Housing Advisory Committee Meeting   10/21/2020

All right, quorum is hereby declared.

I'm calling this meeting to order.

This is the October General Hack meeting and also a subcommittee piggyback on COVID update.

The agenda is substantively similar to our September agenda, although it will be organized a little differently, I think.

And I do not expect, knock on wood, this to run the full two hours.

Having said that, on the housekeeping matters, we were distributed minutes.

Does everyone have a copy of those minutes?

I believe Aaron shot them out last week.

Let's see if I can actually manage to do that.

I move to approve the minutes.

One discussion point, I would generally move to approve the nitpicky adjustment of PD, not PO for my initials.

Anyone want to modify their motion?

If there are no objections, we'll approve the minutes based on that one change.

Good, all right.

Anyone opposed?

Great, moving on.

Any other housekeeping matters we need to attend to?

I believe Jeanette is in for Dan today and Corey is in for Jen.

Is that right?

Right.

There you are, fantastic.

So as I was saying earlier, agenda wise, we've got the usual housekeeping, the usual review of where we're at,

and then a move into COVID response.

I had a chat with Sunshine about this.

We're gonna format that a little differently today and then move on to some other business and sort of future planning and ideas.

So Brenda, Erin, is there any update in terms of deployment and push out of these programs?

about which you may have some detail.

I beg your pardon for that.

Yes?

I

sent an email to Holly and didn't get a response back in time.

And I can add though that I know they may be about to run short on the landlord assistance funding.

So we are looking at the possibility of moving some funding around to help out with that.

If you recall, we had discussions at the city council level of that funding may be a little bit flexible to move where their demand is.

So while we don't have the accurate numbers of what's actually been, you know, um, deployed, we do know that, um, there's a substantial additional need in the landlord assistance.

Oh, but as you said, no hard numbers to chew on at this point.

All right.

Um, and then I don't.

I don't think we've got anything on the county either.

I meant to poke on that and yesterday happened to me.

Fine, so I don't think we have anything substantive on the subcommittees reports now.

Although I think we're going to be looking at trying to tee up some work at the end of October and November for a couple of matters, which I'll come to.

Sunshine just messaged me that he is still out of pocket, but he was not clear as to when he wouldn't be.

So as far as the agenda items for subcommittees, I think we'll punt that for the moment.

So, in past meetings what we have done with the strategy subcommittee is we've tried to frame this discussion in terms of the tool, in terms of progress, and Sunshine and I sort of had a chat about that.

and a while that does have some value.

We thought it might be sensible and I'm sort of fishing off this pier at this moment in his absence.

But rather than sort of go through these on light item bases, some of which presumably haven't moved and it's sort of sticky to get an in-depth update, it might be sensible to do a little bit of a round robin here and

He noted, and many others have also noted this, that in moving forward in the current environment, we complain about the siloing of our operations all the time.

That is a danger even when we're not all almost literally in silos.

So

What we thought might be a useful exercise is to have sort of a brief check-in around just to see what your given organization is doing, what the plans are for the immediate future, and sort of mental health and liver function check for lack of a better explanation.

So having said that, not to pick on anybody in particular, anybody who wants to go first, but

I thought we'd just sort of take a glimpse at how our organizations are responding to this, where we think we are and what our major ups are.

And then having done that, let's take a look at sort of the next steps for what the hack might entertain.

Please, all right, hit pause on that.

So let me share this.

I guess these are just the wall.

We don't have any details on the what's and where's.

Right.

But it looks like somebody help me out here that we have committed, we have pushed out

Is that right?

Roughly 263, about 40% of the funds, right?

And we've actually pushed out.

Well, actually it's more, it's actually, it's, yeah, it's 340 out of about 800.

but we've got no sense.

Okay.

Just a question.

So these are the funds that were originally, is this right, in the in the CAF and it was reallocated to these various buckets.

Okay.

Great.

And this is John, I'm sorry.

And then there's one other fund that has not gone out yet, correct?

And we all sort of knew that would be, that would sort of trail behind the others, just the nature of what relief is being offered already.

Well, in addition, we don't really have anyone to administer that yet.

We don't have the capacity internally and we haven't quite issued something to get a partner or worked on how that would take place.

Well, I mean, I guess if we're looking for silver linings and happenstances, the need isn't critical at this second, which is fortunate because we don't have the means to administer it right now.

Great.

I don't know if that qualifies as a win, but all right.

Any further discussion on that?

Okay, so back to sort of the general check-in before we take next steps as to where we might see our activity for the balance of the year.

So are we referring to that spreadsheet of

like the different areas.

Correct.

We were actually going to sort of not dive into that too deeply directly.

Let me see if I can get it up without bruising.

Let's see if we've got that.

I mean, I would say that Habitat at the beginning of COVID made a few changes.

One was to open up our housing counseling to the general public and not just those families that were going through a home buyer program or a pathways to housing program.

So we have continued that and they continue to be open.

We're continuing to take new clients.

We are continuing to support at least our homeowners who have reached out for mortgage assistance.

And so far, although I have a question about this, it seems like RMRP is meeting the needs of most people that we're sending their way.

I did have a question.

I don't know if anyone on the call right now has any sense

of sort of what's left in terms of RMRP.

Oh, it's the mortgage.

What was the question?

Yeah, the state.

What is it called?

Rental mortgage something fund program.

It's the large bucket of money that has come through TJPDC to provide kind of mortgage relief and I guess rental assistance for those that have been impacted negatively by COVID.

And it was quite a large bucket of money.

So anyway, so in general, we'll continue to support our homeowners in that process.

Who needs it?

Um, so I think we've sent over a total of 15 homeowners or referred 15 homeowners, habitat homeowners to RMRP.

Some folks are still kind of working through that process.

But I would say that, you know,

Folks are doing relatively well, all considering, and that has been a really critical source of financial assistance for those who have lost their jobs.

We're beginning to see, so we welcomed our largest cohort of homebuyers into the program this past year.

We had to make a lot of exceptions in terms of our own program requirements for people having to have income, particularly because we approved folks in March and April.

Oh, I'm sorry, in July.

And so a lot of people had lost their jobs or been furloughed.

And so we kind of looked past that and used their previous income to determine them for approval.

There's a lot of folks in Aramark who we were hopeful for.

and they went back to work, but now they've been furloughed again.

So that remains a significant source of concern for us.

So these are folks who are not homeowners yet, they're home buyers.

Any thoughts on where you're going to be by the end of the year, what your signs of I guess on the mortgage relief side, you haven't seen anything that comes off of that.

And I guess what are you doing about these folks with Aramark who were gung-ho and now I guess do not have jobs?

I mean, are they in your cohort still?

Yeah, so they're still working through the program.

People don't fall off our list just because they lose their jobs.

We do try to do what we can to help them find employment.

So network to work has been a huge connection for us in that respect.

Thank you, Rich.

And we've also created a couple of partnerships, for example, with MSC, what is that?

Large property management company that owns a bunch of university units.

But they've opened up a number of different slots, employment slots, for a partnership with Habitat for home buyers that are looking to increase their income.

So that's been helpful as well.

Is that a useful segue to Ridge?

Because Ridge, you've been busy.

We cannot hear you, Ridge.

All right.

So just in a round-robin format,

Network to Work focused on serving our existing job seekers when the pandemic hit.

So we had 903 job seekers enrolled in our Network to Work program.

And so from March until July 1st, our focus was on helping them.

Our rough estimate was about a third of them lost their jobs during the pandemic.

So that would be folks that Jeanette is talking about, like Aramark employees and others.

On July 1st, we reopened our doors, our virtual doors.

We've enrolled another 71 job seekers since July 1st.

So that puts us on track to serve just over 300 families this year through Network to Work.

Our goal is to serve 500 families a year.

But 300 plus is about what we served last year.

So I feel like we're on pace to what we did last year, but not getting where I'd like to go.

So, and the focus of our work is to reach out to the folks who've been left behind in the economy, whether from the pandemic or otherwise, or institutional racism, whatever the case may be, and connect them to job opportunities that allow them to pay the rent without subsidy or have to ask for utility assistance.

I mean, the idea is to get people into jobs where they can support their families, which is what people wanna do.

And so, our,

The whole network to work framework is designed on knocking down the silos and making sure that we're connecting on the front end with the people who are frontline with folks who struggle.

and also referring to our partners who can help with needs as they arise, whether they're training needs or rental assistance needs.

Our experience with the rental assistance program through the state that's overseen by Anthony doing a great job and Christine Jacobs at the TJ Planning District Commission and Sharice Franklin over there, part of what we do is connect them to those kinds of supports so that they can

support their families while they're getting the training they need in order to have more value in the eyes of employers so they can earn the wage that allows them to support their families.

And so we're continuing to march on with our network to work process and most of the folks who are on the call are our partners with us in that effort.

Our take on affordable housing is one way to make housing affordable is to boost the incomes of the people so they can afford the housing that we have.

And so that's kind of our angle on the affordable housing issue.

and lastly, I had forgotten that Anthony was not gonna be on today and I was thinking that maybe Christine would be here, but the last report that I have from the RMRP, which I can't remember exactly what the acronyms stand for, but that our region was approved for a third bucket of $450,000.

Applications are open until November 13th for that money.

It will help, you know, originally

that program would not help people who were on section eight or otherwise in subsidized housing, but it was opened up to help pay arrears payments for people who were behind in their section eight or public housing funding.

And so those folks are eligible to pay the back rent, which hopefully will avoid eviction.

The eviction problem that we know is coming when the eviction moratorium ends, but our region is doing

very well distributing those funds in that program.

That's my report.

Anyone else want to jump in here with where your organization is at and how you're faring under the current circumstance?

Leap can go.

Sorry colleagues, earlier I've been supervising virtual learning, so I've included a trip to elementary school to get lunch with some young adults.

But Leap, getting back to the topic on hand, sorry, Leap, a local energy alliance program, after basically having a stop work order for three months from all our utility clients and to a certain extent the city programs that we implement, we've been

Getting back to work and we're basically at full strength again, you might say.

We've added a crew and at least related to city funding that we have, we call the assisted home performance program.

We exhausted all the funding and have it committed through the end of this year.

And that's where we, at least related to housing, we are helping low-income homeowners replace equipment or make energy efficiency improvements, a lot of equipment replacement.

To a certain extent, and luckily we are anticipating a Dominion regulated program coming from the state to step up and actually fill that gap or hole that is coming basically.

Previously, utility programs weren't paying for

The regular utility programs for Dominion, for example, weren't paying for equipment replacement, but starting January 1st, they should.

So this is a great opportunity to hopefully make the city money, less or less of it, or if there's not anything left of it, go further and help more employees.

We were also lucky to get a pretty large substantial grant recently from Dominion to specifically target mobile homes.

and we'll be executing on that with Albemarle Home Improvement, AHIP, that has additional funds to do health and safety improvements on that.

So all that said is we're not having as many resources as we'd like going into kind of the winter season, which is usually, again, there's a lot of demand right now as people start to think about turning their heaters on and thinking about their heating bills and January, February, March, and especially for those who

Maybe we're low income and need to work from home.

We'll be having to, we won't be able to go into the office.

We'll have to, again, turn the heat up at their homes during the day and thus incur higher utility bills.

We'd like to have more resources, but I think we're in pretty good shape.

And then from a team employment crew wise, we've, again, kind of expanded and are working with Office of Economic Development to add some more staff here in the near future.

to be able to continue to service a lot of the city residents in the surrounding area.

That's what I think here related to the city is what we can report out on.

All right, thank you, sir.

Is that enough of a segue for you?

Yeah, I'm here.

Oh, there you go.

Yeah, I'm going to take Chris's name dropping of AHIP as an opportunity to jump in there.

COVID had a brief impact on us back in April.

Construction was determined to be essential, so we kept working, but we had a about a month long shutdown when things were projected to peak out of an abundance of caution for our crews, our staff and our clients.

We got back into construction after about a month shut down.

The only lingering impact has been we're not engaging volunteers in the same capacity that we used to.

We've really limited our volunteer engagement and the types of work we do.

We've limited it to exterior projects as long as the clients are okay with that.

We're trucking right along, though.

We're on track to meet our goals in the city and the county.

We're actually a little bit ahead of schedule, which is great, you know, normally to exceed those goals.

But the other way we've been impacted is just project funds.

You know, the CIP being cut out this year.

Chris had mentioned they've allocated or spent all their funding.

We're in very much the same situation with that.

We do a lot of our city work in partnership with LEAP.

We use our funds in conjunction with their funds to do more for the clients to reduce the overall cost of home ownership and burden on them.

So we're really having to pare down some of our scopes of work, get creative on funding sources, still trying to meet all the need and demand.

Chris mentioned that it's getting cold.

November 1st, we'll kick off the DSS heating crisis campaign.

We get a lot of referrals through that program.

There are some funds attached to that but the funds are never enough to cover the cost of repair or replacement if that's the path that has to be taken.

So we're already starting to get calls about that and people are waiting until that timeframe when they can get funding through their social workers.

So we're plugging along, we're gonna keep trying to meet the demand and meet the need.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't know if you can put a number on it or a figure or a percentage, but in terms of sort of product output, I guess, or responses that you're making, I mean, relatively speaking, COVID has

Last year, our goal for rehab and repair in the city and the county combined was 110 households.

This year, our goal was cut back to 80 between the city and the county.

That includes both programs, emergency repair and rehabs.

And of those 80, that goal of 80, we have 36 projects completed or under in progress.

Right.

All right.

You know, it may.

Down the road, we felt some of the CARES money that was available, there was a more immediate need from some of the other organizations doing work, especially around food insecurity and immediate homelessness for folks that were out of work.

By and large, a lot of the folks we serve are older and maybe already own their homes.

So they're not at risk of not being able to pay their mortgage.

And in fairness, our clients were already struggling well before COVID.

The majority of our clients are under that 30% AMI mark.

So they were already struggling before this and it hasn't impacted them yet.

We think there may be,

More of an impact in the clients that we're serving in the next six to 12 months as they're, you know, they're really struggling to make decisions about what to pay for with what money they have available.

Deferred maintenance has always been an issue.

It may become a larger issue as they're deciding between paying rent, paying a mortgage, buying food.

You know, I think we do a lot of really great collaboration.

As Chris mentioned, especially with LEAP, it seems like the work they do, the work we do goes hand in hand.

So Chris has always got it in eye, the local funding sources or the funding sources outside of the localities that we may not be as in tune with.

and he does a great job of roping in our work with what they're doing.

So if anybody else knows of anything or has an opportunity to partner, if there's something that we could do for clients you're serving that we may not be aware of, or it's just a referral, feel free to reach out to me directly.

Small, small overhead.

All right, well, thank you, sir.

So in no particular order, Lisa Torres, is there anything from the vantage of the school board where COVID and HAC all comes together here in your observations?

Good question.

Good question, thank you.

No, appreciate you know the ongoing work from from all of the different partners, and I, we have not heard directly.

any concerns regarding housing, but I'm sure there are.

And just appreciate, you know, appreciation for how tough this is as far as the current mode of education being in the virtual mode.

So, well thank you, appreciate it.

Joy, how you doing?

Your microphone is live, Joy.

Okay.

Yeah, well actually that's a pretty good segue to where I'm going next.

Sure, planning commission, doing all the things all at once.

There's been a real slowdown on applications because we just stopped taking any in.

So for-profit housing, it's just not, we just haven't been talking about it for months now.

It will start trickling in soon, but not a thing yet.

The discussion has been about a comprehensive plan, big challenges, or we've really been very sort of top level

What are the concepts?

Reviewing the 2018 material, looking for small changes in goal statements, that kind of thing.

Not really getting into the nitty-gritty or the land use map.

Though we heard that the land use map will be updated in January, which is a pushback, which is good and bad.

Also, a major initiative out of planning commission was allowing child care in the city.

Childcare was banned pretty much everywhere, which was actually not in compliance with Virginia state code.

Anyone else on the floor, are you back?

I can hear plenty of Joy's background.

If Phil maybe was, as we potentially wait for Joy to join us.

I do have a bit of an update on the short-term rental issue.

I think anecdotally, people might have seen, at least in my neighborhood, there seems to be picking it up again.

The delegate at Hudson, again, expressed interest in the report that was generated out of the committee and looks to be forming some legislation or drafting legislation now that the

Assemblies done that will require or request short-term rental companies to share information and that way that gives the local regulators the ability to basically decide and of course if they want to crack down on things or not and again have a more laissez-faire approach etc.

So I do expect a draft of that legislation to be ready in the next

I would expect some moderately furious resistance from Airbnb and their ilk to that disgorgement of data but

I mean, I'm delighted that if it works at the state level that Mark Herring can argue with them instead of poor little old us.

So, great, thank you, sir.

Joy, if you become functional, please bounce in.

Hi Phil, this is Russell Ray here.

Good afternoon.

I'm the Director of Housing at Region 10 CSB.

Happy to provide a little 25 cent summary.

We've been very busy.

We support work with an excess of probably 500 folks across Region 10's catchment area, which would include Charlottesville, Albemarle County, Louisa,

Green, Nelson and Fluvanna.

And we've been very busy during COVID.

I think initially at the onset, we were pretty active with folks that we support having lost their jobs and or income.

So we were really busy with recalculating payment standards and things like that.

Fortunately for us, if folks have no income, typically the subsidies and grants that we manage will cover

the whole portion of rent, which is great.

I would say probably, I don't know, maybe at least 10% of those that were affected by this and lost their income.

So that was that initially.

We were very successful, however, with increasing our awards across a few of our grants and subsidies, primarily for folks with serious mental illness.

and as well as folks with developmental disabilities.

The serious mental illness subsidy has, you know, you may or may not be aware of hospital, state psychiatric hospitals right now are over capacity.

And so we are feverishly working with folks that are being discharged from the hospitals, helping them find and acquire units, which has gotten much difficult as of late.

The inventory is much lower than what it was, say, nine months ago.

And so yeah, it's causing us a little bit of a backlog and how quickly and timely we can help house folks.

And I say that to say, particularly for folks that have criminal backgrounds, poor rental histories, poor credit histories, for example.

So that's been a new hurdle for us.

In addition, we are starting to hear and find that some units, some companies are starting to ask and request that persons

make three times the income in order to qualify for units, which we're probably gonna have to pursue that further with these places.

Essentially, it is a form of housing discrimination.

So we're noticing that a little bit more lately.

I assume that might be because some places are possibly losing money.

I'm not sure, but this has come about probably in the last two months.

We've seen more of that where folks are pretty much saying they need to make three times their salary or set a limit that our folks that we typically work with

don't make.

You know, most of our folks only receive SSI or SSDI.

But yeah, well, I mean, that's certainly I will say that's an innovative way to get your numbers for cost burdened housing down if you start income qualifying people before you rent to them.

I

I do agree with you that does seem to reek of discriminatory behavior.

But I mean.

I guess they're going to stand behind the ability to pay the rent and if they set a new standard of thirty two percent or something anyway.

Yeah, it does seem to be a pretty cynical way of getting your cost, your housing cost burdened numbers down and your affordable units up if you just stop running to people.

If they're paying more than a third of their income to you.

Have you got a sense of the motivation for that?

I mean, are these institutional lessors or these private lessor?

Without naming, yeah.

So some of them are, they're telling us this, but yet we still apply and so far they've accepted our folks for the most part.

But I've contacted my state partners because they're pretty much wanting us to help with identifying these places and letting them know who these places are.

But some are smaller, some are smaller, some are more bigger property companies that might house, they have three-story units housing 80 folks or so.

So it's a wide range.

So what I'm saying is we're hearing the talk of setting these limits.

and I'm getting folks in the community calling me, asking me all these questions about why is it that you can get in and we can't, and when I say you, meaning region 10 participants.

So we're hearing the talk, but we're still having folks apply and they're still accepting folks, if you will.

So to my knowledge, we haven't had anybody denied yet because of it, but it is talk that I'm starting to hear and it is concerning.

Brenda, Alex, any sense of what the city can do in terms of pointing them?

I mean, it doesn't sound to me like it's a quote, active problem.

It sounds like it's a brewing something.

There has been discussions internally that we're aware there may be a situation and looking at this, what you know, the city, how the city can get involved or what the city can do.

But we haven't come to anything constructive yet or concrete.

We're just recognizing that we are hearing there's issues.

So it is kind of on the city's radar.

We're kind of aware that it's a bigger kind of market issue and not sure what the city can do, but it's certainly on our radar to being keeping on top of it or getting into some more serious and in-depth discussions about what is available.

That's good.

But to be clear, you actually you haven't sort of.

As far as you can tell, it's mostly noise at this moment.

Correct.

And I honestly, I don't think that they're going to send out a formal letter to folks saying that, hey, you weren't selected.

They're smarter than that.

But it is talk we're hearing.

And like I said, I'm getting phone calls from folks in the community asking me about it.

and I'm assuming maybe they've been denied and so they're asking me how is it that I can help support folks get in there.

I guess they know them personally and know their financial situations and know that their salaries are well below.

So I can only surmise that maybe they didn't get selected due to their income.

I'd kind of like to hear, uh, as Lisa's take on this, um, and her connection with the community there, if she hears anything in the background.

Hmm.

Um, well, let me just, I've had, um, conversations with folks at the Haven and I know they're talking to Anthony about it also.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Okay.

This is, um, Michael, I joined 15 minutes late, so might've missed it.

Was there any update from the city about our revenue situation?

Okay.

Um, well just real quick.

Last City Council meeting, we've been getting monthly updates about the city's revenue situation.

Obviously, we had an original budget that was passed, then a revised budget, which was lower.

And last meeting, we received information that from our already revised budget, we are $4.5 million lower in terms of revenue than that revised projection, primarily being driven by meals and lodging tax being far lower than the revised COVID predictions.

And

That's obviously going to make for an extremely difficult budget cycle.

And that's obviously relevant to the HAC.

I think at this point, realistically, the only money available for the city for new housing supports is probably going to be coming from the state and federal government.

You know, we have been able to make some good allocations through the CARES Act and some of the, you know, funnel through the state, the rent and mortgage relief program.

but the revenue situation is looking pretty bleak and could get worse absent federal support as you know if the impact on the restaurant industry is higher in the winter than anticipated.

Okay.

So the affordable housing strategy that our consultants are working on in conjunction with the comprehensive plan and the zoning rewrite.

We're getting pretty close to almost having a draft ready to put out to the public for review.

So I think we can be looking at that probably sometime early November and then the consultants will be looking for some input and probably some more stakeholder engagement sessions to be talking about the input they're receiving.

So just wanted to

Let you know that that should be coming shortly in some shape or form.

And this is not the tools and the goals and the strategies that they've been talking about.

This is actually the start of a draft plan.

So, and ultimately this will become one of the elements in the city's comprehensive plan overall.

So that's why they're working on getting a, you know, good grasp on this as they continue working on the comprehensive plan.

I don't know if you're all aware of the city council meeting on Monday night where the city moved along the needs to readings.

So it was just the first reading of funding approvals for the Crescent Halls and the South First Street phase one projects to allocate the CIP funding dollars, put those agreements in place.

And also likewise with the friendship court redevelopment,

The city council is moving along to second reading, the approval of the agreements for the CIP funding for the phase one of friendship court redevelopment.

More specifically on the friendship court, the city is requiring covenants that will cover a 99 year affordability period.

for all four phases.

There will be a master coming in on the site.

And as to the housing authority properties, the HUD will continue kind of regulating the affordability on that.

And also both projects are LIHTC funded.

So there will be some LIHTC requirements and restrictions on those properties.

Thank you, ma'am.

Comments, questions on that piece?

The only thing that, because I don't see Anthony here or Sunshine.

So as now my hat is the board chair for TJAC.

So there's a lot happening in the homeless services world.

As I think most people know, TJAC, PHA, CACF, and Virginia Supportive Housing are collaborating in an effort around sort of the purchase of the red carpet inn off of 29 as both as sort of an immediate solution for emergency shelter during COVID for folks that are very high risk and experiencing homelessness.

So as an interim kind of emergency shelter,

because right now we are paying about $100,000 plus a month to house people at La Quinta Inn Suites and that's about 30 to 35 rooms.

We have money through November to continue that.

So that's an extraordinary cost for us as a community, but particularly for the homeless services world.

So we are in the 120-day due diligence period with the owner of the red carpet in right now.

I think we're, I don't know, on day 30 or something like that.

So that's continuing to roll forward.

I am very disappointed by the news about the city's revenue because certainly we will be looking to the city for support in the effort.

We're also talking to the county as well.

But so that continues to roll forward.

It's looking good on all fronts at this point.

It's a matter of fundraising and sort of identifying.

We had a community meeting on Monday, and since it's in the county, it's a property that's in the county, there was very little pushback, surprisingly.

Really good kind of positive feedback about the idea.

Thank you.

All right.

So although this was unclear, Sunshine actually messaged me.

He is he has been waylaid, so will not be will not be parachuting in.

But.

Back to the the my my attempt at a Segway, as in regards the development of the affordable housing plan and

H.R.

and A.

To date the hack has not sort of directly engaged with that beyond our sort of initial lift to push forward the idea of a comprehensive plan to be driven in part by this sort of tying all of that together.

and it's probably appropriate that the hack does sort of take a dive into where we are in that process since we are in a stage of providing recommendations and input from various stakeholders.

My understanding is that both Click and Chalk have provided some feedback in progress to them and that there is, and it looks to me like the next

sort of major event which may or may not coincide with a, I guess, available readable draft is the November 10th work session.

which as far as I know is still a November 10th work session.

And to that end, having chatted with a couple of you, it would seem that we're probably past the point but we certainly should take a dive at where we are based on the presentations given and the material we have even ahead of that draft to sort of pull together some sort of

to the extent that we have recommendations or comments to make.

And then once the draft is available, do that.

And with some conversation, again, amongst some of you, the thought was is that we would take a look at the click and chalk responses and the two sort of large scale presentations and whatever we can get in terms of the underlying information.

and perhaps take a stab at a review of that.

First sort of circulating some of that material amongst the hack with a point back for written comments.

And then I guess in terms of a timeline, a meeting at the very beginning of November, I know that we've got some limited ability to do some,

subcommittee independent standing meetings but so I mean ideally it would be a political, sorry not political, policy subcommittee meeting to sort of chew on that and then to provide some recommendations ahead of that work session or some thoughts and then a regular meeting to wrap that or if we have to make them the hack November and December meetings and just move the dates around a little bit.

So, Mr.

Chair, thanks for your weighing in on this.

Yeah, I think there will be ample time for HAC to weigh in.

I think what you are proposing is in order.

in terms of HAC, taking a look at the documents, reviewing it and providing comments or recommendations, if you will, for the consultant to consider.

Regarding CLIC, I think CLIC, I read their recommendations, which is pretty comprehensive in scope and very practical recommendations.

I think the consultant looked at it as well.

Some of the things proposed by CLIC were already considered as part of the plan and consultant noted and also concluded that they provided a very good and practical recommendation.

So HAC will have the opportunity to review that and then provide recommendation for consideration

One thing that is on my mind is you were asking for earlier HAC subcommittee or HAC meeting.

I want to follow up with the consultant so there will be opportunity for both entities to have a discussion on that particular plan after you guys have had the opportunity to look at it.

So that might be at your next meeting.

If you also have a recommendation before the joint city council and planning commission meeting, that will also be welcome.

Right.

Anything that you've got is sort of the succinct click recommendations would be helpful for us to plop.

I'm sure we can obtain them, but if you've got something that's been, you know, that's sort of neat and clean and easily transferable, that would be helpful.

So to me, the timing, it sounds like if we sort of disperse what we have amongst the hack for written comment that we should probably meet no later than

November 3rd, some sort of subcommittee to sort of solidify that.

That's even a little tight to get things out for the session, but I mean, the calendar is the calendar and it keeps inexorably moving forward despite our best efforts.

Does anybody have thoughts on that in terms of the basic plan or the timeline?

So, all right, so let's, I mean, we'll sort of look to scheduling.

I know we're sort of on this first come first serve on the subcommittee, so whatever we'll call it.

And I'm not really sure of the exact date I'll have to get with, I guess, Ridge and Dan will be driving on that.

But we'll get started.

And November 3rd may not be the best day to have a meeting and we may not, we all may not be at our best.

that morning, but we'll do what we can do.

So are there any other matters that we should be discussing at this point?

Anything that I've missed or glossed over?

Anyone else wanna chime in with where they're at?

Organizationally, personally, emotionally?

Is there any update on a couple of things at the city?

First, the landlord risk reduction.

Well, I forgot what it was called, the mobility fund.

And then also, you know, any movement on discussion around the ADU ordinance?

Yeah, I don't really have an answer and we're kind of a little overwhelmed right now.

As to the position, it looks like we're gonna have to go back out to advertise it again.

So it doesn't look like we're gonna be filling that position in the immediate future.

So that's about all I can tell you on that is it's in progress still.

Thank you, ma'am.

Chris, and I don't see Lisa Jackson on the call, but I'd be interested and maybe some city colleagues, staff colleagues know about this, but the buying and selling of houses in town and the maintenance of low income housing stock, Northern Virginia people are out of town, people moving to town and buying or

So if you're specifically to the folks in Northern Virginia, I'll sort of circle back to that in a second, because it's sort of developed an interesting little phenomenon that's been popping up there.

But it's not really germane to affordable housing, but it's worth talking about in a larger context.

But first, I would say that the purchase market has been bananas here.

that we've got a very swiftly moving market, a very little inventory that's very quickly turning over.

That's both in the city and the county.

It's sort of same old, same old.

We've been a little shocked by we, I mean both the realtor and the lending side of this.

how little COVID has actually impacted the numbers.

Part of this is being driven by these preposterously low please take our money for no interest mortgage market rates.

But I think Charlottesville is still fortunate in that it's insulated to a certain extent and the folks who can buy their

I have seen folks who otherwise would have been able to buy drop out, but it's a smaller number than you would think.

And several people have pointed out that it seemed that this environment has seemed to get a whole bunch of folks to come off the benches almost in a frenzy as if, and maybe it's just that you're sitting in the place that you're living now and you're stuck there cause you're working at home and you realize everything that's wrong with it and you don't want to live there anymore.

So, but it seems to be.

On your comment on folks moving down from Northern Virginia, this is tangentially sort of related to affordable housing.

And that is, I have had several clients

who have come down from Northern Virginia or somewhere else in the Eastern seaboard who are sort of professional class folks who have discovered they can work out of their house really if they can get things organized and why torture yourself at the beltway or inside it or in some sort of highly densely packed area where you can move and get your two or three acres in your beautiful house.

and in Albemarle County what they're encountering is a dearth of high-speed internet which has actually blown up several transactions where you can't get it, it's not coming anytime soon and CenturyLink satellite at 80 bps is not gonna help you run two simultaneous Zoom meetings while your kids are trying to virtually learn.

So in the larger content, interestingly enough, Nelson County, which managed to sweep up quite a bit of grant money for that sort of thing, is pushing out fiber everywhere.

And I've had several clients who have decided that although they'd love to live in Albemarle County or close to the city of Charlottesville, 80 megabits ain't going to do it.

And they're

and off they go.

I put this in the context of sort of the working and schooling from home and the changing of the use of the home and what it has to now require if we're not using all day school for everybody, amongst other things, for what it's worth.

And I'm not sure, but it seems to me the county has been caught on the back foot for that.

I'll just toss this out there, but it sounds like we're able to raise property taxes if we need to, because we don't have to worry about people leaving for Albemarle if they can't, again, do work there.

So I'll just throw that out there.

Your mouth and Michael Payne's ears.

I'll just, property tax increase, uh,

If the solution were simple, we would have found it by now.

So any other matters for discussion?

Any matters of public?

And if not, I'll open up for public comment if there are any.

All right, we will look to a meeting very beginning of the month, end of October, and I or Rich or I or Rich Dan, in some combination, we'll try to push out some documentation for review.

Yes, sir.

He definitely froze, right?

I still see him.

You can't hear me?

Is that what you're saying?

Very good.

Now you're back.

All right.

I was saying that we'll push out the documentation for review and look for a meeting at the very beginning of November.

All right.

Okay.

So I would think that that regular HAC meeting would be the point at which we sort of wrap up in the wake of the joint session and the consultant's review and where we are.

So yes, probably.

Although in the past, we have punted the November meeting and held it in early December just to get past Thanksgiving and then bagged the December meeting.

So my short answer is I don't have an answer for you that's coherent.

Any other matters before this committee we should be discussing?

I'll move to adjourn.

Second.

Any discussion of adjournment?

All in favor?

Aye.

Anybody opposed?

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Structure was a little different today, but I think it was productive in the sense of trying to get everyone just to breathe a little bit.

and we will look for something at the end of the month, tentatively penciling November 3rd until we're waylaid by scheduling.

We stand adjourned.

Thank you.