Housing and Planning Committee Meeting – 06/15/2021 Title: City of Austin Channel: 6 - COAUS Recorded On: 6/15/2021 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 6/15/2021 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. [3:10:18 PM] >> Casar: I'm Greg Casar, chair of the housing and planning committee meeting. It is June 15th. It is 3:10 P.M. We have a quorum here with mayor pro tem, councilmember Ellis and we're also joined by councilmember Fuentes. There was one item we do need to vote on really quickly. , Which is to approve the minutes from the last meeting. Do I have a motion for that? So moved by councilmember Ellis, seconded by the mayor pro tem. Those in favor please raise your hand. That passes unanimously. Then we'll get started with our presentations and with our agenda. We're taking the items up in reverse order today. We're starting off with the preparation from the board of realtors on housing price data. I'm going to start mentioning at the beginning of our council meetings or at least committee meetings, how much the housing price has gone up in the last year. It really an alarming amount. And there will be quite a bit here in this [3:11:18 PM] presentation, but important to note that we're here in June and if it were January, the median sales price for a house would be $111,000 less. So the median sales price has gone up $111,000 since just the beginning of the year which is really shocking and really a terrible thing for people trying a buy a home in our city and trying to afford and be a part of our city. There's a lot of important information from this that we get in the mls and realtors so I'm happy Ms. Williams has joined us today. And thank you also to Emily for helping us get this together so that we can get this information out to the community and really get to work for the rest of the year on some of these issues. Thank you, Ms. Williams, take it away? >> Thank you so much, council member. Thank you for inviting us to be here. And I've got a preparation [3:12:20 PM] that they're going to share for you there. We're going to do a brief overview of the may housing statistics that were just released this morning. So this is the freshest data that you could possibly get. Next slide, please. So previous introduction, Jenny Williams, the deputy director of government affairs here at abor, we have 1,000 realtor members who serve members of our community each and everyday. We also have our active mls solely owned by abor and there are over 16,000 subscribers who mu the mls to market properties, to ensure that all of our data is good, and do their business each and everyday. Next slide, please. So how is market? It is lightning fast and incredibly complex. I feel like it was continue years ago we had started hearing the 150 people move [3:13:22 PM] here each week or each day or some kind of stat like that. That has not slowed. We have critically low inventory across the region and that's causing homes to sell very rapidly at very high prices. The low inventory with high demand is really causing some jumps in prices. Housing affordability has become a bit of a paradox. Folks who are moving here from elsewhere or those looking at our market from the house think it's affordable still. People moving from high income areas like New York, San Francisco, etcetera, etcetera, look at our market and they think wow, I can get a huge home for only that much? But those of us who have lived here a long time, the lifelong austinites, people who have lived here even a handful of years, it's becoming increasingly unaffordable for that population. [3:14:22 PM] Then finally the most important thing to remember is experts agree we are not in a housing bubble that is caused by speculation, really loose lending laws, etcetera. That is not where we are right now. It's a combination of incredibly high demand with incredibly low inventory. Next slide, please. So what does that mean for the average consumer who is looking for a home. There are numerous offers and offers over list price are now the norm, so if a constituent of yours is looking for a home, they are heading into a market that's going to be tough. It's highly competitive. Buyers are likely to make offers on multiple properties before one is accepted. So gone are the days of the house hunter scenario where you look at three properties and you select one and get it. You are looking at 10, 20 properties making an offer on half if not most of those to be able to end up with the property that they end [3:15:23 PM] up getting. Cash is often needed to cover the gap between a mortgage and a sales price, in addition to the down payment. So buyers are having to come to the table with more cash on happened. Contracts are very complex with lots of wage contingencies, options, appraisals. That's now commonplace. Our members are covering larger and larger service areas to help their buyers find a home that they need. Renters as well obviously. Next slide, please. So you know, you've heard this over and over again. We're in a housing affordability crisis. Simply put, household incomes cannot keep up. So over the last 10 years from January of 2011 to December of the end of 2020, household incomes have grown 38%. Now, that's great because inflation was very low in that period of time, however, home values in Austin have grown 138% in [3:16:25 PM] that time period. So the median household income in Austin, 71,000, could afford approximately a 248,000-dollar home with a down payment. What you'll see in the numbers that I show you is that is becoming increasingly impossible. In this city as well as in the metro area. Next slide, please. So here is our may 2021 stats for the austin-round rock msa and I'll dive into the city's specific staff and give you some of the district specific information as well at the end. So the median price for the msa that's a five county region is 465,000 for month of may. That's an increase of 42% over may of last year. It's important to remember that when we're looking at the numbers right now, we are comparing with a time period where things were a lot different because of [3:17:26 PM] covid. Real estate wasn't an essential service. Transactions were still occurring but they were slowed down significantly. So it is good to keep that into context. In the bottom corner the sales volume has increased 100% to over two billion dollars. So that's over two billion dollars being contributed to our region economy in the residential real estate sector alone. Closed sales are up 48%. Days on market are down 33 days. So that's how long on average a home is staying on the market. A year ago homes were staying on the market for over 40 days and now they're staying on market for a metro. But listings are up, active listings are down because they're moving so quickly and then pending sales are up. The most troubling number to us is in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen. It's the months of [3:18:27 PM] inventory. That's how long it would take for the current number of homes on the market to last if demand -- if no new homes were added to the market. So we would run out of homes if demand were the same and no new homes were added in two weeks in the metro area. Which is really scary. Next slide, please. So now we'll dive into the city of Austin stats. Next slide. So the median price for the city of Austin in may was $566,500. So that's up 34% over the previous may. Again, keeping in mind that we had the covid not shut down, but situation involved in those numbers. Next slide, please. We are seeing just as low days on market here in Austin as across the region. They -- the days on market last time were 31 and now [3:19:27 PM] we're at 15, so they were already lower than the region across the region and now we're at just about two weeks. Homes go on the market and leave. Next slide, please. Sorry, my watch started talking to me. Closed sales are up 54%. Over 1200 closed sales. Pending sales are up 20% over almost 1400 pending sales in the city. Next slide, please. New listings are up six percent to over 1400 so we are seeing more listings than ever and we are seeing higher demand than ever. So the listings are not able to keep up, which is why you see active listings be a decrease of 62% year over year because they're moving off of the market so quickly. And months of inventory here in Austin is the same as it is across the ream. [3:20:30 PM] We're at .5 months as opposed to the previous year 1 point two months. So two weeks of inventory in the city. The Texas A&M real estate center defines a balanced housing market as six months of inventory so we have been at a low level of inventory for almost the past decade, but it's really hit a critical low over the last six months. Next slide, please. So councilmember Casar requested that I create a graph showing these two things and I'm super glad I did because it shows the -- exactly how the inventory has impacted pricing. So you can see that obviously when inventory was somewhat stable hovering above one month prices were rising. They were rising at between six and 10% year over year on average. Sometimes they went down a [3:21:30 PM] little bit, but ever since we reached below one month of inventory in December of 2020 they have really skyrocketed because of the disparity between available homes and the demand. So we'll turn to the demand on the next slide. So here you see days on market as compared to median home price. So we were well above a month of average days on market for at east the past 10 years. This only covers the past year and a half, but ever since we dipped below a month days on market last spring, which is really when people started kind of feeling like, okay, I need to buy a home, need to buy it fast, is really when we started seeing home values increase in such dramatic rates. Next slide, please. So I'm just going to quickly dive into the district stats. Keep in mind that each [3:22:31 PM] district is a much smaller area than the city at large, so they do -- they are prone to swings. So district 1 is -- district 1 and 2 are still below the median prices across the city, which is good news for those who are looking for homes to purchase who might be of a more moderate income. That said, homes are moving very quickly below two weeks on the market and we have very limited inventory as well. District three, four and five are much closer to the median price across the city. You're still seeing significant price increases from year over year that you've seen across the city in critically low inventory there as well. Next slide. So this is where things get a little wonky because the district 9 and 10 I feel [3:23:32 PM] like have the most interesting stories to tell as far as what's going on in their markets. District 6 and 7 are both also close to the city at large as far as the median price, both seeing double digit gains, both still having limited inventory. District 8, councilmember Ellis, your district is seeing things move the fastest across the city, which is no surprise to me based on all of my friends who live in that area that I see posted on Facebook about their home searches. So we know how crazy it is anecdotally there. District 9 has the most inventory and homes are staying on the market the longest. My feeling about that district is that because it does include a lot of student housing, a lot of condos, much more than the other districts do. Which is allowing more inventory to be on line in that area. [3:24:32 PM] And then district 10 is not surprisingly the highest price district across the city. Even still any homes that get listed on the market are moving very rapidly. There's demand at all levels of the market. Next slide. And that's the end of the preparation. So happy to take any questions, comments, etcetera. I think you can stop sharing now. >> Casar: Thank you, Jenny, for sharing this. Members can ask if you want to pull up any of the slides, but y'all please go ahead and ask some questions about this generally pretty scary and awful data. >> I tried to make it look nice. >> Casar: Thank you for that. Councilmember Ellis. >> Ellis: Thank you, Jenny. It does look nice. It's presented very well even though the information -- if you're [3:25:33 PM] selling a home it nice to reap the money on your home and the increases in that. We are seeing that in district 8. Can you share any information on how that affects the rental market. As someone as an apartment dweller myself, people have sold homes in my district and they haven't been able to buy the next one yet so they are entering the rental market as a stopgap measure. Do you have any information you can share about that situation? >> Yeah. So we're definitely seeing rents increase dramatically as well. There was a period of time where they were not increasing so much during covid. I mean, we're obviously still in covid, but during the real peak of the impact of the pandemic. Rents were not increasing as much if at all. In fact, some were going down, but now we're seeing a significant crunch in the rental market as far as median price and [3:26:34 PM] availability of rental units. I can specifically pull some information for you and send it -- I'll send it to the whole group so you all have it about the median price of apartment rentals in the Austin area. So I'll pull it up for you and send it to all afterwards as well if that's okay. >> That would be great. Apartments and maybe single-family homes or duplexes that people are renting, since I know those with children probably want something with a little more square footage than a typical apartment floor plan can offer. I do know there are -- there's kind of this push and shove in the market that you have people coming in from out of town buying houses at higher rates and you're seeing this situation play out in realtime. It does effect -- there's a domino effect of how that works in the rental market as well. We saw it in the pandemic too. First it was this problem and then this problem and then this problem. So I am curious about [3:27:38 PM] household incomes the rental availability is affecting the market. >> I will look up some hard numbers for you, but we have seen some significant increases in rent as well. Councilmember Fuentes councilmember Fuentes. >> Fuentes: I have a couple of questions. I know you mentioned that the listings are up and that was -- we have more listings than ever, an increase of six percent to the extent about what our actual physical housing supply production and what's the rate of that compared to our inventory that we have on the market. >> As far as specific production I would definitely encourage you to talk to the home builders about what they're seeing. Because the majority of our members deal with retail. Of course, there are a lot of new build projects that are part of that equation, but that's not always the [3:28:38 PM] case. Some builders work specifically with certain agents and it doesn't end up in our data. So I would encourage you to talk to them about what their production is looking like. What we are seeing as far as when I've talked to a research group. They study the housing market as well as building production, etcetera, is that lot delivery is on pace to be the highest lot delivery in our region ever in history. So more new homes coming on the market than ever, but there are a lot of supply chain issues contributing to that. Emily, do you have something to add to that? >> Yes. One of the things that we've seen northward to production builders, especially those in large scale developments, is they took a pretty significant pause at the start of the pandemic and [3:29:39 PM] there's a serious timeline that happens when it comes to turning dirt to prepare those lots for production build. So that certainly put them behind in terms of having adequate supply to meet the demand as well. That pause has long since stopped, but it's important to understand that even that six to eight weeks one year ago plus has an impact that is long-lasting with regards to their ability to allow for production to continue. >> And to add on to that, I had a conversation with the Texas regional president of Bradfield properties the other day and he was talking about how at the beginning of the pandemic they changed all their productions and were really -- really died things back. Did not expect the demand that has come roaring back. And so that is anecdotally [3:30:39 PM] of them playing catch-up on something that they all took a pause and said okay, we're not going to really be able to make it work, but ended up being the opposite of what they predicted. >> That's helpful. Thank you. So my other question is how does Austin compare to other comparable -- comparably sized city? Are they also having the same amount of tends or is Austin unique in our situation? >> So we are seeing double digit increases as far as home values go across the country. That's due in large part to a backlog of new production that never came online in the last decade after the great recession. And then also some exacerbating factors from the pandemic. Supply chain issues, labor issues, folks not buying the lots that they needed to meet the demand that they didn't know what was coming, but here in Austin it's being acutely felt and even [3:31:39 PM] more than our increases are even higher than everywhere else. I was on a call with the national government affairs directors of all the realtor associations across the country and someone put in the track is anyone tracking above 20% year over year price increase? And I was like yeah, we're at 40. So everyone is seeing significant price increases, but no one is seeing what we are seeing -- >> Fuentes: The levels that we are. >> Yeah. And in large part that's due unfortunately to fact that we have -- we've been at a low level of inventory for a long, long time. I worked at abore for seven years -- abor for seven years and we have had two months and below of inventory on average that entire time. >> Casar: And where you tracked it, Jenny, was that we were increasing probably too much for a long time, [3:32:40 PM] but then that the real big spike was when we went down to one month and then below, is that right? >> That's right. Yeah. We had had between six and 10% year over year increases each month in prices, which is higher than average, but now we are doubling, tripling, quadrupling year over year price increase as a result of the lack of inventory and significantly increased demand. >> Casar: Councilmember Fuentes, sorry, I hopped in. Don't know if you had another question after that. >> Fuentes: No. Those are the questions I had. Thank you. >> Casar: So what you're saying is though, just to wrap up, councilmember tovo' question is that -- councilmember Fuentes's question is that 40% year over year is pretty unheard of across the city and across the country. >> Yeah. >> Casar: Having done this job for a little while right there is just so much debate [3:33:42 PM] or questions about the land development code and here in the last year we haven't changed anything about that code and we are now seeing a 42% increase. So having done nothing certainly has not addressed that issue and has certainly not addressed the supply issue. And for us to drop down below one month of inventory and then to see the spike unfortunately makes common sense when you have so, so few houses on the market, you have so many more people bidding on the exact same homes. I've heard from lots of constituents who are trying to buy their first home and they wouldn't believe how many dozens of people they were competing with to get the same house in district 4. And to see the numbers in my district and others to be a 40 to 50% increase in home prices in just one year is shocking and it's terrible. [3:34:42 PM] Also I had one other question around -- hold on, I've got my notes down here. Over the course of the last 10 years but also have the number -- I think that was somewhere in your presentation of how much it's gone up. >> Oh, yeah. 138%. It is. >> Casar: I just remember when we were talking about whether -- how soon we would be in a place where we were a city that was over half a million dollars and I thought that that would be some time after I was done with council. And now we've crossed that point too. I just think that it's just an important thing for us to know we've been dealing with so many crisis from the pandemic and addressing critical civil rights issues, the winter storm, so many things we've been dealing with on council but so many issues that we were dealing with before the pandemic seem so much worse [3:35:43 PM] with housing affordability. We were already dealing with gentrification and now I think this means we're dealing with super charged gentrification. We were already addressing -- already becoming more and more exclusive, but this makes it so much more worse and it makes it harder for an everyday person to buy a house and now it seems virtually impossible. So I think it is just an important -- really, really important warning and reality check for all of us to see how as that housing supply has dropped so much we've seen this really sharp price increase that I think we can't fix all on our own, but there are certainly things that we can come together and do as a community to help address that housing shortage. And to make it easier for the everyday person to buy a house. We'll have items coming up on the agenda later about how we can continue to go to address subsidized housing and make sure that people who aren't served by the market have a chance to rent or own, but in part where we're also really having to come to grips with is just [3:36:44 PM] the everyday person should be able to buy a house in the city without subsidy and it seems like that is becoming increasingly far, far out of reach. Councilmember Ellis, I saw your hand was up. >> Ellis: Thank you. What do y'all see happening in the future if we don't bring more stock online? How bad is it going to get? >> I mean, I'm not a crystal balance haver. What do you think, Emily? >> It's more of the same. The reality is this is the crunch that we were in five years ago. It was just action sass certify baited by an historically low interest rate that has increased buying power beyond what we would all hav imagined. A 2.6, 2.8 interest rate not only increases buying powering but increases the urgency of the buyer willing to get in the market today so they can lock in that rate as well. You know, the angst of the pandemic has certainly led to people feeling more [3:37:45 PM] motivated than ever to make moves that they might not have made before. The changes in requirements from their employers and the way that they're working, all of those things are contributing factors to the pace of today's market and how aggressively it's driving, but this is really the same market we were in and it's the same market we're going to be in if we don't make changes moving forward from a policy perspective. >> Ellis: That's great. For those buying houses it's really exciting. For those selling houses it's also very exciting, but for someone like me that's never owned a home in Austin I'm worried about will I ever be able to afford to do that? Am I getting priced out of a market like that? >> Right. >> Ellis: What would you say is our best strategy to try to mitigate the increased rise of housing costs. Like what should we do as policymakers to try to help people to get into a first or forever home? >> There are a lot of things that you can't obviously [3:38:46 PM] tackle as far as interest rates and like what people are talking about as far as supply and labor shortages. There are things that you cannot do to address those problems. What I'm glad is we're really able to work with the neighborhood -- housing department. Is being able to provide them data so that we can have an increased cap on the down payment assistance program that they're working on. So that's one thing obviously that you can -- that you're continuing to work on. And another thing is allowing for diversity in housing types across the city and lots of different places. You know, diversity and housing types doesn't have to mean a giant scary development that looks over a single-family home. It can look like a lot of different things. I have friends that live in Houston and townhomes are [3:39:47 PM] everywhere in Houston. Now, of course, it's not great to compare ourselves to Houston because they don't have zoning. They have a whole host of other issues, but diversity of housing types that meet people where they are and allow them to live in the place where they want to live will allow more supply to come online and the prices unfortunately likely are not to go down, but to increase less. >> I would suggest too that operationally we need to continue to look at the planning and development process, not just in the context of the tools that are allowed in the code, but the time spent waiting on the permitting, the time spent waiting on the process to kick through is just expense on the back end to bringing that housing unit to market. So we want to continue to be focused on operational efficiencies and improvements in the actual planning and development processing, the [3:40:48 PM] administrative aspects, in addition to providing mutuals that allow for housing stock to come online faster. And lastly, wages will continue to play a role. I don't think that Jenny had this slide, but there's another slide that we like to offer. You did? That shows the gap between the cost of housing and the increases in wages locally. And that will continue to be something that's an important conversation in terms of just identifying a living wage that is within reason as it relates to this housing market and the cost of living here. >> Ellis: Those are really great points and obviously my chair, which are, has done a lot of work on wage and living wage and making sure that workers have the money to stay in the city that they love. So those are all really important points. I know we talk about how long it takes to get through the permitting process, what does our land development code allow for. My last apartment was 423 square feet and for a [3:41:49 PM] single individual it worked just fine. I know that's not ideal for everyone, but I do think we need that diversity of housing stock as people are either coming out of college or in college and need something affordable that's close to where they are going to school, close to where they're working. And for seniors to downsize from their two story house and to be able to stay in the neighborhood that they know and love, close to their support network so they can be close to the friends and family that they rely on. So I think that's a really important part of how we allow for the housing to evolve over the years in housing for me in particular. >> Part of the reason that we focus on diversity in housing is a properly balanced market is one that is segmented. And the way that you create a segmented market with lots of different price classes of housing is to create different sizes of housing, different types of housing. What happens today is that so much of our housing is concentrated in traditional [3:42:49 PM] single-family that folks are occupying that because that's what's available to them. They might be able to occupy middle density at a lower price point and bring down the total cost of the market if it was made available to them. And if in a it future meeting you guys would like it, I know the economists over at the Texas A&M center will explain that much better than I can. They can talk you through what happens when you balance out. It's not about just delivering immediate capacity in the form of giant density tomorrow. It's about providing the right capacity at the right density level at the right spot to properly balance out that market. >> Well, and to add on to Emily's point is a lot of times people think, I want to live in this type of home because this is the type of home that I'm used to seeing. When they see other types of homes that meet their needs that look different and fit a different type of lifestyle or perspective, then there is much more [3:43:51 PM] neighborhood welcoming of that diversity. >> Casar: Well, thank y'all. >> I totally agree with that. >> Casar: I also -- we have our new city demographer here, Ms. Valencia. So if you want to tune in here welcome. And anything you want to add to this point, I think that obviously you have stuff to adhere to this conversation about how our demographics might continue to further impact this issue obviously one thing that we haven't explicitly said so far is that those folks who may not be able to pay as much in cash or bring as much of a down payment or be able to offer that much higher above asking price will be increasingly excluded from the city and that's a really serious issue. But anything you want to add, Ms. Valencia, and thank you for joining. >> Thank you, chair Casar. [3:44:54 PM] I really wanted to add, I think you guys really spoke to sort of the increase in prices and the shortage of the inventory, but part of the increase in demand also is very demographic in nature, where we're seeing so many in our population, one of the largest subsets of our population, the millennial population, is reaching that very important milestone of the home-buying age. And while they have been holding off on that, now they're really in the job market taking advantage of the lower interest rates and really jumping in at a time when lots of other people are jumping in. Additionally one of the things that we know is also happening is that the city is is growing more and more from people moving into the city than from natural increase and a lot of times that type of growth can [3:45:54 PM] place very quick demands on the infrastructure and especially housing availability because if you think of a child that's added to a population, they're usually added to an already existing household. They're not using up other sort of services and infrastructure in the city. They're not going to be going to school for a few years or driving a car on the highway for a few years. So that kind of is lagged in the impact that it has on resources. But inmigration is an immediate impact. A person moving into the area of typically working age is going to be looking if for a place to live as soon as they move here. They will be adding a vehicle to the highway and taking up another seat on public transit. So that impact is very immediate. Right now about 75% of our growth in the city is coming from people moving into the city. So that's definitely something to take into [3:46:54 PM] consideration because it definitely will add to that increased demand on the housing market. >> Casar: Thank you for that. I think it's something when I have these conversations with our neighborhoods and with community members is to remind folks that the question will also be of the folks moving here and living here, who will have access to the city and who will be passed out to edges. And so much of that is determined by price. So when somebody is deciding whether they want to stay here because they're going to buy inside the city or going to leave our city and move out of the city that they love, it might be because they are competing with 20 or 30 other people for the same house and they would be so much better if they were just actually able to get a house. So whether people are moving here and who is moving here and who lives here, if we're all competing other the exact same housing stock, then the results are predictable and unfortunate. We are seeing here in the last six months those [3:47:59 PM] unfortunate consequences say scale that is unheard of here and almost anywhere in the country. I appreciate that we've been able to have this conversation and I hope and expect that members of this committee, but members of the dais in general that we can come together to on common ground solutions that can address the lack of housing diversity, address the lack of housing in general on the market and so that we can start turning that graph around some and stop having that continued dip in housing inventory keep driving up housing costs. So thank you. Any last thoughts before we move on to our last two items? >> Thank you just so much for having us, allowing us to be part of the conversation. Each month I send the housing market stats out to all of y'all and your colleagues and I'll be sending those later on today. And I'll going to include this presentation as an attachment to that so that those on the dais who are not on this committee who weren't in this meeting are able to look at it as well. [3:48:59 PM] >> Casar: I'll keep repeating it. It's just -- I think it is an issue of such high urgency and so I will start -- if you keep sending it to me I'll keep mentioning in the council meeting even if it's scary statistics and they are facts that we are 110 more thousand dollars than we were in January if trying to buy a house. Okay, thank you. Thank you for bringing this to our attention and now it's up to work on it the best we can. >> Bye, y'all. >> Casar: Bye. Next we are calling up our housing staff to give us a briefing on our rental housing and ownership housing production that we are supporting as a city for low income people. >> I guess that's me. Hi, my name is Jamie may with the housing and planning department community development [3:49:59 PM] manager overseeing the development assistance program. There it is. We were asked by council to put together a few slides showing the rift of the rental housing and ownership housing development assistance programs. Just to see how we've done over the last decade and a half, the -- we did start by looking back even further, but I think that we found some really good break points to highlight the production of rental housing and ownership housing over the last let's say 10 years. If we can go to the next slide. So this shows the award value per year. As you can see in the first four years the award values were low. No more than two million dollars awarded per year. And after that first line, that first line represents the 2013 general obligation bonds that were adopted. [3:51:02 PM] And through that -- those five years we were deploying those 2013 G.O. Bonds. You can see it ticked up a little bit to around $15 million per year. I'll turn off my video. There we go. The second line represents the 2018 general obligation bonds that the citizens voted to approve. It was a total of $126 million for the housing development assistance program, that's 96 million for the -- rhda or rental housing development assistance. And the remainder for the ownership housing development assistance. And that first year you can see that we deployed roughly $34 million. That includes the first tranche of general obligation bonds as well as federal -- our federal grants so our home funds as well as cdbg funds. We also used the housing trust fund dollars as well as some additional local [3:52:03 PM] funds that are geographically specific such as the north burnet gateway fund. I'll go to the next slide. So these are the amounts of funds or the percentage of funds from different sources. As you can see the general obligation funds are far and away the largest two sources that we use. It's almost 75% of our deployment comes from the general obligation bonds, but we do rely heavily on the federal fund dollars as well as the housing trust fund. If we can go to the next slide. So over the course of the year where we collect the application and distribute the funds, new units are committed by developers as part of their award. We also deploy funds to previously awarded developments. So those units aren't captured in this slide. This is just those units [3:53:03 PM] that are funded for the first time in that fiscal year. Let's go ahead and look at fiscal year 16-17 because that seems to be jumping out at us. Let's go to the next slide. Did we miss one? There it is. So in fiscal year '16-'17, we deployed almost $15 million to new developments for rental housing development. In exchange for 505 new rhda units. Now, an rhda unit is only -- are only those units that are affordable to households earning less than 50% of the median family income. We also calculate some of those as earning less than 30% of the median family income, so even deeper level of affordability. In that last column you can see that cereal of these developments needed additional funding in order [3:54:04 PM] to get across the finish line. For example, govalle terrace received an additional four million dollars in fiscal year '18 to '19. And that's natural due to building out your capital stack you're going to find different sources. We do talk to our developers, ask them to only come see us once. I tell them we love to see you, but I only want to see you last. Mostly because we don't want to be the first one at the party. So when a developer such as the Jordan comes in with 80 units for four-million-dollar ask, we are confident that those 80 units can be developed for that four million dollars and there won't be a second set of funds being requested. So we are learning together as a group. But what you can see here is those 500 units dedicated in fiscal year 16-'17 did not cost $15 million in city subsidy. The total subsidy was closer [3:55:06 PM] to 25 million. And again, that's right on par with where we want to hit in terms of our subsidy per unit level. We'll go to the next slide. So as part of that group of rhda units we also attract permanent supportive housing and continuum of care units. Now, permanent supportive housing is an implementation. The housing unit is supported with services permanently so that the individual who previously had experienced homelessness has wrap around services so that they do not fall back into homelessness. Continuum of care is a way in which we house those units or occupy those units. So an individual coming off of the coordinated assessment would go into a permanent supportive housing unit. So there's a little difference in terminology. But that way we can count them. And as you see if we can go to the next slide, in fiscal [3:56:07 PM] year 14-'15, 15 continuum of care units were at oak springs. This wasn't completed until fiscal year '19- '20. So it takes about five years for -- it took about five years for terrace at oak springs to completely build up its entire capital stack, go through construction and then house individuals. We have a second large coc investment in fiscal year '19-20 at the esparo at Rutland with an estimated completion date somewhere in November of 2022, possibly later. As with development you never know what a timeline will actually look like, so we're programming that for fiscal year 23-24, hoping it comes in before that. But that just highlights the length of time that the development process actually takes. We'll go to the next slide. So also in terms of funding and programs, we also have our ownership housing [3:57:08 PM] development assistance program and looking back at the last seven years you can see that in fiscal year '15-'16, 101 new 80% units were committed. Now, again because of the pace of development, those units aren't complete. It takes awhile for those units to be complete and occupied and then sold. We'll go to the next. So this is the annual production of leased and sold units. In terms of what we have occupied. So all of these were committed in prior fiscal years and then occupied in the fiscal year noted on the slide. You can see that in fiscal year '13 through '18 we had a steady increase and then a dropoff in fiscal year '18-'19. Part of that is due to again the pace of development. We just had a whole bunch of projects that got to completion in that -- in those first three, '15, '16, [3:58:09 PM] '17 fiscal years. And then we had kind of a break. As we were funding prior developments we hadn't received any real new projects come online. And so now in fiscal year '19-'20 we see additional -- we see it ramping back up to where it was in fy'17-'18. Through April of this fiscal year we're already more than half of where we were last year so we will see where we end up come October. We'll go to the next slide. And this is what we have in our pipeline. This is what we have that we can expect to see in the next several years. For the ownership housing development assistance we have several 40% units that have been committed, but you can see that we have about 31080% restricted ownership housing units under production right now and that includes condos as well [3:59:10 PM] as single-family units as well as townhouses. So we are trying to invest in that mixture of unit type. If we can go to the next slide. And this is our rental housing pipeline. The bars here don't represent a time gap, but really just a grouping. So the first two units, coc units and psh units, you can see we have 605psh units pending. So they have been funded. They are in some stage of construction or development, either a predevelopment or releasing. Those units are duplicated in the 30%, 40% and 50% units. So we don't have a total of 1800 units across that. It's closer to about 1500 units total pending. But 1500 total units pending all over the next several years does get us closer to [4:00:11 PM] our goal. We know that it's not enough, but we are proud of seeing that pipeline getting filled. And then the last group are those units that we don't fund. Just to show that even when we have 1500 affordable units in a development, we can also bring to market almost 1,000 units that are not funded through rhda. We'll go to the next slide. So we are in the beginning or middle of our final round of applications for this current fiscal year. We have several developments requesting funds. And I'd be happy to talk through any of these. You can see there's a good mix of rental housing development assistance programs and ownership housing development assistance programs. I'll point out that the three highlighted projects are those that are in competition for the 9% low [4:01:12 PM] income housing tax credit, which will be awarded in late July. The winners of those low income housing tax credits are then brought to council shortly thereafter for the rental housing development assistance program amount. This year those three projects are requesting a total of $8.7 million. That's a large number. But for that 8.7 million we would see 43 rhda units on north, 82 at parker apartments and 42 at June west. We also have a couple of I'd say large ticket items on this chart. One is the pathway to rosewood court which is looking for a seven-million-dollar investment. And the other is the hotel conversion project which is looking for a 16-million-dollar investment. If we were to approve or recommend approval for all of these investments, it would cost us a little over [4:02:14 PM] $39 million. Which is a large number that we do not have, which is why our staff works with these developers to not only drive these numbers down, but to select the appropriate investment at the right time. We'll do to the next slide. And finally as we move into the next fiscal year, we have a few items that we're considering to help build more units and get more units in our pipeline. First we're working with our cohorts at housing and planning department to better align our program with the other development incentive programs, including affordability unlocked and smart housing. We're also looking at our four percent low income housing tax credit pipeline. Right now as a private activity bond issuer, Austin housing finance corporation has a lot of business. And we are programmed out for the next I believe it's a year and a half in terms [4:03:15 PM] of private activity bond sales. Normally the four percent low income housing tax credit and private activity is non-competitive, however this program has become much more competitive over the last several years. We also have our nine percent Pam coming up in December where council will be asked to pass resolutions of support for applicants applying to the nine percent low income housing tax credit. In order to incentivize permanent supportive housing, which we know is a primary goal for our housing development, we are putting together a package. If any developer brings forward a psh or permanent supportive housing development and receives the nine percent low income housing tax credit, the rhda award would be part of that or the rental housing development assistance award, that all nine percent projects receive. We're also going to wrap in [4:04:15 PM] some local housing vouchers. We have our housing trust fund that is supporting some local housing vouchers, which is guaranteed operating income for a development. And we're also working closely with our friends at Austin public health to wraparound the support services that those permanent supportive housing units require. So it's an overused metaphor, but we're trying to bring all three legs of the stool together to make sure that these units can stand on their own. We also have our hotel acquisition, which is currently moving forward as well as all of our project connect movement. So these are some of the resources that we're looking to deploy in the next fiscal year to really move the needle on not only housing affordability, but also on permanent supportive housing. And the next slide is a thank you. And I'd be happy to answer any questions. [4:05:16 PM] >> Casar: Any questions? My one thing that I would point out for folks because you just have bar graphs split up across multiple slides, but maybe we can sort of manager them together at some point for -- merge them together at some point for a future date, but if you look at ownership housing and the rental housing development you can really see that here in the last couple of years there's a really significant increase and that really is thanks to the voters approving the 2018 housing bonds. There's just -- we're just doing so much more here in the last couple of years than all the years before. But because we like to be really detailed and you have it split across psh and ownership and rental, it's not quite as clear, but once you add it all up you can really tell that the voters' investment in affordable housing has us producing a lot more and having a lot more in the pipeline than [4:06:18 PM] ever before. Councilmember Fuentes or councilmember Ellis, anything else? I do think the other point to be made here is that the biggest piece of money, the anti-displacement dollars, are still yet to be deployed. And given what we saw in the presentation before this it's really important for us to get that moving as quickly as we can because if prices are going up and up and up for the everyday perp, then that means displacement is accelerated and it means it will be even more expensive for the city to keep people in place so I know that we want to get it right, but it's also really important for us to get that moving. Our first presentation was really about home ownership really for the everyday person or a middle class person, and this solution in the city coming in and providing subsidy I think is critical if we want to keep low income people in the city. Councilmember Fuentes. >> Fuentes: Thank you, chair Casar. I guess my question is am I [4:07:18 PM] right in understanding that the city invested about 25 million in that investment equates approximately to 500 subsidized units? Is that right? >> I can do the quick math, yes. It's about 23 million for 505 rhda units. >> Council member, this is Mandy de mayo with the housing and planning department. Typically for our rental housing development assistance, we don't want to invest more than about $50,000 so we work with them to leverage our additional with additional funding sources. That doesn't mean it it only costs 50,000 per unit to [4:08:18 PM] build. We know that often in the city of Austin we exceed that and we're seeing this across the rental housing development assistance, 175,000 or 200,000, somewhere thereabout. That's what we see per unit. But really our dollars to subsidize the lowest are at or below the 50% median family income. >> And that's helpful and to get to chair Casar's point. I'm trying to decide what kind of... I should have when looking at the anti-displacement dollars that are part of project connect so understanding kind of what that type of subsidy equates to is helpful. The other question I have is [4:09:19 PM] around the mfi percentage, the 30, 40, 50 all the way to 80%, is there anything there that you would -- like if you could share a little bit from your expertise that is there a a way or certain level that we should be really honing in on and increasing the percentage of either -- production of either 50% or below as you mentioned or 80%? Can you speak to that? I want to get a better sense of what mfi level we should really be targeting? >> So our rental housing development assistance, all of our subsidy for rental housing focuses at or below 50% of median family income, mfi. But we try to drive our investments even further because what we know from our comprehensive market study is that every five years as part of our submission to federal housing dollars, submission to the U.S. Department of department of housing and urban development really the [4:10:19 PM] largest demand is more those rental units that serve the lowest income households in the city of Austin. Those are the folks not served by our market in any way. Often people on fixed income or low wage workers and so that's really where we try to drive our investment for rental housing. For ownership housing our focus is strictly on 80% below median family income and that aligns with federal requirements for our federal funds with our own ncbg dollars, but that's where our focus is for ownership housing. There is need across the spectrum without a doubt, as was evidenced by Jenny Williams' presentation when you look at the median home price, we're not able to serve folks at a variety of median family incomes well above 80% mfi. But our subsidy dollars are [4:11:20 PM] really targeted on that part. >> Fuentes: Gotcha. That makes sense. Thank you. >> Casar: Thank you, councilmember Ellis. >> And a very quick plug. I think you have a website where folks can see to see if they're in a specific mfi, what type of units might be accepting applications. Can you remind me what that link is? >> Sure. We have for rental search, housing search, it's called the host. It's atxhousing.net and that enables folks to put in their -- somebody will have to correct me, though, because I'm pretty sure it's atxaffordablehousing.net. I'm going to ask somebody to check on that for me because I don't want to get it wrong. But it's the online affordable housing search tool and it enables you to [4:12:22 PM] input your income parameters and some other details like whether or not you have a housing choice voucher and then search for tools. Here it is, atxaffordablehousing.net. Thank you, Stephanie for bringing that up. >> I was able to pull that up. It asked for income, how many people are in your household, wheelchair accessibility and housing voucher. And it looks like there's a link for viewing that site in Spanish too. >> Absolutely. So that was recently launched last fall. We're really excited about it. We are collecting all of the data that includes all income restricted units across the city of Austin. You can also find median family income level on our website, which is austintexas.gov/housing. And that will provide the most current income levels across the city of Austin. >> I'm so glad you had that [4:13:23 PM] resource put together.. >> If okay. Thank you. >> Chair, I know you guys can't see me, I am having a hard time figuring out how to raise my hand virtually. >> Sorry about that. Hop right in there, pro tem. >> Thank you. I appreciate it very much. Thank you, councilmember Ellis for bringing up the affordable housing tool component. I would like to ask, though, Ms. De mayo for goes who don't have internet access or don't have a digital device, you know, that sat conversation that we are going to have to allow digital access, what do we suggest for them? >> We do have, again, in the planning department, we do have copies of affordable -- the Austin, Texas affordable housing guide and those are available at our office, at the physical location. They are also available at the Austin tenants council and also [4:14:24 PM] available at libraries across the city. >> And that's our hard copies, so it is an actual booklet. >> And if anybody needs information, they can certaily contact us, 9745129743100 and we will send them a copy of that. >> Thank you so much. And I know that you guys all work really hard, but our new displacement person, nefertitti jackmon has been really working her tail do you have make sure that everybody has access to this information. So I really appreciate you laying that out there. >> Absolutely. And nefertitti, we are very fortunate to have her on our team, but two, she is doing the next presentation on the rent program as well as some eviction prevention strategies. >> Thank you. Any last questions before we move on to the last item? [4:15:26 PM] Well, thank you for providing this, I think my suggestion will be we find a way to consolidate some of these graphs into one, because I think it is really important when the voters look forward and trust with us the dollars for them to see the results, because the vast majority, vast majority of people voting for this may not live in the -- several thousand units that get produced, but they will want to know that we are making, creating a more inclusive city for everyone and so I think showing that real change and that real increase is important and I think the real take away from this presentation for me is that this can work. It works faster than we think and that deployment of that next $300 million, we should learn from this so we can bring those lower costs home to market as quick as we can, while we also make hopefully consensus changes to our land development rules to bring supply on board that isn't [4:16:26 PM] subsidized. So thank you. >> Thank you. >> Ms. Jackmon, you are last but not least. >> I am ready. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, everybody. >> Okay. As we shared, I think we really understand the importance of the assistance program. I am just going to give you, provide an update of where we are since we launched the last iteration of rent 3.0, if you will, internally. We launched it in March of 2021 with approximately 24 plus million dollars from the treasury department and this provides an overview of where we are. I want to just -- I would like to state that in some of the research that -- centers around displacement prevention, one of [4:17:27 PM] the key indicators of that displacement is occurring is an increase in the rise of rents and we have heard Jennifer mention that earlier today, in her presentation, so just something to know as we are going through here. Next slide, please. Okay. And so we are just going to -- I will provide an overview of the program where we are today, provide an overview also of the performance of how the program is operating, of what changes we made with the eviction moratorium and then also discuss some future funding that is coming our way to the program [indiscernible] And the next slide. Here I will just want to provide, this is really an overview or a recap, I don't [4:18:29 PM] want to make any assumptions, in terms of who knows what about the program. As the benefits, they are the same from rent 2.0 to 3.0. They are pretty much standard, so eligibility for renters or for people to receive assistance, they must live within Austin's full purpose jurisdiction and again we are focusing on households at 80 percent or less of the area median income, and these are guidelines that we have received from the treasury department. Must be currently on a lease or contractually bound relationship and in time around, this is a program change. If you are participating in a federal rent assistance program, you can apply, but you must also demonstrate you have been financially impacted by [4:19:30 PM] covid-19. One of the key things that I would like to highlight for our programs is that we have been very effective in serving people at 30 percent mfi and below, and so I don't have a full information at this time in terms of how many are at 30 percent in mfi and below, but for the rent 2.0, over 67 percent of household whose were served were at that level. Benefits for this program, individuals can receive up to 15 months of full contract rent payment for any rent that occurred between April 2020 through December 2021, and rent payments are made directly to the landlord, property manager or property owner who is owed the rent. With some exceptions and there are some exceptions when we have [4:20:30 PM] an uncooperative landlord. We have altered the program to be able to make payments directly to the tenant and then make -- they are able to pay their rent. Next slide, please. So the guidelines for the program, we can help pay future rent, current and past due unpaid rent. So basically what we do, people can receive immediately up to 12 months of back rent, and then with what we do is we will pay up to three months in advance, and then applicants can we apply should they need additional assistance upon recertification. So the funds for rent will pay any fees that are included as part of the lease agreement, so if it is utilities or if it is internet charges, these are all things that must be included on the rent, which question will pay, and the assistance is capped at 175 percent of the [4:21:33 PM] limit of the fair market rent based on the bedroom and unit size. Next slide. We work with a number of different stakeholders to include some priority populations for this go-around of rent so our priority one, which means these households will be served first, once they apply and, you know -- so the first population group is those at 30 percent and below Ami and those who qualify for unemployment based don guidelines provided by the treasury department, and priority 2, households between 31 and 50 percent Ami and below, and they also qualify for unemployment. And finally is anyone above 50 percent Ami house holds that have previously experienced [4:22:34 PM] homelessness, those 0 who are unemployment, populations that were unserved in rent 2.0, and then as a result of the eviction moratorium and the changes, that took effect June 1, we prioritized households with five or more months of rent in arrears. So these are the applications that will rise to the top, and then of course there is -- there is then everybody else who do not fit into those top three categories. Next slide, please. And so the information that I will share, you can go to the next slide, thank you, this information was earned as of last week, I will share some updated statistics for you today, but this is information that can be pulled on a regular basis from our rent dashboard [4:23:36 PM] that is available as of June ninth we have allocated over 80 percent of current available funding for rent 3.0, which includes over 3,300 unduplicated households for a total of 17,354 months of paid rent. So that is really the total amount in assistance to date and again this is as of June ninth is 19 -- $19.8 million. The average months of rent is right about 5.3 months of rent, and so this information is available on our rent -- board -- next slide, please. .. So here is a breakdown of rent recipients by zip codes [4:24:38 PM] with over 296 households assisted in 78741, and I will just share, 78750, about 47 households have received assistance as of last week, when this information was submitted. Next slide, please. And then this gives a breakdown of people who have applied for the program both by race and ethnicity, and I -- I will just highlight these. They are here, but I don't know if you see these. They are a little hard to see, but latinx population, over 893 house holds or approximately 30 percent. And those who identified as white in terms of race, approximately 29 percent. And for those who identified as African-American, approximately [4:25:39 PM] 22 percent. And the next slide, please. And some other additional information that we continued to track, as you can see the information is tracked by income levels in the top left category with just over 1,500 families being served at 30 percent mfi and below. Female head of household over 1,700 families and then households with children are listed down in the bottom left. And then we have also there are approximately 129 families who needed assistance and who received assistance, but they also received federal -- so that is a change from the first program that I want to highlight. Next slide, please. [4:26:43 PM] And here it shows that this increase -- you see the number of months of assistance, there was a huge increase of people who received assistance, in that three to five months and six to eight months, when we were able to change our am rhythms -- algorithms to be able to serve people at five months of rent or more, so to date, we have over 1,500 people who have been assisted with 3 to five months of rent, and then also you know, six to eight months of rent. Those are sort of where our forward targeting to make sure we are able to keep people from being evicted. And as you see here, we had the vast -- well, we had just under 1,000 people who were current on their rent or who did not owe rent but they were still [4:27:44 PM] eligible to receive assistance through the program. And can I go to the next slide, please? >> The next slide. Thank you. So I was able to pull some information up. This information is specific to Austin. It is not for Texas, but it just shows where evictions were at the beginning of April, when we first had the eviction, before the eviction moratoriums went up, and then the next slide -- so they were down slowly. We had in March -- okay. Thank you. We can go to this one as well. So we can see, this is the change with the CDC moratorium in place, evictions obviously decreased significantly with a low in January of five people. We don't have current [4:28:44 PM] information, but just receiving feedback from our vendor that we are starting to see an increase in evictions as the moratoriums have begun to expire, and we are a little concerned because we are -- and again, I need to do some additional research, but we are finding that some landlords are a little hesitant to renew leases of individuals who are receiving funding from this program, and so that is something that we are going to dig a little deeper into, to see how we can help and support. I would like to share that -- oh, we can go to the next slide. I just want to provide an update on some of the future funding that is available in the program. The next slide. [4:29:46 PM] And so we do anticipate that we will receive additional funding from the treasury department. As you are aware of. So right now, from the U.S. Department of the treasury, as part of the era 2 funds, we anticipatehat we will receive approximately $35 million. Some of those funds have been received, but they do need to be approved, which will come some time later. With the addition of the funds that were approved during last week's council meeting. So we are looking at approximately $42 million in funding unless something might change. So we are currently analyzing the funding sources that are available to us and as you know, more information becomes available, we will have an idea [4:30:47 PM] of what information will be included to continue providing rental assistance with haca who is our contracted vendor. So we will look to see what will be added to that gesh local agreement with them. One of the things that we will continue to do with the guidance that we have received from the treasury department, at least 90 percent of the awarded funds, it has to go to direct financial assistance to include rent, rental, arrears and utilities. We have not provided funding for utilities. That has been provided to eligible households through a partnership that we arranged with Austin energy, and so households are receive utility assistance through Austin energy and at least those who are in their service area. Funding will continue to prioritize persons under 50 percent Ami and below, and, [4:31:49 PM] again, we are going above that and we are prioritizing persons at 30 percent Ami and the funds for era 2 expire September 30, 2025. As you see, though, we are expending our dollars rapidly and so some of you may or may not know, so we are just about, as I shared, we spent about 80 percent of our funds, right about $5 million, and that goes to the level of -- that exists within our market. The good thing, one of the changes that we certainly like is that we can serve people without a person having to demonstrate a covid-19 related financial outbreak or need, right? And so I think some families have been hesitant or households [4:32:50 PM] have been hesitant to really identify exactly or some people don't always know connect can shun between their need and it being covid-19 related. But because this has been ongoing the needs continue to exist and there is a correlation between the two. So the treasury department has released that requirement which I think is useful and in no case may any eligible household receive more than 18 months of assistance, under either pr program. >> Next slide. I think that should be -- okay. We can continuing to collaborate with Travis county. We are in the process of finalizing an mou to establish a data sharing agreement. One of the key things that is important is making sure that we avoid duplication of benefits and ctm is also collaborating on creating a website to allow [4:33:51 PM] tenants to you know, know what programs are they available to apply for. Can they apply for, based upon their address and their location. So we are continuing to improve the program in coordination with other city departments and with Travis county as well. Next slide. Okay. That's last one. Thank you. >> Thank you. Ms. Jackmon. Any questions? >> Chair, I know you can't see me. I do have a question. >> Okay. First mayor pro tem and then you councilmember Fuentes, after. >> Thank you. Thank you for your assistance, councilmember Fuentes. So my question is around the utility assistance and then as an additional measure, I am still getting phone calls from folks who are going through [4:34:54 PM] repair assistance, utility assistance, et cetera, et cetera from the storm. How many folks are you hearing from as a result of the work you doing? Which, by the way, thank you, Ms. Jackmon for the work you are doing. I hear really amazing things this the community. People are so impressed by the work you are doing and recognizing -- >> That we are doing. >> Well, absolutely -- share the credit but they are so impressed by the work with that you all are doing. But are you hearing a lot around the utilities as in sort of residual storm damage? And if so, how can we support the efforts that you are putting out in the community? >> Absolutely. We were initially, I think, everybody in our department, most of the people on this call, we were flooded initially and for probably, I will say, through April, we were getting a [4:35:55 PM] lot of calls and requests regarding winter storm Yuri and really trying to understand how we could respond. We did receive direction from city council to respond with the financial assistance, so we established a contract with el Gwen, whereby household accounts receive 1,000 in assistance and this is specifically to tenants who had a demonstrated impact. And so that is a separate program and they were community partners. We worked with community partners to identify households, if they were experiencing continued loss of water, household damage, mold, et cetera. So there is some funding still available and our partners have also been working with community [4:36:56 PM] members, if, number one, to address their need 0 around winter storm Yuri, and then pointed them in the right direction if they also need rental assistance. But keeping in mind that the rental assistance that we had households had to demonstrate a covid impacted need and not -- it couldn't be a winter storm Yuri need. And so that was a little bit of the challenge, but I am not hearing those needs anymore. I know they still exist, because we are still working with community partners who are sharing that, but if people need help -- I mean, it is trickling in. I don't hear it a lot. If people still need help, please send them our way and we are happy to direct them to the right nonprofit organization to assist them. >> I really appreciate that very much. We have a person who started to [4:37:57 PM] trickle for us as well, but then I recently received by way of a person who was -- who just didn't know who to call, and so somebody gave her my number and so she reached up, shared some images with me and shared you know, some really disturbing images with me and didn't know who to call so I am going to send her in my direction. Thank you. I appreciate you. >> Absolutely. Same here. >> Councilmember Fuentes. >> Fuentes: Thank you. Yes and thank you for that question, mayor pro tem, because I think I just want to also say that we do have a need to have some sort of program established that we can deploy in times of emergency, and what we saw or at least what I saw during the winter storm is that there was a need for hotel vouchers to allow resident whose had been impacted by the storm to have a safe nice go for the weekend while -- or even longer than that while repairs are being made to their [4:38:57 PM] home, and so I am curious, Ms. Jackmon, if there is a way for us to give, given that -- well, given the restriction has been lifted on having to have it related to covid, is there any potential opportunity that we should explore, if not through federal dollars, perhaps our own city budget cycle, do you see any potential there in creating some type of permanent emergency assistance program? >> I think -- there is certainly the opportunity. The need, more than anything else, exists. Our department leadership team, Rebecca, Mandy, Erica, we have been having ongoing communications around this. We have also had meetings and communications with the co department. At the present, do we not have a [4:39:59 PM] designated funding stream for an emergency response like this. And so we certainly welcome -- there needs to be a longer conversation in terms of who is handling tenant relocation, right? And what is the various times of tenant relocation that our department will be charged with? And then also, where is the funding to support such an emergency response? And what instances should we or do we -- or do we have the authority to respond? And right now, a lot of the response, it was within the cold department and not within the housing department because of the nature of the request, yes. >> >> Fuentes: I am right there with you. We certainly need have a larger conversation because there are times of you know, natural disaster emergency but also [4:41:01 PM] looking at family violence emergency, so that need for a permanent tenant relocation assistance program is certainly needed and I welcome that will larger conversation. I had a quick question on the website that is being created for tenants to go to. Any information as to when we can expect to have that website up? Up? From ctm? >> You speaking of something I am not aware of. You are not speaking of the Aho, that was mentioned, affordable housing? >> Ctm is work on a website for tenants used by putting in their address. >> Right. Thank you. I am so sorry about that. Yes. So I need to follow up with ctm. We sort of walked through. It is sort of ready. So the conversation is now with our marketing and communications team in terms of where it will [4:42:01 PM] be located. So I will follow up and see where we are and send that information to the staff to share with councilmembers. >> Fuentes: Good deal. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Any other questions? >> Well, thank you to the staff who have worked so hard on this. I appreciate you including the graph about Austin's numbers of evictions. From that same website from pins on the, since the beginning of the pandemic there have been 18,000 evictions in Fort Worth, 19,000 evictions in Dallas, 33,000 evictions filed in Houston and in Austin we are just around 1,000, 1,200. So that has really been the work of our justices of the peace, the county judge and the mayor, our commissioners and council, all working together on this, and then having these rental assistance programs, so that if people aren't able to pay that [4:43:04 PM] were, they were able to clear that back debt and back rent as people go to work. So I think it is a priority for the whole community for us to keep that a really low level and not just have a spike at the end. So please do let us know if there is anything you need for us to keep on building on the success -- >> Chair, I do have one more question. >> Sure thing. Mayor pro tem. >> So mount Carmel, they went through a process where they had to be relocated, because of the outage of -- outage of natural gas so a lot of the residents, what they were offered was you can be relocated. You can move to another apartment and we will cancel your lease, or you can go to a friend's house. Like they offered the option to go to a friend's house. In this sort of emergent related relocation process, there wasn't [4:44:08 PM] a rent access process for them and I am certainly not asking you to fix it today. But during the course of that conversation that was so complicated, and so complex, there was no rental assistance that helped them with re relocation. >> Harper-madison: So I want to put on the radar, there are folks who by way of this process had to be relocated but they didn't have any assistance like to cover the front end on the, like the first and last month of rent or the, you know, and so I just want to put that on your radar. >> Absolutely. And I know our department, we have -- we have a conversation that is coming up regarding at the Fant relocation and I don't know if, I don't know if Rebecca is still on the call but I know Mandy and I are finishing up providing input to the cold [4:45:09 PM] department -- the code department, but again I think -- I think as the larger conversation that needs to be had around ten Fant relocation, and, yes. >> Rebecca, you are on mute. Show is still on mute. This is - - with the housing and planning department and nefertitti I appreciate you talking about our 0 ongoing conversation about ten Fant relocation. Mount Carmel certainly was a unique experience and I will say some of the challenges around that was the fact that they are a federally subsidized property and so there were unique rules .. That were governed by their contract with the U.S. [4:46:10 PM] Department of housing and urban development. As nefertitti mentioned we are an ongoing, we are in ongoing conversations with the code department as well as some other departments about how best to handle emergency relocations when they would be triggered, what funding sources could be tapped into and how we can most seamlessly address emergency situations or tenants in need or residents in need as councilmember Fuentes mentioned we have had other situations including in her district by -- floods where we have had to relocate on an emergency basis, homeowners and renters. So this is an ongoing conversation. We are quorg with the department on a comprehensive response to city council which should be forthcoming, I believe it is in July. >> Thank you. [4:47:11 PM] And Rebecca, we still can't hear you, in case you are trying to. I am sure we would have learned a lot. Sorry. Any last questions? >> Councilmember -- >> Yes. >> Councilmember Casar, do you mind if I -- I just want to share one other thing that is important as it relates to funding that we have available with alga win. .. .. There is funding available -- if people are facing eviction, and so this is tied to our contract that we have with Trell and el Gwen, people who are facing eviction, do we have a limited .. Funds available, if the outcome is eviction, right? There are funds available for [indiscernible] Limited funds available for moving. So we don't have this where we [4:48:12 PM] can assist everyone who is facing -- or have to move, but if they apply through el Gwen or through trella there is limited funding available so we certainly don, as we see increased, evictions increasing I want to make sure residents are aware that these are available, because one of the last -- we want to see, last thing we want to see is people to lose everything and not be able to start on a good footing, which we often see when people are forced to be evicted. So that is something that is available. >> Thank you. To both mayor pro tem's point and what councilmember Fuentes said, I think it is really helpful for us to have emergency funds aside for housing emergencies in general. There was a time where we had to -- the fire marshal said we had [4:49:13 PM] to shut down an apartment complex in my district that was just far too dangerous for people to keep living in. The relocation up front was done by the -- by some emergency funds we happened to have at that time, and then the lawsuit against that property owner because of their negligence ended up helping us refill the fund, but if you don't have the understood in the first place you can't wait to relocate people. So I think that is something we should be thinking about. Any last points here before we close out the meeting? Well, thank you to everyone. I think we covered all the really important sections of the housing crisis we have been dealing with from halting evictions in a pandemic, which gives people stability and actually really slowed the spread of the virus and saved lives to addressing subsidized, low income housing and then the existing immediate for us to do something about housing supply issues in our city, all of these are really urgent. We should be working on them and [4:50:14 PM] talking about them all the time, and it really is the work of our city staff and of this council and minute to work through this. So thank you to everyone for your time and we will see you at the next meeting. >>