Successor Agency to the Redevelopment Agency of Santa Rosa - Regular Meeting

That's it for him. I said, much he's gonna fix?

How much? Back at six? Here he What else he

built? Six.

So She's not

I had something in the last one.

Here we

go. This is okay.

I

have no microphone here, you know, so I'm sure everybody can hear me.

So you have to project.

Yeah. I'd like to call the 04/27/2026 housing authority regular meeting to order. Members of the public may view and listen to the meeting as noted on the city's website and as noted on the agenda. As a matter of housekeeping, I'd like to remind commissioners to keep their microphones muted. It's not an issue today unless they are speaking.

The city of Santa Rosa is committed to creating a safe and inclusive environment free from disruption. We will not tolerate any hateful speech or actions and are well staffed to monitor that everyone is participating respectively, or they will be removed. If necessary, we will also immediately end the meeting. Clerk, can you please explain how public comment will be heard at today's meeting?

After each agenda item, the chair will ask for housing authority commissioner comments, and then we'll open the item for public comment. Once the chair calls for public comment, please step to the front of the room, and I will unmute the mute microphones. You will be allowed to speak up to one time per item up to three minutes. Additionally, there is one public comment period on nonagenda matters item six. To address the housing authority, you are requested to complete a speaker card and give it to the recording secretary.

Clerk, have we been notified of any commissioners who have requested to participate remotely?

We have not. Okay.

Then item three. Before I ask the clerk to do a roll call for attendance to assist with streaming the meeting and capturing commissioners to say you're speaking, I want to continue to remind commissions to please ask the chair to be recognized before asking us question and making a comment. This will allow time for the cameras to shift to a new speaker. Can you do roll call, please?

Commissioner Fearon is absent. Commissioner Downey is absent. Commissioner Owen?

Here.

Commissioner Conti? Here. Commissioner Wimmer?

Here.

Vice chair Capio? Here. Chair Smith? Here. Let the record reflect that all are present with the exception of commissioners Fearon and Downey.

K.

K. Item four, and I ask any of the commissioners, are there any statements of abstention?

No. Janice? Jens? Yes. Hello. Here. And the agendas are right there. These dates. K.

There are no, statements of abstention.

Sit here.

We'll move to the next item. This is items five, the study session.

Item five is the fiscal year 2627. Thank you. Notice of funding availability priorities. Kelly Keikendahl, our housing and community services manager, will be presenting.

Just give me a second while I share the screen.

Good afternoon, chair Smith and vice chair Capyou and other members of the housing authority. As Megan mentioned, I'm Kelly Keitengal, housing and food and services manager, and I'll be presenting on the fiscal year twenty six twenty seven notice of funding availability priorities. Next slide, please.

To

provide you with some background, the NOFAs are issued at least annually, and the housing authority typically has a study session in the spring to kick off the NOFA process before we issue the NOFA. The NOFA includes local, state, and federal funds. And the scoring system, which I will go over with in the next couple slides, was finalized in fiscal year twenty one, twenty two after thorough vetting and an alignment with state funding applications. The housing authority sets priorities for funding under other factors, which I'll cover when I go over this one criteria. Next slide.

The authority established a priority for rehabilitation and preservation of existing affordable housing in fiscal year twenty four, twenty five. Funds for this use continue to be limited. Additionally, there continues to be a need for rehabilitation of existing affordable housing units in our community. The State Department of Housing and Community Development has also identified the preservation of existing affordable housing as a critical community. Next slide.

So the next couple slides, I'll go over the point scoring system. This is included in your agenda packet. The first one, readiness, as a possible, about to 10 points. For that category, we're looking to see if the project where the project is at with entitlement of building permits. For affordability, we are looking for the level of affordability, so depth of affordability across the project and the bedroom sizes.

For bedroom sizes, we're looking for a range of bedroom sizes, including up to three bedroom units to accommodate larger families. For special needs set asides up to 12 points, and that includes projects that have units for formerly home homeless individuals or seniors, for example. Leveraging up to 10 points, and we're looking there to see that the project is leveraging funding sources other than 1,000. Next slide. Project competitiveness.

This applies to projects that are applying for state funding. So we will evaluate how they rank based on the state criteria, and that's up to 10 points. Developer and management experience, up to 15 points. On-site services up to seven points, and that includes things such as classes, childcare, and recreation activities. Amenities up to three points, and that includes, the project's proximity to transit, grocery stores, public parks, and libraries, for example, and other factors up to five points. I'll cover that in the next slide.

Very funny. Next slide, please. I think that one.

Other factor scoring. So 5.5 points will be awarded if the project is going to be using funds for rehabilitation as that's been established as a priority by the housing authority. There's a potential reduction of five points if the applicant has been awarded funds in a previous NOFA and subsequently rejected the award, failed to enter into loan agreements by the deadline required by the funding source, or return funds after loan agreements have been executed. This is included in the, the criteria. We wanna make sure that we're meeting our, commitment and expenditure deadlines as required by other funding sources such as the state and federal government.

We also wanna make sure that we are deploying these funds as efficiently as possible to develop or rehabilitate affordable housing.

Next slide.

So the funding available through this NOFA There's approximately $3,600,000 available. The first category, that's federal community development block grant, approximately $1,000,000. The second item there is state pro housing incentive program, $1,100,000, and local funds of 1.3. We also have a separate NOFA for our home CHOTO funds. And a CHOTO is a community housing development organization.

That's a term defined under HUD regulations. We don't currently have any agencies or developers that we're working with that are certified as such. We do continue to engage our developer community to see if they're interested in becoming a CHOTO, but that will be a separate NOFA. Next slide. So NOFA timeline.

Not up here on our timeline is a survey that we sent out to prior applicants seeking their input on the NOFA process. And they are supposed to get back to us by the end of this month. We haven't had any responses yet. But should we get any feedback, we will be evaluating that and considering it to incorporate into the NOFA. The NOFA is slated to go out on May 1.

I should say NOFA is the affordable housing and the home CHODA NOFA NOFA that I just mentioned. The applications are due June 5. Staff will be reviewing the applications June 8 through July 10. An ad hoc, which we'll be seeking your direction on momentarily, will review applications July 15 through July 23. And funding recommendations will come back to the housing authority in your August meeting, August 24.

Next slide. With that, it is recommended by the Housing and Community Services Department that the Housing Authority hold a study session to receive information and provide direction on funding priorities and appoint two housing authority commissioners to serve on the ad hoc review committee for the fiscal year twenty six twenty seven notice of funding availability process. This concludes my presentation. And before we move into any questions from the commissioner, I did wanna share with you, We received some input via email from commissioner Gregory Fearon, and I wanted to share that with you before moving to questions. He says greetings.

He's read the materials for today's meetings. He has two concerns of the scoring system. In the leveraging points, I'm concerned that should the state and federal budget contain significantly less funding for projects which apply for our funding, that category of points may be underutilized. The second area of my interest is to add to our incentives that delivery of on-site and contracted access to behavioral and substance use services to residents. I would support decreasing overall leverage points and increasing overall on-site points to respond to my concerns. I would also be interested in being considered for both the ad hoc committees for the twenty six twenty seven NOFA and the Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing Committees.

Housing Authority, are there any questions of staff? Commissioner Acante.

Yeah. I'm wondering, how does this year's NOFA compare to last year's numbers?

Thank you for the question question, Commissioner Conti. Let me pull that information up.

Are there other questions? We can fill another question. We'll

help. Okay.

Vice chair. One of your questions? No. Public comment. Also, I'm wondering how how often do we review the scoring criteria? I'm not seeing it on YouTube. Yeah. We'd like to speak. I didn't know who I'm supposed to tell.

Okay. Thank you for the question and and your patience while I look this up. Of course, stand there. You're fine. Last year's NOFA for fiscal year 2526 was 3,500,000. Yes. Oh, one more question. You I'm sorry. You asked about how often we're renewing the review re reviewing the criteria. My understanding, relatively new to the NOFA process, but it's annual. The in the advance of the NOFA, we are evaluating the criteria. Okay. And the staff does that? Yes. Correct. Yeah. And we're looking at other funding source, funding sources such as the state and their criteria as well. Yeah. Okay.

Vice chair Capio.

Yeah. Do you have any response to commissioner suggestions on leveraging and the special need of the services, supervision of mental health services?

Let me start. Mhmm.

Okay. So I think that if a project if there's another funding source that is driving the unit mix and any specific set aside such as permanent supportive housing, then that would be built into the project. But not all projects that come forward to us would have a funding source that dictates permanent supportive housing and would provide for things like behavioral health and substance use. So I think that we could evaluate that, under a couple criteria in this in the the scoring that's presented to you today, and I can take a look at that criteria. We can go over it. I don't think that we should change the criteria based on mister Ophiron's feedback.

How about the leveraging point? You're concerned about the lack of funding

from other sources. So at least for the federal funds that were included in this year's NOFA for the housing authorities' sources, the we have received our allocations. There will be no reduction for the federal part of our NOFA. This the state our NOFA does not include include in any state funding, and so that would be, you know, I guess, predicted or that would be decided at the state level and not through the housing authority. I don't have any Megan, don't know if you

have anything to add. Any indication of reductions in state funding? Well, just looking at the scoring criteria that's attached to the agenda, the leveraging component, which is 10 points of the potential score Significant. Right. It it is based on the amount of funding that the applicant is requesting from us. So an applicant will get more points if for a smaller request. So it's a descending award order. So if you're asking for, like, $500,000, you have the potential to get nine to 10 points versus we've already awarded you in previous rounds a couple million. You're gonna get the lower end of that scale. Okay.

Alex? Let me show a moment.

I heard you say that you guys review it once a year. Is this a this is new. Right? This has just been implemented, or was it implemented last year?

We implemented the scoring system. I believe it was around fiscal year twenty twenty one. Okay. When we were had a huge influx of funding, and we needed more subjective criteria to evaluate applications. So it's been in place, I'd say, least five five funding schedules.

It has.

And we've made minor tweaks along the way. And as Kelly highlighted, the negative points as we've seen some developers kind of push back on funding sources that we have available and have identified for their projects.

Okay. Yeah. That's kinda what I was thinking. Okay. So if you have plenty of time, and you guys have reviewed multiple times, it's probably working real well, but I was thinking that if this is the first time if it was the first time, then I would think six months would be better, but you guys are good.

We're good. And I I'd certainly encourage, commissioners who participated in the process previously if you thought that the scoring works, well in evaluating the project.

I can go ahead.

Okay. Well, commissioner Owen. Yeah.

I was I was involved with setting up the point system because before that was far more subjective than objective. So and it matched what a developer would have to go through at the state level for tax credits or taxes and bond financing or taxable bonds or taxable launch, you know, to go through the state. So the idea was to have a a similar system. So as those projects got approved at the state level for other sources of funding, this these would kinda match. And, again, as what Megan was talking about with the leveraging, the idea is to take the limited dollars that are here and stretch them over the most amount of projects as possible.

So if you were getting 90% of your funding from someplace else and the last 10 was here or some very variation thereof, you would get more leveraging points because you were leveraging other sources. So it is is it is inverse, and it it is it's worked out quite well.

Sounds like it. Yeah.

Okay. And I could just add that I was on the subcommittee that scored or recommended scores the last round. Worked really well. There's always going to be tremendous consternation because of the low level relatively of funding. So every penny counts. We still want to see the projects work, But I think the by and large, the scoring system helps that process.

Alright. If I could add just a comment to your point, commissioner Wehmer, in terms of, you know, how well it's working. And I mentioned the survey. We did add the survey component this year. So in addition to looking at the state funding and how we can align our scoring criteria with that, the survey putting it out to the applicants to, you know, get any feedback from them in terms of how it's working or how how it's not.

Sounds like you. Sounds sounds really good. Yeah.

The the survey, it was mentioned, but it wasn't it wasn't detailed about what you found out, what the comments were about.

We haven't received any feedback yet. Oh, so and a follow-up email went out to to prior applicants reminding them to please apply. So yeah. K. We can make it available. We can't make them,

you know, fill it out. Fill it out.

I will certainly gotten feedback. Evaluate it if we receive it. Be an indication that it's working quite well. Yeah. Well, that's what I

would do too. I would.

Any other questions, commissioners? No. K. We are now taking public comments in item 5.1. If you wish to make a comment, please go to one of the podiums. In this chamber, you have three minutes and a countdown time. It will alert you at the end of that period. Please state your name for the record if you choose to do so. If no comment, clerk, please say no pub public comment for this item.

You may begin. Thank you.

Good afternoon, board. Janice Karman here. And I I've probably gone to a 150 meetings this year. I'm not paid. I'm unemployed.

I've been to the city or any lobby or anything, but I do attend, and I do attempt to get as much information as I can acquire. And this about the appointments of the ad hoc being ensure that head bash wait a minute. The proposed ad hoc committee will be comprised of up to three members of the housing authority. And to me, that's kinda like the hen's house being watched by the foxes.

I think that this comment about this item, or is this about the ad hoc committee item?

Pardon? Is this about

the ad hoc committee item, or is this about this

on the middle. If you're

on the kind of hedging period.

Well, which number are

you on?

We're at 5.5.

Five. Okay. Alright. On the study sess session. But at the end of the presentation, I saw two ad hoc committee members were to be nominated. I saw that right there. And that's part of the reason why I'm commenting now because I wanted to comment at the beginning of the meeting, but I ran up to the City Council chambers first thinking it was up there. So I don't know if I got here on time or not. But, anyway, I think there should be at least three committee members just knowing how it is to try and make the decision. And the other part about that is what I just said, that the committee should be ad hoc.

It shouldn't be something that just happens occasionally. It should be people that kinda get to know each other, have a feel for each other, know that you can email and contact each other. And that that's a feed of three people, at least three people. It says up to three. Rather than two, they just go along with the housing authority or the housing committee, whoever is already, you know, working on the projects. So I think it should be outside, and I think it should be separate from the association of the city. Thank you.

Any more comments? No.

There's no more public comment on this item.

Would any of the housing authority commissioners like to appoint two commissions to the ad hoc committee? Commissioner.

I'd like to appoint myself and I guess, Gregory.

I'm available also.

I I did it last year, so I would like to give other people a chance. Okay. Okay. Myself.

Go on. We couldn't hear the name over here. I think I heard Gregory Behren's name, but I'm not positive.

No. I I'm just going to nominate myself. And you are? Anne Blakonti.

Because he's here not here, we can't really

We we can do that. If not,

if you can

He asked for it. Oh, yeah. That's right. Yeah. It's not like

We're giving him a job.

Yeah. Yeah.

Usually, when your house, like, you get to work.

I'll I'll Gregory is in. I'm I'm I'm down to put him in for a suggestion. Okay. Any further discussion from the commissioners?

I hope

so. So commissioner Conte and Ferron will be the two commissioners for the ad hoc committee. Alright. Great. Now we're gonna move on to the next item, five dot two, review of fiscal year twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven proposed housing authority, budget.

Let me get the presentation. So we can wait on the 5.2. Alright.

Thank you, chair Smith. I'm Megan Passenger, executive director, and Kate Goldstein, administrative services officer, will also be joining me in this presentation. We'll be reviewing the proposed fiscal year twenty six twenty seven budget for the housing authority. Next slide, please. We'd like to start with a reminder of the housing authority's mission, and that is to ensure adequate, decent, safe, and sanitary housing for qualified people within Santa Rosa consistent with federal, state, and local law.

Next slide, please. I'm gonna take the next couple slides to review the accomplishments of our divisions over the course of this current fiscal year. So we're gonna start with rental housing. We have an allocation of up to nineteen twenty five housing choice vouchers that are that can be administered by the housing authority. With that, we also have currently a 101 active emergency housing vouchers.

And as we've touched on this in previous housing authority presentations, this is a COVID era program that is starting to sunset, so we do not roll the vouchers over once a plan ends their participation in that voucher. And so we started with a 131, and we're currently down to a 101. And these are the vouchers that we will start absorbing into our housing choice voucher program in the fall, as the funding is expected to end by December 2026. For project based vouchers, in this current fiscal year, we have leased up eight new units at Del Nido Apartments. This is an Eden housing project that did rehab.

And as part of that, the housing authority several years ago committed eight project based vouchers. We also have 16 new project based vouchers at Burbank Avenue Apartments. Again, this was a project that came to us through the community development block grant program in 2021 time period, and we committed 16 project based vouchers to that as well. Our rental housing assistance team has also created a new portal to help with the lease up of project based vouchers. Each of these properties that we have a voucher contract on has a separate waiting list.

And so this is a way for the the property management, the tenants, and our staff to work in concert with each other to expedite the identification of tenants and lease up of the project based voucher units. And that is going quite well and was done, in coordination with the city's IT team. And then finally, the family self sufficiency program, which is another component of the housing choice vouchers. We have 36 participants. We have four graduate this year, and we had 240,000 in escrow.

And the escrow is generated by increases in the tenant's income while they're participating in the program. Next slide, please. In our housing trust division, and this is the group that manages CDBG and home and monitors our regulatory agreements on properties, they now monitor over 6,500 units throughout the city of Santa Rosa. They worked with developers on the completion of Burbank Avenue apartments as well as the rehab of Vigil Light senior apartments. Together, that's a 113 affordable units, and 16 of the 113 are targeted to at risk households that are at risk of homelessness.

And then also through our NOFA process in 2526, we committed 3,700,000 to support the development of 50 new affordable units and then rehab 246 affordable units. And those 246 is the Apple Valley scattered site project, and that was proposed by Burbank. And that is looking to start rehab this summer. And then the 50 affordable units is Ponderosa, which is a Danco communities project, and they also will be starting construction this summer. So we're very pleased to see those advancing.

Next slide, please. Next, I'm gonna touch on the goals and initiatives of both divisions in the coming fiscal year. So as always, we look to increase the supply of affordable rental housing for our lowest income households, provide housing and services to special needs populations, increase readiness for homeownership for residents, continue to preserve existing affordable housing stock, support efforts to reduce homelessness, and then utilize our program resources as best we can. Next slide, please. In the housing trust, that group manages what is now over 200,000,000 in loans.

That's 500 plus different loans to properties throughout Santa Rosa that are secured by deeds of trust, and then we have the regulatory agreements that accompany them. They monitor over 6,500 units for affordability, age verification, owner occupancy where it's applicable. And they continue to conduct reporting for our disaster recovery projects as well as state grants that we have received for various programs and projects at the time. So that concludes my portion of the presentation. Now I'm gonna turn it over to Kate to review the 2627 proposed project.

Alright. Thanks, Megan. Good afternoon. I'm Sheriff Smith and vice chair Capulo and the housing authority commissioners. I am the qualified and the administrative services officer for the housing division of housing and community services, and I am here to present the 2627 proposed housing authority budget.

We consider we have to consider many factors when we're creating the budget, including federal, state, and local laws and regulations. We have specific program and funding mandates. We have city council and housing authority policy and regulation, and we have city council I'm sorry, city manager and finance department directives to formulate the budget. There are three program areas in the department that are under the authority's purview. That's administration, rental housing, and the housing trust.

There are other programs within the housing and community services department outside of the authority's control, and those are overseen by the city council. That's homeless services, mobile home rent mobile home rent control ordinance, and the recreation division. This slide here shows the authority's budget at its highest level. The proposed budget is relatively flat compared to the 2526 adopted budget. It's up just 1%. However, you're gonna see variances within the divisions in the coming slides. Next slide, please. You guys have this on your iPads? Mhmm.

Okay. Can you see the Is that right, Kate? Oh, wait. No. Go back.

So if you can look at slide eight, which is the administrative budget. There we go. There we go. Different room. Having some just some IT issues, so hang with us. This is also detailed on the staff report attachment. Often, the presentation is just a representation of that. So we'll begin with the administrative cost center. It's about $1,800,000 this year. And all of the housing and community services department programs that I just spoke of, including those outside of the authority's purview, pay for a portion of these costs based on their share of salaries.

And these show as allocated costs in their budget. These costs include largely city overhead and information technology, our share of the city's liability insurance, admin salaries and benefits, and department services and supplies. And overall, the authorities two programs, the trust and rental assistance programs, are budgeted to pay about 1,700,000 of these costs. They are the department's largest programs. Next slide, please.

This is the year over year comparison for the administrative budget. 98% of this is uncontrollable costs, meaning that we are informed of our share of these costs as part of the city's as part of the city organization. So salaries and benefits at the top, we are fully staffed with permanent employees in the admin team for the first time since October 2024. Wow. So the increase that we're seeing here is for merit and cost of living increases, plus our current union contract provides a stipend for staff acting as the recording secretary of the housing authority and also for staff training as backup for the housing authority.

In services and supplies, there it's only a $12,000 increase, but, proportionally, it's 14%. The main driver of this is the audit cost, which is required by the federal government. We don't have a choice in that. Our copier costs increase. We have a huge amount of paper, and then the cost of goods and services have increased.

And remember that we're budgeting now to be able to afford to pay for things in July 2027. So the cost of goods and services for the twelve months starting in June and ending in July '27. In information technology or I'm sorry. Liability insurance barely increased. That's just our share of the city's larger liability pay payment. Information technology did increase. I talked to the IT director about this. The main drivers are sorry. I'm having a little bit of a cold. Bear with me.

IT salaries and benefits increased. They are part of the city organization that we are. We are all held to union contracts, and we have had salary increases and cost of living increases and merit increases for the last three years. All of our software licenses for Microsoft, our accounting software, our accounts payable software, all of that increased to this year, plus their liability insurance and their overhead all increased, and all of those costs are passed along to us as their user departments. Finally, in overhead, our primary costs of that are the city attorney's office, the finance department accounting divisions, accounts payable, and human resources, and use of facilities.

Next slide, please. Okay. Now we're gonna focus on the new revenue source new funding sources available to the two operational programs in the housing authority. This is the trust and rental assistance. So the authority is 96% federally funded. 90% is for the housing choice voucher program. 2% is for the emergency housing voucher program, which is ending this year, and 4% is our ongoing CVBG and home grants. HUD has not yet released admin allowances for calendar year 2026, which is why they have asterisks by them. Those may increase. They've been increasing three to 5% the last few years.

We'll see. Hopefully, we'll have those numbers for you by June. Local funding to the trust is 4% of the authority's budget. It includes impact fees, loan repayments, property rental from 983 Brookwood currently rented to in response, compliance monitoring fees that Megan was discussing. We're monitoring those 6,500 units.

And then finally, the transfer in from the city's general fund for real property transfer tax. And then finally, the housing trust also has 2,200,000 of uncommitted carryover. That's loan repayments that came in over budget that have not been committed to a new project. It's impact fees that came in over budget, and it's unused admin funding that was budgeted but not used and can now be reused. Next slide, please.

Okay. These are expenditures by category. So this is how we're using the fundings shown in the prior slide. So by far, the authority's largest expense is rental assistance, 82% of the budget. This is federal funding that we are passing through to local landlords in the community.

We also if you look at the kind of the top slice of the pie, we also have home tenant based rental assistance at about 747,000. That's also rental assistance being passed through from the for the home program to local landlords. Loan activity here is at 2,600,000, and I just wanna say that doesn't include the pro housing grant that Kelly mentioned in that's being included in the NOFA. That was we weren't aware of that grant when we were making our budget for this. That was just taken to council, I wanna say, a few weeks ago in April, and so it is included in the housing authority's NOFA process, but it has already been appropriated by the city council for use for loans.

We are now asking you to appropriate the rest of the 2,600,000 to be used in the NOFA process as part of your budget. Subrecipient funding of $80,000 is local funding going to fair housing and home services providers. CDBG public services funding is also subrecipient funding. It's 15% of the annual CDBG grant and loan repayments from prior years. City council also has a hand in this funding and has directed it to homeless services for many years.

And then finally, salaries, benefits, and services and supplies for staff who directly work for the housing the rental housing assistance and trust. That's 21 full time equivalent staff for the programs. And then finally, allocated costs. As I mentioned, that's the share of the admin cost center that the two programs pay. Next slide, please.

Okay. Now this is drilling down on the rental assistance budget specifically. The two programs that are a 100% federally funded, the housing choice voucher program and the emergency housing voucher program. The housing choice voucher program is increasing. You can see on that top line, and the emergency housing choice voucher program is ending.

So I'll talk more about that. HUD provides us the rental assistance budget, which is a straight pass through to landlords. They also provide us an admin allowance to run the program, and that's formulaic. So they've not announced even though we're four months, almost five months into 2026. They have not given us yet our 2026 admin allowance.

So they calculate a per unit per month amount, which is then prorated down based on the total amount of funding available from congress. So right now, the 2627 budget is based on 88% of the '25 of the calendar year 2025 amount. That is the latest information that we have from HUD on how our admin allowance is working. Generally, around this time, May of each year, HUD will give us our current year's admin allowance. So I am hopeful that we will get that any day and that we will also get our updated proration.

Does that make sense? Okay. So right now, this is last year's amount at the at last year's proration. Okay. Moving into expenditures.

Salaries and benefits are almost even at about 2,400,000. There's a slight decrease due to the elimination of one vacant limited term technician that was hired for the emergency housing voucher program. Now that that program's ending, we're eliminating the position. This is offset due to the increase due to the reassignment of staff from admin and the trust to keep up with the program demands in the voucher program and merit and cost of living increases for existing staff as I've been discussing. Services and supplies, we're at the the current amount is at 413,000.

As soon as we get those updated admin amounts from HUD and assumingly they will go up, I will program those into services and supplies because we always wanna utilize the full amount of admin funding that HUD allots to us. Allocated costs increased slightly as overall overhead increase. Rental assistance increased increased across the board. I reviewed trends and actual expense for each voucher type. I did a three year look back and an eighteen month projection, particularly with the EHV funding ending and those vouchers having to be absorbed into the existing voucher program.

So for Santa Rosa clients, which includes VASH and project based, we increased the per unit cost 7% from 1,500 to 1,600 because, again, we're budgeting to be able to afford all of our existing clients through July 2027. We also have a huge amount of port in clients. So those are clients that are generally coming from the county of Sonoma into Santa Rosa. We have around 300 of those per month. They tend to come into Santa Rosa for our multifamily housing, larger units.

They tend to have more turnover, and therefore, the rent contracts are often increasing. The original housing authority sends all of their HAP and a portion of their admin fee, and we manage those clients. We increased that rental assistance 11% from 1,600 per unit per month to $17.75 per unit per month by July. Then finally, in emergency housing vouchers, the most recent information we have from HUD, because it varies often, is that the funding will end in December 2026, so we budgeted for half a year. We're planning to absorb those vouchers into the choice voucher program starting in '26.

Their estimated cost was at $17.15. We have that going through December, and they'll be paid out of the choice the housing choice voucher program after that. If anything changes in that and we need to appropriate more funding or HUD does something different, we'll come back to you and if we have to appropriate funding. But with HUD, it's on it's I wouldn't say day by day, but maybe month by month. And we're working closely with HUD to ensure that we have enough funding to continue to pay the HAP for our existing clients.

Next slide, please. So this slide just reiterates what I discussed on the previous slide. So next slide. This is the housing trust budget. So the housing trust budget has up to 15 different funding sources, each with its own regulation or mandate, things like that.

Federal and state funds are highly regulated, and local funds can be somewhat less. So we'll start in new revenue. We have 2,800,000 available. This is a pretty significant decrease from last year for a few reasons. So as Kelly mentioned, we do have our final CDBG and home federal entitlements.

Those went down about 2%, but we also, this year, lost our federal HOPWA entitlement funding. But the funds will stay in the local area. They will just be managed now at the state level. The California Public Health Department AIDS branch will manage that. We are not going to manage it, the services will stay in the area.

We also, this year, do not get the state permanent local housing allocation grant. That was a five year grant cycle. It ended last year. In impact fees, that is the fees paid by developer. Developers were they have market rate housing, and they are not going to provide affordable housing in that development. So they pay a fee instead. The city has designated those fees for affordable housing. So the state law recently changed. Developers had to pay that in the beginning of the process. They now don't pay that until nearly final walk through.

So it's delayed on receipt of those funds. So we used to budget those at about 1,300,000 this year because I can't be sure when we're going to receive them. I have them budgeted at 600,000. We'll treat this source like loan repayments. We'll budget conservatively, and anything that comes in over budget, like a loan repayment, will be part of uncommitted carryover in the next year's budget.

We're budgeting a 128,000 in loan repayments. It's flat. And finally, Brookwood property rental at 16,000 and compliance monitoring fees at 213,000 round out the revenue. In transfers, city general fund real property transfer tax is 1,137,500. This is the city council policy that real property transfer tax is allocated to housing and homelessness.

It increases 5% each year. It's at 65% of the total real property transfer tax of 3,500,000. That's 2,750,000 divided equally between housing and homeless services this year. Finally, uncommitted carryover was nearly even, decreased just slightly. Again, this is loan repayments and impact fees that came in over budget.

So our total resources this year are about 6,200,000, but, again, that doesn't include that pro housing grant that Kelly discussed. Looking at expenditures, salaries and benefits decreased because staff were assigned to other divisions within the department, particularly admin staff towards the recreation division and rental assistance. Services and supplies decreased very slightly as overall resources were just less and were prioritized for loans. Allocated costs increased just because overhead increased. Loan activity decreased due to the overall just fewer resources within the division.

State grant activity was completely eliminated. Subrecipient funding is only the elimination of HOPWA. CDBG public services funding, we are using part of a large one time loan repayment in the prior year to beef up some CDBG public services funding in one area that was reduced with the city council's large reduction of homeless services last year. That's a onetime usage. We don't usually get loan repayments that large, so we're using it onetime this year.

And then finally, tenant based rental assistance increased because we also had a larger home loan repayments than last year. Next slide. Just reiterates everything I just discussed. And then finally, that last budget last bullet, I'm sorry, notes that the housing trust budget and reserve policy has been met, which is a requirement of the housing authority. Next slide.

Okay. Finally, this is what's next in the budget process for the city and for the housing authority. So all city departments, including ours, will be budgeted presented to the city council on May. We'll be back in front of you on June 15 asking you to approve the authority's final budget. Hopefully, we'll have those final numbers from HUD. On June 16, the city council will be asked to approve the entire city budget. And then I just wanted to note that our budget information in the city councils can be found at that link online, or people can call our office or the city manager's office for budget information. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Housing authority, any questions of the staff? Vice chair.

Santa Rosa's in a bit of a budget pickle. We all know that. And there's, some discretionary funding in here, the transfer tax, the city council policy, but it is discretionary. Is that right? Have you

heard anything about that? There has been no discussion at the city council level about revising the current policy, which provides, I think, this fiscal year, 65% the I know. Real property transfer tax to housing and community services. Okay. And that has been included in the proposed So

it's it's included in their proposed budget. Correct. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Just checking. Any other commissions? Commissioner Acante?

Yeah. On the administration expenditures, Infotechnology, that always kind of really It pops up. Yeah. It really it's it's so high, and it it popped up again. And I know that we're, like, coordinating with the the city other city departments. Do we know how much our 14% compares to other departments?

Yeah. It's commensurate. This is just a high cost. So I talked to the IT director about this, and there's there's no part of the IT budget that didn't increase this year. So every software license, every staff member's salary and benefits. Defense department. But cybersecurity increased enormously.

Looking at, the licensing and, insurance on those licenses in terms of AI and future options to kind of eliminate some of those continual corporate funded monies?

I'd say that the IT department, like, department within the city, we are all being tasked by the city council and the city manager to review our budgets very closely and identify reductions. So the IT department is also looking as closely as possible, looking at the number of devices that staff and commissioners have and the licenses that are that go with those. Because, again, with every device that we hand out, our licenses that are assigned to those particular devices. Touch salaries, but if we could squeeze. But it sounds like they're they're doing it. Okay. They're being they're evaluating it closely. Okay. Thank you.

Any other commissioners?

Tell me when.

I have I have one question. Megan, you had referenced, that we have 1,925 vouchers to give out.

Mhmm.

Then you said there were 6,500 units that are monitored. Can you explain what that means?

Correct. So we have PUD allocates us up to 1,925 housing choice vouchers, and those are our tenant assistance vouchers. That is the maximum we can issue coupled with the budget authority they give us. So the budget authority doesn't match 1,925 rent payments. So that's what our rental assistance team does.

Our housing trust reviews all the regulatory agreements, our housing allocation plan agreements, density bonus agreements, all the agreements that are recorded against property to restrict income and affordability. And so those accompany the loans that you provide. So with every loan that the housing authority gives to a project and that we record against the property, we monitor that for the term of the agreement, which is generally fifty five years.

So but the sixty five so what I'm trying to understand, where does the 6,500 units come into? You mean there's

a So those would be, like, when you give out loans to Apple Valley Apartments to

So you count you count all of them.

Yeah. All of the units that are resected. And when we go through those those items in front of the housing at Jordan, we'll tell you how many units. You know, like, with this project, we're gonna restrict 20 units to extremely low income. So it's it's the compilation of all of those agreements and those individual units. Okay.

I'm just trying to understand where that came from. Any other question? Question. Yeah.

That's pretty good. Follow-up. So the 60 does that easy to say that there are 6,500 affordable apartments in the city of Santa Rosa that are at least 50% or below area median income?

No. Because that number also includes we have single family homes that we have issued down payment assistance loans on, so we're monitoring those for ongoing owner occupancy.

And that those have a regulatory

Those have those have an agreement associated with them. Yes. A complimentary regulatory agreement. We do have some projects that have age restrictions, so making sure that those individuals are at least 55 years or older in some of our senior apartments. So we monitor that.

Do those have rent restrictions on them as well?

Some of

them do not have rent restrictions, just age restrictions. So there's a variety of restrictions we're monitoring. In total, it's 6,500, but we could certainly come back with the exact number of

because I was just doing a simple search AI search for how many units are rental units in the city of San Arisma. It's around it's around 30,000. So if you look at 6,500, that's about 22% of those units. I was wondering if that's and then if you look do a similar AI search, how many households in the city of Santa Rosa are 50% or below? And it's roughly 24%. So if you look at 65, the number of units versus the number of 50% or below, it's it's pretty close in terms of percentage of the overall total. So that's what I'm just focusing in on the 6,500 if that's truly rent restricted.

Got it. And we can certainly come back with it

Okay.

A more refined number. And I also like to just remind the housing authority, and this ties into our pipeline, that there are other organizations that do restrict income eligibility on units besides just the housing authority. So if a project just received funding through TCAC Yeah. They're gonna have that unit that agreement in place and be counted as an affordable complex, whereas we wouldn't reflect it on our

So how can pipeline. Where is the source to find the number of restricted units in the city of Santa Rosa?

There are a couple of different sources, and I can push that out via email to the housing authority.

Thank you.

K. Any other questions? Commissioner Capio?

I just have a comment that I would like to express my appreciation of a very delicate handling of the budget. It's getting trickier, and you're you guys are doing great. So thank you very much. It was a very thoughtful job, the projections and and how you're treating the unknowns, which are kinda scary. Yeah.

I'll second that.

Okay. We are now taking public comments on item five dot two. If you wish to make a comment, please go to one of the podiums in this chamber. You will have three minutes and a countdown time, and we'll alert you at the end of the period. Please state your name for the record if you choose to do so.

Thank you, chair. Janice Carmen, and I just wish that you had higher numbers to crunch. I think that you did a superb job with what you have to work with. I think you really did. This is really good.

It it's not totally good news, but I also heard recently that or I saw it printed somewhere that you the city got a housing award. You probably know all about it. But I was glad to see that. And I I just think that it was as miss miss Capio, the vice chair, said that it was really a good job, a very thorough job, I think, for housing, and I'm very pleased. And the other thing I was gonna say is that I know a fair amount about IT, and it doesn't look like it's gonna get any cheaper.

And one of the things is you need to remember they don't have to use software. So it's a constantly renewal thing. Recently, I was listening to a program on NPR, and they were talking about saving material and things that we use to save on discs and other things, saving the DNA of this material in her refrigerator, an IT scientist. And all she had to do was add water, and then she could break it down too. It was a very simple code, actually.

But that's sort of the direction things are going, so a lot is disappearing very fast. And I think Santa Rosa is trying to stay in the game, and they're really working hard. But I don't see that things are going to get any less expensive. And I encourage always that you try to look for something else, especially in these times, other than additional bonds. And I had been at one meeting.

It was for I won't even say which housing, but it was 250,000 for each individual house, and they were very small for the vets. And the loan was pitched, like, at least fifty years or something like that. And then Trump started sort of following that, and I hope we're not going to do that because we're skipping at least a generation and a half when you start doing that that are paying for what we are doing now. So I think it's really a time that we have to continue to just hold ourselves in in check. And I wanna also mention it's very important to vote at the primary, June 2, and the two top winners of each category will go on to the general election.

A lot of people don't know this. It's a very complicated voting situation, and I'm running for congress, Janice Garman. Discove one.

Any other public comments?

You don't have any other public comments like that?

Okay. We'll go on to the next agenda item. This is public comments. Comments from the public will be allowed on all agenda items at this time. Each item is called. This is a time when any person may address the housing authority on matters not listed on this agenda, but all within the subject matter jurisdiction of the housing authority. Each speaker will be allowed up to three minutes.

I'd like to speak on this too, Andrea.

I just want to say that I've been going to meetings ever since I ran for city council. Diana has been stripped of her committees and her board meetings. Oakmont has stated at other meetings that we have no representation out in Regan Valley where we are. That's a real problem, and that's a problem for the housing, the lack of attention that we are getting in Regan Valley and the surrounding area. And I've had a very hard time just recently getting the agenda not the agendas, the printed public matter that announces the date and where the meetings are.

Because there's meetings all over Santa Rosa, somewhere within the city, and take place at various things like out in Laguna And Center, etcetera, bicycle coalition. And I've never had a hard time before. But the other day when I went to see the office and I asked for the public, there were three meetings that were posted in the glass in the courtyard of the city over here, and I asked for the copies. And they said, well, we don't do those. You'll have to go to the agency that's doing it.

Now this is very hard because you have all this footwork you're supposed to be doing all over the city of Santa Rosa. Also, I've gone to many planning, many zoning, etcetera. I've spoken to many applicants who are trying to build here, architects that are visiting from our, Arizona, etcetera, And we need to streamline this, and this should be a simple thing. The city of Santa Rosa admin office ought to have copies of where the meetings are, be able to print them out if you ask for them. And I'm sure there aren't a lot of people like me that go to all the meetings that I go to, but I try to keep track of them, and it makes it very hard.

And maybe that's the point. But I would appreciate it if that were better knowledge. And I I went today, and I did get a part of the committee meeting today or the board meeting today. But, anyway, that that's all I'm gonna say about that. But I don't think that's right, especially when we're trying to do transparency.

And I often am the lone person like today that is at the meetings. So I would like to go to the meetings, and I'd like to be able to ask for something and actually get it when it's in the glass and not have a person that's in the glass putting it up and saying, oh, well, go ask the office. I go up and I ask the office. It's a lot of footwork, and it's really not okay. Thank you. That's it.

Any other public? Okay. We'll move on to the next agenda item, approval of the minutes. Any, commissioners have any amendments to the minutes? Any, public comments on the minutes? No. Okay. K. Alright. So we'll move on to the next agenda item, item eight. This is the, commissioner reports.

So we have an item here under commission reports. It's appointment of an ad hoc committee for the HUD VASH program, and this originated out of the February study session that we held on the HUD VASH program and various questions that came from commissioners. What I'm requesting today is that the commission identify up to three commissioners who will wanna participate in an ad hoc committee, so we will convene a handful of times to review the HUD VASH program. The overall goal is to look into the efficiency and effectiveness of of the program to seek a further understanding from the commissioners on how the eligibility process works and that eligible veterans are receiving the housing assistance that is allocated through the program and that we, as possible, touch base with PA staff to understand what their role in the program is. So if the members of the commission would like to identify up to three individuals that would like to participate.

Yeah. It's gonna just say that you anybody wanna come share counting?

Thought when you do it.

I can do it.

Okay. Go ahead. How many do you wanna appoint? How many do you wanna nominate?

Well, three. I'll nominate you. Scott, Claudia, and myself. That's three.

Okay. Does that work? And do you have anything? No. Great. So you get two committee events. Okay. Right. So I'd like to appoint, commissioner Conte, commissioner WEMA, and vice chair Tapio to this ad hoc committee for the HUD VASH program. Okay?

Thank you. Great.

Number h. O Chair. Of nine. Chair. We have to do

public comment. Comment.

Oh, I'm sorry. Are there any public comments on the

Just didn't hear the three. I'd like to hear all three again, please.

The three are commissioner Conte, commissioner Wimma over here, and vice chair Capio over here.

Thank you.

You it? Yep. Okay. You

got it? What's on the line you're saying?

K. You're one okay. Okay. And that's, that was eight. K. Number nine, this is committee reports. I don't believe there's any committee reports.

We'll have some soon.

Not yet. Any public comment on No public comment. No public comment. Okay. Item 10, executive director reports from

Thank you, chair Smith. Attached to the agenda for the month is the April update to the pipeline. This month, there are no specific project updates that have been included. So everything is status quo as of the last update in March, but I'd be happy to answer any questions. And just as a reminder, we do update this as projects are moved through funding, permitting, and completion.

Any how much are the potential owner?

Yeah. This kinda follows through with the previous column I had of how many actual affordable units are in the city of Santa Rosa. So if you look at this,

and I'll just look at the completed within the last twenty four months, and we'll look at College Creek Apartments, and which is a 100% affordable, but the city's only counting 14. It's a 164 units and only counting 14. So wanna make sure

that there is a and I know why it's only 14. And so are we counting a 164 units as affordable,

or are we counting 14? Or we don't

even have a report like you guys do are.

For the city's count, we are counting 14 because that is what we have direct compliance monitoring over. But when I push out to the housing authority more information Okay. It'll provide it should provide an overview of all of the affordable units. So in this case, the community is monitoring that complex. Okay.

So if

you look at regardless if it's the county monitoring, the city monitoring, Or TCA. Interested in how many four of you are in the city of Santa Rosa. Correct. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Any commissioners have any questions? Yeah. I just I have one. The funding part, those that have the permits, you know, that that just seem to be stuck waiting. Is there just no money available these days to to move these project into construction?

So it's it's a very competitive process at the state level now. As we've discussed previously, we provide a small amount of resources. You saw in our note that we have about 3 and a half million. So projects do need to go compete either for state multifamily housing program funding, tax credits, bonds. Those are very competitive cycles these days. We've had a couple projects that we'll be advancing through As we we discussed, Ponderosa Apartments has received an award. They were on a waiting list and got pulled through, so that'll be moving through. But it's been taking projects a couple of cycles due to competitive nature of funding.

And, there's no state federal money, coming out, or is that dead right now?

There's there's not much federal money. The federal tax credits, which are administered by the state Yeah. Is what we're looking at.

And I remember, what was it, a year or two ago, there was talk of a regional bond. Is that dead?

Bonds are should be proceeding, and and commissioner Capio can provide information. It's passed.

They were done all time.

They knew they couldn't

be seen as well. Yeah.

We we had one last year. It was coming through. ABAC, and we're cannot remember the After years of work. So, yeah, they're looking to see how well these are polling. And there are gonna be a lot of tax measures on the upcoming ballot. So, organizations are trying to be as sensitive. Yeah.

Okay. Alright. I mean, they they have permits. That's the that's the worst part. It's not like they're starting from scratch coming to you. What do you think, Megan? You know, that's that's what bothers me is that they're ready to to do that. It'd be like going to, exchange bank and exchange bank, you know, just have to have the money and everything.

Yeah. Perfect score. And even then, it's like shades of hairs Yeah. In terms of the projects.

That's okay.

I'd say the good news is we still we still do receive calls from developers who are interested in new projects. So That's good. There is interest in the area, and and people are continuing to look for new projects.

Okay. Yeah. You know, one of the things I've noticed at the time I've been on, this committee is have there been any projects where an existing building had been torn down and the and the and the land land reused or everything right now looking for just empty lots to build on?

I can't

think of many projects that have been teardowns. Most of our developers are looking at bare lands and new construction. K. But but but certainly things can change.

Yeah. There's a actually, not far from where I live, a, a good sized property, available for sale. It used to be a mortuary, Lafferty and Smith there. They've moved out, and, I know and so it's a big piece of land that you know, if somebody, picked it up. But if there's, there's no funding to build, you know, nobody's gonna do anything. You know?

Well, some of this is cyclical too. We we are coming off of a a period of what I frame as unprecedented funding. We've we've never seen so many affordable units come online in Santa Rosa as we have in the last five five years or so. So this is part of kind of the natural cycle of funding as well. Alright.

Thank you very much. Okay. Item 11.

I have a couple

of comments. Sorry about that.

Oh, thank you.

No problem.

You. But I have been reading the last couple of days about this question, chair question. There is a move right now, not just in Sonoma County, but I I think that it just got passed. And I'm not sure if it I think it's state level. It's Padilla, and it has to do with what you were talking about with the building on the land or if you can demolish what's on it and continue.

But if you look it up, you'll see it. And I don't know the name of the bill. I'm sorry. But I'm commenting on the other part that I said earlier about projects being in the pipeline a long time, and I hear these horrible stories. And one of the worst ones, and it just seemed, like, so pathetic, was, I believe, was a zoning meeting, but it could have been a design review, but I don't think it was zoning.

And the people had a property that had a business on it, and all they wanted was this small fence. And the fence wasn't even a real fence. It was a beautiful rock hard fence, which was on the edge or near the creek. And, of course, waterways should be involved, but waterways is kinda defunct now. But, anyway, they've been at this for beyond three years, and I can't remember if it's four years, five years, but a long time to put in a metal fence that was just a basic one that is premade at the factory, and you just put it in.

And I just think that's intolerable. And I think that there should be more direct, you know, about these other things that you have to do with the property. And, no, another thing that happened, the thrift store, I call it the kitty litter place, the feeling something or other, they were moving their thrift store, and they moved the thrift store. They were supposed to have a a grand opening, and it turned out that the city came in, told them they didn't have the right permits, and they were supposed to replace at least part of the floor. And so there was somebody out in front that day telling people, we're not opening today, but you can go ahead and donate.

We're gonna be open hopefully in, you know, within the week. And I I spoke with many of the city people about this. I said, this is not a good story. And just these things that are happening and or have been happening. And and I don't know what's happening with the housing authority. I haven't, like, kept the pulse on the housing authority. This is my first big board meeting. I've gone to the meetings up in the other place, so upstairs, economic development or whatever. But but I'm just saying that there is a permit problem. There's also the violation problem of calling violations against people.

And I have a damaged driveway because there was an illegal project very near me that took out all the trees, and the street collapsed, and so did my driveway. So things like that.

Any other further per public? K. Now we can go on to item 11, consent items. There's none. Item 12, report items. There's none on the agenda. And now we've been adjourned. Thank you.

It's been pit bull's open.

Yeah. Thank you for the on the numbers. You know?