May 25, 2022 — Housing Advisory Board Regular Meeting

Transcript

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

[0:00] the monthly meeting of the housing boulder housing advisory board today is may 25th 2022. i mean i call i'm michael o'casey the chair of hab i'm calling the meeting order starting with a roll call so um please announce yourself if you are present uh juliette boone hi juliet uh cole ogren here hello hi good to if you have uh perry promotes sir um jennifer livovich i believe jennifer is absent uh julianne ramsey okay julian not here yet uh danny teodoro okay danny i just talked to him half an hour ago i'm sure he'll be joining us but i believe we have a quorum and can proceed

[1:02] um you have four agenda review uh we'll be welcoming new planning bjork board liaisons we'll introduce them in a moment approving the minutes from the april meeting we have a public participation period with open comment in about five minutes and we do have i think at least two people on board for that item six is matters from the board we'll have an overview of the affordable home ownership program from eric swanson who manages that program for the city um as well as a review of the 2019 volvo affordable homeowners survey um we'll be considering a letter of the council emerging action on that phase two in the planning reserve that's something i drafted for your consideration uh this month it's not a policy statement it's more like a a call to action um and uh we'll be discussing our

[2:01] potential hab retreat in july i think you've all heard that um city meetings will not be live by that time uh item seven matters from staff uh we'll be hearing about a proposal on the regional affordable housing implementation um and and more about the council study session coming up in october to discuss middle income ownership um item eight will be debating the meeting and doing a calendar check at about 8 50 and adjourning by nine um so uh with that um i know we have our new planning board the uh liaison john gerstle aboard mark mcintyre who's new the planning board has been named as the ultimate supposed to hopefully attend when john kent and john do you wanna welcome you first of all and please say hi and introduce yourself thank you hello um pleasure to be here and i'm looking forward to learning a lot and hopefully uh

[3:00] stimulating the interaction between planning board and uh housing advisory board i i understand that uh julia's husband is a colleague of mine on planning board anyway so some of that communication may already be taking place but well he's actually my brother john oh is he your brother oh yeah he's not my husband okay well somewhere in the family whatever okay you know i just learned that myself wow you are a power family the balloons are i shouldn't have conclusions that's right um well welcome john we're glad to have your perspective uh and glad to see you tonight um i believe you've all had a chance item four we've got a lot of chance to see the minutes tiffany sent out from april 27 2022 but they would like to make a motion to approve those minutes

[4:01] so moved or making motion to approve the minutes thank you do we have a second second great uh all in favor aye all aye i believe we had a 4-0 approval vote on that uh so noted um moving on to public participation um i believe we have um ben siegel on the line and you have 30 minutes to comment then welcome hi do you have the timer uh i don't i think technically yeah i'll get the tower going you can start lynn yep put it on one of the windows so i can see just one of the windows please i prefer not to see a big looming three in front of my eyes um i like to see the faces of the people i'm speaking to unfortunately you can't see mine but that's not my choice um

[5:00] so are there any public hearings tonight no this is the wrong format jay um just put it in one of the windows yeah i'm gonna try and know how to do that um maybe you can assign it it as being a participant i'll have to figure that out for the next lin if you don't want to look at it that will just tell you when your time's up give you a warning i can stop sharing and just give you 10 seconds yeah but i like to prepare myself by seeing the image of that i really do i don't think it's much to ask i i don't know how to do it sorry then yeah i could hold up a uh a timer to my next to my face okay that's right there's no idea

[6:02] that's why we got pull up on the board it's just so inconsistent between different boards you know that's i don't know if you can read that or not is that backwards 250 right um so what the heck are you folks doing about the missing middle because lynn lin could you speak up a little we're having a hard time here at least i am having a hard time hearing you sorry thank you can you hear now that's better seriously juliet a little bit i'll turn my volume up but that doesn't help probably um don altman michael bosma stop me if it gets faded or anything this is a new computer but you know they make everything obsolescent these days um it's a mac book air um don altman michael mosman 55th street john knows all about this but that was supposed to be missing middle and that

[7:01] is a paradigm for the problem in boulder these developers are holding you up for ransom to say we can't afford to do our thing unless we have 25 units instead of 14 and that makes them 800 feet and that puts them into the non-middle category we just can't afford to do it well you know i'm sure there's someone out there that will accept less and when planning board just keeps on handing over a another third story a height restriction limit lifted um you know a floodplain thing at the millennium affordable housing and um at olive you know oh sorry our parking had our parking structures there we had to use up the affordable housing with that so we'll give it to you in lou there should be no more in lieu as of decades ago no more in lieu you know we don't need more people commuting

[8:01] to boulder and then congesting our town from the outlying community sprawl that's not that's not an objective here if you can afford a living boulder you can afford to but stop driving the price up you need to advise planning board not to give any subsidies stop already stop um it's so it's so disheartening you ought to go to some planning board meetings and watch this it's just obscene um one thing after another and the the developers pleading that they they just can't afford it you know well too bad sorry you know go somewhere else go do some development in new york city or somewhere but in our town we have restrictions and i know it's going to be expensive anyway but guess what it's more expensive with it with the product that you've got

[9:01] potentially with don altman and michael bosma on 55th street that's going to make it plenty worse if you offered him 14 units now the planning board didn't approve it yet so john don't get upset you know but the fact that he even could suggest after up at 311 he's making 10 to 50 000 a month for over a hundred guests there this is like upper end resort community and for every high-end place you get you get all the support people that you need to support that high-end place and guess where they live outside of the city we need the jobs housing balance balance it's not it's a huge imbalance why aren't you doing something instead all you're fighting for is more and more housing and it's more and more expensive even the mobile homes are on fixed foundations you know it's just not working so why not try something that does and that is stop

[10:02] paying the developers to build here let them explain when your three minutes is up let them suffer a little bit god they're coming from all over they know it's free in boulder thank you thank you lynn the missing middle is uh very much on the agenda tonight and um you'll be hearing more about it um i believe we have another public commenter dan so first let me welcome danny he did join us benny chandler our vice chair and kurt penn neighbor of the city department of housing as well not a board member but happy to have you here kurt um [Music] dan are you on for comment uh yeah sure can you can folks hear me now yes great um i'm not sure i just put in the chat channel um there's an article that was in the

[11:01] colorado daily today i don't know if folks uh had a chance to look at that but i haven't read it yet okay so i've spoken with uh council before uh and the person who wrote this his name is adam perry maybe some of you are familiar with him uh he left affordable housing in boulder uh the rent because that was a better option his complaints uh uh overflapped some with my complaints um i would not choose to be in this program if i had better education uh his complaints uh was that it just got too expensive the hoacs and it just wasn't a good program um this isn't true home ownership what the city offers and the affordable program the main beneficiary is the city of boulder not the actual people that use it the city's building a giant housing portfolio that we don't actually own the uh the mortgage that i got the market rate mortgage i got

[12:01] um got it's basically swallowed up it's it's now i'm now part of the city portfolio uh when adam said that he sold his house the city made him make some changes and and he did not get very much appreciation at all the problem with this is that when you get someone in here i would desperately want to be out of this program i do not like this program but the problem is my mortgage that i put in six years ago can't buy me anything nearby boulder and so uh to avoid all these conflicts the obvious solution is to give market rate appreciation this is the fair way of doing it on the mortgage that the person put into the system otherwise you end up in a system where people get dragged out and they're going to be a few winners they're going to be people that are recent graduates and i read something that someone got a million dollar house after they got this affordable housing program but by no means the affordable household if you look at the 300 000 house they bought nine years ago it just didn't make any sense that they had to buy a million

[13:01] dollar house after that to escape the program and so i get some concerns that there's a program out there that has a lot of people that are extremely dissatisfied it's very depressing to be in this program and the city doesn't seem to listen to us adam mentioned that no one in city council listens to his concerns uh and followed up we don't have representation or a small minority there's a lot of discrimination i've had a lot of problems in the program by my hoa the city of boulder i noticed kurt's on the line has had very serious disagreements with kurt uh uh codes and standards unfollowed there's nothing you could do the city can abuse you i went to the mediation but it's run by kurt's office so what do you do i got an unsatisfactory result so you just get people in boulder that are getting more and more you know depressed and unhappy in this program and it comes down to the design so i i don't really see any pluses in this

[14:01] affordable housing program it kind of takes the worst of home ownership all the liabilities and maintenance it combines it with renting and you have to deal with you know these unstable rates of hoacs so that's that's what i wanted to contribute here tonight well thank you dan it's um partly because of comments like the one you just made or your three minutes that we scheduled the informational session it's the next item on the agenda to review uh what's going on with the where where are we going where we've been where are we going with the affordable home ownership program and uh it'll be interesting to see what kind of user satisfaction or dissatisfaction has come out of that if we can draw such conclusions so thank you again for your comments i will read that article um it's now been shared with the board and i think we can move on to item six matters from the board and we have an overview of the

[15:00] affordable home ownership program from eric swanson the homeownership program management manager again this is a 10-minute presentation there will be q a so we'll turn it over to eric thank you for being here excellent thank you for inviting me um i will share my screen um one moment let's see all right well you'd think after all these months i would have it down all right i assume someone will let me know if you can't hear me or see what's on the screen um and i will go go forward um so yeah thank you uh again so much for inviting me so my name's um eric i'm one of the home ownership program

[16:01] managers there's um three of us that that work on this program and um what i was going to do tonight is just kind of give you an overview of the program jay segnet shared that um it would be helpful to just kind of provide a little bit of education about what we do and and get into a little more detail about what the city's homeownership program does um and i think that sometimes or the way i approach this is to tell a little bit of a story about how one family might or one family went through this program and how it how it benefited them at least with what our is our most popular program and that's our permanently permanently affordable program um and so there here's a story that i'll share with you and this is actually based on a real family i changed the name but everything else is based on a real family and so what we're doing is we're trying to help families like this in this particular family the sharma family they

[17:00] have five people in their family it's two parents two kids and then a grandparent that all lived together and when they bought in the program their annual income from two nursing assistants jobs was fifty four thousand dollars um really hard to buy something in boulder even really hard to rent in boulder at that at that kind of income and they also had limited savings so the down payment could be can be a challenge but what they did need they needed some stable housing someplace that they could afford into the future and that's how they ended up coming to us and they ended up buying a home in our permanently affordable program here's the home they bought is the three bedroom two bath 12 000 square foot condo and they purchased it so it's permanently affordable so it's a below market rate price at um 184 000 and that resulted in a payment of 15 uh just over 15 000. um and that

[18:03] ended up being 35 of their income and that's kind of what we're um that's kind of the sweet spot for us you know 30 35 of someone's income is is thought to be affordable than they can afford if that's what they're paying for their housing then they're able to afford the um other things that they need in their life they're not skimping on those on those things um and so i think i may have said this these homes sell it below market rate prices and so i'd say that this home probably um it probably would appraise for um 300 000 so it's definitely a lot lower than than what the market rate price would be um so then the homes in this permanently affordable program they all have a covenant attached to them um or a deed restriction is sometimes referred to and what that does is it limits who can buy so people need to fit under certain income and asset and some other program requirements in order to to buy these

[19:01] the covenant also has stipulations about how the home can be used uh you know it's designed to be owner-occupied not designed to be a rental property or an income generating property um and then there's uh as i've said there's limitations on the resale price and and basically in that in that covenant there is a formula that that the goal of that is to try and keep the home affordable into the future um and in brief what that is is it's the formula starts with the the listing price or the price that someone paid for it and then some appreciation is added every year it's somewhere between one and three and a half percent and that's determined by some area economic indicators so um it doesn't necessarily follow the market um how market real estate appreciates it's um it's based on consumer price index and area median income um and that's really one of the ways that we are able to kind of maintain these and keep them affordable

[20:02] um going into the future well at the same time allowing owners to see a little bit of return return on that investment now there is as i said there's three city staff people that that primarily work on this program and what we are doing is we're qualifying families so people will apply to the program we'll make sure they um qualify fit under the requirements um and then when the homes sell we're working to make sure that they stay or that the all the rules and guidelines are followed and that a covenant is a new covenant's recorded with that to help protect that affordability um going going forward now back to the story i'm going to segue into another one of our programs um that sort of works very well with the uh permanently affordable program and that's our solutions grant um and so this family as we saw at the

[21:01] beginning they had about um i think thirty six hundred dollars in in savings that they could contribute which wasn't enough to close the transaction even on a minimal loan uh a minimal down payment loan um it wasn't enough and so this grant is available the solution grant came in and provided the balance of what they needed to close the um close the deal now one of the nice features about these grants is that they they aren't paid back it's not it's not a loan it's money just to help someone close the transaction and get it done however that grant does reduce the price at resale so they will have a slightly lower resale price when they sell on that is sort of so we can keep that grant money invested in the home and so not only does that buyer benefit from it but future buyers will benefit it from it in a slightly lower um lower price

[22:01] and then i'll kind of wrap up my story before talking about some of our other programs of this um family um so they're able to move into the this house and um and and live there and it gave them you know kind of the room they needed a three bedroom um was uh was a great uh help to them um helps reduce their commutes to they they both worked in boulder and so their commutes into boulder were reduced which also you know has time implications um environmental implications um which are great a really key feature of it is the stabilizing housing costs so people who are able to go into a fixed rate mortgage really can help stabilize their housing costs as opposed to seeing rent increase over time at probably a more accelerated rate than than um than they would see when they have a fixed rate mortgage

[23:00] um another sort of there's benefits of people being able to kind of stay in a community stay in one place grow roots in that community get to know their neighbors um and kind of the intangibles of that um that sort of uh um benefit and then that last one down there home ownership as an investment um and well people are not seeing the market like what market rate um owners see in boulder they are seeing some return and i ran some numbers and calculated that you know this family over five years would probably have about 37 000 in um in equity um in their home you know this is the money they've paid down on their mortgage and also the a bit of appreciation that they are earning um over time yeah can i first uh oh sorry i'm not sure if you're done on the this part i you know you know i'm i'm happy to take questions yeah if we're gonna go actually one more dan yeah dan sorry you're not dan

[24:00] is the member of the public you're allowed to ask questions so the board i'm not allowed correct hey oh come on i mean this whole thing this whole thing needs to import this is propaganda okay go ahead i agree uh so if you guys keep interrupting we're gonna have to remove you from the meeting yeah this is a it's a it's a presentation so if we could just uh please let eric continue with the presentation um we appreciate that great thank you um so of the overall um inventory the home ownership program represents about just a little bit over um 20 of the um of the and then there's also the whole rental side of affordable rentals that are in the boulder and so um we we represent about 20 20 which is um pretty substantial for a community this size to have um to have that kind of footprint which is

[25:00] pretty exciting um so let me talk about some of the um additional programs that that we have beyond the permanently affordable and shared appreciation grant we have i'm sorry the solutions grant we have a shared appreciation loan program and this is uh intended for people who are trying to buy a market rate house in boulder and what it is is it's a a second loan basically on the program but it's deferred payment so people don't make payments on it but it's all due then in a lump sum at 15 years um at the end along with the share of the appreciation and the idea behind this is that people will be able to have kind of more money that they are able to have at that closing but not have the obligation of making those payments right away and then hopefully over time their income is growing or they're building equity and then they'll be able to pay off this loan through either savings or

[26:00] refinancing at some point in the future but it helps them get into a a market rate home today or before they might otherwise be able to we also have a home repair program that's designed to help with health and safety repairs um for low-income folks in boulder and we actually partner with the city of longmont who runs a very similar program and they they manage the repair side of things and setting up contractors to do that and then we are providing low interest loans to help pay those costs to people and then the last program that i'll talk about here is our housing legacy program this is a newer program and this is for people who some some people who want to donate their home to the affordable program after they after they die to help benefit the program and create more affordable opportunities in um

[27:00] in boulder it's like i say it's a newer program we've got a couple of homes so far and we're we're always eager to hear of other people that might be interested in that so i'm going to segue now into the owner's satisfaction with the program so in 2019 um there was a survey done to kind of figure out what what what are owners feeling about this how are they feeling about the program is it working for them what's not working for them um and the survey the full presentation on that survey was uh was in the uh packet i believe we're not going to go through all of all of those slides but i'll hit some of the highlights highlights here so of the people that um responded the survey um you know 57 percent were very satisfied 34 um were sat were satisfied um with their decision or with the with the

[28:00] home just under 90 we're glad that they purchased said they would do it do it again um and then 68 percent um said that they'd improve their financial security since purchasing so kind of the idea of helping to stabilize or helping to improve people's financial position through homeownership it seemed to be realized at least for a majority of people and then people also said that they were planning to stay in their home for the next five or more years which would kind of indicate that they were happy with um with how things were going and happy with um where they were now the survey did also reveal challenges and these are some you know things that i'm sure you all have talked about or heard of before about half the owners said that they did have some surprises as home ownership and the two primary ones are are listed here hoa costs

[29:00] being higher than people expected or sometimes there are special assessments that that weren't planned for and then maintenance and repair costs were higher than people expected um i think um you know people just weren't kind of in the mindset maybe of planning for um planning for uh repairs and things like that and so that took some adjustment and people were i guess that was something they were surprised about um and then there was some um kind of open-ended questions that people were able to answer and some of the common themes in in that were the increasing hoa fees affecting the affordability so as that hoa fee goes up it it's hard to to find the home or see the home as being as affordable as it once was and this is really not unique to the city of boulder program i think you know as we hear from programs across the country the hoa part is um is

[30:01] definitely a challenge um to to maintaining affordability um people also commented on the appreciation caps and saying that that limited their ability to build equity in the home you know because it's you know limited to under three and a half percent people are not um are not going to grow equity as quickly as they will in a market rate house and so it makes them harder build that and then you know move on to move on to something else um and then um the last kind of common theme was program restrictions so there are um you know restrictions around um credit that can be given for improvements and um and so on and you know just as we monitor this there are some some steps and things that owners need to participate in and be part of and that that does take some time and effort on their part

[31:00] so as i i'm going to move on here and just talk about kind of a current focus of ours so we've done a good amount of work focusing on or on lower to middle moderate incomes and now we're trying to focus a little more on middle incomes and some of the things that we're doing is our shared appreciation loan program that i talked about earlier we recently expanded the income limits so moved it up to 120 of the area median income people so greater number of people can access that program and we also expanded the loan amount we doubled it from 50 000 to 100 000 that people can take out also our permanently affordable program we do have approximately 15 of those homes are targeted towards this middle income group and we also have a new initiative where we're trying to purchase market rate and kind of convert them to permanently affordable that is focused on a middle income category and then the last thing is we

[32:01] are um participating jurisdiction in the metro dpa program this is a regional down payment program um that helps people it can get people can get a loan for up to five percent of the purchase price and the income limits on this are pretty generous they go all the way up to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars um and the kind of nice it says it's a forgivable loan so after three years if someone stays in the home three years they end up not having to pay that back so that's another tool for middle income earners and i'm going to wrap up with what's working well and what um what what's a challenge for us right now so generally the homes are affordable they are usually appraising for twice what they're selling for so that long-term affordability seems to be working we seem to have a strong lender and agents real estate agents support people recognize the program and are willing to

[33:00] work with it and support it we've got a permanently affordable covenant that has stood the test of time i think that over um it's been sort of current iteration has been in place for about 15 years and it has done a good job of kind of balancing the the interest of what the city is trying to do with permanently affordable and providing opportunities for for owners um and then there's a variety of homes spread throughout the throughout the city which i think is is great and then um so the challenges um so a kind of a theme that you've heard a few times is that hoa is is a challenge in threatening affordability um we do have a few things that we're trying to do around that last year we started a program to help people who are face affordable owners who are facing special assessments help pay

[34:00] pay some of those and then we are um uh i just lost my train of thought oh we've got a program that if if homes are kind of on affordable we have a mechanism where we can kind of open them up to a higher income higher income group um so working on instilling that homeowner mindset i think that you know is maybe not exclusive to our program but as people most of our owners are moving from renting to owner to owning and so kind of that idea of that owning and maintaining is they kind of go hand in hand um and then managing homeowner expectations around depreciation um you know it it does not match the appreciation of a market rate home and so helping people understand that as they move into this opportunity and are are living within that serving middle income buyers as i talked about we're trying to spend some extra focus there and i think the program

[35:00] complexity is something we're always looking at trying to figure out ways to make it more more streamlined and just more efficient i think that was it yes so i'm happy to take questions all right well thank you thank you eric let's um establish books here from board members first yes um danny go ahead sorry oh oh there we go can you hear me okay uh i just wanna uh thank you eric for taking the time i have a uh a couple of points i want to make and then just uh uh really quickly and then a a little bit of a question for you pointed on some of the things that we heard about with the critiques and and i think the the two points that i want to make are you know i've dealt with these um

[36:00] the the structure of affordable home ownership uh in communities throughout the state and uh essentially the first thing is the property tax valuations are reflective of the the covenant that's on them is that not correct for boulder too that's correct so they're not they're they're not being assessed at the appraised value they're being assessed at the restricted value so correct so that's one thing so the property taxes commensurate with the restricted price which is as much as you can do really right okay the the second thing um when you talked about the appreciation cap uh you know it's a delicate balance that we always wrestle with but the you know the the point of the appreciation cap and i think what you said it here is if you don't have some sort of appreciation cap then the whole entire purpose of the program can get defeated pretty quickly um as things appreciate and and given the the significant investment that the city puts into these you know we we have

[37:00] to safeguard against that isn't that the approach yeah yeah i would i would agree yeah and and so my last question is just regarding um associations so it's certainly a concern everywhere but um at least what i've seen in the past is there's a lot of a lot of governors that you can put on um hoa fees and things like special assessments so that it's really reflective of the reality that it's becoming increasingly costly to um uh to own a home because of the incredible costs uh increasing costs that we've seen because the supply chain and everything so if you have to put a new roof on etc and so i guess my question is with most of the associations that we're dealing with um can you make a direct correlation between the the dues and the special assessments and the necessary parts of home ownership so in other words as opposed to say a luxury uh association where they may have a lot of a lot of surplusage or

[38:02] you know wasteful uh line items in there i mean so are we are we trying to tailor the association so that we're we're dealing with the nuts and bolts that you need to for home ownership i know that's like a 19 part question but i think that's a great question so so kind of the the idea of uh are the are the folks in these permanently affordable homes that are in associations that are are sort of doing the basic the decent the good safe and decent not doing the pools and the and that sort of thing that is that's kind of your question yeah yeah yeah and and um you know it's a challenge because we're we're most of these homes are in communities that are a mix of homes a mix of market rate and affordable we have very few um buildings or communities that are just 100 affordable and so there is uh and by design like we want to have we don't want to have we want to have people kind of all all mixed around um and so

[39:00] um it is challenging i think that sometimes the affordable owners and what the market rate owners want um might not be might not be on the same path um i i think for the most part though i don't think we have to i mean i suppose there's a few communities that might have some some more separation between that but i i think that most of them are probably um fairly reasonable i i think the challenge is that sometimes at least what i've heard from owners is that sometimes the hoas are not maybe managed as well as they could be and it's hard because it's the owners that are volunteering to be involved in that manage that and so then people aren't thinking about the roof and then all of a sudden it becomes an emergency um you know and we as we educate owners we try to encourage them to get involved in their hoa and understand what to look at with their hoa to sort of keep on top of that um and understand what's what's going on

[40:01] um so yeah i i don't i don't have a great answer for for the the question um other than that okay thanks um are there questions from the board yes terry eric thanks a lot bud that was really nice um and i think uh a job well done um early on years ago um there was there was some issues getting financing for these um deed restricted units i'm assuming that's worked itself out but out of my own curiosity is it is it like local banks that are lending money on them or is it you know more conventional fannie freddie loans that uh that are lending money on these just yeah great great question um so financing generally isn't isn't an issue for us um and most of the loans are are being

[41:01] underrated by by fannie mae or freddie mac they are you know they're being sold on to um to those underwriters um we're we're fortunate that we have a lending community that kind of understands the program we've been working with for for many years and so um they're able to to get the loans through and on occasion we'll have and it's not just the affordables that faces but sometimes we have um uh what's a community is called non-warrantable so like maybe there's a lawsuit pending or there's um a certain mix of commercial and um and real estate and home ownership and it makes it harder to get those loans underwritten and there's a lot of local loans that they call them a portfolio loan that the lender will do and just keep it in-house they won't sell it on so um so yeah no longer an issue and that's great to know um you know if i want to make a comment and ask a question um i think that well question common question you said

[42:00] that the story told that the market value of that 1200 square foot unit was about three four hundred thousand dollars yeah 300 i bet it's more than that but um but 300 you don't buy much in boulder for 300. but uh but the the affordable the deed restricted price is about 180 so even under your estimation which i think your market value we're talking about about a 50 less cost than market rate is that what you see typically i would i would say and that's anecdotal i don't have a lot of hard facts on that but from time to time i will see an appraisal and i would say yeah about half half the price yeah um here's my comment it's it's kind of a stepping stone right and i think that's what it was intended to be it's in between market rate owning and renting you you you get some appreciation you get to control your monthly cost hoa side which you know that's a whole different discussion

[43:00] am i correct in saying you still get to deduct uh your taxes and your interest payments uh on your you know in your income you can deduct those for your taxes right just like market rate so you get those you get some appreciation you pay down some principles so you're building equity yes you're not building it at the typical boulder rate um but you are building some where as opposed to renting you don't build any and et cetera et cetera so that was with my comments which i think is all very good it's all what the program was intended to do and it's doing it and it's good here's my question and i would i'm going to try to make it not an issue but a question the program was intended to have people who make a certain amount of money or have a certain amount of savings living in these homes and my understanding correct me if i'm wrong is that you only have to qualify once to to buy right so if you're at a certain point in your life that you don't have the you have the not enough savings or not enough income and you qualify and you buy an affordable

[44:00] unit in boulder whatever it is townhome doesn't matter the affordable unit builder from then until what you die or the end of time you can live there and your your economic situation isn't taken into consideration again is that correct yeah that's correct so after someone closes we never look at the income again and i think the idea is we don't want to kick people out of their homes like we're trying to of course not yeah nobody's saying that but but people's economic conditions over the course of years and years can change and and nobody's saying you know to kick anybody out that's not what i'm implying at all but i just think for me that's a flaw i don't know the answer necessarily but but that's that's that's a flaw in the system because if at closing date you qualify and a year later your life changes something happens better job inheritance who knows something goes on you still get to live in that deep restricted affordable housing you know for 30 years or 50 years however long you want to win there even though economically you don't qualify again i think that's one of the

[45:00] things i like about the rental side every year you have to qualify and that ensures that the right people are living or the people that should be living there are living there and on the first for purchase side that's just no safeguard day after closing to me that's an issue i don't have a great solution but that's my my comment okay can i thank you a little bit terry i think i mean that's a great observation um but i think what we found is that the typical tenure of uh someone who purchases a home um is around nine years so people typically do move on i mean yes that could happen but it's i mean you can look at the survey and see how many people have been in there for 30 years but it's you know it's relatively slow around for 30 years but i know what you're saying no no that's good to know that's good information i did not know that so you think the typical ownership in an affordable deep restricted unit is about nine years on blended average that's good to know thank you

[46:04] are there questions from board members uh it looks like phil did you do you have your head up yeah i didn't know if danny had something he wanted to follow up on first oh go for it but you muted i just uh i just wanted to know like as far as the um freddie and fanny problems with the with the loans with what they basically did with everybody is freddie and fanny uh you have to subsume the the deed restriction to freddie and fanny however you have the the right to uh redeem if there's a uh default on on the on the loan or even redeem if there is a uh if it goes forward to foreclosure and so you protect your investment that way so that's that's how you balance the freddie and fanny thing and so most still are freddie and fanny but that's the way it's worked out everywhere and it's worked out perfectly fine because if you have that you know there's enough of an asset for the entity to protect if

[47:01] they have to so it's good so uh thank thank you eric for your presentation i i um i have a lot of natural skepticisms of this of this program and um i also don't feel like i'm uh super knowledgeable about it so i want to i want to avoid ranting too much and exposing my ignorance but i do want to ask some questions about it um one of the things that um seems strange to me is uh you you ask somebody who doesn't have a lot of financial resources to place a bet so to speak on on this house and normally in a normal market you can win wildly you can lose wildly um because but you're you're putting five percent down or even even if you put 20 down you know that 20 could be swallowed by a

[48:02] a depression or uh uh you know uh multiplied by appreciation um and so it seems to me that one of the things that this program is predicated on is that housing prices always go up and um which is what we've seen for decades uh and i i think the reason prices keep going up is because we have a market that's distorted that constrains supply when there's lots of demand and uh we have we we keep doing things that increase demand um like down payment assistance programs for example and um i just i just wonder like uh you know if we had a healthy housing market where there was lots of options at lots of different price points um what what would the what would happen to somebody if someone's house price went down in this program maybe it seems like that would be um a bitter pill to swallow but maybe

[49:00] that's not even an issue because of the the landscape that we find ourselves in yeah um i mean it is a possibility that someone's house could um could could go down in value if the whole boulder market goes down um i i think like we haven't seen that like we've only kind of seen increasing demand that's not to say that that couldn't happen in the future but there's there's always a line of buyers when one of these homes comes up for sale and so their people are always getting that maximum price because people are willing to to to pay that so um yeah i mean it is it is a possibility as a result so it seems like it seems like a reasonable approach in this very unhealthy landscape of the current housing market in a healthy housing market um i think this approach is could be really disastrous for families because the housing prices ought to go up and down based on their value and based on

[50:00] supply and demand so anyways i just wanted to point this out that that to me it doesn't seem like a a solution for the ages it seems like kind of something that works now and the mess that we're in um just a little bit more context that might be helpful so um keep in mind the value of the homes is not based on the real estate market i think i tried to make that point it's really based on the cost of so the consumer price index and those changes and area meeting income those changes over years and also keep in mind that the delta like eric was talking about you know those the affordable prices are half or even a third of the market so the market would really have to tank to i think even come close to impacting it so i'm i don't i'm not sure it's really going to be a risk um or at least i'm having a hard time foreseeing that scenario even if we did have a really healthy yeah that's that's

[51:00] that's an excellent point about the initial price so i wasn't i didn't have that quite sorted out in my head um thank you for clarifying that um so one of the things i uh uh i wanted to just respond to kind of like with the data science head on this is very sophisticated anyways but um uh very satisfied plus somewhat satisfied came out to 91 that seems like you're knocking it out of the park um when you multiply that by the response rate of 53 percent um that means you know at least 48 uh like the program uh and i know you can't really say what about the other 52 percent um i'd i wonder if if dan uh glazer filled out the survey or you know like i wonder if the if there's some self-selecting bias in terms of people who like the program to fill out the survey i know for myself personally i

[52:00] tend to not fill out surveys for people i'm frustrated with so um you know uh it would be interesting to know uh and i don't know how you do this without people you know getting a hundred percent uh returns but maybe you could maybe you could sample somehow that the people who didn't um uh who didn't fill out that survey and get some sense of of what your actual approval rating is because because you know 48 to 91 is a is a very large um uh uh range there and um if you have if you have something that's like you know on the balance that's closer to 60 or 70 that might be good for a presidential candidate but for like a home ownership program you know if you have 30 to 40 percent disapproval of that that's a that's like a lot of people who are uh uh having a lot taking on a lot of stress so i just wanted to point that out as well and feel free to comment if you want to

[53:01] yeah yeah i i i i think it's the the challenge of any survey is is how do you you know get a full response right i would say that um i i feel like people are not um are not bashful of of sharing when they are not happy with what we're doing or when they think things need to be changed you know i yeah and i noticed that there were lots of extensive comments in the in the in the packet and those are those are interesting to read through um michael were you about to interrupt me or no i thought you were done but uh i don't have anything in that important thing so keep going okay uh i have i have one more comment and and that is um based on what i've understood about about this program um there's always way more applicants than uh the number of houses that are available and so um it it's uh it's uh interesting to know that it's a it's a it's a solution that's um

[54:01] not uh satisfying the you know the people that would would really like to benefit from it um i would be curious to know what they think about the the the program but what's their favorability uh rating of this um of this solution um and also uh uh one one reason this would be interesting is because there's a section in the packet about um how have people fared that have participated in the program you know what what's been their sort of financial metrics going forward and um it'd be interesting to compare that with people who uh applied for the program but didn't get in and and uh and see if it's you know because because people can fare better because the economy's um is doing well maybe maybe uh you could take a random sample of people in boulder and you would find that they're faring better um so i don't know it'd be i don't know how you control for that it's very difficult

[55:00] but it would be it would be interesting yeah that i agree that would be interesting but it's a worthwhile uh thought exercise even if uh if it's impossible to to sort of do the data science on it um i think that's all i've got for now thanks thank you any other board member questions or comments it looks like john yeah thank you um i just have a a very quick question that's related to issues that come up before planning board on quite frequently and that is when planning board is dealing with some new proposal i would say it's almost universally that we are being proposed to have affordable rental housing rather than for sale housing yeah and i wondered if you could explain why why that is to that degree because

[56:00] when planning board uh inquires there's a there's never a clear answer yeah i i don't know if i if i have a clear answer jay do you have thoughts on that you you work on kind of more sides than i do so john are you talking specifically about um when a developer proposes affordable housing or market rate or a mix no i'm uh talking about the affordable section of what a developer is obliged to propose okay yeah so uh mostly market rate projects but you know they have the obligation to right to provide a proportion for affordable housing as well yeah no i mean that's a great question that's something we're struggling with and i'll talk about this later in the meeting so we'll be going to council talk about um middle income housing in in october but really the the the big issue is that they can make a lot more money by

[57:00] proposing rental income rental units at 60 ami because 60 ami is really close to market right so um they're going to basically barely take a hit on rents that they're going to get every month whereas if they tried to provide an affordable unit the amount of subsidy that would be required is i mean affordable for sale yeah sorry affordable for sale right because the gap between what they could sell that forest on our pricing sheets and what they could get from the market um is just the gap keeps growing every year i see and so it's not so much that boulder housing partners is pushing rental over for sales it's just that the developers themselves uh prefer that both housing partners focuses specifically on rentals that's their mission their their mission is not to provide um ownership units

[58:00] um we've been trying to push them into direction but their board has been pretty reluctant to go go there um but that's why you know a lot of the where you'll see the affordable ownership units right are in annexations right things where we have more leverage basically um but yeah i mean go ahead terry john the other thing is there's on the rental side there's just a lot more money available different financing tools and things of that nature that allow for the rental product to be more practical or more feasible um off-site cash and lieu all these things that have been happening you know every time you pay a cash or lose there's a bucket of money there that can go into it it just it's it's the densities usually in their rental products allow for it it's uh there's a lot of reasons why a lot of reasons why the rental product is is more prevalent than the for sale products um most of it has to do with

[59:01] financing um and the money that you can get to do it from a rental perspective but anyway i'm sure we'll talk about it later in the meeting okay well thank you that's very informative yeah i'm i'm not sure this question is directed to you but i wonder how much the issues around construction defects and condo construction which has just plummeted in the last 15 years has a limited developer interest in pursuing that kind of product i mean that's a statewide issue i can give you my answer um for what it's worth i mean you can look at other states and so my uh most of my experiences in oregon saying same thing's happening there and they don't have the construction defects laws that colorado does but i think it's hard to deny that the construction defects does not have an impact i think the question i would have is

[60:00] how much of an impact um right really like terry was saying like i was saying it's really the cost and and that the pro forma just looks so much better with rental because you're getting um well you know in perpetuity whereas with a um an ownership unit you gotta you're gonna sell it and that's your profit margin right there well let me it's profit loss but yeah uh well i just want to add that going back to eric i'm up on the survey i mean i'm not a professional surveyor but i was pretty impressed by that presentation that i've done some surveying and 48 actually seemed like a very high response rate and i in my limited experiences it seems like the people who are dissatisfied are actually more likely to respond so um i think you raised some really good points about that analysis but um i wouldn't assume that a lot of

[61:00] dissatisfied people wouldn't bother to respond because it seems like they'd be more motivated to respond and i would just add too i mean so we did this survey a very similar survey i can't remember exactly when i have to go back 2011 i think so for me what's interesting is to observe those trends over time so we'll do it again you know in another five six or seven years um and try to keep it as close as possible to what it was i mean the real reason we did that survey when we did though um we were hearing from a lot of um affordable owners but um also all owners throughout the city that live in hoax but hoas are huge and it's not unique like eric was saying it's not unique to boulder it's not unique to colorado right not unique to affordable out every age anyone who lives in an hoa is experiencing this problem um and so i think my sense is there has been more attention at the state level

[62:01] to try to address hoas and try to rein them in some way but it's just really tricky because it's a contract between the association and that homeowner so it's just one of those really wicked problems if you wonder about the future potential to do more being restricted for sale just as a practical matter with high construction cost you know the margin of the sub between the subsidy and the market value or rather the value of a new home uh given what it costs to construct that home has got to be growing pretty significantly right now people are using 400 500 a square foot for basic construction these days so uh i i like it's not a perfect program i i think it's it's like anything with social engineering it's gonna have flaws and things that fall through the cracks but i just um i wish i could be more optimistic about it making a comeback

[63:01] and providing more housing but that something we're going to discuss later in this meeting so any other questions for eric or comments about this topic in general thank you eric yeah thank you very much like i said before i'm i'm uh i'm learning and uh it's i always like the guest speakers who who teach me something and uh i'm gonna i'm gonna keep reading about this well we appreciate uh tough questions instead of head nodding as well so keep at it board uh thank you for inviting me yeah thank you have a great night thanks okay moving on to item b um new chair several weeks ago drafted a recommendation to council um it's really uh kind of a call action

[64:01] it's not so much of a policy statement um i would love to hear some conversation about uh if you've got a chance to review it um it's something that came out of our last meeting um at the potential action step um so i feel like um we got some consensus we did want to do something on these issues so this is specifically uh urging action council action on tv base doing the reserve at least get the ball rolling on what could be very long processes that somewhere down the road could result in some good affordable housing outcomes but it won't if they won't get started so um uh if you want to review that statement we can do that or we can just move into discussion and then talk about the wisdom of doing something with this or thinking about it more so anyway once you start with some comments

[65:03] either denny is left or he's muted oh he's here you made it danny i just i had a yeah uh i couldn't hear anything here for a second so yeah i was trying to put it on my uh can you say that again michael oh yeah i just uh wonder if you'd like to comment on the uh have recommendations i drafted regarding um council moving ahead and at least getting the process started on planning reserve and uh transit village area plan too yeah i thought i thought it uh did a good job just reflecting what we talked about before and just kind of gently pushing that forward and giving some sort of rationale as to why we're addressing that with them now without going into too much detail or too deeply so it worked for me um i thought the language good but can i introduce you guys a little real quick did sure did the rest of the board get this because i don't remember seeing

[66:03] i it no idea what you're talking about right now whoa i apologize um okay uh i thought the rest of the board had gotten it um i i would prefer to table it until next month then rather than having you have to do it on the fly and we'll make sure you get a copy as soon as possible that's unreasonable yeah absolutely okay okay um in that case and i apologize we'll go on to the next agenda item um this is uh we are due for an annual retreat um i think it's probably not too likely this will be an in-person retreat but uh we can have a conversation about um [Music] when and how we'd like to do this uh

[67:01] last year um preview especially from new members we had a good facilitator um i do feel like uh we had a productive retreat um and uh it informed our work plan um it helped us focus on this mythic middle issue that we've been talking about so much it's so important um so i would be happy to do that remind me jay is that would that be the july meeting or is it separate from july meeting um typically it's in lieu of an existing meeting but it doesn't lie too typically it's in the spring early summer i would say another option is if you want to wait if we do end up going back in person is another option okay um fox on the board board members

[68:00] i think just to kind of reflect uh what we talked about at the um cheers mean is it if there if if this is in person maybe we would we wouldn't necessarily need a facilitator because we could all just you know kind of have a sit down face to face and stuff like that um i think if it's electronic or in the ether maybe a facilitator makes sense so um what are we looking at jade i i'm asking you but do you have any idea when we might be going back towards uh in person no idea the pandemic yeah i think phillip had his hand up yeah and we i haven't been to a hab retreat before is there um is it all is it all business or is it is there some uh provision for um

[69:00] getting to getting to know each other activity type stuff uh i'd say last year was more uh business and then we did uh we cancelled our december meeting and did a happy hour which um got a little bit messed up with the weather so i wouldn't say every some people got to meet in person which is really nice but it wasn't the entire board and there was no business discussion back um really just a lot of productive bitching but not related is that the because is that the rule like because we can't really have a happy hour unless it's a meeting uh i mean michael froze oh okay i was looking around to see if anyone else was moving so yeah i would just say um you know that the retreat over the years you know some of them have been more heavily you know getting to know each other icebreakers um learning how to function better as a

[70:00] group so yeah there's definitely opportunity for that but in terms of your sort of happy hour question i mean the board has tossed around the ideas over the years of you know adjourning early and meeting somewhere downtown for a social occasion not everybody's going to want to do that but that opportunity has presented itself in the past everyone like to come to downtown buena vista i'm here so given the um council's decision to delay uh in-person meetings were we even able to do that if we wanted to have an in-person retreat that's a question for jay sorry uh no i would say if you're gonna have a formal retreat no it can't be in person what about happy hour you guys can have any happy hour you want [Music] just don't call it a meeting

[71:01] so we gotta go this is just whatever the same process that we had in december yeah and you're not conducting business is the other piece right better retreat danny knows all the rules so he'll keep you safe well i think a retreat is business but um do we have a happy hour pretend that it's not a retreat and have a retreat probably a bad thing to say if i'll be recorded yeah i think you can one of you could organize it you could start a social committee we we still have a couple subcommittees well the summer gathering outdoors would certainly be um a great thing to do um and june or july would probably work uh certainly worked for me anyway um let's just go around the horn and you know get some feedback on i know

[72:00] some of you haven't been to retreats yet but uh if you'd rather do the center or wait until we can officially do an in-person retreat love to hear from everybody on that terry i vote for anything that's in person and outside whatever you want to call it however you want to organize it that's my preference i second that julian how you feeling about that yeah in person outdoors is my vibe okay that sounds great um okay well um it's summer i think we should do it in june or july um clarify michael you're talking about a

[73:01] happy hour not a meeting well um are you talking about a hab meeting outdoors a hab retreat outside in person yeah um i think if i'm understanding jay's suggestion and you know i want to go on the record like saying something i want to do something illegal but um like have our meeting and then meet for a happy hour sound like a really cool idea and you know have a short agenda to make sure we had didn't get very happy i was too late well i think with jay saying if we had a formal meeting we can't do it in person right jay no not in the immediate future so i think probably the earliest that we would be able to do that is august and more likely september would be my guess unless the numbers start going trending in the opposite direction which uh maybe

[74:00] so i i think maybe we just punt on the retreat let's give let's give the retreat the course of the summer to see how things transpire and then maybe we talk about doing a happy hour but i i just think from from every word represented or worked on or whatever you know like having your treat in person is the fundamental idea of having a retreat right it's the right absolutely so just to have another zoom yeah we did it last year it worked but that was kind of you know unique circumstances i think we could be uh patient um and see how things transpire in august or september that would be my that would be my suggestion in the meantime i'm always open to happy hour or okay you're on the beer front of 7-11 whatever else that's the right the right man okay so uh if i'm understanding this correctly we'll just go ahead and continue to have our regular have meetings on zoom as um as we restricted that format and we could say dane and i could form a social

[75:01] committee jenny knows of a great um sour beer brew pub in east boulder where we could meet and be outside and that would be totally separate from the meeting correct yes yes about to do it soon in june okay danny you and i are going to organize this and we'll invite you i'm in okay cool okay great um let's go to item [Music] staff and i believe we'll hand this over to jay and we'll hear about uh a couple of items regional affordable housing implementation i think we lost michael anyway it's all right so two items yeah like you said the first is um it's called uh i think everybody's heard of the the regional housing partnership so that's an effort that the city of

[76:00] boulder has participated in with all of the boulder county jurisdictions as well as boulder county and the home wanted campaign hopefully everybody's familiar with that so one of the uh outcomes of that was all these different jurisdictions um lafayette lewisville um others have really embraced affordable housing as a sort of regional issue right so they have started to adopt their own inclusionary housing programs but the challenge is they're very don't have extensive staffs they don't have a lot of experience so what the city of boulder is proposing in our department in particular is to help them administer their their inventory so it would be both rental homes and also uh ownership homes so basically they would contract with the city and we would administer basically just like the whole program

[77:01] just as eric described it um so it wouldn't matter if the home was in boulder or if the home was in louisville um they would go through the same exact process um and the same thing with rental compliance so rental compliance it's a it's a pretty significant issue so anytime you're talking about getting federal funds particularly through housing and urban development lots of strings attached you have to make sure you document everything extremely well or you jeopardize future funding funding so basically um i just wanted to give this group a heads up we gave council a heads up the county uh vote will vote very soon i think to allocate funding to start up this program it would be about 1.7 million dollars and then we'll use that to basically um get some under government agreements in place and then help get this program up and running hopefully by early 2023 so i just want to give you a heads up on

[78:00] that any any questions before i move to the second one um so the second one has to do with um oh right what i can remember um october 27th so remember from the city council retreat basically council said we have 10 priorities seven of them relate to housing um staff get all these done staff said we don't have capacity to do that so um we told them you know we'll come back in the fall to talk more about the their initiatives and how they fit into the city's work program um i am happy to say that we have been able to hire more staff at housing human services planning and development services is different story but at least housing and human services will be able to go to council in sep in october 27th to talk about middle income housing

[79:01] um two things specifically the down payment uh pilot remember that ballot initiative to provide down payment assistance to middle-income households and then also what i was talking about earlier in response to john's question was you know how do we make changes to our existing inclusionary housing program to encourage more ownership units and also to encourage more middle income recognizing all the challenges that are associated with that so um that study session is october 27th um hopefully we will have been able to do some work and at least lay out for council some key questions of um and issues for them to consider we'll preview it with this group before we go to council um on those two different projects and then there's also a study session scheduled for september i can't remember exactly when but when i have that i'll pass it

[80:00] along uh planning and development services is also going to council for a study session to talk about adus um and other um the other housing initiatives that they would lead um but we housing human services would also participate in just a quick update i just want to let you know that where we are and sort of that progression and happy to answer any questions about that did what i say makes sense perfect anyone you're just so excited i can tell i like it all right i was trying to say something and i was muted um related staffing i was delighted to hear that the city had hired a plane director and would like to request that um

[81:02] that new director maybe attend a hand meeting um maybe tell them tell us where they're coming from on housing or you have some some conversation with uh brad yeah and the other great news is the um the department also hired a new comprehensive planning manager right for johnson something something like that anyway he actually has a housing background so we could invite him as well and i'm sure you'll you'll interact with him as well you mentioned we would be contracting with some of the neighboring communities to help facilitate affordable housing process does that mean they're to pay us to do it is that the idea yes yeah good yeah i mean it's a great deal for them because otherwise they have to hire staff to do it and they don't have that very much inventory so they would have lots of staff sort of twiddling their thumbs and they don't

[82:00] have the experience right so we have 20 worth of policies our covenant has been tweaked countless times um all in a very strong place so ideally and it also adds consistency across the region which is another great benefit i think sounds great yeah we're excited so on item two j um i'm going to rewind this a little bit to the retreat discussion away um preparing for some recommendations to deliver the council before october 27th is really important um and we have kind of a specific charge related to those um priority items identified at their retreat um i wonder if that's something we we should devote a large part of our very next or a soon future meeting to or is that

[83:00] something that actually we want to hash out at a retreat danny has his hand up i always lose where the prompt is on the uh uh chat thing so you can just raise your actual hand there you go that's good i i think maybe we should we should you know we're gonna come back and revisit what you had drafted michael too so maybe we should uh try to push this up forward especially since we don't know when we're going to do the retreat itself and this could be a a good discussion on it in a lot of ways you know in and of itself i think but that's just yeah i guess that was my roundabout way of saying that if we did the retreat before proposing some action to council at their study section that could be you know a target yes other comments and questions on matters

[84:02] from staff okay um item eight um deeply convenient i think we got through everything on the agenda except for the letter from council that i didn't send everybody um so my fault on that one um uh really enjoyed the presentation on uh for sale uh subsidized housing um i think we got where we needed to go otherwise this meeting today any other thoughts on the meeting debrief i have a thought um i i i suspect that it's lynn i don't want to uh i kind of lost track of who's who's uh in the bottom right of my screen but i find the um whoever is changing their name over and over again is extremely distracting uh

[85:02] several times i kind of went off on a little tangent in my own brain i'm really trying to pay attention and uh uh but i found that the constant uh the constant barrage of of uh very short tweets uh in the in the name to be very distracting and i'd appreciate it if we didn't allow that yeah yeah that's kind of new philip and i agree um also yeah i mean i was trying to give um paul and um lynn a little bit of the ability to vent um because they're not allowed to participate um like a normal board member so i think it's really difficult i think a lot of people have a difficult time with the online format and so this is sort of a protest but yeah that sort of happened because i assume it's happening in other boards as well so i'll find out what they're doing about it yeah that was uh that was my next question what are other boards doing

[86:00] um well to the point of of someone who just changed their name to i beg you listen um it's really distracting me from listening is is really my point that i'm trying to make uh i agree that's right you have some experience with this it sounds like yeah i i can just say that planning board we uh say at the beginning of every meeting that uh that the only use of that chat is to discuss technical issues with uh with staff and not not to have any uh substantive comments that board is expected to look at because the board doesn't look at that during the meeting so we make a we make that a very clear point at the beginning of every meeting and it's it's aimed to the public yeah i believe we have done that in the past so let's resume that and make that a practice um i'll make sure that happens thank you i wasn't imagining all uh

[87:00] changes but i can see how it could be distracting we haven't had people um are basically joining our meetings very often so it hasn't been a problem but obviously we need to bring it back but yeah and i just i just note that sometimes it can feel imbalanced or unfair to people from the public but you know our our whole process as with every local entity is really based off of robert's rules which goes back somewhere in the neighborhood of like i don't know a thousand years or something it's just it's just the only way to get stuff done in fashion and what i will say for for dan you know i think we heard uh some of the comments that dan was making regarding his concerns like with hoas and i would say that i i know for i for one and very open to maybe having something where you can look into that with a little bit more detail in terms of what's going on with hoas and stuff like that because you know the big concern is when there's the disparity uh um an income within an hour can be very

[88:01] difficult for people who are in a uh restricted budget but there are a lot of things that you can do about it and i've actually been involved with quite a bit of that with affordable housing projects and and so um i i think it's a it's a it's a relevant issue we appreciate the the comment there just wasn't a a a forum for it and you know certainly eric was uh um uh you know here really trying to you know provide as much information as possible and i really appreciate what he did and so uh so just because we didn't talk about it now it's certainly something that i think could be germaine for a future meeting to kind of look into and see if there's something we can do to create a better solution so to speak right although if there had never been a covet and these were live meetings you know members of the public would get there three minutes and couldn't just blurt out comments during the meeting so i think we're just applying that protocol to too i agree with that part completely

[89:00] i have a request for the social subcommittee yeah are you joining if you want well i'm an attendee for sure but don't do anything june 20th next week make next month's weekly meeting please i'm gonna be out of town okay okay noted we'll we'll find the best time for everybody don't worry about it that's also juneteenth um celebration so it's good to take all of that as well right exactly that's a good one actually it's become a holiday from a lot of organizations it's great um and we wouldn't do a heavier holiday uh michael michael john and okay john please yeah not to talk too much but just to mention that uh with respect to the comments in the chat um another consideration is that that those comments are not part of the of the record of the meeting and uh

[90:01] therefore it's probably you know it's probably inappropriate to uh to consider them in the meeting itself the other thing i just wanted to mention is to make sure that and jay is probably familiar with the rules but i know in planning board we got to be very careful whenever more than two of the members get together even as in a social occasion uh not to violate the sunshine laws about uh you know in informal meetings and so on um so that may be something you want to consider in in your comments about the social team and the right and the reason um i'm sure jack will give you guidance on that yeah we did have a purely social gathering for the holidays with several board members i think it was more than three and we didn't consider that um when we did not deal with any hab business at that meeting we just talked about

[91:01] what's going to be under the tree and where you going and how much you hate your cake and all that stuff yeah we worked we painstakingly addressed it through the city attorney's office and everything and uh okay yeah we stayed on the side of the open meetings act so and john you guys don't get quite the same scrutiny you do because they're not making quasi-judicial decisions so yeah although we could start wearing robes that would be fun nobody has to listen to it okay um i think we've covered everything we need to cover do you want to hear if can maybe entertain a motion to adjourn michael can we talk about it next week oh yeah i'm sorry uh what is the date for the you next the fourth wednesday

[92:01] you're gonna make me do math now okay twenty seconds yeah we just talked about is june juneteenth right i thought juneteenth was the 20th 15th oh perfect i was afraid it was gonna look um yeah so what i have in the work plan that i sent out was um to talk about adus um so i just wanted to make sure that that's was still of interest to the board so what i was thinking is just as a prep for your conversation about things that you might want to recommend to council to focus on um i can give you a history of what we did back in 2018 when we last updated the um program i can also just give you a more of a history of the program and and how the regulations have evolved over the years i don't have any sort of new up-to-date information yet um but at least i can get you up to 2018 and beyond

[93:01] i i don't i don't want to try to dictate the agenda just because my schedule i'm not going to make next month's meeting and adus are my favorite thing so like is there a way to weigh in via email or something uh and if i can't make the meeting is that an option absolutely i mean i mean we could also do it in july and do something else in june um i propose that we do something informational on adus in june and then have a discussion on um potential action step this is an area where council is looking for some more technical advice i believe um and that could be something we could weigh in on the july meeting once we've fully informed ourselves good idea anything else of interest from the board that you'd like to hear about yeah i wrote this recommendation we need to go over but i'll send everybody first

[94:04] all right that's all i have any other well could we possibly get the planning director next month to chat for 20 minutes um i'll ask okay or the comprehensive planning manager if the planning director isn't available sounds good yeah i think um maybe separate sessions in separate months with those two would be a good idea okay yeah i'll definitely i'm meeting with the company supplying manager next week i'll suggest that okay well thank you anything else we need to address this evening

[95:03] good job joy go ahead no just good job good good good okay thanks good job board um and steph thank you all uh do i hear a motion to adjourn still move thanks from lynn thanks okay um without a second from a board member second okay all in favor aye hi hi okay emotion passes honestly um see everyone next month thank you all for your work in support of the housing objectives of the sport good work everybody safe everything have a good night

[96:03] you