Housing and Planning Committee Meeting Transcript – 03/11/2021 Title: City of Austin Channel: 6 - COAUS Recorded On: 3/11/2021 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 3/11/2021 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== Please note that the following transcript is for reference purposes and does not constitute the official record of actions taken during the meeting. For the official record of actions of the meeting, please refer to the Approved Minutes. [3:34:22 PM] -- about the speakers -- when will our speak per speaking today? >> That's right. Why don't we just take them. >> We can just take them first. >> All right. >> So I will call the meeting to order and we will hear from them. And then go from there. >> Okay. Well, thank you all. I will convene the meeting now. It is 3:34 P.M. I am Gregorio Casar chair of the housing and planning committee, joined here by vice chair Renteria, along with councilmembers kitchen and mayor pro tem, we are meeting virtually. So before we take the first item, why don't we have our speaker. >> >> Can you hear us, Ms. Joseph? >> Sure. >> Are you able to hear me? [3:35:23 PM] >> Yes, we can. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair, board members. I am sin focus I can't Joseph, I just want to make a few comments specifically to your agenda items. As it relates to item 2 which is specifically anti- displacement investments, I just have a question, if and when you get to the item if you speak to the $25 an hour that is on page 6 of 13. I would like to know how many hours, what the individuals are expected to do and what the deadline is for them to apply. Perhaps if you have a total estimate as to how much you anticipate paying each individual that would be helpful as well. >> I wanted to ask specifically as it relates to the anti-displacement investment if the equity office will be taken into consideration in rezoning, specifically referring to the blue line on Riverside and the reason is because the uprooted authors as you may be aware had a way, Elizabeth Mueller and [3:36:23 PM] jack Whitman, they actually penned an article in October 23, 2019 which was shortly after council rezoned that area and they basically said it was a flood approach along the east Riverside corridorness and I would like to know especially if you are actually going to take into consideration the gold line, even though that is not the locally preferred alternative, specifically, referring to Austin community college highland, so that development, which I certainly appreciate you sometimes mention that, you mentioned it the last week on March 4th, I want you to recognize that the developer in collaboration with the housing authority of the city of Austin, does not want lower than 80 percent area median family income there, and just passed a black austinite resolution, I just want to call to your attention that when you say 80 percent area median family income that actually excludes African Americans. It is approximately $54,700 for [3:37:28 PM] 80 percent median family income. Your report that was in the February 2021 packet for the minority chambers actually said that -- approximately 42,422 and hispanics earn about 50,332. So I just want you to recognize the district impact and while it is affordable housing and on a corridor, you still are not reaching the individuals that may be able to benefit from that area. As it relates to the area north of us 183, I am sure you are aware that as Farrell Rutland was on the Texas department of housing and community affairs agenda today and in the past, which I opposed, but I do want you to recognize that it may be helpful when you have items before the committee and also council to have a map overlay, you do have some in your backup materials, but it would be helpful to see the area median family income that is associated [3:38:28 PM] with the affordable housing and the type of project, and lastly I will just ask as it relates to your rent project which is item 3, if you can just share whether the relief of emergency means for tenants is specifically going to be another lottery drawing and if so what that deadline is and then for the vendors, this is my last comment, it is Ed win -- which is receiving additional funding and I just want you to be aware of that they continue to receive the funding but a African-American nonprofits have not received funding on par and so they are least likely to go to -- and so I just would ask you to keep that in mind. They helped with the lottery and also with the rent assistance too. If you have any questions I will gladly answer them at this time. Thank you for taking my comments. >> Thank you. We will certainly highlight some of the points or questions you mentioned as we go through the presentation. >> Thank you. >> Okay. So for item number one, we are [3:39:29 PM] approving the minutes from the last-minute and actually -- just to double check so can I get a motion to pass that. Motion by mayor pro tem and seconded by councilmember Renteria. And that is unanimous, everybody on the dais passing that item number one. So moving on to item number 2 which is a briefing regarding the anti-displacement funds in project connect. >> Good afternoon. My name is Erica lake, I am the development officer with the housing and planning department. We wanted to provide an update for where we are related to the project connect anti-displacement funding. Next slide. So we will cover the -- process the sequence of working with Austin transit partnership, the project connect sequence plan [3:40:30 PM] and also the most recent resolution regarding the anti-displacement funding. Next slide. So as you all know, as part of the contract with the voters there are -- were $300 million included from project connect tax revenues specifically for anti-displacement strategies, including acquiring real property for affordable housing. To be able to start to use those funds there are a few steps we need to take in the meantime. One of those includes creating an intralocal agreement or a grant agreement between Austin transit partnership and the city of Austin to implement those strategies. And staff is already working with the staff at Austin transit partnership to develop that [3:41:31 PM] planned agreement and we hope to bring it forward to the Austin transit partnership and Austin city council in the coming weeks. And then at the same time, staff from a number of different departments are working with community members and consultants to develop an equity assessment tool, so let's talk a little bit more about that. Next slide. So the interdepartmental team that is working on the equity tool includes the equity office, innovation office, office for resiliency -- housing and planning department, and the transportation department. As part of the process to develop that tool we recognize that we needed to define an environment to advance equity, so that the tool can be effective. We also needed to work with [3:42:31 PM] residents to create that tool and then obviously the future step is to implement and assess the tools. Next slide. So in terms of the environment that is necessary for the tool to be able to be effective, it needed an environment that really is conducive to receiving the data and information in the tool, so that includes centering the values of and having shared the mandate for racial equity to identify and correct imbalances to power and decision making structures and also to make sure that the city systems are set up to have accountability to people who are most directly impacted by displacement pressure. Next slide. So part of the way that we are [3:43:31 PM] being able to implement that strategy to create an environment that will make the tool successful is by recruiting people from the community who are vulnerable to displacement to be part of the team to develop, to develop the equity tool. So we -- the displacement risk factors are people who live in gentrifying areas, we are using upward maps for that. Making less than 43,000 per year, had experienced homelessness, that they might lack access to a personal vehicle and being part of a demographic that is vulnerable to displacement. So we had an application process where people noted which risk factors they had and then that is -- that criteria was used to [3:44:35 PM] select 30 they're being paid $25 an hour. We're estimating it will be approximately 30 hours of work. And they have already been selected and that process is underway. So some terms of the whole process to develop the equity tool,, one of the first stages was process is to normalize the idea of having this equity lens and so we've had a couple of different training sessions with the consultants, the participants and city and cap metro staff to really talk about what it looks like to center racial equity in the discussions. [3:45:37 PM] And so that is inextended to make sure that we have the same understanding of what all that means and to also talk about how we do center those values in this process. The next step will be to work on the co-creation of the actual tool. That will take place over a number of different sessions with the community members and consultants to think about what are some of the priorities for the funding and what would the outcomes of the use of that funding need to look like to make sure that the outcomes are questionable. And then the third phase is speaking to accountability. And making sure that the people who are vulnerable to displacement are -- that we, [3:46:37 PM] city staff, are available to those people. On so that will be an ongoing process. Next slide. I know that you all have seen versions of this slide multiple times. This is speaking to what's happening at various phases in the process. In 2021 we are working on the anti-displacement grant agreement, as I mentioned we're working on that right now to bring it to both the Austin transit partnership and city council for approval. And now the sequence plan, this slide speaks to the schedule of the deployment of the anti-displacement funds to that includes 100 million in the first [3:47:39 PM] three years and then the the second 200 million are spread out across the following 10 years. Now I will turn it over to Mandy de mayo. >> There we go, if we can go on to the next slide. I wanted to talk about a very recent development which last month as you all know city council approved a resolution th acknowledged the contract with the voters for the funding and acknowledged that we are waiting for the memorializing of that grant agreement with the Austin community partnership as well as the development equity [indiscernible]. But recognizing that there is urgency because project connect is moving at a fairly fast clip and [3:48:39 PM] accordingly [indiscernible]. [Garbled audio]. Very specific activity for deciding to get started. So if we could go to the next slide, I will describe those. The two priorities that were articulated in the resolution were the land acquisition and the preservation of existing affordable housing. And I'll start first with land acquisition. This was to prioritize community-based organizations to add a non-profit to create organizations to be able to acquire smaller sites and really enable them to do what we call rapid acquisition [indiscernible]. The focus should be on areas that are vulnerable to displacement, that meet the project connect high capacity corridors. [3:49:41 PM] So that's one focus of the [indiscernible]. The other focus is preservation, so really being able to strike fairly quickly, providing us with the funding in order to facilitate that. To preserve existing rental or ownership opportunities. We're talking about larger sites, so really greater than -- just hike land acquisition, we're focusing on areas that are vulnerable to displacement and on project connect high capacity corridors. If we can go to the next slide I can talk about next steps regarding that resolution that was passed just last month. We're in the process of developing program guidelines which lay out the program parameters and the processes for non-profits to be able to tap into this [3:50:42 PM] funding. We are also in the process of developing rfq or request for qualifications so that we can pre- cancer qualified non-profit organizations and the funding would be developed exclusively for those non- profit organizations. The reason for the rfq process is we want to be able to deploy the funding quickly. Right now you already know what we're going to talk about, the 2018 general obligation bonds. We have a quarterly 86 process for all of our funding and we have heard from some of our non-profits that are smaller non-profit partners that the timing doesn't always align with the timing necessary in order to do some rapid just 86, so we want to do a separate avenue to be able% to access funding. But we want to create a process where we have precertified the organization so we know that [3:51:44 PM] they're qualified, that they have the capacity, they have the understanding about the vulnerability of certain communities. And that they understand [indiscernible] Aligning affordability with the project connect corridors. So the rfq will follow our current ahfc, Austin housing finance corporation policies which were adopted in September of 2018. And depending on the level of funding, this may be administratively approved or it may be [indiscernible]. If in fact funding is higher than [indiscernible] We will go through the process to come to the ahfc board and our city council for approval. If you can go to the next slide, which I think is really the wrap-up. And we're happy to take any questions about any of this. We hope to have the rfq wrap [3:52:47 PM] ready for next month in order to get that out to the street. We've already began conversations with some of our community-based partners in order to get a better idea of the requirements or qualifications that you would like to see. >> Casar: Thank you, ma'am. Any questions from committee members? Councilmember Renteria and then mayor pro tem. And then [indiscernible]. >> Renteria: Yes, thank you for that presentation. I would like to know is most of the land purchase or keeping the affordability and anti-displacement; that all going to be concentrated on the blue, the Orange line. And what's the other one? The red line? >> So Erica, please correct [3:53:48 PM] me if I'm wrong, but no, we are not geographically limited. Our limitation for the federal transportation administration is the land acquisition needs to be ideally within one half mile, but there is the possibility to move one mile of a project connect line. So that could be any of the lines. And we are not limiting or non-profit partners in terms of acquisition to the blue line or arrange line. The area is vulnerable for displacement and in the vicinity of a project. >> Renteria: Great. If you tho that information. >> Casar: Mayor pro tem and then councilmember kitchen and then councilmember Ellis. >> Harper-madison: Thank you, chair. I wanted to ask about on slide 11 you spoke specifically about preservation and said larger units. As you can imagine this storm really has our [3:54:50 PM] existing affordable, but somewhat older housing stock, especially multi-family housing stock on my mind. So I just -- most of my questions are about that preservation effort and then subsequently just what do we anticipate in the way of infrastructural investments? >> So there is a lot of interest and there has been interest for years around the topic of preservation. Which as you you know is complicated because a lot of our affordable housing, whether it's naturally occurring affordable housing with some of our older tax credit properties, so older, but income restricted, may be going out of their income restrictions. It requires a substantial amount of investment. So we would anticipate a partnership with the Austin housing finance corporation and the developer or partner of the property. And most likely for most of [3:55:50 PM] these properties that we're contemplating it would require [indiscernible]. We would need to assess the level of capital improvements that are necessary. We need to look at refinancing. Perhaps moving more to tax credits. So rescinding the tax credits. It is a lengthy and complicated and frankly expensive process. We rely heavily on not only our fantastic city legal folks, but we also rely on outside counsel, outside financial advisors to make these things happen. And that would primarily be related to our larger -- larger multi-family properties. So I think the properties in the 100 plus units. There are some opportunities with some of our mid range affordable housing that may [3:56:51 PM] not require the same amount recapitalization or investment but there are challenges with that because the market will often act more quickly than we as a [indiscernible]. I'm sorry, you're on mute, mayor pro tem. >> Harper-madison: Thank you. I appreciate that. And as you were speaking I just kept finding myself thinking to various degreed it's tiered, right, and you said mid range which I hadn't heard before, but it would be very especialliful for me is I'm putting together -- director truelove is helping me put together a list of complexes that are tax credit complexes that are income restricted as by district because we suffered a lot of damage in my district. So that to say when you say mid range or what I'm thinking of as sort of really the oldest housing stock, if there were some parameters for definitions there, I'm [3:57:52 PM] not asking you for that now, that might be helpful for what we're working on. >> And I'm sorry, when I said mid range I did not mean from a cost, but from a size perspective. >> Harper-madison: Then never mind slam. [Laughter]. >> Sorry about that. So in any mind because this is the way that Travis central appraisal property divides up properties, one to five units and then the five to 50 units and then 50 and larger although we don't have a whole lot. It could be in the 100 range. So the larger complexes that -- which suffered a lot of property, that are maybe not subsidized by us, but have been subsidized by hud, urban housing and urban development, or has been in the past a housing voucher on them. So we have some limited [3:58:53 PM] ability to observe influence in those situations. We have more ability to observe influence when we actually have subsidized those properties. >> Harper-madison: Thank you, Mandy. Thank you. >> Casar: Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: Thanks. I have some questions about the allocation of the 23 million and so one question and one just comment. So I know the language talks about areas vulnerable along project connect high capacity transit corridors. But I would urge you all to prioritize because the reason for upfronting the 23 million was to try to get ahead of the curve areas that are coming first. So if -- I know it's not that specific in the resolution we passed because we don't want to tie your hands to see what opportunities are out there. [3:59:54 PM] But I really would -- I would be concerned if we're not -- if we don't use this 23 million to take advantage of really trying to protect for anti-displacement along those lines that are coming up first. Because that was the idea behind upfronting the 23 million this year to get a start on that. So I'm going to want a little more detail about how you're looking at areas and in your selection process I would suggest that it would be important to have that as one of your criteria. Not as a hard and fast criteria, but if you're -- as part of your selection process if you're trying to decide between areas, because otherwise we will lose the purpose of those -- that 300 million is supposed to be -- to help with anti-displacement along those lines. [4:00:55 PM] So I understand there will be a scoring tool, right, that you all will be -- how are you -- how are you thinking you will do that? >> So our plan was to develop a request for qualifications for partners. And so we have two different priorities. One is acquisition of small sites, which this is really for our small local community development corporations or non-profit organizations, many of which are not particularly active I know in terms of front loading dollars. They're they're not particularly active along the blue and Orange line. So we want to limit that. We want their activity, their preservation and acquisition activity to be focused on areas vulnerable to displacement. But maybe you're talking about the preservation -- [4:01:56 PM] >> Kitchen: I should be more specific. I didn't mean specifically the blue and Orange line. There are also T lines that are high capacity lines, pleasant valley is one of them. And I think there's two right now, the expo and pleasant valley that are right out of the gate. And of course the Orange and blue lines. So I'm just suggesting that you consider those which would be more important in terms of priority in timeline and some later ones might be. >> Agree, agree. I understand. And yes, that will go into our calculus when we look at -- I think we're going to talk a little bit later about the 2018 bond in discussion of the land acquisition dollars. And we have been keenly aware of them before when it was just project connect and the Austin mobility plan, but our land acquisition, ensuring that our land acquisition is aligned with project connect for future [4:02:59 PM] development. So that definitely plays into it. >> And last question, just a quick one there. So what is your timeline then, I'm sorry? So you're going to do the rfq process first. Just give me the cut to the chase. What's your timeline for actually making selections? >> We'd like to get the rfq on the street in the next month or so, preselect partners and then let them loose into the market, provided they meet parameters and they can come to us for acquisition funding. I would like to see acquisitions occurring this summer. Keep in mind that that 23 million is this fiscal year. So we would certainly like to see the fruits of our labor by September 30th. I can't guarantee it. But then of course of the 300 million, have 100 million kind of front loaded in the first three years. So we anticipate once the equity tool is developed, we get a better understanding [4:04:00 PM] of who needs it based on the communities where project connect is coming. We'll be able to deploy funding including most likely the land acquisition plan, but through that process have the equity tool -- guided by the equity tool. >> Kitchen: Thank you. I didn't know the timing. Thank you. >> Casar: Councilmember Ellis. >> Ellis: Thank you. Can you speak about are there three different timelines of $100 million to be spent? We know that land cost and housing prices aren't going down any time soon. Have you given thought tho how to get ahead of that market rate for those acquisitions and how to make sure that even if you could only use 100 million within the first three years how to get the most bang for the buck, if you will, seeing as how those costs are only going to be increasing throughout the years. [4:05:04 PM] >> Sure. In terms of just land acquisition, which keep in mind that that is a portion of the 300 million. The 300 million is one of the anti-displacement strategies that have yet to be envisioned and won't be fully fleshed out [indiscernible]. But to land acquisition specifically, I am looking forward to leveraging our other resources as a department. As you all know, we get a fairly significant and growing amount from the federal government for our block grant funding which we have in the past and property acquisition. We also have of course our general obligation bond, we have our housing trust fund, we have other very specific fund sources related to [indiscernible] Development and our historic [4:06:05 PM] preservation districts so we have geographically retained funding that we would like to leverage with this funding, whenever it's determined for the land acquisition, to be more strategic with our funds. On top of that, I will say that we have been fairly successful and we're looking forward to some upcoming successes with partnering with other departments who have excess under utilized land, in addition partnering with some other taxing entities like Austin independent school district, in the process we've purchased a parcel on Tannehill, which we're in the community engagement process right now, putting it out for solicitation. So we feel like there are some very strategic based on our real estate landscapes and the strategic acquisitions and we want to make sure that we're part of that in terms of the developer to work with that. So I think it is really [4:07:06 PM] about partnering, leveraging, and keeping our ear to the ground [indiscernible]. >> Ellis: I appreciate that. I was thinking there would be an easy answer like spend it all upfront, but it sounds like you've thought about that process and into how this is going to work. >> We're trying to be very diligent, thoughtful, strategic and somewhat conservative. >> Ellis: I appreciate that. Thank you. >> Casar: Any other questions on this item? No, there are two more. Councilmember Renteria and then councilmember kitchen. >> Renteria: I just want to know, you know, years back we were talking about a strike fund and having investors who would be able to [indiscernible] Tax credits and not letting them go back. Do you know whether we still [4:08:06 PM] have that organization out there? >> So we do. The organization is a non-profit called affordable central Texas and they just closed on their fourth property so their focus was naturally occurring affordable housing. They closed on their fourth property, which I haven't seen yet, but it's supposed to be lovely. It's near the apple campus in district 6. It brings their entire portfolio up to almost 1,000 units. And they are continuing to go strong. They're looking at opportunities to partner with other organizations. They've partnered with the housing authority at the city of Austin and we would look forward to programming with them in the future. >> Renteria: That's great to hear that it's still going on. I had know here because of some of the non-profit housing builders are having [4:09:10 PM] problems with didn't get as much money from their -- like habitat. They didn't get as much money from their national organization because money was really tight. Is there any kind of way of programs that we could help those kind of organizations to make sure that by using some of these funds, especially as -- have their on onion and fourth street, just across from [indiscernible], if they can go through their project is there a way that we could buy it from them and maybe use that -- [dog barking]. >> Interestingly with the help of our law department we have in our new rhdo and ohda, rental housing development assistance and owner housing development assistance. If they cannot proceed we can secure the land for [4:10:10 PM] affordable housing. We have not done that in the past, but I think we are very open top do that in the future. I will say with all of our profits that we work closely with, including [indiscernible]. And we will continue to support all of these fantastic groups. We've also been working with them to diversify their funding sources and access alternative funding sources. We're in a really good position right now partially because of covid funding from the federal government. Partially because of some increased funding at the federal level for our national housing trust fund. That we are going to see a significant amount of funding become available from our state, the Texas department of housing and community affairs. And we are going to work our hardest to make sure that our non-profit and for-profit partners can tap into that to minimize the amount of money that we put [4:11:12 PM] into the project. We want to stretch our dollars. This goes to what we were talking about with councilmember Ellis, stretch our dollars as far as possible so we can really leverage and be great stewards of those dollars. >> Renteria: Thank you. That's great to hear. >> Casar: Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: Just a quick thing. I wanted to point out that the Ila is in process right now. The one that sets out the allotment schedule. I for one am interested in being it upfronted even more than is being suggested. So I just wanted to let you know it's not a done deal yet exactly the way it is. I think it's great 100 million in the first three years, I think it's [4:12:14 PM] necessary. What concerns me is the remaining dollars are spread out so much. And maybe not upfronted as much as I'd like to see. Again, I don't know what's possible at this point. I just wanted to make it clear for everybody that that's not -- those las are not signed yet. >> Thank you. >> That will be going to the Austin transit partnership board next week and then should be coming to the full council on March 25th. >> Casar: Okay. Thank y'all. We'll move on to the next item, which is the rent program. >> I think nefertiti Jackson is to provide that presentation. >> Yes, hello, everybody. Okay. So today I just really want to provide an update for you [4:13:17 PM] on the launch of the rent program, which will take place this Monday. But because we had not provided an update on the closeout for rent 2.0, I want to highlight a couple of items related to that before we launch into rent 3.0. Next slide, please. So I want to basically provide an overview of rent 2.0 and look at the performance, how we did. And also looking forward to rent 3.0, making sure that we designed a program for equity so that more people can have access to the funding who need it and then also look at some of the future funding and programs that we have. Next slide, please. So I want to provide you just a recap of rent overall. There are many similarities [4:14:18 PM] between both programs. The eligibility, as many of you know, of households had to be in Austin full purpose annextion and making 80 percent of median family income, in a current lease and not already a recipient of other federal programs. And the households had to demonstrate a covid-19-related income loss. And so those eligibility requirements do remain the same, even though I'm highlight 2.0, they remain the same. Benefits from 2.0 households could receive up to six months of full contracted rent and then the rent payments were made directly to the landlord or property owner. And just to highlight some of the differences as we go forward to rent 3.0, this time households can receive up to 15 months of assistance. We can pay 12 months in [4:15:22 PM] area and also three months forward. So we have to have at least one month going forward that we can pay. And then also this time property owners have the opportunity to submit an application unlike the first program. Next slide. And I just want to look at the program which we ran from August through February 2021. As many of you know the goal for spending the funding was December of 2020, but we did add additional funding, we received additional cede funding as well as we've used housing trust funds. And we were able to serve just over 500 additional households. So the numbers and the statistics that you see here are based upon both the program that he ran from August to December and then [4:16:23 PM] the program that is still -- we didn't take any additional applications. The households who had submitted applications but we were not able to fund them because we ran out of money, we were able to seven them with additional funds. So these statistics reflect the total number of households that have been served to date. And this information might change slightly as there are still some ongoing items. Next slide, please. As you can see, the majority of the households that were serviced through the program here on this slide. Next slide. And this just shows the demographic information of who was served through our program. As you can see the vast majority of households served, there were over 2,000 households where there were households of one who [4:17:23 PM] were served. The vast majority, over 3,000 of the households were female head of households. And then the demographic information, racial demographic information, which was very essential that we make sure that we're tracking this information so that we know who is being serviced. So you can see that information on the graph on the top. So over38% identified as latinx, and then the next largest population was 28%. And those were identified as white. Next slide. And so other information that we captured, I would like to note that we started collecting the information regarding veteran statute much later after we started the program. So that's why that number is so low. We don't know if it would be higher or not, but when we [4:18:26 PM] began to collect that information, we had about 20 people that identified as a veteran. And the number of households with children you can see -- with one or more children is listed on the bottom. So we had just over 500 in each of the various categories of one, two T three. And we are certainly going to increase our outreach to households with families and we started a great partnership with aid and we plan to continue that. One of the things that I certainly like to highlight which I think is a success of the program is the number of families we were able to serve at 30% median family income, and that was over 3,000 households that fit in that category. [4:19:28 PM] Okay, thank you. So one of the things that we want to do, we were able to -- we continue to meet with a number of our partners just to make sure that we were able to provide a program that was responsive to the unique needs of the families and households within Austin. We met with many city leaders, community partners, and where we could and when we could, we were able to tweak the program. And so this is why I feel with each iteration of the rent program we've been able to improve the program. And one of the things that I think will certainly help is that the landlord having -- landlords having the opportunity to initiate an application. So once either party, a tenant or landlord, starts the application and submits an application, the other [4:20:28 PM] partner will be identified or notified so that they can start their application process. And that was the challenge with getting funding out quickly before ask waiting on another party of the landlord to be responsive. So we don't necessarily have to wait for a tenant in order to initiate an application with a landlord. We're also working with many community partners to make sure that we can reduce as many barriers to Ms. Joseph's question. She mentioned we are partnering with [indiscernible]. It's important that we partner with local communities on the ground, but we do understand the need to expand the outreach to various communities. And so one of our contracts for this program is with the communication or the purpose [4:21:28 PM] of really doing a better reach with the -- within the African-American community. The program is designed to be accountable, making sure that we're capturing demographic information, and it is very targeted, prioritizing households at 30% Ami. And we're targeting three populations. Priority populations, households at 30% Ami, persons who have been unemployed within the last 90 days and then also persons and households who have experienced homelessness. And the other thing that we like about the program it allows for up to 12 months of back payment of rent. And so a program with sustained funding will allow households more households, more families, to become stabilized as hopefully they [4:22:31 PM] can move on to other challenges that they might face with the ongoing pandemic and rent is one thing that might be covered, should be covered as a as result of this. Next slide. And briefly, yes, I would like to look at our current rent program as I shared, the program will open on March 15th and so we're happy to announce that. We have received $29 million in funding from the U.S. Treasury department. As I share, we will have unemployed persons. Assistance also prioritizes persons under 50% Ami and utility assistance is available under this program. However, we have partnered [4:23:31 PM] with Austin energy and so when households submit their application, they can check a box, letting us know that they would like -- if they're okay with us sharing information with Austin energy, there will be no further verification process. We will be able to connect them with Austin energy and they will do the verification with no additional documentation required and they will pay the utility bills for Austin energy customers. So we feel like we have designed a much more streamlined application process, removed some of the previous burdens that people had with a documentation requirements. And I would say greater guidance from the treasury department in terms of what is allowable for this [4:24:33 PM] program. Next slide, please. And we are continuing our tenant stabilization programs in addition to direct rental assistance. We have launched a program, the I belong in Austin program will el Quinn, [indiscernible], and that will allow us to handle negotiated settlements, which will be handled between a partnership with el Buen and Texas Rio grande legal aid, as well as there is funding in there for moving and storage. In the event that people are faced with eviction as the only option, then there is funding available through that contract that can help support that. In addition to that, el Buen is also leading the Texas emergency rental assistance program for a contract that the city has with tdhc, [4:25:36 PM] Texas department of community housing and community affairs, and that is focused on eviction and divergence. So they will be helping with that. And then Austin tenants' council, we have expanded or had another contract which will allow funding they've had increase in a need for telephone services, they've had to increase their staffing as well, they've seen a significant increase in calls. So through the tenant and landlord mediation and counseling services, we have expanded our added a new contract to help households impacted by covid-19. Next slide, please. I think that's it, yeah. That should be it, thank you >> Thank you, any questions for Ms. Jackson or the other [4:26:36 PM] staff? So just to reiterate the applications you are opening up March 15th, start? >> That's correct. Yes. >> I assume you'll get us all good information so we can share that out? >> Yes, you should be receiving a memo tomorrow with all the details. >> Thank you. >> There is a memo kind of that's going to the full council that should be going out actually today and then there is the usual press, marketing kind of information that will be coming out as well today. So all well in advance of when we have our press conference. >> And then this programming is based on prior federal funding and city funds. This doesn't count the funding that likely is coming our way from what congress just authorized? >> Correct. So this is funding coming through the U.S. Treasury for emergency rental [4:27:40 PM] assistance. Those dollars are new and we're still assessing -- there is actually some interesting opportunities beyond emergency rental assistance that will be hopefully coming that will be kind of in the vein of helping folks with their housing situations. And so we're working with our government relations folks to prepare some -- to digest what congress just passed and to get more information about all of that. >> I really appreciate this. I think that, again, when you look at the numbers of evictions filed, anywhere in the country, Austin and Minneapolis are really leading the way amongst bigger cities of keeping eviction filings low, and being able to not just prevent the evictions, but help people clear the back rent is really important. So I appreciate we're getting this money out. I hope that we make sure to continue to pair our rules with dollars so that we [4:28:40 PM] don't hit a wave of eviction filings ever and manage to keep everybody in their homes. So as we look through -- in the next bill and what we have now, I think we just need to make sure we found a way to make sure that -- that we keep the evictions as low as we have. Because we actually have had fewer evictions filed before the pandemic than we did in the pandemic. That's a really important thing that we've managed to achieve as an entire community. Also I hope that we continue to make sure we have the right level of mix of general funds and federal funds so that all different kinds of people that apply for funds are able to utilize the programs as we have them. Any other questions here from the group? Okay, well then I heard we just got the memo. I think my computer just beeped me. You might have heard that. [4:29:41 PM] Before we were done with the item we got the memo. Thank y'all. >> Good timing. >> Oh, one thing I did hear a note as Jaquelyn was running through the slides and I think she had mentioned the majority of folks at the lowest income levels, the majority of folks that received it were people of color and then I think you maybe said the majority of folks were in households of one, but I think that's the biggest -- the plurality, the biggest number of folks, but actually the majority of households were larger than one. Because once you add up the two, three and four person households, that that's still a majority of people in larger households than one person, but I appreciate the work y'all are going to do with aid that we get to all the families with kids. So thank you for that. I know it's a huge program. It's helped thousands of [4:30:42 PM] people and it's bigger than anything we've ever done before. I appreciate how hard that has to be to do. Do you have any sense of how much bigger this is on anything we've ever done on rental assistance? >> I mean by factor -- I can't even imagine. In the next round, will be probably about the same amount as what we received with this treasury amount. So this is -- it's unheard of. This has been probably the biggest program that we've deployed on a single purpose above even -- or rivalling [inaudible] Repair. I don't have words because it's so big. >> Looked like you were going to add something? I was going to say unprecedented. We haven't done this [4:31:43 PM] previously. This was a program we had talked about pre-covid, because we know even before we knew what covid was, there is a need for rental assistance. We know that. But this really spurred us on to pull together a program quickly. And as nefertitti said, build on it. And hats off to nefertitti and her team who have handled the stress with professionalism and with extraordinary -- and this has been huge for our department and our city. >> We absolutely could not have accomplished this without nefertitti and her team. I echo what Mandy said. >> That is a fact. >> Thank y'all. It looks like there is still a lot more help to give, but I think we can get there. I'm hopeful we can get there to stay at the bottom of that list on eviction filings all the way through [4:32:43 PM] this pandemic. Thank y'all. And I think our final item is on the affordable housing bonds. >> Yes, and Mandy Demayo will be leading that. >> I will be and if we can pull up -- [indiscernible]. So Mandy Demayo, community development administrator here to talk about the check-in on 2018 affordable housing bonds. Go to next slide. We're going to do an overview of the 2018 bonds and the four programs that comprise those bonds. We'll talk about the implementation of where we are and the status and wrap up and questions. Next one. I wanted to do just a refresher on prop a from 2018. This is the description of the four major programs that we'll go into -- land acquisition, [indiscernible]. Rental housing development [4:33:43 PM] assistance for 94 million. Our ownership housing developments assistance for 28 million. And then our home repair program for 28 million. Go to the next slide, we will start looking at the five-year spend. I think this is important to note we developed the spend plan -- [indiscernible] Some of the programs were beginning to ramp up but then some of the programs just like council member kitchen mentioned with the 300 million antidisplacement funds when it's related to land acquisition [indiscernible]. Here is the five-year spend plan. 250 million, 100 million for land acquisition, 94 for [indiscernible]. 28 for home repair. We are currently in year three. So we're halfway through year three and we'll give you a status of where we are. Let's go to the first program we're going to discuss for the first two programs. [4:34:45 PM] Housing development assistance, which is comprised of two different programs, rental housing development assistance or rhda and -- ohda. We have a quarterly application process for these two programs. It's a series of steps. We'll review applications. We have internal staff review, underwriting and internal staff review. A housing investment review committee. That meets quarterly to discuss with staff any concerns, also discuss with the developers. And that is comprised of community members who have expertise in affordable housing and two members from our community development commission. Those recommendations are pack knowledged and go to our leadership team which is our staff executive team. And then from there they go to the ahfc for final [4:35:45 PM] approval. Go to the next slide. We'll give you an eye level overview of a few of the projects that have been funded with the 2018 bonds for both rhda and ohda. Some of these will look familiar because they are high profile projects. We'll point to Spiro at Rutland. A project we are heavily invested in and as Ms. Joseph said, it was just approved by the board for tax credits and looking forward to start this summer. And of course we have our ohda projects, a range of projects including the north Lamar mobile home park, which was a really important Seminole project for us. [Indiscernible] In earings with the national cooperative organization. Super excited. For rhda and ohda, right [4:36:46 PM] now, left in our funding we have 13 million in rhda, and 5 million in ohda. We're currently in the third quarter of our four quarters this fiscal year. We are currently going through our internal review and applications that came in from February. February 5th. They will go to the [indiscernible] Review. And any projects successful, they'll come to the agency board on may 20th. One thing to keep in mind, it may seem like there is a fairly significant amount of money in the rhda and ohda programs left for this fiscal year, but that is not the case. We also historically we have funded our 9% competitive lite projects. We anticipate at least three of those projects being awarded this year. [4:37:47 PM] They are going through the process with the Texas department of housing and community affairs. Those applications will be due to us may 7th. And they will come to the ahsc board the end of August. We anticipate based on our preliminary analysis of the asks, that those rhda applications will take the lion's share of the available funding. So we are trying to be very strategic with our deploying funds this fiscal year. So we ensure we have enough to support our [indiscernible] Projects. I do want to highlight a few things. Because rhda and ohda are large programs that we have administered historically. From the 2018 bonds, so just 2018 forward for both -- let's just start with rhda. We have funded 14 rhda projects. [Indiscernle]. That constitutes more than [4:38:47 PM] $40 million in investment and more than 1500 units. 1,566 to be exact. For ohda we have funded nine ohda projects which instrument constitutes a little more than [indiscernible] Dollars. Going back to the rhda projects, this is a really exciting time because all of these projects are in various phases of development. Some of them that we've funded with 2018 bonds are still in pre-development. Some are wrapping up their financing. Some are starting construction or under construction and some are actually open and leasing up. So it is -- we're starting to see the fruits of our labor which I think is really important when we talk about these investments. If you look back at pre-2018 bonds, I think that's important. Staff and I were just looking back at the numbers and pre-2018 bonds, we were producing somewhere between [4:39:49 PM] 250 or subsidizing between 250 and 400 units a year. So post 250 [indiscernible] We are looking at in excess of 1500 units. It's really incredible story. And we're very, very excited about it and excited to showcase these projects. If we go to the next slide, you'll see -- we're building up our numbers. This is -- I think we talked to y'all in September if I'm not mistaken about our affordable housing [indiscernible] Tool which is an exciting tool for the community to play around with, but at this point, for rhda, rental housing development assistance, you'll see we have in excess -- we subsidized or incentivized in excess of 11,000 [indiscernible] In the city of Austin. To the right you'll see where they were -- or match the dots of all the [4:40:51 PM] developments. But almost a third of them are within a quarter mile of a project connect station and almost 6 percent are within a [indiscernible]. We're pleased with those numbers. We continue to try to push those numbers so we can better align the affordable housing. Next slide. I wanted to talk a little bit about land acquisition, which as you'll recall in the 2018 bonds, was really a new program. An explicit program related to land acquisition and it has been extraordinarily successful. If you look back -- you don't need to go back to the slide with the five-year spend plan, but to date we have out of our [indiscernible] Our department has been appropriated 80 million out of 100 million and to date 75 million has been [indiscernible] For land acquisition. These are all the sites. I want to highlight a few [4:41:52 PM] things. In total, it's about 33 -- a little more than 33 acres of vacant land. Also includes three hotels that we have purchased or in the process of purchasing and converting to permanent supportive housing for people experiencing homelessness. We're excited about having these resource in order to partner on [indiscernible] The strategy. So again, 75 million out of the 80 million we have a remaining 20 million next fiscal year. Our priorities have remained unchanged. We're focused on gentrifying areas, ways to mitigate gentrification. We're focused on high opportunity areas. We have our first on convict hill road was our first acquisition in district 8. We're excited about it and looking at additional acquisitions in the area for potential assemblage of property. And third we're focusing on alignment with [4:42:53 PM] [indiscernible]. And think we'll go to the next slide. You'll note on the purple line [indiscernible] The parcels. [Indiscernible] We also have our format 1114 in district 4. Which is within spitting distance of [indiscernible]. We also have a variety I mentioned about leveraging our resources. We have a variety of sites that we work closely with our partner departments on ensuring that affordability is embedded [indiscernible] As well. As well as saint John's -- [indiscernible]. Those are areas -- partner departments. [4:43:55 PM] [Inaudible]. So again this is part of the affordable housing and transit map. It is updated continuously. So as we acquire sites, they will be loaded into this portal and we'll be able to see what has been acquired there. We can go to the next slide. The fourth and final program is the go repair program, the general obligation bond program. This is a long-standing program. We've had it since 2009 is when it was launched. It is a partnership with seven nonprofit organizations, and I hope I'm not going to leave any of them out, but it is Austin area urban league, meals on wheels and more, interfaith action central Texas, habitat for humanity, Easter seals central Texas, rebuilding together an American [indiscernible]. Those are our seven partners on the go repair program. [4:44:55 PM] And last fiscal year was a challenging one because of covid. For or nonprofits as you can imagine, the [indiscernible] Repair program that provides up to $20,000 in home repairs, so grants for home repairs to low income homeowners, primarily seniors, most of our low income homeowners are seniors. And covid presented some really complicated challenges for them and really slowed down some of the work that they were doing. Their goal -- this is a dashboard that has yet to be launched, but I wanted to share it. We're working on it internally and it will be publicly available for all of our programs, not just go, but every single program. It has a drop down menu to look up each program from a demographic perspective and a production perspective. So the goal for last fiscal year for our go repair program was 208 home repairs and they were able to do almost 150 home repairs. Which was admirable [4:45:57 PM] considering the circumstances. You'll see here that out of this 148, 36%, so more than a third of them -- no, I'm sorry. 86 of them out of the 148 -- so more than half of them are at or below 30% [indiscernible]. Our program limits are 80% median family income but we can dig much deeper when we look at our home repair programs. If you'll go to the next slide it will show additional demo graph you can data. [Indiscernible] About a third, a third and a third between [indiscernible]. Go to the next slide. You'll see further data wreak breakdown in terms of households and persons with disabilities. So again this is something we'll be launching for [4:47:00 PM] public consumption. Wore Y looking to get this out [indiscernible] Some the spring to be available. I do also want to note from a [indiscernible] While this is funded with the general obligation bonds and been very specific in terms of its repairs and its programs, we were able to very quickly launch the emergency home repair program as a result of winter storm uri, based on our existing go repair [indiscernible]. We already had the contracts in place with our seven nonprofits. We modified our guidelines to ensure that folks were getting repairs specifically related to the winter storm event and then we lowered the limit to $10,000 versus $20,000. And I will say as of this morning, we have 183 applications. More than half of those have been referred to nonprofit [4:48:00 PM] organizations. We're moving through those quickly and hoping to get the homes repaired [indiscernible]. We can go to the next slide. This is just an opportunity to remind you all of some very cool tools we have. One is our strategic housing group. So our scorecards were launched last month. We have already presented to the community development commission and the planning commission the 2020 scorecard will be available soon. They come out every year. Since then the scorecards for 2018 and 2019 were just made available. The website is right here. You can see it. It has a ton of information including obviously this particular blueprint, the methodology that was used in order to develop the scorecard, commonly used terms and variety of reports. One thing I do want to point [4:49:00 PM] out the major findings, I'm going to focus on the positive. There was a mix of positive and negative. These were really ambitious goals. 135,000 units over ten years. 60,000 of those below market. And we've had some really deep income targeting. We couldn't have done it without our general obligation bonds. I will say major findings, half of the city council districts made considerable progress towards their goals. The other half did not, but half made considerable progress. We're actually exciting our goals when it comes to units that are between 30 and 60% median income. Thrilled to see that. And another important take away is 96% of all the new housing was within one-half mile of an imagine Austin [indiscernible]. So we were pretty excited about that. The go scorecard is available on the website. I encourage you to take a [4:50:00 PM] look at it and 2020 is coming out. Those numbers will build on the good news. We also anticipate that some of those city council districts that were falling a little bit behind were be looking to catch up with these score cards. Cards. Go the next page. I gave a shout out for this tool. [Indiscernible] It is a great tool to play with and you can scroll down. There is extensive information on all of our housing in the city of Austin. Not -- not just what we incentivize. All of the projects currently in development. Again there is a tab that looks at city assets [indiscernible]. Really timely with respect to compensation around project connect. We have a tab with expiring [4:51:00 PM] affordability of our income restricted units. So we can look at what's going to expire within the next five years. It will help us be more strategic in terms of our preservation efforts and last but not least we have a tab for the [indiscernible] Report which is displacement risk to overlay on project connect. I do encourage you to take a look at that. And then finally, last slide, I just wanted to give a plug for what is called the athos, next slide. Our affordable housing search tool. I hope that you and your constituents will find this to be a helpful tool. It really is user friendly search tool to enable folks who are in search of affordable housing to connect with affordable housing. It's something we are constantly updating. And we encourage you to take a look at it and share with [4:52:02 PM] your constituents. And provide any feedback that you do have. We are happying to constantly work on our tools and [indiscernible] And how we can improve them. So please feel free to check it out and provide us with any feedback. And I believe that is it for me, but I'm happy to take any questions. >> Any last questions? Well, I really appreciate this. I think what I'd be really interested in for either now or for when the 2020 scorecard comes out is a comparison of how many affordable units we're producing this year compared to five or six years ago. Because although at 4,000 in your latest presentation, that still falls short of some of our really ambitious goals. I suspect that 4,000 is much [4:53:03 PM] more than we were doing in 2013 or 2014 or 2015 when the affordable housing elections passed by the voters were way smaller. So I think it could be useful to see how short -- they were am bishes goals but see how far we have come to see the trajectory of where we're headed. If you have any of this on hand, that would be great, but otherwise I'm happy when you release the 2020 numbers to see that. >> So what I will say is just quick analysis, it is fair to say that we are about tripling our production pre-2018 bond to current. Tripling our annual production. Those are just the units that we have subsidized. So we looked at last fiscal year and with all of our funding sources, which are primarily general obligation bonds, but includes housing plus [indiscernible] Funds. We subsidize -- let me get [4:54:03 PM] the number correct. I do not want to lie. In public. Nearly 1500 units, we awarded $31.2 million, nearly 1500 units. 125coc units, so continuum of care units for people experiencing homelessness. 145 of those units were below 30% median family income. And 669 of the units were between 30 and 60% median income. That's just last fiscal year. So in one fiscal year. We looked at fiscal year 2016 and 2017. And in those years, we subsidized somewhere between 270 and 500 units. So significantly increased our investment in affordable housing. I will say that it is important to keep in mind that the blueprint are community goals. So it's not just about -- [4:55:05 PM] [indiscernible] The community don't get me wrong, and our investment matters, but it's also about tax credit projects that have no -- have no investment in the city of Austin. Or what the housing authority of the city of Austin is producing, and so we're seeing an uptick in production, kind of across the board. And I think we'll continue that. So I'd like to say, even though I haven't seen the 2020 scorecard, that we're going to start to see that gradual increase in affordable units being produced. >> Thanks for that. I think it would be useful for us to see that on a line graph. >> Absolutely. >> To see how it changed over time. Couch kitchen. Council member kitchen. >> I have a similar question or point I guess. I think it's helpful when we look at those goals that we're not just looking a letter -- at one year. [4:56:06 PM] That we're looking at -- particularly when we're looking at the districts, for example, if we're just look at one year. That's not giving us the full picture. Of what maybe happening in a particular district. So maybe this is a question for you and maybe the data is there and I haven't seen it; is the data there that we can go and look at how it may go up and down over a couple of years or can we look at it -- what's happening each year? >> So right now we have two scorecards that are available for 2018 and 2019. 2020 is about to come out. So, yes, it can be plotted year by year, but is the important thing to remember is that the goals -- it is cumulative. So if you look at the 20 scorecard, you will see over the last three years what your district has -- or what we as a community have accomplished in your district. >> Okay. [4:57:09 PM] So -- yeah, and is that data -- is it counted at the point that units are [audio distortion] Or at the point that they are built? >> So it is counted -- they have to be -- I'll have to look at my methodology and maybe staff can answer this, but I believe it's not when they are built. It believe it has to be in a certain - - council member kitchen, I'm going to get back to you on that. >> That's fine and I can look on the website. I imagine you got that on the web page. >> It is part of the methodology, but I don't want too misspeak because -- I don't want to misspeak. >> That's all right. I'll take a look at the website and if I have more questions I'll let you know. >> >> Any last questions? [4:58:11 PM] All right, well, our last item is to talk about items of future meetings, but I'm happy to take that from y'all just in between meetings if we want close out of here before 5. Okay, we'll do that. So without objection, I will adjourn the meeting here at 4:58. I appreciate all the staff for your hard work in this really hard time and thanks to committee members and all y'all take care.