January 28, 2026 — Housing Advisory Board Regular Meeting

Transcript

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

[0:03] All right, good evening, everyone. I'm Karin Hoskin, the Chair of the Housing Advisory Board. Welcome to our monthly meeting. Today is January 28, 2026. We'll start with a roll call. Lauren Chevitz? Here. Michael Lecheese? Sure. Philip Ogren? Fair. And Chip Tennessee, hopefully? We'll be arriving soon. Also want to welcome some panel guests that we have here, Andy Minden, Brian Bowen, Holly Hendrickson, and then, Tim Dolan is zooming in, and I believe that, Kristen Heiser will be, Zooming in. Oh, she said, hi! are zooming in as well. So, as far as our agenda tonight, we'll do an approval of the minutes. We'll have, time for public participation. Matters from the board tonight, we have a neuro-inclusive housing panel with some really great guests lined up.

[1:09] Yeah, so do it. We'll talk about the CAB member quarterly update and the HAB work you've reviewed. We'll have a few minutes for matters from SAP. Any final suggestions or thoughts, and then we'll adjourn, by 8 o'clock tonight or shortly after, and Chip Hennessy is here. Present. Present, thank you. Okay. So, approval of the minutes from our November 19th, 2025. I almost caught that, meeting. Any comments or corrections that need to be made? Motion approval. Second. Awesome. All in favor? And opposed? Great. Motion approved.

[2:00] Participation, excuse me, Tiffany, do we have anybody? There's several, members of the public out. Okay, great. Jay, do you want to do our… raise their hands if they want to speak? Does this have the daughter? It is. Next, we're gonna be public comment. Oh, great. Good timing. I guess I'm doing. Sure. That's… Alright, so before we start public comment, I'm just going to go over some of the rules. Alright, so the City has engaged with community members to co-create a vision for productive, meaningful, and inclusive civic conversations. Support the physical and emotional safety of all.

[3:00] If you would like more information, you can go to the website. And read about, the entire community engagement process that was to develop that. The following are examples of rules of decorum found in the folder revised code. These will be upheld by our chair at the meeting. All remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to city business, please. No participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation, obscenity, racial epithets, and other speech and behavior disrupts, or otherwise impedes, are prohibited. And participants are required to use their name they are commonly known by, and individuals must display that, before being allowed to speak online. And currently, only audio testimony is permitted for online participants. That's it, thank you. XJ? Did you want to hear the in-person? Yeah, is that okay?

[4:00] Oh, sure, you're on! Yeah, I'm Max Lord, you may have heard or met me before. I'm a local builder in town, and I was on KGMU this morning speaking about commercial vacancy, something I've taken quite an interest in. I've spoken to a lot of landowners, I've spoken to a lot of the builders, et cetera, and I've even been working with some of the housing workers in, Sundance. So, slightly qualified. I think I'd like… I was invited here by Stephen Hemesty, I believe? Who I've only met via email. But, The… if I may, if you wanted my advice… about how the vacant commercial can be used in housing, just from the lens of a builder. It's quite difficult to do, particularly downtown. You have issues with windows, and you have issues with utilities. With that being said, if we change legislation on boarding houses, and basically, think dormitory-style rooms, and reformat those, I think that we could take a squeeze off of the housing market in the

[5:04] And that, I would say, is a more relevant goal than switching them into, say, apartments, you know? I think that right now, there's a big movement towards helping homeowners rent out during Sundance. But a more pressing issue to me as a renter would be renters' ability to sublet during Sundance, and we don't have many provisions right now that would allow for that. But if you wanted to just make housing more affordable for the average renter, them being able to skip town for 2 weeks and make $3,000, $4,000, that actually subsidizes their rent in a very meaningful way. So, just, like I said, as a builder and as a renter, that would be my humble advice. Yeah. Any questions? Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for your comments. Actually, I have a question. Did you have some examples of how you would, repurpose that commercial space? Yeah, so I'm looking at one space right now that's above the Sundown Saloon and, the Pango Sushi, and I think that a kind of clever way to do it would be, like I said, you have, like, a dormitory-style room along the

[6:15] window. And then you have a common space that's used for more events, and it's specifically targeted more towards, like, a digital nomad. than, say, a luxury hotel, because that's a huge market that we're missing right now. And people are like, how are we going to get these office workers back downtown? And I mean, I'm 32, and I'm telling you they're never going back. I'm like, they'll wake up and die before you get them back in the office. So… which is good for them. So, I'm like, then how are we going to get the people that are working remotely downtown so that they're supporting the businesses, etc? And I think boarding houses would be a really good idea to handle that. We don't have break mechanisms within our current code to allow for that, and I would like to see the city moving towards that. So that… and that handles a bunch of issues. Also, if you wanted to

[7:02] when we're talking about, kind of, the tier of homelessness that is very at risk before they, say, fallen into addiction, etc, you know, I think living in a car. being able to give a voucher to a boarding house is a lot more realistic than giving a voucher to the St. Julian or, you know, the Limelight, and a lot of people in that situation would appreciate a dormitory-style bedroom. You know, so we don't have that almost anywhere in town, but there are a lot of people that that market would work for. And that's… and that's… you don't need So luxury student housing, say, has, what, you have 4 bedrooms, you're gonna have 4 baths, because that's what they're willing to pay for. But something like this could have, you know, say, eight beds, but really it's only one shared shower. And I mean, that's not ideal for a long-term living situation, but if you're just, say, spending the night in town, you're, you know, you're, say, a climber, and you're living in your van, but you want a place to take a shower and meet some people. You know, then they're in town, and once again, this takes a little bit of the squeeze off of the short-term licenses.

[8:02] Because I would like to see that go away as quickly as possible. I think that the short-term festival licensing is gonna… Do devastating effects on the rental market. Thank you. Yeah, and… Thank you very much. Yeah, and I'm probably gonna disk, as I'm super busy, but if anybody… I just thought I'd swing by in person, and anybody who wants to reach out to me, they can. My email's at Maxwell. So, that's super easy to find. Yeah, can I ask a follow-up? So it… I thought maybe you were talking about 3 things, but maybe… maybe two different things. With the… with the helping out with Sundance crowd, perhaps what you're talking about is, like, a hostel-type service, where people can stay for a night or two, or a week or two. And… and then it's very much a short-term thing, but I think that is very separate from, like, SROs in general, where, you're actually just, like, trying to provide the bottom rung of the housing ladder in a dormitory-style, format.

[9:12] Yeah, I'd say that, I mean, I'm oftentimes guilty of talking about 3 different things that I kind of view as the same at once, and I am kind of getting at that, that it's kind of a way that you can leverage the economy of Sundance or the digital nomad community that, in a kind of roundabout way, can help people that are at risk in homelessness. You know, that you've provided a type of short-term housing to those most at risk. By kind of capitalizing on people that have a little bit more cash flow. That… so it's a little bit of both. Okay. And I mean, that's it. We have, I mean, what is it, like, 70% of downtown office space is sitting empty? You know, we have people in the streets right now that could be living in that space, but it's not going to look like an apartment.

[10:00] Yeah, so there's just a basic fact that setting up SROs in office space is just much easier than setting up apartments. That is… if I can summarize it in a sentence, that's exactly what I came here to say, basically, is that, in my opinion, as a builder, what it would take for me to convert it, I can't redo the plumbing to put, like, 8 different bathrooms into these spaces, so you need to be more creative, like, how are we gonna fit people in here, and I'm trying to work around the word density, because I don't want to get, like, put down in the street by the wrong people, but, you know, like, that's where you're able to have a more meaningful amount of impact with the same amount of space. We'll put it that way. Thank you. Next, what did you say your last name is? Lord. Thank you. L-O-R-D. Thank you. Yeah. And I, I mean, honestly, you guys can email me at my professional email if you want, which is max at hammeranddriver.com. That's the name of my construction firm. But… Yeah. Don't ask.

[11:01] ML, I'm the liaison from the planning board, and I would suggest that, you know, you go to the public comment, to planning boards as well. I just thought the planning board. I know you emailed me once, too. I tried to get coffee with you, but I'm an exceedingly busy young man. If it was about a project, we can't do that, but anyway. Yeah, it was about my run for City Council. You probably did not email me, or I even saw it. I promise you, we did. I don't remember, I didn't see it, but this would be a conversation, I think, that planning board… it'd be good for the planning board ears, and the department that is the supporting department are the planning and development people, which is where those codes reside. Yeah, I lurk around at the planning meetings, but I I haven't spoken to one. Okay. Yeah, but I'm there. I encourage you, if you want to take this same conversation there. Yeah, I'm sure we will be. Two quick comments, Max. We did talk about office conversions. at our last meeting, because I had done a kind of a steady tour of what's going on next to E-Town, it's office condos, and it's, you're right, it's like $1,000 a square foot, and you can only do a luxury product.

[12:12] And then the dorm model, I don't know if you're familiar with Bridge House? Yes. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I actually volunteered with them once. Okay, so, you know, that's what they do. It's kind of like you're expanding that idea to a broader market. Yeah, so, I mean, that's the thing, is a lot of, like, it's about putting a bunch of little pieces together, right? Like, to solve any complicated problem. Yep. Anything else? Alright, thank you for your time. Yeah, well, I mean, thank you very much for hearing me, and like I said, if anybody wanted to chat further, like, let me know, and yeah, I'll send you an email. Like I said, I've got an application in right now for Plan Board. Oh, I've already got… I'm already sponsoring somebody, and not that I'm on City Council and have a vote. Take care, guys. Tiffany, were there others? Okay. Yep, we have two community members on… Great, thank you.

[13:06] What do we have… Ben Myers? Ben, can you hear us? Can you hear me? There we go! Sorry for the, technical difficulties here. Yeah, so my name is Ben, I live in Boulder, I've worked for, Tebow Properties for a decade, and Chip kindly invited me. To the meeting, and, I'm here just to hear your ideas, and, here to have a conversation. As you know, we're, A pretty large property owner in town, and have a lot of office vacancies that we've been trying to fill, and we've seen some, businesses relocating to Boulder recently. We've been making a lot of deals to try to find tenants to lease the office spaces, but I'm curious to learn more about

[14:07] what, this subject is about, and, I'm here to be a resource to all of you, and… Answer any questions to the best of my ability that y'all may… may have. And I'm, pretty sick right now. I think it's going around, so… Oh, that's, that's really all… all I have to, to comment on. But just to let you guys know that I'm here, and I'm happy to have a conversation with anybody, and if anybody has any questions. And is, Tebow, as an organization, considered any conversions of the empty space into… for housing uses? We have definitely looked into it. A lot of our office buildings, you know, they have a… Okay. Kind of a different floor plate where the restrooms are in the center.

[15:00] And to convert that into apartments, You know, there's a very, very large cost to it. So that's been our, our major hurdle. Is, just… it's almost more affordable just to scrape the whole building together and build a brand new apartment building. Hvac, plumbing, electrical, it all needs to be reworked. Ben, in light of what our, previous public speaker just said, do you think that If… Code and zoning would allow, do you think? Tebow would be open to doing more SRO, or not SRO, I guess it's… what's a T-Max call it? Dorm style? Micro units is a nice unit. I guess what I'm saying is not apartments where you have to…

[16:01] have bathrooms per, but… or it would be shared bathrooms. Do you think that's a possibility? Yeah, we… I think we would definitely look at it and consider it. Yeah, so the answer would be BS, but we'd have to look at every the costs, and… And, all that. Anybody else have questions? Hey, Ben, thanks for coming to the public comment. Yeah, thanks for having me. Sure. I, you know, something that's often said about Boulder's housing market is that demand is inelastic, and there's, there's, like, a cynical part of me that, it sort of expects people to start saying that, you know, with respect to commercial property supply is inelastic, because, we have… we have all this, extra…

[17:00] extra, office space that's not being used, and I'm just… like, my basic question is, how come the… the rents for those spaces don't just plummet. You know, like, maybe they should be half or a third of what they would be otherwise. And I'm curious if that's because… The financialization model, like, maybe, if it's based on property values, or, or, return on investment from investors, or, like, kind of… what… what's, what's keeping prices from just meeting demand. We have, dropped our office prices across our whole portfolio. For example, we have a 5,000 square feet office space on the Pearl Street Mall. And we've dropped our base rent in half, to try to attract tenants, and that's, unfortunately still vacant. We have given really good deals, pretty much all across the board. One thing to note is

[18:05] The triple net expenses on a building, which is, like, mostly property taxes, those haven't really come down at all. And that gets passed through to… to the tenant. So property taxes are still pretty high. Do you want property taxes to come down, or is that in conflict with keeping the spreadsheets, the values on those properties? Hi. I don't know the answer to that question. I'm not involved in, like, the accounting or tax side of things. I'm more on the operations side. But I think it would only benefit us, you know, we… we… We protest a lot of our property taxes every year, to try to keep those triple net expenses as low as possible, for the tenants who lease from us. But I… I don't know the exact answer to your question. It's kind of… kind of beyond me. I'm more kind of boots on the ground.

[19:10] Any other questions for VIN? Well, thank you all, and Yeah, feel free to reach out, email, I think Chip has my contact info, and… I love what you guys are doing, and I'm here to help. Thank you. Thank you. Yep, thank you. Alright, and we have… One other community member, Lynn. Carolyn, can you hear yours? I'll do respect to Ben, if there's gonna be an iterative process, I would appreciate if you have that as a separate part of open comment for developers and residents, separate, because I can't interact with you individually, you know, like, it's just not…

[20:02] ethical to do that. So… Potentially, they're getting tax breaks. He himself said there's silos, there's people working in different departments, there's, you know, rental-backed securities, there's, private equity funds. We have to look at the root cause of why these commercial spaces are there in the first place. And… then while they're empty, and I'll tell you what happens from watching and planning board, and that is. Developers are given subsidies based on the fact that they're providing commercial. Well, that's probably not going to happen anymore, because everybody knows the commercial is a joke. I mean, with the Olive, it's 10 years of empty commercial space. And I had a feeling, yeah, you can't just throw a bunch of homeless people, or a bunch of residential into a commercially developed space. It's like he said. Then you'd also have to take off the upstairs, because this has already been… these problems that happen.

[21:08] Are long-term consequential. You know, really. The model for housing in Boulder is Marpa House, but how many of you know what happened with Marpa House? John Cobb was in, Halifax, Nova Scotia, and he's the owner, and John Kirkwood, a hill developer, got involved with the neighbors, wanting and dining them, and Lisa Spalding and the neighborhood wanted to buy… help the residents buy Marpa House for her own interests and for the neighborhood's interests, and as a result, he turned and told John, the bottom line, that the neighbors would Okay? And they outbid him. John Cobb outbid him. And then, John Kirkwood built into there 16 3-bedroom units, rent by the bedroom, $1,700 a month, last I know, about 2 years ago. And…

[22:05] After the fact, he was so hungry for… bedrooms are for people, but he couldn't wait, because his project went through before then, so he tried to convert the dining room to a bedroom, which was a big disaster because it didn't work, and The students had to move out for a period of time. This is the model housing for Boulder, is MARPA. You know what? Two blocks from me is an Alpine in 5th house that's… the concept plans are up for 5 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms. 8 bathrooms! Marpa House had 6 bathrooms and 40 people. So, you decide, you know, What more can I say? Bye. Thanks. Thank you, Lynn. Does anybody have any questions for Lynn? Alright, Lee, thank you. Tiffany, anybody else for public comment? No other hands are raised. All right.

[23:02] We'll go ahead and close public comment, then, and move on to matters from the board. Lauren put together a great panel, and Holly is going to moderate, so I'll… There you go. It's off to the races here. Alright, so I'm Holly Henderson, for those online, and here I'm a Senior Project Manager with, Housing and Human Services. So I'll just give a little intro to the subject from kind of where Housing and Human Services sits, and then, hand it off to all the experts in the room. So, a few years ago, there was a neuro-Inclusive housing summit in Boulder here, and Kurt and I attended, and were really moved by it, and Kurt said. you know, let's figure this out. So, Captain, I've been trying to figure it out since then. We have a parcel that's directly south of the new fire station on 30th, so it's 30th and Bluff.

[24:02] It's a site where we're considering this. And in this consideration, we, asked… we applied for a technical assistance grant from CHAFA to start this process to, like, explore the possibilities of it. And we completed that last year, and then since then, we're kind of just doing some more fact-finding, trying to figure out exactly what we should be doing here. So I certainly appreciate, the initiative… the gathering here to talk specifically about neuro-inclusive housing to kind of push this forward and see how see how we can move forward on this. All right, so I'll stop there. So we have four panelists. We have Tim Dolan and Kristen Heiser on screen here, and we'll start with you. You both have presentations that I can share. Tim Dolan is from the Inclusive Housing Coalition. Kristen Heiser is from the Broomfield Housing Authority, alliance. Sorry, Alliance. Sorry.

[25:03] I'm not looking at my notes well enough, apparently. And then after, Tim and Kristen speak, we'll pass it off to Andy, and Ryan here in the room, if that sounds okay with everyone. Cool. All right, so Tim, I'll pass it off to you, unless there's any other Oh, just thank you all for coming, I'm excited for the conversation here. Yeah, me too. Thanks very much for having me. I did send Lauren over a presentation, Do you guys… do you have it up, or… have it, and I will share it right now. Alright. While that's being kind of, teed up, I just want to thank everybody for having me. My name's Tim Dolan, and I am with an organization called the Inclusive Housing Coalition, and so, Lauren was good enough to invite me to talk a little bit about, neuro-inclusive housing, and kind of give you a little bit of, a little bit of background to the extent that I can. And I thought I would do it, you know, just sort of through the lens of the IHC, and,

[26:15] Hoping that that will give you kind of a… a basis for conversation for the other folks that are coming up. Neuroinclusive housing, or housing for IDD, or, you know, some of the other terms that you want to use. That's why we were organized a couple of years ago, and we did this, I and some colleagues, when I was at CHAFA, and I was doing a, when we were we were, convening a innovation team to see how we could develop more housing for folks with intellectual and developmental disabilities. So, if you want to go to the next slide. That would be great.

[27:01] And so, and which is sort of, you know, our mission, right, is to address the unique affordable housing crisis experienced by people with IDD by generating awareness and influencing partnerships by building diverse opportunities in Colorado, and I'll talk a little bit more about all those things later. I would just underscore, a big part of this happens to be affordability, right? there are options out there, of course. if, one has a lot of resources, but, being a houser myself, I sort of come at it from an affordable standpoint. So, next slide. I just wanted to give, a little bit of… overview of the stakeholders that are… that are sort of involved. And I'll tell you, over the last couple of years, 3 or 4 years that I've… that we've… we've organized the IHC, it's really, it's opened my eyes to a lot of different, the wide spectrum of stakeholders involved in this, or that have a need. There are many different levels represented.

[28:06] All the way from, Folks with intellectual developmental disabilities, such as autism, for instance, but not exclusively autism, who might be able to live independently in affordable housing if they had some supports. And those don't necessarily need to be very intensive supports, they can be more what we sometimes call concierge-type or drop-in types of supports. Which are sort of the more formal supports that might be in a property provided by a service provider or another organization, but also natural supports as well. Your neighbors, right? Your, you know, the people that you live with. Those are the supports that might, that might be needed. All the way up to, full-time support, right? 24-hour support. There's also a high-need population, that is in need of.

[29:04] housing as well, and so that's a… that's a different… so the spectrum is very broad along there. So, in light of that, I'm just going to talk briefly about one of the kind of very overlapping things that we see in neuro-inclusive housing, particularly among those that are of higher… those individuals that are of higher needs, and who avail themselves, or are able to get Medicaid-provided home and community-based services waivers. There are two types of waivers, basically, that we see. There's actually three, but for the purposes of keeping things moving, I'm just gonna speak… I'm just gonna identify, basically, two waivers that we see. The developmental disability, or the DD waiver, that provides higher needs, 24-hour care, and then supportive living services. or the SLS waiver that provides more limited supports for folks who are able to live more independently. These waivers are managed through the Colorado Department of Healthcare Policy and Financing, more commonly known as HCPUF. Now.

[30:10] these are services that tenants in a building, or in a home, or wherever they live, can avail themselves of separately from a property. They can choose a service provider, like, A&I Avenues or Imagine, I think it was once called, for instance. And so, that is a service… that is a service provision that is provided to an individual in neuroinclusive housing, but is different from other, types of services that might be provided at the, at the property level. I'm just trying to give you a sense of, sort of, the population here. One population that… we are, are, dealing, or working with now, through some, projects that we have going on at the IHC, are aging caregivers. So, those,

[31:10] Home situations where adults are living with… adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities are living with Caregivers who were over the age of 60. whether they be parents, or other family members, or other types of caregivers, those folks are aging. And so, it begs the question of what happens to those individuals with IDT once those caregivers are no longer with us, or at least no longer to be able to provide services. So, it is, shaping up to be sort of a cliff situation. not to be dire, but it's something that we are very focused on. So, you know, I don't want to spend a lot of time, because it's not really in our wheelhouse, to talk about, sort of, the Medicaid-provided,

[32:00] or service provided, for individuals. The… that, the… sort of the trade group that ha- that works with service providers to talk about things like Medicaid, services and the cost of Medicaid services, and the need for more service providers is handled through Alliance of Colorado, but they are certainly very much stakeholders in the issue of neuro-inclusive housing. Next slide, please. So just to give you some brief numbers here, these are a little bit dated, and they're… so I would guess, if anything, they are sort of higher right now. But there are at least 127,000 people in Colorado that have requested services in Colorado for IDD. 73% of which live with live with caregivers, right? Or live at home, I guess I should say. And 20… at least 20,000 of those, live with caregivers over the age of 60. And so, as you can see, just in Colorado, it is, there is certainly, a need just based on the numbers.

[33:16] Next slide. So our priority areas for 2026, and I hope this just gives you sort of a flavor of kind of the things that we see out there when we're talking about neuro-inclusive housing in the housing space in Colorado. Certainly, there is a shortage of cognitive accessible, or neuro-inclusive affordable housing because there's an overall lack of affordable housing. There is, you know, for many years now, the need for affordable housing in Colorado has not been met. More and more folks are becoming housing insecure as they pay more and more above what is affordable of their incomes to housing. As I mentioned, aging parents and caregivers who have individuals living at home, and what is a proper setting and what is a desirable setting for them after the caregivers are no longer

[34:16] we're able to provide care is certainly something we are looking at. as part of our coalition, we have a lot of folks who are very interested in, as I said, that end of the need spectrum that deals with higher needs individuals. Folks that need, perhaps, 24-7 care, folks who aren't necessarily able to live independently. But could potentially have a degree of independence if they had, were able to have a spot with caregivers with them. So that is something that we're looking at. And then just sort of, you know, more, You know, more on the tactical side of things, looking at the resources that are out there,

[35:07] in, you know, government-related services that are out there. One thing that we've been dealing with, for the past couple of years is the availability of housing vouchers, housing choice vouchers, be it, through local housing authorities or through the state, in particular through their 811… housing 811 program. how can those be better… how can those better serve the IDD population? Next slide. So, you know, what's at stake here, right? Well, a lot. If we're not serving this population, then the, potential… circumstances are, displacement, and possibly even homelessness. But… in the very… at the very least, it is not living in an optimal situation and in a setting that is providing the opportunity for folks to thrive, which is what we actually really want. And if you look at the bottom there, those are just kind of examples of, well, you know, what are the costs? Because there's, you know, if folks are displaced into an institution, God.

[36:19] bit, or even homeless, which would be even worse, then there's a cost to society for that. There's a cost to the community, which is more, I think, than providing just decent, supported, affordable housing. Next slide. So, I think some other panelists are going to talk a little bit about this, but just to underscore that when we're talking about housing, we're talking about all kinds of housing. We're not just necessarily talking about multifamily housing. There is a desire out there for, for providing, living situations and group homes and host homes, and even single-family homes. So, the, the desire for what type of housing to live in amongst the population is as broad as it is for neurotypicals, as one might imagine. So, but, you know, what we really kind of need to concentrate here on is, how those services are being provided.

[37:19] If a person is in a host home, for instance, or an institution, then they are in a provider-controlled situation. Which, might be a good situation for some folks, and some folks are, desirous of that type of situation. However, many are also, in favor of control… consumer control situations, where the individual within the housing themselves, they're choosing who they want to be their service provider, through their Medicaid waivers. And so that's something that we try to focus on. Next slide. So, some of the needs that we see amongst the population, the IDD population, for neuro-inclusive housing are kind of spelled out here, and I won't read them all to you, but I'll just say that, you know, on one end of the spectrum, it's socialization, right? The opportunity to live in a community where one is valued, no matter

[38:23] what their circumstances, and are part of the community, rather than being isolated. And so that's something that, we see as very valuable to neuro-inclusive housing. Certainly there's room for, accessible design. And, you know, our experience is that, including accessible design into, housing, affordable housing, if it were affordable housing, multifamily housing, for instance, is beneficial for all the tenants, you know, regardless of, of neurotype. And so, but for, you know, it might be

[39:01] some of the amenities and design features might be, nice-to-haves for the neurotypical population. They can be critical for the neurodiverse population. So, We… there's a lot of work out there being done by some organizations that are augmenting design standards to include cognitive accessibility, along with other disability, forward designs as well. Next slide. So this is just a little bit… I'll run right through this. This is just a little bit about the Inclusive Housing Coalition, if you're interested. But the… but the… the, the… message I want to impart here is that, there is an organization out there. We are a collection of housers and developers, and service providers, and most importantly, parents and self-advocates. And so, we're, we are growing, you know, we try to grow so that we are bringing in a, a bigger coalition all the time so that we can be a collective

[40:10] voice for this population. There are a lot of, kind of, things that are going on throughout the state. They can be fairly siloed, and so, you know, it's… oftentimes we get groups together, and they, and they're like, well, you know, we didn't know you guys were doing this. We're doing this, and let's get together and let's talk about how we can potentially do this together. Shout out to Kristen and Lauren, who have been great, kind of, Advocates for us and participants in the Inclusive Azure Coalition. Next slide. this is just… here's our website. That's probably the only… the biggest takeaway from this particular slide. We're at IACColorado.org, or you have my contact information. You can call me, or email me whenever you want. I'd be happy to answer any questions about our organization, or, how you might be able to participate. And so, to that,

[41:02] to that notion, I will… to the next slide, I think I am… Well, first, you know, I would invite you to go onto our website and take a look at these publications, along with some of the other resources we have. I think that these three publications are good primers on what is going on in Colorado vis-a-vis neuro-inclusive housing, so I would invite you to go on there and find those and take a read. None of them are… well, some of them are a little bit extensive. But they are all, You know, very, well done and accessible for, anybody that has any level of conversions with neuro-inclusive housing. Next slide. As what I was going to say before is, so what are the opportunities with the Inclusive Housing Coalition to sort of, move the needle or help with neuro-inclusive housing in the state of Colorado? We have three committees that, we sponsor that, I sort of lead. One is our existing IDD housing and government-related

[42:10] Issues Committee. I won't read all this, but this is the committee where we, look at some of the IDD housing that is already out there that is not performing, sort of, up to speed. A lot of those happen to be group homes that are financed through HUD financing. And what are some of the, you know, what are some of the pilot programs that are going on right now to reutilize and make best use of some of those group homes that no longer necessarily function as group homes, financially? We also, you know, all of the… there's some legislation out there right now, in the… now that the state legislator has opened its session, that are relevant to, or could be relevant to IDD housing, as they are relevant to all affordable housing. So, we look into those. Also, we, you know, examine areas where we can better

[43:09] work with… where the community can better work with, state agencies, like the Division of Housing, or the, or HCPUF. Next slide. Another, committee that we have is our elderly alignment. design and supports. Early on, we recognized that there are, that elderly affordable housing in this population, they, sometimes have some of the same needs in terms of cognitive accessibility, and so what can we learn from, senior housing that would help us with IDD housing? What are some of the opportunities there? And then, as I said, a big part of it is our project working on, that issue of 8 Excuse me, aging caregivers. Next slide. We also have our IDD Risk Factors and Empowering Committee. This committee is really At the moment,

[44:06] focused on a creation of a neurodiverse friendly community certification program. The idea here is this. We, you know, we focus a lot on IDD housing and the bricks and mortar itself, so the building itself, whether it be a community or whether or not it be a building, this is a program that we're trying to get going that will That will assist in, developing knowledge and training for those, businesses and retail establishments and municipal offices that are outside of the bricks and mortar outside of the door of these neuro-inclusive housing, and how can we train them to be more aware of, of neurodiversity and,

[45:01] And so we're working on a certification program to be able to designate particular businesses or communities, even, as neurodiverse friendly. Next slide. This is, just a plug for an upcoming event. If you're interested, it's a webinar that we're having on, February 25th, it, the… this… webinar features an organization out of, out of Washington, Washington State, called Partners for Housing. They are an organization that does a lot of work with families to find, appropriate, roommate situations for folks with intellectual and developmental disabilities. And right now, they are working with the Colorado Disability Opportunity Office under a grant to provide free services to up to 80 families in Colorado, through

[46:03] June 30th, I think it is. So, if you have any interest in that, please… it's free. Please sign up, on our website, or pass along the information to somebody that might be interested. And I think the next slide is… I just… thank you, and thank you for the time, thank you for having me here today, and I look forward to the discussion, and I will pass it along. Thanks, Tim. Thanks. Shall we do questions now? Are there any questions we should… Chat about now. Fresh in your mind? I have a question, but I don't want to take over anyone else's. Tim, you mentioned the certification program. Yeah. Is that… Would that be a way to, like, identify or create a, like, portfolio of

[47:01] homes that are accessible and a realistic option for… for… as, like, a… as, like, a designated neurodiverse unit, or is it more of, like, the community services that are involved? Like, is it a way to build the stock without actually building the stock? Right, it is the latter. It really is about, You know, and we… you know, we're building on what some other communities throughout the country, and in Ireland in particular, have done. What it is, is it's… and this, it's interesting because this particular idea was brought to us by a member of our coalition that is a self-advocate. And, You know, the thinking was this. The neuro-inclusive housing is terrific in the supports that go along with it, but what happens when folks go out into the community, and they go to different businesses, and… or they have to go to… or they go to their place of employment, and or they're looking for a place of employment, or they're going to a recreation center, or a,

[48:16] You know, a municipal office or something. How… how are they being… Treated in those situations, and how can we help make those, businesses and organizations and institutions more or better equipped to work and live with the neuro-inclusive population. They, you know, as it was put to me, there's a, you know, just in terms of business retail, there's a, there's a, there's a customer base there that's not being served, as efficiently as it could be, just because, folks might with IDD, for sensory reasons, or for other… or for other, anxiety reasons, might steer away from,

[49:08] visiting a particular establishment. How can we make, you know, how can we make dealing with those establishments more friendly? That's really the basis of it. Excellent. Alright. That's all for now. Kristen, we'll… You're up next. I'll get your slides ready here. Thank you. So, good evening. This is fun. I… I… I don't know if you all know, but I used to work in Boulder, so it's kind of fun to see all these familiar faces. I'm… I… Brian, I'm going to be calling on you in a second, and you're gonna have to talk through some of these photos with me that I'm sharing. Actually, quick side note, Brian, did you bring a slide deck, or are we gonna both work off of mine? I did, I've got a slide deck as well. Oh, okay, so we might have some duplication a little bit, but… but good evening, and thank you for having me. I… I am Kristen Heiser, I'm the Executive Director of the Broomfield Housing Alliance. We are actually the housing authority for the City and County of Broomfield.

[50:12] We got started 4 years ago, and the Grove at Cottonwood is our first development that we're pursuing. And what we're building is a neuro-inclusive, independent living community designed to support self-determination, meaningful participation, and community involvement. And you're… you heard me deferring to Brian, because Brian's, he and his, colleagues are the architect that designed this, and I'll talk a little bit about that in a second, but just, we have a great team that's helping us do this. Next slide, please. So I'm going to start with just kind of the, kind of the… how this prod… how this development came together. So, 4 years ago, we had the opportunity to buy a piece of land in Broomfield. And it's an infill site, and it's right next door to Bell Swan Early Children's Center, which is a neurodiverse, children's school, early children's education center.

[51:08] And, we had the opportunity to buy this land, so that was one of the first things I did when I got the job. And I was soon approached by a group of parents who invited me to coffee, and I didn't really know what I was sitting down to hear about, but I knew that they wanted to talk about housing. And who this group of parents were, there was 5 mothers who are all in their 60s and 70s with adult children. was intellectual and developmental disease… intellectual and developmental disabilities, I'm so sorry. And they shared their stories, and really their fears of where their children were going to live when they could no longer take care of them. And it just… it was a very moving experience to hear from each of them about what their needs were, and they had really nowhere to turn. And so, the HA, with this opportunity, decided, let's… let's figure this out.

[52:01] Actually, I used to work for Kurt using his approach, like, let's figure it out, we're gonna make this happen. So we actually got the same technical assistance grant from CHAFA, And that provided us the opportunity to get a market study, as well as a feasibility study to show that there was a need for this in the community, and that we could feasibly pull this off. So, that's actually when I first really, kind of, I knew Tim, but when we, started to really work closely together on this topic, because he was still at CHAFA, and he was about to launch this… the effort that he's been leading, so it was just kind of kismet that we met at that time. So we had the land, we knew what we needed to pull together for the community, and then I… we needed an architect to help us figure this out. And we knew that the primary center of what we wanted to create was providing a sense of community, because we knew this was going to be a community for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. And we wanted to make sure that they felt safe and comfortable in community with each other. And because I had worked with CADIS previously in Boulder, and knew of their commitment to community building and co-housing.

[53:12] they were the top of the list. And so, Brian's team and BHA collaborated, and we started to design the Grove at Cottonwood. And then we went through the entitlement process, and we got it financed, and I'll talk about that in a little bit more detail in a second. We're currently under construction, and we're going to open our doors on September 5th. And I'll get into more details about, kind of what the Grove is actually going to be, but what I really want to highlight on this slide is the Grove is all about community, and the community telling us what they need and what they're looking forward to How they… how they want to live. what they want their community to look like, and how they want to participate in that. So every step of the way, we have had parents and service providers but really, most profoundly, self-advocates that have helped us all along the way. So in that first picture, those are, I'm looking at them, Desiree Kamika Galloway, who's an incredible expert

[54:15] IDD housing that day, and we facilitated a community conversation with parents and self-advocates and service providers to say, what should we create here? And then this, picture below is us with Brian's team, led us through… a incredible exercise, again, with some crew, like, how should this site function? And then we actually went to a couple of our service provider agencies and had focus sessions. Senior Briefly. future residents. And as you can see on that… Oh, you are? Am I? Oh, gosh. Not quite sure. Well, why don't I take my video off?

[55:01] Perfect. Does that work better? Let's give this a try. Alright, so anyways, what you see here is we… Friends of Broomfield, they conducted a focus session, and, you know, some of them are nonverbal. And so what they decided to do was the self-advocates created signs that had smiley faces and sad faces, so on the… green… happy, and the… and we would just ask some questions. Do you like lots of light? Do you want to have a roommate? Do you like living with pets? you know, do you like to cook for yourself? And they would either verbally share their wants and desires, or they would hold up their sign, and that's how we really started to engage and figure out what we wanted to create for this community. Then you see, we actually, we broke ground, This past year, and the picture there is… actually, those… the people in those pictures are all of our investors, CHAFA and…

[56:01] A variety of other folks. But really, there's other pictures that we have that it's all self-advocates and families that were there with us that day. And the woman that you see that I'm standing next to at the groundbreaking, that is a woman named Gabby. She's our A number one self-advocate. She has been on this journey with us the entire time. She went to every single, planning board, city council meeting, the… maybe a little bit warmer received by our community. It is affordable housing. So it was… it was a rough… it was a rough, entitlement process, and our community came out, I guess. The neighbors around it. Not because of this portable housing. So, but really, we had self-advocates with us all along the way that helped get this through. And then you see the young sister and… that are in the picture.

[57:02] with her arm around him. His mother was one that contacted us and said, my son, when he was little, would say, am I going to have to take care of my sister? And that sparked that family to say, we gotta figure out something else. And here he got to celebrate, as much as he loves his sister, that, you know, that he really wanted this opportunity for her to have an independent living situation, and that he was able to create the life that he wanted to. Another piece that we've done, you'll see in the picture up in the corner, is that we've parents help us in the design, so the fabrics and furnishings, and we have… there's self-advocates there as well, and so we went to downtown Denver, and they're helping us make all those types of decisions. And then just the cool picture of our team. For real. Next slide, please. But the whole point of this was just that… oops, are you able to move to the next slide? Oh, it's super slow. I don't know what that's about. That was not intentional. But what… what all those community voices and self-advocates

[58:10] ended up creating is we are designing a community that prioritizes the needs of individuals with IDD, but what we also heard is that really the best model is neurodiversity and neuro-inclusivity. So while we are designing for the needs for IDD, we are seeing this as being a diverse community, so it is being designed and will be available to seniors and small families, and so we'll offer 40 units of affordable housing that are… they are all accessible, rental homes. We'll also have a community house. We're offering one and two bedrooms, and that was very thoughtfully done, too, because a lot of individuals want to live alone, but there could be situations where there's a roommate situation, where two individuals with IDD, who are friends from day programs, or… However, they know each other, might want to be roommates. There's also families that might choose to have a sibling potentially live with and be a caregiver to their sibling. There's also opportunities, because of the two bedrooms, that somebody could actually have a hired caregiver that lives with them.

[59:17] The property's gonna serve, income… Between 30% and 60% AMI. One of the ways that we are… the affordability and the costs involved is we secured 10 8-11 housing vouchers. These are project-based rental assistance, and they're specific for persons with disabilities. And so those 10 vouchers will help bring down the cost so we can really meet those deepest affordability needs. And the… one of the things that's been, been a process that we've gone through, but we feel like is a real win. Often these vouchers are referred to through the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative, MDHI. We've been able to work with the state to get it so our referral agencies are going to be our local service providers who work with this population. And so instead of having MDHI be our main referral agency, it's actually going to be Friends of Broomfield, which is a homegrown

[60:12] agency that serves adults with IDD is Falls Imagine, so that's how we… community members that we've been working with and have the most, just are able to serve the population of our neighbors. The other piece that is really important to us with this, it's a consumer-driven service model, and so… You might be familiar with a permanently supportive site, and is attached, you know, so you might have, I'm trying to think of an example from my Boulder days, like, up at Lee Hill, you have, at least when I was there, you had, the, the… services while BHP owned the whole thing here is BHA will own the property, but we're actually using a variety of service providers. So we're entering into MOUs with Friends of Broomfield, Imagine, a group of called Blue Spruce.

[61:08] That they will provide services. And the reason that we're doing this is because we really want to provide choice to our future residents, that they can choose How they live, where they live, who they get their services from, and it's not just, required that they use one current… one specific service provider. Boy, I'm talking really fast. Next slide, please. So, just really quick, the lay of the land of who's doing this with us. So, we will co-own and co-develop it, and we're working with Blue Line Development. They're a great development firm out of, Montana. And then we have Catus… Brian and his amazing team are the architects. We're working with Deneuve Construction, you're probably familiar with them, they've done some great work up in Broomfield. But really, the heart of all this work are the parents, the service providers, and our future residents that have been along on this ride with us the entire time. The way that we're financing it, just to get into those weeds, we did receive 9% low-income housing tax credits, we also received state credits.

[62:14] We received a great grant, of home funds from the Boulder-Broomfield Home Consortium. We did receive… funding from the Division of Housing and Developer Equity. Next slide, please. And here's just these amazing pictures, and this is Brian's team at work. Christmas. and Jesus, but what this is, is we intentionally designed it so, it provides choice. So, for an individual who wants to live it a little bit more independently, these are going to be, units that are, That would be more conducive to that. So these are our, there's 5 units in this property. Next slide, please. I'm gonna roll through these, and then, Brian, maybe you can…

[63:08] go into a little bit more detail about the design decisions, or the design decisions you bring to this type of development. Gosh, that is, like, the slowest… Yeah, the connection's not great. Okay, is that what's going on? Alright, and so then here's another option. We are in an established single-family neighborhood. We didn't want to go in with just a huge box of an apartment building. Oh, and then here's probably… but there is an option that kind of looks more like an apartment building. And what you see in the middle there, that's our common house. Common House is going to offer, we're going to have on-site property management. We have a… we're hiring a resident services concierge that's going to take care of, kind of, just, like, those daily needs of our residents, as well as, Social values and social…

[64:00] connections. It also has a warming kitchen and variety rooms where we can… where a lot of that, socializing, can occur. And then that's the apartment option for people with a little bit higher needs, would be a, we're envisioning being more… And jump to the last slide. I'm happy to answer any questions, because there's just a lot you can talk about on this stuff. It's just the variety of options that are available to pull off this kind of housing. Oh yeah, that's our site plan. So you can see, and then finally go to the last slide. I just want to… since you guys are talking about housing, and how to do these types of developments. So, yes, a developer, a housing authority could develop, get the land, develop, own, manage, and work with service providers. That is one option. Other ways to facilitate this type of housing is facing in a partnership, and we're kind of a silent partner, a special limited partner. We are asking that partner to prioritize this population, so we have gone, Ulysses Development is building 152 units.

[65:10] We are, as SLP, we, secured the 811 vouchers that they needed, that they could set aside 8 units specifically for this population. ways that a housing authority, if they're going to participate as a SLP, can strongly encourage that this population be designed for, and, those options are made available. And then also, just at the end, just offering, making sure that all… any… built our offices that serve this population, because like Tim was saying, a lot of the needs that they have are very similar to, well, all the needs we have. We all have, you know, whether it is trauma-informed design, or its, accessibility needs, or it's, sensory considerations. There's just a variety of things that we would all benefit from. So to offer the amenities so any property can be

[66:15] Open and available, because it was his choice. So doing a LIHTC deal like we've done, that is one option. But like Tim said, the wants and desires of this population are just as varied as you can imagine. Some want a single family, some want to live in a market rate apartment, some want to… some want to live at their family home, or with their siblings, and so… However we approach this, we have to remember that there just needs to be a variety of choice and options so they can make the self-determined choices as to how they want to live and be in community. So I will stop talking at that point, and I'll answer any questions. I have a couple questions for you. Unfortunately, you cut out… you started to say something about during the entitlement process, there was some…

[67:08] push back from… I didn't quite… Yeah, so, long story short, NIMBYism is alive and well everywhere. including Broomfield, and Broomfield's new to affordable housing. You all in Boulder have been doing this for decades, and Broomfield's pretty new to this conversation. And this was the… one of the first, developments… this was the first development that their new house… So there was just a lot in the heart of a single-family neighborhood. I'm gonna take myself off camera so I'm not breaking up if maybe I am. But, so it was just your typical nibbyism, but what I think was really… interesting, as I think that people would be kinder and gentler, and they weren't, so just be prepared for that, is what.

[68:04] Love the camera. I do have a couple slides on that, so I can elaborate a little bit. So, a couple of other questions I had. You mentioned that this particular project is inclusive to all. I'm just curious, out of those units, did BHA decide to kind of, like. What would you say? Dedicate, earmark a certain number of… Folks with… Oh, let me think… So we have the 10 vouchers that will be specifically used for individuals with disabilities. Those vouchers have to be used by that population. The balance of the units, the 30 units, our goal is to have as many people with IDD living at… Because the need's so great, and the one is so great to be there. However, we… because of fair housing and a variety of other things, we… we can't limit the property to IDD. And so that's why it is… and it's also what we have heard from

[69:10] only experts, like Desiree, who do they want to live with? They want to live with a variety of people. They don't… what they would say is, I don't want to live with people just like myself. I want to live with, like, all sorts of people. They go to work… And they work with all sorts of people, and that too. So, that's what we heard loud and clear. So, for regulatory reasons, we can't set aside all 40 units for this population, but also, we just don't think it's the best In terms of community, and creating community and relationships, and also being very cognizant that we do not want to perpetuate any sort of isolation or concentration, in our community. I have one lot more questions, sorry. As far as… the financing, that was quite a healthy list, and I'm just curious, was that… did you find that you had more…

[70:09] Sources when doing this project, because it wasn't… It wasn't just looking at LIHTC funding and things associated with affordable housing, but were you able to access more options. No. It's a pretty standard machine. Thanks for understanding what I was trying to ask. Yeah, so no, I mean, I would say that we are going after grant funds. One of the things, because we are very committed to providing resident services, that is not something that you can write into your LIHTC deal. You get a… We are doing… I mean, BHA ourselves are putting in our own operating funds to pay for staffing positions and programming to provide the resident services, as well as, we are doing a lot of grant writing, in terms of that, so…

[71:02] I… as of right now, I wouldn't say that there's special pots of money that are particularly serving this population. I wish there were, but there's not, and so we're kind of in the same boat as every other deal, scrambling for those dollars. I will also add, too, one of the things we just looked at is the cost to build for this population is no different from the cost of building any other LIHTC deal. It's just… the costs are not higher, for designing for this, when it comes to… So, Kristen, as the city is considering embarking on a neuro-inclusive community, what would you say your biggest challenges were, getting to where you're at today under construction? Honestly, I think the key for us, because of this population, because of what we want to accomplish, it's finding the right

[72:04] architectural design partner who's going to get this, and believe in it, and work alongside us with our community to pull this off. So kudos to Brian, who… his team just gets it, so I would say that. As well as, service providers, because at the end of the day, we don't want to just have apartment apartments that people are going to, and, isolating it at the end of the day. We really are very intentional about creating a sense of community, and we have really solid service partners who are gonna… who are committed to helping us do that. I will share really quick, we're leaning into and learning how we're gonna do that. We are spending a lot of time talking to other communities across the country. As to how they're doing this, and every… every community is different. Every… the staffing models, the programming, every single one is unique, and what they all say is a really And so, we're, like, we're coming up with a best-case scenario, but we know after day one, it's gonna be thrown out the door, and we're gonna have to come up with something else, because we're going to hear from our residents as to what they want from their community, and that's what we're going to have to respond to.

[73:21] Any other questions? I'll just, kristen, thank you for the presentation, and I also have to thank Amanda on your team. talked with Amanda several times, and she's always open to share and, like, let me throw ideas at her, and her kindly telling me that I'm on the wrong track, so I've really appreciated her help in this process, so thank you. Thanks. She's the smart one of the two of us, so I'll let her know that you called her out. Thank you. Great. Okay. I just want to make a quick comment. I mean, Kristen, you said so many wonderful, nice things about our team, I really appreciate that. But I just want to point out that without somebody hiring us to do the work, nothing can happen. So, you know.

[74:06] without Kristen and Amanda making this happen, or are you guys creating policy that allows this to happen, or gives fuel the incentive to do work like this? I'm just sitting in a room by myself somewhere, making those sketches. Awesome. So now, Andy, we'll turn it to you. Well, thank you so much for inviting me to this conversation, or I should say, also, my dear wife is also. There's a lot of what I may be saying here that is somewhat duplicative of what others have said, but I'm saying it from the personal position. If you've heard talk about, you know, families with children with IDD, and the parents are over 60. Well. Check, check. We're part of that population, but I guess also, before sharing you with the specifics of our journey through a variety of housing options for our daughter, Kendra.

[75:08] I'd like to preface that with a disclaimer, and that is that while there may be many similarities in our story with other families in Boulder. Our family is fortunate to have the financial resources that provide a degree of flexibility that's unattainable to most people. And so, even within that, you know, we've had our struggles. And… but for so many, the struggles are so much higher. And so that's part of what I'd like to communicate. And I'm not a very good public speaker, so I'm going to be reading this to you, I'm sorry. So, what is our story? Our daughter Kendra is 34. She was born with a chromosomal disorder that places her squarely in the population of individuals with IDD. Like all parents, our goal as she was exiting the public school system here in Boulder was to find purpose, community, and a safe and secure place for her to live.

[76:07] focusing on these issues of community and affordable place to live. Boulder does actually reasonably well on the first thing, creating community, but is severely challenged on the ladder of affordable places. It's… we all know that. When we moved here in 2008 from Northern California, we were impressed by the services and recreational and social programs available to Boulder residents with IDD. So much so that despite an original plan that we were just going to be here for 2 years, here it is 17 years later, and we're… we're here. And, But as to the living options, though, it's tough enough for young professionals to find affordable housing in Boulder. And for individuals that find employment difficult to secure, and who may be surviving on anywhere between 10% and 25% of the county's area median income, I think Kristen was talking about their target for the non-IDD population is 30 to 60%.

[77:09] But if you're surviving on SSI, which is a significant portion of this population, that's $900 a month. And then if you earn a little bit more than that, well, you can get… but every dollar you earn, you lose a half a dollar. So it's, you know, there's not a lot of funding if… for families that are not… don't have other resources. you know, so if you, you know, if you're talking about in Boulder, if you're paying less than $1,000 a month, that's unattainable, really. So, and I think, you know, some of the statistics that, I guess I won't repeat those, because you already heard those, but, you know, they're… there's lots of people statewide and lots in our community that are facing the situation. Our daughter doesn't actually live with us, she lives semi-independently, but, you know, we are thinking about what happens when we're not here.

[78:08] you know, we all, you know, think about, well, we're gonna have an empty nest. Well, when you're a parent with an adult child with IDD, you never have an empty nest. It's always part of your reality. So, in our family's case, we were fortunate in that Kendra's grandparents established what's called a special needs trust, with sufficient funding to purchase a townhouse for Kendra, where she lived from 2011 to 2021. And during this period, she lived with a combination of neurotypical and peer roommates, but mostly with live-in caregivers. And I think one thing another that hasn't been talked about here is in the… that 10-year period, I think we went through Probably about 14 different live-in caregivers that we had to hire, so stability of service providers is really tough.

[79:11] And while satisfying, a need for a safe and secure housing, she often felt isolated and relied primarily on paid caregivers to provide community connections. So it's like, you know, it's just that much difficult. And you've heard a lot about creating a sense of community in the housing. That's really important, because for some, it's hard to create that. So, in 2019, as part of the Ramble Collective, which is a nonprofit my wife and I founded to support the employment goals of this population, we began a relationship with Boulder Housing Partners that resulted in the Blue Bell Building as part of 30 Pearl, the low-income housing project in the Boulder Junction District. The goal was there was to create affordable housing for

[80:02] with individuals with IDD, and the opportunity to create a sense of community amongst the residents. And together with the City of Boulder and Boulder Housing Partners, that project, I think there's a total of 120 total units, and 20 of those were designated with project-based vouchers for the IDD population as permanently affordable, which is a wonderful thing for the city to have done. And while the goal of affordability was met, for a variety of reasons, this project has faced challenges in terms of creating a sense of community and ensuring the safety and security of the residents. And while our daughter enjoyed her time living there, it wasn't an ideal match for her needs, and we start beginning to look for something as an alternative. And opportunity became available in 2023 when Kendra moved into a condo in the Wild Sage co-housing community in North Boulder, which Brian was the architect behind, which is sort of where we got to know you.

[81:04] And, the residents there, you know, I think most of you probably understand the concept of co-housing. The residents there have accepted her and included her in many of the community activities. However, due to Kendra's disability, it's challenging for her to initiate engagement in community activities, and is therefore dependent on others to facilitate these connections. We… and we've come to the conclusion that she would do much better in a similar cohousing community model, but with a significant portion of her neighbors sharing the lived experience of life with an IDD. And just that allows, sort of, more spontaneity, if you can create that community. And our vision now is to create something like that here in Boulder. We're partnering with Trailhead Community of Littleton, to duplicate their success locally here in Boulder. Trailhead, and

[82:01] Matt McMullen, who's a guest here tonight also, is on the board of Trailhead. It's a 83-unit apartment community that opened in the fall of 2024 with about 7,000 square feet of common area. through which all residents pass on their way to their individual units, and is a… is a pathway to create community, because it's not like you're going down the hall, and etc. And that 7,000 square foot space includes hangout space, a commercial kitchen and dining area, providing dinners 5 days a week, craft and game rooms, a gym, workout facilities, 24-7 concierge services, and so much more. In addition to individuals with IDD, there are seniors and moderate-income young professionals sharing life together. Our goal is to replicate the spirit of Trailhead's approach in Boulder, while using a co-housing-based intentional community model, and make it affordable to those who could benefit from what our project will offer.

[83:02] So that's kind of a personal statement of what it means in this community, or this population, and I welcome any questions. Wow, that was an amazing presentation. Wish you luck. Thank you. Do you have a site in mind for this cosmic community? Like, how is that… so it's still in development. Land is not easily accessible. Do you know, in Boulder County, how many there are with IDD individuals? I know at one time, there was an estimate, that 21,000 statewide estimate for those that are living with their family caregivers that are age 60 and above. At one time, that was estimated at about 1,200 in Boulder County. So you could fill with community. Pardon? You could fill a community. Yeah, the need is much more than what we can possibly do.

[84:01] But the goal is to have a mixed group. Yeah, and I think that's, you know, as, and, you know, I think Matt could answer some questions with the experience at Trailhead, that that has been critical, and I think Kristen was saying the same thing for what they're trying to create at, the Grove. is not to have, you know, something that is… and there are other across the country, there are communities that have been built that are 100% folks with IDD. And… but, you know… For us, one of the things when we were working with BHP before the 30 Pro project kind of came to fruition, there was another site where we were specifically looking at the idea of seniors and folks with IDD. And sort of the thinking that we've had with that is that, you know, there's a lot of… you know, seniors, you know. when we all get older, you know, what do we do with our lives? But, you know, you can… there's service opportunities for that population.

[85:03] And it gives a chance for the folks with IDE to connect with people that aren't just part of their community. It's over to you. My question for you is why you think you're not a good public speaker? Because I was really… Well, I read it. I don't memorize anything. I have to respond to what's on the pictures in front of me. It's pulling up here. Cool. It's not doing so well right now, so… It's a wet charger. It's the wet charger, yep, it's not, Order away. Probably wasn't a good idea. Do you need a charger?

[86:00] No, we need a new computer, just kidding. Alright, here we go. If you want to switch to a different computer? That's okay. We'll… we'll make it work here. I will… Pull this up. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Yeah, so my office is Cat as collaborate. You guys have heard about that from Kristen so far, and from Andy. So, I was also on the City Bowlers Planning Board for about 8 years, and I sat on HAB a bit during that at Landmarks Board, so I'm real familiar. I'm really curious about how the City and HAB can work to, influence good outcomes on this, type of housing, right? That seems to me, like, the real question here for HAB is, like, what do you guys do internally with staff, or what do you say to City Council, to make stuff like this happen? And I think before we get into this at all, really.

[87:15] the two biggest things right now, aside from, you know, working closely with staff to advance, especially that one Private property, and, you know, shake your pockets and see if there's other city under properties that could work, is to look at how to incorporate this thinking into the 10-year major update to the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan. Right? This is the time to seed that kind of stuff in there, so that later, everyone else can point to it and say, hey, look what we said back here, we should do that. And then that's also going to fall into the reworking, ideally, or completely rewriting, of Title IX, the land use code for the City of Boulder, which I'm a huge fan of. I would advocate all day long for that. And in that are lots of barriers. You heard the speaker in the beginning from the member of the public talk about, boarding houses and stuff like that. I think we've done the only boarding house in Boulder for 50 years, and it's because the cooperative housing ordinance was a mess.

[88:06] And when we wrote that, it was still a mess, and now it's gone, thankfully. But there's barriers to this stuff happening inside our land use code, right? So that's an important place where HAB could affect some change. So, next slide. And that's our office, it's full of nice, wonderful people. Maybe most importantly, including chair of HAB, Karin Hoskin. We're lucky to have her in there. So, okay, next one. We'll go through this pretty quickly. So this is the Grove of Cottonwood. Next slide. This… And I'll talk a little bit about what Kristen said in the beginning here, in terms of entitlement challenges. Because that's another place where city staff and HAB and City Council and Planning Board have a major role. There are fewer homes on the site than there could have been, based on the baseline zoning because of NIMBYism.

[89:02] So, by allowing neighbors to fight off density, development, impact, all the sort of euphemisms for having people live around you, we're not serving as many people as we could. And so I'm, like, I'm gonna allow myself to be a little bit more, like, critical of the process. Because I want you guys to, like, learn from that. I think that's the important part of this to share. So what we ended up with is, you know, two-story buildings, one and two-story buildings along the… you know, building A and B on the east side there, and a three-story elevator-served building, surrounding a courtyard on the left side. And the most important thing to us in designing projects like this is to be Oriented on how do we allow this project, even after we Are long gone to be a machine for creating community. how does the coming and going of people, have them bump into each other so they create, opportunities for casual social interaction? How do they get familiar with each other? You know, if you… I made this observation when I was on Planning Board, looking at the,

[90:04] Spark or Boulder Commons, one of those projects, and they were talking about building community. But the reality is, in a project like that, and you see this in other housing projects, the way you come and go is you go into a car, and you come into a parking garage, and you go up a straw that takes you to your floor, and you go to your unit. Where in that procession, do you bump into your neighbor? Like, it doesn't happen. So you have to, like, go out of your room and go knock on the neighbor's door and be like, hi, I'm Brian, your name is Andy? Should we have a beer or something? Like, what do we do? So I think that the way we build these neighborhoods is, while we're not really… and I talk about it as community-supported, right? Like, how does community interaction inform all of our design moves? The reality is that most of what we do, often what we do, is actually so focused on, economic efficiency, and this is not an economically inefficient project, I'm not saying that, but switching to a double-loaded corridor would save a couple bucks, but…

[91:01] it's also focused on privacy in a way that's isolating and alienating for everybody, regardless of whether you're neurodiverse or not, right? So, next slide. Spreading different types of units around the site is really important, so you have a diversity of options for you wherever you're at. Next slide. Having rich common amenities, like you mentioned it, Matt's project, which just, like, popped out of my head, because it's what happens for me. So, thank you. 7,000 square feet of common minis. This doesn't have that much, but it's a smaller project. So this is what was originally sort of put in the design with, input from the neighbors, or from the advocacy groups, parents, Kristen, other experts, Desiree, in the co-housing world, there's a huge amount of effort that goes into building a community before you design, before you construct the building. So that's one of the big pieces that Kristen and Amanda really supported throughout. Reaching out to tons of experts, reaching out to parents who are the best experts of anybody on this stuff.

[92:10] And asking them what they want, and then our goal is to try to do that thing. That's… that's how we, as designers, sidestep the conventional thinking that often limits city officials, policy makers, and commercial developers… professional development teams, right? But we're still subject to reality, so next slide. So this is the more value-engineered version of it that's a little bit smaller. Rooms got consolidated. So I think there's some things in here that if you ask, my work partner, Kristen, not Kristen Heiser, Kristen Mito, there's a few things in here that she's like, oh man, I really wish we could have gotten that, or I wish we could have gotten that. Other thing, and Kristen, I'm sure, has the same list. It's still a robust, Common House that is the first thing you see on the way home.

[93:01] And so things should come through when you go to your home, right? So it's like… the doorknob to the house. You have to go through that to get to anywhere else. And that's what activates those spaces. If you see a typical kind of double-loaded corridor apartment building with, like, a you know, common space up in the far corner, and you're gonna, like, leave floor one, and go up the elevator, and go down floor three, and around the corner, and go into the common room? Like, that's not very plausible, right? But if you come in, and you're like, oh, Kendra's there, I'm gonna say hi to Kendra, and then, like, you're talking to Kendra. Like, that is how community gets built. So, next slide. And, the units, floor plans, there's a lot to talk about in this, in terms of designing for, people with IDV, and some of it's in, like, basic accessibility measures, floor clearances for maneuverability, bathrooms that are big enough for a caretaker to help out. Having laundry in the unit is really important to people.

[94:03] The, one of the communities that I will show a little bit later is, the person who really ran that process. said that having a loop inside the unit is really important for people who pace. She says, like, our guys pace all the time, so that helps them out a lot. So… but the great thing about these units, and the units that we've been working on in other projects. is you don't have to… they don't feel weird. You know, it's not like, you know, if you aren't experiencing IDD, you've moved into some weird unit that doesn't work for you. It's actually fine. It's perfectly acceptable. So that means from a pro forma and a balancing your community perspective, you don't have to dedicate unit by unit. You know, the federal law will say, you know, Type B units are what you have, which means that they are adaptable and can become Type A units, and Type A units are fully accessible units, right? So that's your two options. But, within that, it doesn't have to feel weird, so… Can I ask one more question? Yeah. So it seems like many, if not all, of the units are exterior loaded, not corridor-loaded. Can you talk through that

[95:06] conversation? Yeah, so, that's a, I think, a really key thing. I mean, you'll see, like, sort of out of the front door, there's that gray box right at the bottom, that's the walkway system. And so, right outside of your unit, out of your place, you have a lot of openness, a lot of daylight, a lot of visibility into the commons, right? You can see, is something going on up there? And I want to be a part of it, so I'll go down and do it. That's the invitation that I think, you know, when you have a courtyard-oriented project, you can really make a lot out of. That little cafe table is a place where you could, like, without bumping into neighbors, or without, like, being invited to, you could just go sit out there with your plants, with your stuff, and… and hang out outside, overlooking the green. Everyone comes and goes along that exterior walkway system, right? And so people bump into each other along that, too, and you'll see in co-housing communities all the time, you'll walk by somebody's window, and they'll flag you down and be like, hey, come in and have a drink, like, I need to talk to you about that thing. So it happens, like, the life of co-housing projects is on the… in the walkways, in the outdoor spaces, community-oriented.

[96:06] comings and don'ts of it. So you feel like it's just increased visibility compared to… Absolutely. And, you know, you get two sides of daylight, which is also really wonderful. So I think there's a huge community generator to that. There's also a little bit of a shell game that goes along with some of the LIHTC floor area analysis. If it's exterior loaded walkways, then they're not part of your interior space, so they're not part of the basis of it, I guess. So, probably Kristen and you, Lauren, know way more about that than I do. I just tend to Talk about it a little bit. So we can tap through the next few slides here in just a few units, and I'll share this stuff with you guys, it's all on our website, so we can go for a few here. But we have, you know, one and two-bedroom units, two different options for them. You know, one of the things, like, with this particular unit that was really important is up on that, sort of, left-hand image and the top right of that one, you can see there's, like, sort of an ensuite setup, so there's, like.

[97:03] a bedroom and an ensuite bathroom, an ensuite closet. So that would be originally conceived of as a place where a caretaker could kind of, like, be in the unit with the person they're taking care of, but have their own little, like, space, right? I think that's one of the things that helps you not burn through your caretakers, is having, like, a sense of privacy and a sense of, like, okay, cool. I can, like, chill out in here, and I'm just gonna take a little break, and having a balcony off the back would also be a really huge benefit from that, which was once in the design, but is not in the design anymore. Because of value engineering realities, so… Yes, I'll just throw something in at the, the 30 Pro project? The… We only were given… we were only granted two… two bedrooms, and they had half baths for the caregivers, so it really was an issue. Yeah, and in terms of housing needs, I think, you know, what we're seeing on this and other projects, and I think there's a bunch of people who are working on this… working on this all around the country, right? And everyone's sharing ideas.

[98:02] There's these summits, there's conferences, there's people putting together white papers. CHAFA, IHC, all these great resources, so… but I think we're all learning together, and what we're hearing is you know, there could be some, you know, real cooperative-style, you know, almost like SRO-style housing. There could be one bedrooms. There's more desire for two bedrooms. Either for, like, two people who can live independently and be roommates, or for somebody who needs a caregiver. There's another, housing option, which we weren't able to fit into this, which is guest rooms, where people can come and stay, and from what you guys have said to me in the past, like, the ability for a parent to sort of move in for a week, get their kids settled, and then phase out would be really great, right? So that's the kind of thing that having those guest rooms would… would afford. Or if your kid's facing a bunch of challenges, you can come and be like, okay, cool, I'm gonna stay in this, you know, guest room for a week, hang out with them, make sure things are okay. That was a big crisis, but now it seems like we're through it, and we can… we can get out of their hair a little bit more, and give them the kind of autonomy, agency, and independence that they really crave, because

[99:06] You know, everyone's that. So these are just a few renderings, and I would say, like, you know, there's… we got beat up a little bit on the, architectural aesthetics as well. I think it's a good project, but there's a few things in there that are probably, like, responses to, volunteer board members offering their suggestions for architectural aesthetics, which I will say is not always my favorite thing to have to deal with. Yeah. Okay, so, next slide. That image is of a common house, so we've got, like, sort of, like, house-y feeling things on the east side, and then more of the apartment building feeling thing on the west side. But it's really… I've got that central courtyard facing out over the green. Next slide. Next slide.

[100:00] And there's that central courtyard. Next slide. I mean, one of the main things with the sort of central courtyard design is that you have a place you can be outside, immediately outside your unit, right? So if you're on the ground level, you got a little garden space. If you're on the upper level, you've got that little cafe table space, so you can just, like, automatically chill out right outside your place if you're sort of, like. I'm available for conversation. So, so this is another project I'll just talk about really quickly. Cedar Root. This is one that, you know, so, the Grove is… you know, Boulder Housing, or Broomfield Housing Alliance is the client, they're the developer, with Blue Line. Danube's building it, it's LIHTC funded, so it really goes through the entire set of constraints and benefits of that kind of a process, right? So, there's a lot of really good things about it. You have a developer who has got their heart in the right place, you've got people like Chris and Amanda who are saying, we want you to do the right thing for the people who we're trying to serve.

[101:00] not all of our developer clients would say a sentence like that. So this one is a little bit more on the Andy and Connie model. It's parents who are acquiring land and developing a project themselves. without… LIHTC money without federal subsidies, without state subsidies. They're just doing it. And so we've put together, this sort of, like, architectural character board. These are not images of actually what we'll do, this is just sort of, like, the vibe of the place that everyone's sort of coalescing around. On the site plan on the right, there's, the main road, 38th, is… 38th? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, 38th is, and this is in Wheat Ridge, sort of the high point to the site. And the whole site slopes down to the south, bottom of the page. All of the green area that's got nothing in it, is floodplain and agricultural land. We're partnering with the Denver Botanical Gardens to do, like, a demonstration garden, and, like, ongoing agricultural effort there. That sort of dark green line that follows the road through there is an old ditch.

[102:07] That's a barrier to development. And then we've developed it in four pockets, so right up against the road, right behind where you guys can see Kristen in the room, is, the, building which is going to be sort of a commercial educational building. And that is going to be where, the nonprofit that all these parents are involved with hosts their, sort of, nature engagement and educational programs. parking lot right behind that is also going to be the primary parking lot for all the residences. So we're working towards as much of a car-free community as possible. So all of these roads that you see south of there are going to be very infrequently used by cars. Right? So it's as safe as possible. And then there's sort of three precincts. There's, like, one on the kind of, like, right below that, the left corner, and the south. piece, right? So you kind of see that we've got townhomes and flats opening up around common greens. The lowest pocket that's in the sort of southernmost piece of the site is all single-family, but their code allows us to do attached

[103:10] well, ADUs, attached dwelling units, so we're creating a unit type that's got, like, a two-bedroom main floor. The garage kind of creates a barrier between that unit and the adjacent ADU, and the ADU is designed to be a caretaker unit. could be for that house, could be for somewhere else. So I feel like we've got some really cool things happening on this project, and we're in the early entitlement process right now, so I still have stars in my eyes. Yeah, next slide. So, some of the stuff we've learned in terms of design, I think I'll try to focus on stuff that is relevant to you guys. There is a lot of stuff. There's a ton about this online, and great resources I should include. I'd see on this list at the bottom, but, my office, put together, at the very bottom, there's a Designing for Adults with IDD

[104:01] blog post that we put together a little while back, maybe a few years ago, that meant… it was really meant for, like, kind of audiences like this, like, okay, you need to get up on this… get up to speed on this pretty quickly. Here's what we think that you need to know, and here's a bunch of resources. So… I mean, designing in my world, sort of designing for the neuro and diverse community is just like everybody else. You meet with them, you ask them what they want, and then you try to do that thing. But, it's really focused on, you know, people-centered, human-scaled, social connection-oriented design work. You know, sensory-friendly environments, wayfinding is really key, universal design and accessibility are really key, and I do really believe that the participatory process is a magical thing. After running the workshops for Wild Sage 20-something years ago, I remember seeing people walk around the neighborhood after it was built, showing their parents around, being like, I got to design this, can you believe it? And, like, you know, as an architect, I know they made 1-3% of the decisions that were available on the site, but the level of emotional buy-in and sense of belonging and sense of, like, self-determination

[105:09] That's worth gold. So, yeah, next slide. So there's a bunch of, like, landscape site planning pieces, you know, including, you know, being clear about wayfinding, how you get around the site, the fact that when you get around the site, it creates community or not, sensory gardens, meditation paths, play activities for adults or kids. Next slide. Parking and transportation are a big key. home, car ownership and driving, of course, is a smaller percentage of the population, for folks with experience in ADD, so, access to transit and having a clear pick-up and drop-off situation is really key. Next. Accessibility course to kind of flipped through that stuff pretty quickly, but, you know, we all know those things, so next. safety is super clear. I think there's a really interesting, in most of the projects that we do, we're creating a sense of safety within them by having perceptual boundaries at the perimeters, right? So you don't really walk into the project without being like, oh, I've gone into something. You know. There are,

[106:18] groups of people, I would say, or styles of communities, where that level of perceptual barrier is appropriate. I think when you have people who are experiencing different varieties of IDD, gate-controlled, secure spaces are going to be important for certain people, too, right? So, that's also a reality. Next slide. So you guys heard about Bluebell and Pearl, this is one that, is operating here in BHP, develop that, and I just kind of include this slide so you guys will refer to it. Next. We will… this is a really interesting one. This was another, group of parents who got together to design, you know, what was the, like, least expensive, most practical way to house our kids.

[107:07] And it was initially little duplexes, and the idea was that parents would live in half, and the kids would live in the other half. And eventually, most of the parents just actually didn't they came clear clean that they weren't actually interested in moving in. They were like, we would like our kids to be in a place that's safe, but we actually have been carrying quite a load for a long time, and we don't want to carry it up forever. So, and I think that's a very, delicate and vulnerable and real thing to say, right? I've talked to a lot of parents who are like. you know, I mean, frankly, man, I didn't sign up for all this, like, this has been tough for me. So they've got a common house in the middle, it's got a lot of, like, great community space in there, including the sort of housing of the office for the non-profit. But now each one of those duplexes has got, like, a… you know, younger resident, they're pretty much all singles, they pretty much all have a little loft in the back, and the tour… the ones that I toured,

[108:03] each one has its own theme. It's kind of this interesting thing. I don't think it was ever really an intentional thing, but it's sort of, like, become part of the way people occupy their homes. So, like, one guy loves trains. So everything's about trains, like… And so I went in there and, like, had this great long conversation about trains. I was like, oh, have you ever ridden the Coomberson Toltec? And what about the, you know, the Durango Silverton? And he's like, oh my god! So we, like, got this huge, awesome, geeky train conversation going, and then… and his bed is, like, you know, made like a Pullman card. It's, like, really cool. I'm super stoked on that stuff. And the next person was, like, really into Matchbox car… matchbox cars. So we had, like, a billion of those, and the next person was into Disney, and so, like. I was like, each one of these homes has become this, like, expression of this person's reality and their affinities, and it was, like, so beautiful, I loved it. But they all open up under a green. Right outside every unit is a, like, stock tank. That's, like a stainless steel stock tank full of plants, so people can grow stuff if they want to. The other invitation that comes with that is, like, if you aren't up to doing it, then you get a buddy who helps you out with it. So there's, like, really interesting community building that happens there, too. Okay, next slide. Oh, excuse me, is that 35 dwelling units on 1.2-something acres? Yeah.

[109:10] Wow. Yeah, and the parking's off the side, just like a conventional housing project. This one is gated, because they felt like there was a real need for that, and she says that's been super important, because they do have a bunch of young people who wander. And this… this community, I'd say, is of the ones I've visited. has a very broad spectrum of, people's abilities. So there are people who are not physically mobile, not verbal, all the way people who are, like, getting on the bus and going to work and having a job, so… But it is, like, really all IDD. Except for the one mom who was a spearhead who moved in there. And she's like, okay, I'm doing it. And she's unbelievable. So, yeah, next slide. This is a straight-up co-housing project that has been designed to be, neuro-inclusive as well. And actually, they say really inclusive of everybody. They're like, why limit it to, like, neuro-inclusivity? It's like.

[110:03] LGBTQ inclusive. It's, like, inclusive, it's everybody should be here, right? They've had a hell of a road, and they're kicking it back up in, in Portland right now to try to get this thing built, so it's, it's had some challenges, but that's sort of the pandemic, and you know, I mean, for those of you who are not involved with getting these things built. It's not easy. Just to get something built at all requires not just a clever architect or a, you know, a hav that likes the idea, it needs a whole series of things to come together before any of this stuff happens. And so I really feel like, from a, you know, HAB and City Council perspective. I think two things, like, one is that perfect is the enemy of the good. You know, if we're looking for an ideal solution all the time, 1,200 people who are living in Boulder County are not going to have a place to live.

[111:00] And also, like, if you think, oh, it's got to be 30 units or 20 units, well, what if it's 12? What if it's 83? There's a way of doing these projects at every scale, and we need to be doing all of them. Next slide. I don't know if there's anything else. Yeah, cool, that's it. You guys asked me to speak for, like, 90 minutes, I think I didn't. That's really helpful. I think I've… You can close that step, you don't need to. Okay, you don't want to look at yourself? Yeah, I know. I hope in the mirror all the time. Kristen, did you want to add anything to that? Or Tim? That was great. Boop. I was just gonna say, it's… I am, like, policy wonk. I, like, live in policy world, and when I've attended these community engagement events to adhere the self-advocates talk about needs and desires in the space.

[112:02] I get super overwhelmed. I'm like, how do you… how do you do all this? And just, like, all the space. So seeing these… these examples really helps, like. shed light on the fact that it is possible, and not limited by my little wonky mind over here. It's great to see these examples. It's cool. Yeah, I think there's a genius to getting people together. On the community engagement side, that is… I think, you know, people don't really kind of understand it. When I go into a co-housing… I've done a bunch of co-housing projects, done a lot of affordable housing projects. If you didn't tell me anything else, I think I'd probably do an alright job, right? But when I go into these workshops, I come out with different ideas than I went in with. Right? Like, so even as an experienced design professional, right, if you do this right, you are changed by the process, and you learn through the process, and the outcomes are different, and they suit the people better than if I sat in my little room by myself, like, sketching away, right? So I think community engagement is… it's got to be an open-hearted thing.

[113:04] I will say we… back in the earlier days of the city starting to talk more seriously about community engagement, when I was on the planning board, we had a presentation I think it was planning staff at that time. You know, I know we're being recorded, I'm risking throwing people under the bus a little bit here, I guess. But, you know, I'll take my risks. And the people who put together this proposal, like, they were like, okay, what are you gonna do? So, okay, well, here's our agenda, here's how we're gonna do it, here's what we're gonna do. I was like, so you have a 55-minute presentation, you have 5 minutes left for Q&A. that's, like, the opposite proportion for community engagement, right? That is not community engagement. That is a presentation with a Q&A. You really, if you're going to do community engagement, it's 5 minutes of setup, and 55 minutes of talking to people, and really hearing from them, listening. So I think the city's come miles and miles from that perspective over the past decade and a half, so I think the progress is really tangible.

[114:01] In these… in the community engagement, do you ever feel like you're… there's, like, a risk, like, over-promising? That's something we were taught, and we were like, it's, like, in our heads from the city, is, like, meaningfully engagement, only… only do it if you're gonna… take these considerations? Do you ever feel like there's, like, an overpromise? Yes, there's… there's a risk of that. I think, I mean, partially… I mean, we're… we all want to please people, right? I mean, not all of us, but most of us want to please people. And so there's a human desire to do that, and to be like, oh yeah, we'll be whatever you want. I see that expressed in our co-ousing groups, because they're trying to sell units, they're self-developed, they're trying to appeal to people, so they're like, oh yeah, we'll be that, we'll be this, we'll be that. And what I tell them is that, you know, from their perspective, you need to be if you ask most people, and you say, like, what are your priorities, right? Most Americans, they'll give you a list of, like, 500 things, which means you don't have any priorities. If you have priorities, there's, like, one or two or three of them, right? That's what priorities mean, so you gotta understand what's in your box. And I think, you know, for a project like you guys, it's like, we're doing community-oriented.

[115:03] Neuroinclusive housing. That's what you get. You can't be like, we're also gonna have You know, a form-based code, and, you know, all that stuff just dilutes the ability to get anything done. And then I think the, other part of the over-promising piece is being really clear about what you are asking and when you're asking it, and what input you're seeking. I forget the matrix, Kristen's probably got it memorized too, but, like, the… when you're asking people for input, it's different when you're just informing them. And so it's really, really… when I'm facilitating these workshops, I'm very, very clear, you know, this is what I'm being told by the city. We're going to be following these rules. I don't… you like them or not, but we're going to be following. This is the deal. And here's some stuff that we're going to do, basically without asking you, because we know what we're doing. You've hired us because we're good at this stuff. Here's the stuff I really, really want to hear from you on, and we're going to do what you ask us to do on this stuff. So you have to ask them for input on something that you're willing to listen to them on. You know, if you're not going to do it.

[116:09] make it part of the informational part. Yeah, I think as a developer, just the… being as transparent as possible on what you can actually still change is… is really important. Because you can't be flexible on a lot of things, right? Due to cost, due to regulations, due to so many things. And I would say, like, with our cohousing groups. Since they're self-developed and paying for this along the way, and they're gonna be the buyers, they're gonna live there, we're putting them in the position of understanding the trade-offs. Like, so if the site could fit 42 units. But somebody's like, oh, I really think it should only be 24. I'm like, cool. So the site development costs, the land costs, and the cost of the common facilities for each unit just doubled, right? So instead of it being $50,000, it's $100,000. Do you really want your home to go up by $50,000 to

[117:02] Just have 24 instead of 42. No? Cool, we'll go back to 42. So I think, you know, you just have to give them some agency in that, and also give them enough of an education. Yeah, like, just put it in a way… in a way that, like, really is clear and true. And really, like, searching for truth here, right? Like, these are real, true things, and if you can put it to people, and allow them to make a decision, they do a great job. I have a question for the entire panel. Are we at that point yet? Are we still on Brian? I think we're not on me. Question for Brian. Okay. So one of the things that… as we're exploring in our circumstances, is the question of where land. And, you know, we've talked a lot about community and how that connects to the architecture that's within the boundaries of what you design. But… In Boulder, you know, okay, there, you know, there's talk about, you know, stuff way out there on the top end of 28th, or, you know, way out on Iris, or where… that's away from

[118:07] the center of the town. And I think, you know, especially you talk about the… this is a population that doesn't Generally, not a lot of drivers, and so walkability and access to community, service, you know, like whether it's a grocery store or a rec center or whatever. how… how is that problem solved in the development process? Yeah, I think… and that's… that's a really interesting question. I think there's a policy component to it, where if the City of Boulder, which has been in our comp plan for 20 years at least, and is happening more and more in the, I forget the name of the process that just finished about a year ago, but, like, the, Zoning for Affordability that got renamed something else. Vibrant Neighborhoods. Vibrant neighborhoods, thank you. That made huge, huge progress, the state laws made huge progress, but, like, really what needs to happen is, like, from a policy perspective,

[119:11] The city needs to be able to say, like, it's important to us to make this land that's available, that has transit available. to it, available to people who need it. This is a value we have, right? And you can line those things up. That's not hard to figure out. So that's the policy level. You know, we're just left here shopping for land together, trying to figure out where we're gonna do a project. And, you know, in the city of Boulder, a lot of that now means, like, redevelopment, right? Not development. We don't have a lot of green land to work with. So, how do we find a piece of property that… this is a challenge for us from a kind of, like, resident and consumer perspective, right, from a policy, viewpoint. You know, is there a piece of property that we can get that's big enough to have a community on, that's got access to, transit? And actually, those are really the two things.

[120:04] But that's, like, almost all it is right now. Well, the third one is, like, that you can get it through an approval process. And so, if there's something that's built into the zoning code that would Or from a policy perspective, if there was an incentive, or money, or ability to give groups like Andy and Connie are trying to put together here with Trailhead. A leg up on commercial buyers? Right, so automatically you would get a density bonus. automatically you would get faster through the approval process. And those things have to be automatic. They can't be some kind of, like. slow, horrible discretionary review process, because that puts them at a disadvantage to people who don't care about that, right? So this is true for affordable housing as well. Like, if you guys can set it up so that, People you're trying to support are able to say, like, okay, cool, for me, this land is worth a little bit more than it would be to a commercial developer.

[121:03] Because I can put more on it. Some of the policy pieces that are, behind that are, you know, looking at density in terms of floor area ratio. This is something you should be supporting in the new land use code, as opposed to DU per acre, or lot area per DU, which is just the inverse of that. Because that means that the bigger the DU, the better your pro forma works. That's the… that's giving an advantage to the people who have the most wealthy buyers. So our current land use code advantages the most wealthy buyers possible, and disadvantages everybody else. That's a policy-level thing that we could reverse. Ryan, I would add, in terms of the things that we're looking for, for us, walkability and a lot of the parents we're talking to is super important, not just access to buses. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think if, you know, if it could be… I mean, Washington Village, right, would be a perfect location for this kind of property, right? If we'd known about it a decade and a half ago.

[122:07] you know, close to ideal market, close to, you know, all this stuff, close to here. So, church properties, school properties… City properties that they're gonna get rid of. Yes. What about commercial office space? No, thank you. You know, I think… Well, one of the… Well, I mean, it's a serious question. I understand this is a… this is a special demographic with special needs. Is that something that could be workable? Because when you talk about walkability and accessibility to services. I think there is a lot of empty, cheap, commercial real estate. Obviously, you can't just stick people in there overnight, you gotta do something to it. But is that… is that something that could be… you know, worked out for this. You're saying take it down and design something? No, not necessarily implode the building, but, like, obviously modify it. Yeah, I mean, the ideal thing would be to take, you know, the second floor of

[123:06] retail space along Pearl Street and, you know, combine a bunch of second floor levels and create a community out of that, and I think you would be able to, you know, have egress off the front and egress off the back. You'd have to work through The downtown urban design guidelines to get window patterning and stuff like that to work. And there are barriers in the, land use code to that, in the use tables. there's also really serious barriers in the building code. In the way the city views conversion of commercial space to residential, it's a change of use. Change of use triggers everything, so you automatically have to fire a sprinkle, you have to insulate the current standards, you gotta meet Energy codes, you gotta meet, all of the, site lighting, site development, everything, right? So, you basically have to take something that, like, is… is…

[124:04] very much not going to comply with all those rules, and pay the money to make it comply with all those rules. And we've done some of this stuff around the country, but it's tough. Do you guys ever feel like, when looking at the City of Boulder's land use regulations, building codes. That some of it could have a disparate impact on people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Absolutely. Absolutely, yeah. I think, you know, our preponderance of single-family homes is probably item number one, right? Like, and the fact that we've worked so hard to protect that. I'm looking more not how the city's developed, but if you're wanting to develop something in a certain way that would accommodate people with disabilities. And the building codes are saying no. Like, you talk about, windows have to be certain. That doesn't… perhaps work for this crowd. I mean, that's sort of like ADA stuff. Is there… do you feel like there's an issue with the building codes in Boulder that makes it

[125:04] Setting aside the economics of everything, but that makes it difficult to build housing that accommodates people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. You know… from a kind of nuts and bolts perspective, I would say no. I think if you're doing a new project. it's, you know, the differences between IDD population and the neurotypical population. There's not really, like, a building code or zoning piece if you're doing a ground-up project, right? So if you were doing Bluebell, you know, they probably didn't bump into these kinds of problems. But I do think on the building conversion side, there's a bunch of barriers, which would be true for apartments as well as But I think, you know, When you're working with, you know, clever housing typologies, whether it's, like… I mean, the city's code still has a boarding house section in it, but now that we don't have occupancy limits, you can do cooperative housing. So we do a lot of cooperative housing, also on the board of the Better Housing Colorado group, which was formerly known as Boulder Housing Coalition, so we run all the affordable

[126:08] Co-ops here in town, and… So if you have an opportunity, like one of those spaces. the way to figure it out is to, like, look at it and be like, okay, what's the most suitable thing to this space and to this site and this location? And some of the 1,200 people who are, like, trying to serve in Boulder County would be happy to be there. Is it going to work for everybody? Nope, don't care. It's really gotta be, like, this opportunity can afford this outcome for these people, and let's just do that one. the… like you guys have said before, the need is infinite, so… and there is no one-size-fits-all to all this stuff, so it's not like you'd be… like, oh, they all gotta be exactly the same. So I think, like, a second story you know, Perl or Perl-adjacent. commercial, rehab into housing for IDD would be… Totally brilliant.

[127:01] We wouldn't have the same challenges we do with going into single-family, like some of the properties we look at are single-family areas, and then we have to get the zoning change to multi… And you wouldn't have that issue, so… Yeah, and I will tell you that from feedback from other people who've been trying to get stuff like this entitled to different places, like that Cathedral Park group up in Portland. they faced a lot of discrimination. I mean, aside from the sort of normal stuff we see, with affordable housing, with multifamily first, then multifamily affordable, then multifamily affordable for IDE, like, oh my god, you know, and so people say, astoundingly, shockingly rotten things. Nimby, nimby. Kristen, do you want to chime in on that? Is your mic. Yeah. I can ask my question. You can ask your question, Andre. I guess I'm curious, how important is it to have a champion? So, like.

[128:04] I was really impressed with Trilia, the women. The story, who is the force behind that, like, how inspirational she was, and… Like, would that project have happened without her? And how important is it for, like, these other projects that have been successful, or is it part of a determinant of success? Yeah, it's absolutely crucial. Yeah, so the thing that we found in this is talking to Wellspring done in Douglas County, which also is functioning, is, you need to have sort of the visionary or the parents and say, this is, you know, it's to me, it's up to me. And they'll make that happen. And the other connection is with, the spiritual or faith community. And But yeah, the other thing I would talk about, and this is, you know, speaking from PTSD, I designed the shelter 20-plus years ago, is that you have to have a council member that is a champion, and you know, for that… for us, it was Will Tour, and then that baton got passed to Mark Russin.

[129:02] Yeah, so, yeah, it's absolutely crucial to have champions on serious levels, because we got the $500,000 Rocky's rebate. Not many people know this, but Jerry Lee, who did One Boulder Plaza, took all of his, profits from that project and gave it to the homeless shelter, right? He didn't talk about it, but there were people who championed it within the business community, etc. And it's really what Brian's talking about, is it has to be championed at all levels, like HAB, Boulder Planning, City Council, Boulder Housing Partners, and it's just this thing, and we have people from all over the United States coming in to see our project, because we made it happen. You know, it was one woman with parents making it happen, so people are like, how did you do that? Lots of people talking about it, some people are in construction, but you've done it. And what it's really about is absolutely, yeah, planting your flag in the ground and saying it's gonna happen.

[130:05] And every time we say DIF, Yeah. Matt says when, so… I played a game when we decided to have a shelter, and people told me there's no way in hell you're gonna make it happen. And I said, not only will I invite you to the groundbreaking, I'll invite you to the ribbon cutting and give you a personal tour, right? In 20-plus years there, it's there. And its function has changed a little bit over the years, really was… the huge… the biggest part was transitional housing, you know, and then it moved to a housing-first model. But, I mean, I commend Manny and Connie for… for being the people who are taking the stand to say this is going to happen in Boulder. So… Dude, he's got his hand up. Hey, thanks. I just want to comment on that a little bit. It is important to have a champion, and, you know, I knew Barb, and she was certainly a champion of that project, but it also took 10 years of her life, and you can't have every project take 10 years. And so,

[131:09] While, yes, you do have to have the champions, it really needs to be champions at a community level, too, and neuro-inclusive housing has to become more of the norm, and not just the thing that, you know, people people point to and say, hey, that one big example is really great. It has to be more normalized. So, and then you wouldn't need, you know. as much of the… You would need to find the champions to do it to the level that you needed to for… for trailheads, so I would just… I would just offer that as a thought as well. I was gonna say one thing about economics, like, everything that Brian said, I'm an architect. One thing I would say. about what Brian said, and this is, you know, having got my master's in real estate development, you know, my MBA in real estate as well, too, is that

[132:04] Brian, you'd made a comment about economics aside, and I would say, absolutely, you can't say that. It has to be about economics, because you have to understand the time value of money. And while you're sitting waiting for things to go through entitlement, the clock is running, interest is burning. And if you look, we had this conversation with Kurt of, there's not as much funding there, because projects are not happening in Boulder. And really, that's a function of interest rates, but it's also a function of the time that it takes to get through that entitlement process. And so, that's one of the things that I understood when I went back and got my master's, not only in architecture, but got my master's in real estate development, was that without the money. no project happens. It's just these series of unbuilt projects that show up in architectural record and on websites, and you feel good about it, but it's all about making the project happen, and so that's why, working with Brian, we're going to bring those two things together, is how do you bring the people in who have the hard story?

[133:09] With it, who have the money, not only from Personal donors, but also investment capital. And then batch that up with beautiful architecture that creates culture. And like then Tim said. then it becomes the norm, because the more people… like, we're walking Jeffco commissioners through there tomorrow. Everybody from Boulder's been down, state senators have been down, everybody's seen it. And so, working with Tim, the IHC, and the Alliance. and all the folks trying to change it on the legislative side, but also just having it where people can walk through and go, oh, great, this is awesome, we want this in our community. So, I mean, I'm excited to work with you, yeah. Likewise. Yeah. And just to comment on Tim's comment about it took 10 years for Barbara to get there. The sad reality is that she didn't live to see it happen and open up. She passed away a month before we opened. That's the very sad story. The great story is her daughter, Lexi, lives there. So what everyone talks about over age 60, what happens if I wake up and I… I'm not there?

[134:13] Barb is able to solve that problem. So, yeah. Kristen? I just wanted to… I know this is the Housing Advisory Board, and it's about the construction of housing, but I think a key thing is to find… because at the end of the day, BHA is going to own We're gonna develop and own housing, but we can't do this work without our service providers. And one of the things that we're also doing is a lot of the individuals that will be moving into the grove have never lived independently. So we have two agencies in town that are running consecutively independent living academies. where they are hosting, for the past year, two times a month, they got… they have two tracks. They have one for individuals who are, learning the skills to live independently, and they actually have a parent track. Because there's a whole piece to this about parents

[135:10] getting ready to be empty nesters. I mean, a lot of them have been you know, their people have been with them for 60 years, 65 years, and it's, you know, we might experience it sending kids off to college or whatever, but it's something similar. So, there's a lot of really intentional, coordinated work that's happening in our community to get our future residents and their families ready to go so they're successful. And I would just say some of those families, too, are deciding that they're not really ready for this. So some of our biggest champions, are coming to that realization. And so it kind of goes back to the conversation about we can't be all things to all people. This is independent living, and you have to have those tough conversations, and families have to have tough conversations

[136:00] in their own homes to decide if they're ready for this or not. So it's a very… it's about bricks and mortar, it's about money, but it's also just extremely emotional. And you gotta be ready for that, too, because that's… that's a big part of this, is kind of the emotional ride that everybody experiences going through this process. I have a question. Our mandate as a board is twofold, to advise City Council on how it can change the law, or write new laws, and then also to advise the City Manager on how I can differently execute current laws. What can… what can… what would you want to see changed about our current laws, or what would you want to be seen changed about how the city executes, to make housing more accessible to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities?

[137:02] I just read through the whole BRC in the last 3 days, so… Yeah, I mean, that was exciting. But, yeah, I would second what Brian says. It's really about… it's about density. It's about prioritization, not only from a location, but as a strategy. Like, when the shelter happened. It was gonna happen, and it was top-down. And then staff understood that it was a top-down. And so everybody… I mean, it was the most pleasant experience that I had had working in Boulder, where everybody was all rowing in the same direction. But yeah, I think it's… it won't run into densification, right? Because that's the dirty word, you know, and Michael knows that from being on ULI all those years. But really, it has to be some sort of a strategic retreat thing, that it becomes a priority and goes from the BBCP.

[138:02] All the way down into the BRC, into the code. Yeah, I think… I mean, really, like, at a… basic level, everybody who's building in Boulder. Faces a lot of challenges working with the city on site review, tech docs especially, building permitting processes, I mean, still really… like, kind of unforgivably painful, honestly. It's very difficult to get anything built here, regardless of what you're doing. I'm just being a little candid with you guys on that. The, luckily, that's not Hav's problem, but you can say stuff to other people. The, Interpretation of current laws. And… creation of new laws piece. I think, to me, I feel like the interesting part of that, and the most useful part, is, like, how do you essentially, sort of.

[139:06] you know, invite the things you're trying to get to happen. I mean, this history of the city is, like, you know, there's always this sort of, like. there's a new thing, we're excited about that, we're gonna, like, focus on it, there'll be a work plan item, and then we'll create some rules for it. But what that means is, like, the thing that you looked at automatically gets saddled with a whole bunch of additional rules, more than everything else. So if you're like, I mean, the first round of, like, the co-op ordinance, and ADUs, and all these things, right, that we all sat through. We make the thing that we're trying to support the hardest thing to do with that kind of policy work. So… How do we make it The easiest thing to do, to build the kind of things that you guys want us to build. Right? So, like, if you have… you know, people like Kristen or Tim, Andy and Connie, you know, these, like, heartfelt, burning souls who are trying to change the world for really great reasons.

[140:04] If that's the only way that you can get these things built, that's not great. What a great world would it be if you had the regular, like, local scumbag developer dude be like. The easiest thing to get built is IDD housing. I'm gonna do that. You know, and then you have a way of making sure that it's actually a good thing, right? Like, you have enough regulatory oversight that they're doing the right things. But what if it wasn't just a result of people who like, have the time and money and family. I was gonna tag on to that. So we did a project, a 9-unit affordable housing project in Lyons, where my client came to me at a 1031 exchange. going into a property, and we made it through a planning commission and town board of trustees in a month at Christmas time, you know? And I know it's Lions, but it was an absolute vision that they They knew that they needed more affordable housing in town specifically for workers in town.

[141:02] and Holly Rogen. Paul Williams and all those folks on Town Board of Trustees made it happen, and followed their process, but it was expedited and clean, and it's up and running and fully leased up, so… Here's a challenge for y'all. There you go. Yeah, not two months, maybe. I'm working with jurisdictions around the country, right? And some of them are very difficult, like Telluride and Aspen and places like that, but some of them, like Bellingham, Washington. which is the same size city, equally as precious and exposed to natural beauty as Boulder, right? It's a very good corollary. Here in Boulder, we have a 700 billion page form-based code that tells you where to put the crease in the building, and it's going to be two and a quarter inches deep and not two and a half, otherwise you've… gotta ask for an inception, right? He's, like, extremely onerous, like, and I know that's not the way staff thinks about it over in planning, but, like, that's… Kinda how it is? In Bellingham, the design guidelines that I had to follow Where the building needs to have

[142:02] Its primary entrances face the street. It needs to have a clear and coherent design idea, a single one, not 60 of them tucked together to pretend they're little houses and stuck together, and it needs to address the public realm appropriately. I submitted… And I'm through the process, and it's a couple months. 42-unit co-housing project, yeah. And it looks great, and honestly. It's probably the best prize we've ever done. Do you want to know why? We didn't have to accommodate all these comments from people that didn't make sense, honestly. I hate to say it, but that's, like, just a very real thing. So, and there was an interesting discussion on the design, but it was a discretionary review, there was a design conversation. You know, one person was like, oh, the existing building art school front has an arch on it, maybe there should be arches everywhere. I was like, no, I don't think that's a good idea. And the other people in the design review group were like, yeah, we don't think that's a good idea either. And I was like, okay, cool, we're just gonna put that one to bed next, right? So it was like a very… it was almost more like the way the city does the DAB process, the design advisory board, where, like, you're sitting around a table, you're talking through ADAs, and it's less like.

[143:13] well, from the dais, I've got to create a condition that I apply to your project to make it better somehow here at the 11th hour, you know. I like your suggestion at some point in the conversation where you, I, you know, pointed out that started the BBCP and identify, These things are my right. Yes. Because that will change everything. The developers can't come in by right, because… unless they're building these, right? Unless they're building 100% affordable, or, you know, these special needs… And if they do, God bless them. And if they are, cool, but… There's always, like, that little pivot here where, oh yeah, we're gonna do this, but…

[144:01] We can only do it for 10%, and we can only do it for this? You're just like, and we don't have… we don't have the… the means to get there, but we are redoing the BBCP And we know that that trickles down to zoning, and that's been my number one in the process. It's like, they've got to translate. You can't have an ideal up here. Yes, we want diversity, diversity, diversity, diversity, but we don't get diversity anywhere, because exactly what you're talking about. I think we all need to go to… and witness the process. it's about trust, you know? The architect knows… I don't ever make a comment on planning board on other architects' work. It's just like, you know what? It's not my business to challenge your building, but I will talk about livability or experiential, you know, I'll just… Really? That 12-foot-tall wall, 300 feet long, is going to be a good experience? Explain that to me, that kind of thing, but… No, that, that, that would be something… To somehow bring back

[145:06] The idea that less is more. So I have two comments in this regard. I think every member of our board attended the Better Boulder Chamber of Commerce joint event. Last week, and I made a comment one point, I went into this group, and all the developers and the architects were expressing similar grievances, that there's too much red tape, everything moves too slowly, it's too expensive to build a boulder. And people were saying it's… it's especially… it makes it… very difficult to do low-income housing and smaller projects. You know, if you're doing a massive, multi-million dollar, big-profit project, then you can kind of bear the cost, but if you're trying to do something on a smaller scale that's more affordable, it's just not worth it. And I made a comment that, you know. I'm a lawyer, and a common grievance of our legal system… with our legal system has been that pretrial procedure's just gotten too thorough, too complicated, and therefore too expensive.

[146:03] And the Colorado Supreme Court, several years ago, tried to address that by basically putting in place what's called simplified procedure for cases under $100,000. And it kind of acts as a bunch of the procedural mechanisms that you would have in a case that's in excess of $100,000. And I sort of suggested, like, is there a way that we can… sort of, you know, approval processes, regulatory processes to get permits and things built. If it's for certain types of projects, smaller-scale projects, affordable housing, housing for people with disabilities. is there sort of a different track that can go on that's more streamlined and faster? And that can be used, perhaps, to prioritize certain housing types in our community. So I think the state currently requires that jurisdictions are adopting fast tracks for affordable housing projects, and I'm not sure where the city is at with that right now, but… We have another year. We have another year, okay.

[147:10] The planning department is working on it, but it's, like, on the… So that's one comment, and then I think on a more practical note, our board has pretty limited power. We can send letters. But we can vote on it, and I… You can word them sternly. I gather, if we agree, some people in positions with more power may listen to us. That's… that's kind of how I interpret our powers, so… I mean, what is it that you would want us to do? Send a letter to the city manager saying what, or send a letter to the city council saying what? We've talked to Aaron Brockett, and he says, you know, what you want to do is you're not trying to build a million dollar, you know, fancy house for someone. you know, we'd be, you know, he'd be supportive of it, so… He said he's aware of the need, because, you know, I've told him. And he's… he's seen the statistics, yeah, and he was very encouraging, so… Send a letter to him and CC others.

[148:11] I think maybe one idea could be, a joint session with City Council and HAB that Either it could be a study session, or it could be a… publicly noticed tour of Trailhead, or something like that. That's a… that's a big ask for a bunch of people who are very busy, for sure, you guys included in that. I think… you know, Better Boulder has done a bunch of kind of almost like white papers talking about the Comp Plan, or Area 3, or housing, and I think That tends to be from a board perspective, like, a really heavy lift. editorially, because you've got to, like, wordsmith and write together, and I know, like, for city boards, that can be really challenging. But I think… you know, yeah, I mean, like, writing a letter to City Council.

[149:05] We always try to get in front of them, you know, before their retreats, so it can be established as a priority during that process. meeting with people individually helps a lot. But I think actually just taking a really… it does not take long to read the comp plan. It's not like reading Title IX, or… or the Boulder Municipal Code, like… so I think looking through the, Comp plan, as it stands now, looking at the city's… because they've got, like, a really clear idea of how to compress land… compressed land uses and some other stuff like that that's… they're moving in the process really nicely, but have to weigh in on the comp plan and say, like, hey, we… and honestly, sometimes I feel like, again, on the less is more side, like, the way to weigh in is, like, hey, we just heard from a bunch of people how important neuro-inclusive housing is. We think this is important, too. We would like to see City Council, find ways of supporting it in the comp plan. And then, period. You've sent the letter, you know, so it doesn't have to be…

[150:02] I guess it's the art of the achievable to me, like, you know, don't… sort of don't do anything if you can't write the PhD thesis, like… You know what I mean? Like… We're reviewing the draft comp plan in March? Okay. Yeah, I was just gonna tag on to that, too. When I was on UGID board for 10 years, the first 5 years we dealt with the riots in the University Health Action Group. But Yujid, had joint sessions with Council, right? Because it was an emergency situation, cars were being tipped. And a lot of good stuff came out of that. The second five years was about the economic plan that would lay down how the hill could be redeveloped. to have it be a thriving economic center, and that was also a joint UGID City Council session, and who was absolutely instrumental in that was, Molly Winner. I don't know if you guys remember Molly. Everyone Molly. Amazing woman, and Molly, was very effective at bringing it to the City Manager's attention and city council's attention simultaneously to have it, you know, become a priority, so it's really kind of the board staff liaison to use their internal connections to reach out and just go.

[151:15] what you just said. We just heard from folks. out in the community and other communities and other organizations, and we really think it's a priority. We'd love to talk with you individually and see if we can work it into a… joint session. Yeah. Honestly, I feel like a cause like this is, you know, what could be more aligned with HAB? You know, honestly, finding a housing need and helping the city to… to direct Energy to solve it. Kind of what this was in the beginning now still is. Anything else?

[152:00] Online or in person. Thank you for listening. Yeah, we really appreciate that you took this long evening to talk about this issue. When you were saying you were going to end early. So, thank you so much. Can I just say, it's been really helpful for me. I've… throughout this process, I've, like. the idea of, like, the intentional community has been really hard for me to, like, like, what does that mean? And between Andy, your remarks, and then the actual pictures and discussion of, like, how design can make that happen, it's like… it has settled with me on what this can actually mean, so this has been really helpful, I hope, for everyone here on HAB, but it's been really helpful for me to, like. Make it feel more tangible. So, thanks. Thank you so much. Absolutely. And that's another idea, actually, that could be a tour of wild sage and Silver Sage, which are really good examples of for sale, you know, new urbanist development with 40% affordable housing, including Habitat Homes, so down, like, 30-60% AMI range.

[153:06] And we could talk about how that's applicable to this kind of idea. It's not, like, exactly what you would do, you know… And it's 5 minutes from here, instead of… Yeah. But it's far, so that's an open invitation. Thanks! Thank you all so, so much. Thank you guys for being on the board. I know it's a bunch of work. And luckily, you get famous and rich by doing it. At least dinner. At least dinner. Thank you for that, too. You guys are welcome to stay. Well, thank you for the opportunity. Thank you, alright. Thank you. Bye. Thanks so much. See you guys later. How much more of your board meeting is there? Two minutes. I don't know about that, but… I'll shake me in on my comments out of your shoes.

[154:17] Yeah. We'll talk about it later. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you. Bye. Good to meet you in person. Good to see you, man. Alright. My brain's full. Alright, so, next on the agenda is the HAB Member Quarterly Update to Council, which, I… I, volunteered to do, but I did not send you the drafts yet. I'm sorry, but I can do that, actually, this evening. We can take a look at it.

[155:02] And also see if we want to, like, really shift gears from actually what my draft was. After learning information from tonight, so… You should definitely add in a few… a couple sentences from… and we can vote on it in February. Yeah, yeah. So I'll send you the… I'll send a draft. Excuse me, work plan review. Did everybody get a chance to look at the work plan? And I guess a part of my question, is, was there anything in particular that we needed to add to this list? You see that there's the, What do we have coming up? I should put my glasses on. So February is, yeah, we're doing an affordable housing review with City Council on March 5th, and we'll do a preview with you guys. It's a February meeting, so Holly will be back. I think it'll be… unfortunately, the new members won't be here, but,

[156:01] This is going to be an overview of all things affordable housing. And Planning Board will get it to you March 3rd. But is it, so is it… When are the appoint… board appointments? Interviews are next week. Yeah. Appointments happen March? March 5th. 5th. March. Oh, okay, nice. We're in March. Missing it. Yeah, so we typically invite our, new appointees, to come to our meetings, since our meeting's at the end of the month. Right. But they won't be sworn in until the April meeting. Typically. Okay. Unless the board… decides, I guess. I don't know if that's… When… when are the applications available to us to review? We haven't… staff hasn't been given in, so they… application closed on Sunday, so city clerks are compiling all of the applications, so we'll probably get them next week, because… But interviews happen already. Interviews will be starting next…

[157:01] End of next week? Middle of next week? In the following week, and then they'll make the appointments the first of… You know, when the, The list of applicants is public? That's what I was just saying. It'll take them a little while, but yeah. After the interviews? Or before the interviews? Usually it's before. That's what I thought. Yeah. Right. So, yeah, applications just closed on Sunday. Sunday, so this week sometime, hopefully. Probably next week. Probably early next week would be my guess, once… Excited to see how many people are going for the one seat, I'm planning for it. We promise to share as soon as we get. Oh, thank you. So the work plan… I think this SRO, or dorms, or whatever we want to call it, micro units. We can come up with names, days on end, and then after we come up with names, new people will come up with names, but finding a way, basically, to build denser housing and existing infrastructure that doesn't support, I guess, a traditional unit with a bathroom for every bed.

[158:15] I think that… I think that could be helpful, I think, for so many different areas that we've looked at. Could be helpful for the homeless community, could be helpful for people with disabilities, low-income people, and it sounds like there is sort of a… a zoning building code element to that that maybe we can study in more depth and eventually make a recommendation on. I don't have the answer to this issue, but… There's some big financing considerations, too, related to… Especially SROs. Like, to be able to get it to pencil out? Yeah, you can't… you can't, finance SROs with LITTAP. Oh, okay. And there's… jurisdictions have minimum… size requirements, although that's something I suppose… And, like, livability standards?

[159:05] You have to meet certain livability standards, but when we looked at it. Many years ago, we didn't identify any significant barriers in the city's code. I think it's worth chatting about, for sure. it's just more… I mean, some cities have done it really well, like San Francisco and Portland have. But they're also mostly high-end. Yeah. So, highly amenitized, rooftop space, rooftop bar. In September, I was in Tel Aviv, and I stayed in a, like, micro-hotel situation, hot hotel. That was in, like, a big office building, like, you rode up an elevator with, like, office people to a certain floor, and you walked in, and it was actually, like, beautiful inside, like, it was very well designed, and then there's almost, like, little sheds for each room, and then there was a common bathroom area, and…

[160:01] I don't know, I think there… I hear you on, like, you're not getting all the same government money to build that as, like, affordable housing, LIHTC, but I think there could be free market demand in Boulder for visitors, hotel types, and then also you sort of fill the gap at that if… you know, the… there are people… I don't know, like, building that stock could be helpful for a lot of different people, and I was surprised, the crowd staying there, you had 20, 30-year-old tourist types, but it was actually a pretty diverse crowd. So… Excuse me, Jay, when that was, looked at years ago, is there anything Like, right around here that exists like that? I've been searching, and I'm like, there was one that I thought was entitled on East Pearl, but I don't know that it ever got built.

[161:02] Just, like, a year or two ago? So they had micro units on Pearl, Wasn't that far east. Not east, east, like, 22nd, 23rd, something like that. Literally micro-units, so each unit was complete. Okay, thinking about the… Olive? Olive? Olive? No, no. This was tiny, tiny, they were, like. Primarily any parking, yeah. Super high end. Yeah, super high end, super high end. I think, yeah, it's gonna… it's gonna have to… I think it's worth a conversation. Yeah, I mean, so it's on the list. Yeah. Karin, your name's next to it. I know, and I got a little… I got a little stopped when I was searching, searching for something around here. I mean, I don't even mean Boulder, I mean, like, the metro area, trying to see if there was… It's very, like, un-American. I mean, they have it in, like, New York and San Francisco, but, like, for the rest of America, it's, like, an un-American concept, but…

[162:05] Boulder's kind of like a non-traditional city in a lot of ways, in that, like, we have a lot of open space, we're preserving, people want to be downtown, and I think there's the demand for that, and people would make those… creature comfort sacrifices. I mean, I think we all make some creature comfort sacrifices just to live in Boulder. I know, like, if I didn't live in Boulder, I'd probably have way more space and probably more than one bedroom. I think we all can relate to that. And I don't know, I just think, like, if there was a place on Pearl Street where you could have a private bed, it was nice. People pay 90 bucks, 100 bucks a night for that. I bet. And then… That's a hotel. Correct. But then you could also format it… a monthly rate would be much cheaper than $3,000 a month, or something like that. So what comes close is the student housing, where they've got, like, 6-bedroom units.

[163:02] And there's a bedroom and bath, bedroom and bath, bedroom and bath, and then the common living room, they're rented by the bedroom, they're not rented by the apartment. So that model… But it's gotta have a bath, yeah. It doesn't have to have a bath. That's how they're… it's because it's luxury. It's luxury student housing, so they… they wouldn't be able to rent them. So what I'm proposing, I don't think we have to hash out this idea tonight, but when we did this last session on the office conversions, I felt like most of that conversation had to do with, like, turning offices into, like, traditional apartments. And… I think the feedback we got is, like, it's very difficult to do that. But then we were, like, very intrigued by the bridge house concept, and I think this is, like, a good narrowing, is we should sort of focus on the SRO dorm You know, an alternate style than a traditional apartment, and see what is it that the city can do to make that type of housing

[164:07] More accessible, because if we can put beds in these empty office buildings. I mean, gee, like, I've lived in Boulder for 11 years, and that Whole Foods across from the law school is still empty, that's prime real estate. I just find that shocking. Alfalfa is still… I don't… do they put in a medical clinic there or something? I don't… it's just like, we have such a crunch on housing, and there's, like, all these empty commercial spaces. Prime locations, like, there's gotta be a solution that can work. So, yeah, the traditional apartment model, not necessarily workable, but maybe some SRO. I think that's what we heard from our guests, so maybe we dedicate a session on that in the near future. Anything else?

[165:03] We're gonna do a little thing on Elevate Boulder next month. Which I think will just be short, but I think you'll find it interesting. And then comp plan is sort of the big… next big item for HAP. In March, so that public review draft will be released, early March, so you'll have time to review it beforehand, but this is going to be your first big opportunity. I don't know, did anyone watch the Council Retreat? No. Well, we got away with not having a council priority on housing. For the first time in a decade. We'd like to attribute it to the fact that Council sees that we're already doing really good work.

[166:00] But we also promised to come on August 5th to talk more about housing. So, something might come out of that as well. I mean, March. Did you mean March 5th? Yes. August. I said August. And Karin, if we're doing an SRO on the agenda, they said that there's apparently a whole portion of the code on boarding houses. I would be happy to look into that and give a little report on that and see, maybe, are there existing laws that just need to be updated, or… you know, I can certainly… Yeah, that'd be great. Okay. And I also think this is a really good time for Council to hear some of these, kind of, off-the-beaten path. options, because this is when they can get inserted into the BBCP, right? Is if there's other thinking that. I mean, it starts at the big scale, and then it trickles down to zoning and whatever codes. And I…

[167:09] I'm not sure how robust BDCP is right now. In, housing for alternative populations. Either senior housing, or, you know, any… Do we have precise language in BBCP on… You will see, very shortly. I mean, historically. So it does not call out every single population? It's… the language is more generic, because remember, we're trying to get from… Right. several thousand words to… I was gonna ask you to do research on the fair housing implications of identifying special populations, right? In our… in our big vision? Yeah. But I'm sure you've got that covered already.

[168:01] Yeah. I mean, the policies aren't going to change that dramatically, really. Is it possible in the BDCP to create language That would facilitate certain kinds… Of developments that support our values and vision to be by right. Absolutely. That, I think, is the… is the cleanest path, because that, all of a sudden… Without specifying… Huge economic incentive to these kinds of things, huge, you know… I mean, I think, you know, Brian was… Right on. Absolutely. I'll be looking for that. How can we get that language in? But, I mean…

[169:03] It just seems like it's… But it's also a question of what is… Does the community all agree on what is the most important? Well, it's… That comes in the details, which is down here. But at least the starting language that… because right now, we know we're not getting what we want. The community is outraged about all kinds of things insofar as, look what's getting built, look what's getting built. So I've challenged that a little bit. The vast majority… What values are you bringing to that conversation? Exactly. And are they shared by everybody? Exactly. Including the people that truly need it? Well, we have, we have, you know, all the community input factors, identifying things, that kind of thing. It's a matter of then aligning You know, aligning our strategy. to get to, to get there. Because we know we're kind of off base on these things right now. So… Interesting conversation, this Boulder Valley Comp Plan update.

[170:11] Okay, anything else? Regarding the work plan? Nope. Michael, I guess we'll be drinking beer with you another time. Yeah, what's that? I guess we'll be drinking beers with you another time. Oh, yeah, that's fine, don't worry about it. When's your last meeting on the Housing Board? Today. Well, this is your last one? Well, I have two more months, but I have conflicts in the next two months. Okay. Bummer, yeah. I mean, my room's going to Mexico, so sorry. We'll just join you in Mexico. Any other… Management staff? It's the March 5th. I don't think so. Any questions? I think so. Anything else from anybody?

[171:05] Well, then I'll make a motion to adjourn. Great, all in favor? Playlist? Great. All right. Good night, everybody. Good night, Bill. Still up! Feeling better, Phil. Feel better.