Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Welcome back to this weekly meeting of the Community Planning and Housing Committee with Denver City Council. Your Community Planning and Housing Committee starts now.

All right. Good afternoon, everyone. It is Tuesday, September 1st. This is the Community Planning and Housing Committee. I'm Amanda Sawyer. I'm actually not the chair of this committee. I'm the vice chair, but I'm covering for Council Member Sandoval, who is out today. So thanks for joining us. Before we get started, let's do a quick round of introductions. And we're going to start to my left.

Darrell Watson, Fine District 9.

Good afternoon, Floral Vitres, Lucky District 7. Good afternoon, Diana Romero-Campbell, Southeast Denver District 4. Hello, Chantal Lewis, District 8. Jamie Torres, West Denver District 3.

All right. And I don't see any council members online. So we have three action items today. Two are going to move in a block. So that will be our second piece. The first is a set of rezoning. So Libby, if you want to introduce yourself and take it away. And I know that council member Torres is a sponsor of this. So she may want to make comments as well. Council member Torres, you want to start or finish? I'll finish. Yeah.

All right, take it away, Libby. I'm Libby Glick with Community Planning and Development, and I will be presenting the rezoning for the Denver Housing Authority properties in Barnum and Barnum West. So first we'll go through the request, then the location and context, followed by the process, and then finally ending with the review criteria. So as you all know, Councilwoman Torres is sponsoring this rezoning on behalf of Denver Housing Authority. So they own three properties that are highlighted on the screen and they're single and two unit or they're all zoned single unit and they're proposed to be rezoned to two unit. So ESU DX to ETUC. They're currently single and two-unit residential structures. And DHA is proposing to allow tandem homes to be built on the back of the properties. And these homes will be income restricted to residents making up to 80% of the area median income. And it's a part of their first phase of the single family plus affordable home ownership pilot project. So this is located in Council District 3 in the Barnum and Barnum West neighborhoods. The current zoning is Urban Edge Single Unit DX. Most of these neighborhoods have that same single unit zoning, and then there's more mixed use in Main Street along First, Federal, and Sheridan. The purpose of the Urban Edge two unit C zone district is it's a two unit district allowing urban houses, duplexes, tandem houses and detached ADUs with a minimum zone lot size of 5,500 square feet. So the current uses are single and two unit residential. Most of this area is single unit with some two and multi-unit and there's public quasi, public uses and then some commercial and retail along the corridors. So this shows the three sites that are proposed to be rezoned. I'll note that the one in the middle is the one that currently has like two single family dwellings on it. So it's one zone lot, two units. And I believe the plan is to split this lot and then do two tandem homes behind these existing homes. So now we'll discuss the process. So this application was complete at the end of July. It went to planning board in mid-August. We're here before you today for the committee meeting, and it will go to city council on October 13th. So as of the date of the staff report and when this was all sent to you or posted on Thursday, we had not received comments from the public or registered neighborhood organizations. But we did receive a comment over the weekend, I believe, from a neighbor of the property on Hazel that was in opposition to the rezoning. And they were citing just concerns over the current structure that has kind of fallen into some disrepair. And then they also felt that this was did not comply with the West memo that came out, which is where, you know, CPD kind of had a, because there's a lot of guidance in the West area plan for affordable housing, that we weren't going to do a lot of rezonings from single unit to more intense zone districts, unless there's an affordable housing agreement. However, this is a DHA property. And so from staff's perspective, we feel that this is in line with that memo to go from single unit to a little bit more because it will have affordable housing on it. So this went to planning board August 19th and the board voted unanimously to recommend approval of the rezoning. So now we'll discuss the review criteria. There are three review criteria that must be met. Consistency with adopted plans and needs to further the public interest and be consistent with the neighborhood context zone district purpose and intent statements. So you can find more information on how this rezoning meets the strategies in the comprehensive plan and the staff report. So I'll just talk about Blueprint Denver and the West Area Plan in the presentation today. So Blueprint Denver identifies this property as in the urban edge context and the district they're applying for is in the urban edge context in the Denver zoning code. The future places is low residential. This is where duplexes are appropriate and can be thoughtfully integrated. Then the future street types are local and residential where we primarily see residential uses. The growth area strategies, all other areas of the city where we anticipate to see 20% of new housing and 10% of new employment. So this will allow for a slight increase in density within this area. And then this application addresses equity by increasing the development of affordable housing in Barnum and Barnum West. And it addresses climate or Denver's climate goals by allowing greater density, which is a more efficient use of land. So now moving to the West Area Plan. The future place guidance and neighborhood context are the same as they are in Blueprint Denver, but the West Area has specific height guidance. So the height guidance for this area is up to two and a half stories, which is consistent with the ETUC district that allows two and a half stories. And then there's some specific strategies that this rezoning furthers. So Land Use Policy 5 allows expanding missing middle housing and that greater allowances should be considered when one or more units provide long-term affordability. So these sites will provide long-term affordability. It also discusses supporting community partner programs and efforts to create more affordable housing options within low residential neighborhoods. Obviously, this rezoning is supporting a partner program to create more affordable housing. And then the Economy and Housing Policy 2 talks about prioritizing new affordable housing within lower-scale residential neighborhoods. So this rezoning will do just that. It also furthers the public interest, especially by providing home ownership opportunities. It's been found that that provides some long-term stability for residents, which improves communities. For families that live there, it can provide better educational and health outcomes for children that live in these homes. So staff finds it will further the public interest. And then lastly, it's consistent with the urban edge context, the purpose of the residential districts, and the specific intent of the ETUC zone district. So finding all review criteria have been met, staff recommends this move forward to a vote of the full city council. And that concludes my presentation.

Awesome. Thank you. Um, council member Torres, do you want to, do you have any comments? We have one other council member in the queue.

Yeah, I really quickly. And thank you so much. Um, Libby. So Libby was also our consultant on the, um, uh, Southwest area plan legislative rezoning where we've already started this. uh effort of working with denver housing authority on the properties that they've identified as being ideal for a tandem home and i'm incredibly excited about them having looked at all of their dispersed properties and identifying which ones had a primary home like what size they were would they have room to build on the back and like all these other features right this one Or these three in Barnum and Barnum West are not their only owned properties in Barnum and Barnum West, but they are ideal for putting on a tandem home. And doing it at an affordable home ownership model is amazing. And one of the things that I think we responded to really positively in the Southwest area. So we did 19 properties in the Southwest area plan, mostly in Westwood, Athmar Park, and Ruby Hill, maybe. Councilwoman, I can't remember. Yes. And so I think what DHA has conceived is just a really wonderful way of using their dispersed sites. I will also say that we did community engagement on this. We had basically an open house at Barnum Park and a lot of neighbors of those properties and one tenant came. And we're really interested, one, the tenant was interested in, can she move into ownership? Yeah, like that's the goal, right? For the primary home, it is typically a voucher recipient who occupies the primary home. DHA is not kicking them out. They are not demoing that house. They are just building on the back. So both will be able to exist and they want to work with those tenants to get them into homeownership and then potentially sell the primary home as well. So it is kind of this evolving scheme that I think DHA is trying to figure out how can we best use our properties in a really efficient affordable housing kind of way. We also it allowed also neighbors to air grievances to get those addressed. We brought DPD to the table. We brought DHA back to the table like really trying to understand this isn't just about affordable housing for us. It's about neighbor to neighbor relationships too and wanting to improve those and the kinds of things that folks really want to evolve to are seeing folks that feel like they're part of a community in the future and I think this helps bridge that. I will also say that the letter of opposition that we received, I just replied just with some factual information. I think there's a perception out there that the West Area Memo just put a stop to any rezonings and it did not. We are actually approving rezonings in the West Area neighborhoods because it obligated a conversation with host about affordability and making units affordable and they're delivering it. It hasn't been that big of a reach. We are still approving rezonings in West Area and they are actually delivering on what that community wants to see. The other had to do with condition of the primary home. I've already heard from DHA who have sent out folks and just find contradictions to what the neighbor kind of proposed. But I'll let DHA really handle kind of that back and forth. And then, you know, there are going to be other disruptions. Sure, construction, things like that. Those happen. But the home next door has a tandem home as well. So tandem homes are not unfamiliar in Barnum and Barnum West. Neither are ADUs at this point. So I think it is totally consistent with the kinds of things that we're looking for, certainly the plan guidance. And Libby, I just appreciate all your help with us. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Council member Alvidrez. Thank you so much. This is, you know, definitely in alignment with what we've been doing. I'm curious if someone from DHA could answer questions. Is someone here?

I know she was planning to come. I don't know if she's online. I sent her the Zoom link. Yvette? I think Yvette is who I mostly... Yvette?

Do you have Yvette? Producer, is Yvette online? Yes. If you could promote Yvette, that would be great. Thank you.

Great. Well, I'm hoping that Yvette can hear me. My question is, we already did rezone some of these properties. Have any of those begun construction? Is this an actual process that's actually starting to happen where we're actually starting to build and pull permits? And I don't know if she can answer that, or I don't know if Libby, you happen to have any information. But I want to make sure that we're rezoning these. And something's actually happening, because I haven't seen anything. so far with the other properties that were rezoned. And I do have some technical questions about the process.

I'm not aware of anything yet, but maybe Yvette knows.

Yvette, can you hear us?

Yeah, happy to answer. We actually are moving through the design and permitting phase for all of these properties. Our Glencoe Street property and our Thrill property have made it through permitting and are ready for our SUDP permits to be paid. We have submitted LaPan and Bannock also for permitting. So all of the design work is done on all of those and they are moving forward through the process.

Those are these properties are 1 from the plan. Okay. That's great to hear. I do have a couple of follow up questions, which is, I'm assuming that there's going to be a land trust or under these properties and what land trust are you using?

So, we are actually will retain ownership of the properties and then the structure of it all and the land lease will be managed by habitat.

Okay, great. I think that was the main question and just around. I'm a little bit concerned about the 80%. Am I just how is someone with only making 80,000 going to qualify to buy a home?

And so that is something that we are, we have received proposition 123 funding for these homes as well as some contributions from hosts. That will help us subsidize some of the cost of development and be able to sell these for a lower price. As well, as the land trust structure, which keeps us from having to sell them the land also allowing the property to be sold at a lower price. And then we are also, we had a thought of success with our lending partners for the program. And so we have already begun conversations with a lot of them on designing products and maybe finding a way to create special programs that these participants could benefit from. The team working on this project is also connecting with other organizations that may be able to provide down payment assistance or closing cost assistance. We have. We have applied for some grant funding that would also help us with all of that. So we are trying to come at it from a lot of different avenues.

That's great. I'd love to continue the conversation as they get ready for sale and make sure that we have people available to sell them or see how that all pans out. Thank you so much for being here and being available to answer those questions. Those are all the questions I have. Thank you. I'd be really excited to see more home ownership opportunities that are affordable. Thank you, committee chair.

Great. Thank you. Thanks so much, Yvette. And seeing no other questions, Questions from council members? We would need a motion and a second on 1252. All right, moved by Council Member Lewis, seconded by Council President Romero-Campbell. I was doing thumbs up, but yes. I got you. Do we need a roll call vote or are we thumbs up? Looks like we're all thumbs up. Okay, we'll see you on the floor. Thank you very much. And then if you'll just give us a minute, we're going to switch over now to our Department of Housing Stability. We have two action items that are going to move together in a block, 1253 and 1254. So if you guys want to come on up and... Why are you all staring at each other?

Everybody's nominating me.

Uh-huh, come on up, Cole. You're the chief now. I'm in charge.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

Are we ready? We're ready. Okay, awesome. Great to be with you all. I'm Cole Chandler, Executive Director of the Department of Housing Stability, and I'm joined by some of my colleagues who are sitting over here. But I want to thank Polly Kyle for all her work on this and for working to brief so many of you over the last few weeks on this project. Laya Mitchell is here to answer any questions you may have on the housing opportunity side. And we also have Jenna and Katie from our comms and community outreach team. And then I want to also note that Randy is here. He's a member of our Housing Stability Strategic Advisors, which is basically our board of directors, half appointed by the mayor, half appointed by you all. And Randy's been one of the founding members of the HSSA and helped bring forward this initial strategic plan. I believe we have Melanie Lewis Dickerson online as well. And I believe both Randy and Melanie may share some in public comment if we have time for that later on. So thank you so much for having me to talk about the strategic plan. We've got four parts to this presentation today. So part one is looking at our original strategic plan. The Department of Housing Stability was founded in 2019 and this is our first strategic plan that we are wrapping up now. I'm going to talk about the next steps here. So I want to talk about that original strategic plan. I want to second look at the progress that we've made under that original strategic plan. The third part is to look at this continuation plan that we're proposing to bring forward for 2027. And then finally, to take a longer-range view and look at our next long-range strategic plan that we plan to bring back to Council in 2027. So with that, we will dive right in. So our original strategic plan covered the years of 2022 to 2026. And I think that's gonna be important as we go through the presentation, particularly when you think about the goals that were set to remember that those were goals that were set based upon data back in 2021, enacted in 2022. I started my work here at the city in 2023, and there's some things as a part of the Johnson administration that we've tracked using data from 2023 that hasn't always

Cool. Can you just give us one second? I'm just seeing that for some reason our live video stream just went down on Zoom. And I want to make sure that we get that back up because this is really important. I want to make sure that the public see it. So can you just give us five minutes, maybe hopefully a little less? Okay. Deal. Producer, how are we doing over there? Are we back up? They're working on it. So we're just going to sit here and stare at each other awkwardly for a couple of minutes. And sorry about that. No worries. But troubleshooting is happening now.

It's on number eight.

Yeah, I see broadcast is fine. We're getting thumbs up now. Yeah. Okay, great. We can start again. Thank you. Sorry about that.

No worries. Um, so, as I was sharing the strategic plan, um, span of the years 2022 to 2026. It was really set in motion based upon data in 2021. And that's an important distinction that I want to make because I started in 2023. The mayor started in 2023. Some of the measures that we've tracked as a part of this administration and alongside citywide goals have cited 2023 data. So there will be moments in this presentation where you might see that something A data point is referenced in a different way. And so I just wanted to speak to that out front and happy to take any questions that folks may have on that as we go throughout. But the purpose here is really to look at the five-year strategic plan and the progress made under that plan. so at the time that this plan was being written there was a large stakeholder engagement process that unfolded more than 1300 stakeholders were engaged at that time i was one of those stakeholders in the community some of you council members were part of the hssa board at that time and others of you might have participated in this process from either side of the table as well but it was a robust stakeholder engagement process that led to the creation of the plan. There are goals set out under the plan under four pillars, and so those four pillars include housing opportunity, housing stability, homelessness resolution, and operations. I think it's important to note the goals and objectives that were outlined here because later on in the presentation we'll look at a dashboard to review the progress that we made on those particular items. And so you can see these on the screen, but the first one here is to increase the portion of total homes in Denver that were income restricted from 7% to 8%, so a net increase of 1% during that time period. The next piece was looking at our cost burden households and looking at the percent of our low and moderate income households that were cost burdened, meaning spending more than 30% of their income on housing, from 59% to 51%. There was also a goal to preserve at least 950 apartments in income-restricted properties, and then also to increase homeownership rates among low- and moderate-income households from 36% to 41%, and increase homeownership rates among BIPOC households from 41% to 45%. I share all those data points because we'll look at some dashboards later that show how we did on those metrics. Related to housing stability, we had an ambitious goal to reduce the number of evictions filed by 25%. And so at the time, the goal was 8,800. The goal was to reduce that to 6,600. Seeing faces around the table because we know that that's one that didn't go in the direction that we hoped it would over this course of time. We also set a goal to support advancement of prioritization policy to allow residents who are at risk or have been displaced to have priority access to new affordable housing units. And then we also set a goal to benchmark other measures such as foreclosures and things that we hadn't developed quite as much among income-restricted units and household mobility over the time period. So those were our goals on the housing stability side. In terms of homelessness resolution, there was an ambitious goal to reduce unsheltered homelessness by 50% from 2022 to 2026. There was a goal to increase the annual number of households served in rehousing and supportive housing programs from 1,800 to 3,000. A goal to measurably end veteran homelessness by achieving functional zero by 2026. A goal to increase the contract benchmark for the percentage of sheltered households who exit to housing from 30 percent to 40 percent, so trying to increase the percentage of those that we're serving exiting to permanent housing. And then a goal to increase the number of family households who exit shelter and outreach programs from 25 to 50 percent over this time period. And then finally, the fourth pillar is our operations pillar, which is where our finance and data, our communications, public outreach work lives, as well as our contracts. And so within that, Set of goals within that pillar, we set the goal to improve communication channels and align those to community need to reduce the average length of time of our contracting process to reduce our procurement decision making timeline. So trying to speed up the ways that we do government work. to reduce our average invoicing process from 21 days to seven days, and then also to increase percentage of respondents to community and stakeholder feedback. So getting messages and feedback back to the community in a quicker way. So, those were sort of the parameters of the original goal, or the original plan. Many of these goals were very ambitious at the time. Some of them we met, some of them we didn't. And so, we'll talk a little bit about the progress on those goals. But I did want to also mention, as I did at the top, that in 2023 we had an administration change. You might have heard some of the data that we've cited that we reduced unsheltered homelessness by 64% from 2023 to 2026. I just want to note that that initial starting point for that was 2023 versus the plan was 2021. So it was looking at a different point. That might be why you see discrepancies in that data, because actually what happened was that in 2021, the data was at one level, then it went up in 22, up again in 23, and then it started coming back down. So a different high watermark there. We have also seen a reduction in overall homelessness of 12.5%. The reduction in the last point in time count was the first overall homelessness reduction in Denver in nine years. And we are proud that we've seen some other important trends that show that we're continuing to make progress, which is that sheltered and unsheltered homelessness is down among newly homeless and chronically homeless individuals. So we have less new people falling into homelessness and less people experiencing chronic homelessness in our point in time count. So those are important data points. We're actually starting to see those trends nationally as well. This is something that's not being talked about as much. But many large cities across the country have seen that their unsheltered homelessness has declined, that their episodes of newly homeless, chronic homelessness are declining. And so we are seeing that we're making progress, not only in Denver, but across the nation. And then the final point is that in collaboration with partners in 2024, we ended the cycle of street homelessness for veterans. And there's a couple of important caveats there. One is that this was specifically focused on unsheltered homelessness among the veteran population. So we had a goal to achieve a functional zero under the strategic plan. in overall homelessness among veterans, we did not achieve that. But when we looked specifically at solving for veterans, we were able to achieve that in 2024. And so the methodology that we used was to build a by name list. and to create opportunities for every veteran experiencing unsheltered homelessness to come indoors. So we made significant progress on that in 2024. We've seen some backsliding over the past couple of years, but we still know every single veteran that's on the streets by name and are still working to engage them. And so I can tell you exactly how many are on the by name list today. It's just under 60. And so we are continuing to engage with those folks and working to bring them indoors. So those are a couple points that we wanted to make as we brought this forward. But now looking specifically at the dashboard. So going back to the pillars that we talked about earlier, housing opportunity and housing stability are flagged here. So you can think back to the goals that we talked about At the beginning, we did achieve the goal of increasing the percentage of Denver homes that are income restricted from 7% to 8%, so that sits at 8.1%. We did achieve the goal of preserving 950 affordable homes, so you can see 1,424 homes preserved over this timeline. We did not quite achieve the goal on the affordable homes created. And so you can see where that fell short. We nearly achieved the goal for the number of permanent supportive housing units created, 865 against the benchmark of 900. We were not successful in reducing the cost burden rate. In fact, that increased for low and moderate income households. And we did not quite achieve our goal in terms of BIPOC homeownership rate. And so you can see that we moved the needle in the right direction on that, but didn't quite achieve the 45%. And we did not achieve the homeownership rate for low and moderate income households either. And that number moved in the wrong direction as well. So sharing that data out here in terms of evictions, we know that that didn't go in the right direction. And so The goal was to reduce from 8,800 to 6,600. That number has increased dramatically over the past few years as there's been less resources available, especially from the state and federal government. And we have seen, you know, a really kind of leveling off now at nearly 16,000 evictions a year. The other, we were able to implement the prioritization policy, which our team is happy to talk about if there's questions about that. And then in terms of foreclosure filings among income restricted units, we did not move that down from 10 to zero. That number also went in the wrong direction, which you can see here. Moving on to the next bit, homelessness resolution and operations. We'll review these dashboards. So you can see that we met the goal to reduce unsheltered homelessness and have exceeded that goal. We nearly met the goal in terms of households served in rapid rehousing and supportive housing annually. I want to note that that's a household number, so that's not individual people. There's more than one person represented in many of those households. But you can see that number is 2,374. We made progress towards our goal to end veteran homelessness for all populations, not just street homelessness, but still have more work to do on that front and remain committed to that work. We also made progress to increase our family exits from shelter and outreach to housing. And as you all know, family homelessness and addressing family homelessness is a goal of POST and city council and the administration and one that we are looking forward to bringing forward in our 2027 budget as well. And then also, we did make progress in terms of reducing the average length of stay, or average length of homelessness. And so you can see that it was 357 days at the beginning of the plan, down to 243 days. Still a long way to go to get towards that three-month goal, but one that we're proud to be making progress on. We noted improved communication channels on the operations division side. We did not make as much progress on reducing average working days to a fully executed contract as we would have liked. We did, however, achieve our goal on average working days to a procurement decision, and we also made progress on average invoice processing timelines. there is still more room to continue working on increasing community satisfaction with our reporting tools as well. So you can see those represented here. Again, noting all this data is based on 2021 baseline data and reflective of the progress made from 2022 through 2026. So all of that leads to our plans over the next year. And so I want to talk about that. I started in this role in April and quickly started talking with the council president at the time, Council President Sandoval, about how we could get to this moment where we would bring forward a solid plan in 2027. There were a couple of factors that we wanted to consider, and one of those was the fact that we have an ongoing housing needs assessment that's taking place right now. And we wanted to make sure that our long-range strategic plan was based upon the housing needs assessment, that we weren't making decisions or projections for the next five years that wouldn't be based upon that data. And so we came to The conclusion that we would be looking to bring forward a one-year continuance plan, but that it would be based upon the same four pillars and work to advance equity all across those pillars. And so that's what you'll see reflected in the plan that we're bringing forward. As I was just sharing, the continuation plan that we have been working on is in committee today. We have actually already issued an RFP for the long-range strategic plan that would be put in place at the beginning of 2028, and we, a year from now, plan to begin introducing you all to that plan through the formal process. So, a couple of things that you will see in the continuation plan. is basically no wholesale changes to the existing plan. We looked through with our staff, with stakeholders, in conversations with you all in places where the goals that were in place were still ambitious and worth striving for, we left those in place. other places we made minor changes to align to what we plan to deliver in 2027. We utilized some of the community engagement process of the housing needs assessment. So root policy research has been conducting some of that and we attached onto that. We also conducted some of our own stakeholdering with groups that were necessary to involve in this process. And so talk about that on this slide, but we conducted listening sessions with people with lived experience in homelessness and housing instability, with all of host staff and leadership, with homeless service providers and advocates, with community and strategic partners, as well as with affordable housing developers and other housing experts. And we also issued a public survey to provide opportunity for people to provide input in that process. And all of that is leading to an updated plan with updated goals, which you can see here. And so along the pillars, you'll find an impact statement each time. So on the housing opportunity side, our impact statement is that everyone who wants to can afford to call Denver their home. That's the vision that we're striving for. Our goals in this next year are to deliver at least 930 newly developed units, preserve at least 490 homes, income restricted apartments and ownership opportunities to continue exploring innovations and partnerships with the market with market rate developments to increase the number of deed restricted units so that we can eventually get to a place where we could deliver 3,000 of those types of units on an annual basis and We kept the same goal on reducing the housing cost burden percentage. We did not achieve that. It's still a very ambitious goal. We kept that goal as is. We kept the same goals on increasing homeownership rates among low- and moderate-income households as well as BIPOC households. And then we noted that through the housing needs assessment, we will identify specific housing needs for people with disabilities and include measures to address demonstrated gaps in the supply of accessible units. So those are the goals that we've called out on the housing opportunity side. On the housing stability side, our impact statement is that Denver residents remain safely and stably housed. Our goals are to prevent at least 700 households from becoming homeless in 2027. as well as to monitor the implementation of the prioritization policy and allow residents at risk of or have been displaced priority access to new affordable housing. And then on the homelessness resolution side, our impact statement is that residents experience homelessness rarely, and if they do, it's brief and one time. Our goals are to reduce overall homelessness by 30% in 2027 as compared to 2024 and to maintain an unsheltered point in time count of 350 people. So we want to continue driving a reduction in unsheltered homelessness and then to maintain that. We aim to provide shelter to at least 12,000 unique households, provide housing access to at least 2,000 households experiencing homelessness, serve a total of 3,200 households in rehousing and supportive housing programs in 2027. So that's the total scope of the programs we're investing in in that regard. as noted before, continue strides towards measurably ending veteran homelessness by achieving functional zero for all populations. So those are our goals on the homelessness resolution side. Finally, as we think about 2027, I want to note a couple of required ordinance updates that exist as part of this. So we're bringing forward the plan, but within this, we are proposing amendments to the DRMC. that would, point number one, state that we would bring forward a one-year continuation plan that will articulate host goals and strategies for 2027. And then number two, by a date certain, we would bring forward the next long-range strategic plan by September 1st of 2027, and that plan will begin in January of 2028. Basically, the DRMC right now requires us to submit a three- to five-year strategic plan to you all. We're asking for a variance for you all to allow us to submit this one-year strategic plan while we continue to conduct the housing needs assessment so that then when we enact a new long-range strategic plan in 2028, it will be based upon that data. And so I just wanted to explain the ordinance change that is being requested there. Okay, final part of the presentation and then look forward to conversation. I think I've spoken about this already, but just wanted to highlight what we're asking you all to move forward today is just a one-year plan. There is a long-range plan coming. I'm very excited about it. Never been so excited about long-range strategic planning. or housing needs assessments. But it really is an incredibly exciting time that we're starting to look at some of the preliminary data of the housing needs assessment and really thinking about what do we need to do to build the Denver that we all want to live in over the next five years and beyond. I mentioned that the RFP for project management and stakeholder engagement has already been issued. Our team is reviewing that and is selecting a vendor for this process. The housing needs assessment is nearly complete and we will have that by December at the latest. And then middle of the year, next year, we will be drafting a plan to bring to council in September of 2027. And so with that, I am here for your questions and for some support and answers from my team.

Awesome. Thank you. We have 15 minutes of public comment set aside, but Council Member Watson actually used to be the chair of the Housing Strategic Advisory Committee. So before we go to public comment, I wanted to see if you had any comments you wanted to make.

Thank you so much, committee chair. It was very nice of you. I'll share very quickly. I want to say thank you, Cole. Thank you, Polly and team, for presenting this information. I'm so happy to see Randy. My back was turned when you came in, and I appreciate your long-term leadership, one of the original board members, and so is Melanie Lewis Dickerson. Very quickly that I want to share, the role of the five-year strategic plan, we intentionally made it extremely aggressive. We were... shooting for targets that we didn't care if those were reasonable or not within our process in our community input because we thought that the I think the way we are trending as far as caring for those who are living on house, that wasn't a clear strategy from our perspective from the board. And so when you see some of these really large goals and targets, and Cole speaks to what percent we've hit, We knew from the beginning, doing a five-year plan in 2021, that many of these were huge goals and targets. I think the opportunity for our community to see is that each of these targets were individuals, and we treated each of those pieces as individuals. life that was impacted and we've worked within our discussions with really Councilwoman Robin Kanish really led large parts of this as well as the City Council back then. So I want to thank so much all of the HSSA board members. I want to thank the administration for working towards the goals and targets that we've had. I don't see any of these as misses I see these as opportunities that we put forward to have a strategy, and now as we look at the larger plan, not just this one year extension, we can maybe have some measurable targeted three bullet points instead of 15 targets and goals under each one, but possibly three that are measurable and have the action plans each year that we provide from HSSA to be more of a reflection and measurable outcomes. So we are not waiting five years to identify outcomes. So that's my piece. Thank you, committee chair. Thank you all for all your good work.

Great. Thank you. So we have 15 minutes of public comments. Set aside, we have three speakers who have signed up previously. Two minutes each. So Randy Kilbourne, you are first. And if you'd like us to pull down the microphone so you can reach it more easily. Thank you. Yeah, it's on. And I believe the minute timer will be on the screen.

Great, thank you. I'll keep my eye on it. Hi, my name is Randy Kilbourne. I have served on HOST's Advisory Board, the Housing Stability Strategic Advisors, or HSSA, since its beginning, and I served on the Housing Advisory Committee before that. I'm a person with lived experience with affordable housing. currently even, as well as a person living with disabilities. I serve on this committee as a representative of these two communities. Over the past few years, I have worked hard to ensure that HOST implement policies that encourage developers to provide affordable, accessible, and fair housing, and I'm proud that we have made meaningful strides toward that end, but there's still work to do. HSSA and HOST have put a lot of forethought into the development of the department's next long-term plan. We're proposing a simple practical ordinance change that allows us to move forward with a one-year plan now while we await that important housing needs assessment data that is critical to build a strong long-range strategy. I support this plan because it allows us to keep the work moving without getting ahead of the data. The housing needs assessment will provide critical information to help ensure that our future housing strategy is grounded in the community's actual and identifiable needs. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thanks Councilmember Watson for helping out there. Next we have Moe F. Basho.

I have a strategic plan to be the first man to land in the moon. But then I'll just go to Moab Mountain and take some photographs. And then, hey, I never said I'm going to the moon or Mars. I lived in every shelter. What you're doing is called topography, where you use language and visuals to make falsified data appealing. I saw the suffering. You're transmuting human suffering that I lived in. to falsified data. We know, we know you did not reduce homelessness, street homelessness, into 64%. We know. You reclassified failures into success. You, in 2025, removed from the matrix of performance. You moved jailing. You moved returning to the streets. I saw your shelters. They're inhabitable. You treat homeless people as inhumanely with no dignity. Remove them whenever you want. Drug trafficking, fentanyl. So do not lie. You can lie to them, but do not lie to us, the public. Counsel. So please don't listen to this bullshit and go to these shelters. The numbers... I mean, it is really difficult listening to you. Very, very difficult. Strategic plan. If we know anything about policy, real policy, the past is a great indicator of the future patterns and trend. And I am not surprised, Watson, you are in the housing committee. Not surprised. I'm sorry, I've seen it all, I lived it all. They removed me from every shelter, madam, every shelter, just for speaking up, telling the truth. So, bullshit.

All right, next up we have Melanie Lewis Dickerson, and I believe she is virtual. If you could please promote her so she can have her two minutes, that'd be great, thank you. Melanie, you're up, thanks. Hi, can you hear me?

Yep. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you all for making the space for me to speak today. As mentioned, I'm Melanie Lewis Dickerson. I am currently serving as the chair of the Housing Stability Strategic Advisors, and I just had the real honor of being part of that group from the beginning in 2020 as a mayoral appointee and serving alongside Councilman Watson and Randy and many others. I'm here to speak in support of the ordinance and moving forward the continuation plan. I want to really appreciate the engagement that the host staff had with the strategic advisors. We had many conversations about the best path forward and wanting to really build the most robust, thoughtful, responsive, long-range plan that we could. And settled on the approach that has been brought forward today. I want to applaud the team for the ambitious goals that they have set in the 1 year continuation plan and for really setting us up to have a very thoughtful community engagement process and planning process for the long term. Through all those conversations, the strategic advisors ultimately unanimously approved and decided to support moving forward with this approach. And I think I share in Cole's excitement of diving into this planning process, working with our community, working with all of you to craft the next vision long-term for our community in this issue area. So again, just want to say thank you, encourage your support to move this forward, and look forward to partnering with you in the future.

Great, thank you. Before we move on, since we had 15 minutes set aside, is there anyone else in the room who would like to comment or public comment or online? Right here. Well, if you've already had an opportunity, sorry. Okay, great. Well, then we will move to council member questions. And council member Torres, you're first in the queue.

Thank you so much. Thanks a lot, Cole. I don't have a problem with extending it. I think that needs to happen. I do think I want to dig in a little bit more on the housing stability side. And we've had a conversation about this already. And so one of the things, because evictions... I think it's just described improperly in terms of what we're tracking and why and what it means. We're tracking the number of filings. That's 15,000 last year, over 15,000. What I think we should be tracking, yes, I think that's an important metric, but it doesn't demonstrate to us whether or not what we're doing is affecting the landscape at all. So, I would like for HOST to think about one If we set a goal of reducing a particular number, what are we doing that would help in that reduction? We have increased funding to our partners for eviction defense. Of the 15,000 cases filed, they supported 3,500 of those. A third were dismissed because of their help. How does that compare to 2021 or 2023? There are other ways of demonstrating what we're aiming to do is making a difference for thousands of households. And whether it has just doubled, yes, it's awful. We have also doubled our impact. in other ways. So I just want us to think really differently about what metric we're collecting and why and what it tells us about where else we need to put more support because if that needs more funding to keep folks from being evicted then that helps us figure out like that's the pathway right as opposed to rapid rehousing or like some of those dollars I feel like are just gonna bleed out a funding mechanism when we could keep people housed in a stable place already. So that's I think one thing that I want to convey. The other thing is I don't think we're effectively looking at the whole landscape of what housing stability should be. And I am going to harp on an anti-displacement platform over and over again until we actually build it. Because your work, economic development's work, HRCP's work, even DDPHE, I think there's a lot of departments that play a role in ensuring we don't continue to lose families from Denver. And it's not always to homelessness. We lose them to Lakewood, to other jurisdictions because they can't afford to stay here. The ADU program, the funding that we put into that, it's keeping families here. And so even the property tax rebate is aiming at keeping families in a home that they've owned for their entire lives. One of the questions that I have, in 2023, we approved utilizing funding for purchasing homes. I found the original contract. I mentioned it in our briefing. I don't know where that stands. We were supposed to purchase 62 homes over three years. That contract just ended with Elevation Community Land Trust. So if somebody can just let me know where we stand on that. That was just one of the early questions that I had before. But overall, yes, support the extension. But I really want housing stability to mean something in the next round.

Yeah, Laya, as you come up to answer the ECLT question, but I just want to note very much thank you for both of those comments. I think one of the tensions we faced with this was how much do we change the metrics? But I think your note about what we could be tracking on the eviction side could be different, and there's a lot of room for evolution in the next long-range plan on that regard. And then also, you know, have had those conversations with you and very much agree that there's a lot of room for growth and development on the anti-displacement side and look forward to that conversation continuing as well. But go ahead, Laya, with that.

Yeah, and actually before I speak to you, if I could mention too, that part of the housing needs assessment contract with Root Policy does include an additional kind of deliverable, which is our anti-displacement and reinvestment strategy document, which HOST has been working really closely with CPD and DEDO especially. And I made a note to make sure that we're reaching out to HRCP and DDPHE as we kind of get that initial data back from Root on what they're seeing about anti-displacement or displacement risk, um, indicators and then kind of what are we going to do about it more importantly, um, now and going forward. So we're going to have that coming in the next couple of months. Very excited to have that and make sure that it's really guiding our next strategic plan.

I would just add to that with unlocking housing choices coming through.

Yes, CPD, DETO, and HOST have been working already really closely on that one. Absolutely. And then we do have that existing, it's a scattered site contract with ECLT. They're in the last stages of delivering those units. We did make some changes to allow them to concentrate some of those into slightly larger buildings rather than sort of one-off. single family homes at their request, just to be able to be strategic with those funds. I don't have the exact numbers of where they are right now, but I can circle back with that. And then we have several other kind of scattered site acquisition and rehabilitation contracts with home ownership partners, with land trusts, with Habitat, with GS Coalition Tierra Colectiva, that are both also kind of underway currently.

Is that, we didn't extend that contract. The last I had is that it ended August 31st. So yesterday. So I don't know if they're still like delivering and if like how that works.

I think that there is an amendment underway just to change some of the applicability of that, but I will go back and check to make sure that I'm speaking to the right contract. We have several different kind of contracts going with ECLT for different projects.

You can follow up, but what comes next would be my question.

once they've acquired a home. Yeah.

Follow up because that's not related to the strategic plan, but that'll be my question. Yeah.

It is generally for acquisition and rehabilitation. So taking a home, making it better, and then selling it at an affordable rate while holding the land in a long-term land trust. Okay. All right. Yeah. Thanks, Haya. Yeah. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. And I will say, actually, that might... make a really great briefing for this committee to have you guys come back and just talk through that because we are, as Councilmember Tora said, very short on the actual anti-displacement side of the work, and there's a lot of reasons for that. But it's definitely not due to lack of desire to fix it. It's more like lack of tools, which we can change. So let's consider that for a future briefing, maybe. Thank you.

All right, next up, Council Member Lewis.

Lovely, thank you so much. Just a few questions. One, I can't underscore the displacement platform enough because I am worried about it, not just in your council district, but my council district as well as council district seven as well, like as we're seeing these investments that we want to be intentional. And I do worry that we haven't, um, learned our lessons from what we've seen in other areas where we've seen a lot of displacement and we've not done something differently. So I can't underscore that enough. Um, I, I want to understand, um, about the evictions as well as the goal for you all, um, to keep folks house and, and the statement that you made that you all have, um, decrease the number of folks who are newly homeless or would you say newly or chronically? And so I guess I'm trying to understand that. Like if folks are being evicted and moving away from the case filings but the actual act of eviction, where are they going and how are we tracking that?

I just want to know how those two work together. Thank you so much. So going back to a couple of data points here, Let's see. OK. So related to sheltered and unsheltered homelessness down about 30% among newly homeless and chronically homeless folks. That's from the point in time count, right? So MDHI's data, if you look at it year over year, we've been seeing actually for a couple of years in a row now the number of newly homeless folks showing up in that one night, single night snapshot is down. Now, one of the things. where you're connecting that to the point around evictions, it could be the case that someone that is being evicted is not necessarily winding up experiencing homelessness, which means they might not show up in that point in time count because someone's only gonna show up in that point in time count if they were at one of our shelters or if they were experiencing unsheltered homelessness on that single night, right? Doesn't mean they didn't touch the system at any point during the year, but maybe they don't show up in the point in time data. So I'm leaving open that possibility. The other possibility would be that someone who was evicted and then become homeless already had a past history of homelessness. And one of the ways that we've actually tried to target some of the eviction services in an environment where we haven't had as much of those dollars year after year is to target it towards families or households that do have prior episodes of homelessness because they are the most likely to end up homeless most vulnerable and so trying to target a limited resource towards those that are like absolutely most vulnerable. So those are a couple of interventions that are underway or a couple of reasons why that data might look that way. But, you know, to Councilmember Torres' point, while eviction filings have, you know, risen and sort of maintained a steady rate at that current threshold, we also have been able to increase the numbers of households that we've been serving over this time period. And so that's something that we look forward to reporting back on in an improved way moving forward.

Okay, cool. Can I just add one thing to your answer as well? There was a change to a state law that happened about a year and a half ago, 18 months ago. And what it did was it changed the timeline of when landlords file for eviction as well. So the number of evictions that filings have gone up significantly, but that doesn't actually correlate with the number of evictions and it has to do with that state law. So like it's a hard number to evictions versus filings. It's a hard number to cause that 15,000, almost 16,000 that's filings.

Yeah.

so actually yeah it's just these because it's so specific i just wanted to make sure that that was out there as well i'm sorry go ahead and we do have the number of actual evictions that have been um executed and we can share that data point back as well obviously it's not as high as the number of filings and there's also been kind of a plateauing there it's not like it goes up every single year and so it's sort of kind of at this steady state but yeah we can provide that number

That'd be fantastic. Thank you so much. And then you mentioned that there's a plan to develop additional units. And I'm just curious as to what you all strategy is in terms of the development of those units. And how are you partnering, if at all, with Dura? I'm still trying to make this connection.

Sure. So going to This slide. So the way our newly developed units works is many of those projects are many years in the pipeline by the time that we're going to actually put funds to them in the terms of a contract that's going to come before you all. And so part of what we're doing is looking out at what do we know is coming down the pike over the next year. And this is sort of the number that we're projecting will come forward. Our methodologies for investing include utilizing our affordable housing fund, primarily using the tool of GAAP financing to, you know, complete the capital stack on projects. We also allocate private activity bonds to help unlock 4% tax credits and build affordable units that way. And then we make some grants and loans as well. But the number of newly developed units for this next year is really based upon kind of what's been in the pipeline for the last couple years, what we foresee hitting, and what we have maybe already committed to kind of coming forward in 2027. Lyle, see if there's anything you want to add to that, and if there's anything you want to add about DURA and the way we work alongside tax increment financing as well. Thank you.

Yeah, DORA is in one of our kind of primary investment partners, but there are times when if there's an affordable housing opportunity that lies within a renewal district that's already been identified by DORA, then affordable housing projects can take advantage of tax increment financing if the decision's made to invest there. And it can be kind of smaller one-off projects, or it can be at our kind of large catalytic redevelopment sites, like the recent Rock Drill Rhino site, for example, that's going to have residential development and affordability and does have that Dura commitment for tax increment financing. So sometimes there's a partnership there and we do work closely with Dura along with other city agencies on those redevelopment sites and when possible, encourage investment in affordable housing.

Okay, two follow-up questions. The first one is, what does the disbursement look like across the city for the units that you all have already coming down the pike? And then the second one for Dura, if you all have the goal of preservation, but if we aren't necessarily working closely with Dura, how are we ensuring that the properties that exist across the city are being preserved versus not being preserved and new development is coming in and thus displacing folks?

Yeah. I think from the urban renewal perspective, and Dura can speak more to their strategy, but I think they do put a priority on historic preservation when that's possible, but often with an adaptive reuse component to update the buildings for kind of modern use. But sometimes the urban renewal plans do include demolition of existing structures when they're not meeting the needs of the current strategy. Yeah. What was the first part of that question?

And then the distribution of the units across the city. What does that look like? And that could just be a follow up with the map.

We do have a map, so we can provide that as well.

There's a dashboard that has a map on it of our existing properties. And then we haven't necessarily mapped things that are in the pipeline that we're projecting, but we could provide that.

It's the latter that I'm most interested in. Thank you. Thank you so much. And then, can I ask if you want? Okay. Thank you. You're good. Okay, thanks. You talked about instituting strategies for the prevention of homelessness. Can you talk to me about like how you all are thinking about this in terms of those strategies?

Can you say more?

I think that it was one of your goals.

Hold on, let me look at my notes. So you said that there was 12.5% reduction in overall homelessness from 2025 to 2026. And then you had an additional goal on how you all were going to prevent homelessness, like prevent new families from going into homelessness. And I was just curious as to like, what are you, what, How? The how.

Yeah, great question. So I'll get to that slide. So on the stability side, one of our goals for the next year is to prevent at least 700 households. Obviously, that represents more than one person in each of those households, but 700 households from becoming homeless. And so a number of tools. We have kind of a full suite of prevention tools. That includes, you know, temporary rental and utility assistance. It includes eviction prevention dollars. It includes eviction prevention legal assistance. It also includes foreclosure prevention. And so we have kind of a full suite of that. I'm happy to provide as a follow-up. all of the kind of programmatic investments that we have on that. But all of those tools are in place in contracts with community providers. And so when someone is facing housing instability, there are those services there available to them to work to prevent that and in terms of this particular goal as I mentioned before really targeting those resources to those that are most vulnerable having prior homelessness experience a part of their life history is a great way to spend those dollars to ensure that someone doesn't end up in one of our shelters or on one of our streets.

Okay. So with that in mind, do you all anticipate that you'll increase the amount of dollars that have been historically attached to, like, TRURA or the legal assistance or the foreclosure, understanding that some of those dollars actually ran out and we had to stop accepting applications? And so is there a plan to increase the number of the— to expand those pots of money?

Yeah, that's a great question. And obviously we'll be having, you know, budget deliberations in the coming month. And so look forward to those and still working to finalize things. But I think, you know, just speaking to a couple of trends over the last couple of years, obviously we have seen foreclosure and prevention dollars run out each year. We've had to pause that mid-year for the last couple of cycles. And then, you know, there used to be a very large investment from state and federal government in terms of the eviction prevention dollars. Those have completely decimated over the last couple of years. We've been working to replace as much of those as we could at the city level. We're obviously not in a budget growth environment. And so not expecting to have more funds than we've had in previous years, but look forward to continuing that conversation over the coming month.

Okay, and then I promise just one more question. I just want to know, you mentioned that there were some goals that you all hadn't been able to meet and how you all are thinking differently about your goals. the ones that you weren't able to meet, what you all are planning to do differently to be able to achieve it in the next year?

Yeah, thank you so much for that question. Obviously, we're super proud of the goals that we have met. As Councilman Watson mentioned, these really were highly ambitious goals when they were put forward. Um, you know, some of these goals that we haven't quite met, we can continue driving progress on over the next year by staying on the path that we're on. There are some goals that quite frankly, we won't meet and we'll meet the end of we'll come to the end of this year. Um, and we will not have met that goal. And as we look at the long range strategic plan in 2028, we'll have to think about, um, how we adjust around that to adapt to our new environment. So we're going to stay the course, continue driving progress where we can, own our shortcomings and mistakes, and adapt to those in 2028 and beyond.

Okay. I'm sorry, I have one more. And I promise I'm done. I mentioned on this slide for veteran homelessness. Tell me what your goal is for this year.

So our goal had been to achieve 100% functional zero for all veteran homelessness. So we have not achieved that. We're going to continue making progress towards that, but we are not fully at that goal. And so what that means would be that we get to a place where we have all veterans, not just on street homelessness, but in overall homelessness, all veterans accounted for on a by name list. And then that the number of veterans exiting homelessness every month is greater than the number of veterans falling into homelessness and being newly identified in homelessness. So right now, we're making progress. We have fewer veterans on the streets than we did when we started, but we have not yet achieved that more out than in

Thank you. I'm really done for real. Okay.

Thank you. Council President Romero-Campbell, you are up next.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you for the presentation. It makes sense to extend for a year My question is really around when I think about what we're looking at as the goals and the conversation earlier about evictions and previous briefings. It's been mentioned that 50% of the female-led households are the ones that are facing evictions. What I don't see and what we've talked about before is we talk about households, but we don't talk about families with children. And I would just hope that as you're looking at your strategic plan moving forward, that we name children and find a way to reflect young people under the age of 18. And I think often go kind of unseen for being in an unhoused situation. And so I don't know if you have plans or how we link that or how we better tell the story.

Yeah, of course. Thank you so much for that point. I think, you know, just everything's like a point in time, right? And so when this strategic planning process kicked off, you know, in the midst of the pandemic and then went into effect in 2022, you didn't see family homelessness as quite a big concern in Denver as you do now. There hadn't been. you know, mass migration coming from the Texas border. We hadn't accepted, you know, 40,000-plus newcomers, and we hadn't, you know, set up a Tamarack family shelter and all those sorts of things. And so that has become more of an issue during the course of this strategic plan, and it wasn't necessarily anticipated in the previous strategic plan. I think when you look at our next long-range strategic plan, we've noted that that will be a point of emphasis for us in a way that it wasn't in this plan. So, you know, That is still a priority for hosts this year. You will see that reflected in the budget that we'll bring forward in September. And we're excited to partner with you all to work to drive a reduction in family homelessness in the next calendar year. But I think that's something that in our next long-range strategic plan, there needs to be a carve-out for that there wasn't necessarily explicitly in this plan.

And not all newcomer families, right? Sure. I think that there is data or ways that maybe we could link the data with Denver Public Schools or with other school systems. But there are also a lot of children under the age of five that aren't within the public school system that are still, I think, just not seen in, as we talk about our household. So thank you for looking at that or just kind of considering what that looks like in the future. Thank you. because I think it tells a bigger story about who is in our population and who is getting services and how well we are linking what those services are. I have another question around with the year extension, do you expect that we will also have more contracts that will need to be extended during this time? What is the flow? I know we've had a lot of contracts come forward. Can you just kind of give us a snapshot of what you expected also coming before council?

Great question. So our contracting process is not explicitly tied to this. Obviously, as we're, you know, putting out new RFPs beyond the, once the new strategic plan goes into effect, they'll all, be in service of that strategic plan but we have a whole rfp schedule built out and so you'll note that this fall you'll see congregate shelter contracts coming forward you'll see some of our family shelter contracts coming forward next year we have plans for rfping for cold weather shelter and we can provide some of the other things that are on that rfp schedule for next year so i would say the two are not directly related and that you know what you all are um Sort of pushing forward here won't pause or amplify our RFP process. We will continue to issue RFPs on kind of a three-year cycle. And then as new RFPs come forward, they will reference the new plan and how they help to advance the goals of the new plan.

Thank you. I don't have any other questions. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Great. Thank you. Councilwoman Alvidrez. Thank you, Committee Chair. Thank you, Cole, for breaking this down a little bit. The part that I'm most confused about is that we are meeting some goals. and we're not meeting others, but I don't see a shift to focus on the things where we're lacking. I see us continuing to do what we do well, and this doesn't give me hope that we're actually going to fill the gap where we're failing. So why are we including goals that were reached and just like preserving housing, right? That when we only need like 50 more units and I don't see like concrete numbers in how many home ownership opportunities, for example, there will be. Yeah.

I mean, it's a great question. I do believe what gets measured gets done. And if we stop measuring those things, we will not continue to see that we maintain them. And so even where we've completed something, it was put into this plan in the first place because it was important. And continuing to uphold and maintain that progress is really important. We know that we need to continue preserving affordable housing units. We know we need to continue developing affordable housing units. We know we need to continue getting families and people experiencing homelessness off the streets. And so I think it's important that those stay there. But to your point, we do also need to evolve and get better at the things that we've had a harder time at. And some of those things that we've had a harder time at is because They're emblematic of much bigger social challenges, you know, that in some cases are outside of our, you know, levers of control at host. And so we need to think more creatively and collaboratively and with more resources around how to solve those problems. I don't see that as an either-or, but I see that as a challenge for us to continue collaborating on and dialoguing on together.

I don't think we're going to unpreserve housing units that have already been preserved. And I do think this is only a one-year extension where we should be shifting to where we're failing and not doubling down on just what we're doing well. So I disagree with that take on that issue. I do hope as we look to the next plan that we think about other issues that have come up. I think about also foreclosure. I don't see a lot in here about the uptick in foreclosures, other issues like a lot more corporate ownership now than there was when this plan started and how we're thinking about that. So those are the things that I hope. I'm curious, for the RFP, what is the budget for the RFP and what's the timeline for that?

I'm trying to find the slide. So the, you're talking about for the new long-range strategic plan? Okay. So that has been issued. We have received bids. We are working on selecting between the final two providers and then we'll start negotiating. The RFP didn't name a particular dollar amount, named the scope of service and then they bid according to that and we evaluate based upon their skills and past experience as well as the budget that they put forward. So we're in the negotiation process on that piece right now. We should have that contract before you all, before the end of the year. And then we will begin working immediately on stakeholder engagement because that's a big bulk of what we scoped out was project management and stakeholder engagement. And then we'll be in the writing process on the plan throughout next summer.

Okay. And then I do agree with one thing that you said, which is there are larger issues that are impacting housing as far as, for example, people experiencing homelessness, the wraparound services that were promised in the all-in mile high sites and those things. So how are you thinking about That piece, when I look at these goals, it looks like their original plan didn't really talk about sheltering. It just talked about getting people out of shelter and it doesn't talk about the other health, mental health, other services that people in our shelter system may need to get out of shelter.

Yeah, I mean, just to be clear, when I was talking about some of the larger social issues, I was talking about, you know, racism and the economic factors and global migration patterns and some of those things that are impacting us, the shifts in the global economy and housing market and all those sorts of things. Speaking specifically to shelter, what I focused on in this presentation is the goals that were called out in the strategic plan, but each of those goals had underlying strategies. Shelter is a big piece of the strategies that's called out in the 150 plus pages that Councilman Watson hand wrote himself back in 2021. But shelter was one of the specific strategies and particularly delivering wraparound services, focusing on subpopulations that we see in shelter, people, you know, LGBTQ people, looking at gender identity, looking at BIPOC folks and also the ways that we deliver services to those individuals. So all that's in the plan and that continues to be a part of our plan and our strategy moving forward.

Okay, I just don't see that in the actual goals. And I do think that there is opportunity to address racism in these plans. I think that one of the things that I've seen in the last three years is before black homeownership, for example, was not looped in with BIPOC homeownership. That has shifted. And I think that, you know, that there is a big difference in, for example, Latino homeownership and black homeownership rates in the city and how they've gone down. And so I do think that we need to be thinking with that racial equity in mind and address how we're underserving people of color in general, but particularly black individuals in our city. um I don't know if you have anything to say about that or how you know you are breaking that down in the next year. I think that this next year is an opportunity to actually address where we have been failing but it doesn't sound like that's the priority.

I don't know that we really have an argument here. I mean, we're very committed to continuing to drive progress on all the items that we've outlined here. And as I mentioned before, some of these bigger, harder issues just require more collaboration, deeper levers of change, more people at the table. And we're committed to driving those forward and solving them.

Okay. I hope that we do. I appreciate that. Thank you, committee chair. Great.

Thank you. Cole, Councilmember Watson is going to close us out, but I just wanted to ask one quick question that I keep hearing from community, and it is about tracking the outcomes by the funding streams. So, I know this is something that community really would like to see. I know it's something council members would really like to see. Is there is there work being done on that? I guess, you know, I've been here 8 years and hostess existed 8 years. So I feel like. this is something that just keeps lingering out there and it's always like, oh, there's not enough staffing or, oh, tech services has to get involved and their work plan is too busy and like, okay, but now this far in, is there any discussion around actually kind of resolving that issue so that we are tracking these dollars that are being associated with each of these programs and then the outcomes so that we can really see what our ROI is on each of these programs?

Yes, great question. And so I think just to interpret, make sure I'm interpreting the question appropriately, I think part of what I'm hearing is like around these four pillars and the corresponding goals, is there a way of suggesting how much are you spending on housing opportunity? How much are you spending on housing stability? How much are you spending on homelessness resolution? So that's kind of like level one. If we look at host total investment pie, where are we putting our money in terms of these pillars? But then the other piece is out of these pillars and these specific goals and those investments, what outcomes are those investments leading to and what is, as you mentioned, our return on investment for those different pieces. Obviously, the latter is harder, right? The former is quite easy to do and something that in our budget presentation, we'll be sure to highlight exactly how we're allocating resources towards our different priorities. And then, you know, then it's looking at, you know, the investment pie and how that's relating to outcomes and those sorts of things. But I think one of the things that's always important is that, you know, at the city, we're not just like running programs, we're running a system of programs and I do think it's important to look at it from the systemic perspective as I know you do and think about how are all of these things working together to create the highest level outcomes that we want to achieve And so it's not always as simple as to just say, we put in this input. Did we get this particular thing out? Because actually, we put in 10 different inputs. And those might have led to this macro outcome that we're looking for down the road. All that is to say, the ROI piece is a more nuanced conversation. What I am certainly committed to is transparency on the front end in terms of how we're investing in these priorities. And I also think the next long... strategic plan creates an opportunity for us to look at what is actually the resource required in order to achieve the goals that our data shows that we need. What do we currently have allocated? What's our gap? What's our opportunity there? And so I think there's, again, another robust conversation that we can have around that.

Yeah, I really appreciate that. And I don't disagree with you. Right. Getting an ROI is very difficult. And especially when we're looking at something like some of the programs that we use. On the other hand, I do think it would be really valuable to be able to say, you know, this investment in this home ownership program showed us. an ROI of X, Y, Z, right? And this investment in our housing stability program showed us ABC. And so we should, we are seeing better outcomes on X, Y, Z than we are on ABC. Maybe we need to change this program or maybe we need to do something differently or maybe we need to put less resources and time and energy into this one because this one's giving us a higher ROI. And they're all heading us in the same direction. Um, and I just, I feel like some analysis on that would be really valuable so that as council members, our job is overseeing the budget. Um, we don't budget at a programmatic level, right line items, but we do budget, um. A little bit more detailed than just host is getting a giant pile of money. Right? So it would be helpful for us to understand the value of those dollars so that we can make sure that on our end, we are having conversations about, you know, what investments are being used most strategically. Council Member, thank you. Council Member Watson, you want to close this out?

Yes, very quickly. I'll say I could not agree more. I think we have SRFs, the homelessness resolution, and housing opportunity funds, And I think we can tie some RIs in the next five-year plan on that. So I think that's something that the team needs to look at because we can do it. Even the housing connector contract of how we're doing rapid rehousing and how we're leveraging that, what I think is a really innovative program and process that has technology behind looking at how many folks are moved into housing, how are we doing the RI on that and having that tied to the plan. I think all of that is important. One of the things that I take understanding of when I listened to Councilwoman Alvidrez, in the midst of COVID, when we were meeting virtually and Randy and Melanie and all of the eight other folks, there was a lot of stuff our focus was on, but it was very much, and obviously Robin Knietzsch and Polly and others led this process. Our focus was very different than what it would have been if we looked at this plan now. We were looking at a universe where there was federal and state investments to overlay the really lean investments that housing, that HOST had. We were leaning into a non-strategic process in which there was the fastest growing department in the city, which was HOST, receiving tons of investment. but there wasn't an underlying strategic plan to tie that ROI as Councilwoman Sawyer was speaking of. So I'm with you. I think we need to really look at the gaps. Black homeownership was number one. that I saw as something that I don't believe if we hold that 41% target, we're not going to meet that. And then having a look in the next five year plan of something that's realistic, measurable to outcomes makes sense. So everything you said, I agree with you totally. I just wanted to thank the team for the work they're doing. I think the one year extension, I don't have a vote on this in this committee, but the one year extension makes sense to me. I think having a really clear targeted focus based on The things that we are seeing obviously is what we're going to do in the next five-year plan. You'll see a lot more targeted goals, outcomes, and ROI based on the two SRS that we have to make sure we can report back for budgeting process for city council.

Awesome. Thank you. We are out of time. We are moving these in a block, 1253 and 1254. Do we have a motion and a second? Move. Moved by Councilmember Torres, second by Council President. Do we need a roll call vote? All right. Thumbs up. We will see you on the floor. Thank you very much.