June 25, 2025 — Housing Advisory Board Regular Meeting

Transcript

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

[0:00] And I'm going. I am Karen, and I'm the chair of the Housing Advisory Board, and I wanna welcome everybody to the June 25th meeting. I'm gonna call it to order and do a roll call. Here, Lauren. Here. Ml, here, Cindy. Hello, Chip! Oh, yes, and Michael is biking up so he will be a soon. So I think that's perfect. So today, we're gonna approve the minutes we're gonna open up to public participation. We're gonna have matters from the board that include healthy buildings. stronger community roadmap. And we'll do a housing equity symposium. Recap from 2021.

[1:04] We'll do the. We'll talk about the Quarterly Update to Council and the, and we'll review the work plan, and then there will be matters from staff and then open time for thoughts and suggestions, and then we will adjourn. So did everyone get a chance to read the minutes from May 14? th And does anybody have any comments or edits or changes that they want to make. Okay, roll call, will you? Michael's here? If not, will someone make the motion to approve the minutes. Okay, so moved. You're gonna get a second one second. Okay? All in favor. We post on. All right, passes

[2:01] Tiffany. Do we have anybody who wants. Oh, public participation! Are you here for public participation? All right. Where do you want us to talk from just here? But just take a second to pull a month. Alright. So no one of you are you back with us again. the rules for public participation. So the city is engaged with community members to co-create a vision for productive and inclusive civic engagement. Vision supports the physical and emotional safety of community members, staff boarding commission members as well as democracy for people of all ages, etc.

[3:03] More information you can follow. This link and following are examples of rules and decorum that are in the Boulder revised code that will be upheld during this meeting by our chair. and all remarks and testimony, we must be limited to matters related to city business. No participant shall make threatening statements or other forms of intimidation, obscenities, racial epithets, and other speech. The or behavior that's disrupted or otherwise, impedes the ability to conduct the meeting prohibited. Participants. We do ask you if you're participating online, that you display your entire name? Before we allow you to speak online. And that's it. And 3 min, right? Correct? Okay. okay. Hi, my name is Megansteel and I am the Government Affairs Coordinator for the Boulder Area Rental Housing Association. We're a local trade association, and we represent over 16,000 rental units here in the Boulder area, and I'm here to talk a little bit about the healthy Buildings initiative which I understand Crystal is going to present on

[4:18] after us. So we have, submitted written comments to staff and appreciate their engagement on this issue they also recommended. We come, speak with you this evening to talk a little bit about our perspective, so I just wanted to share a few concerns regarding the practicality of the next steps and boulders for climate action goals specifically how they might affect rental housing providers right now rental housing providers are navigating the challenging economic environment. Rents are declining, vacancies are rising, insurance premiums have skyrocketed and a number of new state level mandates are driving up operating costs in this environment. It is increasingly difficult for property owners to absorb additional financial burdens.

[5:03] Our main concern is the reliability and capacity of the electric infrastructure upgrading to electric systems is not only expensive, but often delayed by utility timelines and permitting backlogs. In addition, the grid is not currently set up to handle upgrades, as we have witnessed with brownouts and power loss. A board member Kel will talk about some real world examples that she's experienced after I say a few things. as you know, or may not know, older implemented smart Regs program, and it went into effect in 2018. This required rental properties to meet strict energy efficiency standards. Many rental property owners invested heavily in high efficiency, high efficiency gas powered systems during that period, changing the standards now risks undermining some of those investments were made at that time and forcing them to potentially premature replace otherwise efficient compliant equipment. We do appreciate the emphasis we understand they're looking at end of life replacement. So we appreciate that concept.

[6:06] However, the reality on the ground is a little bit more complex for most older buildings. Transitioning to electric is not simply a matter of just swapping up out the appliance. It can require extensive electrical upgrades, including full rewiring, which adds significant cost and complexity. Given this context, we respectfully urge the city to prioritize electrification in owner occupied housing for this next phase. Rental properties have already undergone extensive improvements under smart regs, and that's still, in effect, if anyone were to go become a rental now. if rental housing is to be included, moving forward, we strongly advocate for a flexible incentive driven approach. one that includes, dedicated a dedicated city of lies, liaison, excuse me to assist with permitting planning, cost, estimating, and navigating rebate.

[7:04] Could you spell your last name? Oh, yeah, it's not. It's hardy. P. As in Paul F. As in Frank A, NSTI. EL. Thank you, and I'll just introduce myself. I'm Jennifer Kroll. I'm the executive director of our house, so I'm just here to participate and listen and really appreciate Crystal's prompting of us in being a part of conversation. It's been very productive, and we like the concept long term. I just think there's a lot of practical implications that are going to think about. And we have brought Kel for some real world experience. So I'm Kel Darnell and I'm a small local landlord. So I'm not.

[8:01] I'm that mom and Pop, you hear about all the time. That's me. Okay. And I have 2 houses on the hill. So I want to talk to you about what it takes to upgrade a hundred year old house. Do any of you have a boiler in your house. Okay, most people have never seen one of those. So this is an issue. But what I really want to talk about is electrical upgrades. So I think there's a bunch of moving parts that a lot of people don't understand, and I'm not saying I do, by any means. This is such a complicated issue that I walked right into it and smacked my face on it. and then had to keep going. So my husband's an electrician. I thought how hard could it be. and all I wanted? 200 year old houses on the hill, one in the 900 block of 13th Street, one on the 1,000 block of 13th Street. Both have one big apartment and 2 small apartments. Neither had laundry.

[9:01] because there's no power for laundry, so I wanted one washer and dryer in each of those buildings. And I I thought, Well, we better get ready for a car charger, because kids are inheriting Tesla's. This is true. So I said, Okay, let's upgrade these 2 houses. Well, 3 apartments. If you've got a 40 amp. Breaker for electric stove, a 40 amp breaker for electric dryer and a 20 amp. Breaker for a couple of air conditioners, and you have 70 amp. Service. You just hit a hundred with 70 ad service distributed. Power allows that to happen, and allows you to put in another stove and a hair dryer and a toaster oven and a couple of other things and hope that it all works. And Megan and I were talking about a dinner, about somebody turns a hair dryer on and the breaker pops. Okay, but 7 Am. Service is common for these old houses on the hill.

[10:08] If you wanna add, if you want to electrify the whole house, including the boilers and hot water heaters and add car charging and air conditioning. None of these houses has central air. You need 200 amp service. So how do you get 200 amp. Service. Well, 1st of all, excel. Cannot provide 200 M. Service right now. So excel is our big problem in this genre. But I did this twice. I got excel to come out and do a plan. You have to get a designer. They come and do a plan. They tell you what it's going to take to do 200 amp service. I have one house that had 2 break, 2 meter panels. that one we could upgrade, because we took all the house onto one old panel and put in the new panel with the new breakers

[11:04] not done and the we were able to do that on that house, but excel does out allow you to add a breaker panel. Now this is in their blue book, not yours, not the city. So if you want another breaker panel on your house, you can't get one. Nobody can get one. So I have another house up the street. Had one meter. Yep, okay. Well, I had one meter, and they said, You can't do that. We had to add a meter to the garage. The upgrade on the 2 existing meters cost $14,322, and I don't have the 2 20 service, because Excel never dropped it. and I still don't have service on the garage 10 months later. So my point is, this is a very expensive project. I'm all in. Everybody's all into electrical electrification, but we've got to have excel on board.

[12:05] Thank you, Tiffany. Do we have anybody dialing? Okay, we're gonna close public participation. And now let's switch to healthy buildings. Let's see. I'm I've got to see if I get this right on this sharing going from the presentation book to sharing into Zoom any advice, start with one or the other. do it, and then we'll just thank you. I appreciate it. Okay, great. Thank you. Like oops. Come on, we can do it.

[13:00] There we go. I think you're up. Great. Well, thanks for having us here tonight. We'll do a quick intro of the the team and talk about our roles and I'm Carolyn Elam. I'm a senior manager in our climate initiatives department. I manage our energy systems, work. Been with the city for the last 7 years. I appreciated hearing the public comment tonight. I think it's very relevant to our conversation tonight. So I do appreciate that. I'm joined tonight by Crystal. You want to introduce yourself. Yeah, sure. Hi, I'm crystal launder, and I am on the energy team. But my role is, I I guess it tends to be a lot about like this type of public facing project, but also energy equity. Yeah, and then online, we have laurel, laurel, introduce yourself. Yes, hello. I'm Laurel Mattree. I work on the energy team on climate initiatives, about 15 years of building energy management and sustainability experience. And I've been with the city for 5 years, focusing on building electrification and efficiency.

[14:07] Great thanks. Yeah, I just, I think quickly. I always love to shit. Say, like, if you just look at these big point here, see all those buildings. They all exist in Boulder right now. So like we're not talking about new build, we're talking about existing buildings. Great? So I think, as as crystal noted, we've been at addressing climate related issues, greenhouse gas emissions associated with our buildings for a long time. So what you're hearing tonight is. you know, a a reflection on our past work where we've been successful, where we've been less successful. What we've learned as well as a look forward into. You know what we know about the latest science today, what it's telling us we need to do as a community related to our buildings and some of the the strategies, and we'll talk about the process. But just really want to appreciate you making time to to speak with us and provide your feedback on this topic.

[15:10] So just go to the next one crystal. So I think everybody's familiar. The community has been adopting climate related goals since 2,006 the most updated goals were adopted and supported by city council through resolution in 2021 these goals are all informed by what science tells us so. The science tells us that, you know, if we, as a community and communities like us don't reach a point where we're putting no more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And then we're taking in through our natural systems. We're going to reach the the tipping point where we realize catastrophic and irreversible climate change. so as a leading and community. You know, here in the industrial world, we set our target to reach that neutrality point by 2035. So that's our mitigation goal.

[16:05] But more important, you know, as we've reflected on our more than decades or 2 decades of of climate work. We also know our role as local government is also to help our community be ready. We're already experiencing the effects of climate change. It's having material impact and disruption on our community and communities like us. And so a lot of our work is is still around making sure we're doing our part in mitigation. But it's really strengthening and showing up our community to the effects of climate change. What it's going to mean in terms of continuous rising temperature. You know, continued decline in our air quality. You know, risk of disruption of our energy, infrastructure, or other infrastructures. And and how does in this case our our building stocks sit within that entirety. From how do we reduce the emissions from our buildings to how do we make them more resilient and make sure that they're provide the healthy and safe spaces we need them to provide for our community, which is why we're talking about healthy and resilient buildings, not

[17:13] emissions, free buildings. That's the nuance, and some of the shift that we've had as we talk about our programs and strategies next slide from an emission standpoint, though buildings are our single largest contributor to our missions. And so we do need to tackle them. Obviously our commercial buildings represent and less industrial represent the largest. Our buildings also contribute to declining urban air quality. So they are responsible for roughly, 5% of ozone formation in the front range. So that's gas combustion appliances operating in buildings that are contributing to that. So those are all factors that we're really taking into account. So why we're here and and and talking with you all is, you know, you're the experts in in this this housing arena and understanding housing policy. And

[18:02] you know, as we think about, you know what we've learned and and where we need to look forward. We we know, you know, people spend 90% of their time indoors, and your risk being indoor and outdoor air quality the most at risk are our youth. Older adults, people with existing underlying health conditions. we also have. And and we'll talk about this a little later. In some of the strategies we're recognizing that as a community, we're not ready for the continuing, rising average temperatures of of that we're seeing. You know, I have a graph. I sometimes show we're on a trajectory to have a climate more like Albuquerque in the in the coming decades, right? And we've not designed our buildings or constructed our buildings to that type of climate. We built it to what was a, you know, high altitude front range community, where you didn't require cooling. You could open the windows at night, cool your homes. And so we know that you know more about more than half of our housing stock was constructed without centralized cooling. People are, you know, using.

[19:06] you know window units or other solutions to get some cooling. But but those really aren't going to be sustained as we continue to see temperature extremes grow. yeah, 25% of our resident potential buildings are in urban heat risk areas. So areas that we know have urban heat island effect where we're going to see continued rising temperatures. There's less tree canopy. There's more surface area that attracts heat. So again, we have vulnerable populations in those areas that are at risk. And so, as we think about our strategies to address emissions, we really need to be centering them and how we're addressing these core issues. Obviously our mobile and manufactured housing, which we value as a really important component of our housing stock, is particularly vulnerable to some climate related events related to wind. We saw over 400 of those homes damaged during the straight line winds the day of the Marshall fire.

[20:05] And we also know that roughly, 50% of our housing stock is rental. And so we see under investment in our rental properties and and delivering energy efficiency comfort bill savings for for their occupants. So those are some of the core values that we've laid out in in our our efforts, as we think about not just climate emissions, reduction. What was that number on rentals? So it's roughly 50% of all housing units. And I don't have the exact number. But that breaks down as you know, roughly, 30% of our single family. And roughly, 70% of that number are you know, apartments multifamily, condominiums. So our question for you as as we continue with this. This presentation is, you know, really looking for insights. As we talk about some of the strategies we've been covering some of the learnings we've had from our roadmap process.

[21:04] You know, how do we continue to balance the the need to address our climate goals with other goals that we have as a community affordability accessibility. So really looking for you to be able to be back to us. Some of your insights in that regard. And so, you know, laurel and crystal are gonna talk through. The process. We've undertaken, what we you know, what we have in place today what we've learned from it, and then I'll I'll take back up with some of the strategies. That we think are of interest and really want to have some dialogue around, agreed. So I'm just gonna move on. So I'm I'm gonna talk about the roadmap itself. it's pretty straightforward. It's kind of what you would expect from a typical document except it's really set to that 10 year, timeline. And like those some of those goals that you saw in Carolyn identified in the previous section. We're really like, it's pinned to like, how do we get there in 10 years? Right?

[22:05] So that's why why it's a roadmap, and it has some policies, programs, and funding identified. And then a commitment to like what engagement needs to look like. And and then those roles, of course. Let's see here, and these are the goals that are specific to the roadmap. So what? Again? It's not 0 emissions. By 2035 increased resilience to extreme weather and heat unlike, oh, better indoor air quality. incorporate equity consideration. So when we la when-, when some of these programs went into effect, you know. Like they said 2018 was the adoption time for or like the when when smart rigs fully kicked in we didn't have a racial equity plan, right? So we just incorporating some of that increasing social resilience. So especially with our lower income community members like and

[23:08] other properties that we like. We'll talk a little. I'll talk about that in a second. But, like other properties. that we really value. We wanna make sure to like invest and really supporting those. And that's actually gonna like, kind of get them over the hump. So they are in that position to be ready for the future that we're living into and then just stabilizing energy costs because gas is going to fluctuate and be volatile. and there are ways to like, say, use so like solar, for example, as a way to to offset. But we're this isn't really about solar, but just in electricity is a more stable cost over time. So what we've done so far, we began with a technical analysis, and July of last year. Laurel was the project manager for that.

[24:00] It? It looked at the whole building stock across city of Boulder and then it was a policy scan like that, and a financial analysis, and then really kind of looking at all of that, and saying like, How do we take all this and then turn it into something that would produce that 2035 outcome. Then and this is why we have. We have some folks here from Barha that have participated in the testimony is we've we've we've got been in a community engagement phase, and that actually like began last in November. And so we've done we did these kind of deeper interviews. We did like 20 focus groups. We had. A community wide questionnaire. And this, now we're at this like kind of final step of just going out to some of the other boards that we know and departments as well, that to say, like to just check in and get your feedback before we move ahead.

[25:02] And then, just to kind of put a finer point into what we're saying about how this you you all being important? These are the stakeholders. They should look like people that that you might have come in and make public comment here. Right? So mom and pop landlords low to moderate income tenants, low to middle income homeowners, fixed income owners. farah also, people who are the, you know, just Hoa's, for example. You know, there's just buildings. There's a lot of different stakeholders. So that's why we've had such a robust engagement. Process. And one of the other things. That is relevant to you all is the equity guardrails. So we part part of what we want to do is be mindful of those buildings that are serving people that are in that you know the equity priority groups.

[26:06] We also want to be mindful of cost burden. There's a lot of different ways that cost burden can come up. It could be because building isn't efficient. So you could actually create more cost savings by just investing in purely inefficiency in making a building more efficient. If you all electric solutions can also create a cost burden. If there aren't ways to kind of offset those costs right and then cost relief for lower income households. And then we know that gas is again. We're talking about fluctuating costs. And you know then, that- that risk of offsetting rents or like the the cost to the person who's renting to offset the, you know, investments. Those are all the issues we're trying to solve as we're looking at this and then there's a whole workforce component as well.

[27:01] so I think this is now a handoff to Laurel. Yeah, thank you. So, now, I just want to go through what it? What have we already done? What? What's in process now with our existing programs. Next slide. So we consistently update the energy conservation code. And you know, I think we have some of the more progressive and kind of up to date code in the State, thanks to the work of people like Carolyn, and those have pretty high energy performance standards for new construction and renovation, not really for existing buildings so much where people aren't doing significant renovation. We also continue to operate the smart rigs program. And these are rental housing, energy efficiency standards, and they're required when a homeowner or a landlord applies for licensing and most of the landlords in existing buildings have already met these energy efficiency standards by 2018. So you know, at this point we're looking at anybody who applies for a new license would have to.

[28:08] would have to meet the standards for smart regs. And that's kind of a checklist that they have to pick and choose certain efficiency measures to complete next slide. Another program is the healthy, resilient mobile home program. That's a grant program that I administer. And that's something that we actually started as response to the Marshall fire. High wind event. You know, after the destruction from the fires happened, we heard from Mobile home communities that there was a lot of damage due to the high winds that were recorded along the front range. So we at the time I partnered with Crystal, who was in housing. And we basically developed a grant program to assist homeowners who had significant damage from from the wind event. And we've served at this point over 260 manufactured homes and repaired these homes in the city of Boulder

[29:04] And we've also partnered with Boulder County. They've provided some funds for us to do some work in some of those adjoining communities as well. We work with Boulder County, and we have worked with Boulder County to design a program called Energy Smart, and that's a 1 stop shop for home improvements. They also help to facilitate our rebates and incentives. So we partner with Boulder County to kind of stack incentives if you live in the county, and then, you know, stack incentives with city of Boulder they also provide technical advising to homeowners been a super great service for individuals saves an equivalent about 1,600 homes of energy use annually. we have a partnership, a fairly significant partnership with partners for a clean environment. And that's Boulder Boulder county group of employees that provides the same kind of advising to businesses, nonprofits, and multifamily housing owners to perform energy upgrades and to access our rebates and incentives. Again, and that saves equivalent about 200.

[30:12] Well, 2,500 homes energy use annually next slide. In the world of equity guardrails and programs. You know, energy smart, definitely works with low income homeowners and we provide no cost upgrades for up to 80% of area media income households. So you know, within that program, we also partner with a group called Energy Outreach Colorado, to perform a lot of those upgrades. So that our the breadth of our outreach is kind of magnified within our partnership with pace. That's the group that focuses on commercial buildings. They, we have a specific equity priority buildings program. We offer larger incentives for equity priority buildings, and you know a lot more handholding as those building owners kind of walk work through upgrades and also work to meet our building performance ordinance requirements, and then that the same thing. They also work with multifamily housing and affordable housing

[31:14] projects around energy, efficiency and electrification. And I talked about the healthy, resilient, mobile home program. And that's been amazing. We've been able to provide no cost. Energy upgrades things like roof replacements. You know, skirting replacements. It's really focused on building envelope. And then the kind of next phase of that will be focusing on electrification energy efficiency inside the home. So a lot of these folks are living with, you know, 2040 year old furnaces, and you know, no air conditioning. Maybe a window unit, maybe a portable cooler. So that's something that you know. That'll be kind of. We'll be focusing on that, as the next phase. Once once we kind of got through with wind damage. We realize there's still a heck of a lot of need out there in the manufactured housing community. So that program will be continued

[32:05] next slide. Okay. Now, Carolyn's Gonna present, our potential policies and programs. Yeah, so thanks again. And as Crystal mentioned, we hired our consultant group to go out there and do a policy scan and and look at programs throughout the country. So what other cities and communities have undertaken, what they've learned. And they came back to us, you know, based on the building stock here in Boulder. based on the demographics and and kind of the gap we have between where we are today and where we need to get to by 2035. They came back with a set of policy recommendations. And that's what we've been doing. Engagement around to understand. You know, I want to be clear and transparent. It's a huge undertaking, like if we are literally going to get from our buildings are today to hit our goals. A lot needs to happen. I'm I'm going to ground you and and ask you to have some belief with me. I've been at this game for a while, and I remember you know, back when we said

[33:06] the utility was never going to get more than 5% renewables on the utility grid. It was impossible they were never going to be able to get it. And you know, today, like, we're not even having the conversation about cleaning up the grid that's happening. So sometimes when we we lay out these visions and start to focus in on the the things that get us some big progress, we gain momentum, and some of those barriers come down. But I just want to say we're also grounded in the fact that we're not going to go out and and propose regulation tomorrow that makes everybody get rid of their gas furnace. We're talking about like, what's the balance? We need to strike what's feasible? Within the financial constraints. We and the the billing owners and and renters have to get us as far as we can in ways that will help drive systemic and market change. So that's the way I'll ask you to to view these from so that we're, you know. Not not too afraid. I I

[34:01] went through the building code update. And and I know everybody thought we were coming for their the gas stoves and and we're upset. So that's not the space we're in. So thank you. But at the same time I I'll share my my personal equity. Journey. I I've worked on with building codes and energy codes for years, and I remember we I was guilty of this, too. We're gonna put the most stringent building codes on the most, the big ones because they can afford it. That they're the big energy users. And what I learned is we gave the most affluent people in our community the most resilient buildings that we have when utility prices were skyrocketing. When gas prices were doubling a couple of winters ago, their utility bills were 0 because they had solar and they were all electric homes. We can't make those mistakes anymore. We need to make sure that we're prioritizing our strategies and just providing the support through financial solutions and programming. To make sure what we're doing is actually giving the most resilient building stock to those who are most vulnerable.

[35:03] So that's that's also Carolyn's personal attorney, because I kick myself for being part of that for years. But at least I learned Carolyn, just quick question, How how do you want? What would be the best way to go through this? I I was just gonna walk through some of the strategies that maybe we can talk back if people have questions, does that work, and then we can have some discussion around them. I'll just give you some of the context of what what they mean? And and a little bit of what we're thinking. And and then, yeah, definitely come back and ask questions. But if there's anything pressing or you have a different preference, please just let me know. So we have smart rags in place today. And again, this sets a minimum performance standard for our rental properties. You have to score a minimum number of points. I will say it wasn't an overly aggressive thing. About 50% of our buildings already met the requirement. About 50 had to make some improvement. there is an opportunity to think about how we refine that and bring in new requirements that we would again phase in over time and and work with our rental property owners to implement that could be deeper efficiency. I've raised this issue of the absence of cooling. That's particularly prevalent in a lot of our build. Our rental units, particularly when we start to talk about our apartment style. Housing

[36:26] where there's a lot of barriers to having robust cooling solutions. So we are thinking about cooling access. One of the benefits of thinking about that is, if we also specify that that needs to be heat pump, or starting to support electrification as well. Fun you. I we start the ones that we likely want to pursue through further discussion and design. So when you see this star, we haven't made the decision today. But these are ones that we're probably gonna recommend as things that we continue to develop but we certainly welcome your feedback on that.

[37:03] Many communities are adopting building performance standards. Many of our over 50,000 or over 50,000 buildings in Boulder right now are subject to state requirements that set a performance threshold for the building, so you can only use so much energy per square foot. You have targets, you have to lower your energy use by 2030, 2040 to meet those standards and make those improvements that's imposed on building owners. We have a form of that in place today. It doesn't apply to multifamily housing. But we certainly are interested in thinking how given we already have State regulation given. We've already had local regulate regulation. How can we bring these together and adopt a similar policy here? So vision you know. everybody needs to bring their apartment building into a you know no more than 40,000 kb. 2 per year, or per square foot.

[38:05] as kind of the requirement. And then we layer in supportive programs that help them make the right investments to get there is what that would look like. Energy improvements. there's a programs around time of sale. So there's all sorts of opportunities, whether it's disclosing the energy use of a building and requiring that that be presented to potential buyers to actually requiring that you bring that building up to a certain performance threshold at time of sale. That's certainly of interest, of of thinking about whether there's opportunity, although it it again only touches a fraction of our building. So we're a little bit in mixed on on whether that one would be something we would recommend next one crystal. you know. Certainly the most economical cost effective time to make a transition is when you're already making an investment. So there is an end of life replacement approach where we're in our building codes. We would start to, you know, for example, if you're replacing an air conditioner that would now have to be a heat pump that could provide heating as well as cooling. Or you know, when you're

[39:21] for sometime down the road, not tomorrow, when your gas stove breaks or your furnace breaks, you'd have to get an electric one understanding. There's barriers to that, just for clarity, but that's certainly we? There are logical times where this is gonna make sense, and I anticipate we would move forward with something on some time horizon. So by 2032 this is what it would look like by 2035. This is what it would look like. Krista could probably talk about this one a little bit more than I can. But you know, thinking about simplifying how people can be successful in designing solutions and efficient options. So there's

[40:02] Pre-approved high performing a do you designs that could be something we could facilitate, so that anything new which is in our current code subject to less stringent requirements like we've made it easy to build it right, build it well, build it resilient. One stop shop, you know, continuing to enhance how we help navigate our codes or regulations. Set people up for success, particularly if we're going to impose more regulation, then we need to support that with ways to be successful, getting permits, understanding what the requirements are accessing rebates and so enhancing those services. Next one. Okay, so so, crystal, you want to talk about this one. Sure. Yeah. One of our consultants, who was in charge of the engagement side of things, was thinking about because they were brought that she works broadly on the Top Housing Institute for the Build environment. So she's aware of what's happening with proposition 1, 2, 3, which I know you all are. If there's a board that knows more about that. It would be this one right here. So one of the kind of questions we have that she raised, and we've gotten some feedback from Staff. But we're curious. Your thoughts like there's this

[41:23] the potential for nationally occurring affordable housing. To kind of count towards your housing goal. And so the question is, we could potentially like kind of tailor services to that space. And then it could be beneficial to kind of demonstrating our that we're meeting our, not the local goal, but the prop, 1, 2, 3. Goal. Does that make sense? So yeah, so, proposition 1, 2, 3 kind of a mandates. They're not mandates. They ask you to kind of you explained it. Jay. You're you're I'm gonna pass. Pass it off specifically so. Well, there are a lot of different components. But prop 1, 2, 3, basically says that

[42:14] to be eligible for this 200 million dollars a year in tax money. Local jurisdictions have to meet certain requirements. and one of them is to have a goal for affordable housing. But they don't consider deed restricted, permanently affordable housing as part of the goal. It's just what's affordable to a certain income. So that's kind of where Crystal is coming with this I mean for us, it's challenging as a community, because our land costs are so high and our housing costs are so high that all of our naturally occurring affordable housing it just it's getting small. That number is getting smaller and smaller every single year, and I think the opportunity here is to think about how, as we're imposing requirements and offering programming, can we potentially create carrots?

[43:05] So say, you know, you have to meet this requirement. Here's money and services to meet the requirement, but to me, but to access those there's some concession that you're making, or I mean, I think that's just one of our our thoughts is like, how can we bring these things together to be supported? We don't have it solved just, I'm just hypothetically showing that so prop 2123 is a lot about new construction projects. Correct? Yeah, there's 2 things, though. There's like the housing. There's the housing when they're when you're goal setting. It's about reaching your housing goal. Okay? So that that's in that goal is kind of not defined the same way that the how you know that the boulder defines it. And so there's this murky category of naturally occurring, and a lot of rentals actually keep their rents at

[44:03] or below 80% ami, so like they could like a lot of rents just naturally fall in that zone. So that could be, we could say, like, Hey, well. we'll kind of cater specifically to that. Those landlords that have have that or that. The other thing that Carolyn was referring to is, if we were to fund. Landlords maybe have some request, like some kind of rent stabilization requests, or like kind of discussion. It's got to be an a conversation. But about making sure that Reds don't escalate. After all, that investment has gone into a given building. You know the city of Boulder has an affordable housing goal of what was it like? Something like 12%? 15%. Does that come on something like this? The proposition, once right there, or where does that come from? Was it just pulled out of somebody's? That's just a that's a boulder goal, and that is for permanently affordable. And so this whole concept of naturally occurring, is really like the estate.

[45:12] Ia state idea that may or may not be, as Jay was, kind of referring to be a match except it may make Boulder look better if we, if we were to do like some some focus on that area. Do you know what it says? Market rate rents at or below 80% ami. Do you know what that monthly rent amount is? I can look it up on the rent. I can. I can. If you want, I can look it up quickly. That doesn't refer to the income of the owner that refers to the rent on the property right. But the rent is set at 30% of the income of the right resident. An area means it's Ami changes from. I know what Ami is, I'll look up the table. So if you have the 100,000 roughly, which is the 100%,

[46:08] am I for a 1, 1 person household? So 80% is 80,000. And then 30% of that would be the monthly rent, unsubsidized rent. That's what the market rate rent is. Yeah. And I'll give you that table. I'll look at the table so I can't do that. What is what is 2,400. Thank you. I have a question on that same. Can I follow up on that same? What percent you said that there are a lot of rental housing in boulder that are that meet that criteria right there. What does that mean? What percent of our rental housing? And is this part of Bhp's portfolio? Or is this the market. It just says market rate, so it has to be market. It would not be. Bhp, it might be there might be some. I think there are some like they call it attainable. There's like a term. So what's the percent?

[47:09] You said that a lot of them need that, what percent is that? I would say, I mean, I remember we did when I was working with Jay. We did a middle income housing strategy. and I mean it was a good share of of here. Let me give you the rent so that that'll start to answer your question percent. So when we every time we look at this we look at it for a range 80 to 120%, and about 98% of all the rentals in boulder are affordable to that range. Yeah. But this is below, right? So oh, so it's 20, it's less than 98%. So here's an example, $400. Well, so for a bed of a 0 bedroom home at 80%, am I? 0 bedroom studio? That would be 2,000.

[48:18] 110 a month. If you did, went to a 2 bedroom that'd be 2,703 bedroom would be 3,100, 3,500 for free bedroom. Are you assuming the bedrooms? Are people? No, the the calculations are a little bit there. There's like the their assumptions that are made between incomes and rent. So I I'm not gonna like, go into, yeah, yeah, but they're not necessarily one. For one. It depends on what space unit it is, and how it's all different. I like tying them together, because if you think about forcing

[49:02] a landlord of a Noa property to make improvements, they're likely going to increase their rent to accommodate right? And so I I think that makes sense. I don't know that that should be the driving factor. But I think, having incentives to voluntarily restrict your property. That's a good thing. That's my personal opinion. So you talk about incentives, and you talk about rebates like. Where is the money coming from for the city to incentivize own owners or landlords? And how much money is that, or what percentage of, let's say, some of the costs that need to get incurred to get it from where we are today, to where you need to be like, are you? Is it? Is it 20%? Is it 50%? Is it 3% like the burden? How how is that burden cost burden shift?

[50:05] Yeah, there's a lot of questions in there. So you know, we can't buy our way out of the problem just to be being clear right? So to to retrofit a property. Let's just say, you know, you're you're going in and you have to. You're gonna have to replace all the heating and cooling equipment which to dream you're gonna have to do anyway, as as a landlord at some point in time. But we're maybe increasing what you have to pay by 5 or $10,000. I'm just making those numbers up. These are not the numbers from the analysis. We'd have to pull that up. But that's an incremental cost that we know will have impact. There, there's we can give you a rebate. There's we can do a group by program. So you're actually, instead of paying $10,000. You're paying an increment of $6,000, and you have to agree to prorate that over a certain timeframe to participate in the program. So the city's not necessarily bringing money, but we're bringing a program and and a

[51:10] an easy way to comply. We can bring financing offers. Similarly like we'll help you pay for it. May we partnered with this this bank, and they'll give you a, you know, low interest loan to pay it. But again you to to access this, you have to agree. So there's this spectrum of of tools that we can find out, you know, which are the most meaningful, which have the greatest effect, because we know the city doesn't have unlimited resources to provide rebates. We do have rebates, and and when we implemented smart Regs. We did provide a substantial amount of rebates. To landlords to help mitigate some of those costs, and a lot of those folks went and access them through our energy smart programs. And those those have come out of historically, the climate tax. Or we've gone out and gotten grant grant dollars. I understand, this is not the climate to get grant dollars, but

[52:06] hopefully, you know, in the future we have till 2035 there might be access to that as well. I guess. well, go going back. I just wondered. How. How did the city of Boulder calculate? 15% affordable housing goal? That was one question. It was a policy choice that previous city council made. Originally it was 10%. And then, about 6 years ago, they raised it to 15%. And that was based on what? The whim of council. So the idea was, you can create something, a goal that is achievable or something that's aspirational. and they chose sort of a combination of the 2. So it wasn't based on, like what it wasn't based on the actual need or being able to provide housing for everybody who wants. Okay? And then I have a second question about the funding. You talk about rebates. I, you know, in the maple part when we had our infrastructure upgrades. You know, for water and electric and all that kind of stuff.

[53:18] It was significant, you know, it was over, you know, a million dollars, and we got a fair amount of funding from the sugar tax. And how how available is that? Yes, most of our our rebate money, and we have invested roughly 2 million dollars a year the past couple of years out of the climate tax in grants or rebates for this program. So between the mobile home repair our our commercial programs so that all comes out of the climate tax, which is the tax on utility bills. We have not explored like whether the sugary beverage tax would be a source. I mean, I certainly think that there's opportunity to to look at other sources of funding. I do know that that alone, because we're not going to come up with enough money to to do everything. I do think that there's other tools like I said, financing products, or

[54:20] or or turnkey solutions that make it easier, like I think, all of those. And we certainly see programs like in California, that have had success at getting landlords because you've offered this and made it easy and reduced their financial burden. To make an agreement. That they they will control, how they allocate, what what they have to pay, and and how they adjust rent. And I have one more as far as you know, building relationships with partners like excel you know where they become a barrier to the upgrades that are necessary. I know, on a mobile home. You can't put a solar panel up there because Excel said No, and so like, what? How, how do you work with providers like our utility providers? So that so that people can actually achieve these goals?

[55:18] Yeah, I appreciate that question a lot. If if you Google, excel and Boulder, you're gonna get my name because one of the one of the roles I have is to manage our partnership work with excel. And so I hear from a lot of community members, and and we try and work with them. So I appreciate the barrier. One of the things we're doing right now with excel is they have a application of the Public Utilities Commission right now. So the Public Utilities Commission is who regulates, excel. and you know they've put together a plan that would allow them to to better invest in the infrastructure, to make it ready for electrifying buildings and transportation.

[56:02] You know, they've been behind the 8 ball a lot. In terms of where we are. It's it's fallen on individual customers. To to have to to drive the upgrades. You know I listen to this. I I probably even know where you live. I think I've heard the you know, and and this way they could take a more systemic and holistic approach. Look where they have constraints on the system proactively make investments. You know, it obviously come, comes to increasing utility costs. So there's got to be balance there. But at the same time we we know that if they don't make those investments none of us can be successful, and and it can't keep falling on individual customers to make the improvements that are necessary. Whether it's install solar or not. It shouldn't be, you know, because your your neighbors came before you. They didn't have to pay pay those costs, but you're the next customer on. And and now it's a problem. And it's your problem. So that's that's a plan. It's gonna be litigated at the Commission over the coming months.

[57:09] We'll be filing a lot of testimony in tomorrow. Into that plan to provide our perspective on it, and we'll participate. So I think that you know that's 1 of the pieces of making sure they're they're ready. I think there's other parts around getting them more integrated in our comprehensive planning to understand, like, where these issues are going to surface before they surface. So there is a lot of opportunity. I don't want to promise. I mean, there's there's still a for profit utility. They make decisions, their their bureaucracy. that there are those challenges. But certainly we try and problem solve when the the issues are coming to us as the city organization. all for my thoughts, for my fellow board members for you, although these are just my thoughts. I'm curious to see how other people on our field. I'm generally opposed to increasing the regulatory burden that property owners in Boulder face when it comes to building codes and efficiency standards.

[58:10] I think climate change and the environment efficiency are all very laudable goals, and it's something our policymakers, especially at the Federal level, should be more focused on. But when it comes to our community here in Boulder we very much have a housing affordability crisis, and I think there can be no argument that these endeavors of increasing burdens will increase costs for property owners. We've heard from landlords tonight that they will face increased costs, and there's no doubt that will be passed on to renters and lower income people. And that's just not something that I think our community can tolerate right now. So I am. I'm very much opposed to increasing the regulatory burden that property owners face when it comes to building codes. I just don't think for affordability purposes. That's something our community can tolerate right now.

[59:07] Thank you, Jeff. You gave me a really good lead in there. I am also a mom and pop landlord, and it's on a very small scale of 420 square foot, a view that we created by converting a Rec. Room in 2017. So we've had all the energy codes and efficiency standards for appliances at the time, and the rent is way lower than the prices you've quoted in a long time we get. I think we hit our market. It's always young people and entry level job nursing student. Currently seems like out of nowhere. We got a notice about 2 months ago saying, you're gonna have to upgrade the rest of your house to to the energy standards of the adu, and you know you got to hire a inspector and they'll play with you haven't done that yet. I don't know what it's gonna cost, or if you don't do it, you're just gonna lose your rental license. And I'm just like.

[60:06] why is this happening like we're thinking of just like fixing the EU because it's not worth the hassle. And you know we're supposed to be encouraging people to create affordable housing, not take them off the market because of what you said. It's really a regulatory burden. I don't know. This might be a very interesting case. Maybe there's like 3 people in our boulder of the situation, but I don't get it like my neighbor next to me has pretty much the same house with Edu. They don't rent the adu out. It's a like family guest room so they're have to face this this process. And you know, just seems really counterproductive to me, and I haven't looked into that deeply. It could be off off the right track on this, but it doesn't look good, and it doesn't seem. It seems like we have some goals that are loggerheads here, and we don't want to do that, and I totally support the climate goals. I get it. But I don't understand why our non rental property that we own is being, you know, driven towards this conclusion by the rental property, which is already super efficient and inexpensive. And it's doing everything it's supposed to be doing.

[61:19] Yeah, well, and like to connect with you offline to understand more, because that comes as a surprise to me. So I need to do some research. I think that's that's good. A good data point for us to understand. Yeah, I'm curious. Can I ask a couple of questions for for you both. so I mean, I understand housing affordability is an issue, and I understand regulatory barriers. or or have a component of that. I I think it often depends on on when we're intervening. So one of my questions for you is

[62:02] if it's at a point in time, where you're already going through a regulatory process like a renovation, a renovation or I have to replace an appliance. and the requirement is just a a different appliance with. And here's the incentive to help you buy down the incremental difference in that price. Do you have the same perception, then? That that's too far reach. Does that feel better like, where are we on the spectrum when we talk about that? Yeah, I that feels, I think, regardless, feels like overreach, I think, to the extent we're posing higher burdens in our neighboring communities. That's a problem. Again, I appreciate the climate goals and our global focus. But Boulder is way more expensive than the rest of the State. There's a lot of types of people who just cannot afford to live here and move out, and you know, from my perspective I moved to Boulder. 10 years ago I lived in naturally occurring affordable housing as a student I could feel the wind blow through the walls. At night I moved to Denver, and I moved into a new nice building that wasn't that much more expensive

[63:18] and then I moved back to Boulder and moved back into an old building. Because that's what I can afford here, and you know that's a cost associated with boulder. But I pay more for an older building in a less efficient building than what I lived in in Denver as a tenant. And I'm okay with that because I want to be in Boulder. It's just the practical reality. If you impose these burdens, it's just gonna cost more for the landlords. It's gonna cost more for the homeowners. This is going to drive up housing costs, and you know there's certain policies we enact, for example, like our eviction prevention rules in boulder. That's a cost on landlords, but the benefit goes to tenants, and that promotes.

[64:00] you know, equity and affordability, and all of that. I understand there are benefits associated with these costs, but they seem to be more like lofty climate type goals. Sure, everyone would love to live in more efficient housing. But it's just. It's not affordable in Boulder, and I have deep concerns that, regardless of what point the city is intervening, it's just going to drive up costs, you know, if Michael wants to fight the city over his adu, a lawyer is going to cost him between 3 and $400 an hour. I mean, this stuff just tumbles out of control boulders too expensive, and we shouldn't be making it more expensive for property owners or tenants. disagreement or or quit comment, or whatever like. If I if I need to buy a new an a new roof, or new windows, or new furnace, or something, and the incremental cost. You're gonna you're gonna help reduce that amount. Then, of course, I would prefer to do something. That's

[65:05] that's gonna help the environment going forward. But at some point like Chip is mentioning. If the incremental cost is significant, then I may not, then my in my wallet isn't worth the the environmental cost, so to the extent that the city can help reduce that incremental cost for like doing the right thing, then, in theory, none of us should object to that lofty goal of being more energy efficient. But to me it all boils down to money like, where does the money come from? So rent shouldn't have to go up if the landlord is being able to do the more energy efficient appliance at no incremental cost as the city subsidize it. I do have to say that I actually very much agree with Karen, but I do have to say that there are other municipalities that are doing similar things. The city of Denver, for example, they're about to outlaw gas furnaces. And so it's not just boulder

[66:12] good question about I you know I I I think these climate goals are really good. But when I look in like just my mobile home park, and I think about you know the the mobile homes that have been upgraded, you know. You know, given with heat pumps, but they're in like Pre 1974 homes and the windows haven't been upgraded. The insulation hasn't been upgraded. There was just a heat pump put in, and I know from 3 residents that said that they're going back to, you know, a furnace. because it's not. They're they're not getting the same heat generated in the winter, you know, from the heat pump as they would with a furnace. And so that's kind of like money just flushed. And then those homes, you know all you know. The money is going into putting heat pumps, and you know, the 3 homes that I'm I'm thinking of, you know, are pre, 1974. And

[67:23] so the money has been spent on putting heat pumps in them without upgrading any anything else in the life of that of that mobile home is is very short lived, and so I just see, you know the money going out the door? Down the toilet, and I and I just wonder, you know. You know, going back to there. There are more pressing, pressing issues that you know. People you know in in my neighborhood. You know, have their ceilings are caving, you know their their windows, you know, don't open, or they they're the

[68:01] the crank windows, you know. That's single pane, you know, or the plastic windows, and I think it's like putting. I I think we're we. We've just tumbled over. You know, some some much larger problems in order to reach some of the climate goals. and and I and I. And I guess I worry about that because I think that they're they're very noble goals, and you know I I would love to have solar on my my home. I got my home through the flood recovery program, you know. Thank God for the flood. But I, there's just a greater need out there for people to be in homes that don't have mold. And and but they're getting heat pumps. So I just wonder about that.

[69:02] Do you know how Denver is incentivizing landlords and homeowners? Yeah, I don't know about it from a like a small scale, single family homes perspective. But I do know that with large, multifamily development. it's any day now, new and new. So any day now they're gonna say no more gas boilers, and anytime you need to replace your boiler, it has to be electric. So all the buildings that are being developed now they have to be electrification ready at a minimum when you get to new construction and an end of life of equipment. That's a great time to to upgrade, especially if there are subsidies available. But

[70:00] you know, retrofitting is a lot harder and more expensive than as Karen said, where's the money come from? On the other hand, if we don't address climate change. We're all gonna die. So we need to do something. There is that little problem. But also, except we address this at one of our last meetings like this phenomenon boulder where people are tearing down buildings. I mean, there's a certain eventually buildings. Most buildings aren't gonna last forever in Boulder. Maybe some of them, because they're pretty flexible. But eventually a lot of buildings in our community to be replaced. And I think when that happens, we have to ask ourselves, is it the role of the government to say this is how you you know, in terms of efficiency? Or is there just from the developers perspective. I'm tearing down my. you know, mid-century house to build something new. I'm probably have my own incentive to spend some money on a more efficient home at that juncture. Does the Government need to be imposing that burden for it to happen? I don't know enough about buildings to know the answer to that.

[71:04] But you know it seems like new buildings tend to be more efficient, regardless of what the government says, just because our new, our new buildings are going to be built all electric. I mean, we have an all electric code. They're going to be built highly efficient. So but one of my challenges and I pose this to you. All is so what happens when what is gonna happen as that transition continues to occur right is is we're scraping down existing structures. We're putting in new, highly efficient ones. And then you have the ones that are left right. So as we take all of these, you know, former buildings and put the new ones in and pull them off the gas system. There's fewer customers paying to maintain that same infrastructure. So we have all this gas pipeline running through our city that we pay for and and you have 50%. Fewer people are paying for the same amount of capital.

[72:08] That means the people who can't afford to scrape their homes off, who can't rebuild the brand new ones and and don't have the financial capacity to build the nice homes are now seeing a a doubling and tripling, and actually the numbers are worse than that, as you look at it, and the forecast of their of their utility costs, because they're the ones left bearing the financial burden of the infrastructure that serves them. and that in itself creates an incentive to then change once it becomes too expensive, because I'm paying all this money for my old gas house. I'll go electric. But that nice developer comes by and says I'll give you 1.5 million dollars for that piece of land your little house is on, and they build something new, I mean, that's isn't that the market reality. Well, I guess that's the 1st benefit. But then you're getting rid of the naturally occurring.

[73:02] Can I? Can I answer the question you asked retortably, and I'd like to amplify Ml's retort to it. Which is, I absolutely think, the Government's role is extremely important in creating regulatory stuff for houses and efficiency like like like your point. maybe just make it again. Well, just in response to yes, the government's going to mandate it because we have codes. We have energy codes. We have building codes. Correct me if I'm wrong. Developers don't typically make make choices about environmental sustainability out of the goodness of their hearts that generally do the minimum they have to be to do above, to be above the code. Right? There's incentives. Educate me. But there's uniform building codes correct. And then there's codes that perhaps the city of Boulder imposes, that are even more stringent than that. Is that so? Generally the way the codes work is, we adopt the uniform codes, whether it's energy code or building codes. And then we amend and and insert. You know things.

[74:13] The the big codes that we adopt are up upgraded every what 4 years by a very, very robust and rigorous process. So these codes that we adopt and then amend our our state of the art. So it's not like we're starting with something mediocre. I'm not saying, let's burn up all the rules and the laws and the codes. But should the city of Boulder be posing that much more of a burden than or the State thresholds that you spoke of earlier, the state already has efficiency thresholds. Should we be imposing a greater burden when we have such an affordability crisis here, not saying we should have no laws or codes. It's where do we draw that line, of course, and we can look around at our peers. We can look around at this stage and say, Are we imposing a greater burden that's contributing to already.

[75:12] I'd say Boulder has a bigger affordability problem when it comes to housing than our peers. So is the trade up then for you, like, okay, we're gonna promote more affordability. But then we're gonna be more at risk for environmental issues, because we're not being proactive like. It seems to me that a lot of what we're discussing is which priorities are more important than others. And how do you evaluate the trade off? So affordability is important and environmental. Sustainability is important and promoting. You know, adus is important. And they're and they overlap it's it's absolutely true. It's a balancing act. And the point I'm making is for the city of Boulder right now. I think affordability is a bigger, more pressing problem than climate change. Climate change.

[76:05] Go back to an earlier slide in your deck. But seemed like there was a list of potential regulatory innovations, and one of them related to a large homes. There it is. It looks like adopting building performance for standards, for larger homes is off the table. Which puzzles me a little bit. And you said before, like they're the people who can afford it. And when you build a large home, it has a bigger environmental impact. So like, why not? Yeah. So some of our thinking around this and you all are absolutely encouraged to to challenge this on. This is When it comes to building performance standards. You have to measure energy use per square foot for home. There's a lot of reporting and requirements. And so, as we look at

[77:02] the 1st one of the earlier charts we had like where the bulk of the emissions are versus the the type of building stock, right? We see from a reporting. It's far easier for a 50,000 or 100,000 square foot commercial building to report their energy use and and to demonstrate compliance with the building performance standard. Then for every single house that's 3,000 square feet. The other thing is, particularly with the larger homes, almost all of the larger homes here in Boulder now, were built under our yes, they are much more stringent than peer communities, although peer communities have caught up to us. So we've led. We've led the way for for years. But everybody's catching up in recognition of you have these issues around afford energy affordability, you know. I'll also just offer. Yes, stringent codes can contribute to increased cost.

[78:06] the the amount of that relative to the total cost of building something or the affordability is something, I I think, is a is a topic for conversation, so I hesitate to throw out regulation and attribute all regulation to affordability or energy code in particular to to constructability and and affordability. Because, I think you know, we can look at labor rates. As part of like if it's costing $700 to construct. There's there's labor components in there. There's property values. There's all those other things that contribute. But it's still hurt. I just wanna acknowledge. I that's that's some of the feedback we need to hear is is the reaction to potential regulation. But just want to ground us that we we do unpack as we think about building codes. And then Mlc, that some of our presentations, as we've done building code updates, we do look at the incremental cost of what that code is going to require. And we do look at how that delivers in terms of long term savings back and and reduced utility costs. So we do try and create that balance, and we would certainly carry that forward here.

[79:19] So what would you like from us like this is very informative, and there's been, like, I think, really interesting pros and guns, and so are. You're not asking for us to like advocate or vote on anything, or it's it's not an advocate or vote. I think if there, you've given us some really valuable insights and perspectives and some of the very tensions I think we wanted to to hear. You know I appreciate the you know. Don't throw money at something that you're not holistically addressing, you know, around like, just don't put a heat pump in a in a port building. You got to address the envelope lead with efficiency, you know. That's certainly one of the notes I'm I'm taking away. Yeah, I think. I'm just curious. Is anyone really excited about the topic of adaptive reuse to either to say, that's a great idea, or like

[80:11] that's really very impracticable to actually make happen. So we've had discussions about adaptive reuse from office to residential. And it is something that's of interest to us, but we didn't look at. We were not focused on the energy efficiency of it. But there is a program called C. Pace, which it. And and that's an interesting thing because it for people who don't know basically like, if you are building a new building or you're renovating you. And it's gonna and there's certain, like. like qualified expenses. Then you can get like a million dollars for those expenses, and it gets paid out over 25 years with like a tax assessment. So your taxes go up slightly, and that's how it's paid back over 25 years. So if you're if you're a office owner. That is part of your triple net cam reimbursement, and the thought is that the building is more efficient. So some of the other expenses will go down. And so

[81:18] the tenants in theory, aren't paying that much more to pay that back. But I don't know. So in theory you could use c-pace for adaptive reuse, right C. Pace. In a similar carrot conversation we have on the naturally occurring affordable housing. I mean, I think, that there's this nuance of. you know, regulating you know, empty commercial spaces that have been empty for a long time and trying to encourage adaptive reuse. I think it's just gonna be pretty limited. I don't think there's gonna be a huge utilization rate of it because of the challenges related to the conversion. Yes, although we have explored it as like if you are looking at it as like a market rate apartment, and you are looking at it more like Sros, or like Co. Housing, or then it might be more

[82:16] viable. But that's a totally different. And I'm I'm just gonna I just push this like a little bit more when I 1st moved to Boulder in 2,007, it was like soon after they rezoned the frontage road on that had been like all the hotels like the Outlook Hotel and all that. And then it became rentals. Right? So I'm I. Just that, because there are all these like. I think adaptive re-reuse is a complicated topic, but like if- if there was like a rezoning, it would would it, if it would enable a residential use or conversion? Would that spark any more interest? Would there be ways to facilitate it, or do you all have thoughts on that? I think it goes back to that concept of. If you're doing a renovation, if you're gonna have to spend money anyway on something that's more energy efficient, then that's an opportunity for you to make people

[83:15] like indifferent right like, if you can reduce the cost differential between a green furnace and a non green furnace like do the green one. So in adaptive reuse. That's like a remodel. It's an opportunity to encourage people to do the right thing by reducing the incremental cost. Well, if we're rezoning commercial space into residential or just enabling it in that, or you're you're tearing down a shopping center and putting a house which is something that happens in boulder. I think that's that doesn't necessarily affect the naturally occurring affordable housing. You're not tearing down an old chief building that people are living in and putting it nicer. For yeah, although in this case we're not talking necessarily about encouraging, tearing down.

[84:03] it'd be just reusing the building part of the video of that session. We had 3 developers and did a panel discussion. They're all in the process of trying to adapt. They can partial space into residential, and you know they were not pessimistic about that, but they were very honest about barriers, some of which were regulatory, and some of them are common sense like you gotta have better fire codes, for you know, a residential building versus commercial building. But what video was this? Excuse me, what video was this? What was the video of our meeting about 4 months ago, you wouldn't have to watch the whole thing. It's probably a half an hour of the whole meeting. We learned a lot, and you know it's a challenging topic, and I think to tips point you know, regulations are not evil. But it would be nice to see them be oriented towards producing something rather than always, you know, stopping things from happening which gets happen sometimes. So I think that's a philosophical way of looking at it. It's kind of the abundance argument that's going around. Now.

[85:14] if I can just offer what we've seen come through planning board in the last year has been a lot of a lot of up zoning. So a lot of where a lot of areas of town where housing was not previously allowed is now allowed. and that is by intention of the City Council to provide more housing. The downside of that is, who's moving in to do that are the developers that are providing market rate, which really looks like luxury housing or student housing. And they're bringing new models. The national models. They don't rent student apartments by the apartment they rent by the bedroom.

[86:00] And and so these we're getting maybe more buildings built. but they're not falling into solving. You know, the problem of, where are people who have this 80% ami going to be finding housing and then coupling that with our our climate goals, which is really good. the point of viewer I I have a suggestion, and I just you may have this, but I didn't see it in the presentation. One of the things that is very useful when people begin considering. okay, there's new regulations coming, or there's new ways of thinking about what we do with our buildings. do you have? Or is there in the works? A strategic options? So you know the low hanging fruit? And that speaks very much to what you were talking about. It's like, where do you start? And

[87:07] for whether you're a developer, a builder, a house, a homeowner. Most people don't think holistically, that is not a common that that is not a common approach to making change. And so if in part of this. Rolling out of of options. You could create something with big picture big picture options that drive down to a detail. and the detail could be the replacing of the, you know, furnace, or the cooktop, or or the windows. But to understand the interconnectedness, and really the effectiveness of doing one for or after the other. That would be a very valuable tool for people to understand.

[88:03] How can I kind of get the most benefit for the amount of dollars I'm gonna put in today and not have to come back. you know, in 3 years and say, Oh, I messed up. I should have done. I mean it. Just people don't naturally think this way. and if you offer them a means. I I think you're going to start seeing some some meaningful results and people are, will might be more willing to say, Oh, I get it today I'm I'm coming in thinking I want a new door or new window. But really I should be thinking about this because of. And you offer the logic. And so people have a tool. Because we're trying to incentivize us out here right in the in the world to make change when we, when we are bringing new buildings, or renovating, or whatever the role is.

[89:00] But I think we need the intelligence that you have in your research that would benefit. Oh, great! I know we need to clone Carolyn basically is what think you have the start of the slide? And I like that. I like the suggestion of making it more tangible. And so people can make good choices. Not just a choice, but a good choice. Yeah, I have a few comments. One is I've been a renter since 2,007 in folder and I started off at Smiley Court, which is not under city purview necessarily. It said. 30 Eastern Colorado scratches student housing extremely inefficient. and and electricity and heat was included in the bill. So nobody nobody had behave, you know, just incentivize the wrong behaviors. I lived in a place

[90:02] on Shanahan Ridge that had single pane windows and you know the frost would build them, and I live in a place now that is, is up to smart rigs, but it's still like I can feel the drive, you know, like, if it was my house. I would invest the money to make it environmentally sustainable. I really care about the environment and about my carbon footprint, and I don't live in boulder, because I'm willing to pay higher rent for grafty apartments. It's weird that the incentives are so misaligned that I have to spend 20 years renting places that I feel like don't meet my own expectations about how I feel about the environment, and I think there's a lot I don't want to say I speak for all renters, but I'm just. I just want to point out that renters care about the environment. They don't want to live in drafty buildings. They want to have low and reliable energy bills and

[91:09] So I I applaud moving in directions where we have more sustainability. I think the smart rigs are great. I'm so I just that's kind of just a broad comment that Oh, and just to add on to that like I've always felt like, Oh, if I if I was an owner in this city. then I could be environmentally sustainable, you know. And I I really care like I don't own a car. I bike and bus everywhere, and I ride my clothes and on hangers throughout the house, you know, clothing, racks, and yeah, I I wish that there was some way for the the care that I have about reducing my carbon footprint

[92:03] was could somehow be manifest in in the the housing market. I I participated in which I just feel like really incentivizes people to do the very bare minimum with respect to whatever codes are in place. So that's that's kind of where I come at this. One of the questions I have. This is kind of. This is my laundry list of things I've been thinking about this evening. But, one of the questions I have about the natural gas is when you talk about the fire codes and what you know, the we and the you know how we're gonna prevent the next big fires from tearing apart large parts of boulder. How does the natural gas system fit fit into that? Is it? Does it? Is that an exposure of risk to the city, or is it because it's buried underground? And it's like there's not enough oxygen for it to explode. It's not a big deal or

[93:07] disconnected at the house. Yeah, no, I mean Is that true? So when there's a big fire risk that the city just or the cell turns out, I think during the Marshall fire they shut off the gas because a common problem then people had is their pipes started, their pipes froze after the fire. They shut off the gas. All the heat houses lost heat. But the benefit of that is that thousands more houses. That's my understanding. Yeah, the way it usually works is so the fire starts and the 1st homes it hits have gas, and the gas contributes to the growth of the fire. Right? So you're exploding the gas that you're you're creating. A leak. It's igniting. It's burning that depressurization of the system.

[94:00] Then triggers the utility to to to shut down the system, because they know that there's a a massive leak. So by the time you know it, like the fire burnt into you know the Marshall fire by the time it kind of got I I think it was still on in the Sagwatch neighborhood, but as it got farther by that point, the utility had shut off the gas system, but most certainly the gas system contributed to the conflagration that occurred. So so then it seems like there's gotta be a way to align the the risk of the having natural gas pumped up in this giant grid with the difficulty in getting the insurance that is getting more and more expensive. I don't know. Maybe there's some alignment there that could be kind of like leveraged a bit more somehow. Yeah, I mean, I think we definitely need to look at the future of the gas system. Much of our community's gas system went in roughly 70 years ago. It's at end of life.

[95:07] Rated like, you know, you're that's why you're seeing a lot of projects around town digging up pipelines. Yeah, I've kind of like a kind of a peculiar little hobby horse that I I just referred to, and then a more general question about this. but I actually don't use the dryer in my house, because it's so dry in Colorado that you can. Just I. I just hang it up in the closet about an inch apart, and it just dries overnight, and it provides evaporative cooling in contrast, using the dryer that we have. It's like a 6,000 watt kilo, 6 kilowatt, you know, for 1 h. It's like way more electricity than I would use for my e-bike for a for a week.

[96:00] and that's for 1 h. and and not not only that, but it's like a like a you're pumping heat into your house in in adversarial role to your air conditioner, which is, you know, trying its best to keep up and so I just wanna like make a statement. I think dryers are bad. We don't need them in Colorado. Stop using them, everybody and maybe there's a maybe there's an opportunity around education, or just social pressure, or or just, I don't know. Like to me it seems like a no brainer, but I think everyone's like got this mindset that oh, I should have dry clothes in the next 45 min all the hoas that we're allowed to hang our clothes out. So I will tell you. Boulder was part of making that a State law that hoas can't be on your clothesline. Yeah. The dryer also serves the purpose of getting dog hair out of clothes. Do you have any tips on that. So then my-, my kind of bigger question

[97:07] that I use this as an example of is like most of what you brought up is feels like political, economic, cultural problems about how we like, like, we have the solutions. But how are we gonna implement them? How are we gonna roll them out? I guess the question I have is, do we have? Do we think we have technological problems? Still like, do we have all the solutions? And we just we just need to like implement them. Or or it's a real like technological challenges that we need to like address. Like, you know, one of the things that came up was shade, you know, like, why can't we retrofit buildings to be passive solar with the right kind of awnings? Or I I don't know, or white roofs or so I thought I'd just throw that out there. Yeah, no, I appreciate that.

[98:02] I'd say we're on a spectrum in terms of technology solutions. you know. Certainly we we have all the technology we need to convert residential homes and most commercial homes. But the barriers are are making sure it's done well and done right. So there's still a lot of training quality control. You know, experience and design that so that it gets done right? So that's that's it. There there are still applications that there's not good technology solutions for, particularly in industrial loads, or that the solution is not a good solution. Because it's it's it's just going to be So challenging to implement like, is it really accomplishing the the total goal? So I mean, I I think technology is continuing to evolve. But yes, certainly, if if you do it well, you know you tighten up the building. You put the windows in. You put the insulation. You put the heat pump. Everything's somebody who knows what they're doing. Make sure they're they're properly connecting it. So the Coolant stays in the line. You know all those things. Your home will be fine. It'll be comfortable. You will feel better than you did in the home, you know, with the gas furnace and forced air, like all those things, will will happen. So quality control is is the real thing. There?

[99:27] You are correct that it's not just about electrifying home. It's about efficiency, it's about passive solutions. I think all of that has to be part of the equation. And I think that kind of goes back to Cindy's earlier point as well about I mean, the efficiency is a big opportunity. It doesn't have to just be like we, we should always lead with efficiency, for for the less you use the better it is the the lowest cost. Lowest emission energy is the energy. You don't use incentivize clotheslines when you were talking about thinking holistically. You know, as the you know how how we start thinking is thinking holistically. But when

[100:23] You know, as a low income resident, and I know that I have. You know many of my neighbors are in the same boat. It's very difficult to think holistically when you're dealing with. An emergency after emergency after emergency, like the refrigerator goes out. I can't think about the grant. I can't think about a rebate. I just need it, and I have $24 and 93 cents my account now making refrigerator. And how am I going to replace the food and what you know? And it's very difficult, you know, and I think about you know my gas stove. You know I don't want an electric stove. I want a gas stove, you know. What am I going to do? If the electricity goes out? You know, how am I going to? You know I'm not going to a hotel, you know. I'm staying in my house. I need to be able to.

[101:04] Yeah. My my furnace is gas. It it provides, you know, heat for me. I I am very very hesitant to think about what it would mean to get one of these, you know, heat pumps, because I know that right now I'm warm in the winter, and and I and I can't. I can't compromise that I I can't even think through. You know what it would, what it would take to have a heat pump, you know, and it and it didn't work, like several of my neighbors, say that their heat pumps aren't working, you know, aren't producing heat in the in the winter. and I think that there are just so many more pressing issues. And when you're thinking about even, you know end of life stuff, you know. End of life, you know, on my dryer, you know, which I use because I I'm I'm not gonna think about, you know, you know, hanging my clothes up and and making sure that they're dry and then coming back, you know, and like I, I just need to get them done because I need. I need to go to work and they just need to be done. And and I and I have other things that I'm thinking about. And

[102:13] it, it's just. It's just very, very difficult to think holistically when you are. There are so many more pressing issues, and I know that. It. It's just there. There, I feel I just feel like there are so many more things that need to be addressed before the the climate. And it's yeah. I was hearing you say that some, some things could be solutions like. For example, you mentioned the refrigerator going out like that. I mean, there are energy star models of refrigerators, right? So like. I mean, that could potentially, but that you get what you can find for 24 bucks on Facebook marketplace, you know somebody, you know, if somebody, you know, getting rid of theirs, you know, because they're upgrading, you know. So I'll take that, you know. Non efficient refrigerator. If you're giving it away. I'll take it because I need it.

[103:12] But that could be potentially be a point of solution, too, would be to just have ready options. Yeah. the kind of the emergency response. Thank you very much. If you take yours down. And yeah, related to your conversation. you guys are welcome to stay. We're going to watch a 17 min video on the history I actually am. I was like semi enticed, but my children are at home wanting dinner.

[104:04] Thanks for coming. Appreciate it. Thank you. Too bad. By in the building. Yeah. Looks here, Jamel, do you have public comment? We do. And I can't remember the last time people come virtually, and people being like one, maybe 2 people. But in the room other than the applicant. we haven't seen real people for a while. That is A, are we all up for that video when people come back from the popcorn

[105:05] same as locked in? No, no. sorry. Okay, The simple answer is 0. We're owner occupied but somebody can front area. But our bylaws say they're restricted to doing it for a year at a time. But if somebody wants to rent longer than that, because of whatever circumstances they need to bring the request to the community, and that has happened about the communities approved. But we do have.

[106:06] So we have 34 units. Yeah. Okay, why don't we get started in that? Oh, like, like, I guess, like, oh, got it. Okay? And actually, I do have. So we have one unit. This makes me really happy. Actually, so there's okay. Tiffany, can we start, please or Jay. Can we start, please? Well, the folks that are here?

[107:06] Alright. So we were thinking that it would be nice to have a conversation about this presentation that was done back in 2021. So this is something that the housing and human services put together. It's a 3 h event. So I'm only going to show you 17 min. Thank you. You're welcome. but just for context. So there was jonah Goose gave some introductory remarks. Our mayor gave introductory remarks, so did our Kurt, our housing director. clay phone developed this presentation. Well, we we developed it together, but he gave it, and he does a much better job than I possibly do. But then we also had several. We had a panel discussion afterwards, which was also fascinating. So if you you does pique your interest, I would encourage you to watch the whole thing.

[108:02] Is it on the city's website? It is the whole video is on the city's website, housing Equity symposium. I'm sorry. Send the link to the hub. So yeah. And my thought was, we could watch it. And then, if you had thoughts, questions, just to start a conversation about it, and think about how the history of boulders influenced our, so were there any outcomes or policies that came about because of this symposium like? Did people have a Aha moment? And they're like, Oh, we need to do A B and C, I would say that it did influence the significant shift in how people in Boulder think about housing. I think it's hard to pick a point in time. But if you look at the politics in our town around housing and affordable housing in particular. I would argue that it's around this time that there was a very dramatic shift

[109:08] and communities perceptions, and who showed up to argue for housing policies. When did you say this was 2021, 21. Okay, thank you. I mean, it started before this. But I would say this, this really sort of catalyst things a little bit, anyway. Ready. Hello, everybody! This right. My name is Clay Fong, and I work for the city of Boulder's Department of Housing Human Services. I'd like to welcome all of you here tonight, and I'd also like to thank you and acknowledge that this is not necessarily an easy conversation that we'll be having tonight, and a lot of people do feel uncomfortable about it, and I just want to acknowledge that feeling, because part of my personal journey in exploring these issues gave me those feelings of unease as well. This is not an evening for finger pointing or for accusations, but rather for all of us to mutually explore some of the darker chapters in our community's history, and what we might do to remedy some of the harms caused by that, and to move forward. So I look at this audience as one of allies and friends, with a common commitment to improving what is happening in our community for generations to come.

[110:28] So with that, we have to ask the question, why are we looking at this particular topic? Why are we looking at our history? Why are we looking at race and class housing, as we all know, is extremely critical for an individual's prosperity. It is oftentimes the single, most largest asset an individual owns. It's a tool for building wealth and equity and housing is often a determinant of one's prosperity and one's health. Housing is related to one's proximity to education, healthcare their workplace.

[111:04] other things, such as recreational amenities that have a profound impact on quality of life. And so it is a very significant determinant of, you know, one's well-being and those of their families. Purpose, as I sort of mentioned earlier, is really to start a new conversation moving forward, and I hope that by looking at the past, we can craft a better future. a helpful lens to look through. All of this is the intersection of myth and policy. Well, I think a lot of us are far removed from the classic Greek and Roman myths. Of such things as the Minotaur and the Medusa. There is a pervasive John Wayne inspired Western myth. That is very much about what this country, particularly communities in the American West, are all about. The American narrative is very much informed by a myth of manifest destiny. a myth of rugged individualism, a myth of equal opportunity. But the reality is things such as manifest destiny often have an underpinning of religious justification, and, to put it bluntly, that of white supremacy. And by tackling these myths we're going to be able to look at, how can we make things better in the future.

[112:21] Most importantly, myth also informs a long legacy of covert racism. We've used that to cover things up. and as if we can kind of strip away from that myth. We can see that things that we had assumed were somewhat benign, benign, actually have a racist and exclusionary impact comes as no surprise that one of the people that I like to refer to in this particular presentation is Professor Ibramex Kendi, and he very pointedly notes that the actual foundation of racism is not ignorance and hate, but self-interest. So a lot of things that might be cloaked in high-minded rhetoric, or some of this American mythology really boil down to a particular group.

[113:05] benefiting from certain policies pertaining to housing the settlement of the land, and ultimately more seemingly mundane but impactful things, such as zoning and environmental regulation. Let's start with the prologue here, which is the Treaty of 1851 Fort Laramie, also known as the Horse Creek treaty. Like many treaties at the time, this did not require indigenous nations to give up land, but simply guaranteed safe passage for people that were, you know dominant white Americans that wished to travel West. Part of this was from an economic interest. We have mineral wealth in the West, and access, to, say, the gold in the California gold fields and minerals also in Colorado, had led to this, being sort of a policy imperative. One of the key parts, though of this treaty is, no land was ceded at this point, but we'll see very quickly. The history is such that this key provision of the treaty was broken, and to a certain and to a great extent we benefit today from that particular breaking of the treaty.

[114:12] So this is the 1st part which really talks about how Boulder came to be in the period right before and a little bit after the Civil War. So California gold rush takes place in 1849 always had been a bit of a rumor, though, that this place, called Colorado might have similar mineral wealth, and sure enough, in 1858, July gold is discovered near present-day. Inglewood doesn't take long for the word to get out, because by October, 1858, we have the 1st white settlement in this area, located near Red Rocks Park. Chief Naiwat meets with settlers, and this is kind of one of those areas where history still possesses a lot of ambiguity. What we do know is that Naiwad initially approached these settlers and said, Hey, you can't really stick around here.

[115:01] But then, what happened next is subject to some historic debate. Some say that he never changed that position, others said that he did concede that. Oh, yes, you can stay. but if that did happen. There's also a question of what was the reasoning behind that, and some believe what that was driven by was a feeling that the white settlement of this area was inevitable, and to be cooperative early on might result in less negative consequence for the indigenous peoples that have been here since time immemorial. Of course the stakes get higher when gold is discovered in Gold Hill in 1859, and a month later the Boulder Town Company is founded. The Boulder Town Company really, I think, is where the die is cast for what becomes the modern community of Boulder. They parse out 4,000 lots. Each of these losts cost a thousand dollars. This is before the Civil War. Agricultural land, you know, off to the east and up to the north is more on the order of a few dollars per acre, so we can see already we are establishing boulder as a place that's not necessarily inclusive for the working person or the person who has limited resources. This also sets a little bit of a precedent, for there not being heavy industry within boulder, we don't have the intensive agricultural

[116:23] operations or the mining that you might see in some of our neighboring communities. Historically. things start to move fast. Folder becomes a territory. In 1861, we see legislation placing the University here, and this is against the backdrop of the Civil War. Emancipation, Emancipation Proclamation happens in 1863, and at that same time tensions between indigenous peoples and the newcomer. You know, white population tensions start to rise. This is a really critical point in Boulder's history. In 1864, the Colorado 3rd Us. Volunteers Company D, mobilized at 4 chambers

[117:06] for those of you that are unfamiliar with Fort Chambers that is located near Modern Day, J. Road and 63, rd and this is where local leaders among them trained for what ultimately became known as the Sand Creek Massacre. It's also, I think, worth crediting that community groups such as right relationship have done quite a bit recently in helping to illuminate some of this dark history. Sand Creek massacre is essentially an unprovoked attack on innocent people. There's no legitimate, defensive, military or offensive military objective at play here. The high numbers say that 600 people were killed. It's hard to tell. You know. Probably the numbers that most people agree upon are more in the neighborhood of 150 to 200 people killed key players, and we'll talk a little bit more of them are John Chivington, and, to use sort of modern parlance, he's kind of the big bad of all of this. He was a mason, you know. There used to be a historic plaque commemorating him up in Gold Hill, and David Nichols.

[118:12] chief Naiwat, dies a few days after the Sand Creek massacre of wounds that he sustained. This really sets the stage, for you know the the conflict on the plains. This, you know, in a very legitimate argument, could be that this is the fuse that ultimately leads to the battle of Bighorn, or, as the indigenous peoples refer to it, greasy Grass Creek in 1876. But this is kind of the thing that lights the fuse. So it's very significant and has a local time. Yeah. again, we have the backdrop of what's going on. Civil war ends the post-civil war constitutional amendments come into play. This becomes more important in the ensuing decades, and we'll return to that boulder in 1871 incorporates a clear violation of the Treaty of the Horse Creek Treaty. Colorado becomes a State in 1876 Cu. Opens in 1877, as many of us know.

[119:09] You know, at the time communities were vying for? Who would be home to certain Colorado institutions? We do. We get the prison or the university? Some say we lucked out and got the university, and you know I'm grateful. We did that because that we wouldn't have our speakers here tonight. Some of the key players include Nichols, who we had talked about had been implicated in, you know, had heavy involvement, unapologetic in the Sand Creek massacre prior to his commission in the army. I believe, as captain, he was Sheriff of Boulder, but resigned that commission of Boulder County so that he could take that military leadership role. The establishment of the University is another step in cementing boulder as a place less for the working class, less for industry and more sort of more leisurely setting for lack of a better term. Couple of real quick points about Nichols

[120:02] Nichols, you know. If you look at what he did, he's not a good guy to put it mildly. I see my Cu colleagues agree. Patty Limerick, at the University, Professor Patty Limerick, at the University of Colorado, posits that. But at that time that was part and parcel. You would build communities, you would encourage the development of the Church, but you would also kill indigenous people, and all of those were viewed as virtuous things. and we'd like to think that's an outmoded way of thinking. In 1961 the University decides to name a residence hall after Nichols. This isn't because, you know we found this information later on. I mean, I think people full well knew what Nichols was all about. and it wasn't until 1989 that Nichols Hall was renamed Cheyenne, Arapahoe Hall. So I think that's very telling with what's happened in sort of our community. So to summarize. And I will grant it's a gloomy picture. Land was taken by from indigenous peoples.

[121:02] We institutionally sanctioned the taking of land by the formation of the town company, the Incorporation Statehood, and much of this is accomplished through the use of military force. There weren't payments and negotiations. This is simply brute force under the wing of the Us. Army. Exclusionary policies start to come into play. High land prices make it very limited. Who can live in boulder who cannot? And again, this moves away from the working class. I know this picture is provocative and disturbing, but it also reflects a reality of what was happening in Boulder, particularly in the 1920 S. So we will talk about the rise of boulder of a community, but not for all. One of the key documents in the creation of modern Boulder is the report done by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. About the development of Boulder in 1910. Everything Olmstead writes, sounds really good. It sounds like, oh, this is part of this is the blueprint for the community we live in. Now. this quote that's up on the screen right now, as he's talking about

[122:02] basically, boulder is a place where it's an agreeable place. You don't necessarily have to be super rich, but it helps to take advantage of what's here, and have an agreeable life in more detail. He sort of decries, industry, pollution, and all the sort of dirty things that come with it, and at the same time he's a proponent of what's known as the City Beautiful Movement. The city beautiful movement sounds great. It's about open spaces. It's about grand shared spaces. But what I didn't realize, because I had heard about this, and Olmstead was actually responsible for some development in my home Bay area was that this was a reaction to immigrant communities, tenements what was perceived as sort of the dirt and filth of all of that, and that sorry. Sorry I get a little too excited, but I will slow down. Thank you. I get a little passionate. Oh, what happens is that we have this very nice sounding rhetoric.

[123:05] But the reality is this was all sort of a myth. A cover for Olmstead was a pretty unrepentant segregationist. That, I think, is very telling him. Regional divisions have to be taken into account. If you try and force the mingling of people who are not yet ready to mingle and don't want to mingle. The development cannot succeed economically. Let's break this down a little bit. It's a pretty darn paternal statement. 1st of all. you know, he's making this judgment. but we don't care about society's greater good. This is all about the economics. This goes back to the notion of self-interest that Kendi talks about. This goes back to all this beautiful language a beautiful vision of what the urban space should be. It's really something that comes down to

[124:03] economics, that's what this is really about. Meanwhile, in the rest of the country. We have the 1970 case of Buchanan versus Worley, which is essentially overturns, racially based zoning because it is presumed to violate the post-civil war amendments dealing with equal protection sounds great same time. The administration of President Woodrow Wilson is getting a little concerned like oh, we need more working people to have houses. But at the same time we need to keep certain people away from that Russian revolution sort of prompts that. So, while racially based. Zoning is deemed unconstitutional. Somebody figures out, Hey, there's other ways. We can keep these undesirable folks out. And so that comes about through programs that are aided and abetted by the Federal Government that use an economic basis to sort of. In 1921, the city adopt zoning ordinances that are sort of around single family homes and density, so as to make it less accessible for people of color and immigrants.

[125:12] The President of the National Association of Real Estate Board says. and who was part of this, as was Olmsted, and was part of this commission that was under Vice President Herbert Hoover. a realtor, should never be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood members of any race or nationality whose presence will be clearly detrimental to property values in that neighborhood. It's all about the money, and it's all about keeping certain people out. Meanwhile, in Boulder University's been open a couple of decades. Very limited diversity. It takes a couple of decades before we have the 1st 2 Latinx students graduate from Cu very small African American population. very marginalized population. Not surprisingly. There's not a lot of opportunity, you know, unsurprisingly, the census reveals that most of the things are going to be working for African American families and people as day laborers, janitors, servants, and white homes and bellhops. There's an area called the Jungle, which is now Central Park, which was a district of rundown homes and temporary housing, very hard for people living there to find the upward mobility to get out of that particular situation.

[126:24] We also see in 1914 the 1st African American student graduates from Cu. Continuing the timeline African Americans are prohibited from living on campus until 1940. We see with the with the sort of demolition of the jungle, we have an area called the little rectangle, which becomes African American. And also we start to see a rise in Latinx population. There's segregation in the movie theaters. African American folks can't get their hair cut here. They're prohibited from going to some shops and restaurants. That prohibition is lifted when the university threatens to have shops and services of its own.

[127:04] 1950, the African American population actually decreases from 1910, while the overall population has doubled. This is also playing against a lot of institutionalized racism. This is the same period in which the Tulsa race massacre happens. And as we'll talk about, we're going to talk about, you know the the prevalence of the Klan in Boulder. I'd like to start, though, because I think history in a lot of ways loses its relevance unless you can relate a few personal stories or stories of what happened. This woman is Lucille Buchanan. She was the 1st African American woman to graduate from Cu Boulder at her graduation she is sitting waiting for her name to be called out of nowhere. A woman comes and says, I'll be your partner in this Lucy, and hands her her diploma. The time for her name to be called comes up, and it is never called so. She is not allowed to walk at her own graduation, and receive her diploma in a public setting.

[128:02] She leaves the university, never vowing never to return again, and I understand that she pretty much upheld that promise until her death in 1989. Recently, I believe a local author has published a book about her. I have yet to see that, but I would like to look more into it. We had a rise in the Klan. The Klan was considered legitimate both in Colorado and in Denver. In the 1924 election statewide, the Klan dominated many State offices. This emboldened the Klan. There was large-scale open Klan parades, demonstrations here in boulder initiation rites involving hundreds of people, all took place within our community. At the same time we also see hate coming from other institutions. 1,900 saw a rise in the number of Spanish-speaking laborers particularly engaged in agricultural work. What's the reaction to this? In 1932, the Boulder County Commissioners passed a resolution funding the deportation of Mexican families to the United States-mexico border, based on there being no prospect of them finding employment.

[129:09] Now comes the modern era Federal housing policies. It's still not great in the Post World War 2 era. We see things like underwriting policies and the like that. Yes, we do not have racially explicit zoning, but we do have ways that prohibit people of color and other communities from gaining a foothold and access to owning a home, you know, which, as we all know, is the way to build equity and wealth. Lending practices are challenging. And again, this whole land of opportunity piece that we've all been sort of inculcated with, you know, it really proves itself to be a myth. It wasn't until the 19 sixties that national legislation set the stage to dismantle some of these things court cases, such as Brown versus Board of Education, which overturned Plessy v. Ferguson, which held that separate but equal, is constitutional, and the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1968 Fair Housing Act.

[130:06] Meanwhile, in Boulder we continue to grow. We have, you know, developments in various parts of the community. The turnpike, you know, changes things quite a bit. This is where we also see, you know, the recruitment of clean industry places like NIST. I talked with a colleague in the city, and she said, You know, the only real industry we had kind of in that period was like a knife factory, so there wasn't a lot sort of going on at the same time. We have a lot of different regulatory things coming in. Most of you are familiar with this blue line building height, restriction. and we see a few glimmers of maybe breaking the sort of chains of the homogeneous community. The election of Penfield, Tate. Ii. But we also see sort of a backlash with the Las Aces bombings in 1974, all amongst this thing of creating more and more regulations. I want to next talk about this notion of environmental environmental veneer. And I think this is a difficult part of the conversation to have. And I say that as someone who, the 1st half of their career was in the environmental field before transitioning to working in human services.

[131:12] this comes from Justin Farrell, who wrote a book. Some of you might be familiar with called Billionaire Wilderness. and he describes environmental veneer by saying the simplistic popular assumption that environmental conservation is assumed to be an altruistic good rather than a vehicle for protecting wealth, achieving social status and integration, expressing group identity, sustaining societal advantages, and generally reinforcing many of the social mechanisms that give rise to environmental problems. In the 1st place. So I think it's a call a little bit to look beneath the hood, so to speak, and see what is the impacts of some of the policies that we've had. A lot of. This is sort of my opinion. But hey, that's why I'm up here in a lot of ways. I think Boulder is a Silicon Valley suburb.

[132:01] We in terms of our ethos, our industry. We're not rooted in things that are happening in Denver or Pueblo or Salt Lake City. It's Tech we are experiencing. And and Laura and I have discussed this, a phenomenon called aspenization. We are an extremely desirable place to live with environmentally protected scenic landscapes, you know. Young people are excited at the prospect of coming to Boulder. What this means is we become increasingly unaffordable. and people like teachers, firefighters, police officers, can't afford to live in the communities that they work in. I won't get too deep into this, as many of you are sort of familiar with, but you know these are some of the changes that we've had that a lot of us, you know, would say, Oh, these are good things. But if we dig deeper, what does this mean for exclusion? What does this mean when we talk about who's able to live here? It has. It raises some questions, and the part that makes us so pervasive is this isn't inconsistent with things like Frederick Olmsted's rhetoric and those other things. So we have a pretty nice through line that, hey? This is all consistent. All seems pretty good.

[133:08] and I want to choose my words carefully here, but all the things that make Boulder a desirable place to live were somewhat motivated by self-interest, and I think that's a real important piece to look at. This. I'll go through more quickly also, because I'm horrific with numbers. But Boulder's an expensive place to live. This is how we stand compared to the State itself and other communities that are close to us. Renters face a lot of challenges. If you're renting a place. It's much more expensive to rent a 1 bedroom apartment here in Boulder you have. But the problem is, and this is the trap your wages aren't going to be much better than if you work elsewhere. So you're going to have to work 54 HA week as opposed to 44 HA week to be able to afford a 1 bedroom apartment. And you know, you just have to make a lot more money. So that really changes. Who can live here and who can't?

[134:00] This next slide? I have a little bit of a challenge with. But while it seems that we're getting more diverse, apparently, because in my, the data folks have sort of enlightened me on this. Is that the way that the census looks at how you report your identity as such, where you can do white and other. So it actually appears that we're more diverse because of that classification. But my understanding is the reality is, you know, that's not the case. So that's not something to keep in mind. And certainly, I think you know, we're not looking at the large scale. Diversity, like our guest, Lisa Bender, will discuss about what's going on in Minneapolis, which is very markedly diversifying, is my understanding. So Penfield Tate said the measure of a great city in a great country is not the size of its green belt, but how it treats its people. And I think we see some issues with that. If we look at the community perceptions assessment that was done in 2017, I just want to do a few quick quotes. We don't have economic diversity. There's hardly any middle class here. Anyone that earns less than $60,000 a year has to be very creative in how to live. There's no diversity in terms of housing costs. It's true

[135:05] people can't afford to live here and buy what you need. Basic living supplies. Very few Cu staff can afford to live in boulder. Some faculty do for staff. There is not a sense of community. This is a place they go to work. This affects how they feel or how they interact. One thing that has helped us, though to create some solutions is affordable housing. We've seen the number of affordable homes increase in boulder, thanks to the efforts of local government and community partners, and we have some fairly ambitious goals to increase that. We have a rare opportunity now, and you know I think a lot of people in this room will participate in sort of changing the course here to turn the tide and address the consequences, both intentional and unintentional, of past planning related decisions, and how we can remedy some of those pieces. The news is good when it comes to affordable housing and diversity. What you see is more diversity in in terms of people

[136:04] that live in affordable housing versus that of the general population, and you also see that you have people with a broader range of Median income, so it becomes more accessible. So all critical pieces as well. There's a general consensus among the community. That affordable housing is a key part of helping to make Boulder a more welcoming and inclusive place. And just so, you know, we're in the home stretch here, so we'll be. I'll be wrapping up soon. How do we look ahead? I'd like to go back to Abram X. Kendi. He defines racial inequity is when 2 or more racial groups are not standing on equal footing. So when you start seeing large disparities like who owns a single family home. And you see, one groups up here and another group's down here. That's when you have racial inequity. More important, he defines a racist policy as a measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups and any an anti-racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial equity between racial groups.

[137:09] And here's the challenge here is that we did a lot of things with the best intentions. We wanted to protect our built and natural environments. We wanted this to be a good place to live. But the problem is. the past had set a stage that impaired our ability to look at the impacts of these things critically. your Olmsteads, your manifest destiny, that all made it much more challenging for us to look at this through the critical lens that would help us to build a more equitable and just community. I would like to leave conclude with hopefully, what is a bit of a hopeful note again, I don't want people, because I have given this presentation before, and people that I deeply respect say that their immediate reaction to this is shame. I don't think that's where we need to be. Professor Anton Troyer, an indigenous scholar from Minnesota, says.

[138:04] all human beings have dark chapters in their personal histories, and all nations have dark chapters in theirs. Nobody should be stuck in shame. However, it is important for all countries and individuals to examine dark chapters in order to learn them and prevent them from recurring. Thank you. Feels like a different era. You're saying the Covid era and use. Well, I mean, he predicted, the future. This is this is fascinating. Is he still with the city? No clay actually left to go work for the county for a little while and then now he's with the Federal Government. Do you mind summarizing why you wanted us to watch it?

[139:19] because I think it's thought provoking. I think it's important for people to understand the history of housing in Boulder. So, like every person we hire at the housing human services, we make them watch actually the full 3 HI think most people just have no idea of. You know how boulder was formed. and how you know, past policies have really impacted housing affordability here the interesting thing. My kind of takeaway is that it took a long time for us to become this exclusive, but it seems that in the decade the seventies and eighties.

[140:03] There was like this window. you know, where Martin Acres was very accessible and affordable. Newlands was very accessible and affordable. We had these parts of the city that weren't in the foothills weren't on Mapleton Hill weren't around the university that yeah. Ordinary people can live what used to be out there right now we're in Central Boulder. But because when I came to boulder in the in the late seventies this did not feel like an exclusive community, and I don't think it thought of itself as an inclusive community. There were a lot of people craftsmen, you know, unskilled, not techies, not academics, making a living and owning houses and

[141:00] making a go of having a reality. And it's kind of like, you know the frog sitting in the pot and boiling. It's like, then Boulder became this place that we have today. And it's it's interesting. I'm hearing what I'm what I'm thinking that he was proposing is that. Yeah, it's been in our water all along, and this was our destiny. But I feel like I actually heard it say that older had some being exclusive from the get go right, not doing agriculture, not doing industry, having the university. I agree it didn't feel that way when I arrived, though, in the seventies and eighties. It was like I would argue that that had to do with when you arrived in Boulder, but I'm saying if someone arrives in the nineties might also think the same thing. Oh, I got here in 93, and I feel like I could work here. I was. Gonna say, you could afford to come. Yeah, exactly. Newlands was like middle income. People

[142:12] could easily come and find a house and make a life in Boulder now, and easily is the operative word. you know. It's not easy to do it. A lot of people probably still do do it. Renters, for example, you know, come and and find those old houses and those areas. But it I think it's because sitting on planning board and watching the redevelopment. And it's like, are we getting this thing that we really want? And we made our regulations. you know, to speak to the earlier point of what role does government and regulations play huge, huge role, and it continues.

[143:02] oh, wow! It feels like it's gotten like it may have been exclusive, as this indicated from sort of the get go, but I think the supply and demand factors have gotten even more impactful with zoning in the green belt. And then and then, you know, Federal lab, like the employers being more higher, paying whether it's the university, and then the Federal labs, and then Google and High Tech. And then the concept of what is it, Richard Florida? Or like a creative creative class, where where it attracts people who don't necessarily have to go into an office. And now I feel like second homes, 3, rd homes, like people.

[144:02] So I feel like I feel like it's become less and less and less affordable. And and and to the point where supply and demand economics will not create the community that maybe we want boulder to be so setting 15% affordable housing and using cash in lieu to create those units. Is it? Is the city saying what we want us to be, and it may be that the next step is to come up with ways so that our policemen and our firefighters and our teachers and our nurses, our service providers are also insured a certain percentage of housing, so that we're kind of dictating who we want to live there by to overcome supply and demand factors that will just price out everybody. I think it's Instagram.

[145:00] and what I mean by that is, I came to Boulder in 2015 to tour the Law School, and it was snowing that day, and I walked out on the patio, and I was like, Oh, my gosh! I have to live here. This place is beautiful. and I don't think that reaction that drew me to Boulder is new. In fact, I believe that's probably existed for millennia but the difference is, when I came here in 2015, I was able to take a picture of it and put it on the Internet and show thousands of people across country and lots and lots of people do that. and I think the reality is more and more. People have discovered what is possibly the most defining feature of our city, which is that it's beautiful, and we can pass all the laws we want. But that defines our city. There's plenty of cities in America that don't have that, and people are not moving to those cities for that. And I, you know, that speaks to supply and demand. People are going to want to live here, no matter what, even if the windows are thin

[146:06] and it's crappy. And there's that has whatever. Just because this is such a beautiful place to live. And that's a defining feature of our city. And I don't know. I I hear all this history. And we're you know about racism. And I mean, yeah, like, look at America, we have a we have a dark past in this country. That's part of our story, but I don't know. Well, I I don't think that's the right approach. I mean, I I'm honestly like personally struggling a little bit with Boulder right now. I went to my 1st city council meeting in March for hab to read our statement, and what I saw there was shocking, like just the public comment at our city council meetings is foreign war, hate, speech. angry people screaming really mean things. And then, 3 weeks ago, Jews are burned alive on, or you know, on Pearl Street, I mean, that's that's literally what happened. And

[147:08] I watched the city council meeting that followed. They canceled public comment because they couldn't stomach it, and then they held their meeting, and they each offered a comment. And there is a lot of acrimony on our city council. And I wonder is that is that just our city council and our government? Or is that our our community that you know we are so at each other's throats right now over race issues and foreign war issues. And all of that. And I watch this, and it's talking about our past. And I I don't know where I'm really going with this other than I. I think there's there's some some problems in our community that maybe transcend. I I just don't know. I think there's I think there's some deep rooted problems in our community right now, or maybe our local government.

[148:04] Can I interrupt for a minute? So I wanna just do a time check. It's 8 30. I think most of us would like to get out by 9. I think there's a lot of We could probably spend an entire have session talking about the comments of of this. And so I just want to sort of open it up to people because we still have several other items. So do we want to go beyond 9 o'clock. Do we wanna come back and talk about this video at the next meeting? Are there any of the other things on this that we wanna eliminate like, I just want to be respectful of people's times. I would suggest wrapping it up on a video, maybe continuing the conversation at a later date and moving on with the agenda and finishing by now. Is that okay with everybody?

[149:02] As I go into cryogenic storage at night? Well, I'll I'll wrap up my comment. I guess I I think there's there's a lot of acrimony in our community right now, and I guess I think, like, you know, what role can we play to do good? And maybe that's to to focus on housing issues? You know, that's I think that's principally what our communities looks to in our local government is maybe not these big, weighty, global issues. But do we have affordable housing? Do we have public services that work? And there's a lot of city issues that are not our purview. One of them is housing. And that's 1 of the big local issues. And I think if we can focus on that and send that message to council. That's that's a productive endeavor, because maybe I don't know if distraction is a lot of right word. But there's a lot of issues that I think are fomenting in our community right now that don't pertain to essential local government services, and

[150:07] we sit on one of those essential local government services which is housing. And I think if we can keep that front and center for City Council, City manager's office and say, that's that's what the people want and need from their government. I think that's productive for our. So that leads greatly into Philip's presentation. But yeah, I just have one comment, kind of related to the the video and everything. But also related to some of the things I was thinking about. about 10 years ago I was listening to an economist who was presenting, I believe, to the County Commissioners and talk, or the city Council, and talking about the the largest industry in boulder is the service industry and you know, traditionally, our lowest paid low income folks is our largest industry in boulder, and it really concerned me when you you mentioned that our

[151:09] affordable housing goal is 15%, and that just came off of a whim, for it was just just pulled up, you know, you know, it's just a team like it. It didn't have any real correlation to the need, and and that that concerns me in a big way, I guess so maybe at a future meeting we can explore the 15. But I've actually heard that, like Bhp has some vacancy issues. And so I think that could be another longer discussion. Yeah. So I don't. Please, please don't get me wrong, like I'm not trying to. Silence anybody like. I want to hear everybody's voice on a variety of topics. But I also want to be respectful that, like, I don't want this to go to

[152:01] 9, 30, 10 o'clock 11, whatever. So you know I would. I would love to give a speech about about this. Yeah, exactly. We've maybe heard it in previous years. You haven't heard it tonight. So do you want to talk about your update to council like? Did everybody get a chance to read what Philip is preparing to say to city Council, and does anybody have any edits? Or, if not, we can make a motion to approve? I think it's I think it's very good. I think it's too long. You're not gonna be able to get in 2 min. That's my concern. I have no substantive issues. I just worry about the 2 min. Unlike here, they they definitely kick you off. So I know I've done it before.

[153:00] and I I've timed it. That's fine, cool. Thank you. Do we need to make a motion and approve like vote on it? I think we should. I move to approve Philip's statement, lest you no, just to congratulate Philip. I'm doing a great job. I move to approve the statement. Second, all in favor. any post so moved. Okay, now, let's go to. Can I just make one comment. I will do my best to show up city council as soon as public comment is up and running, are they? Gonna is it gonna be at the end or the beginning? Have they figured out? No, they haven't figured it out yet. Techniques. I think they're going to figure it out tomorrow night. Yeah, there's been a lot of outline posts on this time this week. Lots of opinion saying, no to the end.

[154:00] Variety. Okay? So they want to do away with public comment. I just, I just think it's they don't want to get do away with it. They're just trying to structure it in a more productive way. I'll just when I went to that meeting, I thought, this is such a sad state of affairs for our city. And I stand by that. I it's it's really sad. Okay, let's keep focusing on housing. Okay? Next agenda item is the the work plan. Does everyone wanna take a look at that and see, are there any comments, changes, additions? Mhc, what does that stand for? MHC. Manufactured housing communities.

[155:01] So you'll hear about that more at next meeting we'll have a proposal for you on a a tour, and then potentially, panel discussions. Time got to work. Not too great issues in here. I don't see mention of the Oh, never mind, I'm sorry. There it is, subcommittee housing solutions for homelessness. We've got that covered. Do we know when the clutch reports gonna happen? August August? So that's kind of our next thing, right? We're waiting for that? Did you want to offer any other updates? Not tonight. Do we want to add the clutch report to upcoming items? I mean, it's not going to get presented to this report. Okay? Oh, got it. Okay. But these guys are going to use it when it comes out. Farn and I will meet, and then maybe we, after it comes out, set aside some time in one of our big meetings for us to discuss it with you all. Will they be presenting to city council so that we could watch what happened like is the clutch presentation going to be public?

[156:13] A question? I don't hmm. I think it has to be. If we're paying them. The public's paying. I mean, the the report will be yeah. or a summary of the report will be made available for the public, but I don't know if there's gonna be a presentation I would guess there will be, but I I can't tell you for sure. So the only thing that's not on here they just found out is September. He's asked to come get your feedback on the latest iteration of that of what the comprehensive plan update. So that'll be September. When were you thinking that that mobile home manufacture

[157:05] September, October? But I I don't know that it needs to be September as opposed to October. We talk about timing. Think we step one is, get the report. Yes. Talking about 2 different things was asking about was in relation to the mobile Matthew manufactured home. Tour and panel. Sure, yeah, which will be like, Sep, yeah. September, October, too, but different than the solutions for the factory. Right? That proposed stories of the factory. Correct? No, wait, no, it'll be of communities. But the factory will plan to some piece.

[158:01] You guys are by coordinating that a tour. Yeah, Cindy, and I'm helping her with that. No, I think that's great. we need more months in the year for all the topics we want to explore alright. So, working on a volunteer day for the Boulder month for the Board Board members, I think it'd be a funding fun time. I'm just curious. We have new members, the new members who've been with us now for just a a little while. I feel like us who've been at least for a year, have a sense of issues that we're interested in. But would you guys just want to? Is there anything you guys are interested in. I think the discussion on housing pipeline. I think that should be like a fairly regular conversation. Maybe like by annually at least

[159:00] like that just more as an update to the board on what's going on locally where I used to be. Well, I'm working on the manufactured housing and module in the factory. that's, you know, putting it together cool. Just wondering if there's any issues you guys care about. So other than that fully affordable housing definitely. This for me. and this is more of a personal rather than professional thing is, is homeowner, affordable homeownership. And I think Bhp is doing a really great job from a rental perspective and a 60% ami and below perspective. But I feel like affordable homeownership is a real

[160:05] real problem in our community. Like I personally, it's much more affordable for me to rent than buy a home, and I would really love to buy own, but just not possible. And so just understanding what's going on in the community from a homeownership perspective and opportunities that might be there. So I did have the opportunity to attend the middle income housing Summit. And they're putting together. They there was some workshoppy time, and somebody was kind of putting all the information together. And so when I received that, I'll share that out with you guys. But a couple of kind of the 2 most common threads that were coming up in these various group discussions. One was great. So we're doing pretty good with affordable rentals. But what about affordable homeownership? So that was definitely something that came up quite a bit. And then also, what? What can be done to

[161:16] improve the process of creating and building and getting through permitting and entitlements and blah blah any more efficiently to be able to create stuff. So I'll share that out with you guys as soon as I receive it. It sounded like they were saying, like Friday this week or Monday next week. One of the things you know, when I talk about affordable housing and just affordable homeownership. And one of the things like they talked about in the video is this idea of wealth generation and really building wealth. And it's not just, you know, getting somebody into a unit. It's it's about building wealth, building opportunities and getting people, you know. Possibly, you know, out of generational poverty.

[162:01] you know, through through housing, and that's why, in this tour that we're looking at and the the volunteer day, it's really looking at modular homes. I had a long discussion. We invited Molly. Go to our board meeting, you know, for my mobile phone park, and we we had a long conversation about, you know, is is manufacturing manufactured housing. The the way to go, you know, as far as you know, owning owning your home? Or is it more of a modular, because a modular cool is is that something that we need to be looking at more more thoroughly? Well, you put together a really good proposal for exploring. They, you know, exploring mobile Home Park issues like who owns it. And is it chattel versus real estate and

[163:09] and so I think next month. At this have meeting we'll present your proposal that can get added to September or October. And then, if Lauren, if you wanna dig a little deeper into the concept of affordable homeownership. Like, I know, I've been very interested in employer based housing so that we can provide homeownership, or or at least allow some of our service providers to live locally. And so, if you have ideas about sure people that that you'd like to be speakers or moderators, or themes or topics like, I encourage you, whoever all helpful to. I just wanna make sure that hasn't been a topic that has been discussed in recent history we've talked about like the missing middle. And we've talked about the potential for what might happen at the airport or at

[164:15] area planning reserve and and those kinds of things, but it hasn't really been like a a well. It hasn't been that specific topic, so I think it would be great. This could even be like an annual thing. I know we've heard from them before. It's just like Bhp. Some people from Bhp to come in, because it's such a large piece of what we discuss is bhp, this bhp, that so I don't think it hurts to hear from them on a semi regular basis. You can also attend their board meetings. I think they're open or look at their website, like. I think that would play into pipeline as well

[165:03] I guess that would be my question. What what do you wanna hear? What do you? What do you want to hear? Specific numbers like this year? We have this many new properties or this many new people housed or like, what do you? Yeah, I think maybe better understanding, like, I think we all could benefit from a better understanding of how they operate. You know, we we have this 15% affordable goal, like, what does it actually mean, you know, like, break it down. What is affordable mean, you know, like, who qualifies for that? What are? What are the metrics? What is their portfolio of residents look like? I just think we we could benefit from learning about that, because when it comes to housing policy in Boulder, a lot of that is the development of affordable housing through. Bhp, so you know, that's a big piece of the puzzle that we look at. I'm not saying it's something to do the next few months, but it might be something we want to consider, maybe later in the year or something.

[166:06] and also give you a tour of our dashboard that we have online that basically has every single unit. It's in our portfolio who it serves. what the income levels are, what type of unit it is unit. You know how many bedrooms interesting. That's something we all could benefit from. Right talk about housing in boulders and understanding of what is this affordable housing? You know that we we throw that term around a lot can mean a lot of different things. Jay, when you say our portfolio is that housing and human services is that Bhp is Bhp part of housing and human services. They're not. No, they're separate. So it would just be the city and a city affordable program, you know when we say affordable housing. We're talking about deed restricted, permanently. Affordable housing has the vast majority of the rentals, but it's still only a you know, a percentage of the total portfolio. We have lots of other partners. We have private developers who built affordable housing. So

[167:17] percent of the affordable housing is Bhb, the deed restricted affordable housing units. Let's pull up the dashboard. If the answer is no, we don't have to get into that. My guess it would be complete. Guess 82% of the rentals is a big big piece of that puzzle. So you know.

[168:03] Alright, are there any other thoughts? Suggestions? I'm sorry I haven't. I haven't. There's my name is in the bottom list of upcoming possible. I have not forgotten about it, but I haven't given it attention, but I will give it attention. This idea of land value tax. I'm very interested in it. I want to go learn some more and think carefully about how we might have a productive discussion about that here. Well, I feel like you did a lot of heavy, heavy lifting already by organizing the renting bedrooms like excess bedrooms. So I'm not rushing you to do that. I mean, I'd be delighted if you wanted to. That's kind of like a goal, for you know, by the end of the year I'd like to kind of at least propose something that we might. I have one thing that I wanted to raise. I think I've mentioned this before. But there's a new State law that says if someone has been renting a unit for more than a year. The landlord basically has to offer a lease renewal, and

[169:12] unless they have good cause not to. For example, the tenants been repeatedly late on rent, or they're gutting the unit and rebuilding it, or a family member is gonna move it. But this is this is a big law. It says that they have to renew it, and they have to renew it on reasonable terms. That's state law. It does not define what reasonable is, but it contemplates. If your landlord says, Hey, I'm renewing your reason. I'm doubling your rent. You have a good argument. That's not reasonable. I don't have to pay. So there's this question of what is reasonable, and this speaks a lot to rent increases. If your landlord says 20%. Is that a reasonable renewal? Probably not. And as a lawyer, I'm just like, like, No, no one has really decided. How do we determine what's reasonable? But it's a big deal, and I've always thought that if the city could provide

[170:06] data or had some sort of methodology for collecting data from people who rental licenses. As what is the average rent for a 1 bedroom unit in Boulder. How much has rent increased every year? If we had data, we could point to what's reasonable if rent stagnant in boulder, and we have good data from the city that says that. And a landlord's telling someone you've lived here for 5 years. Now I'm going to increase. I've been increasing your rent 3% of yours. Now, I'm gonna increase to 20% because of market conditions. And that doesn't pair up with the data that gives the tenant good cost. To say this is not reasonable terms. Is that the kind of data that the city collects like Terry Bruteg is a is a researcher who does a lot of analysis on multifamily industry in Metro Denver. I'm sure he does that. But I don't know. Are we aware that that's an issue here like is that something? Well, that's I mean, the point is like, I think the city has the ability to collect that data when it does its rental licenses. Can it ask, how much do you charge for your unit?

[171:22] The from just a legal perspective? If the city has an established methodology that you can call someone from the city to testify, you know, like these poor tenants who are dealing with these issues. they don't have the ability to hire an expert witness from Yada Yada to testify about land values, and most of these issues never actually end up in court. It's the tenant and the landlord texting. And if the tenant can go on a website and say, Hey, the city of Boulder says that rents increased 2% last year. you know, between. And you're increasing my rent by 20%. I don't think that's reasonable.

[172:03] That's I mean, this is how most disputes in society are resolved. And they say, Oh, I see that I'll come down. But actually I had a reason, you know, I just think more transparency as to how much rent is going up can help people when they go to renew their lease. So do you want to add that to our topics? Yeah, I mean, I I'd like to, perhaps. Yes, I'd like to add it. And maybe what I'd like this is like a concrete policy proposal would be, can the city collect this information from people when they apply for their rental license. And can they, you know? Obviously, they're not gonna disclose. Oh, this unit cost this much. But then, can they aggregate the data every year and say, this is how much rent has increased, based on our rental license app, you know, applications. The city of Boulder. That seems to me like something the Government could easily do and publicly report, and that would give tenants in this city good data to point to arguing against over regulation.

[173:10] That's not like, we know, that's that's people's income. It's not rental rates, I mean, I just. I think it would be. HUD increases. Rental rates is just based on annual changes in them. Yeah, yeah. But I don't know. I just one suggestion. So Brian Rosbert, from housing Colorado is going to be here next meeting to talk about last legislative session. You could ask him specifically about that, I can tell you. I'm familiar with what the law was, and the compromise was that the legislators didn't want to come up with a methodology. So they said, which is something politicians frequently do. We can't decide on what's reasonable. So let's just say what's reasonable and then have a judge decide

[174:06] when it gets into a courtroom. Well, how do judges decide things based on evidence? So lawyers need evidence to present to judges what's reasonable is probably based market rates in the local market. But there's not really good market data on that sort of thing. You know, we can point to Median income census. I do think there's I do think there's apartment data that you can find that will talk about annual increases community by community, and sometimes you have to pay for it. I don't know whether the city collects it. But like, like, if you want to investigate market data, then I think we should bring it up. But I don't think we're going to resolve anything in the next 5 min. This proposal can the city collect this? And is there someone in the licensing office that we can talk to and ask them that you know something that's possible.

[175:02] It's a policy idea great. We can. I think we can decide whether that like right now, there's a whole list of different. I just added it to the list great anything else people want to talk about. I think I have a question, but I'm not. I don't. I'm not sure. It just seems that it's I'll just throw it out there. For affordable housing. What what is the income limits for affordable housing? Which kind like? Who like what incomes or is affordable housing meant to serve it. It depends. If it's ownership or rental ownership in our program, we have homes up to 120% of area meeting income is for one person in Boulder household of one just over. It's like a hundred 5,000.

[176:06] Whereas, like some of Bhp's units, target 30% ami. Those are rentals, though those are rentals. Rentals are typically are all 60%. And below. and do we know how many people in boulder. The dashboard will tell you exactly what incomes they earn, what units they're living in. But the dashboard won't tell you. The average rents over years older now isn't a good source of data. That's what I want to fix. I need to start a new business. It's not a business I feel like. It's well, it may not be data that the city collects, but, like appraisals, have data about average rental rates, and Terry Bruce gets hired to provide reports. So there are people who collect that data. It may just not be the city.

[177:07] So we struggled with it, my boy. just because the methodology isn't consistent year over year. So you have different parties collecting it. The idea is to give people of limited means access to this information. You know, knowledge is power. So you know, someone who's landlords jacking up the rent? 20%, they can point and say, Hey, that's not reasonable. The city of Boulder collects this information, and but I'll I'll let it go. or we can revisit it at a at a future meeting. You said the dashboard, will show the incomes of the people who are in those units. But how would I find out, like how many people and boulder in those income limits that live in affordable housing, that qualify for affordable housing

[178:04] can tell you that one in 10 people in Boulder live in affordable housing. But it'd be interesting to know, like who actually, how many people in boulder, since the service industry is the largest industry qualify for affordable housing. But cannot it might. It might help us better understand that 15%. The tricky thing for boulder is that students do not qualify for affordable housing in a large. But when the census collects data they're not. I don't think they're distinguishing the students, you know, like, when they collect race ethnicity. All of that. I don't know if there's a good way to stipend that out. I'd assume most students. but for being a student would qualify based on income, you know, because most students aren't making that much money.

[179:00] So one thing you can look at is the Dr. Gong the Denver Regional Council of Governments that did a housing needs analysis by region of the entire Denver metropolitan area. and you can see what that what the needs are. So that's very. It's kind of a macro scale. but it's pretty significant. So the highest need is are those lowest incomes like you figured out? And you know, it's basically 10,000 units. There's also data on people who are rent, burdened. They spend too much money on rent or mortgage pay compared their income, and that's a pretty good indicator as well. Any other comments motion to adjourn all in favor. Alright! We'll see you next month. Keep the ideas coming. We

[180:03] meet on a regular basis for our meetings and add and add items to the agenda. So thank you.