City Council - Regular Meeting

all right good afternoon everyone and welcome to the monday may 11th special board meeting of the placer county board of supervisors we're going to start with a flight salute led by stephanie holloway to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Before we start, I just wanted to say that staff had anticipated bringing an item on the Dollar Creek Crossing affordable housing development today for consideration. However, there are ongoing discussions about the long-term funding plan for the project and the ad hoc committee for funding and fee implementation also continues their work to identify sources and guidelines for the county's affordable housing investments. And staff anticipates bringing an update on the Dollar Creek Crossing project to the board on June 9th. With that, we will move to our first item, which is item 1A, proposed renewal of the North Lake Tahoe Economic Development Incentive Program.

Good afternoon, Chair Landon, members of the board. Thank you for being with us today on this beautiful afternoon here in Tahoe. I'm excited to bring before you today a proposed renewal for the North Lake Tahoe Economic Development Incentive Program. And this program is due to sunset at the end of June this year, which is why we have it on your agenda today. I'll go over just a bit of background for you on the program. This was first approved by your board in May of 2016, so it's been 10 years, for the purpose of encouraging town center redevelopment, specifically in upgrading the lodging infrastructure to achieve both the environmental and economic goals outlined within the Tahoe Basin Area Plan. after a few years initially of low interest in the program the county and also hearing from developers that there are other barriers to developing lodging here in tahoe the county commissioned an additional economic study in 2020 which recommended that because of the extraordinarily high cost of development here for lodging and mixed use in the basin that the county should look to include a financial component to the program, which would also allow for rebates to be paid directly to the developers on new transit occupancy tax generated from the projects. And that would help assist these developers with cash flow of these high capital need projects. The program focuses on supporting both developers of new lodging, the large catalyst lodging projects in our town centers, as well as remodel lodging projects. And the way that the program incentivized that is by acquiring and banking tourism accommodation units, TAUs, better known as, that are required by TRPA for to be able to operate a hotel in the basin but then also assist with large infrastructure capital costs and now this newer tot rebate component the development rights cost offset and tot rebate component are highlighted on the slide since those are the only two that have been applied for as part of the program currently the two projects or sorry the yeah the two new lodging projects um that came before uh the county applications that came in shortly after the new changes were made with the inclusion of the tot rebate in 2020 one was for a lodging project in tahoe city which utilized both the um the the new TOT rebate as well as the development rights cost offset to acquire TAUs for the project. And then last year, your board approved a conditional option agreement for both a development rights offset as well as TOT rebate for hotel development here in Kings Beach. But then most recently, last year your board approved our first application for a remodel lodging project, the Eva Hotel project in Tahoe City, that was last June, which underwent an extensive remodel of the former America's Best Value Inn property. And actually we've recently processed their first rebate application about a month ago and count that project as a success of the program. And I'm just going to share a slide that you saw last year to give a little bit of context of what these reinvestments could look like for our aging lodging infrastructure in our town centers. So on the left-hand side, you see before pictures of the America's Best Value Inn. And then on the right-hand side, the after photos of the Eva Hotel. So I wanted to share these because emphasizing how much the reinvestment can really do for a property like this. Not only have they been able to provide a higher quality lodging project to Tahoe City, then a result in charging a higher nightly rent as well, but doing it in a thoughtful and inclusive way, which increases the overall vibrancy of a town center. And as a comparison, the former property had an occupancy rate of around 50% in the comparative years that we used. And last year, Eva Hotel reported over 70% occupancy. So adding that vibrancy to our downtown, more people in our town centers, adding to the overall economics, and just enhanced feeling of what we're trying to achieve in our town centers. So why are we asking to renew the program? We've had it for 10 years. We have a few successful projects. So why would we ask to renew the program? And the main reason is because we'd like to shift the focus and have a renewed focus on these remodel-type projects. We're asking for a five-year extension to the program. We've worked extensively on these couple of large new development catalyst projects. Those are long timeline projects currently still moving through their processes to be able to get towards construction. We think we've done a good job of staff and supporting and assisting those projects to move forward. However, I What we've seen, especially through the Eva Hotel experience, is that there aren't necessarily any new large catalyzing hotel projects on the horizon that we would want to be able to account TAUs for. However, we do think there's a lot of untapped potential in the remodel category with what you see here in Kings Beach, especially with older hotels, lodging developments that could, if given the opportunity, potentially some remodel, some upgrades to be able to increase their utilization and economic impact here, as well as take care of a lot of some of the environmental issues that these older aging properties have that the TBAP has focused to improve. and a remodel project dollar-wise and permitting-wise is typically an easier project to undergo than starting from scratch. So the action requested from your board is to approve the proposed renewal of the North Lake Tahoe Economic Development Incentive Program for a period of five years, sunsetting on June 30th, 2031. and then to determine the proposed action is not a project pursuant to CEQA guidelines section 15378. And I can answer any questions that you may have.

Great, thank you. Questions? Comments?

Yes, Supervisor Gustafson. Sure. I had a couple questions. One is, Nick, thank you for bringing it back. You said a renewed focus on the remodeled projects. Is that to the exclusion of any new construction or just a focus on marketing to those remodeled projects?

Great question. It is not to a detriment of any new projects. I think what we've seen is based on the guidelines of the program and what we had set out to achieve as far as acquiring the Bank of TAUs. The bulk of those have been allocated or promised to be allocated to new development projects. So the opportunity to enter into another discussion for a large project, so a greater than 40-unit project, we wouldn't have the Bank of TAUs at this time. However, we do, and it was reinforced by your board in the past couple of years, We do have that set aside reserve of TAUs of I think roughly 40 for the purpose of smaller projects that need to either, it could be a remodel project who wants to add some hotel rooms or a new project that's more of a boutique, smaller unit size that doesn't need more than 40 units.

40 units. And then have you been approached by any of the current property owners that are looking to remodel?

We have not, but I think one area of the program that's been a bit overshadowed, I think, is the remodel portion just because of, I think, a lot of the initial interest that we had in the program was around these large catalyst projects. from staff's perspective, the bulk of our time and efforts have been put towards those larger projects. And it would be beneficial, I think, for the program as a whole to now have an extension with the support from your board to focus a bit more on these remodel opportunities. Because it does seem like there are quite a few around. And I know there's one or two that have come in for potential redevelopment of the site and I think there's, like I had mentioned, some untapped potential there.

Well, in particular, Falcon Lodge, have they stepped forward? I know they're facing a lot of... Not directly with me.

I know that our planners are aware of the program, and I believe that in a couple of the pre-development meetings that have been brought up, that is one that we would like to pursue further if we have a longer timeline.

And then the other question is, why just five years? We had 10 years previously. Should we consider a longer-term commitment? Or is it relatively easy to bring back and extend after five years? Five years goes by quick up here in getting projects done.

Definitely. And I will say I discussed it with Stephanie a little bit before we were bringing this item forward. Originally, the thought was it's been 10 years, perhaps we should restudy the market and see what the true hotel demand is now. I know there's a number of properties that have lost hotel rooms, so the math might be different than it was in 2015 or 2020. But the thought that where we had landed was working with an extension of five years based on the current information that we have from the former studies, focusing on remodel would be a good stepping stone. Maybe at that point, we could talk about extending it further, but would likely need a new kind of level setting what the market could bear and where we're at. At that point, it would be 15 years beyond the original economic study.

Great. Well, I think that I'm comfortable with five years. I just, you know, I'm concerned because our TOT, I think, has been relatively flat for almost 10 years now. And so as people, as the cost of service and cost of doing capital projects for the county and for any of our partners who are using those funds goes up, if we're not keeping up with that pace with TOT, product, we have a challenge. So I just want to make sure we're looking at that big picture as well as the incremental steps to get an increase in that revenue to address our issues that keep coming. Yeah.

And I'll add, I do think that Whenever that time comes for us to discuss commissioning a new economic study, I think that would be one of the main focuses of that study would be to identify what is that new demand for lodging units, specifically in our town centers, contrasted to what it was in 2015. I think that could tell maybe there's potentially more of a ceiling there than there were previously because of some of the loss that we've seen. Yeah, okay.

Stephanie Holloway for the record. Yeah, I think, you know, Nick and I have been talking about other sort of edits and additions to the program as well. I know we've been working on kind of the goal of a development rights manual for Tahoe as well with TRPA's new code where they've allowed, sorry, this is so high.

He's taller than you.

Where they've allowed conversion of some of those development rights from TAUs to RUUs. I think we are also looking at kind of the opportunity in the next five years to bring on potentially a development rights manual for your consideration. And then other incentives beyond just the hotel incentives, housing incentives. If there's other components to a bigger program, we'd like to study economics to have a little bit more time to kind of put a bigger package together.

Great. Thank you. Supervisor DiMattei.

Thank you. Thanks, Nick. What is the minimum size hotel, motel that would, is there a minimum, 10 doors, 20 doors?

There is a minimum for the large projects. I'm pulling up the guidelines now so that I can give you a specific answer. it's a minimum of 40 accommodation units that would be needed for those larger projects but we also have in the guidelines that A 25% SET ASIDE BE HELD BACK FOR SMALLER PROJECTS AND THAT CALCULATION WAS DETERMINED BASED OFF OF THE TAU BANK AT THE TIME OF OUR KIND OF COMPLETION OF ACQUIRING UNITS WHICH WAS 206 UNITS. SO CURRENTLY WE HAVE 166 OF THOSE EITHER ALLOCATED OR IN AN OPTION AGREEMENT TO BE ALLOCATED TO A PROJECT LEAVING THAT SET ASIDE OF ROUGHLY 25% FOR a 10-unit project or a smaller type hotel project that would come in requesting units. Okay.

Thank you.

Yep.

All right. It doesn't look like any other questions or comments up here. Is there anyone in the public who would like to comment on this item? And anyone online? All right. I'll bring it back to the board.

I'll make a motion to approve the renewal for the five years. And can I do it in one motion? Determine that this project is not a project pursuant to CEQA?

Yes, you can take it all in one motion. Okay, I'll make it. And just because we don't have two board members here, if we could use my roll call. I'll second.

All right, moved by Gustafson, seconded by DiMattei. Roll call vote.

Supervisor Gore absent. Supervisor DeMattei?

Yes.

Supervisor Jones absent. Supervisor Gustafson? Yes. Supervisor Landon?

Yes. We will now move to Item 1B, Workforce Housing Preservation Program Annual Update and Request to Amend Program Guidelines.

Good afternoon, Supervisors, Chair Landon, Tim Cussin, Tahoe Housing Specialist. Thanks for joining us up at the lake today. My first item is one of two that will give you a sense of where we're at with our three main workforce-focused housing programs here in East Placer. This first one is regarding our Workforce Housing Preservation Program. I neglected to include a slide with the proposed actions, so I will read them here for you today. Action one, to receive a presentation, an annual update on the Workforce Housing Preservation Program. Number two, approve the amended Workforce Housing Preservation Program guidelines and deed documents which expand participant and program eligibility, enhance transparency regarding impacts of the deed restriction to subsequent buyers, revise the voluntary termination fee to reflect the public benefit received over time. and align with similar deed restriction programs within the region. Number three is to determine that the proposed actions are each not a project pursuant to California Environmental Quality Act guidelines, section 15378. So our Workforce Housing Preservation Program is a home buyer program. It provides 16% to qualified local home buyers towards the purchase price of a home in Eastern Placer. In exchange for those funds, the home is deed restricted to be occupied by a household that includes one local worker for the next 55 years and restarts at each transfer. The program was first adopted in 2021. To date, we have 17 total properties.

Hold on a second, sir. Can you turn that off?

That's OK.

To date, we have 17 total properties that have participated in the program, two condominiums, two duplex, and 13 single-family homes, totaling 43 bedrooms housing local workers. The average disbursement has been 108,965, just under 109. The average median income of participants, we have seen quite a range from in the 60% range up to just under 245%. We've seen a bulk of the participation be below 180% of the area median income for those household sizes. And what that tells us is that the people that are accessing this program are the ones that it can make the biggest impact to. So it's allowing them to either enter the home market when they couldn't otherwise or allow them to buy a house that's a little bit more than they could afford otherwise and really get into that forever home that can make a big impact for their families. Total, 32 local workers and family members have been housed. That doesn't include new additions that have happened after purchase of the property or any renters that may rent subsequently in the two duplexes. Over the past fiscal year, we have had three new properties enter the program, two single family homes and one duplex. When we brought some amendments forward last year, we made the deed restriction crystal clear that any unit within a multifamily property would be subject to that deed restriction. And so thus, we essentially acquired four deed restricted housing units by adding that duplex. The average disbursement this year was just under $110,000. We saw a purchase price range from $575,000 to $750,000, and we have housed five local workers in those properties, as I mentioned, notwithstanding any new additions that have happened and the renters in that duplex that they are working to finalize currently. Staff is also bringing forth the proposed guideline amendments based on prior board discussion, participant feedback. We also hear a lot of feedback in regional housing conversation about the desire to better align like deed restriction programs, like the Truckee Home Access Program that is existing in our neighboring Truckee. uh the proposed amendments we would be looking to add local businesses as an eligible participant currently only individuals are allowed to be a participant we would also be expanding the eligible properties to multi-family homes prior are greater than four units currently only one to four unit properties are allowed This certainly enhances the number of units that we can restrict at a given time and really preserve that at-risk housing that we see being marketed as alternatives, either redevelopment or bulldozing or converting to something that is not suitable for the workforce. With the addition of multifamily properties, we are, for multifamily properties only, we are removing the cap of $150,000 on the deed restriction disbursement because we recognize multifamily might equate to a higher value than $150,000. We are replacing this limit with a limit of $75,000 per unit. So the deed restriction disbursement would still be calculated at 16% of the purchase price. We would then take that disbursement, divide by the number of units within that multifamily property, and that number could not exceed $75,000. We are also proposing an amendment to the voluntary termination fee. Currently this fee is set to be the greater of three separate items that naturally increase as the term of the restriction goes and doesn't really reflect any public benefit received during the time that the deed restriction is in place. So we are proposing a gradual decline of that voluntary termination fee. we are also increasing the disclosure within the guidelines indeed restriction of the potential impact of the restriction on future buyer and sales several or virtually all of these items are improving alignment are all within the truckee program with the exception of the voluntary termination fee currently that program does not offer a voluntary termination fee Um, we also recognize that these policy choices, um, are these, these amendments are policy choices of the board and staff is prepared to incorporate any direction or amendments, um, from the board. Um, while the board may have, uh, while looking at voluntary termination or any of these other provisions. With that, that wraps up my presentation. I'm more than happy to take any questions that you may have.

Thank you. Questions or comments? Supervisor DeMattei.

What is the fee for the voluntary termination?

Currently it is set at the greater of three separate items, the original deed restriction plus interest accumulating at 10%. The second one is the original plus a percentage of the equity gained from the time that you are doing the buyout versus when you entered. excuse me, the original restriction plus 25% of that equity gained, or 150% of the original disbursement. So again, it would be the greater of the three.

Okay, thank you.

Supervisor Gustafson.

Thanks, Tim. And thanks for all the thought in this program. Obviously, we would like to see more homes In the program, I do think there's not much inventory in that price range in our region, so that is part of the stumbling block that we're trying to make up for. Obviously, when people look to make an investment like this, they want to find that perfect property, and that's a pretty low number of properties qualifying. You mentioned the average area median income of the participants. And through many, many, many public hearings, both here and at TRPA, I've heard people concerned that we're finding ways for multimillionaires to buy houses. So what was, can you share with us maybe the highest and the lowest? Because the average brings those together as far as median incomes.

yeah so we've seen two of the 17 households be over 200 percent um one was just barely over 200 and one was at 242 percent um the low end we have i believe 61 percent is uh the lowest that we've seen participate but as i mentioned the bulk of them are between 100 and 170.

And we knew we were looking at numbers at the 220% just to try to get into our housing market up here because that disparity between the cost of our housing and our average incomes is so challenging. So that doesn't surprise me, but I think some of the concerns people had for whatever reason were, you know, about individuals misusing this program. And that leads me to my concerns with the voluntary buyout program for two reasons now. I thought about it, and I'm sorry I didn't call you before the meeting, but I will let you know now. I do think that the intent from the beginning was the county would be able to get the money back out of these homes to reinvest if somebody by necessity had to leave and couldn't sell their home to somebody who worked here, that we would share in that equity and then our dollars would then be able to reinvest. So that was our intent at the beginning of the origination of this program. Not that we don't see a benefit. We see a benefit. That's why we're putting out the money and may not ever get it back, right? 55 years from now is a long time. But we would certainly have benefit, but so would they, because our housing prices go up much quicker than CPI or other indexes. But now my concern is also with the businesses buying the properties. because that's where you might see more of this voluntary turnover and payback and then we don't have real dollars to buy the next unit so i'd like to suggest to the board that we take a little more time with talking to some economist or financial folks to look at how we might fairly and equitably look at that program. Tim did some research for me after the briefing, and the town of Truckee, we already knew, didn't have a voluntary buyout program at all. Vail, Colorado doesn't, and I thought Vail did, and so I'm surprised, but they may have walked into this same thing, that you have investors finding a way to invest and make 15 or 20% on their income and just pay back $150. thousand plus you know or 150 000 um the value of our homes goes up so quickly here compared to that so i'd like to take a little more time personally to to have some more thought on that and do we treat differently those multi-family or business owned properties versus a residential owned property because that's where i could see that You know, every rule we write, somebody finds a way around it to make a profit, and that is the nature, I think, of people, unfortunately. And I just want to be cautious in what we do there before we give you direction to move it forward. So those were my thoughts.

Yeah, those are valid, especially on the business side of things. I could see that becoming an unintended consequence, maybe. I'd be fine delaying until we have a little bit more time to process through that. Do you have any concerns on that? Okay. I will open it up for public comment. Is there anyone here in the room who would like to speak to this item? And is there anyone online?

All right, then I guess I can, well, I am okay moving the 75,000 per unit part of this forward with the current termination agreement, because that sounds like it does make up for our investment. But if you want to bring the whole thing back, I could go with that as well. I mean, is it, what's best for, if you have people waiting to buy these units and we want to expand it,

I believe ultimately, if no action is taken today, the current guidelines would still stand and our current funding would still stand. And so we would be able to take new participants and then But not the businesses, not the multifamily. Correct. Yeah.

And I think we want to get into the multifamily market. Those might be some of the more affordable units out there.

I guess I suppose if the board gives us direction today to incorporate all the new changes and then retain the termination component from the current guides we could make that change and then come back for I mean I'm kind of looking to you Clayton I'm not sure how they would actually give us direction to adopt that but we could just retain that existing termination fee and then move forward with all the other components we may need to come back on consent but again I'll take a look

Yeah, my concern with that would be we'd have to do a line item change to the actual guidelines. And I just, I'm always nervous doing that on the fly. And if there's no time urgency, my suggestion recommendation would be to just bring the entire package back with it cleaned up. That way, we're sure we don't miss something.

Yeah, and I don't want to sit on this a long time. I hope we can get some research done and think it through and bring it back more quickly because I do see units in around the community that are those multifamily units that might be really great for housing and we want to move that forward. Thank you.

OK, then we will bring this forward at a future date and we will go ahead and move along to item 1C annual Eastern Placer County Housing program updates.

For the record, Tim Cussin, Tahoe Housing Specialist. Thanks for having me today. Here with an annual Eastern Placer County housing program updates for lease to locals in our Launch Pad program. These represent two additional programs with different target areas than our WIP program. Again, I failed to include a slide with the action. So for this one, we are just to receive a presentation on the annual program update for East Placer lease to locals and Launchpad housing programs. For the first part of the presentation, I'd like to bring up Isaac Landman. He is with Placemate, who is our program administrator for the Lease to Locals program. We are wrapping up year four currently, and so Isaac will share some program wins and annual data with you.

Thank you, Tim. Hello, good afternoon. Again, Isaac Landman, Associate Market Director for placemate, and we are the administrators of the lease locals program. So these slides should look familiar to you. You saw a similar slide deck at this time last year. But to give you a brief overview of the Lease to Locals program, Lease to Locals is a long-term rental conversion program that provides a financial incentive to property owners to create a new long-term rental. And that could be a seasonal unit or that could be a 12-month lease. And Lease to Locals serves a tenant population of the missing middle. That goes technically up to 150% in the Placer County program. There is no income maximum. To go a little deeper on program policies, in order to participate in lease to locals, a property needs to be located in the Eastern Placer County limits. And the property cannot have been rented at a full time within the last 12 months. If an owner decides they'd like to move forward in the program, they can sign a 12 month lease or a five to 11 month lease, what we refer to as a seasonal lease. And they can't rent that property for more than $3,500 per month. They can earn an incentive of $4,500 per qualified tenant for a 12-month lease and $2,000 per qualified tenant for a seasonal lease. Those incentives max out at four qualified tenants. So a maximum incentive of $18,000 for qualified tenants on a long-term lease. And in order to access those incentives, they need to rent to a qualified household. A household is considered qualified so long as at least one of the adults in the household works locally. So works for an employer that's based within the Tahoe Truckee Unified School District geographic boundaries for at least an average of 20 hours per week. Children are counted cumulatively as one additional qualified tenant. So if there's any children in the household, that's one additional incentive payment for that lease that's signed with that household. You see here the incentive amounts. Again, they max out at $18,000 for payments of $4,500 on a 12-month lease. So first, diving into the results that we've seen so far in year four. Year four ran from July 2025 and runs through the end of June of this year. Thus far, we've converted 24 properties to be new long-term rentals. That's 56 bedrooms, housing 62 people, 48 of whom are local workers and 14 children. The county has committed $194,000 for those 24 properties at an average incentive per property of just over $8,000. Each of those properties on average is rented at just over $2,700 per month, $1,100 per bedroom. And the average incentive that the county is spending to house those 62 people is just over $3,100. Turning now to the full program results. So since the program was first launched in July of 2022 and through the current day, we have converted 147 properties to be new long-term rentals. That's 335 bedrooms housing 357 people, 286 of whom are local workers and 55 children housed across those properties. The county has committed just under $1.4 million in incentives at an average incentive per property. Again, all results at $909,391 per property on average. Average rents stay pretty steady at $2,600 per month. Same thing with average rent per bedroom, just over $1,100 per bedroom. And then the average incentive per person housed is $3,800. So delving a little deeper into who Lease to Locals serves, again, we spoke about how Lease to Locals is aimed at providing housing to the missing middle. Thus far, since July 2022, the program has housed 302 adults. And for a household size of one, that's serving folks who are making 76% of the area median income. That's an average adult income of just under $65,000. This year, in year four of the program, the average household size is 2.58 tenants. And adjusting for household size, household incomes have a bit of a range. They range between 37% AMI up to 242% AMI. But on average, we're seeing that household income, when you combine the household income, is 113% area median income. So really getting at that missing middle population. In addition, another stat that really shows the efficiency of Lease to Locals and the behavior change that it creates is we found that 77% of the program participants indicate they're continuing to long-term rent after they have participated in the program. So once the lease term ends, we survey owners and tenants and we say, what are you doing with your property now that you've graduated from the program? And 77% of those folks say, I'm continuing to long-term rent. An item here that I'll note is that's up 7% from when we reported this stat to you last year. So property owners that are graduating from the program are continuing to long-term rent at a higher rate than they were when we presented this data last year. One stat that we didn't put on this slide deck that I'll highlight, we have begun surveying property owners at the request of the NTCA to determine once they've been out of the program for a year or longer, are they continuing to long-term rent? So tracking that multi-year retention data. And the results are coming in still, but They're quite positive at over 50% of the owners that we've surveyed that are over a year out of the program are continuing to long-term rent. So I'll turn it back to Tim here to wrap us up.

Thank you, Isaac. So Lease to Locals has been funded through both TBID and TOT funding. Last Wednesday on May 6th, the NTCA Board of Directors recommended another round of TOT funding in the amount of $500,000 for the next fiscal year. Currently, our current funding will expire at the end of June. Our Tahoe CEO staff is working on an item to bring that forward to your board in June to secure funding for next fiscal year. With that, that wraps up our presentation. Happy to take any questions.

Thank you. Questions? Supervisor DeMattei. Supervisor Gustafson.

Hi, thanks Tim and thanks Isaac. Great results. I think you both know that this is essential for our community and how many people we're serving. I'd love to get to a point where we're really incentivizing the development of these into long-term solutions and not year-by-year and short-term. I know that has been a request from others that we extend those times and do different things. I look at this and if the average is $9,300 a year in incentive we're paying, in 16 years we would have matched the $150,000 we would have given to a property owner or to a tenant to buy that home. And I'm trying to figure out what the, you know, up here on the dais, I can't figure out the economics of that, but I want to make it more of an incentive to get these into a long-term ownership by a business or an individual so that Sorry, Isaac, but I'd like to diminish your value long term and have permanent housing stock for our community and multifamily. We're having a really hard time constructing new in this community, but I think looking at how we could acquire these. So I guess my question is, do we have any data on the value of these homes that people are renting? Do we look at the Zillow listing price or any data that would tell us the value of the home that we're helping them be in?

CURRENTLY, I MEAN, WE DO OBVIOUSLY HAVE ALL OF THE ADDRESSES AND THAT'S SOMETHING THAT WE COULD UNDERTAKE, BUT I DON'T BELIEVE THAT COUNTY STAFF HAS LOOKED AT VALUE OF THE PROPERTIES. I DON'T BELIEVE PLACEMENT HAS EITHER.

I'M JUST TRYING TO FIGURE OUT AT WHAT POINT IF YOU'RE LONG-TERM RENTING CAN WE ENCOURAGE YOU TO SELL AND GET IT INTO A PERMANENT POOL BECAUSE YEAR BY YEAR IT JUST IS ADDING UP TO A LOT OF MONEY AND WE'RE NOT MAKING A DENT IN THE LONG-TERM. situation as much as i'd like to i guess is this is this is serving us well now but long term i'd like to see a way that we incentivize people to be investors in our community and providing housing long term and maybe that's buying the units or helping buy the units so they can be rented to local workforce i don't know Just a thought, because I believe this has always been what we hoped was short-term while we developed some more housing, and that's taking inordinately a long amount of time to do that.

And that sentiment was a driver for the collection of additional data beyond how we're doing a great job with Right at the program exit, 77% are saying they're continuing to long term rent. But the data that Isaac's team is beginning to collect will give us a better outlook. What is the long term? Like maybe there's a steep drop off after one year or two years departed. But you are right. We did go into this thinking there would be a drop in participation or eligible people that would be interested in converting. So far, we just haven't seen that. Truckee kind of went in with the same feeling. And they're one year older in the program than us. And they are still not seeing any drop off in interest in eligible properties. So I think you're right. It does give pause to what our

what are we doing long term and how can we you know make make a longer term investment and yeah and in combination i'm not saying to the exclusion of this but you know if we're spending this kind of money what what can we do with we only have 17 that we've acquired maybe by opening it up to businesses or multi-family we'll get some more acquired i've seen a number of homes run down older homes in my neighborhood sell recently and get fixed up. But again, second homeowners are taking those. And so what what else can we do to expedite holding on to some of these homes in our local communities? But great, great results. Thanks for collecting all the additional data because that that's so important to us making good decisions up here.

Absolutely. There is one other element, our Launchpad program, if there are no other questions on lease to locals. Launchpad is our financial incentive program to create new housing, so kind of the third prong of our housing approach. This is applicable to both new construction and conversion of non-residential into new housing units in exchange for the incentive or the incentives are issued at the certificate of occupancy in exchange for a very similar deed restriction to that of our workforce housing program. Every unit within the project will be deed restricted for occupancy by a local worker. And same as WIP, it will run for 55 years and restart upon each future transfer. This was a program that we brought to your board in April of 2025 for adoption. We also brought forth a million dollars in sort of a pilot funding. And so last spring, we launched our first notice of funding availability for that initial one million. We received eight total applications. Four of those applications were deemed as eligible. And two of those four eligible projects elected to participate in the program and received a funding reservation for them to go start their project. One of the projects was a three unit multifamily project right across the street from the Kings Beach Elementary School up the hill here. and then a second also in kings beach was a wheelchair accessible accessory dwelling unit both of those projects are currently underway navigating through the acquisition of the tiny home units for the multi-family and then navigating the permitting process for the adu they both anticipate being completed by next spring so then we will be bringing those units online and leased up for local workforce so overall the initial pilot we did We're happy with the response. We did reserve some funding. We did learn some lessons. And we brought forth in February of this year a funding request for $3 million. And together with the $275,000 that went unallocated from the first notice of funding, launched our latest NOFA in February. We received a great response, 12 total applications to that notice, six multifamily projects, five accessory dwelling units, and one property converting both substandard transient units and a substandard duplex into fully rehabbed residential units. In total, 55 units are proposed by the 12 applications, expanding a range of housing types, 30 studio units, 16 one-bedroom and nine two-bedroom units, so really bringing a mix to the table. Overall, the total funding request exceeded $10 million. So really getting the word out there, starting to pick up some traction on the program, and really excited by the response to this latest round. Staff is currently in the process of making sure our applications are complete and making eligibility determinations. We are getting close to being able to wrap up that process. and we will move on to the award portion. We anticipate utilizing the lottery award process for the first time with the program. and upon completion of the lottery and awards of the funding reservations we anticipate a pretty deep dive into the program guidelines and deed restriction documents you know certainly we've learned a lot of lessons in running our program for two notice of funding rounds we've also received a great deal of feedback from participants and stakeholders, including those recommendations brought forward in February from the NTCA Board of Directors. And we anticipate considering all of that as well as new feedback from a new round of community outreach to really make sure that we can maximize the program efficiency, maximize the use of those dollars, and see if we can bring some real-life housing units online for our local workforce. That concludes the launch pad portion of my presentation. Happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Questions on this item?

Trying to give you two a chance. Tim, on the lottery system, as I recall, the program still requires two years, you have the funding secured for two years and you have to produce within two years? Correct. Units. That's pretty aggressive if you're starting from scratch. Some of the prefab and some of the projects that are moving forward can probably do that, but others may not. Do we have a criteria by which we would extend that if they were making good progress? Or is that not within the discretion of the program? I couldn't read all the details.

Not a problem. So yes, currently from the time of reservation, a project would have two years in which to complete the project. as far as grounds for extension um i think that a documented progress and effort of good faith is something that we would review and see you know what sort of things were causing it to um causing the delay i think ultimately we also went in leaning on the expertise of the developers who would be applying for the program and knowing that if you had a project that was definitely over two years to complete, it might not be the right time for you to jump in early on in that development process. you may need to wait until you've gotten a little ways through. And certainly the guidelines require that the entitlements be in place, either the project be allowed by right or have the necessary use permit already in hand, which there's any number of things that can delay a process that is certainly, having that entitlement or getting that use permit is something that could provide

long period of time to take and put them in jeopardy of missing the two years yeah well i appreciate that when we get into a lottery situation you know we'll get appeals and we'll have people watching others are they producing or are they not and And often those appeals end up back up here if you don't give them the right or the answer they want to hear. So I just want us to be prepared that this is a pretty unique program and I'm really excited about it. And I'm excited to see the interest and I'm just cautious about the lottery system because because we're oversubscribed and we can solve that by putting more money in but I'd really like to see some of these get completed and know that it's doable and look at those guidelines whether two years is adequate from Start to finish or if we need to give three years and is that two years to certificate of occupancy?

Correct.

Okay That's a pretty aggressive timeline if you're not pretty far down the road with your other financing. So I

the lottery is certainly one of the areas that we've received a great deal of feedback on and so certainly one of the areas we would be targeting in our uh evaluation this summer and ways to incorporate a priority or some some other metric that takes a little bit more of the Wild card out of it and you know could could lean into those projects that are further along or closer to completion.

That as well as you know if you've applied once and been and didn't make it through the lottery that you get into the first round, the next time. I mean, I've heard of those sorts of programs as well. So, I mean, there's a lot to digest here, but I know we're going to hear about it when you make your final decision through the lottery who is going to get the initial funding. So, thank you for all the work on that. I'm sorry. Yeah.

As a follow-up to that, is... The idea of a ranking system is still kind of on the table of if they, let's just say it was multifamily versus one ADU unit or something like that, is that something that could potentially be considered?

yeah um absolutely um any number of ways we could take that in if we remove the lottery you could certainly parcel out x number of dollars from a given tranche of funding to put towards adus and then x number towards multi-family um but certainly an adu compared to a large multi-family far more efficient time wise yeah so yeah that's certainly an element we'd be considering in the next round

Any other questions? Is there anyone in the public who has a question on this item or a comment? Anyone online?

Caller, go ahead and unmute your mic and give your comments.

Hi. Can you hear me? You're a little quiet. Just give us one second here. OK. There you go.

Can you hear me all right? Yes. Great, thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Landon and members of the board. My name is Tara Hetz, and I serve as the Director of Grants Programming for the North Tahoe Community Alliance. I apologize for not being there in person, but I wanted to make a comment online, so thank you for letting that still happen. I want to start by thanking the board and county staff, in particular Tim Cusson, for all of his presentations, both to our board and to you today, for the continued focus on housing in North Lake Tahoe. It's encouraging to see the range of programs being discussed and supported because housing is not one single issue with one single solution. Housing is an ecosystem. And I want to highlight that each program plays a different role within that ecosystem. Some programs help bring existing homes into the local rental market. Some help preserve housing for the workforce. Some support renters, like Sierra Community House. Some help people move toward long-term housing stability. And that others, like Launchpad, look how we can create more attainable housing over time. Programs like Tim presented today, Lease to Locals, WIP, Launchpad, and as others that we've supported through the TOT, TBID dollars at work are not interchangeable. They are addressing different needs and serving different parts of the community. That's why it's so important to look at the housing as a system rather than evaluating each program in isolation. I want to highlight to comment earlier about long-term funding. As we've renewed the TBID for 10 years, we're looking to building a long-term proven funding cycle this fall with the goal of supporting proven programs through June 30th of 2030. And that long-term approach is important. I think that many of these programs cannot be expected to demonstrate their full value if they are only funded from year to year. And long-term funding creates stability and it allows the implementers as Placer County, for example, to plan and gives programs the opportunity to build trust and improve over time. And at the same time, I do believe that long-term funding needs to be paired with a clear understanding of impact. As we move toward a long-term funding horizon, we also need to figure out how we define high impact programs, especially in key categories like housing today. So when we take a look at that and we build out the economic roadmap and catalyst initiative, we need to make sure that we look at high impact projects and programs within our community. This is especially important as we look at programs that may have very different models, timelines, and outcomes. Lease to Locals WIP, Launchpad, and Lucera Community House, ADU Accelerator Program, may all contribute to housing solutions, but they do so in different ways. And I believe a strong rubric can help us better understand those differences, identify where programs are having the greatest impact, and make more transparent funding decisions over time. So I thank you for your continued partnership and investment in housing. And as we look ahead, I hope we can continue supporting long-term solutions while also building the tools to evaluate impact in a thoughtful, fair, and consistent way. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else?

Yes, Chair.

One second. Caller, go ahead and unmute your mic and give your comments.

Greetings this afternoon, Board of Supervisors, Diane Louise Alessi from District 5, Christian Valley Park. I'm going to do this extemporarily because it's kind of a pet peeve, obviously. This county really needs to look outside the box and maybe shift some of this funding more into the mindset of incentive in terms of the stakeholders such as the resorts who heavily depend on the workforce, you could incentivize them by having them dedicate a part of the open land space that they do not utilize for say the skiing or the trails. And you could implement Quonset huts back into this equation. And for some reason, California abandoned that. But when I was growing up, because it was post-World War II, Quonset huts were everywhere. They're extremely cheap. and effective, and especially in a snow load area such as that. That's why actually military still utilizes those. And I think this county is missing the boat because those are quickly erected. It's just that everything is moved away from it for permitting. You could set up a long-term lease and a tax relief structure for the resorts to put in these either single and or multi-home scenarios with these. Quonset huts or conda barn dominions. They're called Texas. All different states are utilizing this and I'm I'm missing the point here that this County cannot step up because literally they could do that as a habitat for humanity type structure. Get the people involved in their own erection of that with a 50 to 99 year lease and you're giving the stakeholders a tax relief to keep that least going and so they're basically it's almost in if they move out of that and they have some skin in the game. with the erection of these Quonset had quick to erect buildings, then they could profit from that. And it doesn't even have to be that deed restricted because it's tied to the long-term lease of the property. And that can go on public land as well. There's plenty of other states utilizing other ways to think of this, and they're not dependent on developers. So let's reach inward, shall we? And with that, I yield.

Thank you. Anyone else? All right. Any other questions or comments from board members? Thank you so much. Great president, not preservation, a great presentation. Thank you for that. We will now move to our last item, one D affordable housing priority applicant policy.

All right, I think we're at the right height. Good afternoon, members of the board. My name is Marie Maniscalco. I'm a housing development project planner with the CEO's Office of Economic Development and Housing. And I'm here today to present for adoption the Affordable Housing Priority Applicant Policy. As a little background, we took board direction on April 1 last year to pursue a local tenant preference policy. Community engagement took place in fall of last year, we did both East County and West County outreach. And we presented a draft policy to your board in November of last year. Since then we have, we've worked with a consultant to complete a fair housing analysis, which went well. I'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment. And now we're here to present the policy for adoption. As a refresher, the policy would be applicable to all income-restricted units countywide. We originally were trying to pursue a policy that would apply to existing units, but we found that in order to implement that would be difficult. And so it would apply to all future projects getting their land use permits July 1st or later. There would be two geographic preferences. So the Tahoe Truckee Unified School District boundary and then the rest of Western Placer. So just to give an example, if new units were built with an income restriction in Tahoe City, someone living in Kings Beach or even in Truckee would be a preferred applicant for that project. However, someone living in Auburn or in Meadow Vista would not. And same for the other side of the county. If a project comes online in North Auburn, someone living in Roseville or Rockland or North Auburn living or working would get a preference, but somebody from the eastern portion of the county would not. So the priority groups would be local workers, current residents, or folks who lived in the area in the last 10 years. This policy is really meant to help prevent displacement and by capturing folks who maybe even if they were kids went to school here and are young people wanting to move back or people who had to make hard decisions during the COVID era about where to live because of cost of living, but have an opportunity to move back. We wanted to make sure that those folks are prioritized. And so how this works is it would be implemented by the operators of the affordable housing. And it would be on top of other requirements like income verification and background checks. So they all have very intensive processes by which they review applications. Preferred applicants would move to the top of the list. So you would essentially have two buckets of folks. You have people who are preferred. All of their applications would be processed first. And then only if there were leftover units would they go to other folks who maybe didn't already have a connection to the area. This would be implemented through conditions of approval for new projects and or incorporated into affordable housing agreements, or if the county is a funding partner, we would put those in the deed restrictions and the funding agreements as well. As I mentioned, we conducted a fair housing analysis with a consultant, and they studied the statistical probability of creating a disparate impact on different racial groups. Because it's relatively similar, the preferred applicants versus if we went to a larger applicant pool, it's unlikely to create a fair housing issue. As I mentioned, we would roll out the policy effective July 1st. As required by state law, we would notify HCD. It would go into our housing element annual report, post it on our website, and we also have a full rollout plan ready to go to do direct outreach to local housing operators. As I mentioned, we can't enforce it necessarily on existing units. However, we do have a plan to do outreach to all of the existing affordable housing in our area to encourage them to start processing their waitlist in this way and make sure that all of the operators have the information that they need to get this policy in place. And with that, I'm going to actually read, it's a slightly different version of the first action, but the actions requested today are one, to adopt a resolution approving the Placer County affordable housing priority applicant policy and authorizing the county executive officer or designee to make minor changes to the policy subject to county council approval. And that's as written in the staff report. And two, determine that the requested action is not a project pursuant to California Environmental Quality Act Guidelines Section 15378. And with that, I'm gonna conclude my presentation. Happy to take any questions. Questions?

I have one question. Well, first of all, I'm really excited that this is finally coming forward. I think this gives us at least some semblance of local control. You know, we feel like things are out of our control so much. So it's nice to have something that we can have a little bit of a say in and hopefully give priority to placer residents. But one question I have is, will there be data collected over time to determine how often it's just the Placer County residents that are in need and how often it goes beyond that bucket and has to bleed out into marketing in other counties to bring folks in.

That's a great question. We do have, within the policy, the detailed policy, we do require annual reporting. We're still working on exactly what information we want in that reporting, and we'll absolutely be tracking that, though. That is the idea of how successful is the program? How often are folks coming from outside the area? Are they local workers? We always have to take out all the personal information, of course, and aggregate the data. But we do plan to do annual reporting on an ongoing basis.

Great, thank you. Other questions or comments? Supervisor Gustafson.

I just wanted to comment as well, Marie. Thank you. I know this was critically important to our community that we're trying to take care of those employees working in our county, whichever locations, west or east, and make sure that we're working to find them housing in our community. And so we really appreciate your diligence in pursuing this as a way for us to do our best at enforcing that. I know we can't enforce it, but we can encourage it. So thank you.

Doesn't look like there's any other questions or comments up here. Is there anyone in the room who would like to comment on this item? And is there anyone online? All right, I'll bring it back to the board.

I'll move approval.

I will second.

Moved by Gustafson, seconded by DiMattei. Roll call vote.

Supervisor Gore absent. Supervisor Gustafson? Aye. Supervisor DiMattei? Yes. Supervisor Jones absent. Supervisor Landon?

Yes. Thank you. Great, thank you. And with that, we are going to adjourn today's meeting until our next meeting, which is tomorrow morning at 9 a.m.