Housing Commission

CITY OF FALLS CHURCH HOUSING COMMISION MINUTES PURPOSE OF MEETING: The five-member Commission is appointed by the City Council for three-year terms. The Housing Commission maintains awareness of housing needs and opportunities, including affordable housing; proposes housing policy initiatives and changes; investigates fair housing complaints and conciliates these complaints; mediates conflicts relating to the Virginia Residential Landlord & Tenant Act and offers reconciliatory services in conflicts relating to other housing laws. DATE OF MEETING: October 8, 2024 PLACE OF MEETING: In Person City Hall Dogwood Room w/ Virtual Option MEETING CALLED TO ORDER BY: Meredith Anderson at 6:35 p.m. THOSE PRESENT: Commission Members Guests Meredith Anderson – Chair Sennen Gaur, Student rep Jordan Hicks – Vice Chair Mikayla Edmunds, Student rep Sara Ferrara Paul Bosen (Welcoming FC) Robert Kravinsky Kevin Hurst (Welcoming FC) City Council Liaison Allison Brown (Welcoming FC) Letty Hardi Rachel Sunden (Welcoming FC) Christine Buchholz (Welcoming FC) Staff Brenden Woodley Kayleen Mark • Roll Call – Chair Meredith Anderson at 6:35 pm. o All commissioners present. • Approval of Minutes – Chair Meredith Anderson. o Sara Ferrara moved to approve and Jordan Hicks Seconded. Minutes approved. • Public Comments – Chair Meredith Anderson o No public comments • HHS Updates – (Brenden Woodley & Kayleen Mark) Affordable Homeownership Program (AHP) – Brenden Woodley  o Last time we met we talked of possibly getting two units sold. We have one under contract and our 6th unit, a one-bedroom, closing end of month. A 7th unit was shown today, and we hope to get a contract in a couple of weeks. o Apprehensive to move forward with available units due to steep pricing and the price is too high for those who are on our short list. There is a two-bedroom unit available at Winter Hill, but price is a concern. o Two new people added to the short list and two more on the interested list added since last meeting. o Robert Kravinsky – where is the cash now? Brenden responded the city has it. It is in the same pot as AHF, but funds are set aside for the program. Funds are in possession of the city, and the only thing we haven’t finalized is the 128 Haycock property, and we are doing the accounting for it. Robert Kravinsky – can you share how much is in that account? Brenden Woodley – can’t tell right now. We have a monthly report that we send to council, and it includes what our total cost per unit is thus far and how many units we can get. We originally planned to have 18 units and now it seems to be stretching to 20. May get complicated at end as we won’t have money to fund more units. We are budgeting five units per year. Robert Kravinsky asked that HHS shares the report that is sent to city council. • Virginia Village Update – Brenden Woodley o Not a lot of updates. Follow up meeting with Wesley end of week. Our point of contact is moving on. Working with Wesley to make sure all goes well. Board meeting for Wesley is scheduled for tomorrow night and will discuss determination from board meeting and what next steps are. o Meredith Anderson– what are potential outcomes from the meeting? Brenden Woodley –there is a possibility they can say they don’t want to manage the project anymore. There is a divorce clause in MOU, but as for now having a strong partner is important step. Meredith Anderson– if they decide they don’t want to be that strong partner they can say that. o Sara Ferrara– what is envision for Virginia Village working group? Brenden – discussions offline and he imagines there will be public discussions, but a small group of stakeholders in that meeting. Once there is a discussion and review then we go to a more public format. Probably similar to the ALP work group. o Letty Hardi – as written in MOU with Wesley in 2021, the working group will help figure out acquisition and redevelopment strategy with EDA and planner etc. for setbacks, how tall it would be etc. Someone to help think of city’s goals and part of the plan would be lots of communication. A facilitator will bring the group together. Big part would be financing options and what else we would do, discuss phase redevelopment and what it looks like. o Sara Ferrera– are we considering hiring a consultant? Brenden – probably Wesley’s role for this project on how to put it all together. Sara F. - to some  extent that is what they do. Sara F. thinks of Wesley more as a developer and not a developer consultant. Usually, developers hire a consultant whose sole role is to determine structuring and the developer is the one to get the project going. o Meredith Anderson – thinking about what decisions are being made by the group. Is it their job to take what the committee talks about and develop some sort of proposal to bring back? Depending on who is there it is not necessarily a fully informed group. Any proposal needs to be vetted by someone who knows it would work. If it comes from a developer consultant, they will already know what can work and the guidelines. Brenden Woodley – depends on a lot of things, but the purpose of the workgroup is to come up with an idea of a development plan and a phase approach that would be acceptable to the community. In terms of feasibility maybe possibly there is a consultant that the developer would hire. o Sara Ferrara – thinking more of early stages that the city might benefit from someone whose sole role is to look at the situation and give possible solutions. We didn’t get VA Village money as it was not a standard project. Brenden – we could if it was a redevelopment project. Sara F. – a consultant can tell us what we need to do to get the project going. Meredith A. – a working group can say ideas of what we want to do and pass to a consultant, instead of doing a lot of work and moving the project along and then bring in a consultant. Meredith believes that with a group of representatives from planning, council, and housing, you will get a lot of people who care and not know the most important things to go into the redevelopment. Making sure the work group is matched with what they can bring and not tasked with things that need more expertise. Sara F. – the city needs professional expertise as no one on staff is a development expert. It is great to have community involvement but can benefit from a professional consultant. Letty H.– agrees and once we have meeting with Wesley after their board meeting, that will help us move forward. • Housing Update – Kayleen Mark o We are halfway leased at Broad & Washington property. Still a bit difficult to rent the studio 80% units. We started working through priority 3 households (outside of the city), however there was a pause on those households as we received applications for priority 2 (inside of the city). o Walkthrough was completed at the Alder at the West Falls project. Beautiful units, we will have studios, 1-bedrooms and 2-bedrooms units at 60% AMI. The property still has construction going on and they plan to start leasing units in phases. They are hoping that the first phase will begin on November 15th. Once they receive their COs, Kayleen will reach out to households on the waitlist to fill those units. Lots of households are waiting for 1-bedroom units, so those should fill up quickly.  o HHS staff has been working with IT to developer a way to do mass email notices to households on the waitlist to give them an update on status. The question most households have is in regard to wait time, however there is no way to answer that question as so many things are factored into eligibility when a unit becomes available. However, we can create a system that sends them information on their priority status. IT mentioned that we do not have the capability in house to provide that service and we may have to bring in a third party. We currently use Sugar as a database in HHS, however our current licenses do not allow us to do the requested and we will have to purchase new licenses to do communication to the households on waitlist. An option can also be that we create a spreadsheet and assign a unique identification number to each household and upload to our website. Downside to this is it will be have to be done manually and updated manually which would increase workload and calls from households. o Kayleen mentioned that HHS is in need of an administrative person to help with increased workload and help with clients. Currently not in budget but we are hoping for next year, we can have an administrative person in office. This can help with extra tasks we have and also with the new units coming online. o CCAU – all units are filled. Clients are super grateful and express gratitude for the assistance. Thanks to council and housing commission that supported increase funds for the program. We budgeted for $150,000 per year, however we are currently spending approximately $100,000. The maximum we spend per unit every month is $1187 and the lowest is $317. With an average of $676, we can add more units. If we add units at the maximum we spend, we can add at least 3 more units that would cost us an additional $43,000. Kayleen requested support to add extra unit to support more low-income families. HC is in support of increasing the units and will write letter for support and Kayleen will do a memo for council. • Affordable Living Policy (ALP) Progress – Brenden Woodley o Brenden gave an overview of the policy timeline. We are in the drafting phase. Email was sent out on first draft. Timeline update – started process on the 19th, expect internal staff to review first draft in a week or two, will submit comments by end of month and then city attorney will review draft. Expect significant comments from city attorney then meet with policy workgroup in a month. o We received the first version of draft about four hours ago. We seem to be on schedule. City Attorney provides comments mid-November, and the comments will go on a draft in later November, then start council submission process including taking to board and commissions. Brenden thinks it may be more effective for another joint HSAC and HC meeting and opportunity to review and provide comments on draft. Later in December we will have community forum. We will use the comments and add to draft and start posting process with  planning commission and council to work for adoption of draft end of February. We will use first draft for any budget discussions. o Robert K. – last meeting there was a discussion of reviewing before it became a draft in an outline format, is there something to look at now? Brenden W.– sent an email that had a staff report that had the recommendations on there. Meredith A. – understanding that there is a lot of content and recommendations and thinking of turning that into a draft, the prioritization - who is doing that part? If there are 30 recommendations that seem to be the most powerful part of that and who has that power? Brenden W. - Part of why we have consultant is to give advice on timing and the effectiveness and we have to be ok with what they decide. Meredith A. – thinking since there is city staff and the city attorney, it may be a good thing for the policy review draft meeting, to have a bunch of things in there to consider that seem to be important on prioritizations. Sara F. – thinks it makes sense for the policy work group seeing it early on and wondering if it makes sense for the HC to see at that stage. Planning has to vote as it goes to comprehensive plan, but she thinks HC should also vote on it during that last stage. The vote should be after all comments are received and incorporated. o Meredith A. – how are the comments going to be incorporated? What if the EDA says one way and planning says we should do another way? Is there a process for that or based on we will look and see and make it happen? Brenden W. – we will do our best to disambiguate and Paul Stoddard said all comments will be part of staff report. o Robert K. – first time seeing it would be December 10th? Brenden W. – will receive before to have an opportunity to review. At least a couple weeks before. o Robert K. – back to Meredith’s point, it will be fairly well baked by the time it gets to the planning commission and he wonders if there is an opportunity to shape it and discuss at the next meeting? A bulletize document of recommendations would be helpful. Question becomes where is HC input? Brenden W. – City Attorney would tear it up and can give what we have at that point when shared with policy workgroup. It’s probably going to change and start another review. o Sara F. – best to share when goes to workgroup. Meredith A. – EDA and planning will see it before us, but it is based on when the meetings are. All comments will be incorporated. Sara F. – thinks housing commission should have a vote after comprehensive work plan session when planning makes more changes, HC should see it again. Letty H. – we can have a joint meeting with planning commission. Brenden W. – Do you want a copy or a vote on it in February? Sara F. – yes, HC should be able to vote too. Brenden will provide feedback and get back to HC.  o Robert K – doesn’t see the downside seeing draft before it goes to the City Attorney and get ahead with what the recommendations are. Meredith A. – be it that the policy meeting on the 7th, doesn’t need to meet on the 6th to discuss if they get a copy of the feedback and the policy group had representatives from housing. When sending to City Attorney, cc them on it so they know what it looks like. We can have session in December where we provide feedback. Sara F. – most important thing is to add a joint session in February with planning. Letty H. – another option is HC can come to council work session and do a joint session on November 25th. Can be more efficient. There are two council work sessions scheduled. • Affordable Living Dashboard Update o Brenden did a presentation of the housing dashboard. o One of the recommendations from the ALP workgroup was to have something that shows the affordable living in the city. o Took a variety of data types to include housing related and human services information. o Currently 11 pages but we will add more. Housing information listed is from our annual affordable housing report. Includes AMI calculator, charts, and information, most of it is interactive. Included size of units and where they are located. o Pages include ADUs, housing stock, human services, and affordable housing preservation. o We will discuss next time the structure of the dashboard. o Question of the fields – is 2027 with a 3-year period? • Welcoming FC o Presentation on the progression in the families with employment; one adult has position in DC Gov and two in HVAC training program. Children are thriving. o Paul – this is a pilot program with support of the city. Exhausted funds and thinking of how to move forward. Useful to look at how structure of program has developed. Initially had 18-month subsidies at 40%, 50% and 60% AMI. On reflection, decided to extend the 18 months to support 2nd year of lease. Federal and state support is lasting longer than originally budgeted. o Added $75 for families per month for discretionary needs such as emergency funding. o Paul – looking ahead, want to make this long term. Program models Pittsburg and would like to make it excellent how it works. Recommend in second year that the families not step up from 50 to 60% AMI. Some families are stepping up. In addition, extend rent subsidies to 3 years. o Policy idea – property tax credit structure. Homeowners renting their units to lower AMIs and offer a property tax rebate if they do so. We had active interest of a townhome owner who wanted to do this, but policy mechanism prevented it.  o Sara – after 24 months, is the hope to have spouse add income to family as they take English classes and skills? Kevin – yes, 4 of the families are looking for opportunities. Rachel – some came in with children not old enough for school, when their children can start school, day care costs will be another issue. Kevin – graph represents three different families and are at different points in progression. Belief in next 12 months they will receive jump in income. o Kevin - We have one family on low trajectory. This family is already making plans to leave city not just for income, but extended family is coming in and low probability for spouse to work. o Support teams are pursuing available options for affordable housing. Kayleen mentioned the Alder that will accommodate five people for 2-bedroom. Affordable homeownership program also for the 1st family. A bit hesitant due to budget and not comfortable with the numbers and HOA fees and not sustainable. o Speaking to FC Presbyterian and partnering with for affordable housing as part of the supply piece. Looking to do a few partnerships like this. Property tax credit idea – if city can have a policy requiring homeowner to have covenant that their property be rented at affordable rates through an amendment to their deed. o Meredith –What about monthly donors? Welcoming FC – don’t have a large infrastructure that is dedicated to fund raising. Takes time to cultivate donors. o Sara – what is the ask from city’s budget? Paul – $100,000 to include adding 6th family. Sara – does that number change if that family gets into an ADU or CCAU? Paul – yes, changing family pattern will have an impact. Sara – Does that that $100,000 include year two and three? Paul – yes. o Sara – is there something Welcoming FC is looking from HC this evening? Paul – HC’s attention and questions and if HC would make a recommendation to support to council on the issue. If it is appropriate to take action as a group. • 8:24pm – Jordan has to leave meeting early. Remote participation read for virtual participation. Motion read by Meredith, second by Sara. Commission members voted to approve remote participation. • Other o None • Adjourn o Sara Ferrera moved to adjourn, and Robert Kravinsky seconded. o Adjourned at 9:00 pm.