February 26, 2020 — Housing Advisory Board Regular Meeting

Transcript

[MM:SS] timestamps correspond to the YouTube recording.

[0:00] I would like to call to order the February 26 regular meeting and listening session on tiny homes of housing advisory board and if we can do roll call Judy not judge me Juliet Boone Mason Moyer Dave in time okay that's us the agenda review I just want to go through briefly for everybody in the audience and give you a little bit of a outline of what we're going to be doing and how it will be structured here so you know what's happening we're gonna

[1:01] start with a brief public comment just for open comment that open comment is if you have something other than tiny homes okay so if there's some comment you want for the housing advisory board that's not to do with tiny homes that little open comment period will be for you and then we'll go into the presentation we're gonna have four presentations one is a short video and then we have three speakers here one city staff member and two other guest speakers who come in we'll go through those presentations about ten minutes each is what we're trying to achieve with those and after that we'll recreate our circle and then we'll come down into the listening session now we may not have chairs for everyone in the circle but you're welcome to sit in the chairs the regular seats back behind and if you want to speak you can ask to come into the circle we'll make a space for you it'll be a fairly casual environment

[2:01] okay so with that Corey do we need do we need to have Danny Danny can you state that you're here with us anteater Oh present okay so with that we'll go ahead and and start the open comment for public participation we didn't have anybody sign up for that portion okay great so we will close open comment for that and we'll go right into the tiny homes listening session so Jay can you cue up this video and I'm gonna just prep it a little bit this gentleman who's going to be speaking is presenting to the San Diego City Council as they were considering an ordinance around tiny homes and he his name is Daniel Fitzpatrick he is I believe the president if I'm correct Byron you could probably of the american tiny homes

[3:03] association sorry tiny home industry association and so we have just a six minute clip of him giving his presentation it's a nice little overview okay so a shock to you you also want to provide a quick overview of sort of what the purpose of a listening session is and what we hope to get out of it absolutely thanks for reminding me yeah so that that would be good what we're trying to achieve I think tonight is a few different things we know that the City Council has an interest in tiny homes we know the community has an interest in tiny homes we're trying to give feedback to Council eventually from the board and what we try to achieve tonight I think is have a community discussion first around what tiny homes are how we classify them what do we call a tiny home because there are

[4:00] different definitions some people consider certain things tiny homes and other people don't consider those same thing tiny homes so there's kind of an educational component to it that we're trying to do part of that has to do with where we are with the city and in that process of considering tiny homes so there will be some of that and that's kind of what our presentations are more about to give us kind of a context for the tiny home and Boulder beyond that what we're really looking to do here is gain perspective from you community members and people who have been involved with tiny homes and living in tiny homes potentially to start to engage with pros and cons of different types of tiny homes and even into the zoning potentially of well where would we want as a community to see them how could we use them what members of our community

[5:00] what populations could they serve as an affordable housing issue anything I'm missing in there you know that's good enough okay so we will start with this video then Thank You chair award and members of the Select Committee I'm Dan Fitzpatrick I'm the director of government affairs and advocacy for the American tiny-house Association I became involved with tiny homes and the tiny home movement not because I live in a tiny home or even aspire to live in a tiny home is because in 30 years as a government official being a whether be a County Administrator city manager redevelopment director or 20 years as a private developer one of the most difficult things it is for us to create in the municipal or even in the private sector is affordable housing and so when I

[6:02] became involved with the tiny movement I saw this as my niche my tiny niche of a way of supporting and working with my friends up and down the state and local government to give them ideas on how to utilize tiny houses whether stick build or movable tiny houses in in terms of meeting their issues relative to affordable housing my staff asked me to cover three things in 10 minutes on their talk quick one is what are tiny homes two tiny homes in terms of being used as accessory dwelling units and three tiny homes or Buhl tiny homes and the utilization for infill you know properties whether remnant properties city-owned properties or whatever for affordable housing first of all what is

[7:01] a tiny house and tiny houses are basically now defined legally in the new 2018 international residential code as being you know homes less than four hundred square feet in general as you may know in California law efficiency apartments are 150 square feet you know plus so that's basically your range of quote-unquote tiny homes and so tiny homes can range anything from sic bill moveable we even have a number of stackable you know units I think Michael was talking about some of the things that can be done in the private sector using factory built components that you can stack and a number of these I I know are being built in a Bay Area I don't know if you have these in San Diego at this point in time in terms what is the movable tiny house they're generally generally eight and a half feet wide if you're buying ones that you want to move regularly up and down the

[8:01] highways of the state of California or nationally it can't exceed eight and a half inches wide and none of them can be over thirteen and a half feet tall right so they're always under 14 feet which is normally your limitations for second story and your various codes but many of the movable tiny houses that are only being moved occasionally they're moved mainly from the factory to the lot and maybe you know moved every five years or so they're being bought they're being bought up to ten feet why so that's what I mean a tiny house is and as I said it's a range we also support you know containers and other types of building that's four hundred square feet or less now what are movable tiny houses moogle tiny houses are not your conventional RV in fact if you write an ordinance to define moogle tiny houses I can show you a hundred different ways of writing it

[9:00] in such a way that none of these will ever be considered a movable tiny you know house moogle tiny houses are built to resemble a typical cottage or bungalow and these are typical pictures of units that are located in different areas in California they're basically a you go to next slide a sick built house the foundation just happens to be on a chassis versus on a concrete you know slab or foundation built with the same 2x4 you know wood or steel construction all of the support that plumbing electrical and so forth built in accordance with code you can have many different designs depending on the particular neighborhood in which it plans to go that you can put any type of facade you want on these particular units and certainly the interiors are

[10:02] designed to meet all of your requirements for habitation for living sleeping cooking and sanitation keywords right out of the health and safety you know code for a habitable dwelling unit in fact these units are actually built stronger than a stick built house because they're made to be able to go 70 miles an hour down the freeway you know and hit a you know pothole and if you look at the interiors here you will find total drywall you can imagine what a pothole would do with drywall or plaster the interior they're all very well built so you've got basically your sheathing on both sides that's you know wood or whatever holding it together a movable tiny house is one thing that's you know people say you know why not have sic built you know Adu or you know versus a movable well many people have you know want flexibility they may only need it for five or you know six or seven years in their backyard as an Adu

[11:00] you know many of them are truly being used as granny flats or caregiver facilities or to put a family member through college or a family member or friend comes back from overseas tour needs to get their life together it's perfect you know way of doing that very quickly and conveniently one of the items I'll go through yeah I just had Jay stop there there's more to it but I think that just set kind of a stage a little bit and then Jade I'd like to turn it over to you and give us kind of the view of the city and where we're at with the city and tiny houses right good evening everybody so my name is Jay studnets I am a planner with the city of Boulder housing and Human Services I want to start off by saying that I am NOT an expert on tiny homes far from it but

[12:02] what I'm gonna try to do is share sort of what I've what I've learned from the city's perspective and this is also an opportunity for the city to learn as well from the community so I just want to be clear about that so if I say something that you completely disagree with let me know so I just wanted to be clear this a little hard to read but this is from back in 2013 so tiny homes were identified as a potential tool to address some of boulders affordable housing challenges I know it's been talked about ever since I've been at the city it's also been on City Council's work plan for a number of years it never quite rose to the top wasn't prioritized but it's always sort of percolated just below the surface so I wanted to get into a little bit more detail on what is a tiny home so the movable tiny home or the tiny home on wheels there's even a broader spectrum so it's everything from

[13:00] something that you would take on the highway to something that's even on casters so some communities have looked at as a potential solution for instead of a shopping cart to have something a little bit more secure for our plate and safe place to sleep and store personal items and that's the image on the bottom there and then it's more of the traditionally you would think about sort of the tiny amount of fixed foundation something that could be you know on a single parcel out in the country or on an individual a lot but in the boulder context mostly what you're gonna see is a tiny home as an accessory dwelling unit so Boulder just back in 2018 relax significantly the accessory dwelling unit regulations in the city and with the update to the city's building code that I'll talk about in a little bit makes it much easier to build these and that's so from our perspective we see that is where the most likelihood of

[14:02] seeing tiny homes in Boulder in the foreseeable future so another big question that I think it's important to ask is who are we trying to serve with the by tiny-home a lot of one option is it's sort of this transitional housing so one step from living on the street so people maybe who have mental or addiction issues or potentially both who are not quite ready for permanent housing and this has been used as a solution in other communities up north the picture on top is sort of this where residents build these themselves and then there's a much more intentional approach and you can you hear about that sorry I borrowed your picture I hope you don't mind I forgot to ask your permission first and then the traditional housing so it could be a rental housing so that ad you example I gave you is always going to be a rental because it's on a single family a single

[15:00] families owned parcel and then it is potential for a lower cost homeownership opportunity I mean it's definitely a four hundred square foot home is significantly less than a four thousand but typically the cost per square foot is just is quite a bit higher so that's why I had the question marks and then these slides get into the regulatory piece and I borrowed these I want to be really clear from Dawn Eliot who is the planner with Clarion Associates here in Denver he's given a number of presentations on tiny homes and the regulatory arena around them and I think this just really wanted to get the point across even though they're not RVs tiny homes are for the most part regulated just like there would be RVs so like the speaker said it has a lot to do with are they safe to move on the highway not are they safe to live in so that's one way to do it the other is if it's on a fixed foundation then it has to meet the building code and there are

[16:03] a number of layers in addition to the building codes so the building code is all about what is that structure safe to live in the zoning regulations talk about well where can it be built are there certain is a residential non-residential multi-family or not what are this all those regulations that's part of the zoning and then subdivision regulations have more to do with whether or not you could be able to subdivide and potentially sell that tiny home and in the boulder example currently if you build an accessory dwelling unit in your back yard you are not allowed to condo is that and sell it off separately as it's always associated with the primary residence and then of course there are private covenants and Don says we can ignore it so I'm not going to talk about it a lot but basically if there's a covenant on that piece of property that prohibits this type of use or structure then you're it's going to cause problems

[17:00] again the building code is is it safe to live in and it's and it has to do with our people gonna be living in there for 30 days or more so that's sort of the trigger of whether or not want to make sure it's a safe environment to be in and so it has to meet either the International or residential code or comparable state or local regulation or it has to meet the HUD standards for manufactured homes and there's a lot more detail that we could get into with those we just want to be clear many of the tiny homes currently do not meet Xavier with those and then my last piece is just to talk about what happened at the City Council recently I just want to be super clear so with the city on a regular basis updates our building code to match the International residential code and this year it just happened to include standards for tiny homes which is great but that was not the intent of the update I just wanted to be clear

[18:00] about that so it is less restrictive so it allows tiny homes to be built and it has to do with stair geometry the loft that the loft area allowing a slightly higher ceiling heights as well as a loft egress window for safety and fire egress but Boulder was very clear that our council was very clear in terms of requiring tiny homes to be set out of fixed foundation and also to be connected to utilities so some things to consider tiny homes reimbold are considered just like some detached single-family homes so it doesn't matter if it's 400 square feet or four thousand or eight thousand its treated the same if you were to build a tiny home you would still have to be provide 25% of a community benefit in terms of affordable housing which adds to the cost and I

[19:03] think what as I said earlier I think one of the most likely scenarios is you're gonna see more a private property owner building or bringing in a tiny home as an accessory dwelling unit so that's just a quick overlay just overview any questions or anything did I offend anyone say something wrong I have questions okay well I guess we can start out with I feel like there needs to be some clarity especially if anybody is here when you say under things to consider tiny homes are subject to inclusionary housing ordinance I think what you're talking about is a chunk of land developed as a tiny house community correct or are you just saying one tiny house so a single-family home okay so you're just talking later the same as a big house okay just want to make sure that we're on the same page of whether or not you're talking about a chunk of land or not and again what I got asked a

[20:01] lot of questions for was after the last City Council meeting and the headline read tiny houses are now legal in Boulder and that was perpetuated by you know some misinformation out there our tiny house is legal in Boulder as an accessory dwelling unit yes and in other situations but it would be really a site-by-site determination that we need to be made and you mentioned that the ADA law was relaxed significantly and I'm curious how many applications have we gotten on ad use and what is the percentage that increased our overall housing inventory so I wouldn't know with the percentages we've received I believe approximately over a hundred and fifty applications in the first year all the you know they're

[21:00] in various stages of approval mm-hmm I can't tell you exactly how many have been approved and with the complete build out of the saturation limits that we have I think the overall was estimated to be one half of one percent of our entire housing inventory correct so with a full complete build-out of a DS and we those significantly relaxed rules we're still only looking at one half of one percent of our entire housing population when I say significant I'm talking about compared to what it was before okay yes after 10 years of piloting yes yes okay you also mentioned that ad use on slabs when we when you're under who does it serve so you mentioned ad used on slabs as a part of the housing and one of the discussions you and I have just for full disclosure is one of the considerations about discussing and entering the

[22:01] conversation of tiny houses on trailers is to build equity so when we talk housing mobility and entering in individuals who already own their homes and create communities versus just creating more renters so would that serve another population is there a pop I guess the question is is there a possibility to serve more than just the two types being renters and creating more renters and communities well this slide also had homeowners homeownership as a potential homeownership if you own the main house well so that's always going to be a rental if it's an Adu it's always going to be a great because you have a primary residence it needs to be a linter occupied and then they can rent out the accessory unit or they can live in the accessory in it and rent the main house right but you have to own that house you have to own it right you have to own a piece of land yeah so it's the same issue with manufactured housing

[23:00] right so you may pay rent for your pad you own the home but the challenge is a lot of the times the loans that you get are not favorable because they're considered chattel as opposed to home ownership loans so you don't get all the great tax advantages that we bestow on home ownership in this country mm-hmm I have a couple more but I think they'll be mourned down there I have just when could you refresh my memory was it the current City Council who did this or was it the previous City which I believe the final reading was just last night okay so when you said uh sorry when you said a ownership so but you said that that we already we already made a decision that you can't condominium eyes one of those and so it's it's essentially it runs it

[24:02] runs with the with the main home in perpetuity right so if it's an ad you reppin ad you right so what kind of scenarios have we contemplated in terms of ownership of the tiny home without having some other property interest me personally all right the city no I would say it has not really been contemplated as a housing type I mean the challenge is yes you can build if you own a piece of land you can build a tiny house and we'll regulate it just like we would a regular big house so the question is if you own the land and you can build a tiny house versus a larger house what are the economics that go into that right all right unless you can build multiple tiny homes unless you exactly condominium on or even platta but most likely or the other piece is that if we allow tiny

[25:00] houses on trailers you then have a homeowner who then is essentially cooperatively losing land with a home owner a land owner and so then instead of creating more renters you're creating a community with home owners yeah I think I want to make one point I think that these are and for everybody here I think these are some of the things that we want to engage with 9 and so we want to set the groundwork here of where the city is right now and understand where else we could go with this in other words is this serving us to the fullest extent possible or can we go further did you have something that you want to add I want to kind of wrap this up so we can get through our speakers but go ahead if you want to you guys had one quick slide ok last slide so what I what I would suggest might be helpful for everybody is to think about when you say tiny home what do you what do you mean because I

[26:00] think my experience is everybody in this room probably has a very not a very different but a distinctly different impression about what a tiny home is so you know some ways as you're talking about it is it on wheels is it on a fixed foundation very different scenario is it connected to utilities or not mrs. in someone's backyard or is it in a village like we've been talking about and really importantly who is being served and how is it being perceived as the solution to affordable housing so I don't that was my attempt to try to provide a little bit of context instruction yeah thanks Jay Cory Jay is it best if we ask the speakers to come up and sit next to you yeah I think okay so Jan could you join us this is Jan Burton who was in the past City Councilmember and is now

[27:00] working on building modular if I'm correct I'll let you actually explain what you're doing and then and then talk a little bit about the environment around constructing these okay super thank you good evening everyone my name is Jan Burton and I am a boulder resident and I'm also owner of a company called rhino cubed which we began making quote-unquote tiny homes in January 1 of 2014 so more than six years now I say quote unquote because everyone has a different definition of what a tiny home was in fact our company has always built two IRC standards and again as Jay described IRC is the international residential code which is used in cities like Boulder for housing so and so they would not be on wheels not on a chassis and that was the traditional word for

[28:02] tiny humps so I just want to tell you that I'm not going to be a big huge Rara cheerleader for tiny homes I think it's more my my Vince as a resident of Boulder and a former council member to talk about the pros and the cons and where I see them fitting as well as maybe providing some advice of how I think the housing advisory board and this community can make a bigger impact in housing with some other policies and I think are more hurtful that unless we change we'll never really make progress with small homes so the tiny one movement started really back in hippie days with the original inspiration being Henry David Thoreau's Walden there was a book that was published in the in the 90s by a woman named Sarah sue Sanka who

[29:00] is really viewed as as the person who started talking about the not so big house and then a guy named Jay Shafer who I have been on talks with offered the first building plans for tiny homes on wheels then the tiny momentum started with the financial crisis in 2007-2008 so many many people who got shoved out of the housing market decided well I could do this I could build this on my own and why not so it was a desire for no mortgage for smaller fees in fact if you look at the ownership of small homes across the country most of them like 76% do not have a mortgage so it's really a valid approach to living much more less expensively and in 2015 my company was part of a tiny home Jamboree they expected 10,000 people Brian you were there as well 40,000 people showed

[30:00] up so it was a huge explosive kind of fun industry to me it seemed like my early days of the PC industry so what is part of what has generated this in 1950 average home price at home sit home size 980 square feet with four people living in it today it's over 2,800 square feet and usually it's just 2 or 2.1 people living in the house so what has happened to our society and what happened to cause this and what gotten one thing that got me interested I don't know if you can see this this is a slide that I took from a real estate booklet in the Denver six County area back in 2015 that talked about the listings of small houses so the the bars on the on the top are small and the inventory and then the price so what was happening was no one was building small homes anymore so in

[31:01] my when I graduated from college and started out there were starter homes but in this day and age no more starter homes so this is not only damaging to young people and older people in a financial crisis but you also think about the impact of student debt so and by the way if you looked at this picture today it's probably no different so we have to look at policies that are bigger than all of that so the reality today for tiny homes the building codes and city expectations are different city by city county by county that makes it very difficult for builders to know exactly what they can build and where they can be permitted zoning and land use and density are bigger issues even than the codes so what you just heard is the City of Bowl Boulder has adopted a version of the code the IRC code that allows a small home if it is we're a tiny home if

[32:01] it's on a foundation but does that solve the zoning and the land use issues and the density perceptions in this town know you look at the land in the land cost so this is one very specific thing for the city of Boulder how much is land kind of expensive in it so how many people are gonna buy an $80,000 tiny home and put it on a piece of property in Boulder exactly zero because they can't afford the land you don't put an $80,000 house on $500,000 piece of property the cost of building I was talking to you before the cost of building has has erupted about 40% in the last probably three or four years that includes building materials it includes a place to build it and includes labor so the cost of building these units has become more and more of an issue that's true with the entire housing industry but I want you to know

[33:01] it's also true unless you use something like habitat or something like that the cost of building them is very real financing is an issue because banks don't want to do something they don't really understand so the question is how many real people live in small tiny houses and frankly not very many and that's because we haven't been creative about solving a lot of these issues so what are some very appropriate uses for tiny and when I say tiny homes I mean the ones that are not put on irce code that are not put on trailer they're definitely fantastic for homeless I mean why wouldn't we in fact the council went to Portland came back and Aaron Brackett and i were really trying to get us to do something for the homeless and the council voted it down but that would be a great area something

[34:00] like college housing we have college kids that are spending $1400 a month on housing up on the hill why wouldn't we consider temporary something at CU South allowing students to stay in in tiny homes they could cut their their housing bill and their student debt by huge amounts pocket neighborhoods where land is cheap or adding them to mobile home parks no-brainer and then part-time cabins so now I'd like to serve up a few ideas that we might talk about as a group that are a little bit more broader than just bringing in tiny homes so when you look at this whole issues yeah at this point I would like us to maintain the focus okay for this portion of it on the kind of the tiny home stuff and then as we sit and have a discussion I think there

[35:00] will be space for kind of more of that pro and con piece okay that's okay real quickly so one thing go ahead and run through real fast okay one thing is mentioned is that they're really approved as accessory dwelling units that's true we still have the most arduous Adu guidelines in the country so one thing we could consider is having two structures on a on a piece of property that could be an Adu and a Maine in 1990s Boulder had housed behind a house it was a program so that's one thing we should consider number to give financial benefits for building smaller so more carrots like waive some of those fees like what Jay talked about so some of the things today would prevent it change this policy slightly another thing is to remove livability standards so some of the things that we have is an idea that a room size should

[36:02] be not smaller than a certain room size that's not health and safety that's a perceived attitude we have livability standards that affect all of our affordable housing like you have to have a coat closet you have to have blinds that come up and down things like that that are perceived things that everyone should have but but it adds a lot of cost sprinkler systems in a small house you can walk three steps to the door why should you have a sprinkler system and then finally educating and ruling the public about density and environmentalism and how smaller can be very very important in helping us achieve our environmental and affordability objective well yeah and I think thanks Jan I think that all of those pieces are a big part of what we're gonna want to look into and discuss in this so I'm sure there's gonna be lots of thoughts about the zoning pieces and the density so thanks

[37:00] a bunch Jan for that and then our final speaker is Mark Solomon and mark is with the veterans community project he's the founder and he's been doing some great work in he's a veteran himself and he's been doing some great work and housing veterans using tiny homes both in Kansas City and now in Longmont and so he's going to give us a little bit of a picture of the community that served or one community and how it's been served and then also talk a little bit about his experience with getting these projects off the ground and getting tiny homes allowed in these developments thanks Thank You mr. chairman and board members so a little bit about US veterans community project started by combat veterans I am probably the best-looking one on that slide just for reference

[38:00] I've I am in the Navy still fifteen and a half years served in Baghdad in 2008 to our 2007-2008 came back basically with these gentlemen realized that there was a need for serving veterans these are people who were willing to give their life for their country and when they came home a lot of times the hoops you have to jump through the answers a lot of times no you know we don't have money for a bus pass so that you can get to work we don't have money to help you with your rent payments so you get kicked out of your apartment whatever it is the answer was typically no and so we decided we wanted to form an organization that said yes nationally just so you understand a little bit about where we started and why the the government estimates there's about forty thousand homeless veterans sleeping on the streets every given night in Kansas City we estimate about two hundred and fifty or so veterans every night sleeping on the streets here in Boulder

[39:01] County there's probably in terms of veterans specific population for homeless there's probably 70 to 100 people every single night sleeping on the streets most of these folks are in conditions that we would not consider habitable and so again we wanted to do something about that so our mission is to build and maintain transitional housing the houses themselves are permanent we'll talk a little bit about that get the the veterans transition through the homes say yes to every veteran in need through outreach programs as well as community-based housing and then connect veterans and the community together this is the land we bought in Kansas City the city sold it to us for five hundred dollars and didn't have any infrastructure sewer water electric I know those prices are a little different here so five acres of land five hundred dollars retail of that land would probably be approximately Kansas City at the time about forty thousand ish dollars for that property

[40:02] the picture on the right is kind of our concept plan so our goal was to put 49 tiny houses on this plot of land and Unity Center to serve the veterans there and that is exactly what we did we use trades volunteers members of the community to help us build these houses they are built on foundations they are permitted structures so they meet all building codes for new construction we talked about the IRC codes being adopted I was actually at the meeting and happened to be in Kansas City for the IRC when when those codes were adopted so that was a neat thing it allowed municipalities to do exactly what's happened here which is which is a neat framework to start writes a blueprint basically in Kansas City they they I believe even to this day have not adopted those so we're using basically old cottage codes that were basically

[41:02] started I think when the pilgrims came it's not entirely accurate history wise and so again we use volunteers but there is sewer water electric infrastructure again there are permanent structures this is what the village looks like these are single occupancy units they're 240 square feet we varied the roof lines the colors things like that so that it looks more like a subdivision instead of row of tract houses the houses behind this picture are actually family units we have in Kansas City of the 49 tiny houses we have we actually have four family units and we do have families living with us so we've got veterans men women peacetime vets wartime vets we serve any veteran who ever served so regardless of their discharge status we don't take any federal funds so it's all private funds so we are able to serve any veteran in need this is a picture of

[42:01] our village about a month ago we're working on the grass but we just finished this this was about a two year process to do all 49 tiny houses the building in the upper left is our community center it's a five thousand square foot facility that services the veterans in the village we've got a dentist chair there we've got cuts available we have people that come in and volunteer and give the vets haircuts we also have a dog washing station in a veterinary area right now or as of about two months ago before you finished the last phase of houses we had 26 tiny houses on the right side there before we finished the ones on the left and we have 10 dogs and two cats that live with us as well as our veterans so we treat the whole person including their family members and in this case that maybe their pets that's typically especially if they live on the streets and they have a pet they're not going into a shelter because most shelters don't take their pets and they're not leaving their dog outside in the winter

[43:00] so let us sleep on the streets also another reason for this particular population is as a veteran I will tell you I don't have PTSD type issues yet I'm not gonna sleep without the house and other people when we were eating you know dinner back here my door my back was to this door back here and that kind of makes me a little nervous right so we design our houses with veterans in mind basically they have their own kind of private space in the back all the windows are on the one side so they have total control of their space with living in our village it comes with case management we have an 8 to 1 caseload with our case managers that make sure that our veterans are taken care of so it's very accountable and the veterans actually have formed a community so it's almost barracks style living without the barracks so the veterans take care of each other to make sure that they're not doing silly things that they shouldn't do to the point of as I mentioned we have children living in our village with our veterans one of our veterans got

[44:00] custody of his kids back every other weekend so very safe place this is basically just a picture of the interior of one of our our units the bigger family unit is 320 square feet our individual unit is 240 square feet and again we can sleep up to 7 so there's a picture of the front door and then the kitchen and this is from the front door looking back the kitchens to the right there so you'll see the the bunk beds and then the the pullout and the bathroom is sort of around to the right back there and there's a nice barn door that makes it private and then this is just a quick look at the kitchen so the houses come fully furnished for our veterans all the way down to knives and silverware and all that what's kind of neat for me is when they transition out of our program they can stay up to two years in our program when they transition out we make sure that they get to take everything with them so if they go into an apartment or whatever it is more permanent type housing now they have all of the things they need they

[45:00] can take the bed and all that we basically just refit the house with all of those things and then keep on going another way we get the community involved is we actually typically will do when we were refitting a house with for a new resident we will just put an Amazon wish list out and then people just click stuff just shows up and now we can outfit a new house so it's a neat way to get the community involved even if they can't come down and volunteer or help us build or do any of that sometimes it's just easy to go online and click and last couple of slides here so we're actually going to be building a community in Longmont we should hopefully break ground sometime in the next 60 days and then we will build houses later this summer hope to have 10 done by the end of this year and 16 more next year along with a 3,000 square-foot community center what's really neat about what long month is doing is that they are putting the tiny houses for

[46:01] homeless veterans next to a high-end subdivision so this is a map of the entire subdivision don't quote the subdivision on this this may have changed some the red is condos the kind of orange color is townhouses and then the yellow is single-family anywhere from the condos being $300,000 all the way to the single-family up to $900,000 and the bottom left corner with a purple there that's actually that row of purple is Habitat for Humanity there'll be eight lots with duplexes and then our twenty-six tiny houses will be right next to that so basically we'll have 26 homeless veterans living on purpose next to a high-end subdivision in long run it's the only place in the country that I know this is happening and this is kind of a close-up view of what that will look like so basically you've got our community center in the middle and then the houses go all the way around again the idea is to have these little cul de sacs it'll actually be fire pit type areas and

[47:00] things like that to build a sense of community with the veterans parking and then on the left is where the Habitat homes will go the developers hms development they are the developer not only wants to have amazing amenities so you can see the blue towards the bottom there's a you know tennis court things like that world-class pool all those sorts of things for the high-end subdivision the developer really feels like going forward one of the amenities and every subdivision should be compassion and so he's putting his money where his mouth is and that land will be donated to us before we build our houses he's going to put in all the sewer water and electric infrastructure it's about a three million dollar donation so briefly my time is up so let me just briefly just talk through some of the things that I know we we talked about in terms of what are the issues there's no magic formula we've had over 3000 other cities reach out to us and say hey we love what you're doing in Kansas City come to our

[48:00] town and do that every town is very different it's really just the will to do it and some creativity truthfully okay and that's what we found so a lot of places it's mixed-use development in Longmont actually the area is zoned so its zoning that's really the issue the the code compliance there's usually no variance on code compliance we meet you know in infrastructure you know we have trades that come in and do the electric and all that kind of stuff but in Longmont it's a mixed-use employment or multifamily so in some areas they're treating us like multifamily and other places they're treating us like single-family homes and so they're just being very creative in terms of long Mott and how they're doing it they're also expediting through the process so this subdivision would probably take somewhere between three and four years to be approved with us being attached to that the city of Longmont is expediting the approval process for this it'll probably be about

[49:00] eighteen months from start to end so the developer gets to build houses sooner the city gets to solve their veteran homeless problem and we get land sewer water and electric to be able to to house homeless veterans so it's a win for everybody and and as Jen mentioned to theirs it's it's clearly an option for homelessness right and how you address that so again in a small space we'll have those 26 tiny houses and a community center to be able to support those pets thanks yeah questions from here and would again say let's try to keep it brief because we'll have Marc with us and the circle and we can do anybody yeah let's get a couple out do you have how many acres two houses you have I don't specifically I can get that for you okay and are these all homeownership or any rentals they're they're all transitional it's rent-free so the veterans just stay for a period of time get the help they need we we don't reinvent any services so we partner with other organizations that already provide service civilian if

[50:01] necessary if they don't aren't eligible for veteran services or other veteran services and then so they come into our house our houses they stay for a period of time until they till we feel like they can transition to the next phase whatever that is we teach them how to cook and how to clean and how to budget all of those things make sure they get to their PTSD counseling all that and once they get to a certain point then they can transition out we actually had a veteran go from homelessness she was sleeping in her car hotels things like that she came to our village stayed about eighteen months she just became a habit at home our owner sorry our hand owner in Kansas City so she went from homelessness to home ownership with a transition through our program for 18 months nice so there's no cap on that back end as far as like shorter long term in terms of stay yeah yeah two years is really one we believe we aren't doing our job if we can get if it takes longer than that the second piece is if

[51:00] they are eligible for VA services they get to maintain their homeless status during that time so the VA considers them still homeless as long as it's less than two years in a day so when they're done with our program and now they're better than they can transition to programs where the VA will pay for an apartment or something like that as a homeless person so now all of a sudden they're they're well-off and they can transition we started with five percent employment when we first housed our first pets and we're at ninety five percent employment so we also we do lots of things including getting jobs for our vets and making sure that they're stable yes Danny you mentioned something about not seeking federal funding or I'm just wondering why particularly quick story on a Navy reservist I've always been in the reserves if I had not deployed when I did and let's say I hadn't served in the Navy up until six years as a reservist one weekend a month two weeks

[52:00] a year let's say I did five and a half years and something happened civilian side or military side I got injured I would not be considered a veteran even though I served five years in the reserves six years is the cutoff we had a vet would be one example like so then if I went to the program like this that said you must be a veteran and eligible prove it sorry we can't help you go someplace else right the idea was to say yes to vets we had a vet marine three times DUI got kicked out of the Marine Corps with a dishonorable discharge he's a four-time combat tour vet three times in Afghanistan one time in Iraq so he's self-medicating his PTSD he's not eligible for veteran services because because of the so so that's why we've decided that we're just not going to do that we take support from cities and municipalities things like that we don't take any federal funds so that we can help veterans any way they need okay one last question so we know with fixed foundation homes it's actually more environmentally friendly to have shared walls why would you opt in a fix foundation situation like this to have

[53:01] them spaced apart so one of the things we found is that one thing I didn't mention is that this plot of land at forty thousand dollars we had it really bold to this area of land and increase the property value to about 1.5 million right now so we're sort of changing the narrative around homelessness that's part of it is that there's sort of a value in single single homes right single family homes we'll call them and so having that spacing allows one the veteran to have their own space and two it also helped us in terms of how we're we're interfacing with the community in terms of we're actually adding value to the property that we developed does that make sense sure also I'm a little confused because to me it's like how would two duplexes or a triplex not add value the same way that so at least yeah lease Kansas City

[54:01] why is what I'll say is that a duplex is not as valuable as a single-family home okay right so bad and I know things may be slightly different here so but that's where so for us and we also can build these things retail would be I think you would kind of mentioned you know retail might be sixty to eighty thousand dollars on these with volunteers and donated material we can we can build one of these houses in Longmont and house a vet for an entire year for $35,000 so it's a whole lot cheaper to do it that way yeah okay awesome mark thank you for that and good work [Music] impressive so what we'll do now is those chairs that I moved back out let's go ahead and I think instead of creating a full circle here let's just do the

[55:00] semicircle kind of as it was again and we'll put those chairs back I have six people who've signed up and giving many names I think six or seven to speak that doesn't mean if you didn't sign up then you can't raise your hand and engage in this discussion okay so don't feel limited by that but I will call on these six first and we'll get your input and start the discussion there yeah I was gonna say what do you guys feel do you want to do a quick break sure just to please yeah so we'll take a quick five minute break to for anybody needs that and then well thanks Mary much did you just habitat in Kansas City to so that's actually separate so we didn't do anything we just happen to own that particular bedroom did you get the volunteer labor and Kansas City so you're just using

[56:01] that habitat model more in terms of in terms of the construction

[62:03] okay they're ready testing testing okay everybody we are going to get started here so actually I need to find the slips with everybody's name no did I put you come on down a couple

[63:03] of couple of things that we'll try to see how this works I would like to use the microphones kind of as the Talking Stick so if you have it feel free to talk if you signed up in general we have a three minute time limit per individual I don't think anybody pooled time so that's just what it'll be and you'll hear a beep Coryell keep us on time so if you have something try to keep in mind a three minute limit on that and and we'll go through as I said these first six here and then I know some of you took papers but didn't necessarily fill the mouth thinking you might want to speak or you might not if you decide to that's great just please leave them with me because it's just helpful for us to know who spoke and what your perspective was and what's going on it helps us track okay let me yeah you got

[64:00] actually you go ahead two things okay I would like to add on to what you're structurally saying as well is that whenever we do the listening sessions they for some people this is in a very emotional topic so we might have unhoused individuals here we might have people that are looking for transitional housing so to keep in mind that you know we're creating a brave space here and we're not attacking each other the second thing is is that there are business owners that are here as well and that we're not here to Center businesses or what you want to achieve in this community we're here to listen to what people want to put forth for housing as housing options or expressing of your own opinions about tiny houses along it what does that make sense one other quick piece shout out to our councilmembers we've got Adam sweat lick and Rachel friend in the house back there thanks for coming guys and with that I think Byron phears is

[65:05] our first member up thank you I'm Byron Fears owner of simplicity tiny homes Alliance also on the board of directors the tiny home Industry Association which is trying to help create regulations in the realm of tiny home building I'm very excited about Boulder of entertaining tiny homes I'm not excited that they're shooting themselves in the foot for attainable housing by not allowing them being a part of me not allowing them to be on wheels I think Boulder needs to take a look at this a little more and become more educated about the on wheels portion I've got a stronger foundation is you're gonna get especially a few deals bentonite soil around the mention metro area our house isn't gonna shift foundations are going to hold up so I'd like to really urge her to consider the on wheels process I did testify at the council meeting about a month and a half

[66:00] ago and helped convince them that building in a factory or at a building facility like ours and Lyons with a third party inspector is permissible if you put on foundation here which I felt was a major movement on boulders part to go there instead of just foundation built on site benefits of being on wheels one is attained ability by placing them on foundations what you're creating is a situation where someone's going to be having to put an extra fifty to seventy thousand dollars possibly into the foundation it's not going to be an attainable home it's going to be a rental home if you had tiny homes on wheels you can move that home into the backyard and it could be someone else's home and so it creates a whole nother living situation which I think is in more alignment with what Boulder says there about I lived in Boulder back in the 70s neither us gone for a while so I kind of have a little bit of a finger on the pulse of what Poehler says there about rather than what they are about I'd like

[67:00] to see them be more in alignment let's see old green way and really try and help the lower class people lower-income people not lower class people also like to get you to entertain the idea of attainable rather than affordable housing it's a whole nother concept we all know how housing is in Colorado now in the Front Range is insane you can't buy a house unless you're making $200,000 maybe $150,000 a year for the most part and the attainability is very important there's so much I'd like to share and I'm gonna try and just go over it real quickly something that is really amazing to me when we first started building houses we are one of the early builders in the country back when we started building there might have been 10 or 15 serious builders in the whole country now there's 500 people that say they're builders Iranians I debate that but there's those who say they are if you saw some of the quality you would understand part of why we're trying to develop standards part of a pen excu is really bringing that into alignment so

[68:00] anybody when we started building I thought it was gonna be more people in their 20s and 30s interested but actually as baby boomers that are the highest demographic of interests and tiny homes we are now at a point after oh okay okay let me just finish this one statement real fast extremely fast I'm not gonna pull a presidential debate one anyway r10 the main demographic of interests are baby boomers we've come to a point where the majority of our tiny home owners that we've built for our women single women and probably almost half of those are retired so this is a whole nother concept that I don't think Boulder realizes and most of the country doesn't realize the main people are getting tiny homes on wheels I can let you pass that along yes yeah go ahead

[69:01] thank you and welcome I just have I just have a couple of little questions the I don't know very much about this and I don't have a horse in the race so these are just questions I have can the homes on wheels what do you do about things like gas and electricity and water and sewage that can that hook up to structure they self-contained most certainly and I'm glad you asked that I was very instrumental in helping Lions develop their Adu laws for tiny homes on wheels they had the wisdom of waiving any tap fees you can't afford to have a 35 or $60,000 tap fee for a tiny home on wheels people who live in tiny homes typically live a much more sustainable lifestyle they are not going to be using as much electricity as much water they're not going to have as much impact on the sewers we hook up just like any house we have a breaker box where you could go solar if you want to we have a

[70:00] sewer line that goes out and go into how to hook up to a sewer line our hookups are electrical could be as simple as a heavy-duty RV cord plugged into an outlet at a breaker box you know it's just like a regular house it's just a different dimension thank you and my second question is if some people object to tiny homes on wheels because of how they look or something can there be skirts put around them like there are on manufactured housing in mobile home parks or perhaps those people haven't seen the tiny homes flea build that looks like a stone cottage on a foundation we skirted it with the same faux stone on the bottom of it and construction dudes got was in a really heavy house are you gonna pull it they thought it was real stone and it looks like a classic old english stone cottage so you make it we make them look we can build them to look like the house that they're behind where you can build in a really classy looking we can build them

[71:00] basic how much did it cost our homes range basically between 65 and hundred and thirty thousand dollars and help bigger then from 24 by eight to ten by thirty four so far the ten-foot ones is wheels correct so you can build up to eleven foot six wide on wheels when you take it down the road you have to have that's why we use that water telling them next up let's see that's not number two or number two go there Josh Davis hi there everybody my name is Josh I'm a boulder native and an artist here in Boulder I'd like to just talk a little bit about what it's like to be a very low-income artist and try to afford housing here in Boulder I have

[72:05] been searching for a house to buy for about six years right when the boom kind of happened and it's been a very frustrating and and emotional experience as somebody who has grown up here and done lots of building and sustaining of community trying to afford a house here is it's just it's astronomical so a very real option is tiny houses and to have you know city officials say that it's not a feasible thing because they don't know what it's about or why somebody wants to live in or they think it looks trashy or whatever the reason is is it feels like a slap in a face to a group of people who create the culture here in Boulder a

[73:02] lot of people love Boulder because of the artistic community here and when you continue to shut out those people financially it just excuse me compounds that cycle of gentrification and typically its artistic type people that make people want to come to places like this so I have been designing my own tiny house for the past six months or so it is on wheels I hope someday that it will be a legal thing so that I don't have to like try to hide it from you guys and I just like to sort of stack on a couple of points that some of the other people have made around the land cost here and and how a person is supposed to afford to buy a piece of

[74:02] land here when they can't afford to buy a house here it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense so it just it seems that much more important to to look at how you can regulate properly the tiny house on wheels thing it just it makes so much more sense otherwise you're just creating more rental income for the wealthy people here so that's all I'll say thanks Josh appreciate your sharing and I know I think that's a big driver for many of us here is this you know I mean I'm raising two kids now there are only five years away from trying to live here and we're all working on that also one note as you build your house if you don't want to have to hide it pay attention to the codes because so we can yes yeah the let's see I have any

[75:04] questions here for Joshua we're good to go you say to pay attention to the codes and there is a company that certifies tiny houses if you videotape the entire process from beginning to end so if you film everything and they can certify it from that space so just keep that in mind another note on that and this was from talking to Dan Fitzpatrick if anybody's out there building their tiny home he made a suggestion make all panels that cover electrical plumbing cetera removable so that if it comes to a place where you need to get inspected you could you could be inspected so just little little tidbits of how to tiny home from a guy who's just starting to learn I see art Laubach thanks everybody

[76:03] my name is art la ball I'm the organizer of the Colorado tiny house festival and the director of the Colorado tiniest Association and I'm also a builder with Einstein tiny homes at a Brighton so I want to come off of what Byron had mentioned so at the festival we get usually about 20,000 people out for the weekend and of that group of people that come out from all over the world actually I mean people from Japan Australia come out usually it's from the Front Range but we get people from all over the country and the two largest demographics are people from 25 to 32 and the baby boomers and this is not a shrinking market either every year that we've polled and discussed hey did you sell anything at the festival or did you did you make a sale for the professional builders that number has risen every

[77:01] year last year we had roughly 70 percent of the people who showed a structure made a sale from it so the the fact is is that there's a large number of people who are buying these or building them themselves and I think that there are there are two sides of this there's the homeowner in whatever County tiny homes benefit people on both both sides of the coin a lot of people don't wanna talk about rental income for people who are already wealthy but it is a fact you know you if you if you bring a tiny home in on wheels I don't have to spend a hundred thousand dollars to build an Adu but maybe I'm making $400 a month in in for utility in space so and the flip side of the coin for the other side is the person who can't afford you $1400 a month for rent or they can't afford whatever that cost would be because we I

[78:01] think we'd all agree that an Adu that was built on a foundation is gonna have a higher cost of rent than somebody who built their tiny home and they've moved it in on wheels and then the person who can afford that tiny home has their own home granted they're renting space and this is something I know a lot about because I own property that I rent space to people who live in tiny homes so it's not compliant so we'll just leave it at that but it's in a place where it's very rural and nobody cares so so I think that you know I there are a lot of concerns from communities you know they say I don't want to be trashy right they don't they don't want to be trashy or they're concerned about their property values people that are concerned about their property values don't understand how properties are valued so 80 is on foundation do nothing but add the value

[79:00] to a property and anything that can be moved in our wheels can be moved out so some thanks I appreciate that and sorry about the name no picture of me I do think that this is one of the things that we'll be talking about is how ad use on wheels allow the value to move with the owner and I think that's a huge a huge benefit that we really have to think about when we consider where we limit to foundations or not so thanks for bringing that point up Jeremy yeah so my name's Jeremy tiny house on wheels like other mobile dwellings I like to classify us such as RVs for vans and convertible school buses are viable low-cost solutions to offset affordable housing sorge's also allowing the property owner to

[80:00] host mobile dwellers on their private land well diversify the community as well as boost the local economy through into higher individual spending because they're saving more on rent it will also reduce the amount of daily traffic coming into a town offset the carbon footprint and should limit the government's need to fund or build new infrastructure to support lower-income earners restrict restrictive zoning is counterproductive to reducing people's reliance on the government instead governments should be embracing people willing and able to host these hard-working people who choose or have to live in tiny or mobile homes a couple things I heard tonight one of the things was why does it have to be fixed I didn't have never understood why people feel it has to be fixed we are gonna use the same exact utilities that a fixed home would use they're just not connected and I feel like that is comes down always to a money thing why else would it be I don't know and then the other one was for tiny houses in RVs if if tiny houses are regulated the same as

[81:02] RVs then why don't we treat them the same why are they being treated differently other than from an aesthetic standpoint I can understand and then there was a question that was raised do real people live in them there's an estimated 1 million people in the United States currently that live full-time in RVs the city of Los Angeles has currently 28 thousand people living on the streets in their cars or RVs so yes real people are living and living them and really real people that live in these tiny places they just need stability like anyone else that's trying to be a productive member of society you have to worry about where your house is gonna be every night or if it's safe on the road or if some neighbor is gonna call the cops on you that's a stress that you just don't need to try to get ahead financially so I guess that's pretty much what I have and then just one real quick one a lot of people that work here this is in the service industry are commuting from Boulder or sorry from Longmont la via Erie just real rough calculation that's

[82:00] approximately 600 miles a month that they are going to travel just to work and you know we see the fog on the Front Range all the time now that's if we could reduce even a hundred people from having the commute into the town six 600,000 miles the a month of travel I mean that's tons of gasoline offs and again if you get more people that are lower income earners in the community saving on rent they will spend their money on goods and services that are gonna benefit the city of Boulder businesses as well as the city of Boulder from sales tax and whatever else Thank You Mason question that a question actually last year I contacted the RV National Association three point five million and that's of the RV dwellers full-time and they estimate that there's probably at least another mill if not two of unrecorded ones which i think is

[83:00] a pretty sizable number and that's a whole nother listening session but just know that you're you're speaking to the

[84:16] you know and this is our entire effort with the affordability or as you said attainability if I can just interject for just a quick second if you speak you because we are televised it's very important that you have to have the microphone otherwise nothing that you're saying will be captured on film thank you thank you Cory okay we have Joe Callen teen Callan teen good evening everyone my name is Jo Callan teen I come on behalf of representing my own

[85:01] company of life-size tiny communities officially launched in September of 2018 for the sole purpose and mission to develop community specific to tiny houses the the concept of the village life that was put up on the screen during the the mission or the the start of everything tonight was is really what I'm focusing on to be able to actually create a community space that is of like-minded individuals that want to and choose to live this type of lifestyle because it's not necessarily about a demographic that is going towards the tiny house life because this is something that people are actively deciding on that works best for them and their lives and how they can personally secure their own financial future when 2008 happens and the financial crisis

[86:00] happened people are like how can i recession-proof my life how can I prevent this from happening to me and my family in the future and with Jay Shafer and all the things that he did in 2008 as far as like moving movement and it's not a new concept is tiny living has been around for eons if you think teepees if you think wigwams and mobile living structures have they're not new they've been around for a really long time and being able to travel from one place to another think covered wagons you know the Oregon Trail when people were coming across from the New England states and the the biggest point that I want to make with village type of living and these types of structures is the fact that the missing middle went missing somehow or another back in 1940 and the community-centric bungalows that we're trying to group together to be able to create that community aspect and provide

[87:00] an attainable option for people to get into homeownership whether it's just a springboard for them not so much transitional housing but say okay I know my family is going to grow how can I take a hold of my personal finances and start with something smaller there was mention somewhere about starter homes are completely gone these days and if this is an option for people to have a starter home then why can we not provide all available paths for them to be able to well do it and get themselves started and be able to make that that jump into whatever that they need for bigger phone bigger homes as their family grows and their needs change so that missing middle aspect is is very important as if we're able to create a single family-style home as tiny house on wheels preferably because then that provides that flexibility and I'm out of

[88:00] time so we if we're able to provide that single family-style personal space and privacy and still be able to combine that communal aspect where people are contributing to a bigger something that's bigger themselves similar to what you were doing and you're with your veteran projects the rest of us want to be able to do that too and I think we should have the options okay thank you very much I will go to our last speaker Allen Peake okay again I just want to address a couple things I got the note so my hands here my tiny house on wheels is eight and a half feet by 13 and a half feet by 26 feet and I own it I'm very excited about that I built it three years ago with my father after I had a very very difficult time coming back from two deployments and three campaigns in Iraq and now I'm a

[89:02] homeowner a homeowner and I've really rebuilt my life I really need to tell everyone that that my tiny house on wheels has reach Ainge everything about my life I'm able to use my GI Bill and use it well and become an active part of the community and I'm gonna keep this short but I'm an activist now and it's not for the tiny house movement it's for our waterways and the tiny house on wheels in the tiny house on movement movement has really enabled me to come back from a car repossession getting kicked out of my apartment because I couldn't live in it and and now I'm actually becoming a real active community member so in the future I'm gonna look for places to live after I get out a UCCS with probably a dual degree in history and geology and right

[90:02] now it's looking like lions will be a really good place but until then I am a real tiny home owner and liver I live in one full time and I am hiding and that I think speaks to my military experience standing up for what's right and tiny houses are absolutely right for everyone and the freedom of our country thank you awesome Thank You Alan and yeah lines is great hopefully we can make space here in Boulder - Xan Alex and zan all right zan I am just so excited to be here I kind of geeked out on tiny house nation recently and so um but I'm just coming

[91:03] from an experiential space I used to live in Dana Point California at a five-bedroom house and I my husband was in the mortgage industry in 2008 and we almost lost everything left in 2012 traveled for seven years lived in rooms lived in community lived in different spaces and had to get rid of everything so every time I moved it was me my dog in the car and that was it so I'm 49 years old I had to convert my life and it is a way of life 90% of everything that people buy will end up in the trash within six months our culture have must shift we do not have like a lot of time to worry about what it looks like we have humans that are dying we have people that need homes and this is a solution and I think that we need to fight hard to make it happen in a much larger scale land needs to be provided

[92:00] like you guys are doing not just veterans but for everybody for artists for people who are really trying to survive and live and the baby boomers like I don't have like retirement or any of that I'm just trying to like get ahead and I'm an entrepreneur who's very smart so it's it's really like a global situation and the resources should be put into this for Humanity and not necessarily what are people doing with big houses they're moving they're having garage sales are getting rid of bunch of right so it's like we need to like downsize as a society and so I'm just the big advocate for it so thank you for letting me share awesome thanks and [Laughter] there you go I added the sugar of my tiny house to the agenda up here so

[93:00] that's my tiny house on wheels and if you look behind it real quick it's just a little bit to the right of my house you can see a traditional-style house there was a hundred houses that are conventional houses in my neighborhood and not one person has complained about my presence and I haven't brought home brought down anyone's home value and houses have bought and sold around my my house and they've all been really good neighbors to me and they've all welcomed to me no one's complained so that's nice thing thanks Alan yeah I wanted to just add a couple thoughts as a bolder homeowner I'm sorry my name is Kirsten Oak Fritz and I live in North Boulder and buy some grace of God I managed to get a house here but I really can't afford but it still has my name on it

[94:01] for the moment and we got all my rooms rented out and my taxes have gone up 25 percent in the last four years they went from 4,100 to 6100 or 4400 to 6100 and I have like 0.4 acres I have a whole half whole house version of a yard and I'm right on 19th Street and I can't even park my own RV in my yard cuz I'm in the flood zone and it's just ridiculous there is no reason why I can't get someone to move in there and put in a tiny home and we can build a pad and we can connect it to the water and the sewer and put electric in and make it totally legit like if they were in a trailer park and you know help me pay for this enormous house that you know because I don't I mean I'm like my kids are gone

[95:01] you know like I don't need to have a lot so I don't mind sharing it because I've always had people around so I don't mind having community space and I don't mind having somebody in my yard and I want somebody to be able to live and be able to have a space that they can call theirs you know cuz I know what that feels like I lived in a school bus for eight years when I was in my 20s and it was easier but but you know it's just it's just ridiculous and guess what we keep reproducing and that means there's going to be more people and more people and more people and it's grotesque that there's 4,200 square foot houses that live they have four people in them it's just grotesque and it's a sign of our culture which is really grotesque right now with the money so I am advocating for tiny homes because one it can help people like me you know middle-aged ladies that are just trying to get by because no we don't have retirements you know and we still have grown children

[96:00] that need our financial support even because they can't afford so so you know and like I could put my kid out in the tiny home so I don't have to live with them and pick up after a many frickin more you know so there's options and we need to have options thank you thank you yeah actually we can hand it down that way so I'm Ralph RIT and Lafayette we have the same problem you have I'm here because I work that correspond with Megan at Boulder County housing and connecting with nog I got really angry I was trying to get a house for a past mayor of Lafayette children and grandchildren that couldn't live in the area a flipper beat me to a condo and so I got so mad I bought a house and I rent it to them well under market value and I'm here to tell you that I think there's there's there's

[97:00] three or four points that that would really help at least that I've gotten from this there's no silver bullet to the housing piece we are short so many houses we need everything we can get density needs to increase I think the rural parts where you've got some land mark great program the wrapped services absolutely essential tiny homes great where you put them for transitional service because it's about well-being it isn't just about home you brought that point out it's about your well-being and about being able to move into a next piece and I think coupling tiny homes the right in the right atmosphere where you've got some space form you've got some flexibility put some density in so that you can get some services for the people that have served us both past and present and and and where I come to that I think you brought up was you know we got about eight or nine things here to work and I'm working on the deal off yet to be able to say

[98:00] density is not a four-letter word we can use it we can use it profitably and I'm going to be meeting with MIT McKenzie because to bring another economic model about when you're in a high growth mode like we are you can actually build in and and rent under market value because things appreciate so well you don't have to make your money off the renter's so so great program loved everybody that spoke today our tiny homes legal in mobile home parks see okay but see that that's so ridiculous there should be able to be mobile you know tiny homes on wheels it's the same thing right I thought that that that was true and I just wanted to bring that up because I mean like there's the Thistle program that has the mobile home park over here on 26 fabulous program people are able to die there and it's okay you know they can survive you can

[99:01] live on Social Security in that Park you know and then there's the Orchard Park and they've even got like a whole like backyard area that could have a tiny home you know community circle put in no problem it's not a problem thank you curr tonight I'm gonna ask you to just pause for a second I just wanted to say one thing it appears that the majority of voices that we have here tonight are really pumped up and really pro tiny-home and I just want to make a little bit of space because this is a public listening session and I just want to say that if there are concerns about tiny homes these are also the things that we want to hear and we may get no I may get no takers on that but but that's also why we're here and and it's not only to hear the naysayers but it's also

[100:00] to understand those concerns and then see how we can adapt the thoughts that we have to make a reality come true so I just want to open that space up make sure that everybody's comfortable and feels good about saying well what about this or this doesn't seem like it's going to work one question I have about tiny homes on wheels is that what I've seen is people have to buy big transport pickups to move them around so I would be wondering how people solve that issue and I mean let's face it most people put them on wheels to avoid the prying eyes of city officials because they're so well what's the purpose of having them automobiles I understand the cost of foundation but there's also a cost of building them on that that's right yeah

[101:00] so that I think that's great and that's kind of that's what I'm looking for so first I want to go because you obviously put a tiny home in a not easy place and so you move that thing around so maybe you could talk about moving it around and and do you have to own your own f-350 that's a good question and actually I was on HGTV I was on that tiny house big living and the producers said that this was the most insane move they had ever seen so to answer your question and it's just really justification really if I decide to move somewhere I'm gonna have to be either first or last month's rent or I'm gonna have to pay closing costs on a house so if I ever choose to move somewhere then what I'll do is professionally insured have a professional mover moving my house even though I could probably rent a u-haul and because it's it's eight and a half feet wide by a thirteen and a half feet tall all of our drivers license would be able to allow to drive it I don't want

[102:00] to it's me my dad built it so I'm willing to pay about you know maybe when I live in Colorado to here it would probably cost me about a thousand dollars to move here and I am well so willing to pay that if I found a really good legal spot yep so yeah I don't own a truck yes I do the question about transportation one of the first I talk to a lot of people about tiny homes cuz they come to see me constantly one of the first questions they ask after they said where can I put it is what I have to have to pull it and I go nothing there are many professional companies had tow tiny homes and there's no reason to have a sixty to eighty thousand dollar truck just full tiny home every once tomorrow why on wheels job security is not what it was when you and I had the pleasure of growing up a lot of people have to move because of jobs it's

[103:00] really nice to have your home that you can take with you instead of going and finding a box that you're gonna rent and try and make it your home or that you're gonna buy you know people in the computer industry working in Seattle for three years older for three years you know Austin for three years they could take their home with them and they don't have to live in a box and try and make it at home we don't build tiny houses we build tiny homes there's a big difference I also have another concern since we're talking about concerns just can you give us dressed one of the big reasons that I would prefer to have my house on wheels is because I can't afford $500,000 worth of lands here and I can $500,000 worth of land here in Boulder I'm happy to pay rent somebody who's willing to let me put my tiny house on there on their land and you know when it's time for me to move along because either I'm ready or

[104:00] they're ready or whatever the case is I'm able to do that and move to the next place I just like like some I think you even mentioned like no one's putting an $80,000 tiny house on a foundation on a half acres worth of five hundred thousand dollars right the land yeah and I'd like to add that I think you brought up a really good point about job stability but I also in your demographic of the retiring boomer as well you know there's a how many of us know individuals who are wealthy that have two homes that might be just them and their spouse and they're flying back and forth from two homes I know a lot of people that spend six months in one part of this country and then six months in another part of this country and their house sits empty and their utilities turned off during that other time I personally would love to see a tiny house who's renting a backyard somewhere and then traveling down to their warm weather with their instead of occupying a you know a 2,000 3,000 square foot house only half the year okay we're

[105:04] gonna go to Kurt okay I just wanted to give our briefly our experience with tiny homes my wife and I are the lucky ones the privileged ones we own a detached single-family house in Boulder but a young woman who happens to be a special ed teacher approached us and said I'm looking for a place to put a tiny home do you know of any place and we said well you know we have a backyard and so she bought one from a place in Parker or something and she spent about him on she had moved up with the big f-350 that she hired and she put it on our yard and she spent about spend about a month getting it all ready and setting up sort of a little yard space and a little walkway and stuff like that and it was lovely and she moved in and literally the very next day

[106:02] there was a bright orange sticker on our door from code enforcement and so so the city's credit they did give her about a month to to to find a different situation she found a different situation elsewhere in this city and to my knowledge she is still there with her tiny home so the point is that by making them illegal we're not actually getting rid of them were forcing people into hiding like this gentleman here and we're imposing additional costs on them because she had to hire the f-350 to come out again and move it and it's an additional stressor so we felt terrible for her we we had warned her that it was illegal and she wanted to she she felt comfortable going ahead with it but she didn't realize how dire the situation

[107:01] was so that's our experience thanks Kurt yeah so you need again please it's Ralph Fred fr ID my concern is use tiny homes for the right reason in the right place to serve the right purpose we have many many people that need housing and and we're not going to find one solution that's going to fit everything and one of the things that I come up against all the time is people that get a really the hair raises up on the back of their neck when you start to talk about density you start to talk about affordability and we need to use tiny homes in a way that promotes the well-being like mark is doing here so that everybody gets to see the the positive aspect of this and we don't get the fear you know uncertainty and doubt going and then complement that with other forms of housing that that meet other other needs

[108:00] you know equitably as well so I see tiny homes as being one of many solutions and I think the key is use it in the right place for the right reasons so that's what I would say yeah I think I like your point I look at the housing thing as a as a pie there are many slices to the pie to to manage affordability and I think you know the one thing I I think we all need to keep in mind is we actually can't afford to toss any of the pieces of the pie out but as you said we need to be judicious and thoughtful about how we're going to introduce a concept and an idea and with the hope that we can spread it I think there's hopefully some concept counsel that we could do a pilot project at some point in time on this so good evening ml Robles so it seems to me that

[109:01] there are two parts right so there's the people who are investing in owning a home right so the tiny home owner and there're the people who have who have land and it seems like in the city right there's two things that need to happen one is a make tiny houses on wheels legal but B maybe start providing a way to create land leases so that it can be kind of a no-brainer right there is right now a City Council is trying to stop a to use from being sold separately from the main house or the land lease concept which happens in commercial it happens in affordable housing right condos that's all land lease so if people can't afford land that is a big deterrent let's look into the idea of a land lease as an opportunity to enable people to have the security of bringing their home into properties in Boulder

[110:00] and I think it starts to bring home ownership not just to the tiny house but potentially to the ad use to a broader range of people that can afford it now I do have one concern and it's more not about affordability one thing we keep talking about is affordability affordability affordability affordability however this is also for wealthy people 90 houses can also be for very very wealthy people that have a different style of living and what it really amounts to is freedom so yes there is the affordability aspect in giving more freedom to people that might not already be able to afford it but there's also the aspect that there might be attorneys out there that lead a very different lifestyle doctors that lead a different lifestyle and they don't want a house they want something very small that they can go home to and I really think that that's important part we talk a lot

[111:01] about affordability but freedom is really what we should talk about so my two favorite people I always talked about their tiny house dwellers Matthew McConaughey lived in his air stream and then tiny house for like ten years before he got married to his wife now and popped up three babies and the CEO of Zappos lives in Las Vegas in a tiny house and exactly so there's a lot of brilliant uses and as my green friends know in this community is that as a personal just comment to this is that her one you mentioned people are dying and hurting but we also have environmental concerns we cannot continue to build houses and not cohabitate together and create community together anymore so for me tiny houses is also a very big path towards us getting greener and using less resources

[112:00] we just don't have the resources to throw around about it anymore so there's a sense of urgency well said I think we all think tiny homes are great is that about the general consensus I think we all think they're wonderful not done Adam any time a couple questions the rules for no for fix foundation tiny homes that just passed like last year right yesterday okay do we have any idea how many fixed foundation upper tiny home opportunities there are in Boulder has anybody done that analysis to say you know we don't want wheels as of yesterday but we do one on one fix foundations and we can potentially have X of those is that anybody well it would be similar to what our ad you and this

[113:02] the 30% saturd session so those numbers I'm sorry for saturation so it's the same numbers as ad use so one half of one percent so yeah sorry you don't have the microphone I do sorry I just wanted to clarify real quickly so the saturation only applies to the RL zones so with the rest of the city there are stones where they're allowed it does not apply we can go back and look at the Adu analysis that we did and can give you a figure of how many could potentially be built it's basically how many single-family homes do we have in the city because each of those would be potentially if it was if it was loosened even more that's the number on every lot

[114:00] on every single family home lot and the re zones we could potentially put a fixed foundation to any o re RL all ours devil's advocate a little bit I'm not bad that was advocate but I'm hearing a lot of we need to get tiny homes on wheels it sounds like that's a lot of a lot of heads nodding from up from a real estate planning perspective from a real estate investment perspective I think it doesn't make me nervous but I think it makes people nervous right when people come to bold or we're throwing around half a million dollar Lots find me one they're not there's no half million dollar loss anymore you know they're there they're more than that and that's you know this is so so people spend a lot of money on these properties from all over the place some live here some don't and I think the on wheels tiny home concept makes people nervous that's what I think so how do we alleviate that fear right how do we how

[115:01] do we call that I don't have that answer and I know people say oh well we can make them look great we're gonna put stone skirts around them they're not gonna look like they're on wheels and I just think I think like with anything you got to start with one you know you gotta have one successful one and maybe if there's a way to do well it's not gonna happen with wheels and bulgur but that's the fear I think that's what people are worried about here for a minute I just want to be cognizant that I think we've gotten into a good piece of discussion here art also had something that he was wanting to add in yes so go ahead and hit that keep your point please and then Adam just one thing I wanted to address really quick was building code compliance so as a builder myself we the homes that we

[116:01] build they're they're out of there not compliant with IRC really in two ways the 2x4 wall versus a 2x6 wall and the foundation being a trailer basically now you guys built a 240 square foot tiny homeowner foundation that is code compliant and so building codes come from two things safety and basically the requirement for environmental impacts are values and things like that you see a lot of the new building codes require some in some cases in certain jurisdictions around the country they require external insulation you know what it means some some things like that so in most cases all these homes that are being built they meet all Colorado code for our value in the foundation in this in the roof in the wall and so you've got basically two variances for code compliance now some building departments

[117:01] will say well the toilets too close to the shower because that's obviously a part of the IRC code as well but if you can build a 240 square foot foundation home the 280 square foot home I'm building right now is completely code compliant - those two factors so I think that one of the major concerns from the government side is code compliance and the fact is is they're not they're really not out of compliance and so there are there are there are answers to every concern I think if you were to say hey it's it's got to meet IRC code I'm pretty sure that some builders would be willing to put it two by six wall on a trailer although you might lose 17 square feet but that those are the big concerns the other major concern that you were just referring to about homeowners people that spend a lot of money on these homes in general they're concerned about two things one of them is outrageous they don't want to they

[118:01] don't want drugs moving into the there there it's true we've I've been to meetings this is a it's a legitimate concern they don't want people running a meth lab this is this is I'm hearing someone tell me this in another meeting but when we watch the news the DEA is always raiding a nice house in Boulder they're not raiding tiny homes and so and then the last point of that is that the is that like I said before the people who are concerned about their property values don't understand how property values are assessed you know there it's done geographically by a something that's similar in in design or size so putting putting a budget alliums next to a nice subdivision doesn't affect the impact does it have a impact the value of that home so it's and in many cases like where I live I then brighten if I were to throw a pole barn in the backyard my property value sky rock

[119:00] so there there are a lot of those concerns boil pure and simply down to education it's it's it's purely information the people do or don't have or choose not to believe or choose to believe a different thing it's it's you know fears in any project that we do is they're going to arise I think it comes down to a will of the people and I'm wondering if that's something that you were getting ready to say even though Adam and David are next and I think it does come down to just a will of deciding like you're gentlemen made it a priority of putting it in the subdivision so I'm like member of Boulder City Council I had a quick question since we have a bunch of people who both build and own is it a depreciating asset because that's that's

[120:02] just a question that I honestly don't know and I'm really really interested in because to me it's it's a home for sure but it gets lumped in sort of with the RV type of vehicles and a lot of sentences so I just want to hear from a couple people about depreciation is it a depreciating asset the property that you own your house does not appreciate it's the land unless you have put a really exceptional outrageously cool house on your property it's the value of the dirt that appreciates there is one Inspection Agency which I will not name that says they inspect tiny homes which is just BS they recently had a blog out that said tiny homes is an investment have all three shaitaan' value if they did not appreciate in value no

[121:04] well I think again there there seems to be a huge difference of opinion between tiny homes on wheels and tiny homes on fixed foundation I think y-you see that's that's that's I think you answered it on wheels and realistic I tend to agree with you if it's a fix foundation I think it absolutely appreciates and I think it actually adds value to the property that it's on even if it's an ad it's just for whatever reason there's a huge difference of opinion of there's a psychologically there's a big difference between wheels and now wheels and then we're seeing that flush out here right the fixed foundation seems to be wobbly it adds value people love it it's going in and long run it's going next million-dollar homes nobody cares it happened in Kansas City great we have anything like that on the Wheels side yeah I know I can speak

[122:03] to for my house and one of the largest mansions in Colorado it's actually called a compound is in my neighborhood and one other thing about it you know you talk about people worried about their home value I've told everyone in my neighborhood what I'm doing and how I'm doing it and how many days I have versus how many days I spend and they all tell me you go on with your bad self you do you and the houses behind me they have not depreciated in value at all so and they're very close they're within eyesight I could throw up tennis ball and hit them so the to touch on Byron's point is the fact that it is considered chattel in terms of mobile tiny houses there are the the biggest focus that I'm

[123:00] I would like to be able to implement in as far as the private sector is concerned to be able to help combat that very issue is there are creative methods that are out there within the commercial and business war to be able to take that chattel aspect provide the value for the homeowner as the homeowner because really if you think about it the tiny house is valuable to that owner because well it's their house but if it's the equity aspect that we're looking at to be able to okay if I sell this tiny house am I going to get out of it what I what I put into it so in the private sector there are certainly some business aspects and some things that you can be able to integrate into say community style living to be able to add some equity to that homeowner so that way okay I don't want to live in here anymore but I'm gonna take my house with me I can sell my equity and no longer live in this community and then take my profit or loss depending on how the market is and that still gives you that same quasi

[124:01] equity aspect of a traditional home and I own my own property as well that is on my house so I can sell my property if I wanted to as well so without going delving into like a lot of the details the the equity in and of itself is within the land because by to Byron's point the land itself is what holds that value but there are practices within the business and commercial sectors that you can actually divvy up portions of that to the individuals who are living within that community that is then equitable and marketable and they can sell it a profit or a loss that is one avenue that can be explored yes all right excuse me my name is Dave ensign

[125:01] so I'm the ex-officio of liaison to the housing advisory board from the Planning Board and just thought I'd throw in a few observations based on things I've heard planning board routinely sees things in the code that are frustrating to us of course and the tiny homes thing is an example of something where we see a lot of value and we always look to hear from the community and I really think AB for doing this because we look for opportunities to advise council and to give them our opinion I know at least on a few occasions in our annual letter we've recommended looking into the tiny homes pilot for example I wanted to just talk about the building code updates that went in I think that we need to keep one thing in mind before those updates went in I don't think there was any way you could do the on wheels thing before so what happened was this fix foundation thing came in because the the staff decided to adopt this appendix Q

[126:01] in the international codes that loosens some standards for the lofts in the stairways and overhead windows and things like that so it actually can I have opened up the discussion which was kind of a cool thing my sense is that if Planning Board and council had told staff hey we we want to address on wheels they would have had to go off and work for some time you know six months and the overall goal that they were trying to do was just bring the code updates to the latest version of the international standards so I don't think we lost anything so I just wanted to make sure people didn't think that we have been losing ground on this however there was not I guess it was not seen as an opportunity to necessarily address that I do think that address those kind of things we're going to as boards and commissions and as the public really try to help council prioritize what to put on the work plan so we have the wheels one which we've heard a lot of voices in

[127:00] the room talk about great things that it does for the individual and this is really important we also have an overall inclusionary housing an affordable housing landscape that we have to deal with so does that fall well within that and is it something that we'd like to add and it may be reasonably low hanging fruit like you said it may not be that big of a change to our building code to do something like that but it's something that would have to be researched and scheduled the other thing is the zoning laws that really make it hard for us to do things like they're doing in Longmont dwelling units are very specifically defined and dwelling units only a certain number of them can appear on a lot attached units are different in high-density residential you can have big buildings with apartments and condos and stuff units are very hard given our current zoning laws so that's gonna take ordinances and we're gonna have to go write that law right so and there are opportunities there's a area to land that we could annex and we could write a specific zone

[128:01] to apply to that new piece of land and do a pilot like they're doing in long run or potentially if it's a big enough parcel we could combine it with other types of housing and fit some have some some tiny homes in so there's a lot of moving parts here what I think that we really have to do is help have and Planning Board and council kind of prioritize which are the ones that are kind of trickling in the top that we want to retract soon and start to get those on you know prioritized so I think that's just kind of the way it works so I just wanted to kind of talk about that a bit thank you David one thing I do want to add to that with the low-hanging fruit that you brought up is the financial low-hanging fruit of doing trailers as well as because there are so many people that want to live in our community and if they've already built their home we're not asking the city to provide any dollars and landowners are usually building out the pads so it you know it seems like that's something that we could also be looking at as well as with the ordinances I'm

[129:02] curious could Planning Board take what Lyons did and utilize it in some capacity for ours so Lyons is interesting because they have one tiny homes community that I could find that is more of a kind of a rental resort and I think resorts can be built under different kinds of Zoning right little cabins that people live in temporarily so there's that well they're 80 users and they also have 80 years right and so they also have an ordinance that they did to allow tiny homes as a to use and there is allows on wheels so that that would be our model yeah exactly so they they said they took that step that we haven't yet done a note on that there's a couple things I want to we're gonna be wrapping up soon so there's two things I want to make I just want to make the note that Lyons it's a very limited program I think for twelve tiny homes ten tiny homes excuse me in

[130:04] the whole town yeah and it's a small town however but the other thing that I want to say is we're gonna wrap up the listening session portion of this in a few minutes I want to check in with anyone who hasn't spoken yet and see if there's anybody out there who feels like they haven't spoken and they would like to add something in at this point and if not you with the mic can speak and then I think we'll take two more um so I was curious what is the problem with tiny homes being in mobile home parks and like I think that would be a great first step because there's a lot of really junky mobile homes that could really get used to get pulled out sent to the dump and something nice put in and what they did over in the Mapleton Park they have rehab sand mobile homes that look great and J you

[131:00] can jump in you're the expert who works for the city but as a Planning Board member I've been exposed to this the zoning for mobile home parks the imagining has very detailed language on how those are manufactured how they're tied down and they're very specific to the types of of land use arrangements between those trailer homeowners and the owners of the land and also the type of construction that's done in those mobile homes so they're constructed under and there are specific standards for a mobile home fabrication that are built into the code so the code just doesn't have any language that accommodates anything other than that right now now that doesn't mean that we couldn't update mhm and that might be the kind of thing we would do with an ordinance or we would just define a new designation depending on the need that goes into law there's a lot of research that goes into it it takes the staff has to do

[132:02] community outreach and you know I just wanted to also bring up in response to the question about because I'm a real estate agent as well and you know one thing that I've noticed because I deal with a lot of different financial levels in the sales all around Boulder County and I get a lot of people who want to buy a little a lot of land up in Boulder County and throw a tiny home on it and I think that their the the fear about the wheels is that people are transient and a lot of people think that the world is still the way it was 20 years ago when you had a job and you worked there for 25 years and then you got your retirement and that's just not true anymore and that's why we need to open up the idea of the wheels because you know like like he said you might have to take a job or just do 18 months things here and there and I think having that's a good option sorry moving on

[133:01] I guess I'd like to just make one recommendation it sounds like we're there's interest in tiny homes on wheels but also other structures on a house one of the limitations we have is the saturation twenty percent saturation of homes can have something in the backyard detached and that would be a real stumbling block we don't address that in conjunction with conversations around tiny homes on wheels so that's I mean even though this is a housing advisory board that's one thing that I think we need to start really talking to the funding board talking to council about is there an appetite to start increasing that saturation level all right you you get under so I really appreciate

[134:00] everybody's insight and comments on this and I think what's really imperative and I'd kind of put this out to everybody in the public now is to move forward on this what to think about so you know we have I understand your point about code compliance but I don't think really building code compliance is ever the issue the issue is how we attain code compliance with the development code of the lanes code the zoning code and from that perspective we don't have it right now so how do we get there excuse me and so in that regard I think where everybody really needs to start thinking about or what kind of things can we do in terms of design standards what kinds of properties are they appropriate and what kinds of properties are they not you know there's going to be certain limitations you got to realize that any sort of any sort of legislative efforts you really have to take into consideration everybody's concerns and even if somebody's concerns are going on property values you know might not be based in and in

[135:00] fact or during the actual fiscal analysis it's still going to be there and so the best thing that you can do is really come up with with concepts that really kind of address what those concerns may be in terms of design standards right so that you know this is what the facade is going to look like on the outside these are the areas where they're most appropriate in a yard so somewhere where they're screening somewhere where there's viable entrance at cetera et cetera what of a minimum amounts of time that somebody can stay there you know so there's somebody's not coming in staying it's almost like it's short term rentals right they come in and they stay for a week and then they leave and so those things are legitimate concerns and I think it's it's you know very viable to say we can come up with a structure that can address those things it can really kind of come up with a concept to say this is how and this is why tiny homes on wheels can also work but I think there's definitely a challenge to try to figure out how that can go about and how

[136:00] that can address some of those other concerns too and so I put it out to people that know a lot more about this than me but I just say that's something that I love to hear in terms of where they can go how we can put them there how long they should stay there etc and I think that can really start to make that notion a lot more viable in terms of the whole political process which is necessary to get to the next step so thank you I'm sure shox gonna thank everyone at the conclusion but I just also besides that I wanted to add that if there are some of you who are not comfortable talking in a group setting or have more you want to say you can email us at housing Advisory Board at Boulder Colorado gov or you can go onto the city website be heard Boulder has a section right now where people can make comments about tiny homes and so you have other options if you didn't get to say everything you want here as Judy said I

[137:10] will say thank you I think Danny wrapped up a lot of what I was going to put into my closing statement here around that kind of just the solutions to put forth if you see them and that segues into what you just said send them to us that's really what we're here to try to do start to get a sense of if we want to do this in Boulder how can we move forward what are the most viable pathways and we need your ideas for that and that's why we're here tonight so a ton of thanks to all of you for coming out and giving us your stories giving us your ideas and helping us try to move forward with it all right and we are gonna move to the rest of our business now we can just leave these chairs right where we are and we're gonna do the boring stuff but thank you so much guys we'll take a

[138:02] break here for board brief one five [Music] [Music]

[139:03] [Music] okay hey guys I have a quick interruption during this hello hello if you spoke tonight and you didn't fill out a sheet would you do that okay so if you spoke just give it to Cory

[140:22] [Music] [Music]

[142:25] you board members your break is over and again to the public who spoke those sheets or up by Cory's table there you can fill them out we are on their tables good

[144:32] ignite Sigma s PG ne T Mason I'm trying to get you home on time go ahead and start again so a secondary call to order here and our first piece after the listening session we have approval of

[145:00] the minutes from January 22nd 2020 so we'll make a motion to approve the minutes can I make the motion I'm making the motion to approve the minutes from January 2020 thank you okay so we'll go ahead and vote on the minutes Mason can you hear us okay all in favor aye the minutes from January 22 2020 are approved unanimously thank you so moving on matters from the board and I'm kinda gonna wait for Mason to come back in here because we're gonna talk a little bit about our March meeting and this meeting the meeting on homelessness

[146:08] March 18th just like I just wanted to touch base real quick about clarifying for everybody up here because it has bounced back and forth in apologies from the chair on the bounciness but there was some back and forth on whether we do joint or not and now it is moved back if I'm correct Corey to the 18th that is correct okay our gonna discuss that I believe tonight when it what I think that's the next agenda item coming up so yes it did get moved back to the 18th okay the Wednesday awesome thank you and then Brenda do you have some input on that meeting somebody just give us what you got well it's not fair to put Brenda on the spot I haven't prepared anything

[147:01] specifically about that meeting but I am part of our engagement Department so I am here to support engagement for that process however it is you all need me to support okay great thanks I wasn't sure if you had some specific if you would like her and we will be talking to you further I'm sure do you want me to give it just a quick overview of what happened what time you held that record sure so I mean I put it in the email so council had a briefing I can't tell you the exact date but they basically requested that both housing Advisory Board and Human Rights Commission I'm sorry Human Relations Commission that both of those boards that board and the board and that Commission that they provide some feedback to Council to try

[148:01] to explore what are there's things that we're not currently doing to address homelessness in Boulder new ideas that we have not explored before our current practice is that we could potentially strengthen and so staff had the great idea whoa hey this seems like a great opportunity we'll have a joint board meeting between AB and HRC public would have one place to go to visit and it wouldn't have to go to multiple boards to share their ideas it would save staff time and it would be a good opportunity for the two boards to interact we met with the chairs last week and HRC was the their chairs were pretty clear that they were not interested in a joint meeting they said that wasn't the direction they'd heard from council and that they have a lot of business to attend to that night and that's basically they felt that they should be better served by having separate

[149:01] meetings so all the chairs basically agreed at that meeting that okay we'll go back to our original plan that's why it was kind of abrupt and so we went back to the meeting on the 18th and that's kind of where we are today so we'd still want to do the type of engagement that you guys talked about way back in January and that's why Brenda is here and if there are and we're happy to talk through some ideas you know Brenda and I both went and went to what lunchtime webinar to talk about the Socratic circle which could have been and could be an opportunity but I think there might be able when I heard from the chairs that our last meaning to that might be a little too soon at the March meeting so we could potentially revisit that or we can pattern it on the existing what we just saw in terms of a listening session so and one other piece that I'll plug in and I'll be quiet the

[150:00] homeless bus tour and is going to be March 12th so the Thursday before your meeting so hopefully everybody is already RSVP'd but that'll be a great opportunity you can interact with HRC members there learn more about the issue I think that it's shaping up to be a really fascinating tour so if you can make it I would highly encourage it so I'm not gonna have answer any other questions you might have that's it okay thanks yeah so I'm gonna just leave it there with Jays schnapps us of it and we so we now sit back in the position of having to put together that meeting and we had big dreams I think there was a lot of excitement around so I want to kind of read with that and our time frame is shorter now for preparing we had two volunteers to work on that preparation I want to I

[151:01] think first just check with the whole board to see if we're still interested in essentially doing the same thing we were discussing initially and and if we're good to go back to that I can say I love the idea so I was pretty enthusiastic in it you know three weeks all right enough time to get that and you know we kind of talked about ways that we were going to try to generate turnout and make sure we had ample turned out and even you know provided meals you can you know contribute into that but stuff like that I was down with all that stuff and I just I I really loved to see that done right would be my thing and I don't know if three weeks is more than enough time not enough time but if that would be my big concern no that's great points so

[152:07] here's what we were thinking cuz the date was moving around so we were like we get would come and donate so there was just some finagling with that I approached the so what we thought about whether or not we'd get people here and in lieu of getting people here we go to them it's a vulnerable population we should be going to them and so I'm I'm in a space on her name over at the bridge house at the emergency center on 30th Street Isabel sorry Isabel has offered us potentially to go there so we can go there provide food I have the same kind of a listening set up that way they don't have to come to us plus Brenda brought up a good point tonight is that for them to get into the shelter or to get into the services they have to be over there so if they come here they're missing out on their shelter for the night so us going there is appropriate and yeah it's

[153:05] totally enough time a majority of the individuals there have been engaged on our social media and we've already since the last meeting hit all of the emergency slack groups and at the unhoused group so they're prepared and note that we're doing this they're just waiting to hear from us when we plan update so I have a couple questions one is what is the capacity there the room capacity I'll find out and my other question is since council wants us to find out a new idea of strategies and tools for the unhoused I imagine besides people who are unhappy there you want us to invite other people in the community too is that correct that's what I talked with Elizabeth about listen I'm sorry so there is

[154:02] capacity for both the people who are nor we're gonna talk about it okay and so so then I want to say that I had agreed to do the part about engagement still and so how does everyone feel even though the details are not down yet I have a list of about 20 or 30 places that I could send out a simple save-the-date to so until you know that it will be March 18th at 6 o'clock and and we'll let them know again once the data is but to say that date and does everyone's own screw okay I would just do two or three sentences you know so is everyone just trusting me that those sentences will be appropriate and we can do that okay thanks I'll talk with Isabel and find out about the room capacity we kicked around a couple of whether it be at go ahead Brenda and now your you want trimmin yeah one thing that we've found

[155:00] successful and engagement with vulnerable populations is to let the folks who work with those populations co-create yes I've been with us so it's possible that a Wednesday at 6 o'clock at severe weather shelter might be a rough time for them to be doing anything other than housing people who have come to severe weather shelter and providing the services for the folks who are there so Isabel Singh amenable to it at that time yeah I mean right I didn't know how specific you are with her about yeah I'm okay that it might be and how many people might show up we have a call scheduled so we can actually add in I didn't think about the room capacity piece yes additional questions yeah confirm with her that that's a good time for the folks who are there and any folks who might be coming from outside of there to be in the space yeah and it brings up a good point which Terry and I were talking about too is that to create some ease if the first half hour is that it's above face that we're all having food and sitting and breaking bread together before we go into a listening

[156:01] session to have that be more of a welcoming experience I believe they 30 00 everyone good night good to know so that could be the beginning of the session as you all come and have dinner yeah that's what I was going to ask I was wondering if our timing of 6 o'clock is actually appropriate for that yeah he's a bill when this is once we had the date yeah so the the one piece I just wanted real quick is for members of the board do we have some flexibility can everybody have some flexibility on that I'll make sure to as long as we know was it's that bait it's that date it's that date and could be a few hours before yeah the state at time and you know I think as it's a rolling thing too we

[157:02] could you know we could start things as you said it's gonna be kind of a hangout time initially and then we'll get into the listing session so I think if somebody rolled in late that would also work fine probably right I also have another question a Cori maybe you can answer this because obviously we won't have it on video but we'll be recording it but is there a way that we like are these microphones only work here is there something we can do so people can hear the speakers you know we don't have the capacity to do something like that we don't have the equipment necessary the only thing that I have is the small recording device and so you know I don't have a microphone either so if we're in a very large space and people are not loudspeakers and we don't have them close enough to the microphone it may not record everything but that's pretty much all the equipment we have so that's we have taken SIA Cory

[158:00] when we chose the off-site locations and we have that little thing in the center of the table and we have mics up can we do the same thing what do you mean mics up well there the table cut like we just used out there no this is tied to the city's your camera for the these portable mics are tied to this sound system in chambers and it's not something that we can just take with us it's built into this is it possible we can get like what do people do like rent a little microphone or use a microphone or something I mean don't we need no not being heard at not being tape recorded and then well it will be recorded like I said I have this recorder and it does have the ability to pick up sound so long as people are close enough to it and speak up we can look into renting equipment but that could get really pricey yeah I'm just letting you guys know because this is gonna come out of your budget for the year and it could cost upwards of five

[159:00] hundred dollars to rent equipment for the day yeah what are we doing when we were at spruce it was a small enough space that the table microphone recorder was able to capture we just talk loud right you just talk loud and it was able to pick everything up but if we're talking about a mess listening session like tonight I could prop it up in the center but it there's no guarantee that it'll capture everything so that's just something to consider shall we just suggest initially that we're gonna use our existing means yeah but let's just put it out here somebody in this room knows somebody who does sound in some way shape or form and maybe we can get something that could record and serve the purpose so if anybody's got anybody in their back you might know that let's just put it out there and see if we can get something better so that we can effectively record those voices I mean it'd be nice to have recorded voices for the meeting that's that's effective in a

[160:02] way it feels bad to me when I say we're doing this other type of meeting and because you know this population that we want to hear we're not gonna hear some of them may know I want to record it so I think it might be important to make that optional for people that people who rights to have the recorder turned off so I say if you really want to be heard loud I have a walkie just point to bring up can't help it everything but uh so we 30 or something right for Open Meetings Act for the Sunshine Law we're gonna need a just notice it for then as well have quorum so I will say one benefit about going to that community dinner is that some of the folks who have not been able to access services through coordinated entry can come and have that dinner it's open to the public so you may be able to

[161:00] meet with some people who the current services now are not necessarily good pathways for them and I just want to clear up it wasn't Isabel that I was talking to I just checked my notes I was speaking with Melissa okay that's Judy go ahead so when we were at this meeting with the Human Relations Commission Jacque mentioned something that I thought was a really good idea while we're looking for tools and new ideas and new strategies to help for people who are unheated we confine it to housing and so we not veer off into areas where we don't have expertise or learning like more mental health services or more alcohol rehab services

[162:00] or whatever that we can find it two ideas about housing so I just wanted to have us all talk about that I think I want to revisit that comment because I do think that this format that we're putting back together here I might I would pull back on that a little bit because I don't know how viable that is to say hey everybody we want to hear about it but we only want to hear about this from you so I think it's probably it's it's gonna be a broader discussion we may be able to give that as a prompt and say hey what what works for you as interim structures that we can put together that we haven't thought about that you know and we can maybe give it some direction but I'm sure it's gonna we're gonna hear many different perspectives on many different things so we want to have some questions maybe some means of frames the discussion a little bit yeah I actually had a question about that was the ask from the council did that come with just

[163:00] this general question or did was there going to be a presentation from staff on ideas that then the boards would comment on because generally the that's the format we always get when we're asked to comment on something is that there'll be a set of proposals from staff but if this is specifically an open-ended question then it sounds like this format will work but I just want to make sure that there wasn't something also yeah there's some very specific stuff they were asking for let me let me turn that to Jay real quick the council when they made the request it was a very generic request but staff has been talking about it and one option and you guys can tell me what you think about this there are several council members who have floated specific ideas right so maybe we address those as part of the staff presentation and that sort of gives you something to kind of react to but the idea is we didn't want to limit it to just a few suggestions the idea is if there's

[164:02] something new that we haven't considered before we definitely want to explore that and input I think that just to be clear what council asked for is you know we don't want a list of 50 things we would like you know a handful or less of topics that we can ask staff to go back and do some additional work on two questions one you just said the staff presentation you're not expecting that us to get over there and you're gonna present something before the dinner right what are you talking about the stress staff presentation to us you did say presentation didn't you no no I think if the word presentation was I thought maybe you were just talking about when you when the request was made or something no so yeah same is the joint meeting what staff would propose is that you would have a listening session but it's the same format right so staff our

[165:01] homelessness person would go through and explain we have homeless strategy that was adopted in 2018 yeah the meeting yeah just to provide that context and sort of a you know a basis of information so but I'm thinking we're thinking that's like 15 20 minutes tops tops yeah even less and you're gonna learn more from the tour to a lot of that's gonna get covered on the tour but for the people in the audience to understand what it is we're currently doing I think it's important to come I think it's just I think it's worth heaven maybe a discussion briefly about that and just how much time that would be and purpose of it and the value of it and I see Brenda yeah thinking about it over there also so yeah exactly yeah my thing I want some clarity to around because there's been some things

[166:00] that have happened behind closed doors between you and councilors some somebody else because you keep referring all I know about is when we were at retreat for the work plan where that came from with the HRC and us working on this was specifically Adam and Rachel had pitched the unhoused comprehensive plan that was going to pick up any onion and intended consequences that have happened from coordinated entry and they pitched a package of services for it and council was like I can't put it on the work plan it's got a lot going on how about we discuss it in April and that's when Rachel's suggested that hab and HRC pick it up and do the legwork with people before hand and give recommendations back so for what I heard was that around the services that they're pitching as fillers for what the coordinated entry is missing these were

[167:02] possible options and then the question became we have individuals with lived experience that are not at the table so we're we're here reigning without drawing lived experience to the table and asking them for their input on a court on a comprehensive on house plan and so it sounds like there's been discussion with council since then and I'm curious because you were like don't bring back 50 bring back and I was like I think there's already stuff on the table is there not there are stuff on the table so I don't think what you just described is inconsistent with what I was describing I think what I understood I wasn't at the retreat so I don't know exactly what everyone said but I thought there was a Qunari what am i understanding there is a component of are there new ideas it wasn't just a reaction to what Adam and Rachel have thrown out there is that accurate yeah I

[168:02] think it was just the new what they there was new ideas in their comprehensive plan yeah and I think this is this is what partially what sank the joint meeting was there just wasn't clarity on what the ask was and and eight HRC was concerned that we're blowing something wide open and andrey addressing their entire strategy and there was discomfort there so i think one thing that i'm thinking about what this is we're gonna get as you said I think if I'm hearing what Mason saying this kind of let's glean some new especially for the entry coordinated gleen where we're missing what are some things we can do to to close those gaps is that is that correct was that part of that do you have what they proposed do you have what was presented to everybody on console the unhand that Adam and Rachel I do not have that okay so it's got there's probably five different

[169:02] things in there with some general services that are being asked for it wasn't made up I mean it's it that's what I'm saying is like there was clarity around it I think there was a fuzz on how are we moving this forward in right so maybe we'll be helpful J is if you have access to that can we see it yes so that'll be part of your that'll be part of the memo great we'll get a memo on this from Vicki excellent at least a week before okay if there's any way to get that sooner than a week before I have it I can send it you have it yeah let's get it into our hands I think as soon as we can so that we can look at that so my understanding from from I went back and listened to our meeting when Kristin presented what counsel had requested and memo that you wrote all of us about it and I thought that our task was pretty clear and that we're supposed to invite public participation to learn new ideas tools

[170:03] and strategies to help for people who are on housed and my thought was that counsel was looking to make sure that everything was covered and they had all the new input and and that as you said I mean council members have told me that when that when we present them with 40 or 50 ideas they're not going to pay much attention but when we present them with four or five they're going to look at it more seriously so if we can hear what everyone thinks are new ideas and we'll hear a lot of things that aren't new ideas but that with then then our job would be to call that down to a few ideas to present to Council that's what I thought we were supposed to do not what I heard but this is this is exactly where well I was in the meeting right no I know you know I know I know but when we all sat down I'm I'm feeling like where

[171:04] this meeting is gonna go is is that we're gonna have a lot of input probably a broad range of things I think our role as hab is to do just that is to glean and I would I would argue that we put a lens on it of housing in other words things that we are engaged with was how do we provide these things but we don't necessarily limit it to that in other words if we're if we hear something out there that's an idea that has nothing to do with housing and it has to do with services or then we'll pull that in as well you know but our strongest recommendation is likely going to be around things that have to do with with housing I think we try to come up with a set of recommendations that are related to housing and then we can tangental right we can meetings there's anything really salient that comes up you know that's out of our wheelhouse

[172:01] but it's really a good point that it's a good point we're gonna bring it forth yeah brenda is there away on be heard boulder to bring up just like with tiny houses do the comment piece for on house so that because I'm a part of a couple of private groups for unhoused individuals and it'd be great if they could write in if they don't can and can't attend or aren't attending yeah we can certainly put something up on be her Boulder also I was talking with Lindell Ellison who is the resident services manager at the Lee Hill permanent supportive housing site which is folks who are just on the other side of homelessness and she said if you if we could send her a worksheet that had the questions on it she could distribute it to her residence she said it's hard for them to get out in the evenings usually but she'd be happy to collect answers to those things so if we come up with three or five prompt questions there are lots of different ways we can distribute that

[173:02] while I stood up I'm thinking about sort of the business versions of the meeting when it came up with the presentation I'm just trying to picture the at bridge house how we're doing a presentation and then how a discussion like this is happening after the meeting while in the middle of severe weather shelter the time I was there I believe they use the whole building for beds and so just asking Melissa what what those capabilities are it's also hard to have a culling conversation in front of very vulnerable folks who've just given you all of their stories and then to say well this piece is important then this piece is less important we'll might might land rough on those folks so I think we want to be really thoughtful about how the business meeting happens within the context of the listening session having a business meeting there would we well know I think I think the

[174:01] question is I think the question there is when you bring a good point we don't have time between that meeting there's no second meeting then we don't have another meeting to say these are the pieces that we're gonna put together and deliver to Council so in some way shape or form we have to wrap it up in that meeting unless we have another meeting that we call a notice and we go to a bar and well something interesting I'm just gonna throw this out there if we meet from say we meet earlier and we're doing 30 5:30 6 o'clock or something and we'd owe their the road house across the way has a private conference room and the lower level of it so we could adjourn for 15 minutes go across to the Roadhouse and use the conference room and downstairs and finish up our meeting meeting public notice just so that were

[175:05] clear everything's public notice that's good because I yeah we don't want to do it you know with everybody there I mean maybe it still work the question to bridge house and say hey is there a room that isn't in use that we could step out and the there's I I like the road ability depending until some March and one thing to that I just I'm thinking ahead about logistics if we do have a staff person come in to do a brief presentation like what Jay suggested about the homelessness strategy and whatever do they have the capability for us to be able to set up a computer and have a screen and all of the other things that come along with a presentation I would personally not go that route I would say that Jay could give a five-minute recap on where we're

[176:01] at with the coordinated entry or something like that if you're comfortable with it but is like little maybe paper or maybe it's a dry erase board and a flip board something a little more human than low-key Vicky did did a 10-minute version of what she did for council at a meeting we had with Boulder Junction neighbors recently so maybe it's something more like that just with no she didn't have a no PowerPoint or anything she just shared the things that we did that they had been working on and the results they've seen she was a really nice handout that she's been working on for how's that yeah different steps I think you know I'll be a brief but uh having staff kind of lay out what's out there first because a lot of people might not even know and so it's really important to get that out to them say these are out there for you especially if we're gonna ask them what are we missing

[177:00] right well what do you have right and so and what I think is really important right yeah hand out looking at that and they can see it and and then get feedback I think is great so are we gonna ask Vicki to participate and then no I'm sure he's planning it's flexible how you know it's really up to you to decide what that what that looks like I have another question so I have not seen the space that they're Brenda you have seen this space I have you know I just want to make sure that we're not having the meeting at a time when the people who are staying there that that's their space and we're preventing them from you laying out their mattresses and stuff like that that's the question to Melissa they have 30 to 6:00 I'm not sure what time the beds go down the beds are all cots that are sort of up against the wall there's two spaces one side is for

[178:01] the folks who are in the path to home program and the other side of severe weather shelter so it'll be a good question for Melissa as far as how the logistics of that work so Mason you're gonna be on that right - with the logistics to keep in mind the sooner we can confirm space the better because I do have to at least put advance notice in the paper for these meetings and pin down the exact locations and approximate times so that I can put out the proper notices for these meetings but I will need to know by the next chairs meeting I promised very latest something to you by the end of Friday perfect doesn't work I'm totally fine with saying let's kind of bail on it and try again you know I mean if the logistics just don't work or whatever right we all need to decide if we're gonna be looking for another space is that gonna be you guys so we're gonna be stuff here's my sense

[179:00] of urgency on this we're losing the shelter in the spring the the emergency shelter in the spring we've got massive issues on the end house we've got sweeps going on I personally have a sense of urgency around not postponing these things just because we have beds to go home to and this is urgent for I mean I was kind of shocked about the seven eight hundred vets on our streets so I I think this is absolutely doable this is kind of an I'm just saying like yeah we'll figure it out yeah I think it's emergency to also because we can't this is the first time consuls asked specifically asked anything of us and if we don't get it done then we won't be able to deliver so the issue is you know if you find out the place isn't right because it'll prevent people from putting out their cots or being comfortable and I'm sure you can find another place mr. Lee Hill Lee Hill

[180:02] permanent supportive housing has a lovely lobby area that I'm sure they would be happy to let us use oh really okay I can't promise but but I think they would probably welcome a conversation in their in their residence okay I'm so sorry finally as a very last backup pretty much all of the spaces are booked that night but the Senior Center sorry the aging well West eat is available okay we would have to pay for somebody to be there attempt but it's you know there's a little diner so there's a lot of pieces on the plate Mason you kind of our point it seems like do you need someone else working with you on aspects of it or or just thank you okay let us let us know if you do if you need anything from anybody in that Thank You Brenda yeah and I appreciate that we

[181:06] spent we spent a little bit of extra time on that but I think we needed to pull it back together so thank you for that have retreat planning we were gonna talk about what we're gonna do with our retreat because this is the meeting that we have to do that so there's there's two things I didn't look at when I looked up at boarding Commission's today I didn't see I didn't see when people are sworn in as being our new people are they already well that are to be done by the time we have the retreat didn't you send something out that said if anyone had any specific things they want to talk about so all shocked and I

[182:03] need to know right now is if in the next couple of days anybody does have certain topics they want to talk about to let us know and then we can go ahead and plan and we'll meet with the woman who's going to be the facilitator so we don't have to talk about it not tremendously but yes yes sieved anything from anyone on that as far as topics so get in this week yeah if you if you have something yeah get it into us okay correct yep all right I got an interview next week I was gonna ask you if you're going again good I think items C we don't have anything on tonight's meeting I will listen to

[183:00] the to it on television and write up a report about it like I do and submit it just to have ahead of time I mean you know submit it everyone changes yeah standard standard process on that and then D is in there we're not gonna have any new business so that's great are we gonna talk about what what did transpire tonight if there are any issues that are important to us I'm gonna just debrief okay okay with that so that wraps up matters from the board matters from staff addressing homelessness bus tour we've already kind of been there I actually have a question about it I'm really curious how you handle how we're doing this like I mean it feels really weird it feels like we're what what are we doing what I mean

[184:03] wouldn't it was so we're touring the topic is literally addressing homeless bus tour are we going where they're sweeping or and I just I can't wrap my brain around this what does this look like did you look at the stops that we listed yes and okay and to me if we just walking through the buildings and going to the courthouse judge Cook will give a 10-15 minute overview about how she sees homelessness in her courtroom and the tools that she has at her disposal 45 so I didn't get this agenda I yeah I didn't see this detail of going into the judge so they'll keep going this makes more sense the next stop will is the homeless shelter so basically you'll go in and as in people been in the homeless shelter before I mean it's pretty interesting so

[185:02] I mean it's beautiful oh I'm sorry no start we start with coordinated entry is the next stop and with the severe weather shelter next door they'll talk about sort of the three services that are provided there then they go to the homeless shelter Gregg arms will give sort of a ten minute overview typic talking about you know who they serve and you know how they how it operates you'll see sort of the men's side the women's side the lunchroom just if we're going to be a very quick tour through and then we haven't quite figured out if you're gonna go into Lee Hill or if we're just gonna walk by it but just basically try to show that continuum so from you know being in the you know some people their first experience with our system is the courts and then the next step is through coordinated entry or the severe weather shelter and next it's the homeless shelter and then it's a

[186:00] transitional or permanent supportive housing the transitional housing so we're trying to show the continuum and ideally we would show someone fully housed at the end but that's been a little challenging does that help yeah it's not what I thought it was going to be I missed that on the event rate I didn't see the scheduling on that okay so we good on that yes all right great welcome back mark knew you couldn't stay away from the exciting stuff so we have just debrief now on the listening session and anybody have any comments for debrief I think what you're doing is awesome I almost want to take a trip to Kansas City to see it all right and I hope we can do something around here like that sooner rather than later

[187:00] because I think it's just great so I guess my question is we had this really good productive meeting and I hope we have a little discussion about what we should do about it then do we actually want to write something up that we give to Council that would just be three or four I mean it seemed like three different things emerged as being possibilities to maybe move the needle a little farther along and one would be perhaps lightening things up about tiny homes on wheels and one would be perhaps two different types of pilot projects one where maybe tiny homes with wheels could rent space or something and one would be a project like like marks that had tiny homes maybe in an area that was partially industrial so it would so it

[188:03] would be easier to accomplish perhaps that had that had some case management right there or service assistance or whatever at the right word is you know and do we want to do anything or do we want to just let this evaporate I think my my thought on that is for me this is gonna be an item that I'm gonna put into our retreat I think that anything that we do put forth needs to be well thought out and put together so it's not something from my perspective but I think that we want to just say you know we had this listening session here's what we heard but I think I'd like to see us engage with it put some backbone to it and then and then move it forward I absolutely agree I think that's the best way to go about it I think there's very there's some very loaded issues there particularly once we're referring

[189:00] that to Town Council you know particularly with that regulatory side and stuff like that and I think there was some strong sentiment that we are today that you know we can relay in the best way but they'll probably be a good retreat thing talk about how we convey those things and maybe that can underscore a broader retreat issue which is you know we're going to have all these listening sessions and we'll have another significant one that or our belts by the time we do that retreat you guys do the retreat whatever but at that point in time I think you know have a good idea of saying here's how we're going to kind of decompress the Lycians listening session and then relay that information from that point forward right yeah because I think there's some process for that and probably you know doing it on the fly is probably not the best thing yeah anyone okay that said I will

[190:01] adjourn the have regular meeting for February 25th 2020 thank you all very much [Music] [Music] live from Paris on forth like that [Music]