City Council - Regular Meeting

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Okay. Welcome, everyone. So glad to have this turnout. Great turnout in person. We also have people watching online via YouTube, and this will be recorded on YouTube for anyone to watch it later as well. So I think we're going to get a lot of really good attendance and people giving us information. We also have translation services available. Luz? Luz? is out in the hallway. If you need any interpretation services, we have that real time. And yeah, so very happy to be here and talk about this important topic of housing bonds. And I'm really appreciative of our panelists who have come here to discuss with us. So quick introductions. Alicia Sherburn, on the far end, moved to the gorge in 2023 to be Big River Community Land Press inaugural executive director. She came from Orcas Island, where she spent two years as the community engagement manager for Orcas Opal Community Land Trust in the San Juans. She's a HUD-certified housing counselor and licensed realtor in Washington State. And the Big River Land Trust recently completed their first home on Tucker Road and is working on a 40-plus unit project over on Avalon Way. We also have Maui Meyer for more of the private sector perspective. He's a local entrepreneur, developer, and real estate broker. He discovered Hood River in 1985 while taking part in a windsurfing world tour. After studying food and beverage management and finance and real estate development in college, he opened the Sixth Street Bistro in Hood River in 1991. The construction company followed in the real estate brokerage, Copper West. Maui has also been active in public service, serving as county commissioner for 12 years. So his tenure as employer, builder, and public servant really gives him a unique perspective into the area's housing challenges. And then we have Karen Long, Executive Director of Mid-Columbia Housing Authority and Columbia Cascade Housing Corporation. She's been with the organization for 15 years and Columbia Cascade Housing Corporation owns 24 affordable housing communities with 435 units over a five-county Columbia board region. And Mariposa Village will be their 25th property, adding 130 units locally here in the Hood River. So I just want to thank you all for joining me. And before we get into, I have some prepared questions. And then we want to have questions from the audience. But before that, I just have a quick little presentation and set the table with some housing statistics to support the conversation. Hey, Jackie sharing

Sounds good.

Mike Wilberg , The Capacity Collective, I said we're focusing on housing, but I did just want to give a quick blood, but we're doing this is housing and public safety bond measures that we're considering. Mike Wilberg , The Capacity Collective, And so, for July 29 we're going to have a open house, just like this, but focused on the police department right underneath our feet. Mike Wilberg , The Capacity Collective, It was a fire engine bay that's just been mentally minimally converted and has a whole lot of deficiencies, and so I I do hope that, even though we're focusing on housing today. People are also interested in learning about the police department next. So getting into housing unaffordability and river release are the seven houses that were shown on Zillow as sold or that have been built in the last three years. Now, more than seven homes have been built in Hood River in the last few years, but most of them are built to order. They're built for people who order them. People aren't really doing subdivisions anymore in Hood River ever since CBER crop really built out. That shows in our housing permit data. So this is new housing units permitted going back to 2015 up into so far 2026. So we used to permit about 40 to 60 new dwelling units per year back in the 2010s. That was really when Seaver Crop up in the Heights was building out. Since that's been fully built out, production has really declined and now we're permitting about five to 15 new dwelling units per year. The big exceptions are those multifamily developments. The first two are the Leeward and Adams Creek cohousing, and then the most recently is 130 units at Mariposa Village. And you see, except for American disability, we've been well below our state target, which is that dotted line, which would be if we're contributing our proportionate share towards the governor's statewide housing production goals. And while production is down, we're also misaligned with the housing need. So this shows, this is from the Oregon Housing Needs Analysis. that estimated our current deficit and need by income group over the next 10 years. And I've put in what production is kind of in the pipeline. So either things that have been permitted or things that the city knows are on the horizon, like subdivisions that aren't complete yet. That 30 to 60 ring area of income, that is basically all America's village. And then the 80 to 120, that's basically all the Avalon way, hoping that that comes from concept design to reality. So it shows we really have a huge gap, particularly with 60 to 80% of our European income, and then just nothing for households that are earning less than 30% of our European income. Huge gap and nothing in production. So as Housing production has lagged. Probably no surprise that homeowners have become further and further and further disassociated with local incomes. So this is the ratio of home value to household income. And a rule of thumb generally for first time home buyers is a three to one ratio. So if your household makes $100,000 a year, you might wanna look at buying a $300,000 home. Hood River was five to one back in 2012. And then we reached as high as 10 to one in the pandemic. And we're still with home prices being about eight times median household income. So while home prices continue to rise and rise and rise, we were to some extent buffered by lowered interest rates. As interest rates during the pandemic kept going closer and closer to zero, that made buying a more and more expensive home attainable. But that has all reversed. I think people are well aware of interest rates rising in the last few years. meaning that the income you would need to purchase the median home in Hood River is now $135,000 per year, but the median income, the actual median income is only 86 and such. I don't think anyone thought that Hood River was affordable in the 2010s, but it's really become a yawn gap in just the last few years. So as we looked at this problem, and thinking about bringing it up to voters, thought about why does this matter to people who maybe already own their home and are having affordability challenges of their own with gas prices and inflation and taxes seem like a step in the wrong direction. And so we wanted to think about what are the community-wide problems and outcomes that we're trying to address. So one is that four out of five Hood River workers commute in from elsewhere. So I think you can see that in the mornings around just second and Oak here, big long lines of cars getting into the city, or at the end of the day, big long lines of cars stretching up to State Street, trying to get out of the city. It's because about 80% of our workforce doesn't live here. That means harder to find labor. The Mid-Columbia Economic Development District labeled the lack of affordable housing as a key economic weakness and threat in their strategy plan. And it also means that these folks are setting down roots and growing community outside of the river. So that leads to declining school enrollment. So the population age zero to 17 in Hood River County has dropped by 16% from 2011 to today. And that compares to just a 6% drop statewide. Half of our police and fire personnel don't just live outside of the city. They live outside of the county. So that means they could be stopped from getting here during implement weather or if there was a disaster. And that also, when they're starting their shifts, which range in length from 10 hours to 48 hours long. They're doing it after commuting here from long distances. And then lastly, that 53% of renters here in Hood River are housing cost burdened, which means that they spend over 30% of their income before taxes on housing costs, which means obviously increased stress and less ability to participate in the local economy. So those are the problems that we've been, that we're hoping to address with a housing bond, but I also wanted to talk about just briefly the things that we've done before asking voters for approval for bonds. So in 2016 After a housing needs analysis and strategy document was adopted, we regulated short-term rentals in Hood River. So we were up to 200, we had 206 at our peak, and now we're at 157 and pretty much holding steady at that number of short-term rentals in the city. We adopted a construction excise tax on the construction that funds affordable housing. And we just updated our townhouse code to make it, simpler to build townhomes, which is a type of missing middle housing type for people who are living with that genre. We addressed accessory dwelling units in 2019 by limiting parking requirements and also reducing fees associated with that building type. In downtown, In 2020, we eliminated the need for off-street parking for commercial to residential conversions. So a lot of our historic buildings were built without parking and we allowed those to not have to create new parking if they switched to residential. Then in 2021, with that construction excise tax that I mentioned, we borrowed against that revenue source and we bought 7.1 acres over on Rand Road, which is now about to open into a 130-unit affordable housing complex this summer. Then in 2022, we adopted what's called a missing middle housing code. We allow developers, if they're going to build smaller format homes, we allow them to do more of them per parcel and have less parking requirements. So really incentivizing homes that are naturally a little less expensive than larger homes. That basically rounded out the strategies that were from that, our housing analysis. So we went to putting together a new document, which was our 2012 affordable housing strategy. That recommended and we've done creating an urban renewal district on our west side, which will fund housing and infrastructure investments. A recommended providing direct incentives for building of smaller homes, which we now provide $12,500 to any builder who built a small size home. And then that also recommended going for a housing bond in 2026. So this discussion today really stems directly from that affordable housing strategy topic. And also just wanted to set the table with just how funds are used to build affordable housing using America's Village as an example. So one, acquire land, look at, find land that is developable, do your development due diligence, as you did at 789 Road. But then also the city is in a much advantaged place when it acquires property because one we have lower borrowing costs, but also we can close quickly paying cash and often, as was the case with 70 Rand Road, the owner was interested in the public purpose of providing affordable housing. Once land is acquired, do an open and competitive solicitation for a developer with community goals in mind. So for Mariposa Village, We wanted a range of incomes to be served. We wanted a publicly accessible park, trail connections, green building standards, and the list went on and on. And we had multiple developers come propose to us, and we picked community development partners who gave us the best mix of meeting our goals and also fitting our budget. And then the developer goes ahead and gets all their funding and finance together, which will take a significant amount of time. But if we had more resources to bring to Mariposa, we may not need to take that long. And they start construction. And so in the case of Mariposa Village, that took from 2020 to about 2026. So you can see there's quite a long lead time in this process. As far as what a bond could cost, uh that's to be determined um the city council is wrestling with that right now and getting input uh but if we did what uh the metro and portland have passed uh metro their housing bond was 24 cents per thousand of assessed value that's that would generate about 4.8 million dollars locally applied to our tax base if we went to uh what the city of portland uh of voters approved for their housing bond, that would be for about 42 cents per thousand of assessed value generate about $8.5 million. So that's kind of some relevant ranges. And then as far as where we are today and where we're going, we have lots of information on our website. We have a survey, we're doing this event and also presenting to other groups around town And we're gonna take all that information together to the city council in their second meeting in July to finalize a ballot title or decide not to forward anything at all. It's really all open right now. And then if something is forwarded to voters in November, ultimately it's for the voters to decide. So thank you for bearing with me on all that background information. I think it's going to hopefully help set up the conversation. So with that background, I have just a few prepared comments. But then I'm hoping that that sparks questions in the audience. And we'll just do raised hands. First, I want to start with Maui Meyer. You're a real estate professional in town and you've been in politics and local government, so you've been watching this for a while. I think we all know that Hood River has never been an affordable community, but how have you seen it change in the last few years?

Well, I mean, first off, I think it's... I was talking with... Officer Paulson, in fact, and it's important to remember that this is, while this is happening here in River, it's not unique. This is a nationwide issue. So a lot of the factors surrounding it are external to us or happening to us. And so it's our charge to try to do something different. But I would say that it's challenging because it's not getting better. It's arguably getting worse as an employer in the hospitality industry. It's basically beginning to threaten the viability of businesses in town at the Yeah, so it's not getting any better at Capsule.

Well, and Karen, at the Housing Authority, tell us a bit more about who you're intended to serve and what situation that they would be in if they didn't have the Housing Authority's assistance.

Sure. Excuse me, the Housing Authority... Provides federal rental assistance for about 900 households across the five counties. And about two-thirds of the people we serve are on fixed income, so seniors and disabled households. And about one-third are working families with children. And at Columbia Cascade Housing, we build, own, manage affordable housing units like Mariposa Village. And we have housing that's dedicated to seniors and disabled households. farm workers, and then also working households. And a lot of the residents we see work at local hospitals as healthcare aides, local schools as teacher aides. They provide childcare. These are all, you know, the restaurant industry, retail. I mean, I could just go on and on, but these are jobs that are essential to our local economy and really make Places like Hood River are a nice place to live and we want to make sure that they have an affordable place to live because if they work in this community and can't afford to live here, that means that they're commuting long distances. They might live here and be paying up to 50% of their income towards their rent. And that's actually considered to be at risk of homelessness. So you might have someone who their rent is so high, they're not able to have savings And so they have a car failure. And so they have to choose pay rent this month and worry about my car later and not go to my job or not have my money next month rent. So it's just.

And Alicia, the community land trust is a little bit different than Maricopa Village. Can you talk about the folks that your organization is intending to serve in?

Yeah, so our focus is really coming in and trying to help house middle income workforce housing here. So our goal is really to keep people living where they're working. We do intend to serve four counties across the board and we're focused primarily on homeownership, but that's really why our organization was started.

Yeah. And I think community land trust is new to the Gorge. Could you tell folks just a little bit of how a land trust model works?

Sure. And while it is new to the Gorge, I will just say for background, this is not really a new model. The first community land trust in the US started in 1968 down in Albany, Georgia, and there's now well over 300 across the nation. It's become a more popular model over the last 20 years in particular, mostly around housing, though it can be used in a variety of different ways. But for housing, how we're really using it is to keep kind of what we call perpetual affordability. So what we do as a nonprofit organization is we maintain ownership over the land and we are a member-based organization. And then when we develop, we sell just the house to a buyer that buyer then signs a 99 year ground lease for use of the personal land that it's on. And the key is really that ground lease. And that does three main things. One, it ensures that the home is owner occupied. So these are not rentals. These are not investment properties. You have to live in that home permanently. The second thing is that it does require a certain level of maintenance for the house. So that's kind of built into it when an owner decides they want to sell. If there's anything called out in the inspection or that the new mortgage lender needs to be completed before they'll sign off for the new buyer, those repairs actually are on the seller. So there is that incentive to kind of get as much equity out of the home as they can. And then the third and kind of the biggest piece is that we do have a resale formula built in. So these homes do not... they're not gonna sell them for market rates. They can't actually, we have a capped equity earned that they can get year over year. So we cap ours at 1.5%. And the goal of that is to kind of match how wages are rising in the area so that we are continually serving the same income level every time the house sells.

And so both the housing authority and community land trust are providing housing at below market rates that require subsidy. But I think a lot of people are interested in knowing why isn't the market producing, why aren't they producing anything that is affordable to a median or lower household income? I wonder Maui, could you talk a bit more about, you know, with land costs being what they are in Hood River, like can the private market produce what we need for our workforce? And if not, What role do you think the local government has?

I'm going to go on the record and say something. Functionally, no. That's an unfortunate thing to say publicly. It's very, very hard to buy a piece of land and build something here. The cost to construct had accelerated away from the median income. So it's difficult for a person who's earning a living wage in this community, a very good living wage, we call them in the real estate side of it, they're a little bit income bound to somewhere around $800,000. And you tend to have the market showing signs of cleaving right around that number into this tier above 1.1 and this tier below 800. And it's a really sort of an interesting thing to sort of see it happening in real time. People who work here can't afford something like that. And to replicate that on the ground is in the 1.1 range, right? When the dirt's $350,000. Or, you know, even maybe if you're up in Odell, it might be a little bit less. It might be a little bit, but the construction costs are the same no matter where you're building. And it used to be, you could build pretty effectively sub $200 a square foot range. You can no longer do that. And then, you know, $350 a square foot construction is kind of casually tossed around way too commonly now. And I, you know, I'd even say arguably $400 a square foot. It's just the numbers, it's impossible for some people. And a lot of the developers are just sort of paused at this point. So I know there's some developers in the audience probably, and they may have some comments on that because I speak from the sales side, not from the development side.

I'm interested in your also perspective as being on the County Commission for a long time and being plugged in, you know, I would, just when the presentation went over all the things that the city has tried to do to tweak the incentives to try to build more private housing. But from your perspective, what has worked? What hasn't? Where have we fallen short? And what do you think local government can do that's not doing right now?

I think when we started the plan in 2016, and even before that, when the studies were being done and the work was being done, that was good work. And we were just barely keeping up with the rising demand. And we had some setbacks. We had some pushback from the community. So we found our way around, you know, to get some things on the table. But since 2016, both the city and I believe the county have been really good partners in stepping. We realized that it's not one magic bullet and it will never be one magic bullet. It has to be 20 different options that make these small changes at the margin and start to slowly define over time what we think housing should be for our members of our community. And so I think all of the short-term rental restrictions, the middle housing, the ADU, all of that stuff was identified in the 2016 plan, as well as the 22 plan, and updated plans. And we've gone through code revision. We've gone through parking abatement. I think all of that stuff is valuable. But as we're moving at the speed of government, of governance, which is governance, not government, because that implies that you guys aren't doing something when I think, in fact, the agencies and you are the people who are doing the most. But at the speed of governance is not keeping up with the speed of the market. Toss a pandemic into that, toss a supply chain crisis, toss a world war into it. We have all sorts of things going on. Sorry, small regional conflict. But that accelerates prices and it's not making it easier for anybody. And so this isn't specifically, again, it's not a problem with Hood River specifically. This is a structural issue that's We can't develop because we can't make the numbers work. It's just a form I've been looking at for years. You've looked at it. It's just red across the bottom. So it's like, well, until that turns black, even to the smallest degree, no one's moving forward on that.

So speaking of cost, I wanted to ask Karen, people often talk about the high cost of affordable housing. So we talked about land construction. Can you tell us why affordable housing may cost more than the private sector, if it does, and what would be the driving reasons for it?

Affordable housing absolutely costs more than private market housing for a variety of reasons. The main financing tool we use to build housing is the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, or LIHTC. funding source. And this comes with additional, it's a very complex financing tool that comes with a lot of legal costs, a lot of fees. It takes a lot of time to piece together all of the different funding sources to build affordable housing. We often access public funding, state and federal funding, and that can trigger prevailing wage, federal or state prevailing wage, which can increase construction costs, which are already high by 20 to 30%. Mariposa Village received project-based vouchers and that triggered the federal prevailing wage, Davis-Bacon, for that project. So that increased the cost. The funding sources can have other requirements like the city of Hood River donated land to the project, but they also, for Mariposa Village, they also required that we build a public park and that we do road improvements and that we have trails built and a private developer probably isn't building public parks. We also build larger size units than is typically seen. So we build two and three bedroom units for family size units and bigger units cost more money. 70% of the units at Mariposa Village are those family-sized units. We also are building or we're committing to 60 years of affordability and making this housing available for the community. And so we build things to last, and that means that we select materials for durability, and that is a higher upfront cost, but it reduces what we have to do over time. We have extra environmental reviews that come with this work. Gosh, what am I missing? I think that's about it. I could probably go on, but we don't have all night.

And I think challenging parcels, right? You don't get, if it was a prime parcel, the private sector would have snapped.

Correct. We don't have flat land. We have land that's on a slope. And we have, I don't know if you've seen the giant wall that we've had to build. at Mariposa Village, but that was not cheap. All of this just adds to the cost. So the overall cost of that project was $76 million.

And so mostly or nearly all paid by state and federal sources. I think the city only contributed about $1.7 million to Mariposa Village. And so it's been just a screaming success from that point of view. But what if we were limited to just construction excise tax and which was just basically enough to buy the land and to donate it in plus a little bit more. If we had a housing bond at the time and we were able to contribute more money to Mariposa Village, how do you think that project would have changed?

A lot of the funding sources we use to build affordable housing come with a lot of very strict income restrictions. So my village is limited to 60% of area median income. And I think the great thing about a housing bond is that it's a flexible funding source. And I think it would allow us to be more creative and maybe pairing affordable home ownership options like a community land trust style project or market rate units that are, you know, in the 61 to maybe 120% income range, but the LIHTC project can pay for a lot of the infrastructure costs or roadway costs or whatever other requirements that can also be benefit to the other units that are going to be attached to the projects. I think that it could just really create, it could attract a lot of other investment and just allow for all of us to work together to be more creative about creating solutions, because that's what we have to do.

Well, thinking about creating solutions and looking at what works elsewhere, Alicia, I wanted to ask you, because you do have experience at a land trust that's up and running, I think has a long history in Orcas Island, which is, I think, similarly constrained in its land and having high construction costs. What can we learn and emulate here that they're doing well on Orcas Island and their land trust?

Yeah, a big part with Oklahoma, they've been around for about 35 years, so they've got a lot of experience with this. San Juan County is kind of a unique county in Washington state, so it's in the very northwest corner. It's all islands. It's about 750 islands, roughly. Most of those are not inhabited, but There's kind of four main ones. And so they are all basically governed by the county. But one of the things they have to be really flexible then and adaptable to whatever they can do. There's no city structure to work with. And one of the things they've done really well, I think has just been to experiment and to test different things and see what works. So in the 35 years they started out very much like ours where they were doing just home ownership and they did several different developments of home ownership and all stick built on the ground. And then they tried a few other things to see if they could cut costs. So they did acquisition remodel for different areas around the island. They did panelized housing to see what that costs and they also bought and barged up houses from Seattle to do that. And they've done that several times, which is a really fun thing to watch. You see a giant house going down the road. And just seeing what worked better and learning a lot of lessons along the way. And a lot of that, again, is kind of tied to financing that is available. It's all about funding coming in. But also they've been really collaborative on what they've been doing. They talked to the community really well. They were solely home ownership. And then probably about, I think it was about 15 years ago or so, maybe 20, the community said they really wanted Opal to step up and take on rental housing because there was no rental housing available or very little. It was all word of mouth. So they started and they ended up buying an apartment complex. And then they built another 34 unit town home that had over 300 applications and and just kind of really adapting to what the community need is because it changes over time so that's been really neat to see and just collaborating with other organizations there's not again any real strict governance system out there the county um does its part but non-profits do a lot of the lifting on the islands so they've got a project right now where they've got land that they're holding with the local food bank and the community resource center where they're going to do a campus that has a whole bunch of services on it. So I think it's just being creative and having some flexibility to do that. But part of that also has come from about eight years ago, they, and this was employees, not the organization, but individuals work to get a county re-tax. So it's real estate excise tax. And that's a tax on buyers. So anybody who's buying a home pays a half a percent into this fund. And keep in mind the median sale price up there's at least a million dollars might be a little over now. So that builds really quickly. But what that has been able to do is allow more flexibility around the county. to come in and help them purchase a 12 unit apartment building. We didn't have a lot of apartments up there and it was all occupied by long-term local residents who are low income, many are on fixed income, many were at disability. It was a great way for them to be able to do that. And that county fund also had higher income levels. So instead of being restricted to 80% AMI, which state funding is, they were able to go up to 115. And so it just allows them more room to do different things and support the community at a bigger level.

So speaking about the funding challenges and needing to be creative, I'm hoping you can tell us insight into how things are going with the 40% the 42 unit project that you have in the planning stages up on Avalon Way. What are your funding challenges and how would flexible local funding be helpful?

This has been a fun learning project. So to start with this piece of land that we purchased from a local church, it's about 2.7 acres. They're actually holding the net for us while we develop. So that's how we were able to acquire the land to begin with. which has been great and it's been a really good partnership. But on top of that, then as you were trying to figure out what we're going to design and build and create, you have all your pre-development costs. So we're working with engineers, architects, a developer who's done a lot of affordable housing projects that we're working with, our general contractors. And so it's a lot of upfront work to figure out what it is you can create before you can even get to a point of knowing what the real numbers are. So that's kind of where we're at right now. And then as you're doing that, you know, we're looking at where can we find funding to actually build this. And the tricky thing with middle income in particular is there's not a lot of funding sources. The state funding through OHCS is pretty much low income at 80% area median income and below. So that 80 to 120 group doesn't have a lot of options. So it's making some of our funding a little bit tricky. So we're trying to kind of figure out how to work this a little bit. We are going to use some of their funding. We're applying in the fall to go in for that. So some of those units will be 80% and a little bit under. And then for the rest of the units, we're looking at the state's got a middle income revolving loan funds that they set up last year that nobody has yet used. So we might be the first ones to test it out. We'll see how that goes. Thank you, Will, also for all your help on that. We did get a $2 million federal allocation. through Senator Merkley's office, which is great. We probably won't see that money until next year. So that's a little bit down the road, but we do have that coming. We're also talking with the city about some additional funding they have that works for the size units that we're trying to build. So roughly eight to 1200 square feet kind of range. But the main balance is, you know, here we're looking at four different funding sources and what it actually costs to build and make sure that we can subsidize the units to what is actually affordable for our target market. And it's really, really close. I mean, it's a lot of massaging the numbers. Okay, maybe we can do this. Maybe we can do that. Maybe not. Maybe we can do it later down the road as we continue to get funding sources. So it's a little tricky trying to balance all of these different things. And our goal with this also is to make sure that we're making this project pencil with not selling every home at the highest possible price we can hit for our market, right? Because if I'm trying to hit 80 to 120 area median income and I'm selling all my houses at 120, that means that's a very small window of people that can actually afford that. And that's not helpful. Where I want to price it is down here so that that entire 80 to 120 mix is actually able to purchase. And that takes a little bit extra. So something like this housing bond could provide some of that extra also to kind of cushion it a little bit. Yeah.

Maybe I'll pause with the prepared questions. I do have some more, but open it up to the audience. Just raise your hand if you have anything that has sparked a question. Yeah, I have a question.

I wasn't sure if I heard it correctly about getting rid of the off-street parking requirement. I did hear that for commercial buildings that could be changed to residences. They weren't going to do that. And is that new construction also with no off-street parking? And I was wondering, what is the density? Yeah, because I've lived in India, so they don't have that. It's a liberal building problem.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, thank you for the chance to clarify that. So for downtown buildings that already exist, if they're commercial and they switch to residential, it's not required to have parking?

Can you repeat the question for the mic?

Oh, thank you, Abigail.

Thank you.

A question. Let me see. Tell me if I get this right is just clarifying. I mentioned some of the initiatives that the city has done to help promote housing and some of them were reducing parking standards. And so I was asked to clarify that. So And then, so we, I think it was in 2022, we also just citywide adopted middle housing code, which dropped the off street parking requirement to one space per house. If you build small and that, you know, does probably add some more parking demand to the rest of the neighborhood, but Candidly, we've had that on the books now for three years and not that many people have been taking advantage of it. We've only had a handful so far.

Is there a limit on the size? You had several blocks of construction when nobody had off-street parking. It's different than if it's just a block here and a block there. Because I've lived in places, and when you come home from work, you can literally drive about an hour to find a parking spot.

sure um you know you do have to build homes that are 1200 square feet or smaller in order to have that one space per unit requirement um and so far it has been dotted uh just a few handful of homes dotted around the city um there isn't we don't have a hard maximum cap on them but um It certainly seems to be slow moving at this point. It's about the best I can say. But yeah, there is no cap on the number of people who can take advantage of their middle housing code. Does anyone have any questions for the panelists? In a process like this, how do you get the feedback and input from the people you're intending to serve? Do I make sense of the question? Yeah, I think maybe Karen, you want to take that one from the Housing Authority's perspective?

Sure. When we're starting, we're in the early processes of design for a project, we will have listening sessions where we have groups of people come together. We usually work with local organizations like The Next Door. Nishiwana Housing. I think we've worked with MCAC before to help bring in the targeted residents so they can help inform the design. I remember for Mariposa Village, somewhere in Hood River, we had a room that had a lot of examples of how it could be and people had stickers where they could go around and, you know, choose like which design they liked. They could ask, you know, they could provide feedback about amenities like a park or a community room or things like that. So we work early on in the design phase to hear feedback from the targeted residents.

Another quick question. Is that the customer you're talking about? Does that answer your question?

Yeah, I think it's an important part of the process to kind of make sure that the solutions being proposed are meeting the needs of coming from the community that we're trying to serve.

right okay yeah i don't know alicia do you have anything about um kind of how you have been tailoring your approach based on the population what you're hearing for the population you're trying to serve um i mean we've talked a little bit amongst the community we haven't done a deep dive into it yet because we're still a little bit early on it but um i have been out talking to the community and doing you know foods first fridays we've done information sessions for um interested buyers in our program. Also, we did do a neighborhood meeting early on at the Avalon Drive property to get some feedback and to kind of hear what people are interested in, what their concerns are, what they'd like to see so that our initial designs hopefully are kind of meeting what the community is thinking about. And then the goal is to also do similar to what Karen was talking about, kind of a design charrette where we can put out maybe three different options with little tweaks here and there so that we can get additional feedback as we're kind of finalizing that. But yeah, I mean, I've got a list of about 100 households on our interested buyer list right now. So I have been reaching out to them also.

We want to share the Mariposa stat of how many applications are in.

I wanted to add, so right now we have 787 households on the waiting list for Mariposa Village. And we were surprised to see that 60% of those households are on the list for studio and one bedrooms. And so we're taking, you know, in 70% of the units, there are two and three bedrooms. And so that's the kind of data that we're taking, not only to our next project, you know, considerations for the next project, but also to the state of Oregon, because Oregon prioritizes projects with two and three bedroom units, but that's based on data from usually from Metro areas. And we wanna show, we have our data that shows that the need in this community is for studio and one bedrooms. And we wanna make sure that we're meeting what the need is.

Yeah. Oh, in the far back.

Hey folks, welcome over here. Thank you for being here and doing this forum. So you guys are doing great work. I love it. I'm also a developer of HomeGuard Capital. We have built or preserved 54 units of naturally occurring affordable housing, most of which is in long-term rental that we hold for a decade or longer, some of which we've sold for $500,000 more or less for less. All that using private capital, right? So these are investors who are... the 70 to 100 BMI. So, you know, we saw that earlier, what that means. You know, there's a place for privately capitalized housing. There's a private place for publicly capitalized housing. You know, we get to dip in a different box of money, and that's to do good. The question I have about this process is, is there a policy objective for this fund if it were to go forward to be capitalizing and pushing forward one of those or the other or both? How do you think about that? Is it really looking at the nonprofit sector, the government sector, or is this an all of the above? And how do you accomplish that?

Yeah.

Can you repeat that question online? Yeah.

Locke, let me know if I get this right.

I will.

Also, question, the housing that you preserved, was that in Lincoln County?

No, the preserved housing is actually here in Hood River. Oh, here in Hood River. It's 12 units down between Polk and Cascade.

Oh, OK. Yeah. So the question was, there's a role for private sector housing production, and there's a role for public sector housing production. And where would a housing bond fit into that? And where do you draw the line?

Really, is there a policy objective to be using this money towards nonprofit and publicly owned? Or is there also a policy objective to help private developers accessing private capital, like the Adams Creek project, for instance, for example, to get that sector of housing built?

Gotcha. Okay. And also, with the housing bond proceeds, is there an objective to have it essentially support privately produced market homes or just focus totally on regulated affordable? To that, I would say this listening session or this town hall and then the polling that we're doing and the surveys that are out, all of that is going to bring the input that is going to go to city council who will make that call. So I'd say it hasn't been decided yet, But I will say some hard and fast rules are with a housing bond in the ballot title, we have to specify what we mean by affordable housing at a percentage of area median income. So is it 40%, 60%, 80%, 120%? It actually, the state law allows us to choose whatever we wanna call affordable housing. but we have to state it upfront and it has to be on the ballot title. So that will be something that council's deciding and will be on the ballot title. And I'd say thinking about incentives for developers versus just doing the straight affordable housing model, I'm thinking, I think there's reticence to have the city step on the toes of private sector builders. And I think the ideas that we are focusing in places that the residents would not have a place in this community, but for some intervention. So if we're making this a complete community where everyone who works here has the ability to live here, you know, that, Unfortunately, I think the housing price is climbing higher and higher and higher. And actually, I'd really take this over to Maui because I'd be interested in your take of how low do you think the private sector can produce and at what point does that sort of hand off and how to tell the little government?

How cheaply could we do it?

Yeah, and where else? And then where does some sort of external funding source need to step in?

Oh, goodness. I mean, I'm a small faculty, but, you know, very, very marginal, marginal return on a, well, admittedly small project, because that's the only data set that I'm living with. was, you know, we got down to 114% of AMI. And that was as rental, that was as low as we could go, right? So we just couldn't get any. So we actually slid that a little bit, you know, a bunch of people right at 118, 120, and a bunch of people down at 104, you know, to get it somewhere around 114. But that seems to be, you know, so we can't do it for less than 100% of AMI. at any level of scale. The weird thing is, in my experience, which is admittedly limited, when you go multifamily, you can't go, well, you can go quads because there's below you can do without much overhead or as an almost alternative single family but if you go over a quad you got to go to 50 units you got to go to eight units you know like they didn't want to look at 30 unit project it's just absolutely undue so and you know scale matters one of the things about a bond that i think is interesting along the lines of well we got to figure out a way to do it differently um is the fact that we can leverage any amount of money with state funding and we should just admit that that's giving us a 5X, 7X, whatever the number is on anything we raise. Yeah, it's going to cost more to do it because it's a Davis-Bacon project, but that is also not a terrible thing either, paying the people who build the thing a living wage. You know, that's helpful for the community. And I do like the way it's being approached with this sort of, this is about a community where if you're working here, you should be able to live here. I think that plus the leverage component, there's probably something there that hasn't been tried in a rural environment. I know this is being done in a metro environment. I don't think there's a carve out for state bond for rural projects. I know there is middle income fund, but maybe, yeah, we start showing that we can do this, that there's potentially some tailwind there.

Yeah, maybe I should. Sorry, I might have gone totally wrong. Yeah, no, no, that's great. I think that brings it to, it's good to note that, you know, voters changed the Oregon Constitution in 2016 or 2018, it's 2016, to allow housing bonds to exist. Actually, Brian, do you know off the top of your head? Did that happen? Or what year it was, 2016, 2018?

It was probably a little before. Okay. But part of the bottom was in 2016. 2016. It was 2014.

Okay. But nobody can do this in Oregon prior to that. And so now Metro has done it. Portland has done it. Salem has done it. We would certainly be a pilot that I think people across the state would be looking at for how to house and bonds work in rural areas.

Yeah. So 50,000 community. Yeah. And we're, what, sub 15, sub 20 for the county? I mean, it's pretty, and we're known for punching above our weight. So, you know, you should try it.

No, no.

I just want to know, we do have someone calling in with a hand raised. I know there's also another question.

Oh, go on.

But I think we can turn this.

Do you want to, but I think she can't hear me.

Yeah, what's the name? Nancy.

Nancy.

Nancy, if you have your hand raised, you can come off mute and feel free to ask a question.

Actually, my question was answered already. So thank you.

Oh, great. Bye, Nancy.

Hey, Molly. Hey, Alicia.

And there was one other hand up, I think, that I missed when I went back to walk.

Yeah. Yeah, so looking at that graph, it was shut down. Yeah, not see what that graph did. It showed where it had the, what it looked like to me that this is a problem that has been affordable housing has been an issue for a long time, a long period of time. I had two questions. Well, I have one question is, how did you get here? Which, it being this long, where like we're now saying like, oh my gosh, we have this issue of affordable housing. There is none. And what do we do about it now? And also to show that we're on the bottom, there was a 30%, I'm right there. I'm at a 30% and we're not even looking at that, right? Like this, I don't know who's not looking at it, but I know that I can't afford to live here. So I'm not doing very helpful right now. on this meeting because I'm in that 30% and I'm not, I don't thought I'm 55. I'm not going to, I don't have plans on like getting into a new career and then finding this job is going to pay me much more. Right. So, um, you know, why hasn't that been looked at, you know, that 30%, because I, those are the people that I worked for the school district. Those are the people that are here that live here. that their children have grown up here. We are that community. But it doesn't seem like anybody has really, that's what I'm just coming to this meeting today. But it doesn't seem like that's been something that has been a priority or just somebody that's thinking like, hey, what are these people living? What are they doing? Like, where are they going to live? And are they able to live here? And the answer is no. we cannot afford it. I'm looking at it, you know, if I'm looking at moving, basically, after 44 years of living in this community, moving out after my children, like, they cannot come in here and live. And I just wonder if that, like, as a community, as a Hood River community, people that are in in roles where you can maybe do something has not been an important thing, right? Because you do have people coming in and I just listening to my daughter now, now I get to mention something about the industry, restaurant industry. They have no one to work. Like they have, they're lacking people to work because it's not worth it for them to come in from the delts, castle locks where they are living. to come in to cover a shift, right? And that, I mean, maybe that's what it's gonna take, right? When restaurants can't open their doors to offer to the people that do live here their food. I'm just wondering, that graph just stood out to me where there's a 30%, I'm like, I'm right there. How many questions? And one more, is there land? available to buy, to build affordable housing in Vancouver.

Yeah, a lot there. I'm going to try to break it up into pieces. So I think you, so I presented to the school board a week or two ago and they were talking about how it's challenged them that employees get hired and they may stay for a year or two and finally can't find a place to settle and then they leave. And so they're seeing turnover And they're also seeing it, they said, in their students' ability to learn when they come and they don't have stable housing environments and they don't show up 100% every day. So definitely, we have heard that. But the question, and let me know if I say it right, is, so we had the Oregon Housing Needs Analysis showed that our greatest housing deficit and need was for people at 30%, a very median income, and that we don't have anything at all in production in that income level. And how did we get here? Why aren't we focusing on that housing production type? I think Karen, you could probably speak best to what it takes to build housing that's supportable at 30%. And then, I don't know Maui, if I can lean on you for how did we get here?

The way that we address the 30% down to zero income is with rental assistance.

that is the way that we serve those households. So with rental assistance, people are paying based on their income. That can be in the form of a tenant-based voucher. So they go out and find a private landlord. That can be in the form of a project-based voucher. So their rental assistance is attached to a unit. And that is not a perfect solution because, you know, we serve 900 households on our voucher program, but we also have waiting lists that are over three years long for someone to receive a housing voucher. We also have such limited funds that we have to prioritize who we give those vouchers to. And so we prioritize people who are disabled, people who are elderly, and families with children. And so there's a whole section of the population that we're unable to serve. And so I don't know if it's possible to build units and have rent that is at a level that's affordable to someone who makes 30% of area median income, but I know that more investment in housing vouchers is the answer to serve that population.

So there are many activists who have been around housing. And when I showed up in the 90s, there was a ton of housing and housing for people. The farmworker programs that built a bunch of housing up off of Pacific Avenue. There's been a lot of work, I think, over time. problem has been there, but we just haven't. It's a combination of not taking it seriously enough and there not being enough resources. And so we've been marching way down the pathway, but the problem is accelerating away from us at this point. These guys do an amazing, amazing amount of work. She's on her way to doing an amazing amount. And so we just need more and more and more of it. And I think that this conversation is part of that. Yeah.

And I think it's important to point out that there's no one. agency or no one government that is the solution. Like it's not on us to solve it. It's not on any of us to solve it. But I feel like even coming together tonight and just thinking about ways that we can collaborate more, I think is the only way that we're going to get stuff done. I want to say a different password. Yes. So on that note,

I think Maura kind of touched it in abolition. And, you know, I just came here in 2023, but my first trip to advocacy to keep my C3 head on that lobby. So there was the lobbyist that asked the big question she asked was like, hey, do people still commute like an hour, two hours away to the river? I was like, I don't know, but I think it's, yeah. I mean, I don't know, you know, but the other big thing, like I think Kara just mentioned, and I think with abolition, Maura mentioned, And because a lot of the guidelines in my organization, I started to inspire and inspire change, and change is hard. I worked with a guy who had this guideline, you know, inspire change. So what is it that's going to take this community and, you know, the equity advisory group to realize, like Kara mentioned, that the community needs to get together, especially to communicate to Salem. And like Molly mentioned about this, it's going to be like Alicia. getting informed and coming together on these issues.

I will say this region in general, when stuff, big things need to happen, has a really great track record. The bridge being a really good example. You know, for years and years and years, like 15, if not longer, it was, you get one ask from your county for that up at the federal level. And for 10 years, all the counties are like, this is our one ask. What's your one ask? This is our one ask. They worked really, really well together. I think we're right at the, We're capable of that, again. Unfortunately, it's a crisis, so we'll get into it. But I think that, yes, working together across the regions to help solve those issues, because we can't just say, oh, yeah, you can drive in from the Dalles. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. It doesn't work for the Dalles, and it doesn't work here. So we have to figure out a way that the Dalles can be a whole community. White Sam can be a whole community. Hood River can be a whole community with the people who are working here, living here, right?

I just got to add to, I got to give a lot of credit, I think, to our city council, current and former members. Went through all the things that we did in 2015. We adopted a plan and it was really difficult to regulate short-term rentals. That was like World War III. People still aren't friends over that one. But adopted a plan. executed it. And then in 2022, adopted a new plan. And we're chunking away at that. And the housing bond, you're seeing it here tonight is fulfilling that stated plan. And, you know, that's a decade and many different people all in city council, I think all pulling in in one direction. So yeah, so I think locally, Brian, I have an answer for

I asked yes to vote, 63% voted yes for it. So maybe that goes well. That's fascinating. We'll know what counted as the highest at like 70%.

Oh, I'll just repeat. So we've got an answer of when the Oregon Constitution was changed to allow housing bonds in 2018, and that Hood River voted yes, the second most of any county in Oregon. Matt, sorry, I thought you had to come back there.

Yeah, just a question. And the bond funds only be used for construction or land acquisition are going to be used for expansion housing vouchers?

Yeah, great question. Thanks. And that's really important to clarify. Bonds are for capital costs only. So land construction couldn't unfortunately be used for more housing vouchers or rental assistance. Yeah, brick sticks and land.

Do we see a way, just a quick follow-up to that, do we see a way that it could help private development Okay, how would something like that actually work?

So, sorry, the first question was, what can bond funds be used for? And there's only for capital costs. And then the second question was, is there a way that this could be used to help fund private development? And I would say to that, and actually this is kind of going back to Locke as well, is the Mariposa Village is a joint venture between Community Development Partners, which is a for-profit corporation, and Columbia Cascade Housing Corporation, which is our local development arm of our housing authority. And after 15 years, CDP Community Development Partners will divest and it will be 100% publicly owned. but very much they're a private corporation and they're a private developer. They just specialize in this income level and all the web of funding sources that come along with it. So yeah, that's part of the housing bond is we can work with the private sector to build housing.

Hi, my name is Renee and I've worked in public education and have lived in a lot of different other towns. The river's been home for a while. And so there are, like you mentioned, this is a nationwide thing that is occurring. There are cities or smaller communities that are ahead of the curve in providing affordable housing to teachers and police officers and fire department. Have there been any models that you've really looked at, any small communities like ours, besides the Orcas Island example that, you're taking lessons from that have informed your decision to go forward or to reach out for more community input.

Yeah. Well, I wonder if you have, because your agency is over a five-county region, have any thoughts on different models or things to emulate?

I'm thinking like basically Colorado, California, Jacksonville, like They all have affordable housing models for, you know, a while.

Well, I can say, because I know the origin of the housing bond was in the 2022 affordable housing strategy, and that was uh, employers, um, renters, uh, real estate, uh, professionals, affordable housing developers all came together and, uh, with the aid of Echo Northwest put that document together. And so that's, um, basically the combined experience of all those folks. And so I don't know if they were pulling from any specific, um, mountain towns. Um, but I know, uh, yeah, we've done, you know, we've seen, uh, I think looking at Park City, Telluride, Aspen, they've gone through the transition that we are going through now and ended up seeing affordable housing as more like a public utility provider rather than just setting up the carrots and sticks and hoping that the private market comes through. So yeah, I've seen some good examples from those folks.

I have a unique perspective because I work for Karen and I live in the Rivertown. So I will be voting on this bond. And so I know part of this process is listening, understanding what the needs are. And so my piece of advice is to, the numbers, I am the finance manager, so I'm following all the numbers. But as we prepare to ask our community for this bond, bringing it alive, bringing the community struggles and how our community will benefit, I think in 20 years. So I've seen the problem with the service industry and the decline. And so I think that would be really helpful if we move forward to asking for it.

So would it summarize for the folks online that as if the bond, if the city council choose to move a bond forward, just really center in local stories, local impact, how people are living it, the thousand shortage. Yeah. Oh, over on the side.

I have two questions. One is, is there any way in designing the bond to account for the fact that inflation is so high so if we look at the median income and the typical algorithm we use might be that you know rent or housing is 30 and other things are certain percent and that's just not realistic right now the other stuff is not realistic so that's one question and then the second question is for the 30 and under and for other renters in the community um Are there other strategies that you're looking at to try to increase the availability of moderately priced rentals so that folks who maybe don't qualify for vouchers aren't able to also find solutions for themselves as they're not going to find anything in the housing bond so they can still vote yes?

Yeah. So the question was, how does inflation get incorporated into the bond and what else is the city doing to try to get workforce and middle income rentals? Is that right? Yeah. So I guess I'll answer that because it's what the city is doing. But the bond is just you have to set an amount that is going to be authorized and it's a static amount. So basically the council would say we're going to forward a $4 million bond or a $5 million bond or a $6 million bond. whatever the amount is, and that can't change. It's set in stone once voted on. And then as far as what the taxpayers paid to fund that debt service could change based on interest rates or if the city grows faster than expectations, which we've seen with previous bonds, then that means actually everyone pays less tax because the bond is set and we have more people here paying taxes. But there is no inflation adjustment. And then as far as what the city is doing, you know, really in the presentation is, you know, all the things that we've tried so far and the housing bond is really the next one up and mostly closes out our 2022 affordable housing strategy document. And so I think after this, it would be going back to the well and creating a new battle plan.

Yeah, sorry, I missed the beginning. Oh, sure. Maybe a suggestion is that as a voter and relatively new one and a renter, that if there isn't an additional strategy to go along with the housing loan, which is just for housing that's for purchase or bricks and sticks, having that other package of ideas ready to go at the same time would be very compelling to be able to say we're taking on this issue

comprehensively it's not just about one particular strategy oh sure yeah i won't maybe i'll connect with you afterwards there's a whole whole bunch of lists yeah um and i think we're actually we're getting a little close i i want to wrap up um with just final thoughts and advice that the pain after listening to this and talking through it advice uh that you have for the city council as they're thinking about forwarding a bond uh in november uh and i just want to uh We acknowledge we have Councillor Rivera, Councillor Mitchell, and Councillor Poulsen, I believe, back here listening in. And I know there were some more questions, too. So I think we're all going to stick around and happy to chat.

But I can just mention, sorry, Abigail, I'm the city minister. I get to work with Will and Jackie. I also want to acknowledge that of your city councilors, at one time, more than half of your city council were renters. That's right. And several who have tried to access and purchase housing. So this is a real issue, not just for our residents, but for our elected officials and for our city staff. We are all with you on it. Yeah.

Right. So wrapping up, what final advice or thoughts as the city council grapples with putting together a housing bond? Anyone jump off?

I think we should do this two or three more times to have the conversation evolve a little bit. Help flesh it out, maybe pre or post the council's decision. Because I think this is a really valid conversation. It's clearly a bunch of interesting people, right?

Yeah, I would actually second that because I think having that transparency to the community and being really clear on what the bond is and how it affects them is really important. So doing this to get more people in the room, I think it would be a good way to go.

Yeah, just making it clear to the community what a powerful tool a bond can be and kind of what it says about Hood River as a community, that this is something that we're all wanting to prioritize and you know, expressing, it kind of feels like expressing care for the whole community, wanting to make sure that, you know, everyone who works here or that, you know, they don't have to commute two hours to get to their job where they make, you know, minimum wage or a little above. And just making clear, you know, that it can leverage a lot more investment into the community.

Yeah, right. Yeah, well, I want to, again, thank the panelists for coming tonight and just reiterate, we're all sticking around and so happy to have conversations and talk as well. And please take some more food. Thank you.