and that really just raises for me the question of our bylaws can we find them on the city website i can check or i can provide a copy i do recall that the bylaws have a provision in there that say that the commission does adopt the city procedure um and that are not in conflict specifically with the bylaws yeah we have not looked at those bylaws in a while okay and as an advocate of the visual i just want to show you the last slide which i forgot if you'd clicked on that link that's up there in the in the box you finally get to that particular agenda and that particular link so that you can actually see the videos and check out all the staff reports so the whole journey is four slides basically the map takes you to the property the property takes you to the information it's a pretty clear easily lots of people that i know who are using this map right now to follow on things because i've already made this map sort of available to my friends working on housing and they're kind of going hey this is easy i can i can do this so we purposely made it simple we purposely tried to link directly to the project's information and like david said the same thing is being done on projects that are fire related or other kinds of things so the technical ability is clearly within the city to do it and i really thank you for giving support to the idea of trying to make it available for housing in general thank you i will comment that i was surprised to find that there is both an android and an apple app called we take section eight and it's a free app and i put in just a zip code 95404 and it says we found 23 rentals and you put in 95407 and there are 155 so there is a a private company in California that's done this nationwide all 50 states have entries in here and you just put in a zip code and it shows you properties that are in somewhere that i haven't done it in detail but i was surprised to see that someone's taken that on nationwide and was located at some point they started asking for money though and that's how i don't know how many people are able to use it okay that is a listing of rentals it's not the development no this is on the totally separate but it is an example that i did not know that there was in existence they somebody who was doing that nationwide for all areas that have section eight programs okay so we have a comment card here from public for this agenda item Mr. DeWitt thank you my name is Duane DeWitt i'm from roseland i had never seen this before and i am quite supportive of what's just occurred um i would ask that you folks be supportive of it also i think that this is a positive type of development that could help many in the community it's been um i met mr. Burke uh 24 years ago by coming here because the southwest area plan was being put forward over in roseland area and hardly any of the information that i was seeking could i find easily essentially i'm just a rube from roseland i'm a person who's been trying to understand these processes for decades now and it's very difficult i think the most telling thing that just came from mr. Farron's presentation should be that the city staff in the planning department are hesitant to share information at times i would actually say almost all the time they're hesitant it's like pulling teeth to try to get things from them sometimes you have to go so far as to file a public records request act to get things that should be available according to what state um and federal laws say are possible to the concerns that miss lemke was bringing up earlier on this topic and the other one state of california has a fair political practices office and they can give you information each of you should make yourself familiar with them and find out what you think is important for the things that you're interested in not just rely upon the city's staff i've done that before and there's a wealth of information we could be sharing it's just santa rosa its bureaucratic culture has been less than accepting of an open government type of approach you folks could begin that process to change this and i ask you to go ahead and put this on your agenda in the future and look deeper into it and find out how it could be more helpful to the things that you as a appointed body will be undertaking to help the elected officials i'm especially encouraged by how this gentleman has pointed out it could be a user friendly and relatively simple process once it's actually implemented the delay will come in all the discussions i'm sure to get it there but once they're away we go thank you very much for your time okay thank you any further public comment this is the section for comments on any matters okay we're still okay there's a you have another card here okay so any further comments on agenda item five one if not then we are item six public comment on items not on agent hello my name is dwayne d widd i'm from roseland and i'm here today to advocate for public housing the city of santa rosa has been buying houses that have been occupied by residents sometimes right up to the time the city makes the purchase recently the city worked to evict an elderly limited income resident of a house that now stands boarded up not being used and that resident is struggling to find a place to live since 1958 the city of santa rosa has participated in federal government programs involving urban renewal and public housing type of activities the city has been getting funding from the federal government involving housing for many decades i believe now that we're up to 200 000 basic people perhaps living in this metropolitan area 187 000 by population count next census will probably be higher that we should adopt a big city approach instead of the small town that we've always been acting like public housing when done well can be a very helpful thing earlier you talked about a housing bond a part of it says preservation of affordable housing so the city of santa rosa owns four houses in roseland that are affordable and they're all boarded up right now and not being used for affordable housing so you need one hand to know what the other is doing in a sense and i believe if this body were to take a position and state the city should make use of housing that it owns and should try to own housing maybe just for veterans to start so that you'd feel comfortable with it and you know you get the funding from the federal government for it people that i know in roseland have advocated and said hey they wouldn't mind a roseland veterans village there's a home over there on west herne avenue that was just down next into the city called herne house it's a transitional housing program operated by a non-government organization there's ways that we could be doing positive things you folks have the opportunity now to take the lead on that during this housing crisis and i applaud you for the efforts that you take i know it's difficult often a bureaucracy is resistant to change but i believe now because we have this long-term housing crisis and we have difficulties in front of us you could make the difference so i ask you to support public housing thank you thank you mr duet any further public comment okay that would then take us to the next agenda item approval of minutes and i do have a comment that i'm aware that now that you know we're being recorded not only audio but also video that it would be possible to in the minutes put the the key to where these particular items are so if anyone wanted to to use those recordings that are available they'd be able to easily go hear what someone said because we're you know since these are action minutes there's no detail about comments and certainly not a lot of detail about the discussion that went on but we do have the record in the form of the recording and i would like to see our minutes allow someone to from the minute go to the actual recording i i wouldn't support that right now not knowing what the um the difficulty would be on the part of staff to accomplish it nor do i know if the city council is following that practice so it would be a little premature for me it was demonstrated by sarah roberts to me that she could do it during the course of the meeting but end of the meeting she had it but then when i went to to look at our prior meetings i'm not finding it so uh there's something it's not bringing it forward if this is helpful the housing authorities website lists all the minutes from all your past meetings and you can click there for them right but but i'm saying once you found the minutes and you've got a particular item if you want to hear what uh what actually took place most of them are there other minutes that are being keyed to the uh i i'm not sure if this is what you're talking about but i know on the the city website where you look for legislative items and you were to click on city council or board of public utilities you scroll down to that that meeting for that date you can pull up the agenda you can pull up the minutes and i believe there's also a link to the archive video for those that might be available is that what you're referring to the videos there but let's say it's three hours long and you want to know where in that video and that is okay i understand that is being done it's just not being reflected in our minutes so when you pull up the video then you would be able to go to the agenda item and then it would take you to that item in the video if it's an hour one in 35 minutes you could you would know where to look instead of being left to search for it i think that that's finding the agenda item in the video and i think the council does that but i don't know if the other council does that and that technology is available so if you want you just click on the the subject you're interested in like report number two the video takes you right to it right but what i'm suggesting is that if somebody prints it out then they can't go and find it by that minute reference they have to be live on the you know to be able to make that link and i think that same information could be in just you know three numbers put on the actual paper or the actual agenda well if we follow the council's protocol we'll see if there if that happens there as well that's what i'm asking is if we can take a look at that okay so that's a general comment on future agendas but on this one we have before us the approval of those minutes from may the 21st do we have a motion to or any corrections or comments on the minutes or a motion to adopt i wasn't here so i'll be abstaining i moved to adopt oh that's the one i wasn't here for just our practices or chair vice-chair umke and commissioner olson so right you're the two that weren't here i mean our practice is not to have a motion second if unless there's any changes if there's any um the chair the chair can right here you know if they're acceptable hearing no objection uh we will adopt these minutes but all right we need to wait till we have it on the agenda to make um suggestions for future agenda items but i i think this should just be handleable as a uh as a matter of technical uh item finding out um how it could be done and how expeditions okay so um this takes us to chairman and commissioner reports uh i will start with commissioners though that's uh um if i may just going back to the discussion about the process uh for getting an item on the agenda um i think i think that's important for us to to kind of clarify and i'll understand better than i do right now anyway and so i'm thinking that um if there would be support uh we could maybe do a similar thing to what we did with the presentation of mr ferran proposed and that would be to have a committee to look at what the city council's doing to see if that works for us if it doesn't then what changes would be more appropriate and then to bring that back for at a point where the city the housing authority can decide whether or not they agree that this is something that we ought to clarify and have as a more formal policy so i guess i'd be first looking for a second person to say yes a good idea we need to know more about how to get things done we we need to have um more greater clarity maybe modify our bylaws if necessary to uh have the steps articulated to get an item on the agenda i think it's a great idea and as evidenced by the action a few minutes ago the person who proposes something like that would be a great person to head the committee i would agree with that yes and i would i would volunteer to be on a committee if that's the thing the chair wants to support okay any other volunteers i guess i could volunteer to uh at least confer with you so that would be three of us is i want to understand no i didn't mean oh you're not okay no she was just saying you had volunteered okay okay so that takes us so back to commissioner reports um on any any right so commissioner i just wanted to let the other commissioners know about a group that's in the process of being formed it's called housing for all and so far i'm aware that um wane goldberg peter rumble who's are some of the people who are coming together and as i understand it and i only know the preliminaries the idea is that there will be a year long process to help um neighborhoods determine what kind of housing they would like in their neighborhoods and the architectural some architectural association is going to be a partner has agreed to provide um to the community educational workshops um on sort of latest building approaches um fire safe materials that kind of thing and i don't know any more information than that but i mean it sounds like an exciting endeavor from my perspective okay any further comments by commissioners on their related activities i will report that i attended the summer conference of the national association or narrow it really doesn't use its oh it does and it actually says national association of housing and redevelopment officials uh the summer conference was held in san francisco at the end of july and i attended as did commissioner uh johnson or morgan johnson and staff members um carmelita howard and uh rebecca lane um i was not i did not know that i had been registered to take the commissioners training this is an actual course that ran concurrent with the uh concurrent you know five ring circus of a conference uh so i was for two days in that official training class that is uh you know uh you given credit for completing and this is the the commissioners uh course on monitoring and oversight um which went into you know a lot of details of uh ways that uh housing authorities can play that role uh most effectively um and it went into detail on the c-map process the first time i heard any detail on how we have you know recurring years had the uh our section eight uh which is what se stands for section eight uh monitoring assessment program uh management assessment program um our uh program has been receiving you know high scores uh on a regular basis um and uh i think there are some uh benchmarks in that process of evaluation that leads to that score that would be useful um management things for the board to be aware of of just what how our numbers are changing with regard to utilization of the uh because that's one of the important things is to be utilizing your voucher uh budget to maximum and we know we have challenges there that could become more acute and it would be useful i think to to be following that um i mean there's a lot more i could say about that conference but it was useful uh to not only from the standpoint of content but also uh making connections there and uh carmelita did bring uh copies of the conference program and the um they do a a session where you can't cover everything but of the programs that have been submitted by housing authorities across the country uh detailing their areas in which they have accomplished something a new activity of excellence that they wanted to share and uh so that booklet is is here and uh i have copies and to to share with the other commissioners i've got some you know some very interesting things and certainly one of the other things is at san francisco uh you know we're in general we're not analogous to the san francisco housing authority but they're in a process a significant process of redeveloping the old public housing sites and uh doing partnership financing with developers you know so that they are maintaining their original numbers of owned agency owned housing but they're significantly expanding and and creating you know privately owned portions of that and uh i think they found some innovative developers and we potentially could learn something in the pacific southwest region that we're in has a staff in Elk Grove and in my conversation with them they offered to to organize a tour for anyone in this area that's interested in in having san francisco's housing authority uh do a tour and show and tell which i think our staff members were able to go on but uh because i was in this commissioner training that conflicted with that but i do think there are things that we could learn there and i specifically you know on my interest in new technology for faster production what was not at the narrow conference because this happened subsequently but i'm aware in the last month that in berkeley there's been a modular three-story building put up with 22 units um modules manufactured in china and delivered and erected in two days at a cost of you know far less i mean uh there's a range of these kind of modules but it means that there is now the first one in the us and certainly it's important it's in california for us a process for producing units that are you know in a cost in the of less than a hundred thousand dollars complete cost and you know we have not been close to that kind of a cost for any of our projects in years so the technology is moving forward and that would be another place that i think it would be useful for some of us to to visit and and get an understanding of how that's being done okay any other any questions or any other commissioner reports okay so moving on to committee reports okay hearing none let's move to the executive director's report and communication items thank you there's two items in the packet the first is the monthly activities report the other is the letter from HUD saying they've accepted our annual plan submission that you looked at a few months ago um just a point on jumping back to the activities report the third bullet down the landlord incentive program this is something the housing authority has been discussing showed it had an interest in we were preparing it as a report item for last month and we learned from HUD that they would not allow us to use our reserves for this program and so i just wanted instead of a report item it now lands as a bullet in your monthly activities be happy to answer any questions so excuse me we're still interested in having the chair appoint a uh nofa review ad hoc committee because those those have just come due so we'd like to get together and start reviewing those right you said the nofa deadline was to august 31st correct and uh they would the staff would be in a position to begin review with the committee and a week or two after that or and do you have any sense of uh how many projects are being submitted the applications are due on friday afternoon so far we have received one application but we have numerous others that we have been in consultation with the developers so i expect we'll have five or more and in this round what's the figure of uh that we have said is uh distributable we have approximately four million dollars available okay so we want more than one thousand but and a suggestion would be that whatever committee you appoint also um review the results of project based vouchers should you wish to proceed with that later in your meeting but that would be i mean it would be a while before anyone would be able to respond to that right that is correct but i'm only making the point that it might be good at the same review committee looks at both okay so i did have questions on the first part of your report and that was to understand the turnover rate in the vouchers because it you know that that item says that there are now five thousand eight hundred and sixty two total on our waiting list and then that's after adding three thousand four hundred and fourteen which means that the list had uh two thousand four hundred and forty eight by mathematics um and then the estimate was that it would be eight to ten years to work through that total of five thousand which means you know that the turnover there would be in the order of six hundred placeholders per year and how is that turnover occurring between actually being awarded vouchers versus dropping out of the of either applying or qualifying good afternoon commissioners Rebecca lane the manager of the housing choice voucher program so the waiting list um on alternate years we open the waiting list and we update the waiting list so in odd years uh we will approach the entire list send out a mailing to make sure that people are still interested in participating and so that's where the waiting list turnover occurs for the most part is during those updates because that can be hundreds of people who either don't respond and are taken off the list or respond that they no longer need the assistance and so they don't want to remain on the list but you said that's done in the odd years so that was done in 2017 and now this year in May the list was open and and so you began after the list had already been sifted through for qualification or continued interest that this number of about 2400 is correct right we had but is that is a blend of both the standard vouchers and the vouchers no sir the uh Vash vouchers is a separate waiting list okay because that's actually managed by the VA so so none of these numbers include anybody on the waiting list for uh or utilizing a Vash voucher that's correct okay so so our actual number of standard vouchers is like 1877 is an number I remember seeing in our total vouchers under contract with HUD that's the 1877 that does include the Vash vouchers okay so that's how it gets confusing that we talk about them when we talk about how many vouchers we have in place but they're not on our waiting list and so the uh we're going to get into this in more detail though I mean you had the letter in there from HUD accepting our limited preference right that that was but I am looking for some more clarification on what this item is on the agenda and maybe you know that can come up when we we get there because we're basically asking for an approval from HUD again right yeah I would recommend to the body that we cover that when we get to that report item okay so any other questions on the activity report I do have a question about the landlord incentives program um I I thought that when we did the study session that we were told that the incentives that were being offered up had been seen in other communities and so I'm wondering why they were denied that that's correct we did model our program after some other communities Merritt County Santa Barbara County that we had spoken with regarding their programs and I've discovered two fold one is some of the programs were funded with admin reserves that were established prior to the year 2004 when regulations around the use of administrative funds was slightly more flexible and the other reason is that many of the programs are funded through other mechanisms such as the county's general fund so we were told that we would not be able to to pursue the program with the reserves that we have currently okay and so on that note it also says that there's exploring the use of the disaster administrative fee set aside so what is currently the the budget in that set aside we don't know right now we just submitted there was a very short turn around for an application so we submitted it Friday for an just additional funding both on the administrative side as well as for our actual rental assistance related to increased costs because of the disaster so one of the components of that request was implementing a type of landlord incentive so we'll see if given the extraordinary circumstances of the disaster they're able to approve a specific set aside for something like that thank you back to the alpha so so you mr. chair you'll be appointing a committee right i i'm not sure i want to do it today because uh i have to be able to talk to i just want to express my interest if uh if that's something that uh you would agree with and then the other thing is uh but that's a kind of little caveat i'm going to be gone the first part of october so if that interferes i don't and the other thing i was thinking about this you know in past experience i would really highly recommend whoever is on that committee that there be a opportunity for site visits i would second that honey in the past have been on a site visits and i remember all of us uh i felt that was a good addition to the process i would also be interested in that you've expressed that i mean do we know uh this is now back to the topic but uh are some of these uh rehab project potentially or is it all new construction new units the application that we have already received is for acquisition so we would like to be in a position to move quickly if that was something that the committee would be supportive of but it's acquisition of land to build a new project on our acquisition of existing it's an acquisition of a 56 unit uh market rate complex that would be converted to affordable 56 units that's the one application so far and the project is already in escrow that's a turkey okay so if the chair was inclined to appoint a committee today that would be very helpful for staff yeah well i uh i would do it this week i just want to make sure that you know talk to everybody about their interest and availability before we nail it down okay so that's um that's taking us to item 10 right so we're ready for uh report item 11 which is uh request to approve the release of a project based voucher request for proposals uh otherwise known as an rfp uh under housing choice voucher program and i want to express my thanks to the staff for doing work on this project based vouchers i think it's uh something that uh well the easiest thing for us to act on to provide incentive for new units i mean if the bond passes we'll have another round of this but this we don't need the public to uh move forward and i would just comment we tried to align the two processes the NOFA and this item but we had to also work with HUD in the meantime so that's why they're off okay good afternoon chairman harris and commissioners my name is rebecca lane and i will be presenting the item before you requesting your approval to open a request for proposals or rfp for up to 100 project based vouchers project based vouchers are a component of the housing choice voucher program in which a housing authority ties vouchers directly to a specific housing development this tool can encourage the development of new affordable housing by allowing developers to leverage the project based voucher or pbv rents for additional funding families who qualify for these projects are required to live in their pbv unit for at least one year and will only receive tenant based voucher if one is available the housing authority currently has two project based voucher sites in operation and five more in the pipeline to fill pbv units the housing authority surveys its current waiting list for eligible families who would be interested in the project after the entire waiting list has had the opportunity to apply the project begins to operate under its own site based waiting list managed by the housing authority project based vouchers must be awarded through a competitive process approved first by the housing authority and then through hud the proposed request for proposals will offer up to 100 vouchers under an rfp which we anticipate opening as soon as we receive hud approval the rfp will give preference to projects that include units dedicated for families experiencing homelessness we have determined that the number of vouchers for this rfp under two considerations one the limit on the number of vouchers we are permitted under the hud regulations to set aside for project based vouchers and two our current actual capacity based on spending and voucher utilization the regulatory maximum project based voucher allotment for a program of our size would be approximately 375 vouchers we currently have 189 project based vouchers under contract which is approximately half of our maximum allotment while another 186 vouchers may be allowed under the regulatory cap based on our current voucher utilization and hap costs the maximum number we can make available would be 100 this concludes my presentation and i am happy to answer any questions that you have well you know i have a lot of questions i mean that is a subjective a conclusion as to how many you know we could actually handle uh and you know because you came up with a difference between 375 uh approximately as the 20 percent and uh and 189 you know is more than 100 so it's it's closer to 200 potentially but you know i understand that there are some questions of management uh uh and uh you know not having certainly if the budget for um vouchers were to be decreased i mean if the acc if the appropriation amount was decreased it would become more difficult the more project based vouchers you had but that aside um i think it is a worthwhile goal to try and maximize our project based vouchers because it is a tool that we have to create more inventory you know doing incentives to landlords when they don't have a problem renting uh our incentive has to be significant for them to you know but give a preference basically to a voucher holder and it's far better in my opinion that we should be creating more inventory so that is not what the issue is is it trying to convince landlords to give preference to voucher holders it would be if we had the inventory built with vouchers then they would be available to voucher holders um so i think you've all heard my preference to see us maximize this but um obviously we want to get started so and i agree i think one thing is that we need to have a lot of tools in our toolkit so to speak um there are a great number of uh participants uh on the program who are successfully finding housing and more that uh would not find a project to to necessarily meet their needs and so we want the the choice uh of the housing choice voucher program to to be in balance with this as well and i i do um want to emphasize that the 100 vouchers that we're proposing to put forward for the rfp is in fact the maximum number that we have based on our current spending and utilization that's that is maxing it out okay i would like to meet with you and and go through that with you sure that would be great thank you excuse me i also want to add that um you know rental market is cyclical so right now it's a tight market but um our clients are starting to find housing more now than maybe three or six months ago so we don't want to end you know like um um board member philolson what we always talked about in the past that um we don't want we want our clients to have a choice where they can live so when we project base units and we we're proposing a hundred we don't want to propose the maximum because if the moment we have uh we have the maximum project base then our clients will be forced to live in the project base units and it we score better and the whole goal of section eight is to de-concentrate poverty so we want to make sure our clients have choices and since the rental market is cyclical we don't want to think about just for now we want to think about two years three years ago um in three years um coming and i've been in the business for 19 years doing section eight here in santa rosa and we've been through this kind of market before and when the mark and the rents become really expensive and regular renters cannot pay the rent they always end up going back to us and we start we're starting to see that so our goal is to have more choices for our clients and we don't want to leave them stuck in a project base because then when it's a project base unit it it will be our responsibility to fill those up first but if they're built you know according to the guidelines that were raised there was the bond in close to transit close to uh you know the amenities and efficient uh energy wise etc i mean i don't think our project based uh uh new developments would be undesirable i mean certainly what we're talking about you know less than 10 percent of of our uh vouchers being added and uh that means that people have nine other choices for everyone so you raise a good policy question for your colleagues this matter before you is asking whether you want to maximize the vouchers regardless of the math or you know i would recommend we don't have a sit-down visit the decisions in front of you today i know it's a delicate matter based on what carmelina just described do you want to bounce portability with project basing i've asked this question before i don't think in front of of you all so i wanted to ask you i i do not understand um about there is no portability with a project based voucher correct once a once we have a tenant in that in that project based voucher uh unit they cannot well they can be on the waiting list for a housing choice voucher but they can't take the voucher they have and just go i'd like to give notice here and move to a house or something like that they can the the requirement for the family is that they commit to living in the project for at least one year after one year they may request to move out and give notice to vacate to that property but we are only able to give them a portable tenant based voucher if one is available so what do you mean is available so i thought that we have all of our vouchers in use so are you saying they go on the waiting list and they wait that out or no no they don't go back on the waiting list when i say when we if we have one available it's related to our our contract with HUD so if we have 1876 families leased we would only be able to give one person in a project based voucher unit a tenant based voucher because we have one voucher available for someone else so a project based voucher holder jumps to the top of the list if they give notice and then they say next month i would like to be in a housing choice voucher they that does that mean somebody that was going to be accepted from the waiting list is not accepted from the waiting list well so we start out all of the project based voucher waiting list by surveying our existing waiting list so we everyone has the opportunity to to decide whether or not they're eligible for or interested in that particular project so it does start initially with the entire waiting list is offered the opportunity for that for that site for that project based voucher site and and then after that if someone has applied for for example we have two site based waiting lists right now the Rosenberg and the Bethlehem Tower because our entire waiting list at the time that both of those projects came online was surveyed for people who were interested in just moving to that project rather than continue to wait for their tenant based voucher so everyone was given that opportunity and the same thing will happen for the projects that are coming online but essentially what i'm trying to say is so if someone decides to leave their project based voucher unit it's not um they're taking a space from somebody who has been waiting that that's a way of looking at it yeah yes yes only the only requirement right now is that they live there for a year and is there any reason that they can't leave that voucher leave that unit and still get a voucher say they're a family of two they're in a unit in the project based voucher that works well for them i could see that they outgrew their unit obviously they would need to move but if they just said i don't want to live here in the Rosenberg anymore i want to go to some other place we allow that yes after they've been there for a year yeah they're free just to clarify that point didn't aren't those people who have a project based voucher didn't they come off the list initially yes so so they're i mean they've done their time but i understand that but i think that what i'm struggling with is that if this if the space is working for them you know i understand and we're giving them a subsidy it seems to me that it's you know allowing them to jump ahead of everybody else who's been also patiently waiting i don't know about the fairness of that i have to think that that's certainly a concern that's been raised in the in the past by this board um as we were discussing years ago you know whether or not to uh to even implement a project based voucher program at all because it could have an impact on the the rest of the waiting list but the fact that it creates new inventory is the mitigating part of this i mean if you don't have project based vouchers you still got the same market you've got now and this would allow you to have one new unit for every voucher that you project based and you know this limited preference of 24 vouchers for the currently homeless that was based on a estimate or a number of recent years of the annual turnover and i think you said it was 15 percent that 24 is 15 percent so we have a turnover of approaching 200 vouchers a year and so you know how how many is that okay that's uh uh you know 15 or more a month so if somebody wants to move out of a project base there's somebody else who would probably move in there and we've got 20 a month in turnover so so there isn't ever a problem having the Rosenberg filled there's not you know there there aren't uh a problem with finding people from our regular wait list who's willing to go to the Rosenberg building the both the Rosenberg and the Bethlehem tower project we did exhaust our existing waiting list at the time surveying to to find out in their both restricted to senior and disabled right those projects so not everybody on the list can go there oh that's correct and see that's what my concern is because now they just said that they've exhausted that list right but we don't have to do limited senior and disabled with project based options i get that for so it could be projects right but what i'm saying is now with the Rosenberg um if someone who decided that was in the Rosenberg decide they wanted to go to a housing choice voucher do we have somebody to take that space and they've said that that list is exhausted so that's just my only there's no more seniors or disabled on the list no i'm sorry we do both sites have their own waiting list now so the entire waiting list for the regular voucher program was exhausted and then the each site will begin its own separate waiting list so a person who is elderly or disabled may apply for the Rosenberg waiting list at any time so we're gonna have multiple waiting lists no we have multiple waiting lists yeah but there is a little deep it's they leave a project base they bump some they they have preference on the other list and i think that's not fair i've argued this before carmelina and i have had several discussions on this i do not think this is fair um why in the why in the heck would you stand there on your list you're doing good you're now up to number three you've been waiting two and a half years to get there and somebody else that decides all of a sudden they don't want to live somewhere they come and they bump in front of you that that is just not equitable well except at the same time they're freeing up a unit i mean that's the one for one that's bull if someone moves out of a unit in a project that unit becomes available to somebody else on the list except but only if they can really if they only want to go to a project based unit right but we're talking about less you know a small fraction of our units being project based so the there's no force there if the only thing that we had were project based but that is never going to be the circumstance except chairman her as um rebecca has just said that each one of those projects now has their own list that is not a master list and that i mean that isn't new didn't they always have lists the projects yes so a project based voucher progress site will will have its own list which is initially established by surveying the existing waiting list and then once that list is exhausted once all the people on the waiting list have been offered the opportunity to take a unit in the project based development then the site has its own waiting list stand why that is the case i mean what's the advantage of the site having its own waiting list why doesn't it continue just to pull people from the regular waiting list well it's just the the way the regulations are written for the the program is that if vouchers are tied to a site then the the site can have its has its own waiting list for those vouchers this is a regulation but when do you they decide which lists they're taking from them if you've got you know seniors and disabled people on your list and they have it on the Rosenberg list uh how does that work i'm not sure i understand the question i'm sorry English and it has people on it who would be meet the criteria to move into the Rosenberg Bethlehem towers for that matter or you know other that are restricted i'd say just to seniors you've always got seniors on your list and they have a list that is not an overlap with the master or your big list yeah so and hud requires them to have a list that is independent of the housing authorities list there the waiting list for both of the sites that we're discussing are are always open at this point so at any time a person who is eligible for that project will be able to get on the waiting list for that project already if an open if a unit opens next month will they pull from their own list or will they pull from our list we manage the waiting list for the site so the owner comes to us and says we're anticipating a vacancy please send me five applications you know five names from the top of the waiting list so it we work cooperatively with the project owner for the duration of the project but which list off of the off of the site based waiting list which is initially created from the other list and so when they go on to the site based list they go off of the other list they don't have to but they they yes if they say you can be on both yeah Rebecca if uh when your name is the number one on the list and what and their uh about your comes up in in a you know where you have when they were where it stays with the unit and you choose to take that one now you're top on the list right so you have a choice if you're going to the uh the voucher that's attached to the building or a normal voucher that's your choice or that's uh cudd's choice or your choice is that that would be pretty rare uh the because the the waiting list for each of the sites uh moves just as the the building vacancies come up so it is possible that if you're on both a building waiting list and the general waiting list for the voucher program that you could come to the top of both of those lists at roughly the same time and at which that point you would be offered either one but that's the only if you're at the top of number one list you don't and there's a units available on both programs you're not allowed a choice then you are allowed the choice if you were to come to the top of both the Rosenberg and the rate regular program waiting list at the same time we would offer the family either either spot their choice any further questions and as I view it you have a number of complexes and in this case city of Santa Rosa a large number of those have been built through various means and they maintain their own waiting list and then there's the voucher program where people are coming in getting a voucher and then they can use that voucher anywhere in the community including some of these other developments that have been produced over the years and then there's a smaller subset where there's project base involved with this is very small subset and and in that case the first priority is to people who are at the top of the waiting list and qualified at the regular list from from the regular city of Santa Rosa housing authority voucher waiting list so when they come to the list they get they get the first choice but if but if like the list has been exhausted then the backup would be the list is kept by by the development itself and I think the main reason for that is you want to keep these units occupied so so so if we can't through our system provide a person who's qualified to go into that unit then the backup is what the properties have done and I mean it's a tough one I I would have preferred a staff recommendation I realized there's a difference of opinion it's real clear but you guys are closer to it than we are so I would have preferred a recommendation and the reasons for that so maybe there is there's a resolution in the packet which does does have a specific number identified it's a hundred what's a hundred but it's but it doesn't say it's recommended by staff well it's the proposal the staff proposal is the resolution in the packet okay but okay usually okay so so if the commission wanted to do something different then okay we would have to bring that back okay all taken everything under consideration the position is the consensus of the staff and probably with Dave being the time out there it's it would be a hundred units that would be under the voucher program for production you know you know given given the needs in the community I mean I understand I understand exactly what Carmelita's saying and you know that's I'm the concerned and I think that in spite of the fact that things may be loosening up a little bit we still we still need more units in the community and with the with the bond funds and the NOFA you know we you know producing new units these days is so so difficult anything we can do to make that happen more quickly I personally would favor right I mean if we just run the numbers that a hundred vouchers and assuming I mean I don't know who the lenders are that will lend against them but we we've seen in these vash project based vouchers that they've borrowed between a hundred and a hundred and forty thousand per voucher so you take a hundred times a hundred a thousand that's ten million dollars and if we project base we get ten million dollars out there as capital to build new units and if we don't we're just we don't have that ten million available to build new units I mean it is in our number one issue is inventory so but you know I'm prepared to start with a hundred and be ready to keep evaluating this that's I think that's I've already stated that that's my personal view that I do think we need and you know if the bond passes then there's less need to think about expanding project based vouchers but in any case you know I don't think anything we're going to do is going to come close to producing what's really needed in the market and and it is nothing happens fast and this potentially would happen faster David you know I'm going to go ahead and move the resolution and as I remember we like city council are supposed to operate under rules that where you request a resolution at the beginning of the discussion in order to to frame the discussion and I think we've gotten away from that a little over time that's roberts rules to have the no it's not robert somebody else I forget who it is it's Rosenberg's rules and you're you are correct chair lumpy they aren't that different in that regard okay go ahead anyway so I I don't know the number of the resolution oh I guess it's 18-8288 HA resolution of the house I move resolution of the housing authority of the city of Santa Rosa approving the issuance of a request for proposals for project based vouchers and I'm going to waive the reading of the text okay there's a motion is there a second seconded by mr. Olson okay so the recording secretary can call the roll commissioner boldock commissioner Burke should we ask if there's any further discussion I'm just okay but the idea that the Rosenberg rule provides for people to kind of focus on a specific proposal and then then there can be more discussion even though we've done it differently so I was just concerned that maybe there might be some other comments no well I hadn't I don't approve I don't approve of what they want me to do so but that's either here or there because I obviously that's not going to pay much attention to me but I honestly am uncomfortable with the way we do it but I will vote for because I think it's better than than nothing okay so now we're sorry it's okay it's okay okay so commissioner Burke all right commissioner Downey hi commissioner johnson morgan hi commissioner Olson hi vice chair lemke hi chair harris hi the motion passes with six six yeses and with the exception of commissioner boldock who is absent so let me ask just the one question related to the vanish project based vouchers we had also authorized a hundred there and where are we with regard you know some of them that we granted have not been able to be used what is the current status on the use of those hundred project based vouchers that request for proposals is still open and there are 19 vouchers available under it and that's assuming that the 12 or so that were granted in gernvill are going to be used or assumed that they're not going to be used no those have been withdrawn okay so that includes those so there's 19 batch vouchers project based available correct and this will then add a hundred of standard vouchers correct thank you okay so our next item is a report 11.2 limited preference for housing choice voucher program waiting list good afternoon chairman harris excuse me and housing authority commissioners i'm jules pelican the program specialist for the housing choice voucher program i'll be presenting today on the proposal to establish a limited preference for disaster affected families on the housing choice voucher waitlist the limited preference is a strategy for local housing authorities to respond to an urgent unmet local need without reordering the existing waiting list a limited preference is different from a general preference in two key ways one only a certain number of vouchers are made available for limited preference and two phas may limit preferences to people referred by a partnering local organization these limitations help balance the needs of other families on the general waiting list with the urgency to address the local need the general waiting list will not be reordered it will remain closed 24 vouchers which does represent 15 percent of santa rosa's total program attrition annually will be made available for the limited preference the waiting list will be open only for those qualifying for this limited preference and on a referral basis implementing a limited preference allows the housing authority to specifically and efficiently respond to the needs of very low and extremely low income residents after the wildfire disaster the proposed policy will offer assistance to qualified families who were residing within the limits of santa rosa when the disaster occurred and experienced either direct or indirect displacement as a result so for example households whose primary residence was destroyed or damaged during the fires would qualify for this limited preference and in addition households who were secondarily displaced will also be eligible and this could include households where they were given notice to vacate due to the landlord's loss of primary residence at HUD's recommendation we applied on friday for an adjustment to our funding based on increasing costs that can be attributed to the disaster such as higher rents if our application for this funding adjustment is successful and if we determine that there is a significant demand for the vouchers available under the limited disaster preference we may return to the housing authority in the future to request additional vouchers for this program at this time we're requesting 24 limited preference vouchers to be issued to qualified families impacted by the october 2017 fires to solicit applicants for this program will work with selected local agencies such as rebuilding our community sonoma county which is a network of local governmental nonprofit and other organizations collaborating to provide a coordinated fire recovery effort and which recently opened a center dedicated to serving fire survivors this concludes my presentation and i'm happy to answer any questions i have a couple of questions so okay the 24 vouchers would bring us to that those would be on top of our 1800 and so brings us to like 1900 they're within the 1877 yeah we can't go over the 1877 then those vouchers are really not available until there's 24 vacated because we're using all of ours right now we're actually not using all of our vouchers at this time in july which was the most recent month that we reported to HUD our total of our regular vouchers of which there are 1473 we had 1361 least up so it's it's about a 93 percent utilization rate right now and the preference for persons who lost their home because the owners needed to retake the property how is that how will that be established is it just going to be the word of the person coming to us or are they going to have to get something from their landlord saying yes i took the house back because i needed it yeah we'll be working with the referring agency um on establishing that you know the proper documentation to verify uh the for the preference that's that's a part of the requirement with the program with a limited preference is that there is a verification of the circumstances well i'm going to assume any verification is going to be that the the landlord's willing to cooperate and say that that's the reason they took or the reason they gave note or gave the the tenant's notice how other way how i'm sorry i'm getting tongue-tied how could uh the the tenant prove that any other way um you know we already have had established you know some landlords who have lost their homes to the fire we've had to do address changes you know it it happened just sort of in that moment there was a lot of turnover right there and the household probably did register with fema that would be another verification source okay i have a question you it sounded like 100 plus vouchers are not currently being used is that because they can't find um available units it's a combination uh it's our spending is um we've spent our our entire budget on on just the 93% roughly of the families that are leased up so part of the um the strategy here is is if we do receive the adjustment from HUD that we are referencing for the disaster adjustment then then we'll be able to uh have more money to spend on more families and bring our leasing back up to 1877 that's the that's the goal so but you can't have exceeded HUD um caps on rents in the past i mean you have to stick within those caps so is this a strategy to get more funding from HUD for another 24 units because you spent more money on a smaller number of units rather than the full amount you could have spent so the the program is always balancing between the number of families that we have leased up and the amount of of money that we're spending on the on the housing assistance payments for those families we we're not allowed to lease up more than the number of vouchers that we have under contract with HUD which is currently 1877 um but we are spending all of the the budget that we have been allocated on the existing families who are currently renting which is about 93 percent of the program so yes part of why we did ask for more assistance from HUD to have the adjustment was based on their recommendation and also that that's why it was made available because they recognized that the the costs went up after the fires so yes we were hoping for more funding and then to be able to direct it um to some of the wildfire survivors i'm surprised you're allowed to take funding for 1800 vouchers and spend all of that money on 1700 or whatever the exact figures right so the um sorry the curvilator was reminding me that there are cap the payment standards um are the the the caps as it were on the amount of rent but uh there there's also what's called rent reasonableness and so if the rents are going up and they are in line with the market then we have to approve a rent increase even if it will affect our portion of rent if it will make our portion of rent go up we we still have to allow for that because we can't under this program limit the amount of rent um that that landlords can can receive so they're allowed to receive market rate rents on the units and so that's how we find ourselves in a situation where we're spending all of our um housing assistance payments dollars but i would point out that there is an advantage to the project base vouchers because there are limits that those projects can charge uh i mean especially if they also have funding from tax credit bonds there's another set of limits that you know would restrict how far they can go and i mean there's because i mean the fact that carmelita uh in in february of last year well i'm going to show you carmelita that uh uh you present the fact that we had an increasing number of our regular tenant based vouchers being used in deed restricted properties and that we were you know we have a significant number of them that are de facto project based vouchers because they're being used in affordable housing projects and uh you know when we get to that kind of level that tells us that the inventory is a real problem and in those cases it is a better choice for the voucher holder to go to a deed restricted property one that has tax credit uh bonds because there is a a ceiling that they can charge for for rent they you know and the market stuff is the market you know and and so there's an advantage to the renderer that has been obviously been playing out that we have more and more of our tenant based vouchers becoming de facto project based vouchers is the way i think it's appropriate to to say it i mean but these numbers i i think it would be useful to to for us to see periodically just a factual report i mean because you said i'm putting together numbers here we'd have 1877 vouchers and you said we have 1473 of regular so that means we've got 404 based vouchers okay which we have a for our population instead we have a significant number of based vouchers i mean you've applied for them gotten them but then you said it's a combination of this 93 percent and availability that's causing to have more than a hundred of them not currently being used and just how that combination swings back and forth you know whether there's insight there that that helps with the management certainly the best thing that i think we can do is create more inventory so that there's less upward pressure on the rinse it seems to me though that you're talking here now this is a second limited preference right we already have 24 that are limited preference for homeless currently homeless who get referred by continuum of care that's correct and this is going to be another 24 who are fired displaced that's correct we just we just applied for set aside vouchers that HUD has told us because of the disaster and that's why we are doing this in advance of our approval and we have requested 40 and when we say we are spending all our money we still have vouchers that we have client we have our clients who are looking for housing but then you know monthly there's a ratio where you know people get out of the program or lose their housing so that even though we maximize our funding every month there's some openings for more vouchers and for expenditures so right that's the balance you get some of both of those things so just a question coming in so every month what is the turnover in other words how many people actually go off the program every month seven percent seven percent per month per month more times 12 months that's I mean you know on an annual basis so there's a lot of turnover well seven percent not very much well per month annually 84 percent annually there's annually annually it's seven percent ever percent annually yes not monthly okay template annually okay so in in in these times with the fires is that more or less or has it any effect at all say that again did the fire affect our numbers it hasn't affected the turnovers uh no and I and like I was saying the reason for that is that after the fire um we had 32 that were displaced because of the fire but because the housing market has opened a little bit because of the housing um you know because um the rents have gotten so high that now there are more renters that are paying regular rent that who cannot afford it anymore we have some landlords who are going back to us to offer their housing and that's why we didn't see a real big turnover because our clients who lost housing have found housing again right now we only have four of those who have housed their housing that have not found any and it's because they're living somewhere else or you know waiting for something to open that they prefer how will you then able to justify the request to HUD if only four of that group we're still looking what what we're requesting is for the um the people who are affected by all by the fire not just for our own housing choice voucher recipients so we are asking 40 because for example at um journey's end we know that those are low income people and some of the you know some of the people affected by the fires are low income and so we're requesting additional 40 vouchers that hopefully we will get from this set set aside so we're kind of like moving ahead so that when um HUD calls us we say oh our housing authority has approved a preference for our fire victims so they know that you as a housing authority board are really interested in helping the community in you know finding housing for our low income clients that's really the strategy that we're trying to do and those new vouchers would still uh be for people who qualify every other way for HUD it just they weren't on the program but they were correct correct and you know we will be working with the uh with the with the housing uh board from the county and us that you know so this will be we will definitely know that they are fire victims because they've gotten um funding from FEMA or the Red Cross and they've been certified by different agencies that they are fire survivors i don't know if this question has been answered but uh the 24 set aside for persons experiencing homeless how many of those vouchers are actually being used for people so all those vouchers have been issued and we were issuing extra but how many yeah we haven't issued beyond the 24 actually we issued 25 because one person was absorbed by another housing authority we've housed today i'd say we've housed 10 but all the vouchers are issued so all about all the the vouchers are issued but only 10 people are placed in housing well they just began being issued uh towards the end of may so it hasn't been that long yet they've been looking for three months they haven't found a house is that what you're saying and that's not that long yet that's how we need project these vouchers three months is not long anymore for looking for housing in you know for the last two years i would say the average um search is about four to five months i would like to move the resolution i would like to move resolution of the housing authority of the city of santa rosa approving the housing choice voucher program administrative plan or vision establishing a waiting list limited preference for disaster affected families and waive the reading of the text is there a second i would say commissioner downey has seconded okay any further discussion i mean this this definition of limited preference i mean we've done two rounds of 24 i mean how many where does there has to be some uh definition of what limited preferences i mean we could have 50 percent of our vouchers under limited preference or it will be a policy decision right so so that is still i have not seen any HUD directive on the size of limited preferences there could be one but i haven't seen any reference to it whereas these other kind of numbers you do run on to if you start reading uh so you know it's kind of a misleading term to call it limited preference when you've got basically you're saying that this housing authority would have the discretion to to do more limited preference numbers or types one for the most about those those phantom vouchers that are not being used so there's no one attached to the there's no one we just haven't offered them because we can't afford to fund them is that the case so really there's a hundred less so really um our total number of vouchers is more like 1777 correct of operating vouchers well third class 61 was the number they said were actually in use right they actually have a contract on them correct but we have those other hundred searching oh so there is someone attached to those vouchers that we can't fund that's right and what happens if they go oh i found a place and we go we can't fund you what happens then um it has we have some reserves that we can use it it is not a science but you know we kind of determine based on the monthly averages and so there's a risk even if you don't have project based vouchers that you exceed your ACC your appropriated amount and uh so the one thing you get with the project based voucher is you started the process to get new inventory these others are not starting any process it's going to give them a place to go that's that's not what we're arguing i know but but it is the fact that there is a we a similar issue of utilization well i mean clearly these two items have raised a lot of questions and i always find that when we talk about the voucher voucher program it's very complicated and there are always new pieces of information that come up that caused me to go really i didn't know that so i don't know whether at some point i know we've had to study sessions before on that but i feel they've been bigger picture i mean like the little strategies i hear you're talking about i don't disagree with that but it's not usually part of a presentation so when it comes out it's like oh and i think we've all had a series of ohs what is kind of what has happened accidentally today i certainly appreciate the skill on the part of staff because if you spend too much money you're penalized if you don't get enough units under contract or penalized so it's kind of like if it wasn't for the experience and the skill of staff you know we wouldn't have the great record that we have in the city of san erosa of putting those resources to good use over the years so well and you put another thing on the table that having reserves is a useful thing and you know are we you know what do we do to monitor optimize whatever with regard to you know making this management job easier well i'm going to call the question if uh unless we're ready to proceed with the vote yes okay that is a calling question well calling the question strictly speaking i think you have to vote on right right right and i think hearing no objection i think we are ready to vote okay commissioner allson hi commissioner johnson morgan hi commissioner downy hi commissioner berke hi commissioner boldak vice chair lemke hi chair harris hi the motion passes with six yeses with the exception of commissioner boldak who is absent okay so that takes us to the end of the agenda and we do have uh topics to that will keep us busy in the future and some clarifications that i i think are still outstanding uh so we can all get a better understanding but thank you all very much for your time and i am very happy to know that we have some new project vouchers i thank you okay