Planning Commission Work Session Meeting   6/10/2025

Meeting of the Albemarle County Planning Commission.

I will start by calling us to order.

Yes.

Ms.

Firehock.

Here.

Great, thank you.

Moving on to item number two, the consent agenda.

Would any commissioners like to pull any of these items for further review?

Second.

Any discussion?

The only thing I will add is that it was a pleasure to see that what we're looking at is what we asked them to do when they came before us.

Great.

Thanks.

Any other discussion?

OK.

Yes.

Mr. Murray?

I'm sorry.

Mr. Bivins?

Sorry.

And Ms.

Firehock?

Yes.

Awesome.

All right.

We will now move to the highlight of the show, the work session on affordable housing.

And I will turn it over to staff for the presentation.

Could I ask me?

I'm sorry, can I just ask kind of an opening question to sort of help frame expectations a little bit?

Because oftentimes, you know, we'll have work sessions where you all start off with these are the things we'd like feedback on.

Is this more of a briefing on a current status?

Okay, and how much of the briefing is about the current sort of status of affordable housing versus the

And before you start, I just say, you know, again, just for your benefit, those who might be listening, I think this was the reaction to your all's request for more information about just various

You know, efforts that the county is making on affordable housing, I knew it was front and center.

So we started with this one and we'll try and do some other ones for you.

We have holes on the agenda.

Great.

Good evening.

I'm Stacey Pethey, Assistant Director of Housing.

And I'm here to give you an update on housing Albemarle.

So the housing policy and activities that have happened since its adoption in 2021.

We will start with just a brief overview of what exactly affordable housing is, how we measure it, what we mean by that, and then who qualifies to live in affordable housing.

So I'm trying to move this closer so in mean and weird ways.

and then looking at the housing needs and housing out in Albemarle County and that's really based on that 2019 Regional Housing Needs Assessment that was completed by the Central Virginia Regional Housing Partnership and then look at the county response to date.

When we talk about affordable housing, we're really talking about housing that an individual or family can afford with the income they have.

It's really that simple.

The U.S.

Department of Housing and Urban Development recommends housing costs no more than gross household income, so pre-tax income.

and that really includes if you're a renter that includes your monthly rent and the amount you pay for utilities each month and for homeowners that's the monthly mortgage payment including your principal and interest property taxes and mortgage insurance if that is required for your mortgage as well as the utilities that you pay and really that 30% was I believe set in the 1980s

It's really designed to leave room to pay for housing but also cover other essentials such as food and healthcare, transportation costs, etc.

There are several ways that we can measure affordability and the first is the fair market rent.

And this is set by again HUD, the Youth Department of Housing and Urban Development each year.

It's really based on the 40th percentile rents in a metropolitan area.

So for us, it covers Albemarle County, the city of Charlottesville, Greene County, Nelson County, and Fluvanna County.

And so in 2025,

HUD set the fair market rents for a two bedroom apartment at $1,729 a month.

And if you compare that to the average rents for apartments in April of 2025, a two bedroom was at that point renting for about $1,900 a month.

So they're set at a lower level than what market rate rents would typically choose.

I will say that in Albemarle County, the Office of Housing actually increases our fair market rents or the voucher payment standard for our Housing Choice Voucher Program at 110% of this fair market rent.

Can I interrupt?

I'm sorry, one question.

One second, I have a restarting now, not now.

Okay, I just had a question on that previous slide.

Overall, I guess the trends, it's increasing, right?

The costs are increasing.

Have you seen, is it a steady increase?

Are there aspirational goals for that to change or what's kind of the... Ideally, our voucher payment standards would be set at the fair market rent.

So we would love to see that 1729 a month as our maximum assistance level.

That way we'd be able to assist more people.

So the higher we have to set our voucher payment standards, the fewer people we can serve.

We are given a limited budget each year.

and told how many vouchers HUD believes that will serve.

And then it really depends on the market as to whether or not we can meet that goal that they gave us.

So we would like to see the rents go down.

Looking at more recent data, rents about different bedroom sizes are going up and down at different rates.

Tell me a little bit more about vacancy rates for apartments.

It's still pretty low.

It's hovering around two or three percent, so it's definitely below five.

Ideally, vacancy rates for rents or for all housing units would be around the five percent mark, and that allows room for

movement within the housing market.

When it gets down below 5%, particularly around 2%, that's when we really start to see housing prices rise considerably and quickly, because there's just not enough housing to meet demand.

Another way to measure housing affordability is what we all in the housing industry like to call the housing wage.

And that represents the hourly wage a full-time worker must earn in order to afford to rent a modest two-bedroom apartment.

So modest two-bedroom apartment would be that $17.29 a month at the fair market rent level.

So according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,

I'm sorry, according to the fair market rent, a single worker would need to earn $33.25 an hour in order to afford comfortably that $17.29 a month with their utilities.

Based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data, about 25% of households

Workers in the county have income less than the housing wage.

So that's about 20% of our households do not earn enough to afford that $17.29 a month.

Like it was in the neighborhood of a $68,000-a-year salary.

It's more than that.

Multiplied by $2,000.

So moving on to who lives in affordable housing.

Affordable housing is really geared towards low and moderate income households.

So low income households are households that earn 50% or less of median income.

Moderate households are that 80% AMI category.

And as of April 1st, the area median income for its Charlottesville metro region has increased to $125,800 a year.

That's up from about $122,000.

And so if you see from this graph, 80% AMI is about $70,000 a year, and that would be for a household of four.

I'm sorry, low income is not defined as 60% or below, it's defined as 50%?

It's HUD really sets those income level definitions.

So low income is considered 80% AMI and pretty much down to 50%.

50% down to 30% is low income and below 30% is extremely low income.

Got it.

and I believe all of you have seen this chart, this graph before.

This is our housing affordability spectrum, and it really moves from the extremely low income category, which includes a person's experiencing homelessness and need to live in emergency shelters or transitional housing, moving into permanent supportive housing and housing choice voucher programs, which really focus on 50% AMI and below households, affordable rental housing,

which is that 60% AMI category.

So that includes your low income housing tax credit projects up to affordable home ownership, which for the county, we set that at 80% of area median income and then up to 120% AMI.

So from that 81% AMI up to 120% is generally defined as workforce housing.

And so again, the housing policy, Housing Albemarle really focuses on that 80% AMI and below.

households.

We can really look at who qualifies for affordable housing based on income limits.

These are typically set by HUD of each year.

They set them at the 80, 50 and 30% of area median income categories.

So based on the current area median income of $125,800, a family of four at 80% of AMI,

would need to earn no more than $100,650 a year.

You guys also picked up all these slides are in your packet.

Absolutely.

I just had a quick question on that.

So it seems once we got to that, if you can go back to the previous slide.

But the 33 is an individual.

That is.

But it could also be a blended wage in the household.

Correct.

Yeah, you could have two people earning minimum wage.

They'll probably get you up to 30.

But that really doesn't get you up to 30.

It probably gets you just below 30.

Correct.

HUD makes those, they adjust, they always start at the four person household and that is the straight percentage.

So that 80% AMI is strictly 80% of that 125, 800 plus a little weird manipulation by HUD.

They round up, everything is like ends in a 50 or zero zero.

And then they adjust downwards for smaller household sizes.

So they would take that four person household amount and multiply that by 0.7 for a single person.

And they do that to sort of even out the buying power of households.

And this is just some information from HUD about the number of households that fit within each of those categories.

This data is from 2021.

This type of data tends to run about three to four years behind always.

So we don't know exactly what those categories are, but this comes from HUD.

I don't have that breakdown of the data.

I was just sort of extrapolating from the, I guess that's, I'm going to call it copper, the copper color.

That's the, as opposed to the, that's why I was just extrapolating.

So, and what it would be interesting to see

I mean, I know what the population in Jack Jewett is.

Okay.

Correct.

Because we talk a lot about sort of what is the quality of life issues that we've talked about during the comp plan.

And while I would sort of make a bold and brass statement thinking that those individuals who are in denser communities

The Central Virginia Regional Housing Partnership is about to begin updating the housing policy.

Their consultant has access to more data sources than county staff do, because they have the budget to pay for them that we do not.

So it may be that that I'll have to see exactly what type of data they're looking for.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that if we were so more than half

Or below, this is 2021 data.

So the AMI has increased since then.

Quite a bit actually in these last three, four years.

So I'm assuming this number is

That's my guess, but I cannot verify that yet.

HUD works with the Census Bureau to do some special tabulations of data, and they break it down in ways that I can't necessarily get through the data that we have access through public means with the Census Bureau.

So I will see what we can find.

Thinking about cost-burdened households, so these are households that are paying 30% or more of their income for housing.

This is back again, the 2021 data, because that was the most recent available.

At that time, two out of every ten low and moderate income homeowners were housing cost-burdened, so those were homeowners with incomes at or below 80% of AMI.

and nearly two out of every four renters with the lowest household incomes are severely cost burdened, which means they were paying more than half of their income towards their housing costs.

Correct, it's your rent and utilities.

So it's the gross rent, not the net rent on the unit.

Projecting out to 2040, and this information comes from the housing needs assessment that was completed in 2019.

By 2040, that study estimated that one out of every four households will experience housing cost burdens in 2040.

And so that was all the way up to 100% of AMI, not just the 80% AMI and below.

and three out of every four households with incomes below 50% of area median income will experience housing cost burdens by 2040.

So again, those are the households that will pay more than 30% of their income towards their renter costs.

So what has Albemarle County been doing about all of those numbers?

Well, if you remember, the Board of Supervisors adopted Housing Albemarle in July of 2021.

The housing policy includes 12 objectives and 93 strategies or action steps.

To date, staff has achieved or implemented 20 of those 93 strategies, so that's 22%.

Staff is currently working on 43 of those strategies and active steps.

So another 46% are in action.

30 have not yet started.

That's a good question.

A couple of questions about that.

One is,

In terms of your original aspirations, your goals, did you feel like you'd be about where we are now?

Or did you have higher aspirational goals?

I thought we might be slightly more ahead than we are.

If you remember, the housing policy was not fully implemented until March of last year.

And that was when the board approved the developer incentive program.

so working forward from that is we're hoping to work off of that to move forward but also looking ahead towards updates in the housing needs assessment that may change everything we need to do so it's one of the recommendations that was not included in Housing Albemarle but is a really good idea is to review what's going on every five years or so and then make changes moving forward so

Staff is always looking at what's happening, what can be improved, what can change, and so we will be working on that.

I believe there are some plans to have initial data from the housing needs assessment available within the next 12 months.

It doesn't make sense to really work on an updating of the housing policy in earnest until we know what those numbers are.

and that will help us moving forward.

So we're always looking to see where things can change.

We have a list of stuff that we think is ready to be changed to move forward, can work better in other ways.

A lot of it was we're really looking at what needs to be

put in place in order for everything else to work.

That's what was prioritized.

So really the developer incentive program was one of the top priorities.

Finding ways to make the affordable housing fund more sustainable over the long term was another priority.

So staff is working with that now.

So it's really getting those bases

that base level going and then seeing what has worked, where we can tweak things, but really starting the conversation in more earnest among planning commissioners, board of supervisors, developers in the community about how we can move together forward in a better way.

That conversation hadn't necessarily happened in any meaningful way in the past.

It happened here and there, but not in any coordinated manner.

So I have a question about one of these items, housing preservation.

One of the things that I find very interesting about my neighborhood is within a very short walk of my house, we have properties that are with the house and property that are assessed at under $140,000.

And then, you know, a very short walk from that, you have properties with the house that are assessed at over 1.5 million.

And so, I'm very fascinated by the, particularly the rural area properties that are currently affordable.

Well, to date, we've been working very closely with AHIP, the Albemarle Housing Improvement Program, to make sure that they are able to get, obviously there's not enough funding to cover every household that needs help, but working with them to get out into the community and help make the repairs that are necessary to help people stay in their homes over a longer term.

Once that funding is provided, there is a lien placed on the home that does require

that home remain affordable for a particular period of time as long as that current homeowner is in there.

And then we recoup the money either in the sale of the property or should a homeowner pass away and give that home to surviving family members.

If one of their family members is income qualified, then we just allow them to remain in the home.

So again, the home remains affordable for the longer term through that period.

In terms of rental housing,

Again, we work with local nonprofits should a building become available.

Let's say mall-side apartments, for example, one of the larger affordable communities.

It's been on and off the market several times over the last couple of years.

Where we can assist nonprofits to possibly move in and buy that, we are open to doing so.

Oftentimes a lot of money that we don't necessarily have on hand, but working together to try to pull community members together, other organizations that may be able to get the funding to at least put a down payment on and a bid on the property.

That's a great question.

I am not sure.

We used to use community development block grant funding for them and those projects, particularly in the rural areas.

We have not done that in the last couple of years.

They have been getting funding through the planning district commission and their home investment partnership.

So they have those numbers.

I do not, but we can certainly get those for you.

Yeah, I just wanted to follow up on that because what struck me about that, and I do think that's a critical piece, is how we look to preserve the affordable housing stock that we have, right?

And you know, we've had that conversation before and said, how much are we losing?

Do we know?

And I know it's hard to track, but what struck me is when I looked at 1.14 in your objectives, which is that one that talks about housing preservation,

but that was listed as something that has not started.

Which is on around page 30 in the packet for those.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I, so that's the one thing, I mean, I think the presentation is great.

It was a lot of great information.

Yeah, but there's other partnerships, right?

There are.

There are.

Those are all competitive grants.

And so that, along with the Community Development Block Grant program, some of those are not available to local government to apply for.

They must be applied for by the nonprofits themselves.

And so AHIP does apply for those funding streams when they can.

Okay.

And so there are other ways that we can look at doing that, but it does require some significant amount of funding and a consistent source of funding.

So once we get that funding side worked out, particularly through the housing fund, it will make it easier going forward.

If we could just sort of expand that and I guess at some point there'll be a bit of a question to my colleagues here.

So in that 1.4, you're talking about establishing zones.

You were talking about sort of preservation zones.

And I would imagine a number of those preservation zones, if we certainly look to a survey of the housing stock that we have, the present housing stock, is not in what we would consider the development area.

That's not where a lot of that housing is.

And yet, we were a bit sort of uncomfortable sort of replicating that type of housing down in the Esmond area recently.

So I'd like to, at some point, I won't be here when that probably happens.

I didn't say that.

I said we as a body.

So at some point, we're going to have to wrestle with what that means.

and everyone in community meetings about the comp plan.

People talked about we would like to have some condos.

We would like to have some more dense housing so we can stay in our community, especially as we age in place.

Well, does it have to be a tension?

I mean,

Well, because it's not that.

That's not where I'm going.

The housing preservation is about preserving a unit that is at risk of turning over.

Right.

So that's a person that's that's not adding to the unit.

That's just basically keeping the family people, the individuals who are there in that particular unit.

That's fine.

But that if we sort of are looking for community goods to enhance the sort of affordable housing in our community,

That's how I think.

that type of housing, whether it be more modest or be on whatever the track of land is, you're going to see those kind of opportunities more in the rural part of the community than you are going to be in the development area.

And so it's like, if it's OK to preserve one house, then why is it not OK to add to that inventory in smart and cautious ways, but to do it in a way that sort of is building that out in a way that we're not just looking at preserving ones and twos that are by

I agree it's a topic that needs to be discussed more.

However, one of the paradoxes there is that one of the reasons that the rural area is affordable is because it's lacking in uses.

There's a whole bunch of uses you're not allowed to have, and you're not allowed to have public water and sewer and all these other things.

If you go back and add those things, you say, OK, well, now you can do duplexes, you can do an apartment, or you can do whatever.

Well, you've now added those values to the property and the assessment is going to go through the roof for those properties, which I would say could result in displacement.

I'd like to put a caution.

So what I was suggesting was not bringing public services there.

There are plenty of ways that one can create a community without having to bring public water or public sewer to them.

I mean, I could list numbers of places that have multiple units.

that are nice units to live that do not have public water or public sewer.

So I would hope that whoever does this is that that's not the litmus test that they use on whether or not there should be additional housing in the non-development part of our community, which I think is how, given if you, I mean, most of you either look at or get some, either the Daily Progress or the other paper that comes out, if you look at that weekly number of what our housing stock costs here,

You know, sort of a little Venn diagram with different colors and something like that.

There will never be an opportunity that that number starts going down in a significant way.

When we're sitting at a half a million dollars for a regular house,

Maybe it's a severe depression that's going to get it close to $100,000 again.

But if that happens, none of us will all be doing Victory Gardens someplace or Poverty Gardens.

I should probably rename that and not being able to do anything.

So I'm trying to think about what are the realities that where you're going to have the opportunity to sort of look at that kind of work.

Well, I think the other big problem with that too, and we've discussed this before, is the method by which we do subdivisions in the rural area, which lends itself to 21-acre lots.

And there's no way you can make a 21-acre lot affordable.

and so I think reconsidering the way that we think about how we do subdivision, you know, I would much rather see a bunch of, you know, because I'd look at the affordable lots in my neighborhood, a lot of them are two acre lots, you know, not 21 acre lots and so, you know, someone take, you know, we have a bunch of, there's, I see a bunch of people, they'll take a two acre lot and they'll put a trailer on that two acre lot and now that is an affordable place for them.

So I just want to clarify, now that I found the page that you are talking about, housing rehabilitation zones are a specific designation allowed by the state code.

And that they are generally created not to necessarily preserve housing, but to encourage housing preservation and development.

And it allows localities to provide a variety of incentives that we could not normally provide.

It's been a while since I've read that part of the code.

You could provide different incentives to developers such as for giving overdue taxes on properties so that you could bring an abandoned property back into production.

There's a whole list of things you can do.

Those benefits would last for 10 years.

And so it is sort of like an overlay.

and I have a just a quick kind of sort of process related question.

I've maybe alluded to this at the beginning, cause this is all great.

It's a lot of what we are doing.

I'm also, I think we're talking a little bit about how are we doing too, right?

So I just want to get in my mind clearly the sort of roadmap of the sort of process roadmap.

So when you think about the housing Albemarle, there's the drafting and adopting phase just done.

Right.

And you said, I think that that gets another look every five years.

Correct.

Then there's the implementing phase, which we're kind of in now.

Then there's the assessing phase and that's the housing needs assessment.

How often does that happen?

No.

The last time it was done, 2019.

Oh, wow.

And so I do believe Planning District Commission staff are going to work with their kids.

So they're working with Virginia Commonwealth University and their Center for Housing Studies.

They're going to go through training with them.

so that they can understand what data is used, how to look at the data and so that they can do those updates on a more regular basis so maybe not have to wait five years but be able to do it every other year or annually.

We are sending two housing staff to those trainings as well.

So that they will be able to, I can do a lot of it myself.

I just don't have access to the data.

Yeah.

But I don't have, you know, not necessarily time for me to sit down and do that every two years.

So if we have more housing staff that are trained in how to do those, we can take things steps at a time.

Okay, that's good to know.

Yes.

And then there's the discussing and workshopping, right, which is kind of a next, it's sort of, I guess, an ongoing thing.

And then there's adjusting and refining.

Correct.

So the workshopping piece, when you think about the development community, and I was a part of some of the

work sessions that you had with the development community.

I think you mentioned this a little while ago.

Sure, definitely with the nonprofits.

The nonprofits and county and city governments have been getting together I think every Monday around lunchtime to talk about the changes in the federal funding, how it's impacting our local nonprofits.

And then also I believe the community foundation is involved in those so they are understanding what the funding needs are going to be.

If everything that is proposed in the current budget actually happens, no local government can make that up.

It's just too big.

Thank you.

So have we done an analysis of return on investment for dollars spent?

We have, I don't have it in this presentation, but I can certainly provide that to all of you.

We really get the best investments we can make are in affordable rental housing.

That is where the county's investment has the most impact.

It generally, I believe county investment comes out to be probably 10, 11% of the total project cost with rental housing due to the low income housing tax credits that come in and all the other funding that's brought in.

So it's really up to $30 for every dollar that the county puts into those projects and leverage.

So that's really the best option for the county.

More units than you would get with home ownership.

It's not to say home ownership doesn't matter.

There's a lot of great work going on at Southwood.

Housing Albemarle really took a multifaceted approach to affordable housing, really looking at rental assistance programs, housing for special needs populations, a density bonus program, affordable rental housing incentive program.

of financing, providing financial support for new construction and preservation and an affordable dwelling unit program listserv or waiting list, interest list, whatever we want to call it.

That has started internally.

We are beginning to bring people from the community in.

That's a bit difficult to convince people to sign up for since proper units come online randomly.

So you could sit there five years before one becomes available.

So we're working on building that and finding good ways to make those units more available more often, right?

And it's really coming up with a great system with developers or the property managers.

Some of the new developments that have come online, property managers have worked in Northern Virginia, Fairfax County, Loudoun County,

Out of all of those...

I would say definitely new construction, because we just need units.

And again, the rental units are just a better investment leverage wise.

There has been an increase in developers working with the Piedmont Community Land Trust.

And so their property units, instead of selling them, most developers really don't know how to look

for income qualified households to purchase those proper units.

That's been part of the problem.

So what several of them have started doing is working with the community land trust.

They will sell the units to the land trust who have people that they work with all the time that are income qualified.

They do all the legwork to help them find the necessary down payment assistance.

And then again, those units stay affordable forever.

So those resale prices are restricted

in perpetuity.

So I think that has been one of the wins that has come out of Housing Albemarle and that connection that has been made.

Housing Navigation Services, the county did fund a housing navigator with Piedmont Housing Alliance and their financial opportunity center.

That has been really successful in being able to connect lower income renters, not just with affordable units.

They really sit down and do the search.

They help them search for units.

They help people that are not ideal renters.

navigate that conversation with landlords to help them secure units and where necessary will help people address credit issues and different barriers that they have experienced so far to renting.

Good.

They're quiet, so you don't hear a lot about them.

But I believe they just did a presentation for the Charlottesville Association of Realtors and I want to say they now have 40 units in their portfolio.

They are expanding, I believe, into Fluvanna County.

I think they're working with the Fluvanna Louisa Housing Foundation to build some units there.

And if I understand, so a developer and what they used to do is they would proffer some amount of land or some amount of units.

So they're not being able to profit the dollar.

No, so I think Victorian Heights is a good example.

I believe they have eight units that they, through the bonus density program, those eight units are being sold.

So Greenwood Homes is going to build those.

They're going to sell those units to the Piedmont community land trust who already has buyers lined up for those eight units.

So, and they've worked with

Leavos in Spring Hill.

They did the same thing for 15 proffered units in Spring Hill.

So that effectively sort of goes to the conversation a number of us have had about the list, particularly Corey's always asked, how do we know if we're getting people on the list?

So this is the alternative.

This seems actually a much more reasonable way to get people into housing without your office having to worry about whether or not we're matching the people up there because you said, no, go here.

And then they do all the stuff that's necessary to get a family or get an individual into a

purchase place.

So this is only for purchasing.

So particularly the property managers that have moved from Northern Virginia down here, they understand how to advertise the units.

So they have been advertising on the websites that they have some income restricted units available.

And then you have to, they don't list the price of the rent, but you have to call.

But quick follow on.

So I mean, obviously we like the model of the land trust because they stay affordable in perpetuity.

But theoretically, like let's say land trust doesn't have unlimited dollars to help buy all these.

Before the Land Trust came on board, a lot of developers were working with Habitat.

And so they would proffer 15 units, and then Habitat would build those 15 units and sell them.

And that's it so far.

But Piedmont, the Community Land Trust is really a subsidiary of Piedmont Housing Alliance.

I thought we should talk a little bit about the Housing Choice Voucher Program.

It's not something anybody talks a lot about in the county.

Our program is relatively small and I apologize for the weird formatting on that slide.

It looked fine on my computer in the office.

So currently we have 345 households receiving housing choice voucher assistance.

30 of those are project based vouchers.

And so the housing choice voucher program, if you're not aware, under that program, the county, the office of housing provides a voucher to a family, an individual or family.

They take that voucher out into the rental market.

to secure a place to live.

Then they pay 30% of their income towards the rent.

The county then pays the remainder, that 70%, up to that voucher payment standard, which we talked about way at the beginning.

With project-based vouchers, those voucher assistance is attached to a specific unit.

And then the county maintains waiting lists for those units.

and so we when we get down to a certain level we just opened a waiting list for Hickory Hope Apartments out in Southwood and so when those are ready to be occupied we will begin pulling people off of those waiting lists making sure that they actually qualify for assistance through the program and placing them in there so that when that family leaves that unit that unit remains affordable in this case for 15 years that's the general

time period for those project-based contracts.

We can extend those into the future if we want, and we generally do.

So we have 30 of those out there now.

Coming up in the future, we will have 47 project-based vouchers at the premier circle, now VISTA 29 apartments.

That is specifically in the permanent supportive housing project.

So that will ensure that of the 80 units, more than half of those receive rental assistance through the county.

Piedmont Housing Alliance also has a project in the city that we're partnering with the city and PHA on.

I'm sorry, Dr. Pethier, real quick.

If you have this number on the top of your head, what is the gap between how many people are, say, on a waiting list for housing vouchers versus how many that we offer?

You just opened the waiting list.

I think we had maybe 1,200 to 1,500 applicants.

And then we do a random lottery drawing for 800 applicants.

applications.

We can get through 800 applications in two years, and that's understanding that not all of those 800 people actually will fully qualify for the program, but based on the information they provided on their, the income they provided on their application,

makes them qualify to potentially receive assistance.

Once they make it to the top of the waiting list, then we do a fuller certification of them.

And that covers income.

We will look at, I believe we do have to check some criminal backgrounds.

There are some crimes that does not allow people to receive assistance for.

Of the 1500 to 1700 that you start out with, are you saying you're randomly pulling 800 to actually go through?

That is correct.

Theoretically, the takeaway is that this demand is still way, way, way higher than the amount that our county and even city are allocating to the problem.

I'm curious, how do people learn about these programs?

Do you all proactively advertise them?

We do advertise any time the voucher program waiting list opens.

We work with local media so announcements are made on channel 29 and CBS 19 through the newspapers, radio, the county sends out information.

But through personal experience, having worked for housing authorities this program in the past and with housing authorities in other areas, it really takes one person to hear about it and it spreads like wildfire.

It's huge.

We don't really need to do that much advertising.

There are websites that will scour announcements so media to find and there's I think section 8.com scours the internet every day to see where waiting lists across the country open and that's because anyone from anywhere in the country can apply for a voucher wherever they want to go as long as they will they would just have to move there so

Thank you.

Before you move on, so just to clarify, when you said when you talk about the amount of money or the amount that the unit can be leased for, we go back to the

So if you look at the table above that, the fair market rent, that's $17.29 a month for the two bedrooms.

So that is what HUD says they will pay.

Okay.

And do we have any sense of

This is the harder piece.

This is my complaint.

I don't know what your performer looks like.

So I don't know whether or not you're making money or not.

So do we have any sense of whether or not when we go to 110, for instance, for the 1729, if that's closing a gap or if it's owned by a management company.

So if it's a company that's bringing in and they're going to keep the rental units, are they allowed to sort of at least be cost neutral on something like that?

Or are they still having to make a contribution

or eat a portion of that to be in this business.

So what happens a lot is we negotiate with landlords and property managers.

So we are limited to that 120% of FMR.

We cannot pay above that.

Voucher holders can, if their income allows, they can pay up to 40% of their own income towards rent.

We try not to let that happen.

But we can't stop them from doing that if that's what they want.

But we do a lot of negotiating.

Some landlords just won't bring it down.

We also base the payment standard on

So we make sure that we do rent comparables for every application that comes in.

So even if somebody wanted to, you know, set the rent at 120% of that 1729, and the comparables come back and show that actually comparable units are renting for 1500 a month, we would say, got to lower it to 1500 or we can't do it.

So, and there are landlords that understandably would say, I can't go that low.

So there's a lot of negotiating that goes on in that program.

Just wanted to provide a little bit of information about some of the people in our program.

About 20% of the households in our program include a member that has a disability of some sort.

30% of the program participants are senior citizens, so they're 62 years or older.

And the average household income of our program families is about $19,600 a year.

So they're all pretty low income that comes in.

75% of the program participants for all new vouchers.

So if we were to issue 10 vouchers today, 75% of those households would have to have incomes at 30% AMI or below.

households can earn up to 80% of AMI before they leave the program.

So as their income increases, they pay more and more of their rent.

The county pays less and less of their rent.

So ideally, in order to serve more people, we would have everybody at 70% of AMI.

There's a number that's just what's in our program.

We do have priorities, so we can set priority households that would sort of move them up the waiting list.

And those are, I might get all of these wrong, but one is persons experiencing homelessness.

We do take those referrals directly from the homeless services community so that you can't just say you're experiencing homelessness and get an extra point.

You have to actually have a certification.

from BRAC or some other organization.

We do prioritize families with children, I believe under five, and also senior citizens.

We also have several what we call special purpose vouchers and we have a couple different kinds.

Ones are mainstream vouchers.

We have 105 of those.

Those assist non-elderly persons with disabilities.

So that can be a household that included any member that had a disability as long as they are not a senior citizen.

We also have family unification vouchers and we work directly with the Department of Social Services for these and they are families that

They have a child or children in the care system and they are struggling to have that child returned to their care due to a lack of housing.

Or the child is at risk of being removed from the home due to a lack of housing.

And so we can use those vouchers to help them secure housing and keep their child to get the child back.

We also have housing for special populations.

And these are targeted to specific groups.

Generally in our area, they are seniors and persons with disabilities.

So if you think about Scottsville School, Crozet Meadows, Woods Edge Apartments, and permanent supportive housing programs, we work with all of those to make sure that families in our area, individuals and families have affordable places to live.

Looking, moving on to how much money the county has invested in affordable housing over the last four to five years.

It's really been almost 20 million dollars and that has come from a variety of sources.

This is specifically the housing and affordable housing investment fund.

Sorry, can you back up to that for a sec?

So, getting back to the how are we doing.

This line is kind of all over the place.

It's not steadily increasing or steadily increasing.

Yes.

Yeah.

And then this year's is a kind of hodgepodge of funding, right?

That's been pulled together.

And if I'm not mistaken, there's a portion that is to be retained over time, which is a small portion of that 3.7 or 3.8 million.

Correct.

It's like 1.2 or 1.4?

It's about that, yes.

Correct.

And I think there's a few slides at the end that go over that.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's right.

Easy questions.

There is a reasonable solution if Richmond would ever allow counties to be able to go and put before their population the ability to add a taxon that would go to schools.

then that would at least allow some portion of the 60% of the county's budget to be allocated someplace else.

But when the county's got to push 60% of its budget or more to support the school, there are solutions to this.

And some of them sit at the other end of 64.

And so if you want to have some flexibility, then we've got to get a mindset down there in the capital to change and allow counties to make those kinds of decisions.

or at least allow counties to put it before their legislature, I mean before their populace.

So this is really looking at the number of households that have been served over since 2022.

In 2022, we really were serving about 881 people.

And that is through the funding that was shown on the previous slide.

And that has increased steadily over the years.

As of this fiscal year, it was about 1200 households that have been

or will be served through this program, including through rental housing assistance, owner occupied housing, whether that's through down payment assistance or subsidies to help construct new housing, homeless services, shelters for domestic violence, survivors and homeless persons and housing counseling services.

These are sort of the three big projects that have really been focused up for the county office of housing over the last couple of years Southwood obviously in phase one the funding through the housing fund and the property tax rebates to the performance agreement has subsidized 211 units to be built in phase one of

Southwood that does not include the 121 units at Hickory Hope Apartments.

That's an additional 121 units in phase one of Southwood.

And Vista 29 will be a total of 140 units.

So currently the first 80 are under construction as we speak.

Demolition at the site has just completed.

I drove past there.

I live around that area, so drove past there.

There are no buildings from the red carpeted standing.

It was very exciting to see.

And once that phase is completed, then Piedmont Housing Alliance will build an additional 60 units that will be reserved for seniors and families.

Looking at the number of units in the county, this is what is existing as of the beginning of this year.

So this includes subsidized units such as the ones owned and managed by Piedmont Housing Alliance,

Bonus density units, proffer units have been rented or sold to income qualified households and units that have been preserved through AHIP.

That's about 2,200 units that were in the housing stock and affordable right now.

Those are what we know of.

That does not include the

That did not include things like Cavalier Crossing.

They were not officially affordable housing, so they were not counted at that time.

And there are obviously smaller units throughout the area that rent at affordable prices that we just don't know about.

They tend to be owned by small landlords.

They're hard to track.

We got to figure out a way to do that.

We're just not sure the best way to do that yet.

and the units that we have in the pipeline.

There's a little over 3,000 that are in the pipeline.

subsidized rental units.

So that does include things like Hickory Hope Apartments and Vista 29.

And then a little over 2100 proffer units that have yet to be constructed.

We don't know if those will be homeowner or rental units until much further down the line.

But that's what is proffered and approved.

Can I get just to clarify on that?

Do you have any idea how the, what the reality of is realizing any of those units or?

I do not.

Or the timeline with which those would be realized?

We track those at least quarterly and to see what's under construction and what's not.

We're also working with CDD to get better at doing all of that.

I'd be really interested to see that.

How long approvals have been sitting on the books without being realized?

I can see some sort of a cool chart somehow that reflects that.

And then there's that diving down to the next level of why.

Why aren't they being realized?

Is it costs of construction or they haven't gotten their LIHTC funding or whatever that is?

Well, I will say if they happen to be 100% affordable projects, then the Office of Housing has a really good handle on those because we communicate with them all the time.

So we would know, like VISTA 29 had been delayed for about a year.

They were pretty good at keeping us regularly updated.

So about four times a year, if anything changed, they would just check in and say, hey, we think we have this funding coming up.

And then it was, nope, sorry.

We don't.

And so we had a pretty good idea of when those were going to start.

It's really the units that are proffered and approved.

Yeah.

I mean, is that based on 15% of the total units being proffered for affordable housing?

Yes.

So that's a lot of total units.

Available.

It is.

But what is approved through rezoning, those maximum units are not always what gets built.

Yeah.

No, I think more of the, you saw I come in and say, we're going to do 400 units on the property.

They only end up doing 350.

Yeah.

and only a small portion of, I think it's 58%, right?

It's the total units that are realized.

But that's overall some of the larger projects when we've seen that they have not, the property is zoned for or is capable of holding X number of units.

And I think technically it's, I don't know how that would work, but I think it's technically what the comprehensive plan envisions for those areas.

It's the different side of that.

Oh yeah.

I mean, I promise to build out analysis where you're trying to figure out.

Yeah.

What's the, we'll call it carrying capacity of property.

Okay.

You know, take 15% out of the land, multiply it with max density and that's what every units that could have.

That's different.

Correct.

So these came in rezoning application.

We went through and figured out the maximum number of units approved for each of those rezonings, what that 15% would look like.

That's where that number comes from.

But this is not a great way to go say, oh, this is 15% of the total.

a set of units that are out there waiting to be done.

Yeah, that's helpful.

Good, thank you.

And to come along on Fred on that, what's sort of my time on the commission is what I've observed is that we've had a number of projects that were being advanced by developers who are not locals.

And often those developers didn't want to pull up with the foolishness that they were having to put up with, not here, but just the community pushback.

And many of them said, I'm selling this piece of property.

So the one at Rio, the one at Rio and JW, the Warner Parkway.

The original project was actually a very interesting project, but some of the folks across the street just sort of became, you know, annoyed.

I'll just say that.

And then the project that was on 29 up from, is it Brookville?

Is that, I think, Brookhill, that they've assumed that property.

That was also, a good part of that property was going to be affordable.

right but the people behind them said we don't want those type of people living on the other side of the fence from us so there is this sort of thing that happens around here is that you have people come in and who can do the who do the um the performance and say yeah we can make this an affordable an affordable community and then the community goes crazy and says no we don't want affordable housing here that i just you know that

That is not a sustainable model for Albemarle County to always have those developers subjected to people who want to say no or who don't want those people.

So I think another factor here, and you mentioned the limitations placed on us by Richmond.

I really wish we had the ability to put a time limit on rezonings, because you have these projects that sit out there for just years and years and years.

And ideally, and I think sometimes they're just waiting at the market.

They're just waiting there until the market reaches its peak value, and then they put things out on the market.

No, no, no.

Sort of what we saw with the field school.

And it expired.

Yeah, it's expired.

And we've done a little bit of that, but you know,

Well, I can understand that.

I also understand the complexity of bringing those size projects, any significant project to market.

And there are a lot of pieces that a developer, he or she may not necessarily be able to control.

Yeah, that's right.

And so I would caution the county to putting those kind of sunset

sunset clauses on special use permits unless the county is going to give a refund to the individual if it sunshines, if it sunsets it.

So you sunset it.

Well, we're going to give you back your $50,000 and what it costs you to do it.

I don't think this county is going to do that.

Well, so the problem is that you

A lot changes over decades, right?

We have totally different ordinances.

We have totally different goals as a community.

I would argue there's got to be some number, whether it's maybe it's 50 years, maybe it's 100 years, but it's something.

Yeah, I just don't think, I personally, having gone through this a bunch of times, don't think that that should be up to the county.

I get your theory.

It's important to try to bring and to realize units in the market as quickly as possible.

I think the challenge is to developers, there are so many uncontrollable outside influences, including market, including costs of materials and labor.

There's so much and you know the actual rezoning in some cases is an investment in the land and that increases the value of the land and so it's all if the county were to get into putting in limitations like they do for site plans right site plans you can vest a site plan otherwise it expires after five years like that.

So that's kind of a different thing but the zoning piece is the part that gives me a little

just because of the uncontrollables.

I mean, I've lived through a project recently where we were on target to develop affordable housing and the first round of funding didn't come through and now there's a whole different thing.

It's all thrown up in the air again and now it's well, what's the affordability levels?

We have to adjust those.

What are the materials we're using for the building?

Should we shrink the building?

But I think the piece of learning about whether or not, once you hit a site plan and if you don't exercise GOAT and if you don't actually get a certificate to build or whatever that is that you have to get the building permit.

The building permit, just even start doing dirt.

Yeah, just doing dirt.

Then in fact you've got a conversation I think you can have with someone, but then I mean we've seen a number of projects that came before us that were very exciting and it turned out that the developer sold the project.

yeah and what went there was not very exciting and you know they have to make decisions but the project got I know for me it got a yes vote because I thought what they were going to do was kind of kind of new and different and then when whatever decisions they made maybe that's what they were doing when they came to us but what came up there was the usual oh well look it's more of the say that's what I I mean if I could have anything I would prefer for it to be like that so it's probably okay but you know

What this panel deals with all the time is how do people maximize the return on an investment?

That's what they're doing.

And most of the people that come here don't want to have a negative return.

You know, they're not in the business of having negative returns.

So it behooves them to either push the project forward or to say to somebody else, I know you can push it forward, so would you like to buy this?

I mean, really, people, and in today's environment, with the vulnerability that people are expressed with dollars now, they wanna push things as fast as possible.

They wanna lock in money, right?

You wanna lock in money.

You, yeah, in your daytime life.

Yeah, I think so.

And that costs, uncertainty costs money.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, it's risk.

Yeah, it's risk.

No.

That was good stuff.

It was fascinating.

So again, these are all units that were proffered, approved proffers at the 15% of the total units.

So Housing Albemarle did make some changes to profit unit requirements.

It increased the percentage from 15 to 20 percent of the total residential units in a rezoning and changed the target affordability levels to 60 percent of area median income for rental units.

It did keep it at the 80 percent AMI level for for sale units.

and extended the affordability periods of those units from 10 years to 30 years for rental units and from the first sale only to 40 years for for sale units.

Do you have a sense yet?

This was the big one for me, because this is a sea change.

This is a sea change for developers.

Do you have a sense yet what this is doing to our inventory?

They've been grandfathered.

So I'm just wondering what this does to, I mean, I can anticipate what it does, the signal it sends to developers,

But I would certainly be, I'd be very interested in knowing what the reality of these changes are.

It is.

So there have been several of the rezoning applications and pre-application meetings we've had have included, have complied with these requirements.

I will say the 30, the affordability periods are pretty standard across localities across the country for those time periods.

Because it complies with, it really goes in

Not complies, but it's comparable to low-income housing tax credits, affordability periods for rental housing.

Also, localities that have been doing this for a lot longer have sort of hit the same point at some point.

They said, we are constantly chasing units every 10 years and we need to fix that.

Also the affordability levels, there have been some interesting initial conversations with a few developers about potentially alternative ways to meet that 20%.

So potentially having a range of affordability levels, which is not a bad idea.

It's really, that conversation was one I was hoping was going to happen.

I thought it was difficult

for staff to determine what that range should be.

So the 20% is really based on need in the community.

That number came directly from data analysis from the housing study and following census data.

Since then, the target affordability levels is also really what the county needs and is pretty much best practice across the country.

But in order to meet that 20% it really could be 10% at 60% AMI and so much at here.

Trying to figure that out without input from developers and having multiple conversations about that was going to be hard.

Let's go back for a second.

I get it.

I get the whole 40 to 30 year piece for those projects which are

let's say the majority for affordable housing units.

What I'm trying to get a sense of is if I come in as a sort of private developer, and if I want a bit more density, the way I can do that is to say, okay, I'm gonna put more here, I'm gonna put more affordable units there.

But it's the barrier that I would sense, and again, I'll be interesting to see how this, it's the barrier that I would anticipate or the reluctance that I would anticipate to get six more units

I'm now saying I've got to preserve those units if they're rental for X amount of time.

And that's the piece to just sort of doing the basic kind of math that I kind of do.

That's the piece that feels like it's going to be a drag on the system because I don't know how you make that calculus work.

Our hip, I think is what the acronym is.

That's where that comes into play.

To fill that gap, yeah.

Because otherwise you're going to have people make business decisions.

No, I'm not going to hold capital.

I was skipping ahead to the next slide, so I'll wait.

But I had a question on the next.

Well, I'm finished.

At some point, I'll be interested to hear how this pans out because I'm putting my skeptical hat on right now that it's going to pan out of the way, that's going to have a significant increase in the number of affordable units from the private sector.

So it is, I did have the acronym right, ARHIP Albemarle Rental Housing Incentive Program, which is really to help developers meet the 20% affordable at 60% AMI for 30 years.

Virginia Code only allows the county to offer this for rental housing production, not homeownership.

So I understand your slide, I guess, and probably this isn't the time to really get too much into the weeds on this, but the first three are not incentives, right?

They're requirements.

Correct.

So there's only one incentive on here.

Do you have a sense from, you know, as we were saying, we've got a lot have come up here and they've been grandfathered, they had their zoning done before this.

Have you got a sense that that 15% of total taxes due for 30 years is

is helpful to close the gap.

I think it really depends on the project.

So there have been a few that, yes, that was fine.

There have been other ones where that range of affordability comes into play.

I see.

Along with this, if we could do a percentage of this AMI, a percentage of that AMI, and then it will all work out.

So again, that was something that staff didn't feel comfortable doing on our own without having those conversations.

Yes, it's also trying to land on a particular range of affordability that could potentially work for everyone.

I know the Board of Supervisors has expressed a desire to have everything be very flexible, but then you run into problems where if

One developer, the first developer comes in and he does say 10% at 70% AMI and 10% at 60.

Or let's say 15% at 60 and 5% at 70.

And that gets approved.

And then the next person comes in and says, I'm going to do 10 at 80, 5 at 70, and 5 at 60 AMI.

That's probably a better deal than the first guy got.

So unless everything is consistent,

that will just add another barrier.

So it's really finding that sort of happy spot to do that.

Thank you.

I will say, I think we talked about one point, like how many rezonings are coming in right now?

And it's actually going up.

Is it?

Yeah.

Trying to check on the new system here.

I found at least nine this year we've had for rezoning so far.

That's what may have come to you since we've changed the policy.

But you're always the last to know, aren't you?

Yes, we are.

And everyone should know, and I will just say this because everyone knows how I feel about the Agam Forestal set of property things where you give people different kinds of prices to put their thing in hay.

And so I'm trying to wrestle with, this is similar.

This is a similar reduction of income to the county

based on affordable units.

And so there's a piece of me that says, Julian, you should want this, but Julian always can, given that we have very few ways in order to generate income in this county, one of the things that I have to always bring up, is this the most efficient way to generate these kind of units?

Because the county will take off of a, you know, a 30 or 40 million dollar project, they're going to take a hit off of that on the value on that.

And so while I get wilds being done, I have to put this exactly in the same of my sort of annoyance about the AgForrestal stuff.

You know, how we give those, they get a different kind of tax reduction without having to give anything to the community.

because as everyone knows, you can have 100 acre thing and you get it for the entire 100 acres.

What is it?

The green space thing that you took, the green open space, but I can't go on your open space.

So since I can't, none of these people can go on the open space, why should they get a deduction for that?

At least here, I can point to a whole bunch of people who will take advantage, who will be advantaged for this, where it's single.

It's a single individual for open space use.

and that's the thing I've been saying I'll give you 100 yards of open space because that's the thing I can see from the road but why do I want to give you open space for a piece of the valley that I can't see and I'll never be able to see and that necessarily will never be challenged, never be changed.

So that's just, there's Julian's rant about taking money out of the county's coffers and Julian's rant about how come pieces of property that only benefit the owner get tax benefits where this piece is at least going to benefit a bunch of people who don't have housing.

So I do wonder, you know, we talked before about the housing trust and that applies mainly to really non rental units, correct?

But, you know, I wonder how can we nudge the system into more permanent affordable units?

You know, that's what I struggle with.

Is there a way,

That seems to be the best solution.

I mean, even if we're going for 30 years, then in 30 years, those have been gone.

Sure.

I think the land trust model does that partly.

Yeah, it does.

Because they keep it forever.

I don't think we can require it.

So you have to be able to be in a position to own.

And there's a lot of hurdles for that versus renting.

That's why she's trying to get at the

It's a lot easier to get someone an affordable rental.

Community land trusts.

There are some community land trusts in other areas of the country that do rental housing as well.

I'm not sure a local community land trust is at that point yet.

They may be in the future.

A lot of it comes down to, I think,

You can always extend the affordability period.

There's that option for anyone, any private developer to say, this is working great, let's just keep them this way, affordable.

Potentially offering loans or low cost loans or grants in the future to help them rehab those units after 30 years, which we would all want that to happen, I think.

So it's really looking at that.

That's not a priority right now because we got to get other stuff in place.

But there are ways to make that happen.

And places across the country do do it.

There are honestly some localities across the country that say all affordable units need to be affordable forever.

I don't think

were there in the county yet.

That's sort of having a social housing, but having the owner of social housing be a private entity.

And that's a hard

place to go, I will just say that, because I don't think the county's ready to become, to own social housing.

We don't have the mechanism to be that.

I mean, we might do that at some point, but we don't, which would get to where you're talking about is to have social housing or some of the places earlier.

I think the place in Crozet is owned by, I think it's owned by the Piedmont people.

And so, you know, if you stand up those kinds of nonprofit organizations, they could do it,

It's a hard thing.

It's just hard.

I mean, I'm thinking more, you know, to the degree that you have nonprofits that are interested in doing that sort of thing, is the way that we can leverage public money to assist the nonprofits to sort of bridge the gap, to encourage them to take some of those into permanent affordable houses.

We do that.

And so particularly if they happen to be financed initially by low-income housing tax credits, that affordability period is 30 years.

And there's generally expectation for nonprofits that they will reapply for another low-income housing tax credit loan.

in order to substantially rehab the project, in which case the county would be able to, if there's money available, potentially invest in that like we did with the original construction.

Another thing that is included in the housing policy is an affordable dwelling unit program.

In June 2022, the Board of Supervisors adopted a resolution of intent to potentially amend the zoning code with an ADU ordinance.

It is a type of inclusionary zoning.

It's used extensively throughout Northern Virginia and many other places across the country.

And the ordinance would be a mechanism to enforce the changes in housing Albemarle.

That was a priority of the housing policy.

It's still a priority.

It did get delayed based on a number of factors.

One, it took longer to come up with the

affordable rental housing incentive program than anticipated.

That needed to be in place first.

And this is not, when I hear ADU, I always think about sort of bed and breakfast places or Airbnb.

That is not correct.

This is an affordable dwelling unit ordinance.

Yeah, I think you were thinking accessory dwelling unit, right?

I think you were talking about accessory dwelling units.

Unfortunately, Virginia Code calls it ADU program ordinance, so we got to go with that.

Another tool that the housing office has put together is the affordable housing evaluation form.

I believe those are often included in your agenda packets.

I do.

I just don't, I mean, maybe I've missed it, but I don't remember it being really, it's not always fully filled out or it just feels very... I tried to do it so that it could be, it could grow, we can grow into it.

Got it.

Again, we talked about the affordable unit interest list.

Again, it is up and running.

It's just slow to grow because it's difficult to convince people to sign up for something when you can't give them a date that they may have units thrown in their mailbox.

But we're working on that.

And then the Affordable Housing Trust Fund.

This is Housing Albemarle objective number six.

A housing trust fund differs from the county's current housing fund by having a dedicated source of revenue.

I will say the housing fund always had a dedicated source of revenue, and that would be the cash in lieu of affordable unit payments provided by developers.

It would always get deposited into the trust fund, I mean, the housing fund.

With this next fiscal year budget, there will be that percentage of the tax increase going in.

So that will be there year after year.

It's a consistent source.

It doesn't necessarily mean it's a consistent amount.

You know, property taxes go up and down.

and so that amount of revenue that gets placed in there can vary from year to year.

Thinking about the proffer payments, we can go five years without having anything, we can get a million dollars in one year, more than a million dollars another time it may be $50,000.

But I'm sorry, this might be out of order of your slides.

But I really did want to add, I've been chomping at the bit to ask this.

CDBG, Community Development Block Grants, what's the word from HUD about all the federal funding is at risk of all going away, it seems like, except if you want to fly a rocket to Mars.

But anyway.

What are you hearing?

Potentially.

So in the proposed budget for fiscal year 26, it is completely eliminated, except for disaster relief grants through CDBG.

Everything else is just gone.

That includes home investment partnership funding as well.

So in your, you know, the Planning Commission doesn't have any purse strings.

What's your sense of the board's, you know, like focus, the Board of Supervisors focus on like, is the county going to try to shore up funding with our own county coffers?

They're hard to have because we don't really know at this point.

But that is the purpose behind the nonprofits gathering every Monday to discuss that.

We are looking at different ways we can do this.

We're also concerned about funding for the Housing Choice Voucher Program and what that might do.

So we are really looking at what

what we would do for that.

And I think I would argue because we have people in housing that would probably be the first priority for the housing office is to be able to keep people in their homes that they're in now.

If we could expand it, great, but I'm not sure we could do that.

So we don't have a good answer for that.

I will say because the county needs to apply to the state for CDBG funds, we are limited in how much funding, how many open grant funds we can have at any one time.

So I think it's like two and a quarter million dollars.

which in the general broad construction budget scheme isn't a huge amount.

It is something that the housing fund could potentially take care of, but then it's really

There's a whole bunch of other stuff we could fund too.

So we don't have a good answer for that.

And then it would just, and you don't have to comment on this, but it also seems like, you know, a lot of the nonprofit housing providers, they raise funds and get funds from all types of different sources.

And it seems like a lot of that would be, and things that are federal would be drying up as well.

And so they would also be,

So they are the same.

Oh, thank you.

I would sort of have all these notes like, well, maybe it's this.

I was struggling.

So thank you for... No, that was my brain struggling to remember to delete one of the two.

I apologize for that.

So included in your packet is our draft guidelines for an affordable housing trust fund.

It's really turning the affordable housing fund into an annual competitive application process.

Through that, the Office of Housing would put out a request for proposals, and then there would be

a review committee that would come together to review those applications based on a scoring matrix.

The funds would be provided as a mix of grants and loans.

Grants would be specifically for nonprofit developers or any for-profit developers that were providing 100% affordable housing.

And then the grants could be both for-profit or non-profit.

It's proposed to provide those as 2% simple interest loans.

Right now, just because we needed to put a repayment term in there, it was 60 months.

That can be changed.

It was just a draft.

There will be a portion of the fund reserved for emerging needs.

Those could be anything.

So it could be mallside apartments going up for sale.

A nonprofit is pulling together partners to potentially purchase the property and that could be one of those emerging needs.

It could be something like Cavalier Crossing being sold to a for-profit developer and they choose to just not renew leases for all 500 residents that are in there.

And it could be used to provide security deposit assistance for lower income households that have to move.

There would also be a fund oversight committee created.

They would act as the review committee for the funding applications that come in.

Again, they would score those against a matrix and those scores would then be taken to the board for recommendations for funding.

The board of supervisors would always have the final say in what gets funded and what does not.

And that brings me to the end.

This was just time for questions, gentlemen.

You just remind us that you said this, I apologize.

Yes, that's dedicated.

Also a portion of property tax revenue.

Got it.

Which is like 0.0 or 0.0 some amount.

The half a cent.

I can't remember.

Impact was always asking for this.

Right, that we may not because of the.

So of course, are you seeing that they are also looking to push the boundaries on the density?

I mean, it's density.

We just like to get a sense of what are we seeing from their density?

How far are they willing to go?

Yeah, no, some of these projects we're talking about, they're too premature to sort of like, I think they talk about what's going on.

but broadly speaking, yeah, I can think of several projects that we have where they're talking about large multifamily buildings or I'm thinking of one is a lot of over-under duplexes on kind of a challenging site, but they really try, there's a lot of grade on the slide site and they're really trying to pack it in.

So I think we are seeing the development community try to

Interesting to see what we start to get.

Any other questions for staff?

Thank you, Dr. Petey.

This is really helpful.

It was fun to see your discussion.

You guys asked some great questions.

I think this is an interesting model we'll try and bring back for other topics.

That was really helpful.

And I really was excited to learn about the housing trust and how far now what they're doing with rentals and everything.

All right, we'll move on to committee reports.

Any committee reports?

Mine were canceled for the month.

No, no, no.

Yes, we've had one meeting between this meeting and the previous one that we had and that was June 4th with the board.

The afternoon they discussed the cultural chapter, the 1844 cultural chapter.

Quite a lot of discussion on that.

A lot of discussion about historic preservation and sort of this bumping up of trying to make it a priority to, you know,

Brian Support with County Resources, a lot of discussion about that, ARB guidelines.

It's an interesting conversation.

I think that the board may have looked at some of those things a little bit different than you all did when it first came through.

We're still trying to work and discern what that all means, but it was an interesting conversation.

I'll just leave it at that.

That evening, we had two public hearings.

The first was for the Living Earth School off Red Hill.

And that was approved unanimously by the board.

And then we had a very interesting meeting on the Woolen Mills Industrial Property.

We would call that was off Franklin Street and the one that was still on the floodplain.

Ultimately, that failed on a vote for approval.

It was a tie vote, 3-3.

And broadly speaking,

It was interesting.

We spent a lot of time talking about the details of the flood stuff.

And so on this particular one, I think it's not clear if staff are really trying to make a presentation to the board to make sure they understood this element of a flood plan.

And you would call it, this is on Morse Creek.

It empties into the Rivanna.

It's fairly close by.

And I'm not an engineer, but I'm trying to explain it to you briefly.

Basically, the Morse Creek drainage is fairly small relative to the Rivanna drainage.

So you get a rain event.

It covers the area.

Morse Creek rises and falls.

But the Rivanna, which is a much bigger floodplain, it takes longer to hit that flood stage mark.

So by the time the Rivanna flood is coming down and it gets to Woolen Mills, it's creating what they're calling a backwater condition.

They almost have the water backing up Moore's Creek.

Floodplain there is, in many respects, dictated more by Rivanna than it is the War's Creek.

And as a result, it got a little relatively slow moving water in this area.

So that kind of led to this whole thing of, well, you can place the fill and it doesn't really directly impact

And I think that was seen as a favorable factor.

I think it was a favorable factor to

to try and expand the amount of industrial land in the community and provide jobs in this area.

I think those were sort of favorable factors.

At the end of the day, I think it was a concern of the environmental services that were provided by the floodplain, as well as impacts to the adjacent property owners, especially during the fill operation and sort of stuff on the streets.

I think those were seen as one of the factors against

and the board voted accordingly.

Really an interesting discussion.

You need to have an affirmative vote.

So the motion was to approve.

Oh, was it?

Reminder, we were 4-3, recommending approval.

Obviously lots of different ways to look at it.

All right.

New business, old business.

I'm sorry, did I cut you off?

New business, old business, items for follow-up.

Yes, please.

So as we work to wrap up AC44,

We're in the process, we've gone through the topic chapters, and we're trying to really bring the rest of the document to you all.

And so our intent was to come at our next meeting on the 24th of this month, June 24th, with a work session to sort of go to provide you the documentation of part one, which is kind of the introductory section of the chapter.

Part two, which is growth management policy.

And then a lot of the stuff that's in, I'm gonna call it part four, is the appendix, a lot of the plans, just sort of, not that that wouldn't be exciting reading for you all, but you've seen a lot of it already.

But it's our idea to like, where there's been changes and tweaks as we've gone, we sort of get that out into the community.

But the fourth part of the thing we're going to bring to you was sort of it's going to book in these nine chapters that we've been writing about, the topic chapters, and this is about implementation.

And we want to make sure we get that aspect right.

And as we've been working through it this week, we really feel like we want a little bit more time to tweak that chapter.

So respectfully, see if we could take a vote today to cancel the meeting on the 24th and move that work session item to the 8th.

And I believe, I know, especially bringing this to you all late, I know we typically we start work sessions at 4 o'clock.

I believe at least we have one conflict.

I will leave that to you all if you wish to just start it for.

There's one public hearing item, right?

There is one public hearing that evening.

It's Brookhill, you know, the large subdivision upon 29 is rezoning their town center to take out some commercial uses and put more residential uses into it.

Oh, we're going to take out commercial.

We're not going to have light industrial, but we're going to have more houses.

So we have two potential motions.

The first one is to cancel the meeting on the 24th.

Do they need to have a motion to actually cancel the one?

Do they need to have a motion to move this item to the eighth?

Got it.

Okay.

That's fine.

I'm happy to do it.

No, it's six.

Oh, okay.

I'm sorry.

I misunderstood.

Okay.

We thought about that, but they were going the other way around from six.

Yeah, there was to move it from six to four.

Yeah, I can't.

So apologize for this confusion.

We also have two other members who we don't know whether they can come at four.

Right.

So

We'll just go with that.

OK, so one motion, and that is to cancel the June 24 meeting.

Second.

Second.

Motion to second.

I said so moved.

Yeah, I heard Ms.

Firehock.

No discussion.

Ms.

Firehock?

Aye.

All right.

Thank you all.

Counselors, we're good, right?

And will our gracious secretary make that change on our calendar?

We'll make sure we can.

Any other items on new business, old business, or items for follow up?

No, thank you.

All right, sir.

Thank you.

So with that, I will adjourn us until July 8th at 6 PM.

Thank you.