April 5, 2006 Minutes (City Commission Room)
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MEMBERS PRESENT: |
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Rebecca Buford, Dennis Constance, Dave Corliss, Jim Dick, Mary Grob, Commissioner Dennis “Boog” Highberger, Barbara Huppee, Gwen Klingenberg, Lavern Squier, Phil Struble
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MEMBERS ABSENT: |
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Carrie Lindsey, Bob Santee and Bill Yanek |
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STAFF PRESENT: |
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Lesley Rigney and Margene Swarts |
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PUBLIC PRESENT: |
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Commissioner Highberger welcomed the group and announced that members Lindsey and Yanek would not be in attendance. He stated that as housing prices continue to climb and wages do not, it is becoming harder for working people to live in Lawrence. The CHAT process brought forward some ideas – this group will likely come up with even more creative ideas to address the problem. He asked the group to review the agenda and volunteered to Chair the Committee.
Constance moved to elect Commissioner Highberger as Chair. Dick seconded the motion, which passed unanimously.
Highberger asked staff about reviewing the calendar.
Swarts said the CC room is rarely available in the evening. Days are much better but depending on days and times, we can look at the calendar for the room.
Highberger asked the group if Wednesdays at 3:30 would work and suggested initial biweekly meetings and eventually moving to monthly meetings. He wants to move quickly and put forth some good recommendations.
There was some discussion about scheduling meetings and it was agreed that the next meeting will be held Wednesday, April 26 at 4:00 in the CC Room. After that, they will meet biweekly until they decide to meet monthly.
Highberger asked if anyone wanted to talk about goals or what they would like to see happen. He wants members to review the CHAT report and at the minimum, he would like to go through the recommendations, evaluate them and recommend Commission action, providing a bit more specificity (estimated costs and possible benefits). He would like to provide that type of detail.
Swarts said she sent members the link to the CHAT report and the notebook includes reduced size slides of the full report. Many members present sat in on the various CHAT sessions. There were eight sessions in Lawrence over the course of a week. There were informal focus groups and from those, the consultant came up with a presentation and followed up with a summary meeting at the end.
Corliss said there has been a small version of a regulatory audit scheduled to evaluate Neighborhood Resources Department processes in order to help innovate and save costs. It is not a full regulatory audit because it is not taking into account how to assign costs to the development community. The CC has recently adopted a new development code. There are other items to look at but what is missing from a full regulatory audit is “are our standards too expensive for the desired service levels” or “do we have standards we could live without that would result in a less expensive housing product.”
Swarts reviewed the CHAT recommendations and stated that some of them were already being implemented. For instance, Code Enforcement is working with Planning extensively to try to make the development process easier. There is ongoing conversation about how departments can streamline operations and make the process more user friendly. Also, with regard to partnerships, the City maintains strong partnerships with Tenants to Homeowners (TTH), Habitat for Humanity and the Lawrence-Douglas County Housing Authority (LDCHA). The Lawrence Homebuilders Association continues to work with Code Enforcement and that partnership does exist. Community Development staff works closely with LDCHA in providing Tenant-Based Rental Assistance (TBRA) for clients and have worked with all three entities regarding land acquisition. Most recently, CD staff worked with TTH on a new land trust concept. With regard to the HOOT program (first time homebuyer), it has changed to the land trust but is still a first time homebuyer program for low and moderate-income persons. The advantage of a land trust is that it will provide long term affordable housing. In the HOOT program, the existing housing market allowed clients to go through the program and subsequently sell homes at a price that might no longer be affordable to a low or moderate income buyer. The way the land trust is structured, the affordability period will be longer and units will remain scattered throughout the community. The HAND subdivision is mentioned in the CHAT report and although the Atherton Court project is not, the two are a combined 55 units of affordable housing. The Department has always tried to acquire vacant land for affordable housing development, but the amount of CDBG funds available for those activities is shrinking and there are less infill lots available. Habitat and TTH have to look harder to acquire land.
Corliss said it is important to recognize that some recommendations are not one shot deals. They need to become part of the philosophy. It will be an ongoing process.
Highberger noted that related to developing a growth vision, there is a sustainable design team coming to Lawrence in the fall and this will be a chance to jumpstart that vision. The last recommendation in the CHAT concerned incentives.
Staff said those could include using the Kansas Neighborhood Revitalization Act or having requirements that a certain percentage of new developments be moderately priced housing.
Highberger stated that he wished to get one item identified for the next agenda and suggested having a presentation by staff and a group evaluation of options. The group could throw out a list of possible topics for future meetings. He does not want to overlap with the Community Commission on Homelessness. There are folks who are not getting as much house as they want for a quarter million, and that is not the target of this group. He wants everyone who has a job in Lawrence to be able to live in Lawrence. There will not be a universal solution – it will have to do with public housing, partnerships, incentives, etc. He asked the group if that general goal was acceptable.
Constance said that is the focus of his group, the Living Wage Alliance – people who work here often cannot afford to live here or they are in substandard housing or it takes such a large chunk of income that any small financial glitch can cause them huge problems.
Highberger said it sounds like there are more elements to address than just housing.
Constance says that his group wants to be sure that those social issues are taken into consideration.
Struble said he likes the direction defined by Highberger.
Klingenberg asked if the group was going to discuss rental prices.
Highberger said yes, a lot of people who have housing needs are renters.
Huppee clarified that we would be focusing on moderate income and lower as our target.
Highberger said he does not know if it is necessary to define the target so narrowly with numbers.
Klingenberg said we should take into account local income information.
Highberger asked for staff to provide a breakdown of income and cost of housing stock.
Swarts said the Department has the income piece as well as Fair Market Rents (FMR’s).
Huppee said census data tells us how many own or rent, and HUD provides income guidelines. We can get a lot of the information requested by extrapolation.
Highberger requested a short informational report from staff for the next meeting.
Huppee said for people to be mindful of the fact that when we talk about the hourly wage, we talk about it in terms of gross wages when the reality is net wages because that is what families have to work with.
Buford said the other issue is getting people into housing – they have the ability to buy in the $125,000 price range but the actual housing stock in that price range is not here.
Highberger said he has seen data that suggests otherwise.
Buford said that you are often talking about $15-20,000 in rehab costs. It is not a good idea to put people into housing that is substandard because they cannot afford to pay for improvements.
Huppee said the same can be said for rentals. The bottom 20% is usually substandard.
Highberger asked if Code Enforcement was something they need to talk about.
Huppee said that they turn down many units for Section 8 and TBRA because they do not meet Housing Quality Standards (HQS). They use both the federal regulations and local codes to determine the suitability of a unit for their programs.
Swarts asked if it would be helpful to have a presentation on minimum code as per city requirements.
Corliss says the city enforces the Uniform Housing Code, which is basically a life-safety code.
Squier asked if part of the issue is quantifying the demand and how we understand the demand. It may be larger or smaller than we think.
Huppee said she would provide some numbers from LDCHA research. They can serve families up to 80% of MFI, which is pretty high. As of the last census, 28% of Lawrence households are income eligible for housing assistance; 54% lived in rental housing, which can be translated to approximately 8550 households who would be eligible for rental assistance. Currently, LDCHA serves slightly more than 1000.
Squier said if we understand supply-demand, we may find out something new.
Highberger said his preference would be to not delve into serious research. There is already enough data to estimate the demand.
Klingenberg said we do not know the number who work here and do not live here.
Constance said a lot of KU workers do not live here.
Corliss said approximately 45% of the City of Lawrence workforce live in the city. He does not know if that is bad, but how can we make sure that people who want to live in Lawrence can.
Constance said that those who live far outside of city limits will spend an inordinate amount of money on transportation and childcare, etc. which impacts their ability to obtain jobs. He has lost several employees because of failure to show up at work due to those issues.
Huppee said that unreliable and expensive transportation is one of the most common reasons for loss of jobs.
Constance said the housing stock perspective is important, but he would like to take other things into account.
Swarts asked, other than anecdotally, how can you determine why the others do not live here? How would we look at determining if they are choosing to live out of town or if they are doing it because they cannot afford to live in town?
Highberger asked for concurrence in identifying the ultimate goal as trying to make sure that everyone who works in Lawrence can live here. For the next meeting, he wants to identify one of the CHAT recommendations for a more in-depth presentation. He wants a list of topics from members that they would like more information on and a list of possible solutions/problems to be sent to staff before the next meeting. He wants a dot voting exercise for the next meeting and would like to identify one topic per meeting to talk about in the future. Is there anything currently on the list that members want to put forth?
Squier asked if it is useful to talk about tools that we are willing or not willing to use. If we ask “are we willing to use land acquisition incentives” – then we can talk about what tools can be used to address the problems.
Constance said one of the things they hope to find at the Conference for the Precariously Housed is a list of possibilities they have not thought of before. June 16-17 is the tentative date for conference.
Highberger suggested focusing on information gathering. For the next meeting the group can go over data from Swarts and Huppee and Huppee could give a summary of LDCHA activities.
Swarts said she could invite someone for a brief code enforcement talk.
Highberger said that would be good and asked for details about the conference.
Constance said they asked the Commission for funding for a conference to invite a conversation on the precariously housed. From census data, we are looking at 1500 households who might be in that scenario. There are many good housing programs and lots of focus on homeless services – this conference is looking at the gap.
Klingenberg said she received some information and asked staff if they would like it.
Swarts said staff will keep it in the library and can make a listing and if group wants to look at something in the future, staff can provide it. If at any time the group wants to see a Power Point of the CHAT report, let staff know. She passed around the member list for additions or corrections.
The meeting adjourned at 4:40 pm.