Board of Supervisors Joint Meeting with the Planning Commission and TJPDC - Developers Incentives Work Session   12/4/2023

I've asked Ms.

Jones from county staff to give a little bit of technology update but we have very limited time so we're going to get started now.

Ms.

The microphone is always on.

There is not a way to mute these microphones from your perspective, so please remember that they are on when you're making a case, so I promise you're making many notes.

If you're about to speak into the microphone, it will tell us a lot of pointed points we're faced, and so we can speak directly into the microphone so that we can best ensure that you're getting captured and pushed out over Zoom.

All right, thank you.

So I will call the meeting to order.

We're required to establish our quorum, so I will be going over the names of the supervisors who are present, and that is Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District, Supervisor Ned Gallaway of the Rio District, Supervisor Jim Andrews of the Samuel Miller District, Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District, Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District, and myself, Supervisor Donna Price of the Scottsville District.

We do have a quorum.

Alright, in the same way I will convene the meeting of the Albemarle County Planning Commission, as I look around we do have a quorum.

We have Commissioner Murray, Commissioner Moore, myself, Commissioner Firehawk, Commissioner Mitzel, and Commissioner Carrizzano.

Thank you.

The Regional Housing Partnership is not required to establish a quorum, so we don't need to call them to order.

I do want to introduce and thank our Albemarle County police officers who are present today, Officer Dana Reeves and Officer Andy Munsey, and we do appreciate the service you provide all the time.

I have a couple of brief remarks before turning it over to Supervisor Ned Galloway to begin the formal meeting for developer incentives.

We have 23 people at the table, plus county staff, county executive, county attorney, and some others.

We have two and a half hours, which is 150 minutes.

By the time you eliminate the convening and adjourning, my opening comments, Supervisor Galloway, Dr. Pethias, we take a break.

We're down to about 120 minutes.

That leaves 5.2 minutes per person.

and speaking time.

And I mention that because it means we don't have a lot of time to pontificate.

The comments have got to be pointed, they've got to be direct and they need to be clearly understood.

We don't have time for everyone to simply take your time and talk as much as you want.

At each of your positions, you have a little collection of Legos, which we thought it might help to be able to identify when people are going to be wanting to speak.

So if you just put that by your name tag, then that will help.

I've also made the choice that we will not go around the room and introduce everybody simply because of the time limitations.

You do have a seating chart, which is accurate on the wings, but is in reverse order for the supervisors on the bottom.

So I apologize that that wasn't exactly right.

We are going to take a break at around 2.45, so people will have a chance to get up.

But if you need to get up at other times, please feel free to do so.

So with that, I'll turn it over to Supervisor Galloway to kick off the Developer Incentives meeting.

Thank you all, by the way, for being here.

Well, now that I've been told I can't pontificate.

On behalf of the Regional Housing Partnership, I do briefly just want to thank the staff of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission for the work that they have done to get us through July and the work session that we had back then around developer incentives.

I'll be brief.

It's been over two and a half years since our housing Albemarle policy was voted on and developer incentives is what was decided as the step that needed to be completed before we put into full implementation

So with today's discussion with the commission here, the supervisors and our invited guests from either the housing partnership or the development of the nonprofit community, today is to leave, the intent is to leave with a game plan of what we're going to put in place to try.

Today is not more conversation, more ideas, more any of that.

Today is about action steps and what will Albemarle County's action step be relative to developer incentives.

There'll be time to tweak.

We're not taking any official action today.

There's still a couple of procedural or formal steps that will have to occur after today.

So there'll be time to kind of do some massaging if we need to.

But today we all hope to leave this afternoon with a set game plan of what we're going to do.

So with that, thank you to Kaki and Stacey for all the work that you guys have done on the staff side to get us here today.

Thank you, Supervisor Galloway.

Good afternoon.

I'm Stacey Pethier, Assistant Director of Housing for Albemarle County.

I'm going to run us through a real quick presentation.

A lot of this information has been shared in many meetings in the past, so if any of you have tuned in, this will be a repeat, but I think it's important to talk about today.

So really, it's going to go over a brief description of affordable housing and the housing needs in the county.

That information came from the 2018 Central Virginia Regional Housing Needs and Assessment Study that was completed by the RHP and TJPDC.

Look briefly at housing Albemarle and the definitions of affordable housing in there.

And then we'll run through some real quick incentive scenarios.

And that's really looking at funding for affordable housing.

So, as many of you know, the definition of affordable housing as presented by the U.S.

Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, is that housing is affordable for which the occupant or occupants is paying no more than 30% of their gross housing costs.

of their income for the gross housing costs.

And so that is the base rent plus the cost of utilities together.

That would be 30% of income or less.

For homeowners, that includes their monthly mortgage payments, insurance, property taxes, and utilities.

So according to the housing needs study, by 2040 Albemarle County needs about 10,070 affordable housing units.

Some of those are new construction.

Some of those are just finding ways to make existing housing more affordable for current residents or future residents of those units.

And you can see from the graph that there is a high need for rental housing, not so much in the affordable housing home ownership side.

As the Housing Albemarle, really the way things are working now, we really focus on households with incomes at 80% AMI.

So that is a really restricted focus for affordable housing programs.

Housing Albemarle has expanded that and really has redefined affordable housing.

as rental housing that is affordable to households with incomes at 60% area median income or less and affordable home ownership opportunities for households with incomes at 80% or less of area median income.

The rental housing definition was changed for housing Albemarle because that's really where a lot of our housing needs lie, not in that 80% area median income category, but below that.

So currently, we really rely on the proffer system to build our affordable housing stock.

And so that includes, at the moment, developers proffering 15% of their total units as affordable housing.

And that is affordable rents at 80% of area median income.

Affordable sales prices are defined as 65% of Virginia housings, or VHDAs, housing sale price limits.

The affordability periods are 10 years for rental housing and really the first sale for homeownership.

Housing Albemarle has changed those definitions.

It is now looking for 20% of total units as affordable housing with, again, affordable rents at 60% of area median income.

And the affordable sales price is now being tied to the federal home program and their sales price limits for single unit housing.

and the affordability periods are extending to 30 years for rental housing and 40 years for for sale units.

Just putting some figures to that, currently with the area median income of $123,300 per household, that puts a two bedroom rent at 80% AMI at about $2,446 a month.

That does not include utilities.

That is strictly the base rent.

In order to afford that, a household of four would need an income of about $98,000.

And the sales price for affordable units tied to Virginia Housing's sale price limit is $243,750.

That has stayed the same for a number of years and has not changed this year either.

And that's really affordable to a household that earns about 71% of area median income.

Housing Albemarle again, the new rent limits would be $1,669 for a two-bedroom apartment.

That number includes, already incorporates, a utility allowance.

That is affordable to households about 55% AMI for a four-person household.

And the sales price would drop down to $234,650, which is affordable at around 70% AMI.

So we're reaching a broader range of households within the county.

So there's been a lot of talk about different incentives, but what I'm going to talk about next is really focused on funding and so providing grants or loans for affordable housing.

The localities in Virginia are able to do that.

That is based on section 15.2958 of the Virginia Code.

that states localities may provide grants or loans for the construction or preservation of affordable rental housing.

They can also provide grants or loans directly to individual homeowners for housing rehabilitation.

Owners of assisted properties, so owners receiving assistance through any type of loan or grant program, must provide a minimum of 20% of the units as affordable housing, as defined by the locality.

And those units must be affordable for a minimum period of 10 years.

And so in May of this year, the Board of Supervisors did adopt ordinance number 23-A.21, which creates just such a program or the ability to provide grants or loans.

So the Board of Supervisors had asked staff in the past to run some brief scenarios about what an incentive program could look like.

How much money would the county need to think about providing to developers?

So this ran through several scenarios.

It's really looking at the base scenario is really just a 100% market rate unit project.

Would not need any subsidy from us, but they would include 279 units.

Looking at what we do today, so 15% of those units being affordable at 80% AMI.

that would give us 37 affordable units.

And currently the rent at 80% AMI, so that $2,446 a month is higher than any market rate units.

So most likely we would not need to provide any incentive.

Looking at the recommendations or what the housing Albemarle is saying we need to do, so 20% of the units at 80% AMI that would give us, sorry I can't see, 56 units of affordable housing

And that would be a potential annual subsidy of about $828,000 a year.

If we looked at funding the gap between 15% affordable, which is what we do now, and taking that extra 5% up to 20% AMI, subsidizing that 20% would be about $283,000 a year in subsidy.

And then we also ran a scenario where we looked at a mix of 15% of the units provided at 80% area median income and 5% of the units at 80% AMI.

And that came out to a potential annual subsidy of about $537,000 a year.

And so just to summarize those three scenarios, the first idea is to potentially subsidize all 20% of the affordable units in the project, subsidizing the 5% gap between the 15% affordable that is provided now and 20% that Housing Albemarle has taken it up to, subsidizing 20% affordable units at a mix of AMI levels, and then the mix of those could go on from there.

All right.

Thank you, Dr. Peppia.

One last comment.

I can't see that well to read everyone's name tag.

If I don't call you or identify you by name when you're speaking, if you would please just state for the record so that we do have a transcript of who's making comments.

Before we begin the discussions, could Stacey, I'm sorry, you got all the way over there.

Could you leave on the screen the breakout of your different suggested ideas,

Excellent point.

All right.

Developers, planning commissioners.

Not all at once.

Let me say, I thought this was a very helpful little chart that we got in the email for the invitee's ranking of developer incentives.

If you saw that email, I saw it this morning, that really helped me as I was reviewing

everything.

And there are a few things that I thought were really potential areas to help in housing.

And one would be, for example, assistance in redevelopment, you know, deconstruction costs and things like that.

Mr. Williamson.

Before we get too far down the road on the survey results, I think there

They need to be viewed with how the survey was conducted and the questions that were asked.

I noted that there were a number of folks that chose subsidy, other subsidies, and then other folks took the initiative to write tax increment financing, which some might have said are subsidies and other subsidies.

Thank you.

How much are you willing to spend to get affordable housing in Albemarle County?

That's the question.

Okay, I'm seeing some nodding of approval from developers, a lot of nodding of approval from developers.

Thank you, Mr. Williamson.

Ms.

Yes, I thought in looking at the various proposals that expedited review had a lot of promise because that is quite a lot of cost to the development community.

I know that there were some concerns raised in the memo regarding staff time and availability, but we could look at something along the lines of

A form-based code where if the affordable housing met these various design parameters that we would then be able to move them forward into expedited review, which would mean that the Planning Commission wouldn't necessarily have to take as much time with that application.

So I'm kind of combining an older idea of form-based code that we've explored in our county with the notion that we could probably move things along faster

and have an expedited review, because I think that's a significant cost.

And the other aspect that we see as a Planning Commission and as a board is that sometimes the public objection to affordable housing has bogged projects down and caused them to be withdrawn.

I'm Dan Rosenzweig with the Developer Group and I represent Habitat for Humanity in Greater Charlottesville.

I have more of a question and a comment about the survey.

There were two different question sets, one for rentals and one for homeownership and then a series of

of responses and ranking points but the same questions weren't asked for each.

I was a little confused about that because there are certain things that weren't asked like subsidy for example on the home ownership side that were asked on the rental side and it would have been interesting to see what would have happened had the basically the same questions been asked because I think if we draw conclusions from the

Good point.

Thank you, Valerie Long with Williams Mellon.

As part of my survey response, I surveyed all of our for-profit developers on this question exactly and pulled in all their responses.

So my one response to the survey represented a large number, but I will share that without exception, every client of ours that we work with said tax abatement is what is needed.

That expedited review would be great if it worked,

but that it's so challenging to implement and have it really work, even in other jurisdictions where there's expedited review, which is, it's challenging.

It doesn't quite make up for the gap, despite Ms.

Farahak is correct.

It is a huge expense, but tax abatement would be, was our number one choice.

So my suggestion would be to incentivize that and consider one of the subsidy, the gap, either subsidizing the gap between 15 and 20 or between

Thank you.

Good point.

You know, one of the thoughts that I had reviewing it is there could be some sort of a sliding scale of different types of incentives.

Reading in the developer comments, density bonuses are site specific, may work in one area but not another.

Yes, sir.

Sunshine Maython with Piedmont Housing Alliance.

Fundamentally, I think the core takeaway from the rental in particular, but to Dan's point, I think it probably would have showed up more in the homeownership side as well, had the questions been similar.

But fundamentally, affordable rental housing that is affordable to folks at 60% AMI and below is not achievable without some level of subsidy.

And that is true in Albemarle County, that's true in Charlottesville, that's true, frankly, anywhere in the Commonwealth.

And I think that question of tax abatement versus upfront grant versus some other subsidy methodology fundamentally it's all just subsidy in the end.

It's just around the mechanism that is the most pain-free or strategic from this county's perspective.

The one thing I will highlight is that, I mean, I'm supportive of tax abatement, I'm supportive of grants and sort of whatever is going to get us there.

Fundamentally, I will highlight that tax abatement is a less efficient way, financially efficient way to bring that subsidy in.

And when I say that, it is efficient from the county's perspective in the sense that it is pain-free.

It's tax

It's not necessarily grants that you're putting out in a large amount in a single year.

However, we utilize those tax abatements to leverage debt, and debt has an interest rate.

And so we end up paying effectively the interest rate that leverages a certain amount of equity, but it also leverages

Keith Lancaster, Southern Development.

I'd like to go back to where you were talking about a group of ideas and a sliding scale.

I think it's going to take multiple solutions.

It's just not a one fix all type of issue because as everyone's sitting here, we have rental for sale, be simple transactions that occur.

So I don't think

One solution is going to fit within the box.

For myself, I'm a process guy and I work closely with the process.

So I think expedited review, I think it's going to take multiple things that come to the table.

And then I would ask, is it going to help how that fits in with staff timing?

And if we have this start implementing processes like that, and if the road we're heading down,

That every project is affordable and then it takes away from this project gets expedited review and this one doesn't when they probably should all be within that time frame.

And how do we get to the goal quicker, faster to make more things more efficient and affordable?

One of the things that struck me, and I'm not trying to run this, I'd like other people to chime in, but was the questions were seriously raised about the difference between the affordability of period and the period of financial incentives.

There's a disconnect between that.

Were any of you able to help share more information on that?

Thank you.

William Park with Pinnacle Construction.

So first of all, to answer that question, they should match.

OK, so as I was thinking about this this morning, I wrote down a few notes.

And one of the things when when you all look at this, just like us as developers, I think you need to begin with the end in mind.

And one of the concerns I have

Be careful making this complicated because my concern is the compliance side of it, right?

What is the bureaucracy that's going to have to be created for compliance?

And then if someone doesn't comply, what are the penalties going to be, okay?

Also, as you look at this, when you look at the affordability,

You're affecting market value and long term you're affecting marketability also.

Some of us in here work on both the affordable side and the market rate side so we have experience with it.

And one of the things you'll find is someone who is on the affordable side will probably have the compliance people on staff to deal with it.

Those that are strictly market rate and now you put affordability components on this and the more difficult you make it, meaning if you're adjusting for family size, if you're using utility allowances.

For example, who calculates the utility allowance?

who keeps up with that every year?

How do you compare a building that is green certified versus a building that's not green certified?

So there are a number of issues there from a compliance standpoint that you know I hope everyone thinks through this and doesn't rush to creating something in the long term if you make it too difficult

your incentive is not going to work, right?

That's pretty self-explanatory.

The other thing too, I took a project that we have out in the western part of the county, 126 units, ran a few numbers on it.

So in summary, when I looked at it, if I take 20% of the units at 60% on 126 units, I cut the value by $2.2 million.

That was the value of it.

Now, that's a value in the very first year.

Over time, my experience has been that market rate rents are going to increase probably quicker than affordable rents are going to increase.

So probably long term, you've affected the marketability or the market rate of it, the value more than anything.

The single biggest component or incentive that we found over the years, and this has been voiced a couple of times previously, is the tax abatement.

And we've used it with this county and we've used it with a number of other counties.

And it makes a big, big difference.

OK.

And so you got to think about us.

And I think I have five point twenty six.

One of the things you've got to keep in mind is the underwriting aspect of it.

If we can't finance it, we can't build it, right?

And so what happens as we get into this, as you push down the affordability, which I'm not opposed to, we do a lot of affordable housing.

But what you run into when you've got a debt service coverage that you've got to work with, you've got loan to value, loan to cost that you have to work with, and whether you're giving a loan, it depends on the interest rate, right?

The time, if two years ago at 3% versus 7.5%, the incentive might be very different.

So all I can recommend is as you go forward, and I've said this before, try to make this as simple and descriptive, not prescriptive, or we're going to have a problem, or you're not going to get the incentive that you're looking for.

Thank you.

Well, piggyback on that and maybe differentiate a little bit as well.

So I'm speaking on the homeownership side.

One of the things to your question, Ms.

Price, is about term of affordability.

The first thing that's really important is to be very clear between term of affordability on the rental side and the homeownership side and how you achieve that term of affordability.

And one of the things that I think is going to be really

It's going to be part of this policy, but also larger than this is for the Board of Supervisors to be really clear with staff about how you feel about the term of affordability for home ownership, for example, or not even for example.

There are really, there's a continuum of home ownership terms of affordability from the type of home ownership, subsidized home ownership that invests in the person, people-based, and then unit-based.

On one side of the spectrum, unit-based affordability for home ownership is land trust, which stays affordable in perpetuity because the home can only resell for a certain amount of money to a certain

income purchaser, the county's interest is preserved insofar as it gets long-term affordability.

That number of units stays the same.

What you don't get is that kind of investment in the person so that the people don't stay poor for forever.

And so there are all sorts of programs that operate on different points on that spectrum.

My perspective is that we have to have all of it.

In other words, we can't have a bias towards equitizing families or a bias towards equitizing units.

We have to do both.

If you help a family achieve wealth through home ownership,

That's one unit that you don't need to create in the community.

So you've already solved that problem.

On the other hand, it is important that 80 years from now there's going to be another affordable housing unit that recycles.

And so I think your staff is looking for direction on that.

Karen?

Yes, I know I'm talking twice, but I just want to I don't want to leave this meeting today without bringing up the success rate of placing people in these units.

If we come up with a great subsidy idea or better incentives and more units come forward, buried in the materials, not intentionally, but just in all this voluminous material we had to read, is the success rate of how many folks we were able to put.

So if you look at the math, it's somewhere between a quarter and a third of the units that we said is affordable actually went

to people.

The other ones ended up being releases market rate or not built.

So I'm just wanting to put in a cautionary note that we're going to have to do a lot.

We've done a lot to beef up our program.

We're going to have to do a lot more on the county side, or at least working with affordable housing providers both probably, to make sure that we don't miss that opportunity to make sure that as much as possible we're getting a one to one.

For every unit that we create, we actually put a family in there and it doesn't get lost back to market because they only have to keep them available for a certain period of time.

And then they go, and that's fair to the development community, but we're not hitting our target.

And so I just really think we need to focus on that, not necessarily today, but as part of any package.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'd be curious to hear from the development community as partners, what is your perception on incentives that are based around building reuse, right?

Or intentional green building, not just by happenstance.

We're doing these kinds of metrics to make sure we meet these goals and targets.

Thank you.

I think if the

Those programs and components of a project are truly incentivized.

I think most developers would be happy to do that.

It's just a challenge to do it.

So if it's maybe an offset against an affordable housing goal or something like that, but it's the additional challenge and expense of those components, which are very important.

Mr. Williamson?

Yes, thank you for the question.

I've been pursuing with the board and staff the concept of the county getting out of the way with regard to zoning for commercial and office.

We have a fair amount of commercial and office space that's underutilized.

and the Planning Commission and board hears about it every time there's a housing proposal come forward that there's so-and-so just up the street.

We are seeking to get a resolution of intent from the board on the idea of allowing residential uses in commercial and office zones.

This would free up

Thank you.

Let me begin by thanking Dr. Pathia and everybody who knows a lot more about this than I do.

It's a fascinating subject and so critically important.

One thing I really appreciate is the fact that, in general, things look like they're moving towards what can be achievable versus what can just be aspirational.

So I think that's a great move.

For me, this sort of comes down to three general areas.

One is process.

Two, this is obvious, is funding.

And the third is infrastructure.

And so this is sort of an addition to many of the great comments that have already been made.

But in terms of funding, I would just, obviously, this is a great start.

This is not a sprint.

This is a marathon.

The question I would say is, how will this be funded?

Obviously, that's to be determined.

But also, thinking of this as a starting point, but those numbers are going to change as the market changes,

Other influences in development change, there are going to have to be changes to those numbers.

So thinking not just as a snapshot, but a long view as and if this is the process that's moving forward.

Second thing I'll mention is the redevelopment idea, I think,

Supervisor Price, you mentioned that, and under the heading of sustainability, I would add redevelopment plus keeping people in their homes, so fixing homes that are currently in disrepair.

Obviously the most sustainable home is the one you don't have to build, and so thinking through that as part of this process I think is incredibly important and should be added as something to consider.

A question, I guess, for the county.

This is a little bit rhetorical.

I'll stop rambling in a second.

But county land, I know that came up as an option.

I think that would be interesting to consider.

Is the county able to purchase land?

Is that something they can bring to the table under the category of funding?

And how does that strategically get located within the county?

I'll also mention the idea of thinking holistically about an inventory of housing and making sure that the development and well so say the other way the infrastructure keeps up with the development so as we think forward on potential infrastructure improvements just continuing to track whether it's

Rivanna water and sewer authority, traffic, etc.

Making sure that as we talk about increasing density or adding density rights that we also think about that aspect of the program.

Yes.

I'm glad that the point about effectiveness was brought up by Commissioner Beyerhock.

I think programs like Habitat for Humanity have been very effective.

I think land trusts could be very effective.

One of the things in Albemarle is that Albemarle is a very transitory population.

So the population that's here today may not be the population that's here several years from now.

But we still need that affordability

even the people living there have swapped out.

So I don't know how we can encourage more land trust but that's something I think is also very important.

I would differ with this notion that was brought up about allowing housing everywhere and including in commercial and industrial places because I think that's a different kind of interference.

It's also important for us to have affordable places for new businesses.

And if we automatically interfere in that market, then those prices for commercial properties never come down.

Thank you.

I just want to echo a little bit what Neil and Fred said that we need more land, right?

I mean, we've got a supply and demand issue here.

And, you know, a rising tide lifts all boats.

So essentially, even if it's straight market rate housing, that's going to lift everyone up.

We need more housing, period.

OK.

And the other thing to keep in mind,

Don't forget about the tax credit program.

And maybe that's something you all need to focus on a little bit more is how you can support the tax credit program when you would get those people at 60 percent or less.

And that that money is already there.

It's very competitive.

But a lot of times the county can assist in that, whether it's donating land, providing grants or something like that.

And to the extent that you have income averaging now, when you're in the tax credit program, you could

You could get someone at 70 percent and then offset that with 50 percent and you still equal 60 percent.

So that widens your range of the number of people that you can get in these apartments, which makes a big deal.

So I think some discussion needs to be around how you can support that tax credit program.

Also, again, this is something we've done with this county here.

And, you know, anytime you can get a project that's 100 percent at 60 percent, that makes a big dent in what's going on in this locale.

I just wanted to quickly reinforce a comment that Mr. Park made earlier, which is that the term of length of any tax abatement needs to align with the term of length of the affordability period.

Fundamentally, we utilize those as an income source to the debt provider.

So Virginia Housing underwrites those as an income source.

And if all of a sudden the income source goes off a cliff halfway through the mortgage term, I can't underwrite with it.

Thank you.

No, thank you guys.

Zach Zingshine with Stony Point Development Group.

I'm gonna try my best to tie a lot of great comments.

I appreciate everyone's time being here today as well.

A lot of great comments, man.

I'm going to try my best to, maybe as eloquently as I can, try to tie together some different questions and comments and certainly my thoughts, our thoughts at Stony Point and how that might inform maybe some of the other broader, for-profit, rather, development community.

Piggybacking off of Mr. Williamson, the question asked, specifically on the conversion side, maybe of either industrial use, other commercial use,

I think a reminder, speaking personally, how we view the world as a for-profit developer certainly, but I think a lot of developers and folks in real estate holistically think of the world in terms of highest and best use.

So when looking at a parcel of land, the existing asset, et cetera, is that in conformance with its highest and best use today?

And that is based upon a variety of factors, market conditions, economic fundamentals, population, et cetera.

I think look at we think of the world or we look at the example of even an office conversion.

A lot of conversation today in very highly densely populated cities such as like Washington, D.C.

You see these 60s, 70s style vintage office buildings that are 40 percent vacant.

I'm sorry, 40 percent occupied, rather.

There's a huge housing shortage in our nation's capital, too, and the conversation of like, can you easily just convert that?

It seems so easy from the outside.

But it's actually very difficult from the developer side, the cost to do so.

And that pertains anywhere from the floor plates and having to pack units into these, into floor plates that were not designed to be residential use, including any utilities, etc.

The whole point being, I certainly think it would be attractive.

I bash my head against the wall a lot trying to think of a unique way to then connect to another comment Mr. Barks said of supply, whether it's capital affordable housing or lowercase affordable housing.

From our standpoint, the more we can

Add to the housing stock by way of supply.

We're certainly at the belief that that only has shown to help provide more housing that provides renters more options that helps pricing parity and power back to the renter.

But it is difficult on the conversion side.

I think from our standpoint, we'd be, you know, we'd entertain to look at any incentive that aligns incentives to help us achieve that.

But candidly, you know, we look at office conversion plays too.

In some cases, if you made the land zero, if you got the land for free, it still wouldn't make sense because it's just that capital intensive.

To then connect to the financing piece, and this is why, from our standpoint, just for the record, we're very much, as Ms.

Long said as well, you know, I'm not sure if the survey

represented, you know, a wide swath of for-profit developers.

But as Ms.

Long mentioned, you know, her sample size was for-profit.

We were in that camp as well.

Certainly would advocate and very, very strongly for some housing from a tax abatement perspective as being the highest and best use vehicle to achieve the financing ability to be able to produce and get these products out of the ground.

So to speak to the financing piece,

Real estate is obviously very capital intensive.

It's not cheap.

Not many folks are fortunate enough or privileged enough to be able to pay out of pocket with equity and cash.

They typically rely on leverage by way of a bank, lender, some other vehicle in order to get a product out of the ground.

And what we're discussing today has a direct impact on the financial operations and performance of a project that determines the underwriting ability from that lender, mortgage, you know, mortgager, etc.

And so what we're talking about today, I really appreciate the example from Mr. Park.

But, you know, analyses that we run as well, just the movement of from 15 to 20 percent in terms of capital affordability, notwithstanding the impact on the 68 percent AMI and what that does from a rent perspective.

But on a typical market rate deal of a couple hundred units that you're used to seeing that are being delivered today, it has a material impact to the tune of several million dollars on the project value.

And that directly impacts then the financial capability of it getting financed.

Coupling together all these comments, I think in today's particular environment, as Mr. Park alluded to as well, we read a lot about interest rates, particularly on the single family home side where we see headline mortgage rates and how quickly they've escalated.

That impacts the commercial development real estate market as well.

Typically, these construction notes

You know, they're very much aligned with these rate interest rate increases.

And so the point being that is a direct impact right now.

And certainly in my career, I can candidly say not having worked in commercial real estate, no 809, but it's been certainly the most challenging development environment that I've ever seen from the ability to get a product out of the ground right now.

And that speaks to just a lot of the cost increases, but then also interest rate side.

All that being said, making it commensurate as well, because just to tie it again to the underwritten component, but making for however long these programs, again, capital A affordable housing, are in play, that will have a material impact on the financial results, the operations, the net bottom line of the asset of the project once it's delivered.

And as a result, that has a material impact on the financing ability.

And the bottom line is if a product can't get financed, it's not going to be able to get built.

If it can't get built, that doesn't help get any further, you know, further the supply and help any other units get online.

So thank you.

Yes, just to amend my comments a little bit, one of the big opportunities I think that we have in our developed areas, we have these huge areas covered with parking lots that are mostly empty.

You look at Albemarle Square, you look at

You look at Fashion Square Mall, you look at a lot of these big areas and they're polluting streams, they're serving no useful purpose whatsoever.

I'm fully in support of allowing housing in those areas and even incentivizing housing in those areas because it solves two problems at once.

So I think that's one thing.

I'd also mention that, too, on my time on the Southern Water Conservation District, there's a lot of people that came before us that had great need of septic repairs or septic replacements.

And these are dire situations.

I won't go into the graphic details of the problems that these people have.

But there are many people that would have been kicked out of their homes if we weren't able to come in and provide funding along with AHIP to help fix those septic issues.

And so I think, you know, as the comment was made earlier about the most affordable home is the home that you're living in.

Thank you.

Comment and question.

I guess the comment would be whatever is implemented.

I would highly advise some kind of intense educational program for the community.

I think density is a scary word many times as we see these proposals.

And so I just wanted to flag that.

And then secondly, so I'd be a silly question, but I'm curious, is there any benefit or advantages in phasing this, right?

So

15 to 17.5% for a few years and 17.5 to 20.

All right, thank you.

Thank you, Chair Price.

So I'm going to back up a tiny bit if I can, because what we're talking about is market-driven solutions, which is really, I think, what the conversation, we have developers in the room, that's where we are.

But I want to talk about community-based solutions.

I want to say the same thing.

Unless we have a significant change in the drivers of our economy, we are always going to have this problem with us.

whether or not it's for 20 years, it's for 30 years, the two gentlemen over there are always going to be in how do we put people in affordable houses.

And so the question I've been wrestling with, a number of the issues that you've heard from my colleagues on the Planning Commission we've talked about, and you see them in our notes every time something comes before us, particularly during AC 40, AC 24 or 40, AC 40, is that, so what is the county's,

appetite to support more land, as someone has mentioned, or to support becoming partners either with the land that we own as the county, whether or not it's the county of the school board, and helping to use that as a way to reduce costs.

Because that's the place that I will offer that the county has the ability to turn things quickly as opposed to letting the market

rise to whatever incentives market developers will do.

For instance, I'm also struggling with the fact of whether or not the county should be engaged in providing a safe and quality place for people to live that's going to be there as a county resource, like a park, like a school, or we should be engaged in building

equity for single individuals or single households.

While I am certainly much more comfortable with us investing in land that is similar to a school or to a park, I struggle with the county being actively involved in building equity for individuals

Thank you.

Any responses?

How helpful are tap fee system?

The idea of TAP fees, I think it's been loaded a number of times and I find it to be helpful.

The number that that's assessed with isn't really hugely impactful, but I want to be clear that when we talk about such things, when I speak of TAP fee assistance, it's not Albemarle County Service Authority providing the TAP fee, it's Albemarle County funding Albemarle County Service Authority

as the service authority is its own standalone body.

Thank you.

Ms.

Thanks for the opportunity to respond.

I'm Kelsey Schlein with Shimp Engineering.

I think for the TAP fees, yeah, it's certainly a tool.

Specifically, in my experience, I found that TAP fees and

particularly abatement of TAP fees is crucial for manufactured housing and how TAP fees are charged for mobile homes in Albemarle County.

It's currently treated as a multifamily unit.

All right, thank you.

I would say tap fees are extremely helpful for a couple of reasons.

One is that you can count on them, you deliver, you get them, and so you can then use them as a local match, helping leverage large sources of funding from state and the Fed, whereas something like the housing fund, which is

I mean, it's all the same thing.

It's money out of the county's coffers one way or another.

But having that predictable, you build it, you sell it or rent it to somebody who's low income, you get that money, is something that then helps us get affordable housing and affordable special needs housing funding, shop funding, et cetera.

Thank you.

So one of the things I'm hearing is defined and predictable and early are some of the greatest things that help in terms of your ability then to provide the affordable housing.

anything that we don't have to pay obviously helps right because we don't have to have debt service on the other side of it but one area as I mentioned earlier it could really help is when you're doing a tax credit application right because what that shows is locality is putting money into the project and when you do so

This convoluted process that you have to go through to get low-income housing tax credits, it helps that project score higher, which you stand a better chance of getting the tax credits.

All right, thank you.

Others?

How did I get read?

This is a logistics question.

And I don't know, you know, in the penciling of projects and when you're trying to secure your investment from your investors, wanting to count on, I'm speaking tax abatements here, if you had a 30 year tax abatement, clear cut, you can count that in there.

When you're going through the process of a rezoning, which has to be separate from an incentive process or an incentive program, where does your commitment or your

The investment commitment come?

Is it after the rezoning or before if the rezoning occurs?

Like talk me through the logistics of I go to an investor.

I want to do this project.

Here's the parameters that the county set up.

Use the current policy just for cleanliness or easy or simplicity right now.

And then just talk me through that process without even the incentive piece there yet.

I'll speak quickly from the LIHTC developer side of the equation, which is fundamentally we can't go for any sources until we have zoning in place.

So that rezoning is the threshold that allows us to then go and attract capital, apply for LIHTC, etc.

That being said, when we go for a rezoning in a project, we're typically not taking that step unless we have some level of comfort that we are going to be successful.

Obviously we're going at risk for spending money to patient engineering or whoever to do that work.

Thank you, Mr. Park.

So if you were to, now this is a hypothetical, for managing from our side, if we wanted to do an incentive, then let's say it was a tax abatement.

And you have your, at the current 15%, 80% AMI, and you've secured investment commitment from it, let's even say you've had the rezone it.

If on the other side, the county then said, we want to take it further and here's the incentive to do it, does that mess up your investor's relationship or your investment pro form?

I mean, the simple part of what I'm asking is to me, it sounds like the money should say the same from what you had originally committed.

But let's say we took it from 80% AMI down to 60.

And we say, here's the incentive to get you there.

Well, I think it's like any underwriting.

It's arithmetic, right?

We plug the numbers in and we see if it works and if the return is going to be the same.

And that depends on, you know, Ned, the parameters at the time, right?

I mean, and that's the hard part about what we're trying to do today is it's always fluid.

So are interest rates 8% or are they 3%?

Is the return someone has to have 15% or is it 12%?

So we just have to back into that from an underwriting standpoint.

And that's a great question and that's the hard part we deal with every day.

And that's what I'm saying.

Just to add from the nonprofit perspective, it is always our goal to drive down the affordability as deeply as we can.

When we start a project, we make some initial assumptions, partly aspirational, partly realistic.

As funding sources get confirmed along the way, either we're reconfirming our estimation at the beginning, or if we get more than we expected, we can drive down affordability more.

So that profile can change over time.

And fundamentally,

Thank you, Ms.

I was just going to echo Sunshine's comments with regard to our clients as well.

It's almost identical.

It was helpful to hear him.

Our clients are usually looking as we're working through the rezoning process or even before that when they're looking at a rezoning, the clients and or their investors are usually asking me, what's the county's requirement for affordable housing?

And I explained, well, right now it's this, but they want to get to here and we don't know when that's going to happen or how.

And so I know they're talking with the developers on the other side saying, OK, well, if it's the affordable housing requirement is this, here's how much we contribute.

If it ends up being this, we contribute differently.

and trying to be prepared for each scenario.

Ideally, they get their developers signed up before the rezoning, but usually in my experience, it's just somewhat like a non-binding letter of intent.

It's a commitment, but as Sunshine said, we're not going to commit fully until you have your rezoning in place.

And even then, we're seeing more than ever

investors coming to us and saying we want you to give us a memo exactly about how the affordable housing will work, how does the site plan process work, how does ARB work.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

I think great, great comments, great points made just to piggyback off a few of those.

A lot of preparedness, risk, predictability are a few adjectives for terms I've heard, you know, mentioned a few times now.

And I think in our world, risk and return are correlated, as you know.

And so, as mentioned,

an appetite for risk and the associated the commensurate level of return needed particularly in this environment typically not going to see then folks get in until concurrent with you know with with the rezone and site plan approval or the rezone approval rather

Thank you.

Also what we find out, our corporate investors, they will not invest until we have a building permit, okay?

So that's where the exped... I think if you're going through the process, and we talked about, okay, we're gonna get a rezone, we know what the subsidy is from the county, I think it should be understood if you're going to do that, it's going to be an expedited process, whatever that means, because we need to get there as soon as we can with a building permit,

Thank you.

Supervisor Galloway did that answer your areas?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Absolutely, thank you.

And I wanted to get back to a point that Commissioner Firehawk raised earlier on, and I had the same response when I was going through this material.

We seem to be leaving a lot of affordable housing on the table.

and we can spend a lot of time in looking at the incentives, which is an important step to it, solving the problem.

But I was just struck by the amount that we're leaving on the table.

Maybe Ms.

I want to be clear, the development community has done what was necessary to fulfill our half of the agreement.

The other half of the agreement was Albemarle County was going to bring forward the applicants, qualified applicants.

I understand from some in the nonprofit community that you have to have 21 applicants to get to one that's qualified.

There's that very tight window of qualification.

You have to make enough, but you can't make too much.

And I think

It might be worthy, as we think about this, whether or not Albemarle County should put itself on a performance agreement.

Don't increase the percentage until you place a certain percentage of your affordable housing.

Because right now, affordable units are going to market, not because developers want to put them to market.

I mean, that was pretty clearly a policy flaw that I think everyone's determined to rectify, that because you got that out after 60 days or 90 days and it can go to market, you have to get rid of the out.

It's as simple as that.

You should be able to check the box if that unit is sold or rented affordably, period.

I would agree, but I also think it would not be fair to the developer to have to keep a unit affordable in perpetuity or for beyond some certain reasonable amount of time because if the unit is sitting there and no qualifying family or individual is coming to fill it,

which is a tragedy and of its own because we know there's such a need but to have the developers have to keep that house or that apartment unit vacant for an unlimited amount of time.

So there's got to be a period there.

Anecdotally, it appears to me that the purchase is the more complex to fill.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I just want to clarify, and Ms.

Fethia, please feel free to jump in if I'm mischaracterizing this, but that loss of units is almost entirely on the homeownership side, not the rental side, just to be crystal clear there.

And so one of the efforts that we've

endeavor to try to do.

We piloted a program last year where we partnered with a private developer.

And by we, I mean the Piedmont Community Land Trust and Piedmont Housing Alliance partnered with a private developer who had a proffer for a certain number of affordable homes.

And we had an agreement with them that we would be the entity that would then go find the individuals

to be the home buyers.

And if there were a time where we needed more time, essentially the community land trust would, we had some capital to work with at that time.

We essentially purchased it so we didn't get lost.

And then that gave us the window of time we needed, maybe an additional 30 days, maybe an additional 60 days to make sure we could find an income qualifying buyer.

We want to continue to be that tool that can close that gap.

and we need capital in order to do that.

So there's a two-fold opportunity there.

Thank you.

Yeah.

I mean, I just want to piggyback on what Sunshine said, that if there's a will, there's a way.

And we have 400 people that we turn away every year.

who otherwise would qualify to purchase a home with the subsidies that we bring to the table with private philanthropy.

And so I agree that it's unfair to put this on the developer, but because there's such an easy out, people take the out.

It makes sense.

But if it requires something a little bit harder, a partnership with a nonprofit,

This is easy.

It's not that there is no market.

And that's really what highlighted for me and why I asked my question, because there is a there's a significant disconnect when you see the need versus houses, affordable homes that are that are being lost, that they're coming to market and not and not being filled.

So I think that's got to be part of this conversation and equation.

I mean, how do we solve this?

Another point that hasn't gotten a lot of traction, but I know that Commissioner Missell brought it up, it's a conversation that we've had in the Planning Commission before, is how do we maintain our current stock?

We have a stock of affordable housing that we're losing.

and it's not going to get any easier or any better with some of the zoning changes that we're seeing from the city.

So we need to be cognizant on how can we maintain, and yes, maybe the quality goes up, but the quantity is going down.

So we have to be aware of that as well.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I tried to write things down so I wouldn't get lost.

I think it's really important in my brain to think about separating the approach for nonprofits versus the for-profit agencies because they seem to have different

needs requirements, avenues to success, et cetera.

These are basically a list of questions people could write down and we'll come back to some other day.

I've been interested in learning more about the menu of percentages that was briefly mentioned about having an average and then having some above and some below that get so that the population of people who may actually their income may change and they need to be sliding up into a different income category to still be able to stay in their place.

So I think there's a lot to learn about that.

Definitely the county needs to solve its problem with the handoff, with the making sure that the units that we do get constructed actually become occupied by qualified people.

That's been something that's been gnawing at all of us for many, many years, and I'm glad we're getting so much closer.

Can we approach one category at a time?

So perhaps start with the nonprofit sector and figure out how to make that work and then figure out how to move to the for-profit side afterwards, just as one example, so that we're not searching for the perfect for everybody all at once and not really making a lot of progress because having a chunk that we can deal with and then another chunk may be more successful.

Protecting the Noahs, absolutely.

Our affordable houses are hidden away in both urban areas and completely out of view in rural areas.

But there are many, many, many people all throughout the county who are hanging on by their fingernails in their older homes who need help.

And there are many agencies who are helping with that, and the county is funding them, and I appreciate that.

But we cannot let them get away because then those people have nowhere to go.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

I'll be brief.

I just wanted to echo something that Mr. Park said about expedited process and getting back to that.

When you think about the process, whether it's applying for subsidies or grants and loans, ensuring that the process is streamlined and isn't arduous.

I think just time, it takes so long to get things done, as we all know.

Second thing is on zoning, comp plan, site plans, building permits, thinking about a common thread of affordable housing that runs through each of those processes that links to the next one.

So if you're a developer and you're coming in and you're going for a comp plan amendment, hopefully not, but if you are, let's say a rezoning, that you know that the rezoning is the start of it, but you have a

that's manageable that then goes into site plan review that can actually continue and you have a way to get the building permits in place.

And then one thing related to building permits that I just would recommend is the use of third party reviewers has been very helpful and the county has embraced that because I think there's a resource issue in terms of how many building permits there are and how many people there are to review those.

Use of third parties has been really helpful.

Just our thought.

Thank you.

I play with Legos, that's the thing I do.

I had a really basic question, and I apologize for my ignorance on this coming into the planning commission just this year, but when calculating AMI, I'm curious where the number comes from, about 120,000.

And that literally could be someone who asked, just because I was looking at the median income for Albemarle on the census, and it's like in the 90s.

Richard Goodresser.

Thank you.

That's not the whole comment.

That's a survey that comes out from HUD, the FHA.

They do that every year, I believe.

All right, cool, thanks.

So I also wanted to echo what some folks all around the table have been saying around how do people find the affordable homes when they're available.

The problem of filling spots, yeah, it's definitely like that's an issue if we're losing the ones that are on the table.

That is a process thing.

That's a social sociology question, a marketing question maybe more than anything else.

And then one of the developers, and I don't remember who it might have been, William, also said, how do we then enforce the term of affordability down the road?

What's the sort of mechanism that we put in place with that?

That's just a process question with staff, but also one that comes to mind for me as well, especially for the owned homes.

Does someone can be, oh, I can only sell it for this amount.

How does that work, and how do we enforce that?

And I also wanted to kind of echo what Commissioner Bivens was saying in terms of talking about market partnerships for affordability and then maybe some other options that are not on the table today.

But just looking at the summary of scenarios and the various kind of tools in the toolkit to incentivize what gets built and how much affordable housing is part of it.

I mean, the county could just say, hey, for any development of 10 units or more, 20 percent needs to be affordable at 60 percent a month.

But is that going to be actually economically feasible for y'all?

and what makes it more feasible.

And I mean, it sort of just seems like we're kind of figuring out how we slice the pie.

I don't recall which of you said it, but you know, any fee we don't have to pay is better.

I mean, of course, I understand that completely.

Expedited process is also better because that's less carrying costs and more gets done more quickly.

And it really just comes down to a matter of arithmetic.

I don't know from your perspective what

Kind of alternative one, two or three makes it more affordable more of the time.

The kind of crux question on the market side of this for me is how many more affordable units do we get from you all collectively in each scenario by 2040 when we need 10,000 more units?

And so that's kind of the market situation I see is like, how much incentive do we need?

How much substitute do we need to get 10,000 or 11 or 12,000 units in the next 15 years?

And that's, I don't know the answer to that.

That comes down to your books.

And then again, this is more what Commissioner Bivens was maybe alluding to, is where the county owns land or could own land, you know, when this is outside of and maybe the next future phase of the conversation.

We know it prevents us from building beautiful residential and mixed use communities, these publicly owned kind of like council housing to borrow a British term, with parks and third spaces and beautiful amenities and invite market housing around it but have sort of permanently owned and affordable housing that the county actually is directly invested in and responsible for.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

And just quickly, I really appreciate the discussion and the comments.

I've been watching my watch because, of course, we realize we're on a deadline.

We're coming up on our break.

And I just would like to suggest before we go on break, I've had several folks or heard several folks reference staff and Stacey with questions.

It would be of interest to me to see, I know Stacey's keeping notes back there, I'm sure.

I would just like to ask if Stacey would like to respond.

Okay.

Thank you.

Commissioner Firehawk.

Thank you very much.

Just for the edification of the public, I think it's important to point out the county has done some great investments in helping rehab housing.

I'll point to the project in my district in Alberin that rehabbed quite a few houses that

who are really in disrepair and would have gone, you know, eventually they would have become uninhabitable.

So I really want to put a strong push for investing in the nonprofit providers because again, if we don't close the gap, I'm not suggesting as long that the

a business community and the developers should now become experts in placing people in housing.

I never said that.

I would really like to see the county invest in the people who are really good at that.

Especially like I've mentioned land trust is a great option and I think beefing up their ability

We also used to have a person who worked for the county many years ago who was actually really good at doing matchmaker jobs.

And then we lost that staff position and now we're crawling back to having a full department, but we are not doing a good enough job at that.

And then the last thing I want to say really quickly is

just going back to Mr. Williamson's live, work, that sort of idea of commercial.

I think we need to get away from Euclidean zoning, to use a term of art from my planning degree.

I think we need to be able to, transportation is a huge problem if you have to have two cars, one for the mom and one for the dad to get to work and to stay in the house.

And there's no bus service hardly.

So if we could have more people living in the urban ring,

in places where they're walking downstairs and going to work in their Burger King or whatever their job is.

We're walking across our somewhat unsafe Route 29, hopefully better crosswalks of the future.

All right, thank you.

Dr. Pathia said she is ready to come up and I'm going to ask that she address maybe the top topic that she's heard.

Then we'll take a break.

And Mr. Rosenzweig, I do see that you also have an innovative token.

Oh, Mr. Metham?

Oh, sorry.

We've got a lot of innovation on our tokens here.

We'll do that right after the break, if you don't mind.

So I think there's really two things.

Sorry, I missed one when you came and asked me.

One, the first was about compliance that I know Mr. Park has talked about.

Our compliance measures are going to be very similar to what you already do with the public-private partnership that we have for Brookdale.

So it is sending over the rent roll once or twice a year just so we can guarantee that the units are still being rented or purchased at the affordable prices.

In terms of who would look at utility allowance annually, that's already factored into the rents

that are in housing Albemarle.

So we do that for you.

We don't expect that to happen on a case by case basis.

It's done as sort of a general across the board.

This is the maximum amount you can charge for a unit.

Already includes the utility allowance, so that's not something that developers would have to do on their end.

One of the other things that I know everybody's concerned about, Commissioner Firehawk has talked about this, is really getting those units filled by income qualified people.

and staff is looking at creating an actual waiting list for that.

So people from the county would be able to register for the waiting list.

We would do all of the income verification to make sure that they can qualify.

That's what I'm looking for for the program.

And we will have that database available so that when units become available from all of you, we send those out to people on the list and they can go

and apply for those units.

A couple of things we need to work on.

One, the best way to create that waiting list and be able to collect information online.

And the second is the best way to advertise the units.

Rental units are a bit easier because they turn over more often.

But for those affordable units that are for sale, what is the best way to select interested buyers on our waiting list?

One is using a lottery system.

I'd like to go ahead and call a 10-minute break, ask everyone to be back at 3 o'clock because we will start at 3 o'clock.

And also, I've been trying to track a little bit in terms of participation.

I'm not going to call anyone out either way.

But I would ask that those who have not yet had an opportunity to speak, if you wouldn't mind trying to come up with some things you'd like to comment on so that everyone does have a full equal opportunity to make comments.

And I'm going to take just a moment because we've had some real personnel changes at the county and there are two people here today in particular that I would like to introduce to everyone so that you'll get to know their names and faces right off.

And that's Ann Wall, our new Deputy County Executive.

Stand up a little bit more than that, Ann.

We've got to at least let people have a chance to see her.

So what a great addition.

We are so excited to have you here and thank you for joining us.

Thank you.

So everybody on the developer side, now you know who you'll be working with.

And also Barry Albrecht, our new Director of Economic Development.

And we're extremely fortunate because not only do these two individuals have incredible relevant experience, but they also come with a lot of enthusiasm.

And so we're really excited to have both of you here and join the great Albemarle team.

And of course, the developers will also be interested in economic development.

So thank you both for being here.

It really shows a lot, and we appreciate the opportunity to be able to introduce you.

So as we get started back again, we have a few people whose tokens had already been up.

I see now Mr. Mathon is challenging for the most innovative speaker token.

Notice that he's using the landscape in order to give everyone a perfect view in the five units of his development over there.

So Mr. Mathon, we saw your token right before the break as the first one, and then we've got another one after that.

Thank you.

I will try to keep this short, but respond to some of what I've heard so far.

I want to highlight that when the survey went out and we were looking at the various incentive typologies, the part that was a little confusing to me was that it felt like a little bit of an either or, and fundamentally we need all of them.

There's no jurisdiction, there's no county, city, anywhere that has fully solved or addressed this problem in the way that it needs to be done.

And every tool in the tool belt needs to be utilized.

And even though I agree that where we put the resources is important to prioritize, but I do think fundamentally all of these are going to be necessary.

And this kind of folds into my second comment, which

Supervisor Mallek had brought up around the distinction between nonprofits and for-profit entities and how housing gets supported, affordable housing gets subsidized or supported.

I think perhaps I agree with the conception that there is distinction.

I think the most important in the nonprofit sector is sort of turning the dials of all these tools as far as you can to one side versus the other.

and in particular also having the opportunity to stack and layer these tools.

That's how we're going to get the depth of affordability and some sense of scale.

And then my last point, and this came up, someone had recently spoken about the area median income and the recent increases, and I actually spent some time digging into this data because I was pretty alarmed when I saw our most recent AMI increase for our region.

So I spent some time digging into the data over the last six years, as well as sort of how it's constructed.

And what I'll just say in short form is that in 2017, the AMI area median income for our region was $76,600.

This year is $123,300.

That is a 61% increase in six years.

39% of that increase happened in the last two.

and there are, to my understanding as I've dug into the details as to about why that's the case, I think there are three explanations as best I know it.

One is that there is an inflationary factor that when HUD does the calculations, it's not purely based on the ACPS or census data.

Since there was high inflation recently, they do apply an inflationary factor.

So that is one piece of it, but that's a small portion.

Another is we know that there are folks moving into the region, the region is growing, but the number of folks who are moving in is not enough on its own to move that dial that dramatically that quickly.

We also know that there are wage increases.

That is true everywhere across the country.

That's true here as well.

But we also know pretty clearly that we're not seeing a 61% wage increase at the lower, particularly in the lower and middle income bands.

So that's not purely part of the explanation.

I mean, that's part of the explanation, but it's not fully part of it.

And the last explanation, frankly, is displacement.

is that while you have people moving in who are higher income, you have those at the lower income end of the spectrum who are having to move out because they can't afford to live here anymore.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

So I just want to put forward that with our for-profit, and everyone knows that I am definitely a free market guy.

So don't go thinking that I'm saying something that's not about free markets.

But most of what we're talking about is sort of market-driven development.

And we just came out of a period of, a rough period for builders in this country, not being able to get raw materials, not being able to get people not being able to buy their products because the interest rates were sort of a shock to people's systems.

And as a result, we're seeing some issues with it.

We're seeing issues with inventory, particularly inventory in Albemarle County.

And so, not from the business standpoint, but from the county standpoint, from the supervisor standpoint.

The question that I would have for us to wrestle with is can this solution on how we approach and how we attack a problem that's about affordability in our community, can it be simply driven by the market?

because the market is driven and the market is subject to all the various business cycles that we all know and appreciate, but accessibility is not necessarily, it doesn't have, it doesn't respond in the same way.

So we have some systemic accessibility issues here that are outside of the business cycle.

And then we have obviously those, and we obviously have those which are a segment of the population which is a function of the business cycle.

But my suggestion is or what I'm putting towards our supervisors is that some of what's going on here can't be solved by the good graces of these individuals.

is never going to be solved by them.

And my other piece is, the question that you will have to ask is, is an $828,000 subsidy for 58 units the best way for the county to allocate its funds?

Is that the best way to allocate its funds to solve this problem?

We could have a longer conversation about that at some point in time.

But I would call into question, since our community is

is often resistant at increasing taxes.

When we do tax deferrals, we are in fact pushing something onto the community or as in the community to pick up the slack on what gets deferred or what gets sent to a third party.

And so my question is, and again, I'm a free market guy from the get-go, is that the best way to allocate taxpayer dollars when we live in a community that is not necessarily appreciative of the need to increase taxes?

Commissioner Firehawk?

So part of what I do for a living is I measure supply and demand.

That's what real estate appraisers do every day.

And I think we're spending a lot of time talking about processes and what we can do here or there.

But that's further down the road.

I think it really comes down to just elements of production.

We don't have enough land.

And as long as we're going to keep the county down to 5%, that's a problem.

I think we're inadvertently, maybe it's intentional, maybe it's not, but we're acting as a gatekeeper

when we put these policies in place that prevent us from developing one of the most large geographical areas as far as counties go in the state.

Albemarle County is huge.

I know it takes resources, it takes time to develop.

I was told the other day it takes 10 years to get anything to really happen.

It's going to take a decade.

So if we will start looking at opening up, having more land available just from a policy perspective, how are we going to fix any of this?

It's just a question.

Thank you.

Ms.

Thank you.

So building off that comment of supply and demand and just kind of looking at the county and the development areas and the rural areas, I think how we look at affordable housing and kind of tying this back to the action steps that we were tasked with at the beginning of this meeting, that's ultimately what we're tasked with is action steps for affordable housing developer incentives.

And I think that we should

Look at affordability in the rural areas and affordability in the urban areas differently.

They do have very different problems, very different just access to resource issues, funding issues, land issues.

But I think especially in the rural areas, just looking at manufactured housing opportunities, I think is

Just one action step that we can explore, especially as the county has already taken on the step of updating the comprehensive plan, looking at it that and then further down the road looking to forward to the zoning rewrite.

All right.

I would just say I agree with both those comments that I think in my mind it begins with where do we take the 5% and grow it to 7, 8% and density is the other.

It's five man, simple.

I got three pens, I got one pen.

You're going to pay more for that one.

So I think it will help the affordability across the board as we expand that market

Thank you.

Ms.

Schlein, is that okay?

It's a pregnant pause.

Anyone else at the moment?

Oh, Ms.

Thank you.

All right.

Just to try and help keep things moving, I'm going to just start, Mr. Mathon, with you.

And I'm just going to ask each of you in term, as you come down, to just state if you would, your number one, what would be, if you had one thing that you could really get the approved, what would be the one thing you would ask for in terms of incentives?

Predictable subsidy sources.

Predictable subsidy sources.

Thank you.

Mr. Rosenzweig.

Expedited review.

Thank you.

Ms.

Thank you.

Ms.

All right.

Tax abatement.

Mr. Parry.

Mr. Lancaster.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr. Williamson?

Ditto.

All right.

Mr. Fincham?

Need more land.

All right.

Ms.

I think what I'm hearing in general and from my time on the Planning Commission is that there's a need for action, which I know is why we're here today.

But I sense that there's a need for there to be more certainty in the marketplace.

All right.

Thank you.

I think clarity on how we provide the resources so the community can find these homes.

Thank you.

I would say ditto to that.

I would rather if we have limited time and resources, we spend our resources in shoring up the nonprofit providers' ability to get people in the housing and as well as on our county side.

I don't think there's a lot of utility in making it a 20% of units be affordable and still letting most of those sit on the table.

Thank you.

Commissioner Bivens?

Thank you.

Chair Claiborne?

Thank you.

Commissioner Claiborne?

All right.

Thank you.

Commissioner Murray?

All right.

Thank you.

Yeah, I've given this some thought.

To make a dent in the AMI movement from 80% down, I'm convinced the tax abatement is the way to go for that.

It's more process questions for me than that is the subsidy.

And I've heard all the other questions like, well, what are we willing to do?

Well, that's a budget question every single year.

So this is just getting added to the budget conversation and we have to say this is what we have and what are we going to do with it?

And that's what we got elected to figure out.

So this just gets added into that conversation.

I think

That response is specific to rental units.

What I heard in July for land and homeownership was that the cost of the land and the sticks to build the unit is already past the sale price amount for an affordable lease.

So the only answer there is remove one of those two costs, in my view.

So the land conversation is there.

I think we have a lot to learn from our economics development team and how we do economic development projects to follow what they do to pull off affordable housing projects.

We just made a major purchase in this county for economic development where we are a huge landowner.

I've said this publicly a few times now.

This is probably a good venue to go ahead and just put myself officially on the record.

We do that because it's going to have economic returns for us, which we see as a value for the community.

Likewise, we should probably be acquiring land to impact a huge issue that all of us said is an issue.

And while it might not give us the economic returns that an economic development project would, it would give us a public good that we all say we need to achieve.

So I'm on the record now as saying that, yeah, I think we do need to start acquiring land as a county, not just identify the current land in stock,

But whether or not we run and own and operate and be the developer, that's a more drawn out conversation.

But if we can do it for economic development purposes, we can do it for affordable housing purposes.

And I think that helps us attack the homeownership issue from that regard.

That particular item is not an incentive conversation.

That is a policy decision about what we're going to do in terms of acquiring land and when we're going to do it.

And that's a CIP conversation for the most part.

But I don't know how else to get at the home ownership piece in the county without taking that type of step.

So from the rental standpoint, I'm full on with tax abatement.

I think everybody needs to understand that if we try to exclude any incentive,

We're putting ourselves in a box because we've got so much creativity and things change case by case that we have to start getting comfortable with one another to go.

It's all out there, but we have to give you some sort of prescriptive thing to count on.

I'm looking specifically at both the for-profits and the not-for-profits so that you can do the things you need to do to get a project moving.

But then once it does get moving, the idea is let's keep that cost number where it needs to be.

And whatever it takes to do that, let's do it so that people can afford a place to live.

So I want everyone to understand from my perspective that it's not about identifying one, two or three.

It's all out there as far as this supervisor is concerned.

But I think tax abatement is the biggest one that is not cash up front for the county.

That doesn't mean it's not a cost.

It puts limitations on us.

But then it could free up some upfront cash for us to do other things that could impact other cost areas that I've been hearing.

Welcome back.

Yes.

Thank you.

Number one for me would be the tax abatement also.

The acquisition of land by the county to be able to provide more affordable housing, I think that is a good way to go.

I think the expedited review predictability, I think you need to separate profit from nonprofit.

I think if you have it, you know, one size fits all, maybe not work.

Maybe would not work.

So if you can separate the two to have expedited review for profit, nonprofit, or for victimability when you write up everything.

There also came a good suggestion actually from Mr. Park that if they

whatever they can do to help to assist and one thing we talked about a little bit is that having the developers and I'm sure the staff is going to probably hang me for this but having developers work as they work on

How to make it expedited, how to make it simplified, how to make it work, get the developers input from that.

We may not know everything in Oza County.

We have very, very smart people, but maybe we don't know some of the nuances that would actually make

Everything goes smoother, faster for the developers and keep something like that fluid because it may change from year to year.

Our markets are changing.

What Sunshine said, even as far as the AMI, how much that's changed.

So we've got to be at the point where we can't be dogmatic.

You have to do this, this, this, this.

There has to be some kind of given

Thank you.

Oh, one other thing.

I'm sorry.

I know we have affordable housing units, rentals, or housing purchasing on the books, and we can't find people.

What about the realtors helping us out there?

I mean, they see people all the time.

Why can't they gear people toward

All right, thank you.

Supervisor McKeel.

Sure, thank you.

I think that's critical.

Expedited review.

And as someone who has been on the record for decades about using excessive, excess school and county properties, I would agree with expanding our ownership of properties to be able to use for our own.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

I came into this recognizing that we're talking about incentives for affordable housing.

So I don't want to have my comment be seen as answering the question about how to get affordable housing, but how to incentivize the development of affordable housing by for-process and non-profit developers.

because I think that there's a lot more and some of that's been brought up but I don't want to go there.

So focusing on just the things that we've been talking about, I really appreciate that some people said predictability was important because I think that's something we should be able to crack somehow, figuring out how to make things more predictable.

That said, it's balanced against the fact that every project is a little bit different and there's so many different ways in which we could

incentivize a project depending upon that particular project, which is making this particularly difficult.

Long-winded say, I do think that tax abatement is going to go the furthest.

So I hope that's all.

Thank you.

First, acknowledging the rapidly diminishing value of the opinion of a supervisor who only has three and a half weeks left on the board.

I will nonetheless offer my opinion, first off acknowledging that every subsidized unit, every affordable unit is subsidized.

If it wasn't subsidized, it'd be market.

So when it's subsidized, the question becomes, where does the subsidy come from?

And speaking specifically and purely from the county perspective, which is taxpayer money, which is community money, it means we are asking other community members to help subsidize the housing of some community members.

With that as background, Commissioner Bivens and Commissioner Moore's comments really stuck with me in that the acquisition of wealth by some select individuals in the county at the expense of the greater members of the community is a challenge for me, and that relates to purchase for sale units.

So I am much more comfortable with the support towards what we can do to increase the rental market, which is separate, although it could be related to the acquisition of wealth.

I do believe that we have an obligation to ensure that we are providing to the greatest

number of our community members.

So things like parks and other quality of life things and I really like the concept though of if the county purchases land it'd be done in a method that the county maintains the ownership and is able to use that land for the greater benefit of more members of the community because rentals do have a higher turnover rate and therefore we're able to subsidize

through taxpayer money, more members of the community rather than targeting the accumulation of wealth by select members of the community.

So land acquisition and tax abasement would be the two things.

Whatever can quickest, reliably, and more helpful allow the developers to be able to subsidize the housing that we are trying to get in the rental market is where I would go.

And this isn't meant to be combative or any of that.

So I'm just looking for some free conversation.

To move 80% to 60%, the cost involved, like when I think of tax abatement, that's where tax abatement helps me move the dial, helps in my view.

the 15% to the 20% at the current policy of 80% AMI.

We have had projects come in, and I guess Valerie's probably been the target of my finger wagging over the last two years about why are you not shooting for the 20% mark when we pass the policy that that's our aspirational goal at 80% AMI.

So to get to the conversation, what we have to wrestle with during budget,

to do all of this as subsidy could put it out of reach.

So then you have to start doing pieces of it.

So why have some projects been able to come forward to us and rezonings and hit the 20% piece, and some have come and only been 15?

I know the answer, because the ones that hit 20 found cost savings somewhere else.

But to give some sort of predictability for everybody involved, if we had to say,

move the requirement to 20%, perhaps leave the AMI where it's at and target incentives to make the AMI go deeper, well, how would developers respond?

The needle was 20% at 80% AMI.

What I heard when we passed Housing Albemarle is if you change this from 80% to 60%, you're not gonna get any projects coming forward for that.

I didn't hear that on the unit switch.

So I just had a clarifying question.

And you're talking specifically in the context of rezonings.

Right.

OK, great.

All right.

Ms.

What I hear from our clients when we talk about projects that they're interested in doing, that's as big of a hurdle, maybe not as big of a hurdle as going from 80 to 60, but going from 15% to 20% is a big hurdle.

because as Chair Price mentioned, you're already subsidizing those 15% of units.

So now you're taking on an even bigger subsidy.

We get calls a lot.

What's the policy?

And I explain, well, oh yeah, we can do 15% at 80.

OK, that works.

Well, here's what they want.

Oh, we have to go to 20.

Well, we really got to go back and look at it again.

So I think it's incentive.

If there's a way to support that gap with some tax abatement,

Mr. Park?

I was just going to say every project's different, right?

I mean, it's just, that's where I'm going back to one box fitting everything's kind of tough.

So, um, and especially what's happened in the last couple of years, I've said a couple of times when rates go from three to 7%, I mean, it just makes a huge difference.

Okay.

Um,

Is this Supervisor Malek, is this in response to this topic?

Thank you.

From my perspective, that would help.

That's what would make the difference to go

This isn't on that particular question, I apologize.

I just wanted to go back very briefly to that point about who pays for this, because we talked about the fact that we're using tax dollars to do this work, but I want us to look a little bit bigger, especially in light of our excellent new Economic Development Director.

We have to realize that I run a small business, I'll take my Commissioner hat off for one second, I just hired 10 people.

All right, that's great.

I just tripled my company.

But the point is that three people couldn't afford to live here, two are now living outside Richmond, one just bought a house in Lynchburg.

So if you want to attract businesses and they're looking at, can my employees afford to live in this community, then

We need to provide a place where people can afford to rent or own homes because that does drive away business when we look at how expensive it is to live here.

So it's not just taxpayer dollars.

It's also the people who are bringing jobs to this area and providing economic development to this area are going to start looking elsewhere because they can't afford to bring their business here.

They can't afford to grow their company here.

So I just want to be clear that it's not just shifting the burden of taxes to the private sector.

It's actually dampening our economic development ability.

So I think it's a really wise investment.

And I do support the county using some of its abilities to perhaps purchase land and make that available for affordable housing.

The last real quick point is that I might be the only one sitting on this inner dais who's ever actually benefited from down payment assistance.

So that ability to get that little bit of help from Piedmont Housing Alliance so I could get my home, so that I could build equity, so that I could graduate out, so that I could build it.

Now, I never came back to Piedmont Housing Alliance.

But the point is that I didn't need to.

Thank you.

Just to build on that, it's a very apropos comment.

On November 10th, Virginia Housing just released a new deep dive report that may be helpful for the Economic Development Authority as well.

Housing is an economic development strategy for Virginia, and fundamentally it is focused on the idea that this, the issue that you're speaking of, which is that

if we are gonna continue to thrive as a Commonwealth, but in particular individual communities and have business creation, we have to have the housing spectrum be addressed.

And it's a really worthy report.

It's excellent.

Thank you.

Anyone else right now?

Yes, Ann asked about the reaction, I think, from the developers and the group around alternative two.

I'd like to hear the reaction from the same group on alternative three.

Ms.

I'll just say it's really the same issue, Supervisor McKeel.

Well, I don't know.

I hate to speak.

I think, Supervisor McKeel, the underlying answer for them, not to speak for them, is that it's all about the cost.

Yeah.

I think alternative two and three is more a question for us.

Yeah, and I get that.

Do we want to go deeper?

Mr. Park?

I was just going to state the obvious.

Yeah, I mean, I think Ned said it's more of a subsidy on the county's end.

And as Sunshine noted kind of as an earlier comment and from what I've heard from most of my clients who I've worked with is to get below that 60% AMI, it has to have subsidy.

And so I think it's more so maybe the question is, we're currently at a standard where 15% and 80% AMI where many developers can provide that without subsidy.

And so I think it's kind of more so the question of like, well, you know, how is is there a shift beyond that that can happen from from the private sector?

Mr. Mathon, thank you, Ms.

Just quickly, I want to highlight that, particularly in the rental sector, this is true in the homeownership side too, of course, but that there are three dials to the cost impact.

One is the depth of affordability, one is the number of units you're talking about, the percentage, and the other is how long has to stay affordable.

All three of those have financial impacts on the pro forma, whether you're talking about a non-profit or a for-profit.

and so being conscious of those dials and which are the priorities from the county perspective is crucial and that gets to my second point which is I would push back a little bit from just a

A human policy perspective, based on the numbers that I shared a little while ago around increasing area median income, at $123,000 this year, 80% of the area median income is in the mid 90s in terms of household income versus 60%, which is closer to $70,000 a year.

So the question from the county's policy perspective, where do we want to see affordable housing in the long term?

I would strongly argue that we want to see it as deeply affordable as we can because there is a strong likelihood.

We've seen, as I mentioned, 39% increase in AMI over the last two years alone.

That trend may continue.

Thank you.

Yeah, and to follow up on what Sunshine's saying too, think about it.

If we're at 60%, that's the max.

Very few of those people are going to be at 60%, right?

When they come to qualify, it's a good chance they're going to be at 55 or 50% in order to fill that.

So just keep that in mind.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner.

So one of the things that we, when a project comes in for the Planning Commission, a number of commissioners will always ask, is the affordable unit, can you tell us where the affordable unit is going to be?

and what's the distinction between the affordable unit and the market rate unit?

Well, some people struggle with that response more than others, but there is often a moment of pause.

And so what I would be concerned with if we do this bifurcated approach here is that that's going to make it even more difficult for the developer.

And that you're actually going to see communities that are going to have, that might have even more variation

between the affordable unit and then the one that's got a deeper affordability to it and the market.

And that's fine.

In real life, that happens.

But I don't necessarily know if the county wants to subsidize that type of disparity.

Commissioner Missell.

Thank you.

Just a couple of things.

This is based on not only what I've heard, but what I've learned in my day job recently over the past few years, I guess.

You know, if you think about how this is to Supervisor Gallaway's question, too, about how do we get this across the line?

How do we make impacts?

The simplest way for me to sort of think about this in summary is the both sides of the ledger, right?

The one side, obviously thinking about the inputs, you know, you're getting money from rent, from sales, from

We've talked about some of these interest rates which are obviously all over the place, construction costs

Land Costs.

And one thing I'd actually recommend to the county, and I'm not an expert in this area, is to think a little bit outside the box, not just about land acquisition, but looking across the country and thinking about what other localities have done in terms of leasing land for long term.

That's actually been, at least from a quick Google search, effective in several areas.

infrastructure, rezoning, site plan, building permits, taxes, tap fees, lots on that side.

All right, thank you.

Anyone else right now?

All right.

Just because we're scheduled to go to four o'clock doesn't mean we need to go to four o'clock.

But at the same token, I do not want to cut off the opportunity for people to make comments.

Ms.

I'll tag on to Commissioner Missell's comments.

You hear this all the time, but in real estate development, time is money.

And it's never more so than now, in my experience, in my relatively short career.

But every month that goes by that a project is not approved for rezoning,

puts it more and more at risk.

Somebody else mentioned earlier about investors.

They look at another project.

We had a project that was approved earlier this year unanimously.

It's got a lot of praise.

It came real close to not happening because the investors were like, this is taking too long.

We've already found a few new projects we like in these other communities.

We really had to beg and crawl back to get them.

And we're still answering a lot of tough questions from them about how does affordable housing work?

Every month counts.

I get calls all the time from both local folks as well as out-of-town folks.

We're looking at this piece of land that just came on.

We'd like to do this multifamily project.

We're thinking maybe this many units.

Would that get approved?

If so, how long would it take?

And how much is that going to cost us on the rezoning side?

Those are the key questions.

They're just trying to even look at should we even try to acquire this land.

My answer on the rezoning side is 12 to 18 months for rezoning and a minimum of another year on the site plan side.

And that usually gets a big pause.

And so that's hard enough.

But then when you say, oh, and by the way, don't forget, there's also this affordable housing policy.

Here's what the current rules are.

But here's what the future rules are.

And we don't know when and how those are going to come into play.

But you need to think about that as well.

So it's all those things mixed together.

that make the challenges that Mr. Mussel is explaining.

So to the extent we can work together on those issues, we have a complicated process in this community, and that's because there's a lot of people who care so much about how we have so little land in the development area, so people are very focused on making sure it's done right, which isn't great.

It makes for beautiful communities, but it's very expensive to do that.

Thank you.

And then I think a lot of people have said sort of the same thing is that you have to, everything in the toolkit has to be on the table.

The other piece that is sort of separate toolkit over and above the toolkit is empowerment of staff and a mandate from the supervisors.

I can tell you the one thing that, the one place in the city when I was on the Planning Commission, the one place where when the city had a project or a need for a project in the realm of historic preservation,

We had a preservation planner who had intense support both expressed and also in terms of tools and resources to get it done and so in the city for a number of years if there was a project, if there's a great building and the owners needed some support in perhaps applying for an individually protected property designation

They would have the full weight and force of the city behind them and supporting them.

We don't necessarily have that.

We have great people in the county and they're working really hard and overtaxed in a way, but we don't have that housing, portable housing guru.

the person with the mandate from the supervisors to say here's the tools in your tool belt and somebody mentioned this before I think it was Karen mentioned that we had we used the the idea of having a convener that would find out oh there's this piece of land that's for sale let me let me go ahead and give a call to a few people who might put some deals together but you had that one person that single point of contact that person who is every day with the support of the supervisors

of working at it to pull the pieces together.

We've got great developers in this community.

We have really good nonprofits, present company excluded.

We're just mediocre, but we have really good ones.

But we need to have that clear mandate.

Thank you.

Oh, I'm sorry, Commissioner Murray.

Yes, it was mentioned that the issue of the rural areas versus the growth areas is very different in terms of affordable housing.

It's worth noting that I'd say most of our affordable housing is actually in the rural area.

One of the reasons that I, as someone who grew up here, have chosen to live in the rural area is largely because I could afford to live there in the rural area.

I could not afford a home in Old Trail.

So I think that's a separate conversation that needs to occur.

I'm glad that the county has talked about putting a rural area chapter into our new comprehensive plan.

I think that's important.

I think, too, the way that our

We structured subdivision and the rural areas arcane at best.

And it encourages 21 acre lots that end up in pharma states.

And no 21 acre pharma state is going to be affordable to anyone except someone who can afford a 21 acre pharma state.

So I think we need to really look at these issues and look at what we have a lot of historic communities in the rural area, people that have been there for generations that are being displaced.

Thank you.

Commissioner, Ms.

Thanks.

This is just, I guess, a question for, I don't know, hopefully it's a fair question.

What's next?

Is there a timeline that we're thinking about in terms of bringing some closure to this?

I believe we do have a roadmap and the roadmap is to take everything that has come in today to then compile that and have staff come back to us with a proposal that will then be reviewed by everyone and voted on

with amendments like much like any application you have the initial application then there are revisions that take place and the board will make a decision which we hope will achieve we we have to believe will achieve the the mission of increasing affordable housing.

Supervisor Galloway?

The board now is seeing actual numbers for different decisions.

I've heard tax abatement to match longevity, which we have not got to that point before today.

I think land use, I think getting people into the units, I think all that separate conversations from incentives, but I think we have some pretty clear

I want to

I think the piece that the board will have to wrestle with, which isn't necessarily on the developers or the not-for-profits, will be having to revisit housing Albemarle as it relates to this conversation for what comes in if it doesn't get an incentive versus what does when it does get an incentive.

Thank you.

Two more.

Yes, I'm, you're asking for, or some of you were asking for a, like a housing guru, kind of like a broadband office.

Is that something that would be, pardon?

Yeah.

Possibly.

So someone you can go to, right?

So maybe not necessarily an office, but a person or a couple of people, something like that.

Okay, I think I've got that.

The other thing I did want to ask, I see that with the different subsidies, would it be beneficial instead of the subsidies, the county purchases some land and then you don't have the cost of the land,

No, that's okay.

Okay.

All right.

That's the question I had.

All right.

Actually, two more.

Commissioner Bivens.

Chair, I would suggest we've heard from the cream of the crop of developers that do business here.

But I'm struck by Ms.

Long's comments about people who call into here.

and I think you might benefit from having a conversation or being informed what outside developers look at when they come, when they think about coming to us as opposed to just simply the people are in-house.

I recall we had a wonderful, I thought it was a wonderful project across near

by Rio and also by KTEC.

And the developer was not from here.

And from what I was told from some offline stuff, they just couldn't navigate our processes.

And so, well, we've got a group of people who have figured out to do that.

But I think that that's a different world when you really are making just a decision based on the numbers.

So do these numbers work in this location?

A project sometimes can go someplace else.

Thank you.

I just wanted to make a few comments relative to the process and what do we do from here.

It would be my hope or my suggestion as we've talked

through the Regional Housing Partnership.

And when this came up in, what was it, April of this year, I think when we went into this process, that's got us here today.

But I think the logistics of what we've heard today immediately would go to the Planning Commission as soon as possible for there to do some logistical review.

And then it comes to the board for a final set.

This shouldn't be added to another six months of process deliberations.

So I think it's time to get this one review at the Planning Commission, bring it here for a decision,

And then we've got an incentive thing out there that we can start playing around with and seeing how it works.

The other two things that I would say, I guess, Mr. Richardson, I might be directing this your way.

And this is my thought.

I've heard expedited review.

Expedited review, I think, needs to be a complete process review, not just for affordable housing pieces.

and because it's a staffing issue that we know we're wrestling with.

So we have to fix that for all fronts.

So I get leery of wanting to incentivize one area, even though obviously I'm a proponent of affordable housing.

So I'm just throwing that out there.

The other piece that I would say as the chair of the Regional Housing Partnership is I hope everybody who are not on the partnership knows about the Central Virginia porch light.

that helps try to get people in units.

And what I heard from Mr. Mathon was it was not necessarily an issue with rentals.

More so with home ownership.

But since the question has come up as a supervisor, I'd like to know the answer to that question.

I don't think that's an incentive either, although it's been mentioned several times, but we should probably get to the heart of that.

But there are tools that other organizations have put into place to accomplish that very thing.

So it's probably worth some more deliberation, but outside of the incentive conversation.

Thank you.

I have some closing comments.

I'll look to Kaki Demick from a technical side or Stacey Pethea to say, is there anything specific from a technical standpoint that either of you would flag at this point?

Excellent.

You're good?

So no questions today at this time, Chair Price.

What I would say in closing from the staff perspective is I really see three buckets.

The first is subsidies, specific tax abatement and or going into the form of closing the gap.

Number two is land availability.

specific to what we own as an organization or what land is available out there.

That's work that we can continue to do.

The third is process, predictability, time, speeding it up.

That's very complicated in this world of workforce stabilization where we've struggled mightily.

over the last year with approximately 80 to 90 positions that have been vacant across the organization throughout the last 12 months.

And we are like many local governmental organizations, not just in Virginia, but across the United States, where we grapple and work continuously just to fill positions, critical positions, just to keep the work flowing.

A private sector that's in the room today, they know what we're talking about because they've struggled as well.

So we will look for board guidance on process and expedited review.

That is a separate conversation that we will have and come back to the board to talk about that.

And I'll stop to see if any of the staff that I didn't call on have anything else to add.

Thank you.

When we speak about affordable housing, one of the things we have to acknowledge is whether you're paid by the minute.

the project or if you're on a salary there is a cost to you and your employers for your participation not only here today but for the time that you have each dedicated towards civic duties by being a part of this process and I cannot thank you enough for you and your organizations for being here today.

Madam Chair Price, thank you for inviting us and asking us to be here and genuinely asking our opinions and guidance and suggestions.

It takes a village, and we're all part of that.

All right.

Thank you.

And at this time, we will adjourn for the Board of Supervisors.

Our next meeting will be on Wednesday, December the 6th, 2023 at 1 o'clock p.m.

We will convene at that time in room 241.

in the county office building.

It will be a joint meeting with the school board.

We will then at 6 o'clock reconvene in Lane Auditorium at 6 o'clock p.m.

on December the 6th.

Opportunities for the public to participate and comment are provided and available on the Albemarle County website, as well as the Board of Supervisors homepage.

And again, thank you all for being here, as well as those who attended simply to observe and learn.

And before they leave, this is a great opportunity again to meet new Deputy County Executive, Ms.

Wall and Director of Economic Development, Mr. Albrecht.

And thank you all for being here today as well.

Thank you all.

Thank you to our staff for the work you did to get this all set up.