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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes - Affordable Housing Committee - 10/22/2019October 22, 2019, SoBu Affordable Housing Committee Minutes- APPROVED Page 1 Approved on December 3, 2019 AFFORDABLE HOUSING COMMITTEE October 22, 10:00 AM, City Hall, Champlain Room Members attending: Leslie Black-Plumeau, Paula DeMichele, Sandy Dooley, Michael Simoneau (10:17 a.m. arrival), and John Simson Members absent: Tom Bailey, Todd Rawlings, Cindy Reid Guests: Monica Ostby (PC liaison), Patrick O’Brien and Robin Jeffers of S.D. Ireland Company (arrived about 10:40) AGENDA 1. Call to order, emergency procedure, agenda review, comments from guests 2. Review and approval of minutes of 09/10/19 &10/08/2019 committee meetings 3. Event Announcements: (a) Larry Michaels: Celebration of his Life, Saturday, October 26th, 2:00-5:00 p.m., Hotel Vermont, Cherry Street, Burlington (b) Domestic Violence Forum, Wednesday, October 30th, 5:30 – 8:00 p.m., Tuttle Middle School, Dorset Street, South Burlington 4. Chair’s Comments: including update re Planning Commission 5. Promoting the need for more affordable housing in SoBu—develop plan in support of Paula’s proposal 6. (at 11:00) Patrick O’Brien discusses South Village’s Density Bonus with Committee 7. Update on housing land priority identification project work – Mike & Tom 8. (if time) Review 2020 Work Plan to schedule Committee work 9. (if time) Reports and updates by committee members 10. Adjourn 1. Call to order, emergency procedure, agenda review, comments from guests: As of 10:07 a.m. committee was still without a quorum. John reviewed the exit procedures. Members present decided to defer consideration of minutes until a quorum was present. Monica left to obtain information from City Planning & Zoning staff on fees paid by developers. As there were no guests at that time, there were no public comments. 2. Review and approval of minutes of 09/10/19 and 10/08/19 committee meetings: This item was initially deferred until a time at which a quorum was present. In the end, because presentation, discussion, and action regarding agenda item 6 lasted until meeting end time, no action was taken on the minutes. 3. Event Announcements: (a) Larry Michaels: Celebration of his Life, Saturday, October 26th, 2:00-5:00 p.m., Hotel Vermont, Cherry Street, Burlington (b) Domestic Violence Forum, Wednesday, October 30th, 5:30 – 8:00 p.m., Tuttle Middle School, Dorset Street, South Burlington: John encouraged members present to attend both events. Paula indicated she planned to attend both. Sandy shared that she had attended the 10/17/19 Domestic Violence Forum and, though attendance was low, the presentations were informative and passionate. She plans to attend the Larry Michaels Celebration. 4. Chair’s Comments: including update re Planning Commission: John shared that he and Sandy have been communicating with Monica regarding the amount of fees developers pay per unit when building a development in SoBu. Monica’s understanding is that these fees total $25,000 per unit. The question in her mind is: which is more advantageous to the developer—waiving fees or increasing the maximum income a household can have and remain eligible to purchase an Inclusionary unit. John and Sandy are unaware of any combination of SoBu fees that would come close to $25,000 per unit. Correspondence from Amy Demetrowitz of CHT shows that CHT paid $2,279 per unit for Impact fees for the Garden Apartments now being constructed on Market Street. Burlington waives Impact fees for Inclusionary units but waives 100% of the Impact Fees only for units whose maximum household income level is 50% of AMI for the family size. Also in BTV, when the maximum household income for an Inclusionary unit is 70% or 80% of AMI, the developer receives a 25% discount on Impact fees. Mike Simoneau joined the meeting during this discussion (10:17 a.m.) thereby October 22, 2019, SoBu Affordable Housing Committee Minutes- APPROVED Page 2 producing a quorum for the meeting. He mentioned the desire on the part of some Planning Commissioners to have the responsibility for building Inclusionary housing spread more broadly over the City’s population and/or business entities; for example; a fee imposed on all development, including commercial development. Mention was also made of TDR committee’s consideration of having commercial zoning districts be the only receiving districts for TDRs. Their research identified four municipalities with TDR regulations that operate this way. Members re-iterated their intention to pursue having fees waived as this was included in a motion passed at the 10/08/19 committee meeting. Members decided to delay any further discussion of fees until Monica reports on information she obtains from Planning & Zoning department staff. 5. Promoting the need for more affordable housing in SoBu—develop plan in support of Paula’s proposal: Paula stated that impetus for her proposal came from committee’s past discussions of desire to develop funding base for affordable housing (e.g. 1/2¢ on property tax) and related need to build advocacy base for affordable housing. She sees her work on this as in the “bare beginning” stage. She has reviewed materials on how to do this successfully, which emphasize including real-life stories and what residents that don’t need affordable housing gain from having more affordable housing in their community. Leslie, who had not been present for earlier discussions of Paula’s proposal, indicated VHFA has information that will be useful to Paula in this work and, in addition, she has stories based on comments made by participants in the committee’s survey of SoBu City employees. Leslie will share this information with Paula. 6. Patrick O’Brien discusses South Village’s Density Bonus with Committee: Patrick O’Brien and Robin Jeffers joined the committee. Initial discussion focused on handout Patrick and Robin provided with heading “Goals To Remove Barriers to Building Affordable Housing”, with the following subheadings: “Remove Local Impact and Permit Fees”, “Modify Description of Units”, “Administer Program at the Local level, with no fees”, and “Expand Spectrum of Affordable Qualifying Homes.” They pointed out that building permits fees and impact fees are the same for market rate dwellings as for affordable units, and that market rate units have the advantage of being able to add the fees charged by the City to construct units to the sales prices, which is not available to affordable units as their retail price is fixed by formula, not market demand. This is the rationale for request to remove local impact and permit fees for affordable units. Reducing Impact fees is something the committee proposed two years ago but stalled with City staff; the committee has recently decided to revisit advocating for these changes. With respect to SoBu’s LDRs, Patrick and Robin’s subheadings focused primarily on the existing “Density Bonus” regulations, not the regulations the committee is currently proposing to the Planning Commission. Patrick and Robin’s proposals regarding modifying description of the units are similar to what committee is proposing to the Planning Commission. Patrick and Robin have had a side conversation with Kevin Dorn about local administration of affordable units, who is open to the idea. Expanding the spectrum involves the question of whether City should provide resources for dwelling units, especially rental units, with prices that are already readily available in the private market. Monica returned to meeting at 10:47 a.m. She shared information she received regarding fees. There are many fees in addition to Impact fees but the total is not close to $25,000 per unit. Group engaged in long discussion of fees. Monica inquired of Patrick and Robin: if you had to choose between waiver of fees and increasing allowable household income from 80% of AMI to 100% of AMI, which would you choose? Patrick said it was a close call. Robin said she would choose increasing the allowable income from 80% to 100% of AMI. John indicated he would go back to the City Manager and Planning Director and seek 100% waiver of fees for Inclusionary units. Monica asked Patrick and Robin whether SoBu increases assessed value of land when owner received a permit for development. Robin responded that in SoBu assessed value of land is not increased until the developer receives a construction permit for the development. Discussion moved to Ireland Company’s work at South Village and their attempts to find a workable way to fulfill the requirement in their Master Plan to build affordable dwelling units. The Master Plan provides for total of 334 units, with 32 of them being affordable. They presented the plan for the development and four options for where to locate the affordable units in the development; three options would distribute the affordable units among the market units; one would locate all of the affordable units in one area, noting that all of these units would be duplexes and all would be home ownership. They also shared the views of the South Village October 22, 2019, SoBu Affordable Housing Committee Minutes- APPROVED Page 3 residents and that they would be going to the DRB on 11/05/19 seeking approval to move forward with one of the distribution options. Patrick and Robin are pleased that the committee’s proposal to the Planning Commission includes increasing the maximum household income permitted for purchasing an affordable unit in the Density Bonus section of the LDRs from 80% to 100% of AMI. They also suggested that the committee add to its proposal, at that evening’s Planning Commission meeting, that the policy proposed for the Transit Overlay District regarding relationship of affordable (inclusionary) unit size (square footage) to market unit size also be applied in the Density Bonus section of the LDRs. Committee members declined to agree to request this change because Planning Commission members, understandably, tend to have a negative response to being asked to change something with no notice (not because the committee members did not support this change). Patrick and Robin were encouraged to request this change themselves. Members and Monica also engaged in a discussion of pluses and minuses of having affordable units concentrated in one place or dispersed among the market units. Following discussion with Patrick O’Brien and Robin Jeffers, of the Ireland Company, about South Village, committee members passed the following motion. Sandy (Dooley) moved and Leslie (Black-Plumeau) seconded that the committee (1) supports the proposed addition of 28 affordable dwelling units to the South Village development off Spear Street; (2) supports all four options for distribution of the affordable units among the market units; and (3) notwithstanding support stated in (2) immediately preceding, prefers that the affordable units be dispersed among the market units over having all of the affordable units located in one area of South Village. Motion passed: 5-0-0. The intent is for John (Simson), committee chair, to communicate this motion to the DRB at or prior to its meeting on November 5, 2019. 7. Update on housing land priority identification project work – Mike & Tom: Due to lack of time deferred to a subsequent meeting. 8. Review 2020 Work Plan to schedule Committee work: Due to lack of time deferred to a subsequent meeting. 9. Reports and updates by committee members: Due to lack of time deferred to a subsequent meeting. 10. Adjourn: Shortly after 12 noon, members and guests departed without formal action to adjourn. Bike rack: ● 1/8/19 Emails to K. Dorn and D. Young to be completed by 1/24/19 City: DONE! ● Keep and address at 1/24/19 committee meeting. Work on Committee’s page on the City’s website ● Combine with item immediately above. (Quoted from January 23, 2018, meeting minutes) “John asked Mike to prepare a work plan for the committee to collaborate with Coralee to enhance its effectiveness in communicating with residents via the City’s website and via other means. The plan should include specific assignments to be carried out by identified committee members. Mike accepted this assignment.” Homework (not yet reported on): All bike rack tasks should include date of assignment and date for task completion.