March 26, 2025 — Housing Advisory Board Regular Meeting

Transcript

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

[0:00] You ready? Perfect. Hi! My name is Karen Claireman. I'm the vice chair of the Housing Advisory Board tab and I'm gonna call to order the have meeting of March 26, and I will do a roll call. So Erin clearman. I'm here, Karin, here chip Resident Phillip. There! Julian here, Danny, think said she wasn't gonna be able to make it. Okay. So we have a quorum. Oh, and we have a new member. But Lauren. But you're not officially part of it. You're just gonna participate next month. Great? Well, welcome. Okay, we're gonna now do an agenda review. So the 1st item on the the the item on the agenda is approval of minutes. Then we'll have public participation.

[1:05] Then we'll have matters from the board that include a panel discussion about sharing housing in boulder. Then we'll have an opportunity to review the work plan. We'll talk about elections and we'll talk about board protocol. Then there'll be matters from staff, particularly as it relates to county one b funding update. Then we'll do debrief and calendar check, and we hope to end before 9. So let's start with the approval of minutes. Can I get a motion to approve? Or are there any comments or edits or suggestions. Second, all in favor. Aye, any opposed speak up, because I can't necessarily see Hi Unanimously approved. Great. Okay. Tiffany, can you? Is there anyone for public participation?

[2:07] You have a couple of members of the public great. So jay, do you want to review what the rules are? Please ask them to raise their hand if they want to speak. Yes, alright, then I will do my spiel. Hold on one second. I didn't do it right today. There we go. All right. Let's go through this quickly. So the city has, engaged with the community to Co. Create a vision for productive, meaningful, and inclusive civic conversations, to support the physical and emotional safety for all everybody we

[3:05] for more information about this, you can go to the city's website, and following examples are rules of decorum are found in the boulder Revised code, all remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to city business. No participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation, obscenity, racial epithets, and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes. Are prohibited. Participants are required to sign up speaking, using the name they're commonly known by, and individuals. Please display your whole name before. You would be allowed to speak. Currently, only audio testimony is permitted online. And that's it. Thank you. We have Lynn Siegel. One second. Yeah, let me Yes, I want to 1st apologize. I can't ever make it to your meetings, because the landmarks board is the same night, and something else is always the same night, too. And tonight I have to miss the

[4:11] World affairs discussion group with Tom Nayer because of this also, because that's at 7, and so it has. There's a lot of conflicts. I go to the Tab meeting. I follow the tab meetings. the planning board, the open space board of trustees and the Water Resources Advisory Board, and I try to get to the Hrc. Occasionally and to you. But I'm sorry I just can't be everywhere at once. And I think that there's a value in integrating all of these boards, because there's a lot of disconnect between policies. And one thing that's happening with the other right now. Tonight I couldn't find what's on your agenda. I went to try to see it on many of the boards. It gives an excerpt of what the agenda is going to be right up front, but on yours you go to the agenda, but I couldn't get it

[5:07] like I can with planning board, and it gives you a detailed agenda, with all the concept plans and all the everything, hundreds of pages but which is fine. But I can't even find yours. But one of my concerns is like the The All Roads is going down to 160 beds from 180 beds, and that, you know, we have a depressed economical situation in Boulder, and that's no good. Because. you know, we've got an accelerating, homeless issue. With right now, with my property taxes, I had free quote unquote energy retrofit. That was a complete botch. They botched everything they possibly could, and I was sequestered from it because I'd been gaslighted by the county for a retrofit 10 years ago, where I exposed the fact that they were forcing a vendor to put up solar under adverse conditions, and they

[6:14] retaliated against me, I guess, and as a result I had no input to what happened in my place, and now it's a huge liability for me to get rid of this stuff if they don't get rid of it themselves, or make it work for me? And that's it's a huge liability to the extent that they put in this air handler in my attic that I don't need or want for 20 some $1,000, and they could have put in a 7,000 mini split. That's all I need in my bedroom, and like they didn't consult with me. It's like outrageous that in my own house is fighting me essentially because of the situation. So I guess that's all I have to say this time, because my time's up. But thanks, anyway. Bye.

[7:08] Thank you, Lynn. Anyone else. Anyone else want to raise their hand. Great. Okay, we're gonna end public participation. And we're gonna shift to the panel. Discussion. Philip, are you gonna run this and introduce the speakers and sort of lead lead this Absolutely. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you. Can you hear me? Okay. I'm sorry that Lynn wasn't able to find the the topic for this evening. I know this is a subject that she has talked about many times in her public comments, and I hope this is of interest to her and and many others. Let me share my slides for a bit.

[8:08] Oh. okay, tonight's topic. Our esteemed panel is on sharing housing. and we have some fantastic panelists. As far as I know, I haven't actually met everyone in person. And, in fact, there's 1 panelist that I I'm not familiar with the organization. So I'm excited that you know we have a little bit of a blind date situation going on, but I have full faith that this is going to be great. So here's our panelists. We have Anna Marie Pluhar. And, by the way, these are in order of how I'd like you to present. And so Anna Marie will be first.st She's the president of sharing housing. And it's a organization that helps people think about ways to share housing and find housemates. Savinia Falquist, executive director of Homeshare, Oregon. This is the organ. I haven't met Sabenia before. I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing your name, and

[9:19] so I'm excited to hear what what's going on with home. Share Oregon, And and Marie Parsons is representing here, representing boulder housing coalition, which is, you know, a beloved nonprofit in boulder that runs cooperative housing houses and then we have Bree Erger, who is a real estate broker at live work. Denver live work. Denver is a real estate company that specializes in co-buying, bringing multiple buyers together to buy real estate in kind of nontraditional ways as a way to improve access to buyers in the in the market rate housing market.

[10:04] So there's a quote that I like. It's worth remembering from time to time that there's actually plenty of housing. It's just very poorly distributed. And I like this quote because I just made it up before the before the panel here. You can attribute it to me, but I kind of believe this is true. I think there actually is a lot of housing. And it's it's actually just not really, equitably distributed. So I'm not saying that the solution is necessarily to, to, you know, distribute it according to some centrally planned authoritarian regime. But I think acknowledging this is part of the piece of the puzzle of thinking about how to provide housing for everybody is kind of. We had this kind of fact front and center in front of us. Is it a fact. Maybe here's 1 data point to support that. In 2023 the number of empty bedrooms nationwide reached 30, almost 32 million up slightly from 31.3 million in 2022. But back in 1970 the number was a little over 4 million. So we're kind of trending. We have this trend underway of having

[11:23] a kind of more and more underutilized housing. So this is a New York Times article. So I wanted to just frame this quickly with a couple of narratives that we hear in Boulder frequently. One is that boulder is full, you know we have. We have people who are very upset that there's too many cars. There's too many students. We should have occupancy restrictions so that the students can't live next door. There's too much construction. We don't like the construction, and it seems very dense, and people use unkind metaphors like packing people into housing, which is an odd thing to

[12:05] odd way to frame it when it's market rate luxury, condos. But anyways, and there's just too much change that I don't like. And so yes, it's full, and this must be stopped. so that's and one of the ironies of sometimes the people who are are making these arguments and saying these things are often in the neighborhoods that are kind of literally emptying out. And so I just, I like to ask, the kind of flip side of this is is boulder empty and pointing out that household sizes are getting smaller. They're small and getting smaller. Houses are large and getting larger. It'd be nice to know just like how much housing is kind of underutilized by by some definition. Bvsd, meanwhile, is looking to close schools. Where have all the families gone? Population growth has been flat. That's kind of a head scratcher

[13:02] like. how can we have new units coming online every year and our population stay flat? That that's like kind of counterintuitive. You might think, with all the housing, new housing that people are complaining about, the population would be exploding. But we actually have these really kind of overwhelming demographic trends where people are aging and households are getting smaller, and we're kind of literally putting fewer people into more housing. And so and I would just, I would just say, like anecdotally maybe your personal experience. reflects this, you can. You kind of reflect on like if you happen to live in a neighborhood of detached dwellings? Think about the houses that you're actually familiar with, and the people who live there. What? What is the occupancy of those houses. I know I live in Fraser Meadows, which has a lot of single family homes, and when I walk around the neighborhood, and I think about the people who live in the houses that I'm familiar with. It's often

[14:09] a large house with one or 2 people living in it, and so it. That's just notable. I think so. This is not a great graph. I wish I had lots of great data to share with you. But this kind of shows visually 2 trends that are happening. We've got homes getting larger, the 2 lines getting going left to right, and we have household size getting smaller. And I don't like this graphic because it goes from 1975 to 2015 boulders. Household size is actually considerably smaller at less than 2.2 and and falling but anyways, this gives you some kind of sense of of some of the macro trends going on. And so one way to just frame this in a very simple way is to just ask how many empty bedrooms are there in the country, in boulder, in boulder? The answer is 28,000, and

[15:09] that's like, Hey, that sounds like a real number that I could go around repeating, and that that is a number that I pulled out of thin air, and I go around repeating it. If you want to know if you want to know how I came up with that number. I've got a I've got a link here and a lengthy blog, and I had various ways of estimating it. Mostly. I looked at census data and looked at housing unit sizes and household sizes and kind of did a little bit of bin filling math exercise of making some kind of conservative assumptions about how those household sizes might fit into those housing unit sizes. And so 28,000 is is just a number that I came up with make trying to make some reasonable assumptions, and you can go look at that article if you want to get some idea of how how one might go about that. But yeah, I would love to have better data. I you know, every now and then the State talks about setting up improved housing data.

[16:17] statistical data gathering, and some of the questions I would love to have answered are just like simple, like, how many finished square feet are there per person? And is that a trend that's going up or down? Given the fact that all we hear in the news is that there's a housing crisis you intuitively you might think, oh, there's probably less square feet per person, because there's there's so many people who need housing. But I'm actually not sure that's true. I think that number actually might be even going up, even as many people can't find the kind of housing that they need, similar for bedrooms per person. And I think one way that we might consider shifting the narrative. When we talk about wealth distribution, instead of always talking about like the top, 1% own so much of of the

[17:07] nation's net net worth. We could also talk about it in terms of how much space people take up. how much housing people have, you know, a square footage per person, bedrooms per person, lot, size per person. And I think if we had detailed and and high fidelity data around that we could have some nice visuals that would kind of smack us in the face in terms of wealth, inequality. So what is an empty bedroom? Well, we all know what it is, in a sense, and I'll just remind you that it is housing that is already constructed. It's already climate controlled. It is often move in ready. It might even be in a desirable location. So I think it's quite possible we have a lot of underutilized housing that's not close to anywhere that people work or within their daily activities. But

[18:08] Boulder actually has a lot of single family homes that are very close to downtown and places of work and and schools, and it might be possible to utilize that housing better, so that more people could live car light, or live closer to where they work and such? So yeah, it sounds so easy and simple, because plan new housing usually has none of these properties. But, as we know, sharing housing is difficult. There's a lot of social, cultural norms and expectations that make it difficult for people to like imagine sharing their house or find someone who's willing to share their their space. so. But I think I think it's still worth exploring as one of the tools in our toolkit, because it's environmentally friendly. It's pro-social. It's financially sustainable in terms of people's budgets and in terms of city planning. It's not a silver bullet, you know. We have 47,000 housing units in Boulder.

[19:18] Each one of those has a different story and a different situation. And it's not like. you know, everyone who has a has a spare room is gonna have a new housemate. But that said with so much underutilized housing, if we have tens of thousands of empty bedrooms, it's possible that if we leaned into that just a bit, maybe we could make use of some of them better. So that's why we're here. The panel is to explore. not not so much necessarily like the political landscape or policy directions, but like practical working solutions, strategies, shared experiences. And this panel represents a bunch of different approaches. I'm super excited to hear the the kind of different angles that they come at this problem with.

[20:13] From people who are already working on this. So? With that? Oh, also I I guess I have. That's my last slide. This is my last slide. So this is kind of a pathetic, self, indulgent, tooting my own horn kind of thing. I don't think I've been on housing board for 3 years. I don't think I've ever mentioned my that I have a podcast related to to housing in boulder. It's a bit dormant right now. I haven't put on an episode in a long time. But One of our panelists, Anna Marie Pluhar, is in Episode 46, and Sarah Wells, who is from live work. Denver live work. Denver is being represented tonight by Bree. Episode 48, and then episode 16 cloudy Hansen theme. We talked about co-housing and cooperative housing in the context of boulder housing coalition. So I'm really proud of those episodes. And so I just thought I would mention them. There is like a whole universe of articles and studies going on around this space, and I'm sorry that I just like

[21:19] sort of slapped up 2 articles that kind of represent. But I'm I'm sure that maybe some of our experts have reading resources that they could share. And with that I think I'll stop talking. Are there any? Are there any questions that people want to ask before we start the panel. Yeah. Great. Oh, I'm not sure who mha board is, but I think so yeah. So Anna Marie pluhar take it away Okay, thank you so much for setting it up that way, Philip.

[22:01] You're a Philip right Yeah. Philip. Okay, I am going to share my screen and thank you for inviting me and giving me context. I am here to talk about why, I think it's a good idea to share housing. and I will start by saying that you obviously recognize who these ladies are, and I have over the years that I've been working on this, so many people come to me and say, Yes, I want to have a golden girls home. And I say, yeah, that's a sitcom with writers and trained comedians. It's not going to look like that. But I'm grateful that there's a model, at least for some people for thinking about how they might share housing. I got involved in this because I have shared housing almost my entire adult life. And the house the picture of that house. There is the one that I bought on purpose

[23:03] have housemates. It was a 4 bedroom house. I lived in it for 10 years. It is while I was living in this house that I got the idea for writing the book which teaches a process for selecting somebody that you can live with that is that you're compatible, that you're happy, and so on and so forth. That book came out in 2011, fast forward, 2,017, I realized that this really is a nonprofit effort social mission and formed up sharing housing, Inc. Is a nonprofit. We're 501 c. 3, and our vision is that shared housing becomes a universally accepted living arrangement, that individuals feel happy, safe, and at peace with home mates, and that organizations encourage, shared housing for their constituents. Homemade is a word that I am coining. Please use it. My idea here is that a homemade is a person whom you like and respect.

[24:09] whose ways of living at home are compatible enough, that everybody is comfortable. and as I wrote about it one time, I realized that homemate for me is a mature housemate relationship. You don't start out as homemates. You start out as housemates, and oh, by the way, no adult wants to have a roommate. Get that out of your language because roommates are for camp and college, and so housemates and people have a hard time thinking about it sometimes. Here's a quick Stat. I've got 2 short stats slides with stats. We have an extraordinary number of people who live alone in this country. It's extraordinary. 27% of all households are single occupancy

[25:00] in my State of Vermont. By the way, I'm in Vermont, it's 8 30. I might not stay to the end of this session we have 34,000 seniors who live alone in houses with 2 or more bedrooms. I suspect, in Colorado it's somewhat like that. What I found for Colorado is that you have 614,000 people are living alone. and of those 65 who are older seniors are 219,000. I didn't dig down to get Boulder stats. I figured you guys could do that, but just gives you an idea of how big this is because we have become a society that just simply accepts that people live alone in a way that never used to be true. But I'm here to talk about benefits. And this is the one slide I'm going to talk about all of these benefits from this one slide instead of having 25

[26:02] it is clear that most people start sharing housing for the financial benefit, for saving money, for having housing cost less, and, in fact. I have a new housemate moving in next week, and I am deeply grateful because I can use the income. It's obvious that about the financial benefits. And oh, by the way, I think, given our current crisis. Nationally, it's going to be more important for people to team up together to help pay for housing another benefit. Very much true, for everybody is help. And the the interesting thing about living alone versus living with others is when you live alone. You have to do it all by yourself. and I didn't. I sort of didn't know. But after my partner died I was like, Oh, my gosh! I cannot believe how much more time I spend shopping, filling the car with gas, cooking, cleaning the kitchen, taking the dog for a walk, taking the compost out shop. I had help

[27:18] when you have a housemate, you have help in how you manage in managing a home, and that help has. I have it in as a continuum in my head from the sort of straightforward, easy help of. Can you give me a ride to the mechanic? Pick up my car? Can you pick up chicken soup? Because I have. I'm sick, and I don't want to leave the house to the far end of life, threatening emergencies like falling and nobody finding you. so. The help of having somebody under the same roof with you is underappreciated in our society because people say to me all the time, Oh, no, I could never share housing. I need my privacy, and I don't think that they realize how much

[28:10] work they are doing to maintain their houses by themselves. A big, big, big big one for me is the companionship piece. because we now live in a society where it is very hard to have social connections. Covid showed us this very clearly. But it's also true that we have a crisis, you know. the surgeon, General Murtha, has gone around talking about the epidemic of loneliness that exists in our society. Well, people are lonely because they're alone. and when you live with somebody you have an opportunity to have what I think of as spontaneous social interaction. You don't have to plan it.

[29:03] We've gotten to as a society we've gotten to a place. I mean, it drives me nuts. I want to have lunch with a friend. It takes 6 to 10 texts and emails to make the plan. That's not spontaneous. And that's not, I mean we've gotten to a place where it's just not. We don't get to hang out with people. There's no 3rd space. Maybe you know that phrase, this idea that people have a home or their work. Where do you go to? Just go hang out. Where do you go when you're lonely? There's no place. I mean, there are a couple of places, but some of them don't work, for they don't all work for everybody. But people don't join stuff bowling alone. All of this sort of stuff. I could talk about this for hours, but I have 10 min. But the companionship piece for me is very, very important.

[30:00] Obviously sustainability is a key here. The person who is moving in with me next week, when I asked him. why do you want to share housing? He said. I don't want to own anything. He's just sort of gotten minimalist. He's 5 years younger than me. He's retired. He sold everything 4 years ago, and he's just like, I don't want to own anything. I don't want that responsibility, so he's going to come live with me, and we're going to use one set, you know, electricity toasters, all of that kind of stuff. And then the last benefit. And I call these 5 key benefits. And I have an online course class you can get to. I'll show you my website in a minute where I talk about these at much greater length. I have this idea of whole person health to me. What this is is, I believe that we exist

[31:04] to give and to receive on a daily basis. and that when, as a human being. I don't have the opportunity to give and to receive. I shrivel, I get sad, I get lonely. and oh, by the way, I get angry and aggressive, and things like that as well. But I think that living with others brings about this what I'm calling whole person health. So for me, the idea of sharing housing is, yes, very important in the ways that the Housing Board is thinking about it in terms of how do we create housing? But for me it's also a thing about how do we help? People have better lives, basically sweet. Where am I going? So with that said. what we do at sharing housing is we are advocating for people to live in shared housing a la coming to panels like this.

[32:07] and we're teaching people how to find housemates on their own. We teach a process for going through a select. Many people would love to see a service, and I'm sure we're going to hear from Sabenia about that. And I think that's great. But there just aren't enough programs around the country. There aren't enough people doing this work and so we sharing housing resources can be used by adults who have agency and independence. They've made important decisions in their lives before. Who to marry, where to live, what jobs, professions, all of that. They can make a decision about who they're going to live with as well if they have the tools to make it possible. And that's what we're doing on our website. sharinghousing.com. Philip gave us gave you the our nonprofit website, which is the sharinghousing.org sharinghousing dot com is where we have

[33:11] all of our resources, books, courses. I'm teaching a course. Starting at the end of April 4, session zoom class sign up for our newsletter. We blog on a regular basis. It's just part of trying to get the word out and to help people understand that this is a legitimate way to live. and you know what people who share housing, they just do it. They don't talk about it. They don't make a big deal about it. The only time you hear is when you hear a bad housemaid story. So I you know I. And so one of the things I have been doing over the years is when I find people who are sharing housing. I interview them and put the put it up as a blog. and I would say that when I think about what can government do

[34:03] to support shared housing, remove the legal barriers to occupancy limits and zoning restrictions, those sorts of things that can get in the way. Sometimes there are tax laws depending on where you are I don't know about in Boulder. and then big time for me is, I really would love to see a movement, and I know homeshare. Oregon also worked on this to create a category in the law that separates shared housing from landlord tenant law, because one of the things certainly true in Vermont, and I've heard it in other places. People are afraid of getting the bad housemate that they won't be able to get rid of them. because a lot of landlord tenant law is designed to protect tenants against bad landlords. That's good. But when it's you're sharing a kitchen, and you've got a bad housemate. You really want to be able to have them move out. What I say to people is, don't let the bad housemate move in.

[35:10] which is, do you do a good process about selecting who you're going to live with, and so on and so forth. But people are still afraid which is understandable. So. And also I've been watching hasn't shown up too often. But I've that in some communities efforts to control short term rentals a la Airbnb, that they inadvertently affect people who want to just share housing. So those are things that I think the Government can do, and I will leave you with this last idea from Margaret Mead. I think it is almost a universal human need to have someone who wonders where you are when you don't come home at night. Hmm.

[36:00] Beautiful. Thank you, Anna. Marie. Know how I did on time. But there you go. I don't, either. I was feeling bad that I didn't look carefully at the clock before you got started, but I think you might have gone over 12 min. I'm gonna pay a little closer attention for other panelists. Sorry that you don't all get the same extra time. Bonus Tried not to I'm actually not sure when you started, but might have been a couple minutes over anyways. Thank you so much for your thoughts. I love, the way that you frame the values and the ways of thinking about why, there's benefits beyond, you know. We often in in our Housing Advisory Board we often kind of talk about in terms of like affordability and equity, and you know, availability, supply and demand. And, you know, kind of a little less personal, and I love the way you frame this as like housing, and you know, sharing space and not being alone. It's a it's a very

[37:10] important holistic way of of looking at our lives. So Savinia? I'm sorry if I've mispronounce your name 3 times now, but take it away Okay. The eye is silent. It's Sabina. But I you know, after 53 years I just answer to whatever my mom put that I in there. I think it was hard labor, and it's It's and Effective all my life. So I'm gonna try to share a screen here. Huh! The one thing I want to say, Ann Marie, I I just appreciate all of the work that you're doing, and and the fact that you're you're you've packaged it so well as far as the why.

[38:00] And and and you know we talk about, we talk about the financial benefits, and we talk about all of that. But it's so much bigger than that, and I'm fairly new. But one of my kind of canned responses to people, because one of the biggest barriers is, I don't want a stranger moving into my house. and I do you know, I say, well, if you use the supports and you do the due diligence and the in the vetting and the engagement. You won't have a stranger moving into your house right Exactly. Exactly. That's what I tell people, too. So that cultural shift is a lot of work to work through. So I just, I appreciate piggybacking off of all of this stuff that you were sharing because it's just so foundational. I'm going to go through this very quickly because of our time. We're fairly new. We established in 21, a local developer who is also a philanthropist and has his own organization

[39:01] envisioned home share Oregon. and he saw the silver tsunami coming down. He saw the impacts on women, and he really wanted to see something happen in our local area and then go broader, just to have a resource for people to stay safe and housed. We bought a platform. It was called Silver Nest and we bought that in 2,003, so fairly newly, and last year we spent a lot of resource investing in that to make it so that it will collect the data and the information that we need operating as a community-based focused organization. And so and then I stepped in in July of 24. I like to say that because I I like to hold on to the new as long as I can have some grace doing a lot of assessment and and actually getting some data and trying to figure out like, what is our priorities? We've identified 55 and older.

[40:07] and that 70% of our participants in home share Oregon are female. And we're also identifying that about 70 to 75% of evictions are also female. So I feel like this is a huge disproportionate crisis for females. And so we're gonna we've just started to finalize an initiative to work on keeping females aging females securely housed Oh, my! Gosh, yeah. Yeah, it's. And then you know, the the trauma impacts that happen if they if women do go out on the streets, not that it does not happen to men. But again, disproportionately, females are much more likely to experience multiple trauma impacts. We have home share organ coordinators that are employed through our organization.

[41:07] And I've just started training other organization staff who work frontline with folks that are aging female and you know, looking at foreclosures. I just trained a woman who does the financial counseling for that to utilize home share in the work that they do as a resource And so we're training them to understand the criteria that all the standards we have. And then our online platform, because it is online. There's barriers there with our aging community around technology. So that's the other, the big area that we have to address And then the sustainable sharing support is also building on our project of building coordinators. And then

[42:02] so what I would say is that I started an urban versus Rural Demonstration project, and it changed my whole capacity building plan because I had forgotten what it's like to be in a rural community, and that they don't like other people coming in and telling them how to do things, and they don't want change and they don't. So there's a lot of things. So training those local folks to to be able to utilize home share has been landed as one of our big strategic plans across Oregon. Where kind of went through all of this we offer free background checks. As Anne Marie said. We want people to have agency in the in the work, in the way that they do this, but we also provide a lot of support to try to vet people and make good matches, and so background checks are free.

[43:00] the the stable housing. There's there's some squishy things happening as we find out more and more what the pulse is as it's coming down. Medical health is huge as far as creating financial hardship. And so we're talking about credit checks. And what does that really look like? Because that could eliminate someone from becoming, you know, in the housemate environment. But it was because they had a major. You know, they had an issue. They went to the Er. And it was $15,000. And that's not, I mean, that's lower. That's conservative on a er visit with lots of testing. So we're working on that that flexibility. we are finding an uptick in people going onto our platform and putting rooms for rent for like $1,200. So we are in the process of changing our coding and changing our website to make it so that if it's a room, it's 750 or less. If it's a full studio.

[44:12] then it can go up to 1,200. But we have to put that criteria in there for folks, and we've decided this week we're going to put a banner up that says that you know rooms that if you're renting a room we, we ask that it be 750 or lower we had one. Come on for 2,200. And yeah, we're not gonna work. So And then this, I'm a certified mediator and conflict resolver by my last position and we have introduced conflict, resolution as as a as a resource. So as you get engaged and you have issues that come up. We try to address all of those in the front end, but you can never address everything.

[45:02] We have a partnership with Oregon Mediation Association to have a local mediator contact. These folks if they wish, and just do conflict coaching and come up with maybe an agreement around a specific thing. Pets when you home share with pets it, it should require an agreement that's written. I'll just say that from talking to people. So Let's see the other thing we do have is and this was Anne. Marie talked a little bit about it on the landlord. Tenant versus the home sharing. We have not successfully, really done anything in the law, but we do have a legal template that has been approved and and and is used by our participants. And it has. It's like 37 pages long, and our coordinators work with people to go through all of that, because that is the reduction of conflict you're going through and making agreements in this lease. Template. The other thing is within this lease template. You have the option to be able to put in their 30 day. Notice to vacate.

[46:19] That's not the case with landlord tenant, and the reason we're able to do that is that you? You have the homeowner and the the person coming in sharing the same space. and so it we. We are allowed to be able to have a 30 day notice to vacate in our lease templates. And so that is what we're trying to educate every a lot of people around, because technology is a barrier, and also the fact that people are very fearful of not being able to get someone out. And so we're addressing both of those barriers. we follow up with the with both parties. We're trying to really provide support if they don't want support. We're fine with that as well.

[47:07] And then I'm in the process of developing a Coordinator certification training. and that will be more on the cognitive motivational interviewing trauma informed. Certification training for folks that are engaging with people. And what how am I doing on time? I'm very bad at knowing my time. I have. You've gone 10 min already, so if you could wrap up in the next 2, that would be great Okay, I'm gonna skip past the development stuff and just do a quick view of of how this works. Just very one on one so very in the front corner, it says, start home sharing. and this is where a homeowner. We'll go on to the platform

[48:01] and and do the sign up. You can do a renter, or you can do a home provider but just for time's sake I'll show you like the available homes, and we want to go to Portland. We're working on all of this development stuff that. by the way, I have avoided tech my whole career. And now I'm in it. It's very expensive. the so for our area, we have 42 listings in the Portland area which we've cleaned. We've really went in since I started and scrubbed our whole online presence to know who's active and who's not. And so we did a reset. And so these are active listings. And so this is this is there, and platforms to

[49:06] to find a a housemate. And wants to look at. You know most of it's going to be by pricing and and location. You can go on here and click like here's a $500 one Hello! I've had. Oh, it's running at snail's pace. So here, you see that, you know they put their requirements in here. They put in all of this little description. And then their monthly rent. I'm sorry, but this screen, with all of us on it, is always blocking certain things deposit of a hundred monthly rent of 500. Obviously, you know, they want females only, and then it just lists out all of this stuff. And

[50:07] usually there's more description about the person. we don't give out any information. That's something that people do on their own as they meet each other. And so I'm available to go deep, dive into this. If anybody's interested in learning more about what we're doing. But this in a nutshell. It's like a dating site. But for homemates and and then there's just support internally in our organization to help try to make it as successful as possible. So it's been 12 min, and so we'll move on to the next panelist. Thank you so much for your description of of what you got going on. It's a lot of hard work you're doing. So. Thank you for that. Okay, who's next? And and Marie, I believe Hello! I'm Ann Marie with an E. I'm thrilled to hear there's another Anna Marie working in the shared housing space, but I am the Director of Operations for the Boulder Housing Coalition. We are a nonprofit in boulder that owns and operates for rental cooperatives in Boulder.

[51:23] and we've just purchased a property in Denver. So this evening I'm going to be talking about housing cooperatives as a method for sharing housing. cooperative is a pretty vague term. We use it in a lot of situations. People have cooperated since the beginning of time. But in this instance a cooperative is a business or an association that is owned by its members. Not. Investors seeking profit.

[52:02] And cooperatives are also democratically controlled, so owned and operated by members. There are co-ops in all sorts of industries. Rei is a co-OP. Credit. Unions are co-ops. I'll talk about housing co-ops. there are a lot of different and interesting ways with dealing with home ownership through the cooperative model. The differences usually come in like who owns the equity of the house. It's usually like the primary asset of housing cooperatives. Market equity co-ops are the most sort of similar to condos. You buy a share of the Co-OP to join, and then you own a share in the whole cooperative. But just live in one unit, and when you leave the Co-OP you can sell it at market rate.

[53:00] there's also limited equity co-ops where you also buy in. But the changes to the value of your share are split between the Co-OP as a whole, and the individual using this model can keep like the buy in for co-ops. A lot more affordable. But both of those models require buy in so they can have a lot more benefits. For people when they leave the co-ops. But they do require like financial capital upfront, which in boulder with the incredibly high cost of housing isn't accessible to a lot of people. So I'm mostly going to talk about group equity co-ops, which is what the Bhc. Does before I do that I do really quickly want to give a shout out to rental cooperatives

[54:00] which aren't technically co-ops. But it's a situation where the landlord still owns all the equity of the house of the property. But the renters have made an agreement with the landlord, so they have sort of autonomy over their own maintenance of the house, and they collaborate in their living situation. So this is a way where you see a lot of like grassroots. Collaboration, group equity co-ops sort of blend, the rental cooperatives and other equity co-OP models. In a group equity model. All of the assets of the Co-OP are owned by the group as a whole. So usually the property is owned by a nonprofit like the Bhc. Some other property management company or a university student. Co-ops are a good example of group equity co-ops.

[55:03] Members don't have to buy a share to buy in. They usually just pay a deposit similar to a rental situation. But members still get autonomy and the agency over their day to day operations. The way the Bhc does this the Bhc. Is a 5 0. 1 c. 3 nonprofit that owns 4 houses. Bhc. Is operated by a board of directors, and each one of our houses elects a representative to sit on our board, so that the houses have a say in how the organization operates. And they have rights commensurate with ownership. Also each house is designated as its own property manager. So the

[56:03] Bhc. Agrees on a management agreement with the residents of each house each year that assigns responsibilities so that the residents have control over their day to day operations, maintenance, how they buy food for the house, what they spend part of their rents on. and then the organization provides larger support. We provide support for a lot of conflict is one of the main things that we offer support for Other panelists have talked about the fear of sharing housing like if something goes wrong the Bhc. Can set up housemates with outside mediation. If conflict does arise. We also partner with Longmont community justice partners? For, like larger situations where we might need a whole house mediation.

[57:09] So this model has been really helpful because it allows low income residents who might not be able to like purchase a share in a house to access cooperatives. but the organization provides like stability over time, as residents move in and move out. what's unique about our model is that in addition to being group equity co-ops the Bhc. Houses are all permanently affordable. Each house is a city of Denver, designated affordable property. The way that the boulder housing coalition creates its houses, is every one of our houses was purchased with grants from the city of Boulder's affordable housing program, and in exchange for the city of Boulder, helping us buy the property. We have a covenant with the city of Boulder that ensures that

[58:21] our rent stay low, and that we income qualify our residents? So this is also a really great way to create affordable housing. by creating co-ops. It's a lot faster than new developments. And it's a really efficient way to create affordable housing because larger developers like Litec, are looking for larger properties but turning around smaller homes is a lot quicker and the cooperative model works really well for affordability, too.

[59:03] by simply sharing through economies of scale residents get a lot of affordability benefits. All of our residents share food and utility bills and the interesting study in 2017 showed that co-OP residents in Boulder use a 4th of the electricity as compared to the average caller, add in so that makes sense, because per capita, it takes the same to heat a home with 2 people in it as with 12 people in it. Another interesting thing, though, that this study found as well is that co-OP residents use a 3rd of the water of the average Coloradan. I think this can be a lot from

[60:04] sharing meals, but also just having, like a sense of collective ownership over your home. Leads to a lot of sustainability benefits, and I'm not sure how I'm doing on time. But I did just want to talk about some other social benefits that the Bhc. Has seen as well. Some of the other panelists have touched on this but living in community can cause a lot of great social benefits for people. And specifically, I think. co-ops attract certain types of people that would not be able to live in boulder. Otherwise educators, service workers, medical workers, all live at our co-ops, most of whom could not afford to live in boulder. So a lot of people who are commuting to work in Boulder have an opportunity to live in boulder in our co-ops.

[61:14] Also living independently, takes a lot of work. And it's harder for some people to do that work. So interestingly, this year, 61% of our residents surveyed identified as having a mental or physical disability. and 64% of our residents identified as members of the Lgbtqia community. And it's really interesting to see a majority representation of these minority groups in our houses. But I think that makes sense. Given that a lot of people receive the support that you need to live independently from their family.

[62:09] But not. Everybody has that same support from their families. So we do see a lot of queer residents who might not be able to have support from their birth families, but are seeking chosen family, and we do have a lot of folks with disabilities who wouldn't be able to live on their own living in our co-ops. So I think it. The question that Philip posed at the beginning of the panel of Is boulder full is always very interesting, but I think it's always interesting to think about who is Boulder full of and there isn't a lot of opportunity for affordable housing and sharing. Housing is always a great way to do that. But then all sorts of extra benefits come with it.

[63:01] and I'm sorry I don't have slides for you all, but I do have business cards, or would be happy to email any resources that I have That was wonderful. Thanks, Ann Marie. You came in right on time. I I just say I've had the good fortune of being able to have a couple of meals and go to a couple meetings in some of the Co-OP houses in Bhc. And I'm always just really touched by the warmth and the hospitality, and like the thing that that kind of like makes my brain buzz, is the social capital that's being built in these houses where we have members of the community who are just like, you know, the the multiplier effect of providing this housing that's like pro-social. And in the middle of the city, and people doing great work for for the community. I'm just so impressed by the good work that your organization is doing. So. Thank you.

[64:01] I think Anna Marie wanted to say something Yeah. Go ahead. I didn't realize I was muted. It is 9 o'clock here in Vermont, and my dog desperately needs to go outside, so I am going to beg off. I am sorry, Bria, not to hear your presentation, but I will be happy to listen to the recording. And, Ann Marie, it's delightful to see somebody whose name is almost my name. Thank you for all that you do. Everybody thanks for asking me here. Join our Newsletter list, please. Bye, everybody Thank you. Thank you. Okay, bree this is your moment. Thank you. Take it away. Alright, thank you. And thanks to everyone else who shared before me I've been taking notes, and I won't repeat, because a lot of a lot of what what folks have shared are is is contained here in in what I put together.

[65:03] So, as Philip mentioned, I am here representing live work. Denver. We are a real estate team. There are 3 of us on the team, and as Philip mentioned, we focus on co-buying. We do traditional, residential, and commercial real estate as well. But we are really committed to ensuring that people can live in the communities that matter to them? We've got. You know how how we envision the world and our values. And that is it. It's infused in all of our work. And Philip mentioned, I think it was podcast episode 48 Sarah Wells on the bottom. Right? You can see Sarah there. She's also a board member of Bhc. Helped with the acquisition of the People's Mansion, which is the most recently purchased building by boulder housing coalition, and then Laura is is in the middle there, and Laura started the team. Almost

[66:07] 20 years ago. So it is, the 3 of us, and so I am here to talk about co-buying, and first, st really just wanted to define what is co-buying. And so it is an innovative approach where 2 or more people purchase property together. So oftentimes that's 2, 3, or 4. Those are people who are unrelated so that can be 1st time home buyers, families, friends, and intentional communities? Should I answer questions as hands are raised, or should I wait Pay you until the end Okay, alright and and so co-buying actually can be I think, Ann Marie, you had mentioned

[67:00] rental collectives as an approach where someone buys a property and then creates effectively an intentional community where there's an owner living with housemates, and you can actually co-buy with 2 or 3 people and rent out the other bedrooms as well. So you can kind of have blended models. The folks have already nailed all of the benefits of sharing housing. We we see all of those in co-buying but we also see this the the shared financial responsibility where and the the shared financial gain. So when a furnace goes out it's not shouldered by one person to to pay for that when you know you, you decide to sell the equity is shared among folks.

[68:01] And so yeah, all of the other things that folks have have mentioned apply in co-buying as well the environmental when we're using housing in a in a smarter way and and having more folks occupying bedrooms, that's, you know, higher density, higher density, lower impact on the environment. We're also seeing that folks don't need to buy. You know, everyone doesn't need to have their individual blender or lawn mower. We can resource share. There's the the pro-social, the financial, the companionship the you know, the combating isolation and feelings of isolation and loneliness. and then other considerations. We we've seen and worked with folks who have co-bot properties. where one person or 2 people are living in the home, and then they find a 3, rd a second, or a 3rd person who is co-buying the property with them, but not actually occupying it. So co-buying where you've got someone primary primarily occupying the property and then effectively an investor. Of course, I think someone else mentioned the idea of agreements with housemates. And definitely you want that.

[69:17] That's 1 of the things that our team is really great at is helping people navigate those conversations and sharing examples of co buyer agreements. We're seeing that co buyers now represent 31% of all transactions in the Us. So this is this is increasing. And then our team, the most common groups that we work with are 2 to 3 individuals. But we've worked with up to 9. You can see. Here I am with a couple of friends who actually lived in a nonprofit co-OP in Orbis. Here in Denver. They lived there together, and then were roommates for a couple of years, and then decided that neither one of them wanted to or could buy on their own, but they co-bought a property and are doing exactly what I mentioned with.

[70:09] You know, they they've created an intentional community where they're sharing the rest of the bedrooms with housemates. So I've got a couple of examples of successful examples of co-buying. I myself have co-bought 3 times, and I'm in the process of selling the second home. So have have lived through, you know, live and breathe this work and the this this house. I co-bought with my partner at the time, and one of our friends. None of us would have qualified to buy this property on our own. We see that co-buying makes it so that folks can buy better housing, bigger housing, housing. That's closer to where they want to live. When they co-buy. And so we were able to buy this together, and then we also shared the space with housemates.

[71:08] or home mates. And yeah, it it was. It. It's we're actually in the process of selling it right now. But it was effectively a community house for 4 years and we had in our agreements that we wouldn't sell before February of 2025. And so here we are. We just put it on the market. But it it allowed this big home that's 3,600 square feet, with 6 bedrooms for all of the bedrooms to be occupied. Another example is co-buying of a multifamily property. So I co-bought this fourplex in Park Hill, and it was at the time of originally purchasing it. It was purchased as one property, where it was deeded as a single property on one mortgage, and I just completed the process with the city to reconfigure it.

[72:08] to make it so that the individual units can be bought and sold, which effectively means that this, which would have been ideal for an investor to buy and put a whole bunch of renters in. Folks are owning it. And so there's the shared yard. There's a shared backyard and then private front yards that each owner maintains and then each unit has their own bedrooms, kitchen, bath, bathroom, and laundry. And so there's a lot of it's kind of like Co co-housing light. And then, as a community, we have decided to focus on queer and trans rights sustainable living practices, social justice, permaculture and urban gardening, creative expression, global citizenship and neighborhood engagement. We see a lot of co-bot properties that are community homes having focuses.

[73:05] And then I've got a couple of slides on practical steps to co-buying. We tend to see 2 different avenues when co-buying. The 1st is that you're looking at a property first, st so you fall in love with a property, and you're either a partner or a couple, or you're buying individually. And so this is the process of selecting a property first? st So you would identify how much you can afford. You create your plan. Will you have renters? Will you share equity later, you view properties and evaluate for your for your group use for community housing. You select the property, you complete the purchase, and then you renovate it and fill it with people as necessary, the second. So this is the property. First, st the second one is people first.st So you've already formed your group, and you say I've got 2 besties, and we want to buy a place together. Now we need to find the house, so

[74:01] that is oftentimes where we step in and we help folks to identify their their own needs, and that help them navigate those conversations. Talk about you know the specifics. What? What are you know what's the exit strategy? A lot of folks ask us that. What are the non negotiables that folks are looking for? Then you identify your collective buying power. You create an entity or buying structure. You create your financial as well as your co buying agreements. I can't stress that enough. And again our team helps folks to navigate those conversations, and then you select a property and complete the purchase and renovate needed as move and move in. I will. I will say I don't have a slide on this in another presentation. We we do have one about why, why this is so needed, and I think a lot of the benefits. You know, speak to this, but I think 1 1 piece that I haven't yet heard folks talk about

[75:01] super explicitly, is how income isn't keeping pace with the cost of housing. And so what we see is the cost of housing doing this, and income is kind of flat. And so that's that's creating this this need for creative solutions, including what folks have talked about as well as co-buying and I think I'll leave it at that. I've I've got my contact information here. You can email me directly with that QR code. Happy to sign folks up for our Newsletter invite folks to any kind of events that we have coming up. But yeah, I'll I'll leave it. I'll leave it there, I think I I stuck to close to the 12 min That was great. Thank you, Bree. I have just a couple comments. I love the newsletter, by the way, I get it from comes from Sarah Wells, and it's a delightful that's a delightful read. I often read through those, so I encourage people to sign up. I also want to just mention that I went to one of live work, Denver's. They had a what they were calling a speed dating event where they were. They brought in a bunch of people who were like Co. By curious is the is the I love that phrase. And and one of the remarkable things about that event was

[76:23] you. So you you kind of it's like a speed dating thing where you talk with lots of different people at a table. and then you move every 2 2 min or something, and one of the just. you know, kind of smacks you in the face is. There's like such a wide variety of different visions that people have when it comes to co-buying and living in those kinds of arrangements, from from the kind of like one person's looking for, like 9 housemates to do a to do a kind of more of a co-OP. You know, large house type arrangement to a single mom who who's looking for other single moms and and wants to share space. And I don't know. I just think what you're doing is is super cool.

[77:09] So Thank you. Yeah. Okay, so thank you for all those great presentations. I think we have. I think we have 90 min allocated. So we've probably been going an hour. and so we have a bit of time, I believe, to just open it up for question and answer and and discussion. So yeah, comments and questions from the from the board and future board members, I guess I have a question. Is it true that, like as you add, each additional roommate that, like the potential for conflict and resolution increases, and if let's say I'm a homeowner, and I rent out one bedroom, and then I rent out another bedroom like

[78:00] sort of like, what's the hierarchy or priority of resolving those 2 roommates. Yeah, I can take this one. So in the Bhc system, currently, our smallest house has 11 rooms, whereas our largest one has 22 so there is a big delta between those 2. And we do every now and then have housewide conflicts where something becomes so large that it's not just like between 2 people. It's affecting the culture of the whole house. But we haven't necessarily seen that. Osara, the larger house has more housewide conflicts than others. I think what is definitely more of a factor is just sort of each lease cycle. What members are living in the houses, and how they're gelling and how they're communicating? So I definitely just echo. I think what Anna Marie and Sabina were saying.

[79:14] is that the best way to avoid conflict is choosing the right people. I think, community is built on, you know, dyads. The relationship that you have with each individual person. So as a community gets larger, the relationships definitely get more complex. But I wouldn't necessarily say that as the community gets larger conflict, becomes larger as well. It's okay for the Bhc properties are the rents all the same? Or are they based on income level? That's a good question. So rents are based on like room size as well as based on income level. So we have, like the smallest rooms allotted for like 30%.

[80:13] Ami, and yeah, our rents are restricted, based on chaffa limits. But we also try to tie it to the like physical rooms as well. Cindy Torres, one of our new board members, has a question. Okay. I just mentioned real quick that Sabina had to drop off because of some weather event that's unfolding in her her city. So it's just, and ray and bree at this point, in case you didn't know Yes, I apologize for trying to get my zoom going some came in a little bit late. But I have a question about the Bhc properties. And do you do you know what the

[81:05] a have a number for, like how old folks are who are who are living there. The the more demographics of of the folks who are living in in the properties Yeah, that's a good question. It definitely changes year to year. I think. Currently, the ages system wide range from, we do have a couple of kiddos in the system right now, like 2 or 3 being the youngest and maybe around 50 being the oldest. I don't think we have anyone who's like, officially designated as like a senior living at the Bhc. Right now. I do think, since most of our properties are

[82:03] effectively single room occupancies. Each household has one room. There does tend to be more individual households, and not as many like family households. But we do see a pretty large age range. Is it more concentrated in people who are like young professionals? Would you say, yeah, I think the majority is definitely maybe, like late twenties to late thirties. Interestingly, the city of Boulder does not consider students to qual undergrad students to qualify for affordable housing. Which does mean that

[83:04] Oftentimes there's sort of a gap in our age ranges of like the 18 to 22 undergrad student age. I was actually in a program at Cu, where we they were closely associated with Bhc, so we did a project, you might know, invest. Yeah, yeah, where we were able to make Bhc housing available to undergrad students if they were also involved in invest. Yeah, there are some workarounds. Yeah, did anyone. Do you know, if anyone use that program? I don't. Not currently okay. I do know that we have. In the past I've been in with the Bhc. For 2 years now. And so I don't think I know of any invest students during my tenure. But yeah, yeah, it's just a cool thing because people knew about Bhc, they wanted to be a part of it. But they were undergrads. And maybe they joined this other organization. Yeah, everything's really great. Yeah. Also, Cu has been like pretty resistant in the past to the idea

[84:05] of student co-ops. But student co-ops are a really great wave of sharing housing as well. That was another idea we had. But that was a really really big project. I have a question for bree. I'm just curious that folks that you're helping with shared housing. Is it more often that it's property 1st or more often, that it's people first, st or is, has your partner? That's been doing this for a long time. Have have they seen a a trend, a change It's definitely more people 1st where they folks come together in the co-buying sense. More often, if it's property first, st it it will usually be more of a rental collective where there's the person who originally buys it, and then they have renters that move in. It's rare, although it's not impossible. We know with Queen City cooperative. That was exactly how they did it. They found the property 1st

[85:14] and then transition it into a limited equity. Co-OP but definitely, it's it's folks are coming to us already with their group, or they're coming. And they're saying I can't buy on my own. I don't want to buy on my own help me reach out to my network and and explain to them what it is that co-buying? What is co-buying Kind of a follow up question with that when it's people coming to you. Is it generally like 2 or 3 people or more like the 8 or 9, 10 people The 8 or 9 is rare that happened once. Most folks that we help it's 2 or 3 occasionally. It's 4, but I think in that instance it can be a little bit more complicated, you know. Unlike the conflict examples within Bhc, when you have more folks.

[86:16] You know, life goals, life plans and needs for housing. It can be a little bit harder to find folks that are, that are all all on board with all of those elements. So the more folks that you have the the I think that it, you know just it. It creates more opportunity for disagreement or or different desires. Yeah. Thank you. I also have a question for Bree Bree. Can you talk through the practicality of how a mortgage works with the co-buying model Sure I almost jumped into that when explaining the the group numbers. So I'm not a lender. But I do have folks that I work with regularly, and have a broad sense of of how that works effectively. The mortgage works the exact same. There's no limit, or actually the limit of people that can be on a loan. Application is 8 for a residential property.

[87:20] What happens is you combine income, you combine debt. So they do. The debt to income ratio to to determine what folks qualify for. Oftentimes, if you're adding more folks, you're going to increase your buying power. The challenge is in the 3rd piece of what a lender will look at, which is your your credit score. They do not take the average of the credit score. They actually use the lowest credit score. And so there are times when we are working with a co-buying group. And we say. Look, obviously there, there are risks. But there's a way that you could co-buy with this person who maybe doesn't have a great credit score, or is shifting the monthly payment, shifting the interest rate that you're getting where they can still be on the deed of the property, but not on the mortgage, and then that would be baked into your your Co. Buyer agreement of how that would work operationally

[88:19] Thank you. That's very helpful. Okay. Great. Think Michael had his hand raised and said, yes, as well. And you're my. You're muted. Yeah. Yeah, I'm unmuted. Now. Can you hear me? Nope. Great just a few comments and a question. I think. My thought about the occupancy. Them in the removal here is. It's primarily and have a more positive effect in boulder among the student housing, because the previous role of no more than 3 unrelated people was just, you know, silly and unproductive and widely ignored, and just a pain for everybody. So that's a good thing I I don't.

[89:04] I don't know. Maybe so many of the people that own multi bedroom. Larger houses are more well to do, and I don't know if they're gonna have a lot of incentive to fill those bedrooms with renters, but if anybody and I didn't hear anything new on that tonight, but if anybody has any brilliant ideas, love to hear and then I would love to hear. I was really intrigued by the idea of speed dating to match people up to do co-buying, and I was impressed by the stat of what was it? 31% of all transactions of co-buying? I imagine those are probably people who are in relationships, but not married largely, but could be wrong. Just wonder if that's ever been that sort of speed dating format has ever been used in Boulder, where there are an awful lot of people looking for homes and there to purchase homes, and those are beyond their reach. We have not done a speed dating event in Boulder yet.

[90:02] If if there is a desire, we're we're happy to to to phys facilitate that. But yeah. He needs to see if any of the big realtor organizations would be interested, you know, like a remax or compass, or something like that. Just a thought I have just some comments on like empty bedrooms and occupancy limits. I think. Yeah. The occupancy cap in boulder was Vhc's like biggest challenge in creating new co-ops. And the statewide removal of like occupancy caps based on familial relationships is what allowed us to buy the property in Denver. So that is a big win for co-OP development. And it's just been interesting

[91:05] with our builder houses where we like expressly can't have undergrad students unless there's some workarounds. It's been interesting to see that there's still a lot of interest in this shared living. I think Bree obviously sees that a lot as well with people interested in co-buying so I think a lot of people have benefited from taking down the occupancy limits. and beyond, just students, and co-ops are definitely a big winner there, too. As far as empty bedrooms. I have heard of an idea of like putting a tax or a fee on empty units. This would be really challenging and could be especially difficult for rentals. That like might have vacant units

[92:03] before lease up and stuff like that. So how this would be managed, like the specifics, are really critical. But I do think it's a really interesting idea. To use this tax specifically to fund the cities at Bras rental assistance program as affordable housing. The Bhc. Has used this program a lot, and it's been super helpful to keep our residents housed. We've had no evictions due to nonpayment the entire time. I've been with the Bhc. And I also think that the fact that this rental assistance fund is currently funded by a fee by like a fee on rental licensing

[93:01] has been super helpful because we are already seeing with the recent administration change other rental assistance programs having more limited funding, but having a more reliable source of funding through a tax or a fee is a super powerful tool to keep low income folks in their homes, to keep landlords like the Bhc. Receiving rental income. And that could be an interesting incentive for large property owners with a bunch of empty bedrooms to maybe consider opening them up to people I would also just another way of looking at Michael's comment about you know what wealthy homeowners is. You know we have. We have a lot of narratives in Boulder about how rich everybody is. And it's it's

[94:04] and and it gets reinforced in a lot of subtle ways. And and culturally, we actually just sort of as a, you know, not me specifically, but as a culture. We, we tend to frown upon people who might need to share housing to improve their financial situation. And there's, you know, there are a lot of wealthy homeowners. There's a lot of. There's probably also a lot of homeowners in boulder who have maybe fixed incomes or don't have quite the disposable income or the financial situation to maintain a house that keeps getting more expensive and difficult to maintain, and and property taxes keep going up. And I just think, as a community, we we should normalize and and try to shift the cultural dialogue around sharing housing so that there's no stigma attached to it. I think, for a lot of people there's definitely stigma attached to the notion that you would

[95:05] share a share a room in order to have help or income, or all the other benefits, you know, avoid social isolation. And so I just think. you know, I'm not sure how we you know what the most effective way is to advocate for that is. But I just yeah. I just think we we ought to collectively figure out how to change the culture and the way we talk about it Thanks. So I don't disagree with you on that at all. There are all kinds of people in Boulder, but it seems like. If you want to share your home now, it's a lot easier to do it because of the accuracy limit being lifted. And I don't know. The tax idea is kind of interesting, but like I've got theoretically 2 empty bedrooms. But my kids come home all the time with their partners, and they sleep in those bedrooms. So

[96:01] you know, there's probably a lot of people in that situation. but, you know, keep on thinking about innovative solutions, and something will work Bree, did you have a follow up I was just gonna speak on the you know. How do we? You know. combat the stigma and I think part of that is opening up our homes that are shared and helping inviting folks in to see how it is different than a roommate. It is different. And and, you know, finding platforms like this or or other other places to to share how it is beneficial. And it it's, I think it's that exposure that's, you know, reinforcing that telling more people about it being being loud. Is is, I think, gonna help reduce that stigma Being loud that triggered something that I meant to say in my comments about live work, Denver, and that's they're having this wonderful annual event. Do you mind telling about the the gala event that you're hosting

[97:11] Oh, it's my favorite. It's my favorite event. It's May 1st it's called Spectacle, for the greater good it'll be at Town Hall collaborative. Anyone is welcome to shoot me an email, and I can send you the link to register for that. I can also drop it in the chat. But it is. It is our, thank you. To all of the creative, wonderful weirdo people that we get to work with and we invite folks to take the stage. We have 10 to 12 folks. We tend to work with a lot of artists and creatives and activists and and people who enjoy performing whether that's storytelling, or drag, or burlesque, or juggling, or comedy, whatever whatever it is. Folks take the stage they sign up in advance, so we have a whole

[98:00] line up, folks take the stage and share their gifts. So it's really an opportunity for us to say, Thanks and also for us to create the platform for for folks to share share their talents with each other. So yeah, it'll be on May 1st Town Hall collaborative. We've got to have you, Rsvp, because we have a cap but would love love to extend that invite and I can drop the eventbrite link in the in the chat. If that's helpful. Thank you. Yeah, I I can't remember how. If I've only been once or I've been, I feel like I've been a couple of times, and it's a hoot, love it. Okay. Well, are we any other comments or questions on on sharing housing? Cindy's gonna Like Cindy. Maybe Yes. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, for for the Bhc properties I have. I have 2 questions. I have one

[99:03] and I'm not sure if you you spoke about this apologies, if if you did. But what are the property tax incentives on nonprofit, cooperative homes? And 2, do you take section 8. Fact. yeah, thank you for those questions. The easy answer first.st Yes, we do. Take section 8, as far as our property taxes. We don't pay property taxes eye out on our boulder properties because we are affordable housing. We are also a 5 0, 1 c. 3 that reduces our taxes. But the reason that we don't pay property taxes is because we effectively have an agreement with boulder housing partners the affordable housing.

[100:09] provider in boulder. That all of our properties will be inhabited by residents considered low income at or below 80% of boulders. Ami also, I think it depends on like each house and the covenant and agreement that was made at the time that each house was bought, but for some of the houses, I think boulder housing partners owns like point 0 1% of the Llc. That owns the house. In order for us to get a property tax exemption. So yeah, we don't pay property taxes specifically, because we are affordable housing

[101:04] Thank you. Okay, thank you for such a wonderful discussion. And Qa. And for the presentations I just really admire all the panelists and thank them for their hard work in the community, and you're welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting. This is a meeting open to the public, but also feel free to dismiss yourselves and go about. I'm sure you have busy lives outside of this sort of meeting, so thank you so much for participating. It was Thank you again, Philip, for organizing Sure. Yeah, like, I said, it's a lot easier when people say yes. So Great. Okay? So the next item on the agenda is our work. Plan Review, which was attached to the packet. I think this sort of a new ish concept where? You get to see what's on the agenda for the next couple of months, and what some items that we're thinking about exploring. So this is an opportunity to sort of do what Philip did and sort of take the initiative. If there is a topic that's a particular interest to you, or you have speakers that you'd like to invite.

[102:26] speak up. We have a training next month. Right? Virtual equity training 2 and a half hours. and that will be here online. Is there like a facilitator coming? Yes, 2 staff from the city of boulder will come in and run the the training. And is there pre work homework? Yes, there is, and I almost forgot about that, so that will get sent to us.

[103:05] Thank you. Thank you very much. Aaron. I I confess I kind of spaced out. I was thinking about the panel that just closed down. Can you? give me a summary of what the current discussion is Yeah. So we're talking about the work plan, which was attached to the agenda. And and this is a great opportunity for people to do exactly what you did, which is to like, bring up a topic of interest, raise their hand if they wanna organize or get panelists and and speakers. And then the question was, had to do with a. The April meeting is, gonna have a 2 and a half hour training about racial equity, and there will be pre work. Great. Thank you. And you're still planning a little icebreaker right for oh, I think I'm delegating that. Oh, yeah, we do. A little icebreaker next month.

[104:05] Cool. Can we talk a little bit about the things that are slated for May? There's can I don't have it in front of me. But what are those. So there's a manufactured Housing Strategy Review. That's a council priority. So it's going to come to have before it goes to a council study session. And then I there's housing solutions for homelessness recommendations, which is basically a recap of what we learned from our panel. And I guess one of the questions I have is, do we want to postpone that? Or do we mean the I think the thought was we were gonna well, I drafted a summary of what we of what we learned from the panelists. I think it was, gonna get reviewed by everyone in half. And then, once everybody reviewed it, we would share it with council as our recommendation.

[105:14] Is this where? I should talk about us forming a subcommittee. Sure I think so. Go for it. So I propose that we form a subcommittee to really, look at the housing portion of homelessness in Boulder and my thought was the clutch. Consulting group. Consulting group will be giving their report to city council sometime this summer. and so I thought, if we formed a subcommittee for a couple of us that would like to put energy towards homelessness. The housing aspect. Then

[106:03] we basically would offer ourselves to city council to say, Hey, when your report comes out and y'all create some action items, the subcommittee of Hab is there to help do footwork? Basically, whatever that whatever that looks like. So I don't know how that would kind of parallel with reporting back to them. So I guess I I have 2 questions. One is, do you wanna wait and hear what Clutch says? And then, based on their report and recommendations, wait for city council to delegate or respond. Let me to what they have to say. Let me answer it this way is, I think, we should write a letter to city council. I drafted one, but we should submit it to city council. That just says, Hey, we're forming a subcommittee. When you guys get your report and you create your action items, we are here for you.

[107:08] and hopefully they would come back to us after they've taken a look at the full report and said, Hey, yes, can you look into this, or do a little research on this, or put together a panel about this particular thing. I totally acknowledge that it is possible that that piece won't quite happen. They'll we'll send them a letter saying we're here for you. They've got so much on their plates they'll get the report. and they may not reach out to us, at which time we would reach out to them again and just say, Hey. Hey, we're here. Yeah. Does that answer your question sort of. So I guess I guess. Okay, I'm totally supportive. If there are people in have that want to do more investigation or research on housing solutions. So some of this in my mind, is timing right like, do you want to wait and see what Clutch says? Because then I think your response to city council can be more directed.

[108:18] Right like you. You read the report, you find out what what Clutch says, and and then and then we raise our hand and say we're willing to help out. And then I guess the second issue Okay, so. Yeah, well, wait. Can I just say one other thing, and so then the the other. The other question that I have is with regards to our summary of what we learned in those in our panel and our tour like. I don't mind if we want to wait and share that, or if we incorporate it into that subcommittee, I just know that there has been a strong preference for us to show city council that we're doing things, and we did have a very robust

[109:07] panel and Tours related to homelessness. And so I worry that if we wait too long, then it becomes stale, but I'm those are just my, I hear what you're saying, and so maybe what it is. It's a combination. Take those points. The summary in one letter to council, saying, Hey, this is what we did. This is what we what we learned, and we know that you're getting, because I'd like us to be proactive, for when that clutch report comes out. So this is what we've learned. This is how we did it, and we know the Clutch report is coming. We're we're here to do whatever you would like us to do next. So we kind of combine those You guys, this is Chip. Can I chime in? Can you all hear me? Yes. Okay, I'd like to second Corinne's proposal. I do want to offer some perspective on what I think a subcommittee like the purpose of a subcommittee is I don't think a subcommittee of have can bypass hab, as in like, just make recommendations to council.

[110:20] I think a subcommittee can investigate a specific issue, then report back to Hab, and then have, can the whole Board can vote to approve what the subcommittee recommends, and make that recommendation to council or reject it, or modify it? Or what have you? But my understanding is that a subcommittee reports back to Hab, and then have makes the recommendation to Council. I think Corinne's idea that we form this subcommittee to focus on housing issues with respect to homelessness in Boulder is really important, and I think being proactive is important as well. We heard one of the public commenters tonight that you know it sounds like all roads, is being forced to reduce its bed capacity. We've already seen

[111:11] that has been multiple instances where people been turned away from all roads because there's not enough beds. I think this is a pressing issue. Fortunately, spring and summer are approaching, but I'd like to see our board be in the position to make some firm recommendations to council ahead of winter of next year, and I think, having a subcommittee that can dive deeper into this issue, and then report to have it in a more concise way, and then we can all debate it and pass it on to council from there, if we so choose. would be a good workflow model for this specific topic I am supportive of that, I guess I have a question of what would be the subcommittees process in terms of like.

[112:02] like, who are you talking to? And and how are you presenting yourself? And so to what extent? Okay, so you've talked about how you'll you'll do some research or investigation, and then you'll report to have. But like, what is your process of collecting that data? So my thought was to take direction from council. I don't. Wanna? I think it's good if we're conscious about making sure that we're not parallel doing things. which is why the when you get the report and you figure out your action items. How can we help like we're really there to serve? And so I would hope that we would maybe get some direction. And they would say, Well, we'd really like you to talk to blah blah and go down this path Yeah, I'd like to weigh in based on conversations I've had with board members.

[113:02] One is you may have noticed the careful use of the term homeless. I'm sorry housing solutions to homelessness. I think we've come to the consensus that we need to continue to focus on the housing issues and not address the kind of social issues that we are not expert in and that I think that's a good way forward. I I from my conversation with Karen. It sounded like their subcommittee was gonna carefully read this clutch report and Cherry pick the aspects of it that they thought. we're important to recommend on that. It wasn't as much of a original research journey as a critique of the consultants recommendations. But maybe you can clarify that members of the subcommittee, and I thank you, Chip, for bringing up the process issue, because I think it is important that the Board speak with one voice, and not, you know, based on majority voting and not have board members speaking for the Board

[114:15] so someone could clarify that point about how you think this is gonna work in terms of taking the consultants recommendations, and transferring those into recommendations? That would be great Yeah. And this is Chip. Just a few thoughts. You know the main issue that I would like to see a subcommittee tackle and then eventually have tackle so that we can get a concrete recommendation to council as a board is the topic of emergency shelter space when there's severe cold weather. I think that's a very pressing problem. I hope we can all agree that falls within

[115:01] the realm of housing issues for homelessness. And I guess, Karen, to answer your question. I would envision in pursuing that issue. The subcommittee would reach out to members of city staff, as well as the various nonprofits and meet with them and try to understand what their needs are so obviously that would involve reaching out to all roads. But also I know there's many members of city staff who coordinate emergency shelter, space, and the various nonprofits. I think the subcommittee would do that work. I'm also mindful, I believe, under the open meetings law that it would need to be limited to 2 people, otherwise it would need to be open to the public like we would need to publicly notice every meeting. If there's more than 2 board members, that's my understanding. If someone has a different understanding, please speak up. But that's that's sort of what I was thinking at this preliminary stage, I think, before we even get that clutch report

[116:08] and then I think when the clutch report comes in, we could reassess what our objective is, but I think that's 1 pressing issue. You know the emergency shelter space. We heard it during public comment. We heard this come up at the City Council study session on homelessness. I think that's a that's a big big issue that we can focus on now. So hopefully, we can get a recommendation to council. On that issue. First, st because I think that's a that's a problem for our community. So it seems to me that your vision isn't the same as Karen's Karen's vision, right like you're talking about being proactive and picking a topic and then identifying the people that you want to talk to before the clutch report has come out. And so I I

[117:05] so I think that's sort of issue number one. So maybe the 2 subcommittee board members figure out what the proposal is, and then present it to have at the next meeting. and then I don't feel like emergency sheltering is a topic that I think is appropriate for have to explore. So I respectfully disagree with your 1st topic And I agree with Karen on that. I'll say, why, obviously as humane concern, we all need to care about emergency sheltering and make sure that people don't freeze to that during horrible weather. But this is a Housing advisory board, and I prefer we keep our focus on permanent housing solutions to end homelessness, not the temporary overnight solutions. Which again, I think others

[118:01] are more expert in addressing those issues compared to those on the board Hey! Danny! Hi, how are you so doesn't really matter my opinion, since I have about an hour on the board. But I would agree I would agree with Michael and Karen on that. It just doesn't seem to me to be a housing issue. It's a very important policy issue. There's a lot of very important homeless policy issues or unhoused policy issues. I don't think that's that's the the point, though. It's how. How does it correlate to housing open meetings act the the Standard for the Open Meetings Act is actually a quorum, so you can have up to 3. And Jay, unless I'm wrong, I'm pretty sure quorum's 4 for hab, but you can have 3 people on the subcommittee. We used to have several subcommittees back in the day, and so I think you you guys will be fine if you have 3 or you know, if you even have 3. But but skip is right. If you go past that, then you know, then you have a

[119:09] a concern over public noticing and stuff like that which even that's not that big of a deal. Because most people aren't going to attend that. But yeah, just keep keep that in mind to have 2 or 3 board members, and you should be fine So I just want And 10 Do you agree? What I'm proposing? What I'm proposing is that we create a subcommittee group with how many ever people Jay tells us we can have whether it's 2 or 3. We send a letter to council saying we're creating this subcommittee group when y'all get your and and we can share with them what we learned on our own. The summary, I think that I think that's a great way to combine those 2 things, and when the clutch report comes out. Tell us what you want to know. It might be that they say we want you to find out about emergency overnight shelters. Great it might be that they want us to find out about whatever else. But really, what I'm proposing is that we're really getting in front of council via a letter saying, we are here for you. When you get that report. What can we do?

[120:21] Yeah, and and For that is Say there is. I do agree with that whole point, too, that you know the hab should be the conduit for all that. So the subcommittee you go through hab, and we just say through hab, we form the subcommittee specifically to address this issue, per your direction. So just let us know as long as we're doing it that way, and have the conduit for for that communication. I think that's great. Yeah. Yeah. So if I can chime in here, Danny, the the statute I'm looking at is it's let's see 24, 6, 4. 0, 2 Yeah. And it states that all meetings of a quorum, or 3 or more members of any local public body, whichever is fewer.

[121:10] at which any public business is discussed, or at which any formal action may be taken, are declared to be public meetings and open to the public at all times. I just want to be mindful of. I read that to mean if there's 3 of us meeting, then we need to publicly notice it and invite the public. It says all meetings of a quorum, or 3 or more members of any local public body. So I believe that speaks to just how many people would be on this committee. I don't care if we want to do 2 or 3. I just think, if it's 3, then we need to be mindful that we probably need to notice these meetings and have them in public. Which could you know? That's that's something for all of us to factor in. Second point. What I've proposed is that this subcommittee cannot actually make any recommendations to council without going through the entire board.

[122:06] So, to the extent the subcommittee comes up with an idea, and the Board disagrees. We will have that opportunity to debate Karen to your point, I believe, forming the subcommittee would allow the subcommittee to come up with these concrete ideas, have some time to pose them to the entire board. and if the Board votes them down and says, you know we don't think shelter space for unhoused people is a housing issue. Then we can have that debate and debate it then. But I think the subcommittee should have some time to be able to investigate these issues and present it to the board, so that we can debate them in a more meaningful and thorough way. Right? So I think, to where where Corinne is coming from, and what I'd like to see is just a motion tonight to form a subcommittee. So the subcommittee can start meeting and coming up with priorities and ideas.

[123:02] And then, perhaps before the subcommittee even goes external, ie. Reaches out to people. Maybe the subcommittee presents at not the April meeting these the training, but maybe the May meeting, saying, these are some of the priorities we'd like to pursue. Let's discuss it as a board. What do you guys want to do? That's my thought. But I'd like to get the ball rolling and maybe just forming the subcommittee, now and then setting aside some time at the May meeting for the subcommittee to present to the Board, and just say, these are some things the subcommittee would like to do. What does the Board think? I think that's the right work plan I am supportive of us. You know, making a motion to create the subcommittee. I am in favor of you guys developing a a sort of work plan for habs.

[124:01] perhaps review and approval. And I'd like for it to include topics as well as like, what is the process right? Like, do you tell us what the topics are and we approve it? Do you? Do we provide you with authorization like, yes, it's okay for you to reach out to all roads. Yes, it's so like, what? What are we sort of enabling you to do? And then what is the communication like with city council. So I'm okay with all of that. I guess my next question is, Do jay. I think I gave you the 1st draft of that homelessness. Summary. Has that been shared with the board? Okay, so maybe we share that. And and do, do we give it? And maybe we give everybody the right to review it, or the subcommittee can make edits, or if if that's going to be part of your proposal, so

[125:09] sounded like the consensus, was to combine those 2 letters potentially right. So any other comments before we make a motion. Do you know who the subcommittee is? So far. Besides, maybe Corinne and Chad, or does that matter Well, I I just wanted to get clarity on that 2 versus 3 issue. And then the second question is, do we even need to have a vote to form a subcommittee where you just do it. and then, in terms of what the subcommittee does. I'm fine with any I personally am fine with any form of outreach as long as they're not directly reaching out to city Council to make recommendations. as far as doing whatever you need to do to get to do the research. That sounds like the job of the subcommittee

[126:02] In terms of that number I would go with Chips. Number 2. That's what we had for the last time, when both Have and Hrc. Had a combined Subcommittee on homelessness. There were 2 from each board. And I recall the public engagement was also 2 people, but I can confirm Yeah. And to be clear, it's my understanding that a subcommittee of an Advisory Board cannot make direct recommendations to council. The Subcommittee can type up a recommendation to Council and propose it to the Board, the Housing Advisory Board, and the entire Board can vote on it from there. But what I would like to see happen tonight. And Corinne, please follow up after me is the formation of a subcommittee, and I would propose that Corinne and myself are the members of the Subcommittee on the issue of homelessness, and

[127:01] we can start working on priorities. And then I think this is consistent with the work plan that Karen has set forth. We can then present in May on all right. This is what we've come up with so far. entire board. I don't think we'll have any recommendations by May. But entire board. What? What issues do you want us to pursue further? That's that's what I'm thinking, Corinne, can you please jump in and let us know your thoughts. I think I think I think the only place where you and I are saying something different is you would like to go ahead and identify and create priorities. Now. I'm suggesting we create those priorities with Councils direction after the Clutch report

[128:00] And how do we get Council's direction like what I just what does that look like? That's what I'm curious about. I think we in that. What am I trying to say proactively in that letter, with the summary of what we've learned, letting them know that we're forming the subcommittee and asking them to give us direction once they receive that report It's pretty easy to just get on the phone with most city council members if you reach out and ask. So I mean to Michael's point about the subcommittee having autonomy to figure out who they need to call and what they who, what conversations need to take place, and what research they want to do. Then just go do it and talk city council members I think we're all reaching a good consensus on that. It's just good to be explicit about it, so there's no misunderstanding later. I guess my last question is whether we actually need to vote on this subcommittee, or we just say

[129:04] you're a subcommittee. Go do it Although, I'd say, create a subcommittee and go do it. But I think until we and until May, I would rather that you weren't reaching out to people and doing investigation like, let's get a clear idea of what might be priorities or might be topics, and who you might want to talk to. And I don't know whether, like. yeah, I I think I'd like a little more structure or better under. And I think I think perhaps Karen's what Karen would like to see, and what Corinne is proposing. We can all be on the same page here, which is, why don't we form this subcommittee tonight? I think it. It doesn't hurt to vote on stuff. We form the subcommittee tonight. And then, Corinne, you and I, Corinne and I would be the members. You and I can start meeting discussing priorities, and then can we block off some time for Corinne and I to present to the Board in May. On these are proposed ideas, and then we can get the entire Board's feedback, including the 2 new members of our Board

[130:18] But can. The presentation in may also include the draft of the letter that you're gonna send to Council Yeah, I think that's something I would be happy to, you know, if we form the subcommittee tonight. Thereafter I'd be happy to meet with Corinne and talk about that, and we can have a draft along with sort of proposed discussion points to move forward, and then we can present that to the entirety of the Board Do you feel like that's in man? You were concerned about the summary coming out like, do you feel like that's timely enough. Okay. I'm sorry. Letter to Council. That would just be a letter saying.

[131:02] this is what we intend to do with the lecture report and how we're gonna help you sort it out. Is that right? I think so, I think. Go ahead, Corinne. In a combination with the draft of the letter that Karen created, talking about the summary of what what we had learned already Yeah, that that sounds pretty good. Well, if we're gonna vote on it, can somebody make a motion? We can one of the things I want to bring up here in the word plan. Yeah. So I'll make a motion to form a subcommittee of the Housing Advisory Board on Homelessness, comprising of Stephen Hennessy and Corinne Hoskin At this preliminary stage the purpose of this subcommittee is to develop proposed priorities, and a proposed statement to Council, which will be presented and discussed among the entirety of the Board. At the May 2025 Housing Advisory Board meeting

[132:07] With the clarification that this isn't on homelessness. This is on housing solutions related to homelessness Correct. I second all in favor Bye. Mean Yes. Alright. Thank you. So thank you. New subcommittee. So the other comment I had about the work plan. And maybe this is working, looking ahead to a future work plan is I feel like something we could do is help counsel figure out what the next phase of using this new family friendly zoning could be to ensure affordability. I think the light density increase is a great thing. I'm in Milwaukee right now. There's duplexes and triplexes everywhere. It works really, really well in neighborhoods. But as we've discussed

[133:10] numerous times in meetings, that doesn't. it reduces unaffordability. But it doesn't actually lead to affordability. So what? What's the but and addition that Council might consider next to make that legislation even more effective? I'm not asking answer that question. I'm just saying, that's a question we should grapple with in a future meeting. Do you have a month? You want us to look at it in I'm sorry, Karen You have a month Yeah, I'd say, June. Okay. I added it to the bottom. Other items to explore address with your name next to it, Michael

[134:02] Great. I stand by it. Any other work, plan, topics, comments. I have one. Okay. I would like to sometime in the calendar year, maybe not this summer, but to convene another educational. maybe just one speaker, but maybe a panel on land value tax. And this is a subject that a lot of people don't know much about. But it's it's a subject that people who think deeply about how housing markets work and how tax policy ought to work. They're they're pretty excited about. I don't know enough as much about it as I would like to. But I'd be willing to identify people who could identify people who could speak as subject matter experts I wonder whether we expand that to include like, I think there was talk about a potential tax for short term rentals, or for empty houses like, I wonder if it's sort of a bigger topic of. And I know that Chip has mentioned this before. Like, are there

[135:15] tax policies that create can that are being considered to create some of the outcomes that we want, and whether that's like a head count for workers. Or you know, it may be broader than just land Yeah, I think that's a fair question. And you know, maybe for the purposes of this board treating land value tax as kind of one of many possible policies might be the appropriate granularity. For me. I'm kind of excited about it, and I think it's complicated and big enough and changing, you know, transformational enough to to deserve its own dedicated time instead of like fighting with 3 other presenters in a panel format.

[136:05] But so I I mean, I I see I see the appropriateness of the those other topics tax related topics. But yeah, for me, I'd I'd prefer to see a dedicated time allotment like an hour's worth. Educate Have both on there. Do you still want yours? Yes. yeah. I mean, you might as well put it on the list. We don't. We? We can provide it up or not. So thank you, Philip. Anybody else have topics. They want to add to the work plan Yeah, I'm in. I'm in favor of all of us learning more about tax. I mean, it's a very complex nuance subject, so it might take a few meetings. I'm saying that about myself. but it's, you know. One thing I think of, and I'm actually visiting family in Florida right now is, they have a homestead tax exemption here, which is, or you get a. You get a tax cut. If you live in your house.

[137:06] on your property tax, and to the extent, you know, Boulder. this is just totally theoretical, but, like I could see a situation where the city increases its tax on homeownership, but then gives everyone who actually lives in their home a reduction, so that their tax doesn't change. And then that effect of that is that people who own houses that they don't live in might be paying tax more, of course, that could have negative impact on renters. But it's I mean, it's just one of the tools, and I think to the extent we could find someone good and knowledgeable to just kind of teach us about tax. I I think that would be very helpful. One thing to keep in mind with the work plan. So the way it's structured is the next 3 months. And then there are upcoming items and those upcoming items mean that we have enough information to actually schedule it on the agenda

[138:03] stuff at the below that that list that I just added those 2 topics or 3. Those are other items to explore. but there isn't enough substance to those to actually add to an agenda yet, so keep that in mind so like I love the fact that Philip took the initiative to find speakers for panel. So if there's topics in the other items to explore and address, and you want to take the initiative to start coming up with potential speakers. Then that would then help move those bullet points from the bottom over to the upcoming items. cause it looks like a bunch of our upcoming items will take us through August already. So yeah, great. Any other topics comments, or we're gonna move on all right. So the elections for chair and vice chair happen in May. If you want to nominate someone or nominate yourself.

[139:16] Send it to Jay, and then we'll have votes. Is that is that how it works? It's pretty informal. The purpose of this agenda item was to see who might be interested. And that includes our current chair and vice chair. So it's just to start thinking about it. If that's something that you're willing to dedicate the time. Because the basic fitted what the responsibility is of chair and vice chair is not. Obviously you've seen it run the meetings and be as a backup to run the meetings, but also to help. Throughout the agenda. We meet basically once in between meetings we set the agenda. We send it out. But it's basically that's it.

[140:03] And it's kind of nice to rotate that responsibility around. So think about whether or not you'd be willing to serve comments, questions. And then basically at the main meeting. Yeah, we'll just ask for nominations for chair, and then we'll do the same thing for vice chair alright, moving on board. Protocol regarding interactions with city council. Michael, are you handling this jay? Are you handling this? Should I handle this? It's under matters from the boards like, is this us establishing the protocol? Or is someone gonna explain to us what it should be.

[141:05] because I know we've talked a lot about having like a quarterly update to council. So are you guys wanting to talk about what that would look like a little further. since it'll probably be coming up soon. I think. In my mind the issue is, we have talked about quarterly presentations to city Council, and we've made it very clear that One of the have members can go up in front of city council and that they are instructed or or authorized to read what has been pre-approved by the Board, and so like. At the past couple of meetings we edited what Chip could read to city council, and Chip did a great job presenting to city council. I think we need to make it clear that other communication with city Council is not

[142:03] authorized unless it's been discussed with the Board. So no direct emails to City Council without board approval, city Council as a whole. like, if you know, you know somebody at City Council right? So like, if if you happen to take a walk with Erin, you're talking on behalf of yourself, you are not authorized to talk on behalf of have without have telling you what has been a pre approved policy. So no emails to council. And so this is just reiterating that correct What do you mean by no emails to Clarify that a little bit, because it might be a little confusing in light of what we just discussed about the subcommittee and research. I think it's fine to talk to council members.

[143:00] and we want, you know, we want people to reach out, and as they have the right to as residents, anyway. You know, the the what we don't want is a email or a communication from a cab member. That sounds like they're speaking for all app on a issue of substance, and I think we. I think we ran into some pushback from the the city administrators about whether we had a right to speak to Council Quarterly, or whether we just had to stand in line with the rest of any other resident signing up to speak and speak as space is available. You know, we've gotten some feedback. That council is a little overwhelmed by all the inputs they get from all the different boards and commissions, and that should be streamlined to some extent. It could even be

[144:02] Streamline, as a matter of reform in the way councils and the way boards and commissions operate in the future. So you know, I don't see it as like a gag order on ad members, but there is a probably should be a pretty strong protocol about not speaking on behalf of have unless we've all voted by majority vote on a statement. Does that help Yeah. And I would love to speak to my experience doing the quarterly statement. So when I reached out to the city manager and the the city attorney and the city clerk, who are the 3 staffers who attend the City Council meeting District Council on. Just like, you know we? We have this statement to read, and the response we got from them was to sign up for public comment.

[145:02] which I did on the Friday before the meeting at 8 Am. That's when the sign up opened. And there's like an online form for that. And I just typed in. I have a statement to deliver on behalf of the Housing Advisory Board, and then, the day before the meeting, I was notified that I had been selected for open comment here, and that I was number one on the list for open comment. So I went to City council and I read the statement. At that time. I learned a lot at that city council meeting. Not all I did was read our statement, but sort of after that. There were 10 public commenters. 7 were there to comment on foreign affairs, and 3 were there to comment on city issues, and, to be honest, it was. It was a very shocking and upsetting experience for me. I moved to Boulder 10 years ago, and I've never heard hate speech spoken in this city, and I heard hate speech spoken in city Council chambers.

[146:15] and I got the impression that that was normal. This happens very often at city council meetings, and it's my understanding that you know. As long as hate speech does not incite violence, it's protected by the 1st amendment, so people can do it. But this is this seems to be a common thing at City Council meetings, and I've been thinking a lot about it because it was very upsetting for me. And again, this this wasn't our statement at all. Our statement was fine. but city Council did not respond to our statement, even though we had a question, and I learned that the reason they didn't respond to our statement is that they are not allowed to respond to open comment period. And that is a rule that they passed, I guess because there's been a lot of

[147:04] acrimony involving public comment. A lot of the public comment has not really involved issues like housing, transportation planning. You know, the city stuff we think of. and I don't know. My my takeaway from all this is, I think you know, I just heard someone call Jewish members of our council. Nazis and I thought that was really sad and upsetting, and I think the city of Boulder would be a better place if comment at at City Council meetings focused on city issues. And I think it's a really good thing that we, the Housing Advisory Board, have a plan, and we voted on this plan to come to council meetings every quarter and talk about housing issues. I think that's really good for our community without even getting the weeds about what those housing issues are. And I think that's something we should keep doing.

[148:00] My takeaway from this is that hopefully, if we just keep signing up for public comment. We get selected, you know. I think the next quarterly statement should come from someone else other than me. The limitation of it is, it's 2 min. And obviously it's a statement we all have to vote on and approve as a board. But you have 2 min, and they cut you off, and they're not going to respond. They might follow up with an email or something afterwards, but they can't respond to the public comment. And I think so our statement was good. I got it all in in 2 min, but I don't think we can provide any statement longer than what we did for our last one that's about. I was hitting about 2 min there. I think we should keep doing this, you know. I would like to see in the future. I think it would be good if there was interaction if city council could respond to us, if more boards did that. But that's that's a decision that has to come from city council. And if you know, we want to comment on that procedure, I guess that's something we can also debate, although I think our our 2 min are probably best focused on substance, on housing issues.

[149:11] So that was the experience, you know, just my perspective. From all of this. you know this is a new experience for our board, and was a very new experience for me. This is my city council meeting is that these city Council meetings have a lot of crazy stuff going on, and a lot of upsetting hateful comments. And I think we can do a service to our community by just helping council focus its meetings on city issues like housing. And if we can keep doing this and hopefully, if we sign up for a public comment. We get selected, especially if we rotate people. I think that's great, and if something, if we get passed over, then I think we should get together and debate all right. How do we address this with council? If we don't feel like our voices, our collective voices being heard. So that's my thought. I'm happy to answer questions or concerns from anyone on the board about that

[150:06] And I have a comment and a question, Chip. Thank you. My comment is, I think we basically did what the city manager and others asked us to do is just follow their procedure. So I'm happy about that, and I'm happy that worked out. and I don't mind continuing to do that at all. And rotating have members. I don't think it's about telling them something they don't know. or it's it's really just about maintaining our level or increasing our level of influence. So they are paying attention when you know, we come up with something new or a recommendation that they maybe hadn't thought of before. My question to you. I'm sorry you had to be subjective to the to listening to the hate speech, but if you could have filtered that out, would have you been happy about your experience presenting a saver from heaven

[151:08] And you said, happy with my experience, presenting what Oh, if, when you, when you found that a a productive experience, if you, if you could filter out the hate speech, part of it just focus on the presentation. And and knowing that a statement from have was heard Yeah, very much so. And I think Council appreciated it. I mean. I got their the impression that they they are used to public comment, often being very unproductive. And that's what I've seen reported in the news, and that's what I've heard, you know, not related to housing issues. But I have talked to a couple City Council members about some of the hate speech, and I've I've heard that city council would like to hear more about city issues.

[152:02] whatever they may be, city issues, housing transit. You name it at city council meeting, and I think if we can kind of lead by example for our community and do that, and it is more powerful. You know. I went up there. I read the statement. I said. I'm talking on behalf of the Housing Advisory Board. It's something that you know. 7 people who were appointed by Council debated and agreed on. That's powerful, and I I think they hear it, and I think if we keep doing it. they'll listen. I know in the past this board has sent letters to council, and I think that's also effective. But I did notice, like their their packets are like 700 pages sometimes for these city council meetings. So I think a letter sometimes get lost in the weeds, but if we can come up with a 2 min statement every quarter, it does 2 things. It increases our influence, and then I think it also keeps our city focused on.

[153:01] Let's focus on the issues. And as I was leaving I said, Boy, wouldn't it be wonderful if you know, multiple boards were here to talk about housing transportation. You know the things that the pressing issues our city's facing. So I think this is good for our city. It's good for our board. I'm happy to answer any other questions. I mean, I really just read the statement, and you guys can go on Youtube and watch it if you want. But it was. That was my takeaways. There's a more productive way for city council, probably to I don't know do, or for our city to do, city council meetings. And I, I thought, this is maybe a a step in the right direction. What we're doing here Hmm. well, I concur. I think we're on to something, and thank you for piloting a a new app initiative I feel like we had when we 1st started talking about this going in reporting to Council Quarterly Ish. We had talked about kind of having

[154:03] at each month just writing down a couple of bullet points, so that when we come to write our statement we have somebody. Are we doing that we somebody doing that? Did I make that up in my head? I think it's a good idea like it, like it may be that the next quarter. We talk about how, what this panel was about, and what we do at the next one, and then we do it the next one. But I have. I haven't been taking notes in that regard. I'll write it down. Did you just delegate yourself? Are you volunteering? I can have a fresh piece of paper. So it's on the work plan for the May meetings. It's on there. Quarterly update. So the idea is, yeah. The month before. Talk about what we want to say, and then someone would draft it, and then at the June meeting, someone would actually, the board would approve it, and then that month, wherever was selected would present it to council

[155:01] was the cadence that you talked about I think that makes sense. I wanna stress. I wanna stress everyone. The 2 min goes very fast. There's like a timer Sure. So I got it all in, but I got a little nervous in the end, so we need to be pretty concise if we're, you know, if we're stuck with this 2 min time frame, I think maybe Corinne and I, as part of the homelessness subcommittee. Maybe we can propose a few sentences on the homelessness issues we've addressed in the process we're working on. And we can talk about that in May. And then for the other issues we've addressed, including tonight's meeting. Maybe, Philip, you can work on a few sentences. Obviously, we're going to discuss this all in May and agree on a statement before someone you know delivers it to council Great. Okay, any other. Okay, I'm gonna move on matters from Staff County one b funding update.

[156:06] Yeah. So this will be quick. So but a little bit of background. So everyone remembers the regional housing partnership pretty exciting. So 2017, all of the Boulder County jurisdictions got together and adopted a 12% goal. You know, 12% of all the housing units be permanently affordable in Boulder County. All the jurisdictions approved it. and they outlined to get there, we will need to figure out funding sources. And one of the things the regional housing partnership did was the whole Home wanted campaign to remember that that's actually going to hopefully get refreshed this year and to raise awareness. But also part of it was talking about putting up something on the ballot measure, putting a ballot. a measure on the ballot to raise money. And that was approved in November of 2020, 33. And we basically, we got

[157:07] anywhere between 16 and 18, maybe 19 million a year specifically for affordable housing and in the past year year and a couple of months. The county Commissioners have have basically been driving that whole process and discussion about how to allocate that funding. There's been a lot of discussion back and forth with the different jurisdictions boulder, Longmont, and the smaller jurisdictions as well, and what we think is going to come out of it is boulder, and Longmont will get a direct allocation. so we'll get sorry, and I have the numbers I wanted to share with you. Just so you get a sense. So since the the money is different, basically every year. It's a, it's a percentage formula.

[158:07] And my calendar is not. It's not working one second alright. So 16.7 million this year. So they they've renamed it as the affordable and attainable housing tax. and there was some language in there about providing services, which is interesting. so the the county has decided to take off 35% for supportive services and dedicate 65% to actual development of affordable housing. 38% of that, 65% will go to Boulder County, 32% to the city of boulder 30% to city of Longmont. They're taking 500,000 off the top also for admin 500,000 for this innovation fund.

[159:10] which they're going to basically allot on a sort of a fund round basis. And they're gonna set aside 835,000 in reserves. So the good news is that Boulder should get an extra 3 million dollars to put towards affordable housing every year. And we expect to have an under governmental agreement signed in April. probably more like May, and then we'll be able to make that money available to our housing partners to actually create some additional affordable housing that we otherwise would not have been able to. So, anyway long story. But in the end a positive outcome for the cap, and is affordable like

[160:02] up to 80% ami. So they are working on specific criteria but it would have to meet our criteria, the city of boulder. So it for rental is up to 60%. Ami. I think the vast majority of it is going to go towards rental but our ownership does go up to a hundred percent ami. And so then Jay, can I ask you? But oh, go ahead. Sorry Nope, go ahead! I recall Jay when watching the City Council study session on homelessness. There was some exchange about. and I might be wrong about this, but one of the city Council members seemed upset that this county money could not be used for psh permanently supportive housing like bluebird. That was their understanding. It was like a string attached. The county didn't want it. Going to that, do you know? Is that is that the case?

[161:04] Is that true? I think the I heard that, too, and I wasn't entirely clear what the concern was. I wasn't sure if it was that they were setting aside that 35% for supportive services that does not go towards housing. So psh is housing. It's not services. So I think that's what I heard. But I think with more. What you heard is the undertone of concern that the county commissioners were making decisions without a whole lot of engagement with, or agreement from the regional partners. To put it politely, actually, can you? I'd like Good. Clarification like when I think about permanent supportive housing, I think of like 3 legs of a stool. So there's like money to build a unit.

[162:00] Then there's money for rental vouchers, whether it's Section 8 or project based, or something like that. And then there's money for the case. Managers who are providing tenant supportive services. So I'd be curious to know is the is the money that's coming to Boulder for all 3 of those stools, or just just the unit part of the of the affordable housing. Well, so we don't know exactly yet, because we haven't seen the criteria the county says they're supportive of permanent supportive housing. but yeah, it's still to be determined, but likely it's still also keep in mind. 3 million is is a. It's a good chunk of money, but it's not a significant portion of the city's overall affordable housing fund. So likely what we'll do is that 3 million will go to one or 2 projects most likely to boulder housing partners.

[163:03] Thank you. But then that frees up other affordable housing fund money to go to other projects which specifically would be a permanent, supportive housing project which is one of our priorities. Any other questions, comments alright, I'm gonna debrief. Unless there's something else that I have board member wants to discuss alright. So call to order. We approved the we reviewed the agenda. We approved the minutes unanimously. We had public participation with one speaker. We had a great panel discussion about sharing housing. Thank you again. To Phillip we talked about the have work plan. We discussed upcoming chair and vice chair elections. In May we talked about the Board protocol regarding interactions with City Council and staff. We approved a subcommittee to focus on housing solutions for homelessness.

[164:17] And we got an update regarding county one B funding update. And before we adjourn I want to say a big thank you to Danny and Julian for their service. I think this is their last meeting. I wish everyone was here, and we could all like celebrate Danny, I guess I owe you a beer and on that note I make a motion to adjourn Second. Cool. Thanks, guys, I think we're done. Thank you.

[165:01] Everybody see you next best Thank you, Danny. Thank you, Julian. Thank you. Everyone Thank you, Tiffany. Thank you.