[Music] [Music] Thanks everybody for coming for the work session and I will turn it over to uh Emily Sutton with Housing and Neighborhood. neighborhoods to talk about affordable housing and I want you to I have my Habitat for Humanity shirt on. Love it. Everyone deserves uh affordable homes. So, we need those. That's awesome. Well, good morning uh Mayor Council. Uh I'm here today to talk about our new roadmap for increasing housing affordability and ending homelessness in Raleigh to save taxpayer dollars downstream and to create a safe, vibrant, and healthy city. My name is Emily Sutton and I'm the housing and neighborhoods director for the city. So today's conversation will start by reviewing the state of housing in Raleigh and the work we've done up to this point to address affordable housing and homelessness. We'll also preview a home for every neighbor which is our new affordable housing plan along with a subset of that plan which is our unchildered homelessness response plan. So now we'll talk a little bit about the state of housing in Raleigh. So a city's affordability is influenced by four factors. They are housing demand, housing supply, development costs, as well as household income. And market shifts, population growth, and limited affordable housing supply have combined to create an affordable housing crisis that is fueling homelessness in our community. There's no single solution to this issue. It is complex and as we discussed at the retreat, supply is a big part of the puzzle, but it's not the entire answer. Many actions and participants will be required. So, a little bit about Raleigh's housing crisis by the numbers. Um, we know that more than 1,400, probably 1500 people are experiencing unsheltered homelessness in the county. We also know that there are more than 80 camps where people are living unsheltered throughout the county, most of which are within the city limits. 27,000 low-income households have a housing cost burden and pay more than 30% of their monthly income towards housing costs every month. And then we also know that in Wake County there is roughly a 60,000 unit shortage of affordable housing. Can I ask one quick question on the number of the 1400 that the uh Wake County schools has a number of unhoused children in the school system which I understand is somewhere around 6,000. How do you kind of reconcile this number of 1400 with the 6,000 from Yeah, it's a great question. So this number 14-500 is based on the annual point in time count that the housing and urban development department requires that continuums of care do each year. Some of you all participated in this last year's and it counts people who are literally homeless. So that includes people who are in shelter or transitional housing, living outside um in their cars. So places that are not meant for human habitation. The way that the school system counts is a little bit different. Um that is includes people who are at risk also includes people who are doubled up um couch surfing kind of things like that. So their number is much higher. Okay. Thank you. So, while we've made a lot of progress in creating affordable units, um, in fact, we've led the state and much of the Southeast in building units through leveraging the low-income housing tax credit, there's still a long way to go to meet the demand for housing and to ensure that everyone can actually access and stay safe and stable in housing. At the extreme, the lack of affordability leads to homelessness. In 2020, the US Government Accountability Office found that nationally, for every $100 increase in rent, it equaled a 9% increase in homelessness. And this is because at its root, homelessness is a housing problem. It sounds obvious, but in practice, many of the strategies employed to address homelessness are actually temporary backs stops that are in fact more expensive than focusing on housing focused solutions that we know are sustainable. There are also concentrations um and responses that look at symptoms and coorbidities such as substance use rather than focusing on housing solutions along with services. And research shows that places with higher higher rates of homelessness don't have higher rates of substance use or mental health issues than the rest of the country. It's that they have lower housing supply and lower housing costs. So on the other hand, many places with exceptionally high rates of substance use and mental illness like West Virginia and Tennessee, they in fact have below average rates of homelessness because they just have softer housing markets. Homelessness is like a musical game of chairs. This is how we talk about it quite often. If there are nine chairs and 10 players and one player has a broken leg, when the music stops, the person with the broken leg will probably have no chair. But the broken leg isn't the cause of the homelessness. It's the fact that there are only nine chairs. So if there were 10 chairs, the person with a broken leg and their disability would not matter. They would still have a place to sit. So we are at an important inflection point in the city. What we do now can send us down one path or another to ending homelessness or continuing to manage the problem at extraordinary taxpayer expense. There's also no zerocost option when it comes to homelessness. Doing nothing costs people in the community actually more than it does to address and provide a sustainable solution. And in Raleigh, unsheltered homelessness has doubled in recent years, and there has been a visible rise in the number of camps where people are sleeping outside. The Raleigh Parks Department along with the North Carolina Department of Transportation reported spending more than 200,000 in a one-year period each just to clean up camps. And none of that went towards permanent solutions. It's just the cleanup. Last November, the city of Dallas reported taxpayers pay more than $200 million annually on homelessness related costs like medical treatments, emergency room visits, emergency shelter, mental health, mental health care, incarceration, and that's a $96,000 per person experiencing homelessness costs per year to taxpayers. Local first responders, so our police, fire, and EMS are often in the front lines of homelessness. Responding to calls from people in crisis or distress, and these repeated calls place a strain on the emergency response system and divert limited resources from other public safety priorities. A housing focused response can ease the burden on first responders by reducing preventable emergencies and calls for services related to unsheltered homelessness. By contrast, housing someone and connecting them to case management along with support services costs just 24 to $36,000 per year, which is less than half of what we currently spend managing homelessness. And that $36,000 number per year, is something we put together that's looking at paying actual market rent or above market rent. Um so that puts folks in those units that are vacant um right now. So, we can reduce the public cost of homelessness and lessen the strain on first responders by investing in housing solutions with ongoing supports. So, what are we doing? Since homelessness is a housing problem, we're focusing on expanding affordable housing as a primary goal. In total, since 2016, 7,284 affordable units have been completed or in the pipeline. In addition to increasing the supply of legally binding affordable housing, the city is making moves to improve the overall affordability of the housing market. Both of these two goals focus heavily on increasing housing supply. But again, we know that housing supply is not the silver bullet. Fully addressing the housing crisis also requires demand side interventions targeted at ending and preventing homelessness. One of the key tools we've used to fund these goals is the 2020 housing bond. The 2020 bond was Raleigh's largest to date um exceeding the four previous bonds by about four times. The bond was carved into five buckets as you see on this slide. We have the public private partnership bucket that facilitates partnerships with foreign and nonprofit partners to increase the supply of affordable housing outside of the federal low-income housing tax credit program. 4.8 million of the 24 million from the LITC gap financing bucket is made available each year for five years through the city's gap financing program for transit oriented projects. The site acquisition funds are targeted to preserving existing affordable housing near transit and purchasing transit adjacent sites for development of new affordable housing. Home repair funds were used to create the home revitalization program, providing repairs and maintenance to extend the life of owner occupied homes, help seniors age in place, install accessibility measures, and just in general improve the overall quality of life for residents. The home buyer assistance bucket funds the enhanced home buyer assistance program that provides up to $60,000 for qualified home buyers towards the purchase of a home. So with one year of our budget left, we have 75% um is committed or spent and that's approximately 56 million of the entire 80 million. Um we're currently in our fourth year again 75% spent. Next year fiscal year is the fifth and final year of the budget. So the bond overall has supported 1100 units in these buckets. So the bulk of the production as you can see has been through the low-inccome housing tax credit gap financing and the public private partnership buckets. Funds directed at homeowners have assisted more than 100 households. Um site acquisition funds are anticipated to yield more than 300 affordable units. Funds from the bond are braided together with our other local funding sources like the penny for housing as well as federal's funding sources to include community development block grant, emergency solutions grant, and home funds. And we use all of these different sources to further our affordable housing goals and address homelessness. This slide provides an overview of the key ways we support affordable housing. And here are some of the ways we use our funds to end and prevent homelessness. A little later, we'll highlight a few of these activities to provide some more details on how they work. I'll just give a couple minutes to review this slide. So, we want to highlight some recent projects. Um, for rental production, we have doubled the number of affordable rental units completed since this time last year. So, last fiscal year and the year prior, we saw about 400 affordable units created and preserved. And so far in this fiscal year, we've more than doubled that number. So, we're at 841. Um, a lot of that is due to the development pipeline sort of catching up from the 2020 to 2022 lag that happened during the pandemic. Um, but it's an incredible number of units. We also wanted to highlight um redevelopment and repair projects. So, Habitat Week recently purchased two parcels on South Bworth to build affordable town homes for low-income families. And then we have also completed 16 home rehabs for this fiscal year. Many of you were at our recent affordable housing summit back in August. Uh the event brought together community members and housing advocates along with local and national leaders and practitioners to discuss evidence-based solutions for addressing housing affordability. We wanted to highlight this program because I don't think we have done so yet, but it is the partnership with Campbell Law School to provide eviction prevention services. Um, so far um through since its inception in August 2022, the project has opened about 100 cases. Um, 62 evictions have been prevented through the court and legal advice has been provided to another 29 clients. And the clinic provides court representation as well as legal advice to tenants facing eviction. And every case the clinic has represented in court so far has won. There are eight law students enrolled in this clinic, which is really exciting. Um, it's training, it's helping to prevent these detrimental evictions, but it's also training attorneys and and new attorneys to do this type of work, which is pretty incredible and important for our community overall. They also work with a student intern from NC State that helps with clients non-legal needs like providing housing search assistance as well as applications for food stamps, um, child care, things like that, counseling services. And the clinic's impact just goes beyond legal help. We just wanted to highlight this quote here from one of the clients they served. I'll give a few minutes to read that. So the impact of this work as we said is more than just legal. Um one client shared this comment and this happened. A client was facing eviction that was initially denied the chance to appeal her case because she had no income and her um petition to move forward with no income was rejected by the court. Uh with support from the Campbell Law Clinic, she was able to have her appeal accepted, eventually win her unemployment benefits that she had been waiting on and also secure full-time employment. The clinic also prevented the a default of fiction when transportation issues, as she talks about in this quote, kept her from a hearing and helped negotiate a settlement using American Rescue Plan Act funds that came through the city, resulting in a new lease with her landlord. Just want to take a moment too to talk about the impact of eviction on health. Um, eviction increases suicide rates. It increases severe mental health issues. It impacts children in the homes for potentially generation. It impacts the amount of income that a child is able to earn if they are in a household that experienced an eviction. So, this type of work really impacts generations. Um, and you know, really proud of of this work that's happening. So, now that we've discussed the work Raleigh is doing right now to improve housing affordability, we're going to look forward to what we want to do over the next five years. And Housing and Neighborhoods has drafted a new plan called A Home for Every Neighbor that lays out this roadmap for increasing affordable housing, improving overall market affordability, as well as ending and preventing homelessness. So, here's our vision. Um, and it's where Raleigh, where all residents have access to safe, affordable housing and homelessness, is functionally ended. We've already set the stage for these top priorities, and over the last year or so, we have identified these three key goals as the outcomes that we need to aim for in everything we do. Before we dive into the details, here's just a look at how the affordable housing plan connects and reflects to other major city plans like the comprehensive plan, the consolidated plan we um provide to the federal government as well as the city's strategic plan. A home for every neighbor weaves together key elements of these other plans to fully build out the specific objectives that will further increase these priorities. I'm sorry, Emila. Would you go back to those circles? Why are some of them half and some of them fully green? Well, sorry. Some of them are half. Oh, yes. So, um, you know, while the comp plan fully addresses these, um, the strategic plan fully addresses increasing affordable housing supply, but we just wanted to show that, um, there wasn't wasn't necessarily, um, complete concentration of all of these topics in all plans, but that they overlap, that there is mentions and there are efforts that align, but it's not necessarily a direct um, focus on those. Thank you. So under the first goal of increasing affordable housing supply, there are two main objectives and that's funding new construction and preservation of affordable housing and streamlining the development process to allow for new supply to come online quickly. And we've already we already fund construction and preservation and over the next five years we'll aim to increase and leverage public and private funds to build more units as well as preserve existing units through rehab. Streamlining development involves continued work on simplifying the permitting and review processes for affordable developments and also looking to expand the um accessory dwelling unit fasttrack program uh that planning and development rolled out in 2023. For the second goal of improving affordability of the overall housing market, we will work to encourage mixed income development, enhance financial assistance programs available to residents with lower incomes, and continue to expand housing variety and choice. To support mixed income development, we are evaluating policies and funding models to incentivize mixed income development. Staff from Housing and Neighborhoods and Planning and Development are working with an expert consultant to explore this model. This model uses public dollars to provide lowcost construction loans along with other tools to provide uh construction of multif family properties that include a mix of affordable and market rate units. Staff will be sharing more about this unique emerging tool with council in the near future. We will also continue investing in our existing financial assistance programs for first-time home buyers and low-income homeowners seeking home repairs. In addition, we plan to explore opportunities to expand rent assistance tools for low-income housing low-income households facing housing instability as well as explore shared equity models like community land trusts. Finally, we will work to keep our expanding housing keep expanding our housing options by supporting zoning reforms that increase housing variety and investing city dollars and projects that increase the availability of multifamily units, co-living and small homes and build affordable housing near schools, jobs, and transit. So, moving to ending and preventing homelessness, we're focusing on proven solutions. This includes using data to help us implement evidence-based strategies to address emergent needs. Collecting individual level and population level data about our neighbors experiencing homelessness can help us tailor interventions and match housing solutions with individual needs such as offering permanent supportive housing to those people who are experiencing homelessness with disabilities and have higher service needs as well as low barrier tools like rent assistance, rapid rehousing, and follow-along services. We also need to make sure that we rightsize whatever our interventions are to the actual needs of the community. Meaning for most people experiencing homelessness, a lighter touch is enough. So rapid rehousing up to two years of housing assistance combined with case management is enough. There's about um 10 to 20% of the population that has that higher need that needs really those ongoing subsidies and that higher level services that that are provided through permanent supportive housing. So not overinvesting in one or the other is important and making sure that we're balancing our investment across according to the needs of our community. And we'll also focus on permanent housing as a solution to homelessness which is backed by more than 30 years of research. This will involve partnering with private landlords to increase the use the use of vacant rental units for homelessness interventions, offering incentives for landlords to participate in affordable housing programs, as well as exploring technology tools to build out local affordable housing inventory. And another missing piece of the puzzle is the need for flexible funds to address homelessness. We know that there are incredibly unique needs of residents that experience homelessness and that um whatever we provide needs to be flexible and low barrier. And this could look like creating a flex fund or a pod of flexible dollars that can be used to pay for things like security deposits, application fees, first and last month's rent, utility connections, um and other startup costs needed to move into housing. The funds could also be used as a problem problem solving tool to keep people stably housed or covering costs such as one-time utility arars or onetime renters. So a subset of our affordable housing plan is our unsheltered response strategy. Um and this is furthering to build out a strategy to specifically respond to the rise in unsheltered homelessness in Raleigh. This is a communitywide planning initiative led by 48 uh member steering committee representing a diverse array of residents, leaders and stakeholders to include people with lived expertise. The bringing sorry the unsheltered home homelessness response plan aims to create a comprehensive collaborative solution for unsheltered homelessness and also addressing camps. So it will lay out a road map for achieving functional zero for the unsheltered population and this is a specific metric used nationwide to mark that a community has essentially eliminated homelessness. Uh and this means that functional zero essentially means that um someone's homelessness is rare, brief and non-recurring. Um so the planning initiative is geared towards conducting a systemic needs assessment and gaps analysis. Also developing shared protocols and prioritization tools for bringing housing resources to the camp decommissioning process. Providing guidelines for implementing uh a coordinated camp response and ensuring continuous quality improvement. So, this is what success will look like if we're able to advance the objectives laid out in a home for every neighbor. There are some success metrics that we can expect to see. We anticipate creating or preserving 1,345 affordable housing units by 2030. We also want to reduce the financial burden of housing costs for low-income households. and we want to achieve functional zero. So, we want to reap the payoffs for proven solutions and ending homelessness. Okay, with that, um I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. I'm waiting. I think this is going to be a massive amount of questions, but we will start at this uh end of the tape. Yeah, thank you so much, Emila, for this. Um, I'm curious about the uh number you've got, the 1,345 goal. Can you tell us more about how you've come up with that? I know in the past I think we had a 10-year goal of 5700 units, which was, you know, 570 a year. This seems a little bit less than that. I know things cost more these days. Um, so can you just talk about your your thinking there? Sure. Yes. So this is taking into consideration the amount of production that we've able to do year-over-year in the last five years. Also the cost per unit adjusting for inflation. So it's really reflecting the increased cost of construction. Um as well as again reflecting what we've been able to produce with our existing sort of infrastructure that we have now year-over-year. And do you anticipate additional funding being needed to get there or is this Yeah, it's Yes. So, because we're 75% um spent with our bond um we and next year is our final year of spending. So, the year following, we'll need additional funds to keep this work going. Thank you. Well, definitely thank you for the information, the presentation. One of the things that I know we always talk about the number of units that we've approved and um some of those units are replacement units and some are new units. So my question is what is that number of new units that we have approved as a council. Um so we're not basically we're not tearing something down to rebuild. We're building something completely new. What is that number? And also of the number of what's approved, there's also that number of what has been completed. Um, so what's also the delta there? Because we can say, yeah, we've approved, you know, 10,000 units as a council, but only a 100 been built. You know, you know, I'm sure that number is probably a lot closer. I'm just grabbing numbers. But having that information and then what my last part I'm asking all now so I don't have to keep going. My last question is outside of financing, what are some of the um hurdles or challenges in getting units built? [Music] Cost a lot. Um yeah, I don't I mean um it's it's really just a resource game, right? I mean, I think that the city has done an amazing job of setting up this infrastructure to get units on the ground. And so I think it's just a matter of how do we maintain that momentum. Um and that's just really a question of resources. Um I don't know if Erica you can answer the preservation question now. Yeah. Um I'll have to like confirm and get you the specific numbers but I think um kind of ballpark I can give you the numbers for the past year or so. Council has approved more than 600 I believe new units to be built. I'll have to fact check that. And then you affordable. Affordable. Yeah. And units on the ground. Um we've seen more than 800 come online in this year alone, which I think you highlighted um is like more than double what we saw come online last in the last two years in each year. And and when you do um supply us with that number, can you just let us know if we've approved 600 this year and 800 on the ground? That means there's a backlog. So if we know what that backlog is um that I think that'll be helpful as well. Sure. Yeah, we can get that. and that is Erica Brandt, our assistant director in housing and neighborhood. Thank you so much for this. Um, I think along those lines, we talked about ADUs. Uh, I know we've said it before, how many have been permitted and built. I know we're using that in this context, but we can't control how much they're they're they cost. So, how do you uh use it as a reflection of affordability if we can't control if it's actually affordable? Do you want to speak to that, Pat? I feel like planning is a little closer to that issue. Yeah. Good uh good afternoon, Pat Young. Planning and Development. Yeah, so we've had about 260 ADUs permitted. Um you were right that to my knowledge there are not any of those that are under any of the programs that Emila referenced. Uh, and so I I think some of something that we could explore or discuss is how we could um use the ADU tool as as a as a way to uh uh be included in uh preservation or retention programs for affordable housing. The other thing I would say is ADUs are uh by definition and and by the UDO smaller, right? and and are you usually more organically affordable. That doesn't mean they're available to folks at 60% of area median income, but they are more affordable than traditional housing options. Sure. I just like to make that distinction because I I just don't want that to get washed over um as we talk. We we need affordability at 80% AMI. We need it at 100. We do, but I just like to be specific because residents may think when they hear affordable, we're mainly thinking under 50% AMI. So, I just want to make sure we're clear and and explaining what that is. A few other questions. Is the homeowner repair program being fully utilized? Have you spent all the money that's been allocated or we do we have remaining funds yeartoear? Yes, I have notes on that. Sorry, I'll bring Erica back up because my notes got uh all mixed up. Erica Brandt um housing and neighborhood. So, um yes, the the program is fully utilized. We tend to have um excess budget year-over-year just because of the kind of pace of the programs. We have three different programs. Um they they move at different paces. The substantial rehab program, which is the largest, um tends to move the slowest because it takes three months per project to get these things done. I mean, they are full home rehab. So, we do tend to have a little bit of padding um in the budget just in case things move quicker and we're able to get to more homes. Um but I would say that the the programs are pretty fully utilized at this point. Great. Thank you so much. Um my third question is who's in charge of the unsheltered response strategy? Is that a city initiative? Is that a COC? So the the city through the strategic plan last year was provided funds to hire a consultant to help lead the community to facilitate this unsheltered response plan. So the city is um helping to guide and facilitate that the consultant with a consultant that we were able to hire for that work. That is a completely uh partnered um process. However, so the county is fully involved. We have several department um heads that are involved in that. Um we have several nonprofit leaders. We have philanthropic leaders that are involved there. So, it's a pretty diverse group that is heading that steering committee. Great. I see that we'll get more updates as they as they continue to meet. That's just something that we'll probably do more work sessions on in the future. Absolutely. Perfectly. Perfect. And then the last question I have is, is there a plan to increase the $40,000 per unit cost to better reflect how expensive building new units actually is? So that is not so that is not a number that we set a policy on. Um that is just a number that that we have provided the the data to help support. Right. So, so for example, right now our um average subsidy with city and county is around $40,000 to subsidize one affordable unit. The city part of that is around $27,000 per unit subsidy. Um so we can, you know, provide data to sort of help support what that number is. And of course, that number is not considering the total cost of producing affordable an affordable unit. It's just the city and and the county's sort of subsidy to help get that unit on the ground, right? I guess the reason I ask is because even when uh we do payment in Lou and some we use that $40,000 number even though we know costs are going up and up and up. So when we continue to use that number knowing that it is way more expensive than that, then I'm wondering how do we get closer to what it should be or could be? And I don't I don't know the answer to that, but I just feel that in the last two years, almost three years being on council that that number keeps going up. So, I'm wondering how and when we raise that. We can provide you with the latest um per unit subsidy analysis. Awesome. Thank you so much. Right. I'll start um I'll start keep going down the table. Councelor Silver. Okay. I'll limit mine to four questions. Thank you for the presentation. Um you had mentioned and emphasized on one of the slides. one of the goals increase affordable housing supply and then you made a reference that it's not just housing supply. Uh I was very intrigued by the retreat and there was a presentation I believe it was a council member former council member in Arlington Virginia and she explained no it is the housing supply and not just affordable with a 60,000 unit shortfall in Wake County. Uh you made a comment that it's affordable housing and not housing supply. Can you explain what you meant by that? because with 60,000 and having a target of only 1300, it seems that housing supply is critical. So, can you just explain what you meant by that? It's absolutely critical, but it's not the complete answer. And I think we can't build our way fast enough to get to that 60,000 gap number. I mean, the amount of production that it resources it would take to achieve that number um is pretty astronomical. And so that's why we sort of couch it as um we are able to do this piece of it um and address this piece of it at this rate with this amount of resources. However, there need to be also resources for folks who are don't have affordable housing and who are experiencing homelessness. So sort of that downstream and upstream and upstream need to be addressed at the same time. Um that 60,000 unit um gap was identified by Wake County a couple of years ago and that's the gap in affordable units. So that's saying, you know, someone who's making under 80% area median income, they're not there's a lack of 60,000 units for that group of folks. Um there's also just, you know, people who are making that 40% area median income and under will just never be able to afford housing because they just don't have the income to not be extremely housing cost burdened. Now, the second question may be for Patrick. uh you had mentioned one of the things you're trying to do is streamline the development process. Uh you know I I do know that you know DESAC the development services advisory commission is constantly looking for how to move things forward. Uh can you talk about some of those streamlined improvements that you're making? Uh I'd be very curious. Uh and then I wanted to go to slide 25 to have a follow-up question. Yeah, thanks you. Thank you for that question. Council member Silver, Pat Young with Planning and Development. Um, you're absolutely right. The the timeliness and predictability of the development review process is a huge has a huge impact on getting the housing supply we need to address all the issues that Emila spoke about. So, as you alluded to, we're working with our development services advisory committee. We we've implemented over two dozen um process improvements and changes over the last 18 months. We had uh a multi-ep departmental group called our innovation team which which was set up to from our eight matrix departments and our planning and development department to look at how we could find uh save time savings and efficiencies in the process. Uh we found uh the the process improvements we put in place have saved over 3 weeks in a traditional development process out of out of six months. So 15% savings. We thought that was a a good start. One of the things we've done is allowed um the SPR, which is the um detailed construction drawings to proceed uh concurrent with the subdivision so that if someone's ready to to build something that that saves at least a couple of months. Um we have um increased our project uh support and advocacy for affordable housing projects. We have a team that kind of uh walks folks through the process to make sure that those are getting not getting hung up and if they're they are getting hung up that we convene the reviewers and and have that feedback provided right away. So that we'll provide a full report on that. There was something I think provided in the weekly managers report recently but we can re reshare that um to give you more detail. But I hope that answers your question and I appreciate you bringing attention to it because this is an important component of and and second to that um and again I'm not saying u in terms of expediting projects u there seems probably not to be an appetite for general use zoning which would certainly provide a more predictable path. I think we have one zoning case today that has 18 conditions. Um I don't know how you quantify the cost but certainly conditions add cost and if we're saying affordability on one hand and then having conditions which costs get passed on to the renters or the buyers. Uh just wanted to understand um is there any desire when you go through the comprehensive plan update to kind of look at the impact of conditional use zoning uh and whether we truly want to value and move affordable projects forward whether conditional use may be a more logical path. just don't know if that came up in your engagement series or whether that's something you'll take a look at. Yeah, thank you for that question as well. And I think you're putting your finger on another important point which is that um any discretionary process u involves significant cost, time, uncertainty and risk and therefore adds results in less housing and more expensive housing. So you're absolutely right in that regard. I think our focus in the comprehensive plan is going to be looking at areas where uh we've seen um discretionary approvals um by council. So legislative actions where that maybe 90 95 100% have been approved. Maybe looking to recommend moving those to something that could be done through a rules-based administrative approval process. Same with our quasi judicial processes where we have things that go through uh it's not discretionary. it's it it must be granted if it meets criteria, but if if they're being granted over 90% of the time, we think we could probably identify a rules-based program that you all could adopt the rules and then staff could apply those. So, that's that's really our focus is to to reduce the amount of discretionary approvals without giving up um the level of influence and feedback that the community expects. Last question. This is for Emila. Um and council member Jones had mentioned this payment and loo fund. You had mentioned creating a fund to do a variety of things for some existing affordable housing. For that fund, what is eligible? What can that be used for? Because we hear very often rather than providing affordable housing, they're putting in a payment in loo. So, what could that payment in loo pay for? And could any of those uh that payment address some of the programs you had mentioned in your presentation? Yeah, that's a great question. Um, yes. So we imagine the need for a flex fund which is very uh successful in other communities who have significantly reduced homelessness. And this is a fund that will really address unique needs of people that need to access housing. So things like security deposits, application fees, first month's rent, um utility connection startup, things like that are are incredibly important. We see a lot of folks who are actually kept out of housing because they don't have those tools to just simply access housing. So, a flexible pool of funds to allow for that would be incredibly helpful in addressing homelessness and housing insecurity. Oh, hi. Hi. Um, so one one question I have is um in addition to creating new affordable units and preserving them is I know we in the past have um quantified the loss of naturally occurring affordable housing. I know that's difficult and resource intensive to do, but what is the plan for tracking the loss of existing affordable housing? Yeah, that's a that's a great question. I think that's something um we really want to look at more. Um the county has kind of created a tool that we're talking with them about. Um I think it's proprietary but we were you know talking about how do we how do we get better at looking that number looking at that number in the city and measuring it against what we're able to provide. So um that is something we want to look into and plan to look into. Great. And then um functional zero by do you have a year in mind? depends on the resources, right? I mean, I think um we are, you know, the the unsheltered homelessness response plan is identifying that gap in resources and putting a looking at a sort of five-year analysis of what it would look like to get to functional zero. So, I think that plan will really help us to look at what it would take in order to get to a point by a certain point. Got it. Okay. Um just a couple more for me. Sorry. Um there there's a slide that says 107 units and that seems to be a combined bucket of home rehab and down payment assistance. Do you know the distribution? Like how many went to home rehab? Of those 107 units, how many are down payment assistance? It's about an 8020 split. So home home buyer is around 80 and then the rehab are around I think 16 to 20 something like that. Got it. Okay. Um, I'm just I'm also thinking of the number you gave us that uh $60,000 can go to down payment assistance, but it takes 24 to 36 per year to end someone's homelessness. So, it sounds like for every person we can assist with down payment assistance, we could get two people out of homelessness. And so, um, in the face of a public health crisis like homelessness, it feels like that money is going to go farther. So, in the face of limited resources, like individually, I would prioritize ending homelessness. But um so I just kind of throw that out there as a comment and you don't have to respond. Um and then my last question is just around any ways we've looked at I looked really creatively at getting extra funds. So, I think about um housing as medicine and and housing as health and I wonder if like there's Medicaid expansion dollars or can wake Med because when we end homelessness, we reduce indigent ER visits and other things like that. So, what are some of the most like creative places you've looked for additional funds? Yeah, that's a that's a great question. Um we would love for that type of partnership to address this. I think other communities have found a lot of success in doing that. We partner with Alliance very closely. Um we also have great relationships with UNCC Health as well as Wake Med um who all came out for our resource popup days um to help provide urgent health and safety treatment to people living outside. Um we have ongoing conversations with them because they're also involved in the unsheltered strategy work. Um, you know, I think we talk about housing as health care a lot and would really welcome um increased partnership to address the resource gap on that. Um, there's also the the Medicaid waiver, the 11:15 waiver that has been approved um which will allow in 2026 a roll out is anticipated through DHS and that will allow for Medicaid to pay for some housing stabilization services as well as potentially six months of rent. So if that is implemented, um I think it would really shift a lot of the work we do in a really positive way. Nope. Anything from you, Mayor Prom? The only thing I'm sitting here thinking about is um the next housing bond. So, I guess that's really the the question. I know we have to have those conversations with the city manager's office and things along those lines, but listening to your presentation and and recognizing that we've pretty much gotten to the end of the last one and it's exhausted, but the need's still there. You know, what are the next steps for laying out a plan for the public in terms of what our next iteration of the housing bond is going to be? And I think transportation is the next cycle up if I'm not mistaken and not speaking out of turn. I want to get in your lane and try to do your thing. But um there is going to be some question about how do we prioritize what's going to be next in the queue and things along those lines because I think the public is going to want to know when we're ready to I guess come back and ask them for more funding for affordable housing issues. So, great question and we have already started internally to have those initial conversations about which one of those bonds we're going to bring first and whether we'll bring um more than one at one time. Um as we develop what that kind of projection will look like, we will obviously work with our partners over at the county because we don't want to put too much out there at one time and create a sense of bond fatigue with the voters and we're not successful in those asks. So, we're starting right now those early conversations of whether housing um comes as a bond next or whether or not we bring forward another penny um and whether or not transportation is is next or whether we bring them both together um and what the county is going to be doing in the way of if there are additional school bonds on the trajectory as well. So, probably this summer we'll have a better idea of kind of what the landscape is going to look like for next year. So, I'm going to piggyback on Mayor Pretend Ford's question about debt because we know that the Raleigh Housing Authority just got debt capacity, although it's an A+. We're aa so not as favorable as us issuing the debt, but how does that compare their ability to do debt? Where does that get us and how equivalent is that to having another affordable housing bond? So I think for us ours looks a little bit different than the way the housing authority approaches this work, right? So we will have a fully engaged community process to where we will work for months with community partners um as well as residents in the community to tell us what they would like to see. Those buckets that we will ultimately bring forward to you all for approval will be built around what the public says they would like to see in the next bond. So, while some think that um down payment assistance and all those things are priority, other folks feel like the entree into home ownership is just as important as putting folks into rental units. And as an as a city, we need to support home ownership in a way that all we're consistently doing is funding rental units. What does home ownership look like for residents here in Raleigh who are trying to get into that market? So when we go through that facilitated effort of trying to figure out what that process looks like, we then come back to council and coun we'll do it in a work session. Um we'll kind of talk through that process and then we go out to the voters. RHA is different, right? They get the authority pretty much from us or the support and backing from us and their debt looks totally unlike the debt that we push out to the voters at the ballot box. So um well just to reflectively listen so RHA is all rental correct. So if they have more debt capacity that might shift our priorities to be more towards home equity if they have more capacity to do rental but perhaps it would be helpful to just know with this new tool how does that impact what we're doing and timing of bonds and um but understand we don't need a full answer today but it's just a question I've got se second observation is that many people here are asking about metric and data and how all this stuff fits together. And I know you're constantly getting barrageed, you know, with those. I'm just wondering, and and this came up at the retreat, working together on a sort of a metrics page. Um, and you may already be doing this, but is there a a way to uh maybe prevent all this barrage of questions every time you show up and and find a better kind of dashboard that might help everyone? Yes, we want to look towards that as well. We have a dashboard currently for the bond um where you can see where units are in the city and how much has been expended. I think we'd love to really build that out to make sure that it's reflecting all of the city's investment in housing in all of the different ways. So, that is definitely something that's on our list um that we'd really love to develop. Okay. And my final question is um these uh and I talked yesterday to uh Patrick Young about this, but stabilization policies, you're doing a lot. And one thing I will just say, we're very fortunate to have such smart, competent people who care so much about this issue. So thank you for all the work you're doing. stabilization. We talked about San Francisco, Boston have they're doing many things, but they're also packaging it in a way that I think may be helpful if we could talk about these incredible programs like housing justice. You know, I see Octavia Rainey back there, what the fair housing board is doing and all these efforts to help stabilize certain communities. So, just throwing that out there as a maybe a a marketing communications bundle. We have looked at the Boston plan and we're actually going to talk with someone out of the mayor's office coming up about the development of that plan and what that looked like and what those resources are for them. So, we definitely want to investigate that type of model. Great. Okay. Okay. We'll do another round. Uh we'll go with councelor Jones first. you we were talking about the payment in loo uh money that we were already collecting and you mentioned the flex fund is that created and if not where's the current money going so there's the there's not necessarily a flex fund there's a flex fund um for the pilot but there's not a a a flex fund at large um and so I think um that is something we would need to create um as far as where the payment in loom who is going now. Erica, do you know that? Um I Erica Brandt Housing and Neighborhoods. I believe the payment and L funds kind of go into our um bond program income bucket. So similar to like when we sell um property and the proceeds go to affordable housing. I think it goes into that same bucket. Thank you. Can I ask? Yeah. Quick question off of that. Have we received any funds when the payment in L is in a conditioning case? Yeah, for resoning case housing and neighborhoods. I think we'll have to get back to you on that. Not that I am aware of, but it's possible that before my time. Okay. We can get back to you. Thank you. Yeah. Just had a question. Um again looking for all the affordable housing opportunities. Could you just clarify for the notice of funding availability for the joint venture gap financing road program is that limited to certain census tracks or is it opened up the entire city? And if it is limited, is that a federal requirement? Just trying to if we're looking for sites wherever. Uh I've been told it's only limited to certain census tracks and we want to make sure affordable housing is throughout the city. Of course, land costs vary throughout the city, but just want to understand is that true? Is it limited to certain census tracks? Yeah, Erica Brandt, housing neighborhoods, a great question. Um no. So our our um NOA is open citywide. Um, we do abide by the city's adopted affordable housing location policy, okay, for where city funds go. However, there are many exemptions to that policy. So, that policy um looks at census track demographics to try to prioritize city investment in areas of opportunity. Um, there are carveouts uh for um rehabs do not have to abide by that policy. Um there's carveouts based on proximity to transit. So, you know, any any development that will be on a um on a bus line that has frequent enough service gets a carveout. And then the other kind of complicating factor that may be part of what you're referring to is at the federal level there's what's called a qualified census track for tax credit developments. Um so developers are typically seeking to build in qualified census tracks because they get extra they get a boost to their credit if they build in those. What you're saying is there's an evaluation criteria and points are given. Is that how it works when you look at a proposal? Yeah. So the location um is considered as that that is part of the evaluation criteria and then there is an adopted city policy as part of the comprehensive plan um that prohibits the city to provide gap financing to developments that are not in the areas of opportunity if they do not meet the exemption. Right. Can you just send me that policy specifically that you're referring to? Okay. Thank you. Any other? All right. Well, we appreciate the data and conversation and uh this work session is adjourned. [Music]