February 25, 2026 — Housing Advisory Board Regular Meeting

Transcript

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

[0:05] Ayy! Hello, I'm Karin Hoskin, Chair of the Housing Advisory Board. Welcome to our monthly meeting. Today is February 25th? 25th? 2026? And we'll start with roll call. Lauren Shevitz? Here. Philip O'Brien? Here. Chip Hennessy? Here. Michael LeChese is not here. And, this is his official last meeting, Tripp? And then hopefully next month we'll be squaring in the three new board members, question mark? Ideally, yeah. Excellent. Sounds good. All right, so… oh, and we have some guests, which we'll introduce as we do each thing. I think that's okay with everybody? Well, we have a special guest.

[1:03] Kurt Vernhofer, the Director of Housing and Human Services. So he's not part of any presentation, he's just here. You're not chiming in? Jay is sucking up. Fair. Rain to the appropriate person, that's good, that's good. Glad to be here with you today. Thanks for being here. All right, so for our agenda tonight, we'll be approving last month's minutes. We'll have time for public participation. Under matters from the board tonight, we have presentation affordable housing, a review of the current state of affordable housing in Colorado. and Boulder. And then Elevate a second presentation about Elevate Boulder, that program. We'll have some time for the HAB member quarterly updates to Council, and go over the HAB work plan review. Time for matters from the staff, and then we'll do any final thoughts and adjourn.

[2:05] plan? Alright, so, approval of the minutes. Did you guys get a chance? Any comments or corrections? To the minutes from last month. Did you have a chance to see them? I looked at them. My only comments, first of all, I don't think I've seconded the approval of the minutes last for the November meeting, because I wasn't there, so then it said that I wasn't… I was not at the November meeting. And it said for last… I was at the last one, but it said I seconded approval of the minutes for November. I don't think I did. Okay, those were approved at last meeting. But they were approved, everyone else voted yes, and I no doubt those are accurate, so I just wanted to give that caveat. Thanks for catching that. Okay. Alright, so then for… minutes. Motion 2. Motion.

[3:05] to approve the minutes for Jean. for January, with… The caveat that we're gonna… Guy was talking about November. Sorry about before that, I think. But it's in the January minutes. So were you talking about the January minutes? Did you see the error in the January… The January minutes say that I seconded at the January meeting the approval of the November minutes. Then we can't approve minutes tonight, I'll make those notes. Okay. We're saying November. Do you get what I'm saying? I do understand. But subject to that change, we can… I think we can approve it. Is it coming up? So, get to that change. Or do you want to hold it till next month? I'll make the edit and put it back in for a next one. Okay, cool. Thanks.

[4:01] Thanks, Chip. Okay. Public participation. Do you have anybody online? There's one person online, they're handing out rates. So if you're the person online and you'd like to, do public comment, raise your hand. Okay, alright. Shall move on, then. Matters from the board. So, first thing, affordable housing review of the current state of affordable housing in Boulder, and we have Holly and Jay tonight. Tripp? That's heavy, I was expecting a call. Sometimes, something else. All right.

[5:03] Alright, thanks for having us, Sarah. I bet you guys are getting upset with me. Never. Great. So yeah, so we're gonna talk about, all things affordable housing in Boulder, so a review of affordable housing in Boulder. You received the memo today. Apologies for the late, the late submissions, that's the… the system that we're working with, did anyone get a chance to read it? I did. I was supposed to be doing something else. Perfect. I don't want to laugh, but… Yes, I did. So the process here, we're, this is kind of our first, I'm just gonna go back a second. So it's our first… we're taking this, memo to City Council next week, so, you're our first group where we're kind of daylighting this. So yeah, looking forward to it. Okay, so you have those slides. Okay, so for the, what we're going to talk about today, kind of give an overview of… not really an overview, just review the history really quickly of affordable housing in the city, over definitions, a real quick discussion over… about the current state of the homeownership and rental housing market in the city.

[6:18] an overview of the city's housing policy interventions that have been put into place over decades. And we wanted to highlight some of our innovations in the city, in this space, and then talk about next steps. All right, so, so we wanted to… we mentioned this in the memo, but we wanted to kind of highlight this here, is… just from its founding, Boulder has really been shaped by exclusivity, and real estate prices have always reflected that realist… that exclusivity. Back in 2021, the city did a Housing Equity Symposium that goes over the history, kind of that, back in the 1800s, hundreds history up to today, to give a,

[7:04] kind of give an overview in more detail about that history. And it's… it's been really kind of formative and guiding for some of our work, and we just wanted to highlight here, kind of acknowledging that history as we move forward, especially when we talk about, the… the work that has been done in the affordable housing space since the 1960s as kind of like a reaction, or kind of ways to try to resolve some of those historical wrongs. you know, so this… the details of this, this whole timeline are in the… the memo as an attachment, and it goes… there's… there's a lot of details in there. But just one thing to highlight here, so back in the 2010s, the city was, passed an inclusionary housing ordinance, and it was the first, or one of the first cities in the nation to do that. So it's kind of just pointing out some of these things in the timeline that where we really have been leaders in this space.

[8:04] And so, some of these things have really helped develop the program over the years. Quick question. Sure, please. Has the city ever been sued over the inclusionary housing program, and has it been successfully attended in court? Hasn't been challenged, to my knowledge. Is it, is it… vulnerable to that? I think there was… there were concerns, that it could be. But, but, I mean… what's the example? So, rent control. You know, Boulder tried to adopt rent control. And as a reaction, the state legislature basically management control. So, that's sort of an example of a local boulder policy that is sort of ahead of its time. But inclusionary housing is now a very common tool… Very common. …that people all over the country are using.

[9:07] So, we always like to share that, like, back to the basics, some of the definitions that we use in this space to make sure we're on the same page and how we're talking about some of these foundational items. So, affordable housing, when we're talking about housing that is affordable for households, it means that a household is paying no more than one-third of its income on housing. It's like the one-third rule, the 30% rule, it's kind of like the guiding How we guide and determine what is and what isn't affordable for households. permanently affordable housing, in Boulder has a specific definition, and it means that units, both rental units and homeownership units in the city, have a deed restriction that protects its affordability in perpetuity. And then AMI, area median income, like it or not, it's everywhere in the memo, and it's everywhere in this presentation, just means half at that 100% AMI, it means half of the households make less, half of the households make more than that, and in 2025, the area median income for a household of 3 was…

[10:11] $135,000, just about $135,000. You've also seen this chart from me. This is a… we feel like this is a useful way to kind of identify the problem, the problem that we're trying to solve. So this graph… graph shows over the course between 2010 and 2025, three data points. The… what the AMI has been during that time period, what the median price of an attached home has been during that period, and what the median price of an detached home. So we can see from this data Area median income… area median income at AMI has stayed pretty stagnant over time, whereas the price of homes has really skyrocketed, especially in certain… in recent years. So the problem where we're trying to solve is how to make sure that people in this area median income and below are able to afford to live here when prices like this in the market. Roughly, what price home would that $135

[11:11] I'll get you. About $540,000. Let me show you a slide here. Yeah, there's… okay. I will point out, it is interesting how, you know, on the free market, the yellow and blue, the price of a detached home has gone up proportionally much higher than that of condos. In Boulder, and that's something I've seen, too. So… This is a wonderful segue to this next slide, actually. So, one of the things we wanted to offer in this memo is, like, a point-in-time look at the residential real estate market to give us a sense of, like, what is the homeownership market actually look like? So we chose this date, we gathered MLS data from the state. So this graph shows the blue dots. Each dot is a house on the market on this date. The blue dots are attached homes.

[12:02] And the yellow dots are detached homes, so, like, those single unit or single-family units. And then the red dashes indicate what is, like, a general affordability for a middle-income household. So… so what you were identifying before, these detached homes, these single-unit homes, are just… broadly unaffordable for middle-income households. Those houses… like, there's more house… there were more houses on this date that were being sold at $20 million and, like, something that would be available to a middle-income household. Does this data include deed-restricted housing, or is this all free market? Yes, it includes deed-restricted housing, and I don't know the number, I mean, it's probably, like. a handful of units. There have only been 2 or 3 that would have been available at that time, otherwise. Yeah. And I assume they're mostly attached. They're… yeah, maybe we can make that assumption, yeah. Sorry, go ahead. I was just gonna say, I am surprised that there's a fair amount between $200,000 and $400,000. I wasn't expecting to see that. Yeah, so that's the other… I think, so, like, we look at detached homes, it's like, oh my gosh, it feels like a lost cause sometimes.

[13:09] When you look at the attached home prices, there's… there's units that are available and affordable, to a whole range of incomes. For the… in the city. So that's interesting, but we also want to name the… like, the tension here is, like, those units do exist, but it doesn't mean that every household will be able to choose those units, even if they're available and affordable to them. So we want to just name that the choices for the house… making household choice, making decisions to purchase a household are different for different groups, and this is kind of the road with a lot of this middle-income homeownership, a conundrum in the city. Like, the choices for a family with young… when you look at that graph, the choice for a family with young kids that graph looks… that graph looks a lot different than maybe if you're a young professional living in the city, or if you are an older adult couple living in the city. Like, those choices just look different. And so, when we think about middle-income buyers in the city, there's often… they're often faced with this choice, whether to compromise.

[14:17] With the type of housing that they're able to purchase in the city, to… to get, you know, get the amenities of living in the city, the urban life, you know, all the things that you get to, get when you live in Boulder, or to exit the city to get the housing unit you want, but you compromise on the, those amenities living in the city. I think we should also consider, because I have looked at a lot of these, to buy the 200 to 400 or 500 attached homes also have HOA fees. They're almost all in HOAs, so that's, like, a financial factor that's not reflected in the sale price. But when you look at the monthly payment, you know, it's not just a mortgage payment on a $300,000 condo.

[15:00] It's also an extra $500 a month for the HOA. So, that's a $500, it's not necessarily reflected in the DVAC shows. Yeah, I would say… I mean, detached homes have all kinds of expenses associated with them, besides the situation, so I could probably… But I think it's something we should factor in, that the price, the monthly payment, is probably higher than just a, you know, a $300,000 single-family house, and… freely or something like that. Yeah, I think especially when you're looking at what, a household can, like, qualify to purchase. Like, the single-family house in Greeley doesn't come with an HOA that's big, right? Like, those expenses are… The same price home in Boulder is a quarter of the size, and it has big HOAs. Yes, yes. So… so that's kind of just, like, a brief overview of the ownership market. The other thing we wanted to point out here is… so Dr. Cogg, we're using this, regional needs assess… Housing Needs Assessment from Dr. Cogg.

[16:07] And, they did a 10-year gap to identify the shortage of housing units within the city. And in that assessment, they found that we're, over the next 10 years, we'll be short about 3,500 total for-sale homes within the city. And the gap for that 80% to 120% AMI, that middle-income slice, is about 700 homes. Just offering this is, like, to get our hands wrapped around the scale of, kind of, that shortage. Would you mind going back a couple slides to the famous graph that we've all seen? Oh, yeah. That one. So… One thing I would be curious to know is if the 2010 data point, there's a ratio between the blue line and the red line. Yes. And how does that ratio change between 2010 and 2025? Would be…

[17:07] Really informative, because, what we… what you see, you know, just the… just the… the reaction is that there's a… the gap is bigger over here, and so that's worse. But if it's a linear relationship, usually, you know, it's like two and a half times your income or something like that for what's affordable for most people, you know, as a rule of thumb. Like… how does that ratio change over time would be? Because, because honestly, it… It's hard to tell, just looking at it, which… Which way it goes? Which one… which one… which ratio's higher? Yeah, I mean, it's very possible. It looks like it's maybe $210 for an attached. And then it's… it ends at 540, whereas it's, like, maybe 580 to 1275, so they've both basically doubled.

[18:00] The other comment, and this is just… this is just kind of wishing to be inverse a little bit, but It would be interesting to… superimpose the cost of construction onto this graph. Have a right hand, Y-axis that, you know, it's like cross, square foot, price per square foot. You'd be overthinking this one, Philip. I like it, though. It's very possible, though, like, has this changed much different from, like, national or statewide trends? I mean, obviously, real estate here is more expensive, but, like, it's doubled from 2010 to 2025. Is that reflected elsewhere as well? I don't know. I mean, general trends, everything's been up, right? But I don't know if the, like, the… those ratios that we're talking about are…

[19:01] It depends what part of the country you're in, right? So, whether or not there's been significant growth, or… But I would say along the Front Range. Or, you know, in the mountain towns, it's very similar, and it's probably even more pronounced. But if you go, you know, farther east in Colorado, it's not gonna be good for that. I mean, the main message we're just trying to get across is that incomes are not keeping up with the cost coverage of that. The ratio at the beginning there between the AMI and the detached home, if you take that same ratio, bring it over to 2025, it'd be $625,000. So, that ratio has increased quite a bit, at least for the detached homes. I didn't understand the numbers you just used, the 600… Compared to 2010 and 2025? Between 2010 to 2025, there's a ratio between the AMI and the price of the Datch phone. That same ratio if you bring it in.

[20:03] to the $135,000, that gets you about $620, I think it's $625 or $650. It looks like income's coming up, like, 20%, and… housing prices have doubled 100%. Right. What is $625 mean? That same ratio that you had… You're saying the ratio is 625? I'm sorry? You're saying the ratio is 6.25? If it was the same ratio, then a single-family home would be valued at $625,000. Oh, I see. Actually, that's sort of right. I don't… I don't believe it. I think what would be an interesting, adjustment to this graph would be, like, ratio interesting, but what the purchasing power for a household in 2010 looks like, what that same purchasing power would look like now, and I think that would give a better sense of, like. those choices that people are able to make. Yeah.

[21:02] I'm sorry, the calculation I was doing was the change in the AMI. It didn't go up that much, yeah, from 2010. So I might suggest that we hold off on questions till the end, because otherwise that might be all nice. If you don't mind. Unless there's a really burning, clarifying question. Okay, so now we'll talk about the rental, just quickly talk about the rental market. So the rental market in Boulder is… is just much different from that ownership market. So for this, you know, there's not a good, like, point-in-time source for the rental market, so we're hitting on that Dr. Cogg data. To identify the rental gaps within the city, especially looking over the next 10 years. So when we use that Dr. Cogg data, we find… we see that the largest rental gaps in the city are those units that are affordable to households earning under 50%

[22:02] In that 10-year time period, overall, we'll have a shortage of about 6,000 rental homes in the city, and almost 4,600 of those homes are rental homes for households earning up to 50% EMI. So, that's just a pretty big number. The study also kind of showed abundant rental options for middle-income households, and we wanted to point out, and we pointed it out in the memo as well, that these findings that Dr. Cogg presents have been consistent with previous needs assessments that we've done in the city. We did one a few years ago, consistent with that big data, and then all the way back up, I think, until since, like. 10 years ago, in 2016. So the findings are consistent. The other thing we want to We wanted to… highlight here is that this AMI range of 0 to 50% has really been the focus of our program.

[23:02] The affordable program. And we want… we provided this graph of the area median income of affordable housing renters to kind of highlight this, like, who we're actually serving in our current program. So if we look at the AMI of renters in our program, the majority of the renters are earning less than 30% of the AMI. So, we see this gap, it's like, we see this gap, we hear it, we're trying… that's what we're working towards. With, the resources that we have in the city. Okay, so now we'll just, quickly talk about well, maybe not that quick, but we'll talk about the housing policy interventions that the city has put in place over, over those, you know, several decades. So we'll do a discussion of supply-side interventions, demand-side interventions, and then, just some highlights and innovations of our current program.

[24:02] So first… first thing we'll discuss are supply-side housing inter… supply-side housing interventions. So, simply put, supply-side interventions, we're just trying to figure out ways to build more homes, increase that supply of homes within the city. We've done this, several ways, zoning… recent zoning reforms, especially Inclusionary Housing Program, encourages the building of affordable units. Several waves of ADU deregulation over the years. height and density bonuses, developers using low-income housing tax credits within the city, and then the city's undertaking, like, several ways of streamlining permitting process. processes, but the number… kind of the number one thing we wanted to highlight in terms of supply-side intervention is our local housing trust fund, or our affordable housing fund. So, our Affordable Housing Fund is the workhorse of our affordable housing program in the city.

[25:01] These local funding sources really drive affordable housing investments and that unit creation within the city. So this graph offers a picture of our program's funding sources between the years of 2015 and 2025, so that… About the last 10 years. About half of our program's funds come from cash-in-loop contributions from Our inclusionary housing program. We also have other impact fees, property taxes, and short-term rental taxes. For our local… our local funds. So excluding that 13% federal, federal chunk, those local funds that we've brought in the past 10 years, equals, $142 million. So, some real money here. And then… those local funds really do matter in how we… how we, operate in the city. So it helps fund, Funding supports a wide variety of housing types, and supports the homes to be geographically dispersed throughout the city. So this map offers

[26:08] a view… a picture of, the units, affordable housing units within the city. The darker colors indicate, more units, you know, denser unit count. Lighter numbers, not… fewer units, and we can see that they're scattered throughout the city. So, you know, whether you know it or not, and there's affordable housing units probably within your neighborhood somewhere, and it's Affordable housing is really just, like, a… Core, like, social and physical infrastructure within our city. And we use our local fundings for… it's a primary source for ownership, affordable ownership acquisitions. There's no, federal funding. For those affordable ownership projects, and then gap funding for partners as well.

[27:00] And overall, we want to celebrate that we're… the way we're using those funds, those local funds, we're outperforming our inclusionary housing requirement. So, our program, Inclusionary Housing Program, requires that 25% of new residential development to be permanently affordable. And in the past 10 years or so, every 100 new homes built, 37 of them have been permanently portable. So our totals in the city right now, we have over 4,300 permanently affordable homes in the city. That means that you can't see it in the picture, but it's 8.9% of all homes in the city are permanently affordable. We have a goal of 15% by 2035, so we're inching up there. And then this graph is just… serves two functions. One, this… all this data lives on our affordable housing dashboard, We have a very comprehensive dashboard that tracks all of our… all sorts of different indicators for these units. And then it also shows our unit count, how the… our unit… our home… homes count has increased over time, and kind of what types of

[28:10] Tenure types, whether it's home ownership in the yellow, or rental units in the blue. what we've been adding to our portfolio over time. Does the dashboard have any projection data that lets you kind of see into the future what's coming down the site? Yeah. That's what your crystal ball is for. I mean, it's known, right? Even if it's not easily easy to put up on a dashboard. You could project it, but, you know, so many factors go into it, it's like, it all depends on the economy, so… How many private units are being built? What's the percentage under the… 8.9. Yeah. All right, so next we'll chat about, demand-side housing interventions. So, you know, supply side, figuring out ways to build, build supply.

[29:09] build more homes, demand side, how we're helping households, how we're supporting people, to find housing options in the city and to maintain their housing options once we have them. So, again, a variety of ways that the city does it. Housing choice vouchers, rent subsidies. The one under the text there says property tax relief, income supports, where we'll hear an example of that here today, it sounds like. And then we have a robust emergency rental assistance and tenant protection program. But one… we wanted to highlight, two of our homebuyer assistance programs, here today. And again, I believe… I believe I've shown you this data before, but the slide has slightly changed since I've been here last. So, we wanted to highlight our down payment assistance program. So, our house-to-home ownership, our H2O program, it's a down payment assistance, it's a typical shared appreciation loan structure, nothing creative.

[30:07] Mortgage lenders are familiar with the structure, as are a lot of consumers. The city has a… the initial capital invested by the city is $730,000, but it's revolved… it's a revolving loan, so the evergreen fund nature of this loan has Allowed the city to serve 94 households. And again, behind that little… that little box, the total loan amount we've been able to, to, to give out is, $3.2 million. So it's really… it's a very popular, it's been well-received, a down payment assistance, tool in the city. And then, of course, our affordable home ownership program. As of, 2026, the end of 2025, we have 836 permanently affordable homes. Homes are sold at below market rate, the affordability covenant limits that resale value over time, and

[31:04] We've expanded the scope of this program. It is now a regional affordable homeownership program, which means that we've expanded it to several of our neighboring cities, so we're kind of looking at more of a regional The regional program there. And yes, okay. Some of this is going to be repeats since the last time I was here, but I, we'll… we'll say it again. So, in 20… 2020, 5, we surveyed the, residents of affordable homeownership units to, you know, not just gauge their satisfaction. We do it every 5 to 7 years. you know, to measure the program, to identify pain points, to kind of get some feedback on… to hear how things are going. And in that survey in 2025, we found that 85% of homeowners would be repeat purchasers, so it's a, pretty popular and pretty well-received program. And HOAs just continue to be the biggest pain point.

[32:04] for the program. So we found that during this survey, there were fewer special assessments, but higher monthly HOA fees. And I was just thinking, you mentioned HOA is, like, for any market unit, like, we don't have any, control study over what, what the market would look like in terms of, like, HOA is probably the biggest pain point. Most people's… the housing that we're looking at, Those attached… those attached purchases. I think also HOA fees tend to go up for… as buildings get older, because they need to spend more. So people are looking at the older units with higher back-end price. Okay, so now we wanted to, just call out some highlights of our program and different innovations that we've been looking at. So one of the biggest highlights is, just the importance of the partnerships that we have with Especially nonprofit organizations.

[33:01] So, 74% of all of the affordable rental units, rental homes in the city, were developed by a non-profit organization. Just to highlight this, so last year, we added 186 units, 186 affordable homes in the city, and 173 of those were developed and are now managed by Boulder Housing Partners. So we obviously couldn't do, do a lot of this without our partners. And then the city, the city, uses those local funds to provide GAAP funding for… for the development that comes to this. And then, the other thing I want to highlight is just the community support that, this work has received over the years. So, a lot of information on this page, or on this, on this, slide, so I'll just highlight a few things, though. The city has… a city, county, and state has decided to tax themselves to support affordable housing. So that comes across in, you know, this… this county affordable attainable housing tax that was recently passed and through Proposition 123.

[34:13] And then City Council has broadly supported, these local impact fees, to… to help, you know, through the residential impact fee revolutionary housing updates most recently. So just… this is just to reflect that broad support that we've received from the community as a whole that's been, Very powerful for the program. So the other… one of the other highlights, or I'd say innovations that we wanted to highlight is our middle-income scattered site acquisition program. So in this program, homes are purchased on the market, rehabbed, and then sold at a below market rate. And affordability, same affordability covenant as all other affordable units, are placed on those homes to limit the resale value

[35:03] So far, we've acquired 20 homes through this program, and we've found that it's the most cost-effective way to add new affordable ownership homes in the city. So, per unit subsidy for these acquisitions. is $90,000 to $180,000, depending on the size and type and all sorts of other, factors. And we've received, we are receiving funding from Proposition 123 from DOLA, To, expand this program within the city, and to make it kind of a regional scope as well. These are detached homes? These are… Attached. Well, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, yeah, whatever we can find. I think most typically they are attached. It shows, yeah. There are a few, we have… I think we might be able to acquire some detached homes in the outlying communities. Just because their price points are a little bit lower.

[36:03] You said you guys are acquiring properties outside the city? Yes, it's under a regional… our regional housing partnership. We have a regional affordable homeownership compliance program that we've established to To do this. Why is Boulder promoting affordable housing outside of Boulder? We're not… oh, did you say we're rebuilding it? Well, it's like it's… I mean, it sounds like we're buying properties outside the city. We're hoping to facilitate it. So we did get a grant from the county. That helps peer for a staff person. Do that work? So it takes a bit of time to actually purchase the home, rehab it, and sell it. So, from our perspective, if we're helping somebody in the region, we're helping Boulder's affordable housing issues. Yeah, I guess there's just a question arises because it is subsidized with older taxpayer dollars, unless I'm keeping it separate. Yeah, the regional acquisitions are not supposed to be separate. It's state, state funding, okay.

[37:06] Yeah. Okay, oh, listen, you're already there. Okay, so, and then, of course, Boulder Mod. You've all been there. It's a great, great example of an innovation, a space. It's really the next frontier in the city's affordable ownership portfolio, so the goal of… our goal is to have the factory Put out 25 to 30 affordable homes per year, which will kind of significantly increase our, affordable homeownership base over time. And just to mention here that it is this great partnership between the City, the Boulder Valley School District, and Habitat… Flatirons Habitat for Humanity to make… to make this work. Okay, and then… I can't… I can't go anywhere in the city without talking about the Bloomberg-Harvard City Leadership Innovation Track, so… So we… the city participated, several city staff participated in this innovation track, in 2025, and…

[38:11] the, you know, in this track, we were kind of brought along this really intentional, public path to public innovation, and the focus of the program was affordable and attainable housing. So since the program ended, we are… Jay and I continue to, to kind of pull on some threads, pull on some programs that… some ideas that were identified through this track to see if we can actually get something started here, through some of those innovations that were identified. And I think… I like to think that we've kind of, like, kind of ingrained some of that innovation Methodology into how we're kind of looking at this problem. And then, in terms of the next steps here, I think in next steps, we're just seeking for continued… seeking continued support for, policies and work that expand housing choices to those households that are currently priced out of the market.

[39:10] So we've listed a few items here that we think are particularly helpful. Continuing zoning reforms to help increase that Increase that supply. Prioritize deep subsidies for acute rental gaps. Refining and expanding down payment assistance program. This is a, like I said, a very well-received program. We're just trying to find out ways… figure out ways to make it better. And then maintaining support for inclusionary housing, like spoken before, inclusionary housing is a very powerful tool we have in the city for this work, so that support is, super important. And then, sustaining support for those innovations, Yeah, we're trying to always be innovative and take new approaches in this space, and just that sustained support for those innovations is super helpful.

[40:05] That's all I know. Good question. Boulder Mod, do you all have any data yet on cost per unit and other benefits of the program? Almost. Okay. Getting so close. What was that first year that's so expensive? What percent of the city's affordable housing budget is allocated to rentals versus the permanently affordable ownership? I don't know. Yeah, we don't really allocate based on tenure, so it's… we're really much more opportunistic. So, if an opportunity comes about. If we pursue it. The challenge is that, yeah, ownership just doesn't have the same, sort of. Benefits that rental projects have, in terms of tax credit deals.

[41:01] state funding, so we have to be a lot more careful about how we subsidize those, because the subsidy is significantly higher, typically. I guess, are you able to tell me what percent of affordable units are Rentals versus, The website, or the dashboard content? Number 3200, rentals versus 800 plus ownership. I think it's, like, yeah, about 25% ownership rate. This is a little bit lower. Yeah. That's a good question. It's on the dashboard, I know exactly where it is, I know what the chart looks like, I just don't know what that is. I have a question kind of related to that. Can you go back to slide 14, I think? So I'm just… I'm curious, because if you just, like, kind of glance at it, it's…

[42:05] Seems pretty obvious that it… up until 2013, there was definitely more homeowner as… compared to rental. What else was happening Then, like, or I guess it's more 2014 is where the shift is. I'm just curious, is there… policy that changed? Theoretically, community needs that changed? Like, was there something that happened then? Great estimation. Yeah. That's part of it, yeah. It's part of it, but the market shifted dramatically. So after the housing bubble of, basically 2008, Very few people were building ownership throughout the country. It's not unique to Boulder, this is sort of a national trend. And then we started getting, sort of, a significant shift to rentals.

[43:00] post-2008. I mean, there was a bit of a lag there, but it happened. So that was… that was the great thing about when we started the program back in 2000. we were getting quite a few ownership units, because places like Holliday, right, or Northfield Commons, we had 5 big annexations, and we were able to require ownership units. So, and we just… the annexations we get now are pretty small. So, that's part of the story. Do you foresee that shifting again? Like, with recent community surveys and such, where the… Hopes, dreams, and desires. So you're talking about what people want versus what the market is believing. I am talking about something different now, yes. I don't think it's changed. Well, actually, I remember when I first started at Boulder, came across a memo where our city council was complaining that we had too many ownership units and not enough rentals. And typically, the market fluctuates back and forth. I would say I was expecting it to fluctuate back to ownership sooner.

[44:07] But I think the economics of it have changed dramatically, so that building ownership, it's just, for a lot of developers, I would say it's more attractive to build rental. I think it's also, like, if you think about the type of units that are usually built for ownership, even if they're attached, they're often, like, townhomes. Whereas a lot of the affordable housing in Boulder for rentals has been, like, big apartment blocks. And I think in those apartments, you can just build more housing units on each square foot of land than you can if you're building, you know, townhouses. So… So it just pencils out different… Yeah, I think it's just, if you… you know, that's how, sort of, design is, but if we're looking at acquiring a piece of land, we can probably put in more affordable rental units there than we can affordable home ownership units, and therefore serve more people. That's just my… I mean, there's nothing stopping you from creating, like, an apartment-style housing that's owned, but that's just not…

[45:10] something that people buy. If it's affordable, you're talking permanently affordable, you're talking? Well, that's the challenge. There isn't the state or federal funding. There isn't low-income housing tax credits for affordable ownership. you can get it for rentals. Right. So that's… yeah. And I think that the affordable rentals probably serve a much broader, diverse part of the community. I mean, it serves the poorest of the poor up to middle-income people, whereas when you look at, like, the permanently affordable homeownership. it's not available to the poorest of the poor. It's a much smaller slice of that demographic, so I think there's more flexibility in terms of who can be served by Affordable rental units.

[46:01] That's a really good point. Can we touch really quick on the distribution of AMIs for renters? Yeah. Which one's that? It is. slide down. So… a huge percentage is at that 0-30% AMI. The only thing that's going to serve those is vouchers from the housing authority. What's the strategy there? Is the city interested in actually subsidizing all the way down to 0-30% AMI? What are your thoughts there? A couple things, so, so part of our strategy is to invest when… when it's… When the development is occurring. At the beginning. So, like, several of the more recent BHP projects have had committed AMIs.

[47:01] Like, between 40% and 60%. Yeah. So they're not… they're not just coming in and saying we're doing a 60% project. So we're investing more per unit. But are you going down to 20% AMI? We're not going down to 20, I think 40… well, we've had some 30s as well. So, 30 to 60. And then you're… and then you're correct, the vouchers… You can't… that's the other piece of the puzzle. We do have a local voucher program, and that's targeted, towards people coming out of homelessness. Funded by the city? Funded by the city. It's about a million dollars a year. And that's… that's for a specific population of unhoused individuals that often aren't able to get a voucher. for some other red tape reason. Our seniors, if there is also some of those vouchers. Yes,

[48:00] Yeah, I don't remember the percentage, but about unhoused people are seniors, and so we're getting unhoused as well. Oh, we… you're correct, we can't do without the vouchers. We actually need both of those levers to be able to… and I think BHP's, average renter makes 28% of the AMI. I mean, that's staggering. It is. Are you question anything else? Debated whether it should be that. I was wrong, by the way. I was hoping I would see the updated stats on ADUs. Oh, Lisa's gonna come in April. Oh, okay. That's your everything. I'm excited. Do you happen to know which way it's going? I don't know what ADUs? Okay. There's a ridiculous number of ADUs, but wow, that's so good. You're gonna like it.

[49:03] Well, I think this is a worthwhile investment. I mean, we live in one of the richest places in America. And the fact that we use our money to focus mostly on lowest-income people, I think that reflects positive values in our community. I'd encourage the city to keep doing that. I'm not so persuaded that the affordable home ownership, you know, where there's a limited pot of dollars, I do think spending it on this Is the best way to maximize The most amount of people that we can help. Can I make one more comment about the… Yeah, the data. Can you go back, like, I think it's one slide, actually. Two slides. One more. So… That yellow cloud of dots. You know, honestly, I feel like… and the slide before, there's an aspect of it where it's like.

[50:04] There's no path to affordability through single-family detached homes. That ship has sailed, let's just let it sail. And let's focus on the blue cloud of dots. If those blue dots don't have enough of the right kind of types, let's figure out how to make more of the right kind of types. But, you know, this narrative that somehow the problem is worse because detached family homes are never going to be affordable. it's… it's just… it sort of conflates… the narrative with other narratives, and so I just kind of would prefer to just, like. Let that ship sail, and if, you know, because one of the problems is that people are still wringing their hands over, oh my gosh, these detached home desks, they're still getting more expensive, and the… That's the only thing that families want, so… I agree, I agree with Bill on this. Oh, that's the narrative. No, but I agree with you completely as someone who's… I'm 35, and a lot of my friends are looking at home ownership, and it's like, you basically have two options. You can buy a condo in Boulder, or you can leave Boulder and move out somewhere else and buy a house.

[51:12] And that's a lifestyle decision. You know, I can live in a one-bedroom condo here, or I can move to Greeley and buy a big house. And I have to make a decision about where I want to live. There's no reasonable way for us to make single family home ownership affordable, or at least not in an equitable way. You can subsidize it for one person, and then thousands of other people don't get in on it. Well, I would also just… I would also point out that it's heavily subsidized already by the way we restrict development, right? So. The city's sitting on billions of dollars of development rights that… that could… increase the value of those properties incredibly, you know. Anyways, so your point is, we should be more explicit about how single-family homes

[52:00] That ship, that ship has sailed. And then that focuses the conversation on attached. Yeah, I mean, I just don't want people wringing their hands anymore over… over things that make single-family homes more expensive. I mean, they're already heavily subsidized, and they're gonna… they're just under… they're… in my opinion, they're way undervalued, so… We can't, like, why… We can't change items, yeah. But I don't think the government should be funneling taxpayer dollars into making a single-family home affordable, when it could take that same amount of money and make four homes affordable that are attached, and just serve more people. And if someone wants an affordable single-family home. the answer is it's… you don't live in a city like Boulder. I mean, Boulder looks different than Greenland, for a reason. It's… it's just developed differently. And I think that's… that's just reality. Sorry, Lauren. Part of changing it, that stigma of rentals, too. Like. Because… like, Chip, you can afford a rental in Boulder, right? Like… I do. Yeah. I live in a two-bedroom, two-bath rental. I couldn't afford to buy something, even attached, like…

[53:12] But… It… rental has a stigma associated with it, right? And so. I don't know, but like you said, we're not changing attitudes here. Well, maybe it's also looking at the different product type. can also… help. There is a question, like, if, you know, the city wants to buy a million… $1.5 million ranch house and make it affordable, that's probably not a good use of money when you can take that 1.5 and build multiple apartment units for many more people, and that's, I think. I understand people are out there, constituents are out there complaining, saying, we need more affordable single-family homes. The reality is, I just don't see an efficient way for the government to deliver on that. And the objective in building affordable housing should be to serve the most amount of people possible, so the focus should be on attached units.

[54:11] Thanks, Jay. That's super helpful. Yeah, so any suggestions or thoughts that you have? How to present the information. Do it better. Would be greatly appreciated. We have all these other slides that have 5. But that would take all my… And I'm here for it, too. Anything else before we… I have a question in the presentation. Are there any, Leased purchase programs? Like, can you… can the developer use LIHTC funding? Nope. Well… I thought there was a… Not in Colorado, not in Colorado. Okay, okay.

[55:07] Yeah. We talked about it a little bit, but we haven't made… Huge preference on it, but maybe… maybe not something to share with you in a while. You know, the lease… the lease to buy it was a… one of our innovation strategies, in the Bloomberg work, we, like, prototyped this with a few different groups to see if, like, if we could and how we could. Yeah. And, it didn't go very far. So, and I don't remember the… the big, the biggest, problems of it, but… Something that we considered, but… States too. I just, I was just saying, other states do actually incentivize that.

[56:01] program where it's a LIHTC for 15 years and then converts to homeownership, but outside of… it's outside of Colorado. Yeah, Utah does it. Utah… I've called one of these programs to get the details of it, yeah. Yeah, not allowed by chat. Nobody was using it, that's why Chad got rid of it, just a couple years ago, actually. Oh, really? Yeah. Interesting. Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. When do you present next to our dance person? Bring to the planning board first, on Tuesday. So, Jay, are any of the board members able to write individually? the City Council on their opinions. They shared tonight. Absolutely.

[57:00] I mean, not as a group, because that would take you… that would take a whole process, but as individuals, they may want to hear from you. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you. Yeah. All right. I'll see you next month. I don't know if we really will, but we could see you. Probably. Alright, so next up, elevate folder. Good news. Yeah. And we'll introduce these two, even though Tiffany doesn't need any introduction. Is it okay if I stay here, or do I need to? And then I've got a PowerPoint to share. So thanks for having us here this evening. I'm Elizabeth Crowe, I've met some of you before. I work with this team at Housing and Human Services a little more on the human services side, so we don't interact much here.

[58:00] Or I don't have. But really glad to be here, and thank you for your work. So I wanted to take an opportunity this evening, to talk to you a little bit about Elevate Boulder, which is the city's greatest income program, and kind of like Holly, I'll give you a shout-out as you want somebody. A little bit of a test run, so we've got… been talking about this program and implementing this program for several years now, and now that we have data, to really share about the results. You can cross-cut it in a lot of different ways, including by using the results to look and see how guaranteed income actually very specifically impacted housing security in Boulder. So that's what, that's what we're going to talk about here. We've also got Tiffany Ballard here, of course. who, among many other things that Tiffany does when she's not working with HAB, is being really a key lead on our Elevate Boulder City staff team. So Tiffany's been with this

[59:04] Project from the very beginning and still, and we'll, be here to just kind of help share a little bit about storytelling aspects of the program and how we engage with participants. And then we also have Shannon here, who, was a guaranteed income participant with LA Boulder, who will just share her own personal story at the end, so… Thank you very much for the information. So similar to what Jay shared, if you have, like, a, hey, what do you mean by that on the slide? Feel free to holler out, otherwise we'll kind of go through, turn it over to Tiffany to speak, we'll hear from Sham, and then open it up for discussion. Oops, if I'm on the slide… there we go. So, community need, as you were just seeing, the statistics, and you've seen them before, around 1 in 4 city residents really struggles to make ends meet. They may be in various places in our, kind of, our low-income… among our low-income population, but around 25% really have a hard time living here. And when we say struggle to make ends meet, having a very hard time getting all the food that they need in order to be fed and healthy.

[60:18] Being able to pay rent, or a mortgage payment, utilities without assistance, being able to afford childcare, healthcare. all of the basic needs. One of the other challenges, of course, we have, and we were just hinting at that in our earlier presentation, is that a lot of our community members in that population are really stuck there. Very hard to kind of get ahead. Even after you've been able to, to do better, and making basic ends, meeting your basic needs. And so, of the many interventions that the city already has, we were really looking at guaranteed income, which is unrestricted, unconditional direct cash assistance, to be able to… as an additional intervention.

[61:08] And this, guaranteed income, can unrestricted funds, so they go directly to the community member, not, we're going to pay your landlord for you, or we're going to take care of this bill, but we are going to give you some money, for a period of time, so that you can do with it what you need to do. It's been tested and proven as a strategy the world over, and since 2019, there's been kind of a wave of guaranteed income projects, both piloted and now more permanent, in the U.S. And so we are… we were not the first, community by far in the country since 2019, to run a pilot project and keep it going. But we are one of On the wave, nonetheless. And so the reason that we, again, wanted to have this program was to really focus on improving the quality of life for our low-income community members. What we mean by that is not only, again, kind of the ability to meet basic needs.

[62:14] But the ability for economic mobility and financial stability. Increase mental health and overall wellness, which so many programs have shown to be really significant. Look at the… basically the social contract that we have as a city government with the community members we live with. how can we use programs like this to try to increase the trust? When we have a better understanding and trust community members to do what they need to do, does that come back in a more trusting relationship back to government? And then we're also, you know, longer term, hoping that with economic mobility and financial stability, we just have fewer community members who will need that emergency assistance over and over and over again. That trend has been going up so dramatically, over the years, and is going up now.

[63:12] So when we put the program in place, we were looking, and hoping that on the immediate level, and maybe not day one, but at least within the first, you know, six, eight months, we would see participants, better able to meet their basic needs, have decreased debt, or a reduction in the need to take on additional debt. Decreased stress, worry, anxiety. We also really designed the program to really focus on dignity, so that even for people who applied and were not selected, we wanted them to feel like it was accessible. It was easy, and they felt dignified just through that process. And then, in the intermediate sense, we're looking then at things like improved financial stability through increased savings. You've probably heard the statistic that, people who… low-income

[64:04] Low-income folks who have at least $400 in the savings account are much better able to withstand a financial shock. That will otherwise require them to, Go for more emergency assistance and the like. improve mental well-being, and then improve feelings of self-determination. The feeling like, you know, everything might not be okay for the rest of my life, but I feel like I can see some opportunities, and I can take some of those opportunities. And we look at guaranteed income as something that really hits on so many different, kind of criteria of what we want our community to look like, and what we'd like our interventions to look like. We spend a lot of time, and it's well-placed, and investments. focusing on helping people, out of… out of situations where they're really out of their options. And we were talking earlier about, the efforts that the city makes to take, for example, people who are unsheltered and homeless, and get them to that place where they're doing well.

[65:14] Guaranteed income can help with that. It's also really successful as a preventative, intervention, holistic, again, dignified, collaborative in that it, is required and, by necessity, I would say, but also by our desire to be a really collaborative process with partner agencies and community… community-centered. We used, Utilized a community task force made up of people who are… are low-income and experiencing other disparities and having a really hard time finding that footing to get economically mobile and financially stable, to help design what this project would look like. And so the criteria look like this. In order to be eligible to apply and potentially be selected, through a lottery process for the project, you had to be 18 years old, between 30% and 60% area median income. You had to live in the city of Boulder, probably, obviously.

[66:18] And because the city used $3 billion in American Rescue Plan Act funding to launch the pilot, because those were COVID relief funds, we also required folks to just check that box and say, yes, I was COVID-impacted. Everybody was. But again, that was a tie-back to, how we were able to use the ARPA funds, to launch the project. And then, what we provided was $500 per month, provided in two payments per month, so that it kind of resembled a paycheck. For 2 years, there were no requirements. It was unrestricted, unconditional. However, we did provide financial coaching information, frequently throughout the program to people who wanted it.

[67:05] And, so 200, community members were served through this pilot project, receiving $500 per month. The evaluation results, so we… did evaluation in a few different ways. We contracted with the Omni Institute, to conduct kind of more of the scientific and statistical evaluation. We offered to participants a small, you know, the opportunity to participate was totally their choice in this evaluation process. Around 75% of participants did choose to participate, which is a very, very high percentage. They took a baseline survey at the point of enrollment, so before they were receiving any funds at all. And then another survey at the 8-month. Period, and then a final survey at the 20-month period, and people who completed those two,

[68:04] The second and third survey received an incentive, you know, a gift card, $10, $15, $20 for their time. And then the Omni, consultants also conducted, focus groups, so brought people together who wanted to, to just share a little bit more of their stories. And overall, so we've got a great report that kind of provides all the statistical details, but hopefully to no surprise to this group, respondents were really better able to afford their basic needs. Quite dramatic changes at the 8-month mark that sustained throughout the rest of the program in the areas of food security, housing security, mental health, very dramatic improvements. And, and around a third also noted that they were able to take advantage of educational advancement, went back to college, went back to school, job training, explored different career paths, and they credited Elevate Boulder for making that happen. What we hear most often

[69:16] Most consistently from participants is… just… and again, I think we all know it when we've experienced it, like, having a little break, if I'm not literally worried every day about having to pay rent and feed my family and myself and my family. I have breathing space. If I know these funds are coming, not just for kind of one time, but over two years, now I can really think about, are there things I can do to try to change my situation? That's not everybody's situation. Sometimes you try, and life comes at you. But just that breathing space ended up opening some doors, that… that a lot of participants were able to walk through. There are a couple of areas around childcare and healthcare expenses where there was a change, but it wasn't as dramatic as the others. We mostly look at that and say, all right, if your, you know, child care costs for one kid can be up to $20,000,

[70:17] Unsubsidized, there are wait lists for child care. People have enormous amounts of medical debt, and so because there wasn't as dramatic a change in those areas. that's not a surprise. It's not really a surprise. On average, the kind of change factor from savings and debt was very dramatic and useful and helpful for many participants, however, the statistics are a little tricky in how they showed up in the evaluation, because there were some pretty major outliers. So people that came into the program with a lot of depth. they were able to really get at that debt. At the same time, we had people, as you'll hear later on, who are now homeowners, right? And so, kind of, if you look at the numbers, if you're not renting, you know, you're not showing a lot of debt. Once you're a homeowner, you're paying down that… it changes the ratio a bit.

[71:17] So again, we heard in a lot of the stories and testimonies some really dramatic changes, although if you look at statistics, it doesn't show up that way. And then, just want to focus on some of the data sets that really, kind of lift up how guaranteed income can help with housing security. So, these next few charts are pulled from the final evaluation report, and, you know, one of the things that we looked at was, for example, for food security, survey questions focus on not just, are you food secure, are you insecure, now are you, now how are you? But asking participants questions like, how often do you go hungry? How often

[72:07] Do you skip meals? How often do you kind of go without? There are different ways of measuring food security. And there are different ways of measuring housing security. So some of the questions were, what is your, how are you experiencing housing affordability challenges? And this chart kind of shows a compilation of a different… a couple of different questions that, included how are you challenged by paying rent or your mortgage on time, paying it in full. how are you doing at paying your utility bills in full? There are a number of different, questions that kind of roll up here, and what the chart shows is that From the baseline level, to the 20-month period, they're, 8%

[73:07] No, I have these in my notes, and I should have brought them up on the screen, because I always get mixed up. There were 18% over time. There are fewer people who experienced a housing affordability challenge. Is what this chart shows. But, again, that was… they… they also have broken out by how many people… for how many people that change was affected by mortgage payments, rent payments, utilities, etc. And then, this is, again, a different kind of question, asked people how concerned they were. about, housing security in several different areas. So, for this one, from… this is the, kind of, final evaluation results. So, there's an 18% increase over time in participants saying, I'm not at all worried. about housing affordability from where they started in the program. There were 5% fewer overall who said they were extremely worried, 10% less very worried, so

[74:08] The higher the number on the right side and the lower the number on the left side means good things. Similarly, this is about, are you… how worried are you about rent increasing beyond your… your, affordability? And so there again, there was a drop in the extremely worried and very worried, and an increase on the somewhat, slightly, and not at all worried, which is… which is good. And then another question we looked at is, how concerned are you that you might be evicted in the next month? And this is where, again, we're seeing some really significant changes, and far fewer people who are extremely or very worried that they would be evicted. And, an increase in people who are not at all worried. And, some of you are really familiar, with our, all of the city's, services and investments, and

[75:03] Rental assistance, emergency rental assistance, financial assistance at preventing people from Kind of getting to that extremely worried point where they're… where they actually are being evicted, so this is also really significant. One other thing just to share here is that, in terms of the, kind of the prevention power of guaranteed income is, in the area of family homelessness prevention. We did have, among our participant cohort, around two-thirds of participants have children under 18 in the household, so that's most. Our families and kids. And that's one of our most, it's a more invisible population here in Boulder. We're talking about homelessness. There's a lot of attention on single adult individuals, and less so on families. They tend to be more hidden.

[76:00] They're either in cars if they're homeless, they're doubling up with 2 or 3 other families, but it's a very significant challenge in our community. And, guaranteed income is one of the interventions, called out in the recent, city homelessness strategy update. Because it can be that bridge to get from a crisis situation, to a much more secure… housing situation. So in general, even though Elevate Boulder did not look specifically at all of these different areas, for example, we did not look at, for Elevate Boulder. how… guaranteed income could help people, again, with healthcare expenses, or less utilization of an emergency health service, or recovery from an emergency or a disaster, meaning, like, a natural disaster. But we did look at, some of these other areas.

[77:02] And even for what we didn't study specifically for Elevate Boulder, there's very, very clear data, nationally and internationally on the power of guaranteed income to be able to affect all of these things. So, I'm gonna see here if, we also did… if Tiffany wants to share a little bit about our storytelling activities to complement the data. Sure, so we partnered with several, community storytellers, including the Modus theater, as well as other artists. within the community, we put out a request for, proposals to assist our participants in telling their stories about the program in multiple different ways. We had opportunities to participate at Moda State. Excuse me. At Lotus theater, doing, a live dialogue. We had, photo opportunities where participants would take pictures, directed by some of our storytellers,

[78:07] And how to capture some of the things that most affected them during the program. We had, podcasts and video participants. The… that recorded, several stories and things like that. We also had, written stories, that were shared. We have a webpage with all of the videos and photos, on the city website that you can go and see. We also have an exhibit right now at the Boulder Main Library on the ramp. It goes up. It has all of our photos, as well as quotes from our participants. Just kind of showing and expressing different ways that this program affected them, whether it was being able to provide their child with their very first birthday party, or…

[79:03] Getting braces for their kids, eating better food, paying off medical debt, the… experiences that our participants had in this program were incredibly vast. And hearing them and hearing people, share, the things that, affected them is really moving, and really… Gives you something that you can relate to on a variety of levels, because everyone has had one of these experiences that people share. the MODIS theater was something that was extremely, impactful to our community, and I really loved being able to see that. I encourage… I'm pretty sure we have the link on our… Not yet. Not yet. It's a two-hour performance, so we're gonna kind of splice it up a little, splice it up. That one was very moving, very,

[80:01] Very wonderful, especially Don Leo, Third from the right. Very great to listen to him. But being able to tell the stories provided the qualitative aspects to our program, because not everything can be captured with data points, and being able to see the effect on individual lives. was best presented by the participants. So that was, probably one of the biggest projects of the program that was Supported through Elevate. It's being able to see Everybody's stories. Yeah, and just adding on to the, some of the stories we heard that were not captured in the data. Still relate to housing security and… They're in a home environment where people were sharing. They're able to, for example, one family is, like, the first thing we did was purchase a stove.

[81:01] A family with 4 or 5 kids, who'd been without any way to cook for their family for a long time. went out and purchased a stove. You can't do that with your SNAP benefits or Medicaid. As critical as those programs are. That's something that can only really happen if you say, we trust you to get what you need. And the families that we need a stove. And now we have a functioning kitchen in our home, and now we can cook. We're spending less money on food, and it's better food. And so, just as one example of how this kind of intervention can add on. There are also people who made repairs to their homes that they could not have afforded otherwise. So, go ahead. 200 people were selected for this program. How many people applied? Around 1,300 applied. Wow. And some of those folks were not eligible. I mean, they… even though we said you gotta live in the city of Boulder, there were people who applied from way outside the city of Boulder. So the number of eligible applicants was a little lower than that, but a lot of people applied.

[82:17] And, So our… I'll say this really quickly, and then pass it over to… to Shannon. But where we are right now is that the pilot phase of the project concluded in December of 30… on December 31st. That's when the final payment of the two-year timeframe took place. And right now, we're working on Raising funds externally, so that we can have more of a city, community, public-private partnership, to continue it. Moving ahead, we would not have a program with a $3 million every 2 years. Price tag. We are looking at… Trying to raise to… raise and allocate to about a $1.4 million, program to continue to serve around 100 community members for every cohort.

[83:08] And some of the changes we have talked about making are keeping the 60% AMI ceiling, but dropping the floor to create a little bit more access for folks. There's some reasons why we did… well. there obviously were reasons why we chose 30% to 60% AMI, which I'm happy to talk to, but that's one change that would probably take place moving forward, is that we… Basically, I think it's zero complexity. Nope, nope. The vast majority of participants were employed. It was upwards of 80-some percent. Who did you select? Just out of curiosity. It was a random… It was a lottery, yeah. Me, our evaluation provider, did a random selection. But yeah, most… and of course, that's the truth about many low-income community members, if you're working age, and can be, you know, don't have a disability, that would prevent you from… vast majority of people are working or trying to, and that was the case with Elevate. So over 80% were working, and that number did not change over the course of time.

[84:14] We did have some people who were able to kind of quit their third job in order with this kind of funding, to be able to spend more time with kids and, again, explore some other options and that sort of thing. Want to go ahead? Alright, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna slightly change, just so everybody else, so people aren't cranking my mics. But yeah, I mean, I would say everything that Elizabeth had on that slide, as far as, like, the positive outcomes is… I'm just like, yep, yep, true, true. just, I mean, a little bit about me, you know, I was working, and my husband works, like, we're both college-educated, like, we're both working. We have 3 kids in Boulder, though, and that really, like, makes it tough to, meet your basic needs, because it also involves, you know, renting a 3-bedroom

[85:04] apartment, you know? So, we were spending… at one time, it was 86% of my take-home pay was going to just rent. Just rent. And, you know, you have to go to the grocery store, like, with, like, your calculator running, basically. And, I would say, yeah, the biggest immediate thing, because I was, I was also curious how many people applied for it, because, you know, I was also relying on food banks at the time. Just to, you know, make sure that we had enough groceries. And I would see, like, at EFA and at Harvest of Hope, they had the page up. I'm like, oh, there's gonna be so many people applying for that. And I really didn't think I was gonna get it, and I was really, like, I remember where I was sitting, like, when I got the email that I got it, and, like, my husband was like, because I screamed, but he's like, what happened? And I'm like, you know? And, the very first thing you mentioned, like, the birthday party, that was me in the… in the survey.

[86:02] the very first payment that I got was, January of 2024, and that was the… First, oh, my son turned… 10, like, that month. And he had always asked me, like, every time, can I have a birthday party? Can I have my friends? You know, and it's just like, you know, pretty much any question that started with, hey, mom, can I? It's like, no. Like, it's just a no, out the gate. And it was really the first time he asked, like, the question came around, like, can I have a birthday party? And I'm just like. maybe you can, you know? Let me, like… let me sit down and, like, run those numbers, because we might be able to, and… and we were able to. like… And I was, like… I was really, like, so, just pleased to be able to give them that opportunity. What else? Like, I… with the way that my situation was work-wise, when we qualified, and I'm actually glad there… it's a 60% AMI, because

[87:02] We had been in a situation, I don't know how many of you are familiar with the term the cliff effect. So the cliff effect is when, you are getting some sort of assistance, but you make just a little bit too much, and, like, all of that assistance gets taken away. And for our housing situation, we had been on a waitlist for quite some time for the, the Family Self-Sufficiency Program. to be able to get into a unit, it's near… it's, like, near the Mapleton YMCA, and there's a ceiling there, and that ceiling for a family of five is $75,000. And we were under that for, you know, the year and change that we were on the waitlist for it. And, then, you know, I just didn't think it was ever gonna, you know. our time was ever gonna come up, right? And my husband was offered a promotion. And, like, right after he was offered the promotion, they're like, guess what?

[88:00] you're, we have a unit for you. We have a 3-bedroom unit for you. And we actually had to have the conversation of, like, are we gonna… Decline your promotion. are we gonna get affordable housing? Because we were paying, like, market rate rental. So, it's like, that's… I know that's a discussion that a lot of people have, and a lot of them opt to, forego a raise or a promotion to be able to remain eligible for housing, because at the end of the day, the math works out in diminishing your own, Job opportunities. And that was a choice that we decided not to take. Because it's like, well, you know, where are we gonna be, like, you know, you know. like, not taking an opportunity in order to be able to afford a rental. Just… let's just do it. And that's… that's kind of what I would say is… one of the advantages of how I would describe Elevate was that it was a dignified off-ramp, because, like, we, we were able to accept opportunities. When I was, accepted for Elevate,

[89:12] I… I had had a full-time job, but it was really just… wrecking my health. And it got to a point, months before it even came open, that I just, like, I can't… I can't do this anymore. Like, I'm, you know, chronic insomnia, just stewing in stress, like, working, you know, 20 hours of mandatory unpaid overtime a week, I can't do this anymore. So, I quit that job, I went back to freelancing, and… I was under the 60… I was under the 60 AMI, like, for our household, when it came up, and… now, you know, by the time the program ended, I went from working two part-time jobs and freelancing to having one full-time job with a retirement plan and, with, you know, good health benefits, and

[90:03] I'm in much more stable housing, and this is also something I would bring up with the housing program. rentals, they're… yes, they… they benefit a lot of people, but they don't benefit the people who make more than 60% AMI. So there is that, like, I'm gonna just hunch down and stay under this ceiling so I don't lose my housing. So, if you do have these affordable homeowner programs, you know, they're not luxury units or anything, they're just enough. They're just enough. They're sufficient. For a family, and you can go from not knowing how much your payment's gonna be when your landlords raise it next year, because my rent went up every single year that I lived here, every single year, and… the Elevate Boulder program helped me to, like, just kind of get all of my paperwork in order, because yes, the eligibility process was pretty rigorous, right? Like, we need this, this, this, and this, and I'm like, man, if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, they're gonna know, like… my family's gonna know, like, where everything is, right?

[91:06] that… that encouraged me to just sit down and do the whole, affordable homeownership process, which is a ton of paperwork. It's… and if you have, like, 3 kids, and a full-time job, and your spouse… like, you… it requires… it's a time commitment as well. But, you know. I buckled down, I'm like, hey, I've already done most of the paperwork anyway, let's just, you know, put it into this. I got into one of those financial, what do you call it? Financial literacy classes, and kind of had some accountability buddies to be like, hey, my goal is that I'm gonna get this paperwork in, and I'm gonna do, like, all the certification process, and you're gonna hold me to it. And they did. And, you know, so now I have… I was able to accept a full-time job offer because I had that little extra money to be able to pay for after-school programs. Because when I went from working two part-time jobs, like, I was able to do pickups. And then I was told, hey, we're phasing out this part-time job, but we're, you know, we'd like to…

[92:04] offer you a full-time job, but you can't have your part-time job because we're phasing it out. So it was a… it was an all-or-nothing situation. I was like, okay, calculation, how much is that going to cost just to… I don't have anybody, you can pick up my kids from school, that's… But then I'm like, well, you know, I'm gonna take… 500 of this. 500 of it's gonna come from Elevate Boulder, and I can make up the rest. And my kids, you know, I was able to pay their after-school, their SAC at BVSD, and, take a full-time job. And so now I'm in an affordable unit, my rent's not going up every… every year like it was, and I know that, you know, when I… turn around and, you know, whatever turn in life will be, you know, if and when I leave Boulder, I'll be able to, you know. pass that unit on to somebody else who's in a similar situation. Something I'd like to add about the… the affordable, permanently affordable, we had a… the biggest hurdle to getting into that wasn't the paperwork, it wasn't the, you know.

[93:10] the certification, it wasn't the classes that you have to take. It was finding a unit That had 3 bedrooms. Like, a lot of those units, they're one bedroom, 2 bedrooms. And that's great for singles, that's great for maybe just couples with no kids, but for working families, that's really, really tough. So, you know, I would say if there's any kind of tweak that I would recommend to the Permanently Affordable Homeownership Program. 3-bedroom units. More three-bedroom units for families, because we, you know, we're buying our groceries in Boulder. That's tax revenue, that's back to Boulder. Our kids are going to BVSD, you know, which is helping to, you know. ameliorate the issues that they're having right now with falling enrollment. You know, so you're making it possible for families to be able to stay.

[94:01] Yeah, so… any… open to any questions, but that's, like, that's the broad view. Oh, and I would like to just, you know. Yay, shout out to, you know, my current employer. They actually have a tuition reimbursement program, so I got job training, you know, they train me up to get extra certification to get this job that I have now, and they have tuition reimbursement, and I start paralegal certification classes next Monday, so… so that's something else. Yeah, so I… it's… it really was a dignified off-ramp. It gave me 2 years to kind of figure it out, rather than, you know, 6-month recertification, like how it is with SNAP, Medicaid, TANF, any of those, you know, other public assistance programs. I don't have to go to… I haven't gone to a food bank since I got an Elevate Boulder. Like, I went and got a Costco membership, but… Yeah, so, you know, I felt like I was able to, kind of, Yeah, become a lot more self-sufficient. Thank you.

[95:00] Thank you for your comments, and thank you for coming to speak. I appreciate what you had to say about the three units. I can see where a one-bedroom or two-bedroom affordable apartment while it may be affordable, doesn't really work for a family with kids. And I think, to Philip's point, you know, we don't necessarily need big single-family houses for families, but you probably do need 3 bedrooms, so… That's something that, you know, Boulder Housing Partners in the city should keep in mind for families, is that I think families can live in apartments, but they probably do need 3 bedrooms. One other thing that I wanted to just, that came up when I was, like, looking at the slides that were presented earlier, and I asked those, I'm like, can I ask the question? And so maybe you can ask one later. The ones that were between, because we were looking, we were looking for market for anything, and we were basically, like, okay, we're gonna basic, you know, like, either Boulder Meadows or Vista Village, which are, like, the manufactured home communities, that's where we were looking, because that's what was in our budget. You can't get a loan.

[96:01] for… a unit that's older than 10 years old. And it's a private loan, it's not a mortgage loan, so it's 14%. It's 10-14% interest. Plus, there's the lot rents. The lot rents are, like, I think it's $1,100 now at Vista Village, and they raised it to over $1,000 at Boulder Meadows, so… You think HOAs hurt? Lot rents are even worse. And those are… the majority of the units that we were able to find that were 3 bedrooms were in the mobile home parks, so… I'm kind of wondering, like, how many of the ones that were under the $400,000 line were manufactured homes? Sometimes I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's, that's most of what we found that was under $400,000. Yeah. I might know the answer to that. Hi there, Eli Irkin. I use they, them pronouns. I'm the homeownership manager for the city. I helped pull those numbers, and that was direct, data from the MLS. So most mobile homes are not listed on the MLS, so they're…

[97:04] There might be a couple, but, maybe one or two in all of those numbers, so I don't believe any of those figures included mobile home data. For the vast majority. But I'm sure a lot of… most of those are one bedroom, or. Yeah, the under $400. immediately. Sorry, I look at this a lot. There's a lot of 2 bedrooms and a lot of 1-bedrooms under the 400 mark. I… zero three bedrooms under that 400 mark. Exactly. Yeah. Zero. Like, we looked, we were looking, you know. between here and Denver, like, where can we go live? Where can we live? Where can we live? It doesn't have to be affordable home, ownership, I'm not, you know, like, it doesn't have to be Boulder, like, it just has to be somewhere we can, like, find a 3-bedroom, and I would also say for anybody who is looking for, like, a 3-bedroom like… I was… I was… we were about to close, we were gonna offer on one place, and

[98:06] I just thought to look at, like, the sex offender registry in the area. And I was… stunned. And I went, never mind. Yeah. So, you know, that's… Boulder, inside of Boulder, it's… it's very, you know, I feel like… I feel like it's okay to let my kids, you know, go play outside and, you know, go outside, go outside, you know? Ride your bike home from school. It's fine, you know? And, that's not the same place everywhere that's, within our budget. Any other questions or comments, or just like Holly said, any feedback on things that you might… or others might be interested in? I know that it was unrestricted use, but I'm just curious with, like, post-program survey. what… and I know that there was a range of uses, but I'm just curious, was there

[99:04] Significantly more use used for… food, for housing? Great question. Great question. Yeah, so… couple of things. One is that other pilot… there are other pilot programs in the country, many of them, that really did a lot of deep research on how… exactly how people spent funds. That's easy to do, it's easy to see If you're… if you're allocating or kind of dispersing the funds out, like, through a… like, a debit card. Because you can just track with… de-identify, right? And just kind of see, like, how much went to food, gas, car insurance, you know, whatever. So, for Elevate, we gave people the option. They could either have a debit card, or a direct deposit. There are many people in the community who are on banks, or maybe they do have a bank account, but they just want the card.

[100:02] vice versa. So most participants, decided to have a direct deposit. We don't have a way of, kind of, doing that kind of surgical look to see how they spent the funds. But for those who had debit cards, we could. And the thing I would say about the… so we haven't kind of picked that, apart yet. It wasn't part of the Omni valuation, but we do have the data, to look and see, kind of, how the categories broke out. What we do know about, those debit card purchases is that more than 90%, I think it was actually around 94, 95, 96%, of the expenditures were literally within the City of Boulder. That includes ATM withdrawals, but also direct spending, which I will say, I wasn't surprised that the majority of expenditures were at businesses within the city.

[101:00] But 90-plus percent was great to see. And if you're withdrawing money from an ATM, you're probably spending it very close. And so, that was a great statistic. Nationally, what the data show, the Stanford Basic Income Lab is kind of one of the best, institutions that's done this nationally, national research, shows that the top is food. And that's what we heard most from participants as well. After that, it tends to be rent and utilities, and then transportation, and then kind of all the rest, healthcare, childcare, kind of other household household items. So that tracks with what we've heard anecdotally and what the kind of the evaluation research shows, and we do have the ability of going in and doing a little bit of a closer look to see how that played out, just with the debit card. Well, and I guess I would like to ask that question, and it… Doesn't really matter, because if you…

[102:00] I mean, besides the fact that that was how the program was structured, but if you're… if you use some money for this, then that means you have more money for this, so it's just reallocation. But also, I mean, like, with SNAP, you… SNAP is tax-exempt, but if you're spending something, like, you know, on daycare, or on, you know, toiletries, or whatever, and you're doing that within the city of Boulder, like, the city relies on local tax revenue. So, I mean, this… it's… it's coming… it's going back in its city where it came from. And I would say that's the same thing with housing. Like, if, you know, the closest grocery store to my house is, you know, or to my townhome is, you know, the safe way on… on baseline. So, you know, that's… that's where I'm gonna go if I, you know, realize I don't have any eggs, or whatever, so… You spend where you live. And, you know, if you have… if you're supporting, like, working families, I mean, that's, like, you know, multiple people rather than, like, one individual, also, yeah.

[103:04] I'm curious if there were any things that… went completely… The other direction, or anything that just was really weird. From… in terms of the participant experience, Or just about the process. I'll start with a response, and then Tiffany would love your thoughts here as well. The short answer is no. I mean, a lot went into it, and we had, when there are advantages to not being first, so you can kind of see and get the experience from other communities and organizations as to what worked well, or what they wish they'd done differently, and then we could just do the different thing. But we also, I think part of that was also, I mentioned earlier, a very collaborative approach, where we worked with everyone from older housing partners to I Have a Dream Foundation, and Rocky Mountain Equality, and EFA, and…

[104:06] All the different nonprofit organizations who serve this population, to be able to get the word out and help with the process so that it was really as easy and accessible as possible, and Shannon, you can… Feel free to disagree. That's one thing that we heard. almost… almost unanimously, is that participants just had a really easy time accessing it. And then, again, part of the… kind of the magic, I suppose, of having unrestricted funds is you're not constantly checking it, asking people to recertify it, you know? how are you doing now? How are you doing now? Prove, prove, prove. Which a lot of people who are with low income say is proving our… I have to prove my poverty over and over and over. And so just having that,

[105:02] Process where there are support resources available if you want them. A lot of people who are participants said it's not because we don't know how to budget. In fact, I would say we're pros at being able to budget, living with what we have. Already been through the financial literacy classes, already know how to budget, you just can't do any of those things with… if you don't have money. Yeah. But those resources were available to people who needed them. Well, thanks, and congratulations. Thank you. One thing that was great was… national story on Fox News. Oh, that's true. Where they sat around a table and… Talked about people not working, if they were getting… Yeah, about, yeah, $500 a month. Yeah. I would like to offer a critique, and I want to preface that with my impression is that our city staff is very smart, hardworking, and well-intentioned, and this is not at all a critique of you, but I don't think this is wise policy, and I don't think it's a good use of taxpayer dollars. I recognize this was a pilot program, but

[106:12] As a result, it basically operated as a lottery, where 1,300 people applied, and 200 people won $12,000. And that's not an equitable way to distribute money in our community, especially taxpayer dollars that everyone has chipped into. So that's concern number one. I think second, when the government releases funds, it should be pegged towards something. It shouldn't be unrestricted. you know, I looked into this, and I did see some of these stories, and I have no doubt this made a huge difference for many of the participants, yourself included. But there were stories, and there were people using the money to buy Icon Passes for their kids. Looks like someone bought a bicycle. And to the political point, you know, that's the sort of stuff that critics and political critics are gonna lash onto. This was $3 million in Biden-era ARPA money.

[107:10] And, I mean, it definitely gives fuel for the argument that the money was not well spent, when you see how people could use it in so many different ways. I'm sure many people used it for very good meritorious stuff, but anytime a taxpayer dollar can be used by drugs, alcohol, or anything like that, it's gonna raise a lot of political concerns in the community. This is $3 million, 2.4 was given out to random people. We have… an affordability crisis in this country, and I think this was intention to help those 200 people with that, and it did. I think in order to address this affordability crisis, we need massive reforms to our health insurance system, to, you know, our financial system, our education system. Unfortunately, there's only so much the city of Boulder can do to tackle a lot

[108:05] Are those big picture issues. I think one thing Boulder can do is… deal with housing prices. That's something that we are more uniquely positioned to do as a municipality than deal with food prices, for example. And I think the City of Boulder has done a wonderful job in allocating resources to low-income and permanently affordable housing, and I would encourage the city to take all the resources it spends on programs like this. Because we have really smart, good work… good staff. and directed towards putting more affordable units in our community. And I think that's a much more important priority than You know, universal basic income. I appreciate the feedback. I think a couple of… ways in which we approach this is it's not, as we know from all of our interventions, it's not just one thing, it's lots. We…

[109:03] Support just with various forms of financial assistance in many different ways, including, kind of, financial assistance for a range of basic needs. emergency rent, programs like Keep Families Housed, which are, you know, up to 3… 3 months of… of support, all conditional, again. that all… nobody's in the city is suggesting that any of that goes away. This adding on is a way to help address… families address the whole range, of economic challenges that they're facing. I think one of the other things, because we thought about that a lot in even wondering if we were going to do a program like this. One of the areas we also looked at is what the cost of implementing programs is as well. And I think it's getting worse at the federal level, because, like.

[110:00] heard a presentation today on Medicare, or Medicaid, and having to recertify, like, every 6 months, and having staff to be able to prove… hire staff to prove that people are working. Every 6 months. And, you know, all those… we're creating this infrastructure of… of people to implement programs, and I think a lot of that is going to the infrastructure instead of You know, actually directly to the support of the individual's need. Yeah, I think this was, something to try out of, let's not have a lot of that infrastructure. And just, you know, put the money out there. So it was… it was… it was a different approach to what we've, you know, traditionally done. As a Boulder taxpayer, I would just say $3 million went to this. I would have rather seen $300,000 go to all roads to maintain the bed levels for the homeless. But our coach covered that.

[111:00] We did… well, go ahead. I'm sorry. I was just curious, like, since… because with the… the funds came from ARPA, is my understanding, so not from the City of Boulder. Right, yeah, they were federal funds, but they're… they are tech… it is… it's all taxpayer money. Yeah. Mr. Thank you. Tiffany, sorry, anything you wanted to add? No, I didn't experience anything that was, kind of an anomaly. I mean, several people would write in and say, I got this job opportunity outside of the state, and they withdraw it from the program. Because I had a great opportunity to go, or they bought houses outside of… the area. We had one person who, you know, moved out of Boulder, like, two months before the program ended, and they were like, we're excited, we had all this money, you know, to use to move out, and now we're able to support ourselves. And, you know, you think about $500 a month, and how…

[112:09] little that is to some people, and how it's life-changing now, like I said, I think… not… not having to prove your poverty, not having to… people didn't have to contact us for 2 years if they didn't want to. They continued to get their payments, like, those are things that made people feel like I can survive. Like, there's not a whole lot we can do about major policies and things like that, but we can provide people money. to survive in our community, and I think that was the biggest thing that It's very encouraging. How was that dollar amount decided? And is that what other programs nationally… Like the 500 a month? Yeah, we looked a lot at, just nationally, at different 500 a month at the time, so we were making these kind of design decisions in 2023. And one thing that influenced

[113:10] The conversation a lot was the… what at the time was the brand new, self-sufficiency standard report from the Colorado Center for Law and Policy, which is not just a look at how many people are kind of in poverty, but what it takes to To address the gap between where benefits cut off, not just, like, who's getting benefits, but what that gap is between Where you don't have access… the benefit cliff, where you don't have access to those things, and what it takes to… to be sufficient. And we looked at other pilots, and their range from, you know, $300 a month $500 a month. Some are 1 year, some are 18 months, some are 2 years, some are more.

[114:00] And then we had a community task force, of community members, 9 community members, and a host of nonprofit agencies that we consulted with to kind of put it all in the hopper. And because we… Ultimately, we picked $500 a month for 200 people. More money per month is what most people would have wanted. to be able to do, but then that would have reduced the number of people who could have gotten in, and, you know, so that's kind of where the balance shook out. 500 is pretty common nationally in that it can help people it's enough to make a difference, but if you do have, like, now my SNAP benefits got cut $20, I'm still $480 a month to the good. Like, there's just… it gets… can better get people ahead without, without kind of creating a more steep cliff. Yeah, no, and I think that if the site… if I remember correctly, the study that you're citing, for a family of five, it was like, you have to make

[115:10] it was, like, $160,000 a year in Boulder County to be, like, economically self-sufficient. And you can have, like, two adults working full-time and Fall short of that for a family of five. So, and for SNAP, By the way, my job is I work SNAP and Medicaid. For a family of five for SNAP, I believe it's $65,000 a year for a family of 5. So there's a… there's a lot of people between that $100 and… 60 a year, and $65,000 a year for a family of 5. But for, you know, it's even less for… for smaller families. But I just… I just want to say, like, thank you. I mean, thanks to Boulder, thanks to the folks who designed this program.

[116:02] Thanks for, like, all of, like, even the critique, it's, it's, it's valid, and, you know, I just… I appreciate having the opportunity to… to be a part of of an experiment like this. It's like, that's so cool. Just even, you know, not even the money, but it was like, that's just really interesting to be able to have the opportunity to participate in an experiment, like a social experiment that lasted 2 years, and I felt like… It really, left my entire household in a much better situation because of it. Thank you for coming. Thanks for having us. Anything else, you guys? Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for coming and sharing your story. Yeah. Have some more food. Thanks, Emily, for being a part of it, also. I didn't know you did other stuff besides hanging out with customers. Tiffany has to hang up, you guys jump.

[117:04] Alright. Add member quarterly update. Did you get a seat? I did. Nothing? Do you have any comments, suggestions, anything? Are we voting on it tonight? I'd sure like to, because I'd like to get on the list. I have no objections. We need to be unanimous. I'm ready to vote, yes. Great, do you want to… There needs to be four votes for 4. Sweet. Philip is all excited, he's like, we have so much power tonight. I'm gonna make a motion to guess? Perfect. Awesome. You have the votes. You have to vote. Oh, yeah, I have a vote. Sorry, I'm so excited. I'm so excited. Okay, so yes, everybody in favor? Anybody above? Approved, great, so I'm gonna all… My name on the list.

[118:10] Okay. Work plan review. Did you guys get a chance to look at this? A couple of things I wanted to, highlight is… the Boulder Valley Comp Plan Update. So that we'll have a update in March, and then have time to do, kind of, like, a… Study session, or work session, or discussion. So, I think… we should… so we'll… sorry, will we have something in June to review before then, so we could come with, kind of, thoughts? The public draft is going to be available on March 3rd? March 3rd, okay. That'll be fine. Digested, read the whole link. Okay. And then, yeah, so that's how we set aside the entire… just to focus just on our next one.

[119:06] Can you send out a link when it's available? Yes. And we'll, I mean, and we'll send you the… there'll be a memo that will go with it to provide a little bit of context for you. But that won't be until a week before, but I will send it to you once. Okay, thank you. And you're gonna see… Hopefully, you're gonna see it everywhere. Headline in Boulder. Alright, great. Then, April Boulder Housing Partners Overview and ADU update. April, May, we don't have anything slated yet, but June, we'll do a HAB Retreat, and we're gonna do it at the Wild Sage Clousing Community, so we can do a little tour, walk around the neighborhood, and talk about holiday and how

[120:03] Awesome it is. And we'll have our, new board members then, too, so we'll be able to do some… And then I'd like to push a note on the bottom, but, senior citizens slash older adults, I talk to my parents about this, and they prefer senior citizens over older adults. They did not like older adults, and they feel like they worked very hard in life to earn their status as senior citizens and get They're cheap tickets at the movies, their Medicare, all that stuff. But, you can take it up with Eden, who runs the, A1 West Center. But I think that's… that's an important demographic, and it's not one that we've… You know, we've really focused on all that much. And then, I know… Will Holly come back? Is she getting tired of us? I mean, that's a couple months away. Okay. And then I'd also pitch in on… I know there was some hesitance in the past, and we'll see we have new board members, but maybe if we do a panel on homelessness, and just learn more about that, put it back on the radar. Cool.

[121:16] Because I do think that's a posing an issue. Anybody want to add anything else specific to this list right now? Hopefully we'll generate some stuff? Do we want to kind of tentatively… plan for the older adults in July, we're already planning on that so far, but I do agree, I think it's a good topic. For May, because we don't have anything slated then. Or May. I think it's also… another angle that people don't talk much about, because I guess it's sort of sensitive, is, like. as… seniors transition maybe into, like, assisted living or whatever, or different types of housing that frees up housing stock for other people. You know, it's… it's not just a senior issue, it kind of has a broader effect, and there is sort of a glut of housing of, you know, older people who bought back when it was cheap sitting on their homes, so I just think being able to understand that aging and housing

[122:21] As an issue, it's helpful. I haven't really formed many opinions on it. Does, from the Harbor Bloomberg thing, the house sharing… concept? Is that… do you think there's gonna be any sort of… For now. Pilot program that's doing, like. specific to home sharing? Matchmaking, or something like that? It's kind of like this. Actually, Philip, during the meeting last week. Yeah, there was a, stakeholders meeting for this concept, here in this building, with the

[123:01] I forgot their name. Colorado Sunshine? Colorado Sunshine, HomeShare, and various other constituents. Well, let's see, what, I guess what I would say about that is, it opened For me, a better, richer understanding of the landscape of the various challenges of, In particular, helping match elderly… older adults with younger people. Meaning it's not as simple as it sounds? It's… there's just a lot of… The landscape is complicated, so parts of the landscape are just as simple as it sounds, but then there's other things going on in terms of, you know, older adults are declining in health, and they may have, they may have increasing amounts of need for help, and so having, you know, kind of matching that

[124:06] expectations in place and understanding who's gonna do what and all that sort of thing is, it's really important. The nonprofit that came, Colorado Sunshine, they take, an approach that's very much like a social work-centric intake, intensive… matching intensive. We help you through the whole process, every step of the way, intensive approach. And, that kind of approach is very hands-on, requires a lot of staff, and it's very expensive. I would say that even if Boulder went full-on into that kind of most hands-on, expensive most. When you compare that to the cost per new door of building new affordable housing.

[125:01] it's still, like, an order of magnitude cheaper, and, you know, less expensive. So, I think it's worth doing, even if… if it's… if it's the, you know, kind of, Social worker intensive model. But that said, there ought to be another whole sweet spot of where it's sort of just, like, it's a matching service online. People can figure out what their needs for themselves are, and, find matches with just a little bit of scaffolding. And if it's done right, I think, it… It should be able to just triage. For… for the cases where… where it's… where the system basically says, you're probably not a good… Profile for doing this on your own without some kind of, hands-on support. So, That… that was educational for me, just kind of thinking… thinking through some of those challenges. Probably the most depressing

[126:02] Moment of the… of the thing was seeing their numbers of how many matches they've, put together in their own nonprofit, which is, like, 42. And that's… that's in the Denver metro area. So, again, it's a very intensive, hands-on… they're super proud of all those matches. They're great matches, and they're… But… but how to get it to scale up to, like, some kind of small percentage of all the empty bedrooms in Boulder, it's, That's next level. Philip might be starting an underground posturing website. Roommates are a tricky thing. I knew when I was in school, I knew if you could go on Silver Nest to match with older people, and… Yeah, I mean, it can be… there's sort of just varying expectations. What role… are you going to be a caretaker for this person, or are you going to be just a roommate? And that requires, you know, a serious vetting process and relationship between the people to make sure it's a match, and…

[127:08] like any roommate, but I think particularly in that situation. So it's sort of… that's part of the infrastructure, yeah, that takes time and money. But there are… from the Bloomberg work, there's also… we did a lot of focus groups with older adults on specific ideas that came up, you know, because I think there's this push to, like, well, we have all these Seniors, older adults, and, you know, living by themselves in these big houses. how do we make way for, you know, the next generation? And, talked about reverse mortgages, all these other things, and it was really interesting, the pushback that we got. Older… so many older adults were like. Our goal is to stay in our house as long as we possibly can. Don't try to force us out.

[128:05] Interesting. All right, well, it'll be… So that'll be part of the conversation, but I think Lily and Eden, so Eden, you know, they have… she manages a group of folks that are caseworkers that basically support older adults in Boulder through the age well centers. And they're embarking on this sort of, effort. in a page well city strategy for Boulder. Like, how do you design a city? For older people, older adults, because… Seniors? Or seniors? Because it's the same needs as, you know, younger adults or people with disabilities. It's like, the city would benefit… everybody benefits when it's more accessible. And how do you do that specifically? Yeah, my parents are basically living, like, a college life right now, where they, like, travel and, like, drink during the weeknights, and I'm like, what's going on here? Like, they're texting me late at night, and I'm like, these are New Zealand. I'm like, I have work. So…

[129:06] there's some benefits, I guess, to being a senior citizen, if you play it right, and I think what you're saying is it's sort of similar to, like, college students sometimes, in that regard. Yeah, we just have matters from staff real quick. Do you have matters? I don't, unless you guys have anything for me. I wanted to share an experience with you guys, and I can make it quick, since it sounds like you're… Okay. Well, I went down to the Capitol yesterday, my state rep, probably your state rep, too, invited me. To testify in support of a bill that she was sponsoring, and I testified in the House Judiciary Committee. And I learned that testifying at the Capitol on legislation that's pending is very accessible and open to the public.

[130:02] Basically, you don't need to be invited, anyone can do it. And I think everyone in this room is probably civically minded, and I'd encourage you to look into that, because I found it to be an interesting experience in being able to participate in our democracy. And as it relates to what we do here, I think I mentioned this last week, or last month, but I think we should all do a more active effort of inviting people to come to public comment. And just offer their positions. You know, when you meet someone in the community who has opinions on housing or anything, tell them, come to public comment, we would love to hear from you. I think that's good for us, it's good for them, and it leads to more, you know, civically-minded, responsive government. So, that's something we should all make a goal of ours, is to get public commenters in here. I think there's a lot we can learn.

[131:00] That's a good idea. Okay, any other… Final anythings? Alright, well, what was going on up there? I don't know, somebody's out the window. Oh, is somebody trying to get in the building? Okay, well, I'll make a motion to adjourn. Second. All in favor? Are you sure? Do we have to vote on that? Motion approved. Thank you. I guess if someone's, like, in the middle of arguing…