City Council - Community and Economic Development Committee

I'd like to call the order um the um committee meeting of community and economic development I'm joined on this committee by council members Huffman and stone um today we have one agenda Bill item before us that's bill number um 24101 which is the 2024 HUD Consolidated action plan um uh also known as the action plan which is required by the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development which identifies activities to be funded by the federal Community Development block grant and home investment partnership program during the July to June program year these activities must be consistent with a 5-year Consolidated plan that outlines Community needs and priorities and the city uses the action plan to budget for its local housing Levy affordable housing sales tax and related general fund exp expenditures and today we have to talk us through it um samut of planning and Community Development thank you council member yeah samyut I'm the housing and services program manager in the planning department uh the agenda item I'm speaking with you about today begins on page 143 of your packet and as you introduced it's part of the HUD required action plan approval process um we're just about to enter into the second year of our Consolidated plan um and that plan was approved by Council about a year ago after over a year of very robust uh public engagement um it's a very long and involved plan and it's summarized in the goals needs and strategies one pager that's in your packet today as

well we really see that plan as our the fundamental basis of our daily activities um on the housing and services team uh because it reflects that public engage and uh some detailed data analysis about our community um but each annual action plan is really our time to implement that um and it's the detailed budget and the detailed activities that we plan to do starting July 1 to implement that Consolidated plan so in this case you'll see us continuing to prioritize Housing Development um and that includes uh land Acquisitions uh Rehabilitation to preserve um existing housing um and and and new development you'll also see continued commitments to services that help with housing stability um and the prevention and response to homelessness including uh shelter and Outreach activities um and you'll see an attempt to help as much as we can with basic needs uh given the constraints of the funding sources that we have um as noted in your memo the prior availabil ility of arpa funding really enabled us to save our local dollars over the past few years uh leaving a healthy balance in those two funds that you mentioned the housing Levy and the affordable housing sales tax and you'll see that a portion of those are uh utilized this year in in the budget that's before you um and I also want to note that every effort was made to find funding for the Bellingham Food Bank um they had a significant increase in need over the past few years which has not dropped they've also had um covid

funding that has been able to be given to them um historically preco uh we included about $50,000 a year in our action plan budget um we were able to find about 150 to include in this year's budget that you'll see before you but that's really scraping um everything that we can to do that and and decreasing some of the other other basic um activities there we've also tried to shift as much as is reasonable um into the the housing specific funding but obviously things like food security cannot come from that and so um non-housing expenses are the place that we're most constrained in this uh housing and services budget um and lastly the shelter funding included includes the new uh setup of the new tiny home Villages um out on Northwest um and the need to restore basee Camp uh once the lighthouse Mission departs that location um but not the future winter shelter programming that's unknown at this time so that'll be an item that comes back before you later this year um and then there are lots of additional budget and activity details uh contained in the memo that you have before you I'm happy to talk through any of those um or answer questions you might have thank you thank you so much um questions and comments from committee council member St yeah so I just first wanted to um I notify the City attorney but I know that this item um is coming forward for a vote right to pass the resolution included in the packet um and just to notify the committee that I plan to abstain from the

vote because I serve as a member of the opportunity Council board um of directors and so just in the potential conflict of interest but I just want to confirm with the city attorney that it was still permissible for me to participate in the discussion um today I I would not participate in that discussion yes thank you sorry I'm muted um so then that'll be a recusal so I will leave from chambers and I don't know if you need someone to sit in but you can come get me when it's great um and uh is it recommended to have another council member sit in for you could appoint somebody else to to serve in her position on the committee okay okay I'll give it to council member lqu sorry council member um and uh other questions and comments from committee yeah council member hman thank you um no questions at this point just a a comment just an OB General observation for for those people that might be um hearing about the Consolidated the HUD Consolidated action plan for the first time um and point out a couple couple points here I think it's important to note that we uh we're spending $30 million um this year on projects which is a seems like a huge amount of money of course um that that only scratches the surface of the need uh in our community but we are we're so lucky to have the voters um that have voted for the home fund um uh and also the affordable housing sales tax that we implemented a couple of years ago this Council voted to approve um without that money we wouldn't be getting

to this 30,000 or 30 million um and the and the wide variety of um wide variety of projects and um programs that this money goes towards to meet the needs in our community uh and want to congratulate and thank the the staff and also cab for all of the work that they do to uh to juggle all of those needs all of the funding sources um it's a I know it's a huge Matrix and gets very complicated and Sammy I know in particular you're kind of a a genius at at juggling funding um so thank you for the work that you continue to do on this um that that that's all for now and I'll open up to any other Council m um I'll start with uh list then Anderson then Hamil uh thank you for letting me to sub on this committee um I have two requests for information um I'm hoping it's not too much work to do it uh the first has to do with the graph on page 146 the funding uses uh rental housing reduction is 63% that's great when we first adopted the housing Levy we wanted to put the line share we talked about I think up to 71 point or at least 60% of the original housing Levy would go towards so-called brick and mortar projects um I am glad that we have stuck to our guns on that there's often a lot of pressure to do other things with that money because there are so many other needs um but here's the graph I want and it's been shown on on other times uh a a graph which shows the funding the uses but also includes County and other agencies because I think the important thing to understand is we do a

little bit of specialization where the city and our funds because of what they are we lean heavy on the housing production and less heavily on say services so the county is also spending millions of dollars on this and we really do it together and so where our spending is light their spending is heavier and where their spending is light vice versa so we've had that graph in the past I would love to see that graph again for this year um do you think that's too much work um no I think what I would propose is uh we are due to talk with you about that Levy administrative and financial plan uh we haven't done a deep dive into the overall split and goals of that um combined with the affordable housing sales tax um and so I'd like to revisit that I've been talking with the mayor's office about this um come back to you later in the summer with that and I think um talk to you about whether or not there's a a a need for any adjustments in those targeted percentages just to be clear the graph you're seeing here includes all of our HUD funding and everything else so the the lever proportion for development is still higher than you see in this um overall funding uses graph um but I understand what you're asking for in terms of seeing the walk County funding for services and everything else um it's an imperfect science those things change all the time they're just getting uh the numbers from the State Department of Commerce that they'll have to implement this next year so um I think giving

you a complete picture in a couple of months would make more sense when they have certainty and then also combining that with that discussion about um the the local funds and what makes sense for us in terms of continued goals for the proportionality of those funding sources does it make sense to you to yeah no that would be fantastic I I would I would appreciate that and uh yeah if if we're going to that's going to come forward in a couple months when when the county has more specific numbers as far part of the renew discussion of our own targeting proportions as for the administration financing plan that would be great I do know the county since I think those numbers were last done they have some new housing sources funding sources that that we the city is have cooperated with them also obtaining um I would appreciate that very much thank you Samia very thank you and thank you for the report it's always good to get an update um I've always not curious um so with our rental assistance uh there's a good chunk that goes towards Motel stays and our at least in the past our priority was was uh women and children and then I assume um elderly and then those with uh varying abilities uh with the new facility that's going to be built uh out towards Bellis Fair hopefully to House women and children I'm just wondering what the level of unmet need is because the hope is a lot of the people who are staying in motels or hotels ideas to get them into stabilized house housing but I imagine

that there's a really large uh waiting list or back list of people who would then fill those uh uh Motel stays and I'm just wondering are we seeing um a particular population increase looking for that like uh our elderly people with disabilities is there like a population that's not being served currently that we expect to fill those spaces or is women and children I mean are we just not even going to make a dent in it um yeah so unfortunately we we continue to see really high numbers um of families with children experiencing homelessness um and and Senior population as well so both those are continue to be very high um despite a lot of new units opening up uh recently um mil Works has just um leased up lurel and Forest um opportunity council's project is just leasing up uh for seniors so um we continue to see those too as as the highest needs um as articulated in in the Consolidated plan um the Bellis one project is targeted to families with children the Bellis 2 is targeted to seniors um and then there are a number of other kind of pipeline projects that are not yet um articulated what the population will be so we'll continue to look at that um and work in partnership with the the Housing Development community on the nonprofit side to think about what makes sense for those but unfortunately yes we're just still seeing really really high needs in those areas with the two new projects coming in um do you know if there's percentages allocated for particular population like

transitioning from homelessness or um th those who are on our Motel voucher or because I know like samish way a certain percentage was allocated to different population representation and only a smaller percentage um was for those exiting homelessness I'm just wondering if there's going to be a um a priority in these two new facilities for people exiting homelessness versus people on waiting list with opportunity Council yes so um the Bellis one one project uh 20% set aside for exiting homelessness also Bellis 2 is the intent 20% of unit set aside for exiting homelessness because of um the desire to have rental assistance associated with as many units as possible and some of the available rental assistance vouchers are only available for folks for example who have disabilities um I think the opportunity Council does have certain set of sides for those groups as well which can overlap or not overlap um with the homeless on Entry set aside units Cil president yeah thank you for recognizing me I don't serve on this committee but I just had a question regarding uh Pipeline and I realize that this is um more of a short-term uh presentation and thank you for this presentation it's very good um my question is uh in your opinion what is the health of the pipeline for rental housing production looking like in the next few years in terms of projects um being able to to come online whether they're in the design phase or the actual imple implementation phase um we've been working on our

team very hard to try and increase that the robustness of that that pipeline um and there are quite a few projects that are in the wings um looking to move forward so I'd say it's quite healthy um we continue though to want to look out 5 10 years and make sure then that continues more than just a few years in the future um I think you're aware that when it comes to um the multif family the larger multif family housing developments for affordable housing we really rely on the low-income housing tax credit program that program is severely constrained at the federal level and um therefore as it trickles through the state to um our County uh watcom county is allowed an average um of a certain um allocation of tax credits every year based on that total federal allocation of tax credits that allocation is not enough to even do a single project um a single 9% low-income housing tax credit project every year um so we're um looking at on a rolling basis being able to do three to four 9% low-income housing tax credit projects within the county every five years depending on um each particular Project's need for that tax credit allocation um and so we really need to coordinate with the county on that um we all want affordable housing to be close to the folks who need it um traditionally the low-income housing tax credit developments have been in the city of Bellingham um I believe there's one that's trying to move forward uh in the city of Linden in the next five years possibly also the

City of Ferndale so we're trying to coordinate on a regional basis um for those low-income housing tax credits it's the 9% tax credits which are the the ones that really allow the deepest subsidy and the most housing to be developed um but that said we're working very hard to try and do projects that also don't rely on those so that we can continue to have a project in the pipeline and take advantage of every opportunity in this community to use those tax credits since they are the biggest source but we don't limit ourselves just to those kinds of projects thank you um we are running up on time here folks so um yeah thank you to to staff and to advisory committee members um C Cab who might be listening and for questions oh yep yeah you Mike made one more my second request for information y absolutely it's another graph um so on the revenue it shows that we're we have allocated 30 million but it's a little bit misleading in that it incudes a $10 million of what I'm going to call roll over existing commitments so there $20 million of new allocations here's a graph I'd like to see I'd like to see the graph of over the last 10 15 20 years however you have it new allocations as well as the existing allocations right because each year we have significant so I want to I want to grab them both and I want to see the size of the of the wedge I know the new allocations has grown I just like to keep track on the size of the existing ones if I could see that I think that tells a good

story um and particular I like separating out the new allocations versus the existing alloc commitments as you call them if that's also possible I'd appreciate it yes I might have some followup questions to understand exactly what what you're picturing um but uh yes absolutely we can do follow up thank you great um so we are looking for a motion today um to bring forward a recommendation I think tonight um I'll go ahead and move approval any discussion on that motion all right all in favor say I I I Michael you're on the committee now committee so I um uh all opposed any extensions hearing none um the recommendation is unanimous and with that uh seeing no other business before the committee um and of committee um thank you okay I'll chime in real quick here our next committee will be committee the whole and that starts at 1M see you this afternoon thank you