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.

Community planning and housing committee, I'm chair Amanda sandball representing Northwest Denver district 1. we have a really exciting agenda ahead of us today. Just 1 briefing, but let's go ahead and get started with introductions and I'll start with the council member online.

Hi, everyone Chantal Lewis council district 8.

Thank you, and now I'll start. All right. Flora Alvidrez, Lucky District 7. Amanda Sawyer, District 5.

Paul Cashman, South Denver District 6.

Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver, District 4.

Darrell Watson, 5, District 9.

Jamie Torres, West Denver, District 3. Great. And now we have our post-annual plan, 2026 work plan, even though it's halfway through the year. I do know that we have a new executive director. So if you just want to give a little history on how you got here, Cole, that would be great for the public who may not know all of the intricacies of Denver. But I'll pass it over to you. The floor is yours.

Wonderful. Thank you so much. So I'm Cole Chandler, the executive director of the Department of Housing Stability. Been in that role since April 13, so just over three months now. A little personal history. I grew up in Texas. I did a Master of Divinity degree. I moved to Denver to join the Denver Catholic Worker Community and moved into the Catholic Worker House in 2014. So I started to learn about housing and homelessness issues firsthand from the people I lived with, the people that I volunteered alongside of. That work led to some advocacy work where I helped launch and co-found the Colorado Village Collaborative and started the tiny homes model here in Denver. I worked with several members of city council, past and present, to bring that forward. Spent a year after that at the state working on a governor's wildly important goal related to homelessness. and then joined the Johnston administration as the senior advisor on homelessness in 2023. And I'm now very pleased to lead the Department of Housing Stability. And so it's a little bit of my past, but yeah, grateful to all of you for your partnership all along the way. from my time in community to my time now leading this agency. And so HOST has a 2026 action plan, which was adopted by our housing stability strategic advisors at my first meeting with that group back in April. And so I'm happy to provide a bit of a briefing to you all on that action plan today. All right, so we have a bit of our agenda here. We'll look at some of our 2025 accomplishments, the current host organizational structure, just to give you an idea of kind of how we work and who we are. We will look at our core departmental priorities and then 2026 goals as well. All right, starting with a look back and a look at our structure, I think, you know, of course, as we think about what we have accomplished at HOST over the last couple of years, we're really proud of the reduction that we've delivered in unsheltered homelessness, a 64% reduction since 2023. We're proud of the fact that This calendar year, we've delivered Denver's first reduction in overall homelessness in more than a decade. That was a 12% reduction in the last point in time count. So those are some of the outcomes that we're really proud of on the homelessness side. We're obviously oriented around our goals to increase housing affordability, decrease the number of low and middle income households that are living at cost burdened. And some of the ways that we count towards that, some of the inputs that we measure are the number of units that we're creating and preserving, as well as the number of households that we're serving in terms of prevention work, and then the number of households that we're bringing out of homelessness through our homelessness resolution work. So here's some of that key data from 2025, but happy to dive into that more as we go throughout the presentation. A bit about our structure. You know, we really have two primary divisions delivering our work. You can think of these as four pillars across our organization. We have the Housing Stability and Homelessness Resolution Pillar. That work is led by Deputy Director Jeff Kozicki, who you know. He'll be in committee in the next couple weeks presenting on our performance-based contracts. Our housing opportunity work is led by Interim Deputy Director Lyah Mitchell. And so that oversees the investments that we make in affordable housing, the work that we do to prevent displacement, as well as our preservation work and our asset management and compliance work. So every time that we invest a dollar in creating a building, We ensure that that building maintains its affordability through our asset management and compliance work. And so that's really the kind of the core functions of the organization. But then we also have an operations and impact That's where all of our finance lives, our contracts and procurement, and all of our data work. That work is currently led by a couple of directors. Amy Webb is our finance director. Brittany Aaron is our contracts and procurement director. And then the other piece of our work that's really pivotal is the communications, community engagement, and public policy work. And so that is led by Derek Webb. Sorry, Derek Woodbury. Derek Webb was a performing artist that I liked when I was a teenager. Focus call. Derek Woodparing is our director of comms. And Polly works on that team as our council liaison. And we have a community engagement team as well. So those are the four kind of pillars of our organization. We have a six-person executive leadership team right now. And that team is diverse in every way, male and female, racially diverse, diverse in terms of LGBTQ inclusion, and that sort of thing. Guiding our work, looking at our overarching priorities. So I think this section's a little bit about kind of host governance and goals. I think one thing that we are oriented around is our five-year strategic plan. Some of you were a part of the adoption of that strategic plan. Councilman Watson was the chair as this process was going through. I think it's important when we talk about this five-year strategic plan to just note a little bit of HOST's history. HOST was founded in 2019. There was a global pandemic in 2020. There was, you know, it was a very dynamic time in the life of a brand-new organization in 2020, a huge influx of federal ARPA dollars that happened during that time period, an influx of a special revenue fund in the homelessness revolution. resolution fund. Oh my gosh. The homelessness resolution fund that was approved by voters in 2020 as well. And then this plan was adopted by council in 2021. So the plan ran 2021 to 2026. Huge public engagement process. When I was in the community, I was part of that process. But the vision of that plan is to create a healthy housed and connected Denver. And the plan really outlines how we would do that by investing our resources on the homelessness resolution side, housing opportunity side, and then really what would be needed in terms of the operations of the overall organization. So that's the plan that was put in place in 2021. That plan is expiring at the end of this year, and we'll talk a little bit more about kind of some of our next steps as we go through the presentation. There are four pillars outlined in that plan. Our organizational structure reflects those four pillars, housing opportunity, housing stability, homelessness resolution, and operations. And then I spoke a bit earlier about kind of our governing body, the Housing Stability Strategic Advisors. Per DRMC, this body meets six to eight times per year. It is made up of, I believe, equal parts of mayoral appointees and council appointees. And there's actually a council appointee position that we're working on filling right now. But this body is really responsible for approving our annual action plan and then recommending our strategic plan to move forward to city council process and that sort of thing. The action plan that we're presenting on today, as I mentioned, was approved by HSSA back in April. And then actually at our meeting just last Friday, they approved the continuation strategic plan that we will be bringing forward to you all and discussing with you all in the upcoming months. In terms of kind of our big priorities and the way we fit into citywide goals, obviously two of the citywide goals are part and parcel of the work that we do at HOST. One of those is the affordable Denver goal to deliver 2,500 affordable units and permit an additional 5,000 total units at HOST. We are really focused focused on the first half of that, delivering the 2,500 units. CPD is focused on the permitting, as well as the Denver Permitting Office, DOTI, all the agencies involved in permitting. On the all-in-mile-high side, we are focused on reducing street homelessness by 75% since 2023. And alongside of a lot of other city partners working on responding to street engagement requests within a single business day. So, again, these are citywide goals, but goals that are really part and parcel of the work we do at host. And we have departmental wigs that are outlined in our action plan that align towards these goals. And so I'll talk about that in the next slides. So we'll start with the housing opportunity side. And there's a lot of words on this slide, but I think some key metrics that I want to orient to, and then just kind of a bit of the way of what we think about sort of what we're doing now to bring units online this year, what we're doing to seed units for next year, and then some of the policy and environmental conversation that we're having to make way for affordability in Denver's future is kind of the way that these three goals are outlined. So the first goal is what we will deliver in terms of newly developed units and preserved units this year. These are units that through investments made in previous years will open their doors to new people moving into those units or will be maintained through preservation work that specifically preserves units that would otherwise be expiring due to expiring affordability covenants. So that's the first piece around those 575 and 900 units. The next piece is what we are seeding this year that will be opened in future years. And so our major sources of funding related to housing opportunity come through the Affordable Housing Fund, which is property tax and linkage fee, which sets aside Money for us to invest through really gap financing as our primary tool. And so we invest alongside of the state and private investors in order to make affordable housing development possible. The other piece that we have through. made available by an allocation of the state as private activity bonds that we leverage in order to bring units online. And so this year, through investments that we're making in future projects, we're seeding another 1,500 units that will open in future years as those developments complete. And then the third piece is really around the policy environment that will make future affordability possible. And so through conversations with interagency groups and external partners, we are very much focused on what we can do to reduce red tape and ensure that through partnership with the market, we're able to deliver more affordable units by 2028 and beyond. All right, so that's on the housing opportunity side. Flipping over to the housing stability and homelessness resolution side of the organization, I want to talk about some of the different focuses that we have. As we think about the continuum of homelessness, the first piece is ensuring that people don't become homeless in the first place. So when people are currently in their housing, how do we keep them in that housing? There is a large spectrum, really, of the way that we invest across prevention programs. But this particular wig that we're pointing out as a part of this action plan is about how we prevent households from literally becoming homeless. And so this is specifically targeting households that have experienced homelessness in the past because they're most likely to experience homelessness again. And so when they're in that housing, how do we ensure that they maintain that? That's through some rapid resolution programs that we have. as well as through eviction prevention. And so those are some of our dollars that we leverage in order to ensure that those households will not become homeless again. The next piece of the spectrum is sort of once someone becomes homeless, how do we navigate them from where they are on the streets or wherever that may be into shelter and into the broader continuum of housing? And so our goal this year is through partnership with other agencies to ensure that every 311 call that comes in related to homelessness, that we're able to respond to that within a single business day to get services out to those individuals, find out what their needs are, and help them navigate towards the next location. In previous years, we've kind of tracked this as the numbers of people that we move indoors to shelter. This year, we decided to focus slightly more upstream on how do we actually meet the need of that individual right where they are, rather than just focusing on the output kind of service connection. The next piece of that continuum is then shelter operations. And so this is where we focus on what someone shows up at our shelters, how do we ensure that they're on a path to stable housing, that the shelter doesn't just become their long-term home, but how do we help connect them to services from there? And so through our broad service system, we are serving 12,000 households on an annual basis. And so our focus then is how do we connect those households to permanent housing exits? That can happen through family reunification. It can happen through rapid resolution. It can happen through rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing, through employment services, an individual finding a job, also through their own self-resolution. And so you can see a couple of our... sort of our other goals supporting this year. We're working through an initiative that has been championed by council in the past. We have deployed kiosks across our shelters to really determine what our guests satisfaction is at those shelters. And we have a goal to have at least 75% of guests experience satisfaction in the shelter stay by the end of this year. And then we're also working through our performance-based contracting, which Jeff will provide more of an update on, to ensure that our guests are always up to date with their coordinated entry assessment so that they're on a path to housing, that our shelters are really rehousing sites, not just long-term homes for individuals. In terms of our, the next piece of that is then how do we connect people fully to housing and keep them there? And so our goal is to help 2,000 households exit to our permanent housing outcomes throughout the course of this year. And again, this is something that we'll talk about at length in our upcoming performance-based contracting briefing. all right so that is really kind of what we're focused on through the action plan that was approved by our housing stability strategic advisors this year i did also just want to update you on a couple of other key items that we have in the works this year especially as it relates to that expiring strategic plan So a couple of years ago, through state statute, there was a requirement put in place that all local communities complete a housing needs assessment. We have that work underway this year. It was funded by a grant from the state. That work is being done by Root Policy Research, and it's set to deliver in December of this year. We're really excited about that housing needs assessment. We think it will really help us to locate our goals around affordable housing and homelessness resolution work in the coming years. And so it will finish in quarter four. And I think this is important as it relates to the next point, which is that our strategic plan does expire this year. We didn't think it made a lot of sense for us to bring forward a long-term strategic plan to you all that was not based on the data of this housing needs assessment. And so what we're bringing forward in September of this year and beginning briefings on very soon, is basically a continuation plan of the existing plan. So we'll ask you all to approve a one-year continuation plan. During that time frame, we will create the next long-term strategic plan. And we already have our RFP for that long-term strategic plan on the street. The housing needs assessment will really be the bedrock of that long-term strategic plan as well as a robust community engagement process that will unfold over the next year. But the next long-term strategic plan would be presented to you all by September of 2027. So those are a couple of other just kind of key rocks that are in play for us, which I wanted to highlight. One other thing that we wanted to be sure to note that weaves throughout the entire 2026 Action Plan and HOST's long-term strategic plan is equity as the bedrock, and specifically how we advance equity through the programs that we're bringing forward on the housing opportunity and homelessness resolution side. It's no surprise that black indigenous people of color are disproportionately represented in the folks that we are serving in our community, and so we are seeking to advance racial equity through this plan and through our subsequent strategies. All right. That is a high-level overview. I'm happy to have conversations on the slides or anything else that you might want to talk about.

Thank you. So in the queue we have comes member Cashman Torres Alvarez president Romero Campbell. Am I missing anyone else? Take us away it comes member Cashman.

Thank you. I'm not sure good sequel And these guys are doing a whole lot of good work and we all know is a huge lift So if you had a bunch of money dropped in your lap and you had to spend it in one direction. Where do you see the most need right now?

Yeah, I mean, it's on the housing supply side, right? And so as we think about all the progress that we've made on unsheltered homelessness over the last few years, we really need to work to make a dent in affordable housing supply, particularly for households at the most low incomes. And so I'm sure that that will be confirmed by our housing needs assessment. But as we think about sustaining the progress that we've made, so that we don't slip back in three years, five years. We really need to be focused on investing upstream and doing so particularly for the lowest income households.

I would be interested, and excuse me if I missed it on one of the slides, but in knowing the retention numbers, you get someone off the street, you get them into an independent living, how long are they staying? I know it's challenging because they may move from here to North Carolina and whatnot, but anything you have would be appreciated. Thank you very much. And I do remember your first, the opening of your first Tiny Home Village. I remember that. That was quite a day, quite a new concept at that point. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Councilman Torres. Thank you. Thanks, Cole.

Thanks for sharing what you think the housing needs assessments might bring or will help eliminate the next one. But are we just extending the date of the strategic plan? Because I haven't seen yet a report card of where we're at with the goals that were in the first one or anything like that.

Yeah, great. So there will be some minor changes to it. In some cases, we're... If a strategy has completely changed and we're no longer working on that, we're not going to ask you to necessarily extend that particular piece of it. In other cases, we might be slightly changing the targets if we achieved a target or if we found that a target was way aspirational and we don't want to set a false expectation that we're going to meet that in the next 12 months. So there will be some minor modifications, and that's something that we can talk through as we bring that plan forward over the coming months. But the primary, I mean, there are not major changes being made to the plan. It is essentially extending the date for one more year and adding in language that says that we'll bring back the new long-term plan by September of next year.

It would be great. You know, 1 of the things that we made sure to put into the neighborhood planning initiative was basically a matrix at the end of it that has all of the recommendations and who's responsible for them and kind of like, almost like a quick reference sheet as to what the goals of. are or the recommendations are of that particular plan. I feel like for the strategic plan that you've got, it would really, really helpful for me to be able to go to like a quick reference sheet to say, okay, under housing stability, you'd wanted to increase homes restricted currently at 7%, increase it to 8%. Where are we? what was, you know, if we dropped it, why did we drop it? If we didn't meet it, why, you know, what's some of the context? So that can help me understand like otherwise we're gonna lose track of what did we aim for and where are we at five years later.

Totally makes sense. And I think, you know, the previous plan was very aspirational. It was also very long. And I think one of the things that we're focused on both through the continuation plan as well as the next one is that we're very clear about what it is that we're trying to deliver by when that quick reference sheet idea, I think, as kind of an orientation to the way we read this document would be helpful in the future.

Okay. The other, and I've shared with you my feeling that the original strategic plan was very light on housing stability. Now I'm seeing it couched much more closely to homelessness resolution. And in my eyes, they are very separate. Because there might be, I think what we fund is trying to keep folks from falling off that cliff into homelessness, eviction support, maybe foreclosure support. But homelessness or housing stability is so much... It's very different from that. And I do feel like your housing opportunity, where you put funding, it does help support stability. But if you're not tracking, do we have same number of stable households in this particular economic bracket here as we do five years later? This is what I mean when I'm talking about the city does not have an anti-displacement platform. We are not actively tracking, are we losing thousands of families in West and Southwest Denver, which I think we are. And what are we doing to try to plug that hole as opposed to say, oh, but we've got these policies and these funding. Like, I don't think we're monitoring it very well. And so this isn't just a host problem. I need, like in my eyes, you're working closely with economic development agencies. You're working closely with like, in the, and it's, it's just not happening in a way that makes me feel like I could tell my residents. We give a damn about whether or not you're able to stay in Villa park or Westwood. So that that's something that I would really like to see different as you envision out. What is the next strategic plan look like? And how will we know this is making a huge difference other than. really putting a lot of money into really needed areas, but we're not really keeping track of families.

Yeah. Terrific feedback. I will say that part of the scope of work of the housing needs assessment is to look into anti-displacement work and how we can measure that. And so I'm hopeful that we'll have some new methodology for tracking that in the future. And I think it's a very fair point.

Okay. Appreciate it. Thank you for your work, Cole.

Yeah.

Thank you.

thank you next up we have councilwoman alvidrez followed by president romero campbell thank you so much committee chair thank you for looping us in um to some of your plans one of the things i'm curious about that i don't see information on is like how much are we spending how much is this going to cost sure are we depending on homelessness resolution dollars and linkage fees

Yeah.

If you can answer that.

Yeah, certainly. So HOST's budget is made up of a handful of parts. Obviously, the general fund is our backbone. The next most stable source that we have is the Homelessness Resolution Fund, which is a 0.25% sales tax, generates $50 to $55 million a year. The next piece is the affordable housing fund, which I mentioned, bringing in property tax and linkage fee to focus on our housing opportunity side. And then we have a hodgepodge of federal grants and that sort of thing that rounds out the broader picture. So I think there are some diverse sources. As we think about our homelessness programs, do our best to fit as much of that as we can within that homelessness resolution fund. And that's really the ongoing source of our operations. And when we think about the housing opportunities, investments, that affordable housing and linkage fee are the primary investment tools that we have. So we're very fortunate to have those resources. I would also be remiss to say that we would love to have more to invest, especially on the upstream investment in terms of housing opportunity as we move forward. But that's a little bit of an overview. But if there's a more particular question, I'm happy to dive in further.

Um, no, I think what I'm probably looking for is like all in mile high numbers and that's spending. So maybe that's, this isn't the right place for that. But, um, one of the things that stood out to me is that, you know, we do have the five-year strategic plan that is measuring some of those goals. And I think some of those goals may show how many people we've lost because one of the things that's been interesting to me has been the home ownership rates for BIPOC individuals that we're tracking. We And so I know those numbers have changed a little bit. It's actually not negative anymore. But I'm curious how you're coming up with your wildly important goals, your WIGS, and separating that from all the other really important goals that the five-year strategic plan has.

yeah those you know are really the wildly important goals are based upon I think trying to center around the biggest priorities that the city is facing as a whole and how we orient around those and how we collaborate across departments so a lot of the work of the strategic plan just sort of fits into the normal flow of how host works but there are areas where we have to look outside for external city agencies and external partners to help complete that work. And that's what the citywide goals sort of lift up.

I feel like equity and displacement and all those issues that my colleague mentioned are not highlighted enough in these goals. And so I will just share that as a concern. And then congratulations. I am glad that overall homelessness is down. I think that's a huge win. But I am very concerned about the rise in family homelessness And I think that that could be due to the units that we're building for housing are not family-sized units. And I also have noticed a trend upward in domestic violence. And that is a huge cause of homelessness. And so I'm curious, how are you thinking about bringing in that domestic violence trend and the family homelessness trends into your work?

Yeah, well, first, I want to thank you all for last night approving the funding to help us bring on a new emergency shelter. So, approved that capital funding request last night. I think that's something that we, you know, have been in conversation with you all around for some time of how do we meet the need. We've set a goal to reduce family homelessness overall, reduce the family shelter wait list, and then certainly to ensure that no child in Denver has to sleep on the streets. And so that site that we're gonna bring forward is gonna be very instrumental in enabling us to do that. The other piece that I would say is that we're very eager to see the data around the housing needs assessment. to also identify what typology of housing, what the family and household makeups are that we need to target as we build our new strategic plan. So eager to see that data when it's available at the end of the year and then really to orient around that in our next strategic plan.

That's great. And then just to elevate, evictions are also on the rise, and that was in our budget letter as well. But one last question is around, in previous presentations, you've talked about outdoor deaths, and I don't see that in any of this information or plan. Are you still including that in HOST's objectives, or is that moving to DDPHE, or why is that?

We're happy to. It's not specifically a part of the 2026 action plan, but happy to find that, pull that data and share that.

Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next up we have... President Romero-Kemble, followed by Watson.

Thank you, committee chair. Thank you for the presentation, Cole. As you were talking about moving forward with the action plan and then collecting additional data, having your WEED goals, your wildly big goals, How does that impact some of the contracts that we currently hold and do you expect that some of them will be reduced or kind of like how does that track with what our cycle is or what cycle we have for current contracts?

Yeah, great question. So, you know, I kind of shared a little bit earlier, just the evolution of host as a new organization in 2019 to 2026. We had sort of been operating each year on a one year contract cycle for a number of years, which I think created a huge workload for the contracts team, certainly for Polly, certainly for all of you. It's still quite large at host, but we have shifted to more of a three-year cycle, especially on the homelessness resolution side. And so last year, we brought forward all of our non-congregate shelter sites. this year we'll be bringing forward our congregate shelter sites on three-year cycles in terms of those particular contracts we don't anticipate major changes in the you know long-range strategic plan that comes forward next i think where i'm most excited to dig in on the next plan is really around the housing opportunity side of the work and how we best orient our strategies to meet the needs that we know that we have now and will especially have in the next five to eight years if we don't act soon. And so I think, you know, you would expect to see more, you know, I guess potential shift to the strategy on the housing opportunity side than you might on the homelessness resolution side. So, yeah.

Would that be like additional, how so? Can you speak more to what that should be?

Well, I think just as Councilmember Alvidrez was pointing out and also Councilmember Torres, like how do we hone in on particular focuses? How do we have data that supports that? As I was talking about with Councilman Cashman, what are the specific AMI levels at which we need to be focusing our investment? And so how do we really have more targeted approaches on the housing side? And, you know, I think the other piece is we all recognize we need to find a way to identify more resources to invest in this, in the housing opportunity side of our work in particular.

And then just finally, I think as you're moving forward with the next action plan, I would imagine you're also working closely with HRCP. Just knowing that there are populations that I think are overrepresented and in our homelessness population and also those at risk. So I'm also thinking like older adults and seniors who are just highly at risk right now.

Yeah, great call.

Thank you. Thank you, manager. Thank you. Next up we have Council Member Watson followed by Sawyer.

Thank you so much committee chair, Council member Sandoval. Cole, thank you for, I think the idea of extending just for one year, the plan makes sense because without the needs assessment, even if you have direction from Dr. Cogg's needs assessment, you don't have from us. And so I think that makes I wanted to share a little bit. I mean, there is a lot of meatiness and a wordiness in the five-year plan, and I love the plan because I'm biased with the help of the process, but there are some real specific stuff that was in here that I don't want to miss, and I want to elevate what Councilmember Torres said. When we used the terms homeless resolution and housing stability in kind of one breath, we were very deliberate. six years ago with the work that was done in collaboration with community and a whole host of folks to separate stability from homelessness resolution for a reason. So let me share a few of the things that my hope is that can be elevated even in the one year plan because there are outcomes that I think were, that speak to some of the things that community members are talking to right now. So for example, we had here within the outcomes, within housing stability, We want there to be fewer households throughout our community who feel they have no option, but to move to be involuntary displaced. We want to reduce the number of foreclosures and eviction filings, particularly in neighborhoods with high vulnerability to involuntary displacement and with strong representation of BIPOC households. One of the strategies that was elevated There were like 5 or 6, once again, beyond 3, there's no way we could have measured all of that. But it spoke to something very simple that I don't think we did in any of our action plans over the last 5 years. You build a partnership with Denver public schools to measure involuntary displacement of families with children work with Denver public schools and Denver. Office of Children's Affairs to develop communication strategies and referral systems for programs that support housing stabilization of families with children. And then finally, partner with Denver Human Services to better target outreach and explore additional expansion of the property tax rebate program. I pulled this out, I mean, there's a lot of stuff in here, but I pulled this out because there are some clear narratives around ideas for what we should be targeting on housing stability that meets the needs for families that we're seeing at larger impacts of displacement and more families on the streets. But there are some very technical strategies that I don't believe we've had either the time capacity or really focused within our action plans to hit. And I'm curious as to, is there a process that we're gleaning into some of these, what I think could be really innovative, that innovative piece with Denver Public Schools? I think that could be a powerhouse to identify because they define homelessness different than we do. What we described here within Denver Public School would be someone that's homeless. as far as what Department of Education lists as homelessness bouncing from couch to couch. We don't consider that homeless because they're not on the streets. Very curious as to who will glean through some of what I think are opportunities that we just have not had capacity to measure, because I think it will hit on some of the stuff like the family housing that Councilwoman Avidra spoke to. There's a lot I just shared, but kudos for the good work that y'all have done so far, though.

No, and I appreciate you uplifting that. And as I mentioned, the strategic plan is very aspirational, right? And I think there are aspects of it that we haven't fully realized due to capacity and priorities and various challenges like that. We have had a partnership with Denver Public Schools that's been focused on prevention work. It's been very small. I believe there's going to be a briefing on that on August 11th as part of a TRUA briefing. But it's a very small program at this point and doesn't exactly hit on what you're talking about, but it is a housing stability focused program with Denver Public Schools. So they want to highlight that. It's coming forward on August 11th. Very strong point councilman as always and I think yeah There's a lot of great work in this plan that we should continue to build upon in the continuation plan And then the forthcoming long-range strategic plan as well.

Okay.

Thank you Cole. Thank you committee chair

Thank you. Next up, we have Councilman Sawyer followed by Councilmember Lewis. Thanks, Madam Chair. Thanks, Cole.

Really appreciate this. Wanted to just kind of circle back with you on two budget issues, right? And that is, and I wrote both of them, so they're a little close to my heart. That is eviction right to council and our property tax rebate program. Yeah. Property tax rebate only just got switched over to host. So I know that Melissa and her team are doing an amazing job of trying to get that information and more data together, but it's like in a vacuum right now, right? And with the eviction right to council side, I did the calculations in 2021 when we wrote, 2021, you guys? 2022? Was it 22? I think so.

Ages ago. It feels like 100 years ago.

With candy, and we at that time, based on those eviction levels, which we have seen rise significantly, calculated out the annual need for residents of the city and county of Denver at $4 million a year. It has never been funded at $4 million a year. And we know that those numbers have gone up significantly in the last couple of years. So I'm curious. We've got data gaps. We've got historic funding gaps. And we've got a plan that we're waiting until December to reach. So I'm super supportive of you guys doing a one-year plan to hold things steady and improve what you can and then rewrite the entire plan with an actual database information to start in 2028. I think that's a great idea. But we have budget season coming up and we're also not gonna get that report before budget season. And that's really hard because it's very hard for us to oversee the budget and make the determination of where those dollars need to be going when we don't have that information yet. So, With that said, how do you want to partner with us in having those conversations as we kind of move over the fall and we're looking at things that we know we're short on dollars with and we know we're struggling to fund, but also we know the data is coming and it's not here yet, but we know the need is there and the importance is incredible.

I mean, I think we don't have all of the data, but we have access to some of the data now, even some of the trends that you're pointing to, right? And so we know the numbers of households that we've needed to serve with these types of programs over the past couple of years, and that needs to inform what we bring forward through this budget process. And so I look forward to having a dynamic conversation with you about what the need is. through the data that we have available and how best we meet that goal.

Okay, and in terms of, so I know, for example, whenever it was, 2022 or 2021, when it came to funding eviction rate to council, part of the, this was a different administration, but part of the administration's argument for not funding it at that full $4 million was about our city partners and contractors not having the bandwidth to be able to take on the full amount of the need because of their own staffing issues and things like that. And I don't know if that has changed over time. Has it changed over time?

I think that's something I'll have to check in with the team about, and I'll look forward to learning more about that specifically from Melissa in the coming weeks. But happy to follow up with you on a better answer to that.

Yeah, I think that would be great just because, as you mentioned, the idea of, I can't remember on your slide which one we're talking about here, homelessness. No, housing stability. On the housing stability piece, we have a few tools, including these two that I'm talking about, but they're limited, right? I mean, when we look at basically our foreclosure relief program, which is closed for the rest of this year because it's out of dollars already, and our... property tax rebate, those are really the only two anti-displacement tools Host has. Of course, other than the investment in future affordable units and all of those different kinds of things. But for an actual on-the-ground family who's about to lose their house because they can't pay their property tax, that's it. That's what we have. And so we have to make sure that we're funding them at the right levels. But it's really hard to know what the right levels are right now.

I mean, I think we have an idea based upon kind of the demand for those types of programs in the first six months of the year, what would fund it for a full year. And the reality is, as you mentioned, foreclosure prevention portal is closed because we ran out of funds this year, as we have in past years. This wasn't the first time that's taken place. And so we don't have all of the data, but we have enough data to make informed decisions. And then it comes down to priorities and how we prioritize that together.

Okay. I really appreciate that. I just think that one last question for you in terms of, like, we're the legislative branch of government. We can help.

Sure.

formalize some of this stuff into law, if need be, have you or your team come up with or thought about any or seen in peer cities any other tools for displacement prevention or housing stability that we don't have in the city right now that would give you guys more tools to work with?

Yeah, that's a great question. And one, again, I'd like to follow up with the team on and get back with a better answer.

Okay. Great. Thanks. 21. All right. Was it 21?

It feels like 100 years. 100 years, right? Council Member Lewis.

I thank you and thanks for the presentation call. I actually have 1 question and I'm just curious as to how Dura fits into these conversations. I know that we have in my district specifically some discussions around to funding and that funding going to potential housing. And so I'm just wondering how how those 2 departments interface and how you all are working together.

Yeah, thank you so much for the question. You know, those funds aren't flowing specifically into hosts, right? Our, you know, part of what we're trying to do through a housing strategic plan is lay out a bit of a framework of, you know, how affordable housing development happens in the city and trying to guide that. But those are not specific funds that we have purview over.

So I understand that those funds aren't flowing through HOST. I'm just wondering, like, how is that accounted for within the plan?

I don't know.

If it's not, that's also okay.

Say it again. Preservation. Oh, yeah, I probably shouldn't answer because I don't know that it is, but Councilman Watson might have something to share.

No, I was just simply saying, Cole, and I apologize, committee chair, if I may. I think where Dura comes in, very helpful, and obviously it may not answer your question, Council Member Lewis, but we've looked at dora as a partner to help with preservation so like the rossonian as you're looking at making sure that we have housing and also housing stability or housing opportunity within this five points dora has been an extraordinary partner and when it comes to the preservation of Dura has played a part in the fiscal gap, filling that gap. So, whether it's for the Hattie McDaniel or for the Charles Burrell and now the Rossonian, they are part of the preservation numbers, I'm assuming, that will be counted as far as household units that are being preserved. And so it's not part of the five year plan, but it is also one of the ways in which the lines of support provides for housing preservation in targeted communities where Dura is a partner with housing and all of the other partners that help to build units throughout the city. So may not help Council Member Lewis, but that would be where I see in District 9 it helps. Thank you.

No, I appreciate you opining on that. I just wanted to see if there was any intentionality in terms of what Dura might have in the pipeline in terms of like how you all might be, if you are counting that towards the number of units that you all will potentially be building in the future. But it sounds like, and correct me if I'm wrong, that they're independent and they're intentionally independent. But it does feel like in my mind, a gap in terms of how can we have Dura and as a part of this plan be intentional around that co-creation so that we know what Dura is doing and how that may or may impact the work that is happening within HOST.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it. That's my only question.

Yeah, go ahead. Councilwoman Lewis. I know you and I are working on anti displacement work that that feels very much relevant to a conversation about. That broader platform that's necessary because when we see Dura projects, I think we constantly have to be looking at how does the catalyst of this project affect the displacement of neighbors surrounding it? So I guarantee you the Dura application that's in process for Burnham Yard, we're going to be talking about whether or not it has a displacement effect on Lama and Baker. And so everywhere Dura goes, I think follows this concern that, for me anyway, about what effect is it going to have on the rest of that neighborhood. because it's catalyzing a property in a way that was not catalyzed before. It is new. It is definitely just something that affects everything around it. And that I think we're just watching it happen. And particularly if Dura is just watching it happen, we're complicit. And so that, I think, becomes the bigger reason and I appreciate Councilwoman Lewis bringing it up. Well, it may not be like a concerted strategy or metric that you're tracking an anti displacement platform would be. So, yeah.

And thank you Councilman and all your wisdom. You actually figured out exactly why I was asking that question as well. And how I was asking that question. So, thank you so much for that. Those are my only questions and I appreciate the time.

Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. And to follow up on the Dura conversation, when we do a tax through that, we're pulling money from DPS as well. And so I'm always thinking about that. I'm always thinking about which schools are going to be—because right now, Denver is rated horrible. So just so you all know, when I'm working with developers and they're saying that they can't get the equity to get these deals done, it's also because they're going to these big banks. And one of the factors that you factor in is education. And we don't rate. It's awful. So it can't just be on the regulatory side. It's also education. And I didn't know that until I actually pulled back the layer of the onion a little bit more. And I had no idea that when you were getting this huge, going and trying to get capital, that they were actually looking at the housing supply, regulation, and education. And so when we keep taking money from because of these Dura projects, I'm always thinking about that in the back of my head. So one question I have for you, Cole, is a couple years ago we kept thinking about the Dr. Cog. It was like, Dr. Cog said we needed this many units, this many units. How do you intersect with that Dr. Cog report? And is Root Policy using it at all for a foundation for information?

Yeah. Thank you so much for that question. Similar to the conversation I was just having with council member Sawyer, like, at the time, that was the best data that we had. Um, I think the benefit of this new housing needs assessment is that it will be localized. Right? And so it will certainly consult with the doctor plan, but it will be specific to Denver and to our neighborhoods. Um, and so, you know, right now, that's the best that we have and I would be making decisions based upon that. But, you know, thankfully in. four months, we'll be able to make decisions based upon a new set of data as we go forward.

Okay. And then one of the things that I find interesting is we've had these planning board city council meetings where we're talking about policy. And Rachel Marion keeps telling us we all need to work together in all of our different factors to come together and address this. And one of the things is we have had host on the side when we're having those conversations, but we haven't had you at the table. And I feel like if we're gonna actually talk about unlocking housing choices, how does that impact the housing needs report? Are we taking attainable, affordable homes, right? what happened in my neighborhood, scraping them and then displacing them. I remember when Councilman Torres and I got elected, she actually had, Renee Martinez Stone actually could figure out and track where the families were going as they got displaced. Unfortunately, I didn't have that in my council district. I just know my friends who've gotten displaced. But some of the unintended consequences when we changed the zoning code in 2010, We opened up redevelopment. And when you look at the unlocking housing choice, you look at council district one, it has tons of infill. You know, you live in my council district. You've seen it like in the time that you've been there compared to where we are now. Um, like I have a house around the corner from me that's selling for $3.6 million and But what they did was the Insinius family lived there forever, and they scraped an attainable home that sold for $800,000. It needed a little bit of updates, scraped the whole entire thing, and now they built a brand new one in replacement of it, and they're selling it for $3.6 million. And so how are our policies as land use commissioners shaping the work that you do? And I don't know if we ever sit down and have those conversations as we're thinking about rezonings and we're thinking about adding a missing middle, which everyone says we need. But is that actually getting to the root of what Councilman Torres keeps saying about anti-displacement, and is that getting to what we actually need on what your housing assessment needs? And so I feel like the housing assessment needs should also be informing the unlocking housing policy, because how do they work separate? And oftentimes in bureaucracy, Everything works in such silos and you have to, and I feel like city council is the one who forces everybody at the table and it just, it doesn't work well in that, in my personal opinion, that that doesn't work well. It works better when we're all finding out what do we need and which agency is attacking that particular issue, including city council, right? I mean, including our EHA policy. You know, I've been looking at that and like, what came of that? So I know that was a lot, but those are just all my thoughts on how are we all working together instead of working in silos to inform this process.

Yeah. And if I may just opine on that for a second, you know, I think I'm presenting today on the host action plan, right? And we've talked a lot about a forthcoming host strategic plan. Yeah. you know it's always going to have its limitations because it's the specific strategic plan of a particular agency i think there's a lot of conversation among agencies at the city that we we really need a comprehensive housing strategy and that's something that goes beyond just what a strategic plan would cover and i think it speaks to many of these points and so um i you know Welcome. We would be happy to be at that table wherever we can be, but I think the good news is we have a great set of collaborators, leading agencies at the city that are involved in this, from CPD to DOTI to CASR to several different agencies that are involved in what it would take to build a comprehensive housing strategy, and we're very focused on being able to deliver that.

I like that idea of a comprehensive housing strategy, because Blueprint Denver, it talks about land use. It's not housing, right? And even Denver moves everybody. But where is it? And then you have comp plan way up high. But it's not low enough to create policies to say, hey, here's strategically how we're utilizing all of the subject matter experts in Denver who work for us, and the agencies, and how we're all tying them together to get to these issues. And as Councilmember Cashburn always says, are we getting to the root causes of these issues that we're seeing? Because I know in Northwest Denver, as gentrification has happened, I'm closing schools. Because you can't afford to live in Northwest Denver. I don't know where these people get the money to live in my neighborhood. It's astonishing what people are selling for, but it's scary. And I've only been able to attack it with either EHA or overlays, and I just feel like those have been exhausted. So we need to come up with new strategies. But again, funding. It's always going to come back down to funding. We'll see no other council members in the queue. Do we have any consent? No, consent agenda. Thank you, Cole, for your, thank you for sharing your background. I didn't know you were from Texas. I know that you, I know you know my mom's friends. They're champions of yours. I talk to them often and they remind me of the work you're doing. So just know that sometimes these jobs get lonely. You have a group of all of those women out there who are really, really advocates of yours and really, really supporting you and remind me of the work that you did at the Catholic Worker House. So that was so important of reminding us about that as well.

Thank you. Thank you all for the opportunity.

All right, colleagues, we'll see you later. Thank you.