Good morning, everyone. I'd like to call the September 26, 2022 housing authority regular meeting to order. Due to the provisions of the governor's executive orders and 2520 and and 2920, which suspend certain requirements of the Brown Act, the housing authority commissioners will be conducting today's meeting in a virtual setting using zoom webinar. Commissioners and staff are participating from remote locations and or practicing appropriate social distancing. Members of the public may view and listen to the meeting as noted on the city's website and as noted on the agenda. Members of the public wishing to speak during item six public comment or during public hearing items will be able to do so by raising their hand and will be given the ability to address the commission. In compliance with the California government code 54956.8 the housing authority will conduct a closed session at the beginning of this meeting. Prior to the housing authority recessing to the closed session members of the public will be permitted to speak up to three minutes on the item to be addressed. I'll now move on to item number two roll call. Okay, we'll do a roll call. We'll begin with Commissioner Burke. Commissioner Burke. Yeah, here. And Commissioner Downey. Here. And Commissioner McWhorter. Here. And Commissioner Rawhouser. Here. And Commissioner LaPenna. Commissioner LaPenna. Mr. LaPenna, are you are you perhaps muted? Looks like he's talking, but we can't hear him. I see. He looks like he's trying to. Okay. Give him one more moment for him to come in with his audio. It appears he's having trouble connecting to the audio. Commissioner LaPenna, you may need to leave the meeting just for a second and re-enter so that your audio connects. Steve, I can call Commissioner LaPenna. I think I got it now. He's back. Okay. Thank you. There he is. Yeah. Vice Chair Owen. Here. And Chair Test. Here. Let the record reflect that all commissioners are present. Thank you. As a matter of housekeeping, I would like to remind commissioners to keep their audio on mute unless otherwise they are speaking, unless they are speaking commissioners other than the chair commute themselves. I will remain muted until needing to speak. As members of the public join the meeting, you will be participating as an attendee. Your microphone and camera will be muted. Only today's panelists will be viewed during the meeting. If you're calling in from a telephone and choose to speak during the public comments portion of today's agenda for privacy concerns, the host will be renaming your viewable phone number to resident. And the last four digits of your phone number. 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 respectfully, or they will be removed. If necessary, we will also immediately end the meeting. Claire, can you please explain how the public comments will be heard at today's meeting. At each agenda item, the item is presented. The chair will ask for the housing authority member comments and then open it up for public comment. The host and zoom will be lowering all hands until public comment is open for the agenda item. Once the chair has called for public comment, the chair will announce for the public to raise their hand if they wish to speak on the specific agenda item. If you are calling in to listen to the meeting audibly, you can dial star nine to raise your hand. The host will then call on the public who have raised their hands. Public comment will be limited to three minutes and a timer will appear on the screen for the commission and public to see. Once all live public comments have been heard, the meeting host will read email public comments. If you provide a live public comment on an agenda item, but also submitted an email, your email public comment will not be read during the meeting. Additionally, there is one public comment period on today's agenda to speak on non agenda matters item seven. This is the time when any person may address the housing authority on matters not listed on this agenda, but which are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the housing authority. Okay. Chair Tess, I believe we might have skipped a page. It's okay that we did the protocol for public comments, but we need to go back to three announcement of the closed session item. Okay. I may interject as a reminder to commissioners, there is a separate link for the closed session. So you'll need to exit this meeting and click on the other link that you received in this is a closed session. So it is not open to the public. Yes, that is item number three. And it has to do with the closed session items just as Megan Bassinger just described. And City Clerk, are there any public comments for item 3.1? We've received no email comments and there are no hands currently raised. Okay. Thank you. All right, so item 3.1 is the conference with the real property negotiator regarding 983 Sonoma Avenue and the agency negotiator will be Megan Bassinger, the director. And if everyone could commissioners could exit this meeting and please enter the closed session. Close session number ends in number 7220. Zoom code. Thank you. Everyone sign off at this point. I thought I'd signed in properly, but how do I know that, Steve? Mr. Burke, there's a separate link that Steve emailed for the closed session. Correct. Yeah, you'll log out of that of this one, because this is the public one. Well, okay, I thought I'd sign in for the one at one o'clock, which was okay. So whatever. I thought I had done that. But I didn't. There's a separate one. I know that. Yeah. Let's see if I can, because I think Steve has now gone to that one. I'll see if I can send it to you. Well, no, I have it. It's just, I thought I had signed in using it. Okay, I'll sign off. Commissioner LaPenna, if you'll exit this meeting and then sign into the additional zoom link that will allow you to access the closed session. Commissioner Burke. If you can exit this meeting and then sign into the additional zoom link, that will, that will allow you to access the closed session. Hey, Steve, I keep trying to get in, but I can't get in. I keep coming up in the closed session and I keep hitting the right link. So. Commissioner LaPenna, this is Lacey. Steve is already in the closed session. He's emailing you the additional link right now. So that you can access that closed session. I keep hitting the one that says regular session and it's not working. Yeah, this is the regular session. We don't want the regular session. You want to get into the closed session. So if you'll look at your email. Okay, I'll try it again. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I think all the commissioners have returned to the open meeting. Thanks. We will now resume the public session. And we will move forward with item number four announcement of roll call for the public session right now. Thank you. All right, let the record reflect that all commissioners are still present. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I could. Ashley Crocker needs to provide a report out on the close session. Okay. Thank you. I'm Ashley Crocker assistant city attorney and I would just like to report out that during closed session, the housing authority met to discuss the potential lease terms for the Southwest Community Health Center and the housing authority gave direction to the real estate negotiator to commence negotiations. Yes, I fixed my video. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. As a matter of housekeeping, I would like to remind commissions to keep their audio on mute unless they are speaking commissioners other than the chair can mute themselves. Staff will remain muted until needing to speak as members of the public. If you are not ready to sign the meeting, you will be participating as an attendee. Your microphone and camera will be muted. Only today's panelists will be viewed during the meeting. If you're calling in from a telephone and choose to speak during the public comments portion of today's agenda for privacy concerns, the host will be renaming your viewable phone number to resident and the last four digits of your phone number. And Rosa is committed to creating a safe and inclusive environment free from disruption. We will not tolerate hateful speech or actions and our well staffed monitor that everyone is participating respectfully, or they will be removed. If necessary, we will also immediately end the meeting. No, please respond to the public comment. Claire, can you please explain how the public comments will be heard today? At each agenda item, the item is presented. The chair will ask for housing authority member comments and then open it up for public comment. The host and zoom will be lowering all hands until public comment is open for the agenda item. Once the chair has called for public comment, the chair will announce for the public to raise their hand if they wish to speak on the specific agenda item. If you are calling in to listen to the meeting audibly, you can dial star nine to raise your hand. The host will then call on the public who have raised their hands. Public comment will be limited to three minutes and a timer will appear on the screen for the commission and public to see. Once all live public comments have been heard, the meeting host will read email public comments. If you provide a live public comment on an agenda item but also submitted an email, your email public comment will not be read during the meeting. Additionally, there is one public comment period on today's agenda to speak on non-agenda matters, item seven. This is the time when any person may address the housing authority on matters not listed on this agenda, but which are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the housing authority. Thank you. Item five is the report if any on closed session. I believe that was given to us by Ashley Crocker. Thank you. We'll move on to item number six, statements of abstention. Any of the commissioners have a statement of abstention to claim today? Yes, Chair Attest. Consistent with the past actions, I'll be abstaining from item 12.1 on today's agenda. Due to my serving as a volunteer board member on both the housing authority and the visual light board, the visual light board, visual light apartments were sold to PEP a little over a year ago. So I've been abstaining from these items. So thank you for that. Thank you. We'll now move forward to item number seven, public comments. Comments from the public will be allowed on all agenda items at the time that each item is called. This is the time when any person may address the housing authority on matters not listed on this agenda, but which are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the housing authority. Each speaker will be allowed three minutes. Item number seven. Chair Attest, I see no hands raised at this time. Thank you. We'll move forward since there are no comments at this time, we'll move on to item number eight, approval of minutes. We have minutes from the August 22nd, 2022 meeting. Are there any changes? Any comments on those? Commissioner Burke, your hand is still up. Is that a comment? No, I just raised it again. It may still be up, but I intended to raise it once more. So the, excuse me, we're on approval of the minutes and I have no comments on the minutes. I misspoke, I'm sorry. I don't see any other raised hands. So we'll move on to assuming that there's a unanimous consent, excuse me, on the approval of the minutes. Chair Person, commissioner reports. Any commissioner reports? I have one comment to make. I attended a monthly mayors meeting recently and the mayor had asked me if we were aware of the interactive housing dashboard created by the planning and economic development department. Has anybody heard of that, Megan, have you happened to have heard of that resource? Yes, so the housing, the planning and economic development department put together some dashboards that are available on the city website and they've also linked our monthly pipeline. So what you will be seeing in the written communications appears on that dashboard as well. And there's also a link to the housing authorities, affordable housing map. And this is an interactive map that pulls straight from our lending system. So the public is able to see the properties that have been assisted either financially or through a regulatory agreement within the city of Santa Rosa. So those two pieces, in addition to permitting information are now available on the city website. At some point in the future, could we have a brief kind of overview with a little bit of detail showing how this might work? We can put that on the October agenda as a staff briefing. Thank you. Commissioner Downey, you have your hand raised. I chance to have a nice conversation with our new city manager, manager Keisha Smith, who's been hearing a lot about housing in Santa Rosa. And I just wanted to throw it out there if there was any capacity to invite her or communicate with her what we're doing to address housing issues in our jurisdiction. Thank you, commissioner Downey. Inviting the new city manager is on our list of items to have an upcoming meeting.  But I don't know the city organizational structure from the mayor on down to all the different departments. So I don't know where the city manager would fall within the scope of different jurisdictions. But I know that she was interested in what was being done with homelessness and low income housing. Thank you. Do we have any response to commissioner Downey? So we'll reach out and try and get the city manager on a future agenda, but just for reference, the city manager is appointed by the city council. So they select that individual to serve. And then the city staff reports up to the city manager. So that position is essentially between the city council and the various layers of staff. Commissioner Rawhouse, are you have a question? Because yesterday I started reading an article on the website regarding sustainable family programs and planning, and then now it's not on there. So is that part of what the city dashboard would have access to more programs and things that I aren't necessarily right on my agenda? So we can reach out to you as well to find out more about what this is about. Yeah, I was on my website and I was the article, I was just kind of was leaning through it and going, oh, I wanna get more of this. And then today it wasn't on there. And so I didn't know if that was in connection with the dashboard that would give us more information for different programs that are available that I may not know about. No, so the dashboard is not program specific. The dashboard is data, so it would be information on the number of building permits, housing units. So it's very data-centric, but we could certainly also provide an overview of programs that are available and I will reach out to our parental assistance staff to find out more about the program that you may have been reading about. Yeah, thank you so much, cause it really caught my eye. I see no other comments. We'll move on then to item 9.1. We are now taking public comments on item 9.1. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you were dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. You will have three minutes. Chair, tell us, I see no hands raised at this time. Thank you. Item number 10, committee reports. I don't believe there are any on this particular agenda. We will move on to item number 11, executive director reports on communication items. Megan. Thank you very much, Chair Tess. Attached for your reference is the pending development report and as we just noted in previous comments, this is the monthly update on the units we have under construction. Those that we anticipate starting, there are no units that have been completed recently, but we certainly have some projects that are on the horizon for completion. So we look forward to the Lingatunis project being completed in the near future. The other project is Orchard Commons that should be nearing completion. And that will provide about, I wanna say nearly 70 additional affordable housing units in Santa Rosa. The other item that I would like to just update the housing authority on is we recently had some recruitment for vacant positions. We were able to promote three staff within our department, including Lisa Chappan. She is promoted to a housing and community services technician. So we're very excited for her to continue her career with us here in the department and she will be working on affordable housing monitoring. This is one of the new positions that was added as of July 1 to assist us in our compliance endeavors. And then we had two staff in the rental assistance or housing choice voucher program who promoted from technician to program specialist. So we are very pleased to see our staff continue their careers and grow with us. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Oh, excuse me. Commissioner Burke, you have a question or a comment. Yes, two comments on the pipeline update and congratulations, Lacey. And to the other staff that were promoted. I don't believe that the board received the invitations for a couple of the finished projects. We were invited, I believe all of us to Lantana it's been a while ago, but the others, I don't think so. And as I recall, there was language at one time in our contracts to have recipients or funds include the housing authority board and staff and events such as groundbreaking and when the units are open so that we could see the finished product or the project as it is developed besides driving by it. So is that still the case, Megan, where we do have something in our contract to ask those people receiving funds to include us in those kinds of things? Now, one other comment. Yeah, so we have language regarding publicity. I don't know if off the top of my head it specifically states invitations to events, but I do not recall that Sage Commons or Dunn plots had grand opening ceremonies. I could be wrong, but I don't think that those occurred. And certainly as projects are moving towards completion, we are meeting staff are actively reaching out to those developers to make sure that if there are events we are being included because we have had some miscommunications over the course of the past years. But certainly with COVID protocols kind of winding down, people are much more eager to have those events and gather to celebrate our hard work. That's true. And so to me it is very important. I think it is to other board members just to see the complete, now it's all funding requests and general description, but to see the finished product is really important. And maybe that language could be broadened a little bit, but I do understand that with COVID it's probably affected things in a way that's hopefully unusual and won't be reoccurring. So thank you for that. And then the other item I have is under the column where it says local contributions. It says funds approved by local contributions. So those are probably primarily funding through our department, but I guess not exclusively. What are some other examples of the local contributions that might be included in that column? So that certainly could be clarified. The local contribution is the financial assistance provided by the housing authority, or we did have some nuances in the past five years where funding came directly from the city of Santa Rosa. So I believe within about 2016 or 17, the city itself had $3 million that it made available to affordable housing projects. So that did add a little bit of confusion, but we can certainly revise that. So it's specific to the housing authority slash city, but it's funds that we control and the projects we manage. So it's not the CDC. Yeah, and I don't know that it requires a lot, maybe an asterisk here and there, but I wouldn't go to any, from my standpoint, if it's fundamentally a huge percentage, is this the funds that we provide, then that answers my question. Thank you. Megan, I had a question on the pipeline, the cannery on West Third permits are under review. Do we have any idea how long that has been since they first submitted for permits? Just to get an idea of the length of time that these affordable projects are taking to actually hit the road and start digging. Well, in its current iteration, we're actively working to close the loan and I believe that should be done in the next couple of weeks. So it has been going through its current permitting process in the various stages within the last two years, but this project first was surfaced probably about early 2000s. This has been nearly 20 years to activate this site. So I think that may answer your question is that this particular project has been about 20 years of work by the developer, by the city and then some assistance with the housing authority and the redevelopment agency over the years. So hopefully at our next meeting, we will be able to report that we've closed the loan and they're about to pull permits. Thank you. Mr. Daly. Hi, Megan and congratulations to your new personnel. I was curious of what the additional personnel, do you anticipate being able to accelerate housing production or do you anticipate the additional personnel would just keep me on the same pace as things are going? So the additional positions, we added two, three positions to the department, one in homeless, one in compliance, which is just helping monitor our affordable housing units. And then we added one in the rental assistance housing choice voucher program, which is to assist with the administration of vouchers. So none of these will accelerate housing and that's something we rely on the development community to do is they permit and construct it. We provide some financial assistance to either developers or to the renters, but it will certainly help once we're fully staffed because we've promoted some staffs and now we have some vacancies for the previous positions. But once we are fully staffed, I think we'll be able to be much more effective in the various ways we contribute to housing in the community. Thank you. And I do appreciate the work that all of you guys do. Thank you. I see no other hands raised. So we are now taking public comments on item 11.1. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. You will have three minutes. Chair Tessi, no hands raised at this time. Thank you. Item number 12 is consent items. And I believe at this point, Commissioner Burke will recluse himself. That's correct. I'll be leaving you until you finish this item and return afterwards. Thank you. Thank you. So on consent items, when consent items are brought before the housing authority, it is not required that staff provide presentations to the commissioners. If there are no objections, we can move forward with a motion and a second and move forward. I see no hands raised. So we will move forward. Is there a motion on this particular item? And the item is approving clerical correction to resolution 1739, conditional funding commitment to PEP housing for visual light apartments. Continued from the August 22nd, 2022 regular meeting. Pardon me, Chair Tess. We'll need to request public comments before we can move into the vote. Okay. Thank you. It was correct the way that you just read that in first before we go to public comment. And if you wanted to find out if there was any questions first to staff, you may also do that and then go ahead with the public comment and then come back for a motion. Okay. I see no comments for raising hands. So we will now taking public comments on item 12. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. You will have three minutes. Chair Tess does see no hands raised at this time. Thank you. Do we have a motion to approve consent item 12.1? I'll move to approve consent item 12.1. Thank you, Vice Chair. I'll second it. Thank you, Commissioner. So can we now move forward please for the vote? Okay. We'll now do a roll call vote on this item and we will start with Vice Chair Owen. Aye. And then Commissioner LaPenna. Aye. Commissioner Rawhouser. Aye. Commissioner McBorder. Commissioner Downey. Chair Tess. Aye. Okay. Let the, I could show that the motion to approve consent resolution 12.1 passes with six eyes and with Commissioner Burke abstaining. As soon as we are ready for item number 13, which there are no report items today on this agenda. And we will then move to item number 14, study session as soon as Commissioner Burke resigns in. Give me one moment to inform Commissioner Burke. I'm sorry. Okay. They're waiting for one of the commissioners. At least you're not needed. Steve Brown, can you pull up the presentation since we do have a quorum? Item number 14.1 is the housing authority planning day. Megan Gassler. Thank you, Chair Tess. First, I'd like to introduce Serena Minow, who is an administrative services officer in planning and economic development. And Serena will be serving as our facilitator today to keep the discussion on track and then also to allow everyone to participate in the conversation. So next slide, please. All right. To Serena, don't we need to go over the agenda first and we'll do the. Yes. Yes. Please go ahead and then we'll do the little ice breaker. Okay. So the purpose of this afternoon is to first review the city council goals with the housing authority and provide you with an overview of the housing authority. And we'll touch on the roles and responsibilities of housing and community services, planning objectives, and then finally we'll go through an exercise on planning for the housing authority's future. And so this slide show that you sign your packet and that will be in front of you. We'll go through all of these elements. All right. Now I will turn it over to Serena. Hi everybody. Nice to meet you virtually. Serena, you know, I'm administrative services officer for as Megan said, for planning and economic development. I also provide personnel and HR support for housing and community services as well. So Megan call me in to help you out today. So I'm looking forward to having this conversation with you. So to start off, typically with retreats, we like to start off with some form of an ice breaker to basically shift from meeting mode to more retreat mode where you're gonna have dialogue and conversation around who you are as a commission as well as what do you see for yourselves moving forward. So to help get you to ship that mindset for you, we have a little question for you to answer. And this is an opportunity for each of you to be able to share. So I'd like to hear from everybody and I'll probably just for the sake of efficiency, I'll just call everybody out. And that way we each have a chance to share what a little bit about ourselves. So the question that we would like for you to ponder and share is what is it you appreciate and enjoy about Santa Rosa? Give you a moment to think about that as you start or start to think about it. I'll share that one of the things that I really enjoy is the nature. There's such diverse outdoor experiences that we could have around here. And I feel we are very lucky as a community to be able to have so many different types of opportunities to engage with, to walk on hiking trails, to go out to the beach, to visit Spring Lake. We're very lucky to have that and I personally feel it's very rejuvenating. So that would be one of the things that I really appreciate about Santa Rosa. Let's see here, Megan, do you want to go next? Sure, so similar to Serena, I enjoyed all the opportunities for running and cycling that we have around us and the ability to get right out of Santa Rosa and into some very beautiful terrain within a matter of moments. All right, I'm going to just go in the little pretty bunch squares that I have on the screen here to help keep myself organized. So Chair Tess, would you like to go next? Sure, I am very happy that Cine Santa Rosa encourages volunteerism. I have been on the Merit Awards Committee for five years. Merit Awards just celebrated its 40th award ceremony. And at that particular ceremony, we had volunteers from all walks of life, a couple of young people, exciting to see them involved at their young age. We had 12 volunteers who received awards. And I just think it's a great idea by the city of Santa Rosa to encourage volunteerism across the spectrum. Thank you. Great, okay, Commissioner Downey, would you like to go next? Thank you, Serena. I really appreciate the fact that despite having severe challenges thrown at us since 2017, we have consistently stepped up to take care of our community and have addressed all of our community needs despite some of the most horrendous events that have taken place. And that is something very special. Great, thank you. All right, Commissioner McPorter, did I pronounce that correctly? Yes, you did. I would say mine would have to be because I have a middle schooler and elementary student is the commitment toward education and safety of our young adults. Thank you. All right, Commissioner Lupina. Yeah, I think everybody said a little bit of what I was gonna say. So I'm gonna say something different first. I appreciate being in Santa Rosa and Sonoma County because regardless of what natives say, there is no traffic here compared to what I've seen in other cities that I've lived in such as Dallas and Atlanta and New York. So we're really blessed with that outside of a rush hour where we have a little heavy traffic. We don't have traffic as such. It's so easy to go to the coast where you go to the redwoods within 20 minutes. The farm to table food is fantastic. You don't have to forget about the wine. You can go wine tasting all over every day. But what I like is the opportunity to volunteer. I'm actually, I volunteer in three organizations, one of which is with the Housing Authority, then is the Santa Rosa Manufactured Homeowners Association. And then there's the volunteers and police services. So I get a good cross-section of what's going on in the community and it's really a vibrant community that wants to help one another. And I like living here now. That's great. I like living here too. All right, Commissioner Rawhouser. Well, to me, Santa Rosa, the best word to say is home. I was a little girl here. I went to Spring Creek and I moved away to Wisconsin. I came back in my adult life and grew up here. And after the fire, talking about the sense of community that of everyone who showed up and assisted me in just creating, recreating and regenerating my self-being and my life was amazing. And then I have to tag on with the bicycles because I recently got a bike. I've been really unactive and I used to ride my bike all over Santa Rosa and loved it. And I've just been reintroduced to the bike trails and they're just amazing. And so we've got so much with our park systems and our commitment to volunteering and just that sense of community that we have here. And I really do hope that we can keep that going as we continue our work. Thank you. Excellent. I see some common themes throughout everybody's comments, which is great. Vice Chair Owen. I just enjoy the environment on the road cyclists getting out in the far distant parts of Sonoma County that are quite rural and seeing the beauty of the vineyards or wildlife is really wonderful and the commitment of having open space. I serve on the open space district for the county as well as housing authority. So a great place to raise kids and now mine are all basically grown. But they've gone away and come back and it's just a wonderful place to live. Okay, and Commissioner Burke. Well, I've got to start by saying all of you above. I chose to come to Santa Rosa long time ago, raise our family here and I'm a native Californian, as is my father. So, but that was all in Sacramento. So I spent some time going to school in San Luis Obispo and I was just amazed going from Sacramento to San Luis Obispo and being close to the ocean and having hills and kind of an identifiable community with clean air. And so when I was looking around for auctions for jobs and housing and community development, redevelopment, Santa Rosa just fit everything perfectly. Geographically, this is the right size community and a real focus on making the community better for all the reasons that people have already expressed. So yeah, I can't think of any place better to live. It's really one of the things that stands out to me from what I've heard is that there's a lot of alignment around just the beauty in who we are as a community here in Santa Rosa and I think that really lends itself to the work that you are doing on this commission and how your work is actually contributing towards that sense of community that we are establishing and fostering here in Santa Rosa and ultimately Sonoma County. So hopefully that this icebreaker, this opportunity to share amongst yourselves now will help to inform and influence the rest of the discussions that we're going to have today as we think about what your plans are for the future. So if you could keep that sense in your mind as we move forward, that would be, I think overall helpful to the process. Okay, before we go to the next slide, we wanted to ask Megan review the agenda for today and we wanted to make sure that to see if there's any other items that any of the commissioners would like to discuss as part of today's retreat and I'll keep notes here for myself and make sure to revisit it as we progress through the day. Anything come to mind? And if nothing comes to mind in this moment, please feel free to speak up as we move forward. Seeing none, feel free to raise your hand if need be too. Okay, so moving forward next slide please. I'm gonna turn it over to Megan to go through the next few slides.  So the city council had a goal setting session back in February and what they did was over a two-day process. They reviewed their prior goals and reaffirms how they wanted to proceed as a council. So there are six goals. They are deliver housing for all, reduce homelessness and impacts, ensure a healthy and safe community for all. About economic and community vibrancy, build and maintain sustainable infrastructure and achieve organizational excellence. So you'll see there are some nuances within the goals and some of its maintenance. So maintaining infrastructure, addressing the impact of homelessness as well as helping those who are currently experiencing homelessness and then looking at housing across the board for all residents of Santa Rosa. Are there any questions or comments on the goals? I had a comment regarding the goal of reduce the homelessness. There was something maybe two months ago on the paper that talked about actually developing maybe in conjunction with the county of a homeless plan that we haven't really had a more structured homeless plan. Is that moving forward, Megan? Yes, so there are actually several different components to that. The city itself is currently undergoing a strategic plan process to address homelessness. We are meeting staff here in Housing and Community Services are waiting for the consult to provide us with the draft of the homeless draft plan and that hopefully we'll be coming in the next two weeks or so. The county itself is conducting a homeless strategic planning process as are some of the other cities. So there are many different attempts being made at that process and if it's of interest we can certainly come back to the housing authority with information on the strategic plan once that is drafted and it's ready to go. All right, thank you. All right, Serena, do you see any hands up? I saw, I was gonna say, Commissioner Downey I saw. I was curious as you're putting this together if you did any comparison and contrast with any other municipalities that are similar to us to kind of get an idea about us. What we're doing differently, what they're doing differently, kind of, I don't know, doing a comparison. I don't know if that makes sense, Serena. I may need to defer to Megan on that only because I personally wasn't involved in the process to create the council goals but I do know that they brought in an outside facilitator to help guide the council and send exact stuff through that conversation. So maybe Megan, I don't know if there's any other information to share. And Commissioner Downey, is your question specific to the city council goals or the development of this particular agenda? No, my comment was in relationship to our city council goals and priority and how and what will be considered a sister city to us and how do our goals and priorities compared to quote unquote a sister city and I don't know what would be considered a sister city in Santa Rosa. You know, I actually don't know what the background was in the development of the goal process, but it certainly was an opportunity for each council member who now represents as specific district of the city as well as department heads to and public to identify their concerns and areas that they certainly wanted to see additional focus. And so that was the primary rest of the two days was what are the issues and opportunities in front of Santa Rosa and where does the council wanna prioritize their efforts. Okay, thank you. All right, I think we're ready to move on to the next slide. So I wanted to give the housing authority kind of an overview of why we're here. And so California state law allows for housing authorities to be created and there's some very specific provisions and duties. So you're a separate corporate and politic body. You have a lot of leeway in what you can do so you can acquire lease and operate housing projects for low-income persons. You can also develop housing projects. As you may recall from our prior discussions, we only have one physical asset which is the property at 93 Sonoma. So we operate more in the construction and financial components of housing authority law. So we provide financial assistance and they conduct compliance monitoring. And then the housing authority body itself. So state law requires there be five general commissioners and that there are two lieutenant representatives. So unlike other boards and commissions in the city which now have committed to district representatives, we have the appointments at large by the entire council and so that would be the five and five and two. Are there any questions on this particular side before we move on? Commissioner Burke. It's just thanks to Megan for that. You know, I guess in reading the entire section of the state was a community development law. I can't remember what section this in. I'm sorry again, Megan, what was it? Health and safety code. Health and safety, thank you. And it goes back to probably the 40s. It allows for housing authority to exist in every community throughout the state of California. Takes action by the city council or board of supervisors to actually activate it. If they want the city council or the board of supervisors can be the housing authority, they can act in that capacity. Housing authority in Santa Rosa has chosen to delegate that responsibility to the seven members and seven of us, but we are a separate legal entity. You can sue and be sued. You can do eminent domain. You can build public housing. You can do all the functions that are provided for in that particular section of the code. So I've always been kind of a little bit awed by the responsibilities that we have, that we bear. And also the breadth of activities that we could perform. You know, I think this has been kind of honed over the years and it fits well with the needs of Santa Rosa. But I guess what I would suggest is in kind of my final comment is probably would be a good thing for everybody to read at some point in time, just kind of, you know, cursory reading just to get an idea about, you know, how, what a kind of a sobering responsibility we do have. And so, so thanks for having this. It was Commissioner McWhorter and Commissioner Downey and I that we served on the planning committee for this meeting. And so having this on there to alert people to this particular section of the California code was our objective. So thanks for helping us do that. Sure thing. And as we were preparing for it, for this session on the staff side, me coming into it being new, not part of your normal business, I learned that this is the first time you've had a retreat since 2019 and you have some new members that are associated. So part of revisiting the health and safety code and some of the subsequent slides was around getting everybody on the same page and refreshing everybody's memories and such about what the role is of the housing authority, the purpose, staff's roles and so on. So, so with that said, we'll keep on moving and so that we can really get to the meat of today's agenda. So next slide, please. And then turn back over to Megan. All right, so the next thing we wanted to do is just briefly touch on the mission of the housing authority. So as you can see in front of you, the purpose of the housing authority is to ensure adequate, decent, safe and sanitary housing for qualified people within Santa Rosa consistent with state, federal, state and local laws. All right, next slide please. Okay, and then as I touched on in our agenda, some of the roles and responsibilities of the housing authority. So the key objectives of the housing authority are to set funding priorities for affordable housing production and preservation. And this is something that we tend to do on an annual basis as we look towards our notice of funding availability and where we wanna target our financial resources in the upcoming year. The housing authority sets policy for rental assistance to be approximately 2,000 families with the funds that are allocated to us by HUD. And this is the housing choice voucher program that we have administered to us as well as the VASH program and our emergency housing vouchers. And then we also oversee the monitoring of affordable housing units within Santa Rosa. So this once we construct or preserve, then we have a long-term monitoring requirements. Any questions? Mr. Verruck? Thank you, thank you. On this one, I'm not sure this is appropriate place to bring this up, but kind of in a kind of a parallel effort to planning for this, Commissioner Downey and I were assigned to be on the nominating committee. And so the nominating committee has been working and reaching out to see the level of interest on other board members to serve in the officer positions. And one of the things we ran across was reading of the bylaws, our bylaws. And our bylaws seem to call for an election of officers at the beginning of the year to kind of coincide with the council's decisions about new members. And so we've been working on that. And I think we have, there was a plan to have an item on our next month's agenda about the officer's going forward. But just one of my thoughts on that and kind of thinking about it is, in a sense we're so close to the end of the year, is maybe just hold off until we do know what the council is going to decide on representatives for the housing authority and make no changes until that time comes and we have a new board and then we can go forward. So that's just a kind of a comment or an observation that's related to kind of our functions and our role and kind of gets more in the weeds but something I wanted to bring forward. Thank you. And I did make a note of that. And I think we, like I asked at the beginning Ron, is there anything else that you want to address as part of today's process or even future next step? So I made a note of that, that we can revisit as part of the wrap-up at the end of today. Does that work for you? Absolutely, thank you. Great, all right. Okay, next slide for Megan. Okay, then we're gonna touch just briefly on the staff roles and responsibilities. So there are a few staff members that you see consistently here at our housing authority meetings. So the executive director and all of these are called out in the bylaws as well. So the executive director provides the general administration of the authority business as directed by new authority. And then I turn, I in turn provide direction to our staff which is our program managers in the two primary divisions that come to you which is the housing trust and then the rental assistance division and through them their staff. The secretary who keeps the records of the authority who boards all the votes and proceedings and that is Steve Brown with the assistance of Lisa and Jill. And then finally our general counsel which provides the legal advice and representation for the housing authority. And so that is Jeff Burke with Ashley and Parker filling in today. So the city attorney's office provides that legal support to us and provides advice on our day-to-day operations as well as through your meeting process. Next slide. All right, so this is my last slide before I turn it over to Serena. So we have some objectives for today. We wanna provide an opportunity for new commissioners to provide input on the objectives, provide a space for open communication and idea sharing and then finally identify ways to improve the delivery and preservation of affordable housing. Thank you. Great. And I will find my words here. Chair Tess wanted to turn over to you for a moment to share some of your initial thoughts about how, from the chair's perspective about what you would like to see as part of the process today and as you're collecting your thoughts for a moment, Steve, if we could switch it so that I can share my screen, that would be great. And so as I do that, Diane, maybe I can segue over to you to share your thoughts. So you're looking for what my thoughts are as a chair? Yes, just as we enter into this next segment where we're gonna have more of a dialogue and brainstorming session and what your thoughts would be as the chair, what you're hoping to see as part of today's process or any sort of words of wisdom of every who would like to share as we segue to this next segment. Okay. Well, the one thought that comes to mind is we have been meeting virtually for several years here. Which has its, there are advantages but there are also some disadvantages to not actually meeting people in person. And I have decided early on when we got our new commissioners to meet with them individually over coffee just to get to know them and encourage them to be a participatory and perhaps join a committee, subcommittee so that it would build their knowledge base of what we're about, what we wanna accomplish and how we can move forward. So those would be my comments. Great, there we go. I had to thank you for that. I was scaling with my screen to try to get everything all set up for us today. Okay. So with that said, let's go ahead and switch gears to the discussion that we have here today. Okay. So first question. What are your ideas on where the future emphasis should be in respect to adding to or improving the city's housing inventory? So as you're considering these thoughts one of the things that I'm gonna do is as I was saying or as Church has been saying this is the virtual world. And pre COVID when we were in person you would have seen these statements and questions up on flip charts. But since we're in the virtual world we're going to improvise. And what I'm gonna be doing is I'm gonna be capturing your thoughts here on the PowerPoint so that we can keep it all nice and collected. And then at the end of today's retreat we'll go through a process of kind of summarizing where we've been today and then ultimately determining next steps. So just a quick little process check in there and then otherwise give it some thought for just a moment for yourselves. And as I get myself set up here I'll be ready to take your thoughts and capture them. Any questions about process at all or are you ready to dive in? So what would this look like for you? You were what would be some ideas of how you're envisioning the future and maybe some of you who were on the committee that designed this agenda want to go first so maybe you can contribute some of your thoughts around what inspired you to include this objective on the agenda for today as a way to get us started. Kushner Burke. Thank you, you know, I'll go for- Oh, you're on mute. There we go. There we go. Okay. Okay, yeah, okay. So we did have a discussion Commissioner McBurter and Commissioner Downey and I had built about kind of what does this look like? And one of the things that came up in the conversation was, you know, we have a real focus to a large degree because of the funding sources that we have on new construction. And also we're kind of reacting to the proposals that come to us. And so kind of turning that around a bit to the degree possible because we know we have constraints because funding that comes our way for housing comes with specific objectives which don't always unfortunately match up with what the needs of our community might be. And an example of that is in, well, the housing element, for instance, came up with information about overcrowding being a major problem in the city of Santa Rosa more so than anywhere else in Sonoma County. The generation housing group had a similar study and really emphasized the problem in Santa Rosa with overcrowding. And then there have been programs in the past that are really focused on neighborhoods that are in trouble, that they have violence, they have too much drugs, the conditions of the housing is very poor. And so, you know, one of the observations that I'll just speak for myself I've had is that the impact on the people that are in our community already is a very, very large concern, a high priority in my mind. And well, what can we do to get on top of improving those neighborhoods to keep them sliding further downhill and growing and becoming an insolvable problem because we haven't addressed it early enough. So that's more of a focus on the preservation of housing than it is on new construction. And also another related concern of mine is that we have a homeless problem now, the city council has homeless as a major objective. And if we don't do something about the problem that exists with overcrowding and housing conditions and increasing rents, I think the homeless problem is probably going to grow. So the thought about that is to do find an expert consultant as best we can that could study the conditions in Santa Rosa, look at the current conditions, look at the need for additional housing, look at homeless and help shape where resources should go in the future. Where are the highest priorities? Is it on dealing with overcrowding? Is it creating new housing? And to what degree might we shift our focus to address the needs that come out of such a study? So a study to really analyze. San Diego did one recently and that caught my eye, I think it caught the eye of one or more of the members of the board. So bottom line is help us guide this effort not by our sense of what should be done but by a more in-depth study to ask the question, how could funds best be used related to new versus preservation of housing given our current conditions? I'm trying to capture the essence. My intent is to capture the essence of what you're sharing here. So by putting up here on the screen, so please let me know if I've captured it and correctly. Okay, commissioner Downey. Hi, it's wondering for the future for me, it looks like diversifying the types of housing available for people. For example, modular homes, tiny homes, yards, free houses, anything that meets the criteria for safe and sanitary housing and not just be so focused on one type of sticks and bricks might give us more bang for our buck if we can look at housing people for cheaper without sacrificing safety. And I think that would be a great way to capture the expanding homeless needs that Steve had just mentioned is just looking at, what are the different types of new technologies out there? What about affordability? And just looking at what are some viable options versus what are some things that are just absolutely non-starters. Probably the treehouse would be a non-starter, although I was being very happy living in a treehouse a lot that had an elevator. Creative solutions there. Okay, vice mayor, vice chair Owen. So one of the things that I get involved in in working for exchange bank is the affordability and housing affordability. So this dovetails very well with being on housing authority, but if we look at the amount of units that we have that are coming online, and this is what Megan put on earlier, we had 143 units coming online within the last six to nine months. There's 444 under construction right now. And this is the fully funded, another 179 fully funded projects. So there are a lot of affordability projects coming online, but what's difficult is what is referred to as the missing middle, which are the people that make 80% to 120% of area median income. So that is where, and especially with interest rates going up, the pricing of houses has gotten more expensive because of what the mortgage rates are now versus even six months ago. So how the housing authority can look at ways to help with the people making 80 to 120% of area median income or AMI. And that's important if you look at the increase in minimum wage is great for these individuals, but it's also to the extent that you have two people making a little bit over minimum wage or minimum wage, can put them outside the ability to qualify for 60% of AMI or less. So it's not providing housing units for work for, it's sometimes referred to as workforce housing, people working in the service industry that can't afford apartment rents. So it's difficult to help these people because most of the programs are based upon people making 60% of AMI or less. All right, Mr. McKinnon. Thank you. I just looked back at the council goals and priorities and their first line says, deliver housing for all. I think it should have said, deliver affordable housing for all, based on all the comments that have made, that we've made right so far. That is what's hurting in the city. And I'm involved as president of the Santa Rosa Manufactured Homeowners Association, we're gonna be meeting just coming Monday with owners of some of the mobile home parks representatives. And we're gonna be sitting down and my association wants a reduction and a revision of the rent control ordinance because what's happening now with inflation, these houses manufactured homes that were supposed to be affordable for seniors haven't kept up with inflation. Our colas and whatnot have not kept up with inflation. We've looked at rents, how they've increased over 20 years and we looked how the colas have increased and rents have increased 80% over the past 20 years and the colas have increased 47%. So there's a 33% fall behind which falls in line with everything that you read in the newspapers about what's happening to seniors across the country. No matter how big the increase is, no matter what we do, we can't keep up. So we're looking and Megan and Jeff Burke are working with us to hopefully get with the owners and I'm not optimistic about our chances that we have a revision of the rent control ordinance just like Oakland has and Antioch has where they're taking maybe 60% of the San Francisco CPI and capping it at 3%. So we're really looking at the word affordable very hard and I don't remember when you said these city council goals were done but I would have felt better if I saw the word affordable in there. I just to clarify, they were done this past winter. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Sure, no problem. Thank you. Chair Chast, do you need a commissioner's brownhouser or the quarter? I'll take the next one. So one of the things that I found that happened a couple of years ago was the acquisition by Burbank housing of Parkwood existing apartments. And even though those apartments were not technically affordable by our definition and in terms of long-term affordability, they are now. And I'd like to see more acquisitions whether it's from a nonprofit or even the housing authority to purchase a existing building that makes sense financially and to add to the housing stock by bringing it under the umbrella of affordability and long-term affordability. Any other thoughts for this particular slide? Okay. All right, well, we are moving forward to the next one. Just a quick time check. So we're at 2.55. We have until 4.30 when the meeting is scheduled to end. So somewhere around the four o'clock mark or so give or take, we'll start shifting towards next steps in a wrap-up. So we'll have about the next hour to get through a couple more slides. And if we finish early, we have a little extra time. So, all right, moving to the next slide. Okay, so what would your thoughts be related to distribution of assisted housing throughout the community? So I would imagine this would mean, and please, committee, please correct me here or weigh in, but this is around whereabouts geographically housing, assisted housing is throughout the community and, yes, Mishner, the house owner. I was just thinking about how, we have certain aspects like with the homeless and the people who need a lot of assistance as far as they're getting back on their feet again with the social services, they do need to be consolidated a bit more, but with like the disabled population, our veteran population and just the working poor that are struggling, like the two people making minimum wage, to have them distributed throughout the community is I like that idea of the distribution aspect of the population. So that way we have an interconnected place and so we don't have an area that's known as the projects or we used to look at a certain area of Santa Rosa and that was like the gang town or this was the slum area and this was the elite. So I really liked the idea that we're blending the community and causing the interconnection and interfacing. Thank you. Let's go next. What do you think about in terms of how your current, your current methods of distribution similar to what Commissioner Burke was saying before where currently funding drives your decisions and maybe to a degree availability. But if you were to flip that and you were to look at, well, what if we were being more strategic and where we want to go on the new finding resources to fund your strategic interests? So if you flip the script a little bit, here's your opportunity to think about what would you like to be doing this moving forward? Yes, Commissioner Burke. Yeah, that's a, which you just said captures my interest and to the Commissioner, I was just indicated does as well. You know, there's been lots of good developments that have come out of our current process. One's not too far, probably a little over a mile away from where we live in Lincoln Valley on the corner of Highway 12 Sonoma Highway and Kalistoga Road. And you know, it's, I think, Megan was at 99 units, it's close to 100 units. And a good percentage of those are farm workers. And I check into neighbors next door from time to time, just get a sense of what people are thinking and feeling. Well, that's been a hotbed issue. To a large degree, because of this development and people are talking about development all over town, which is true. But they're mainly concerned about traffic, they're concerned about egress in the situation where there might be a fire, people getting out of Oakmont. But my view of it is that to have projects like that distributed throughout the community to the degree possible makes for a much healthier community. The schools are better balanced with different income groups. People get to know one another, appreciate one another for different reasons than they would if we had more enclaves of just one income group or another. So again, the degree possible, well, an example of this would be to look for property and then to solicit proposals for development rather than the other way around. I think that kind of captures what I wanted to capture. Okay, anybody else? Okay, on that note though, I was just wondering when you talk about the distribution of assistance throughout the communities, how much is gonna be, as you look for acquisition of properties in certain development other areas, how much is community relationships or community relations gonna be a part of that? I.e. what I mean is literally when you start going in communities where people are not used to see transients coming in for assistance, how much is gonna be put towards community outwards so people understand why the people are there. Any other thoughts for this one? And as we progress through some of the other slides, if something comes to you related to the topics as we move along, I can always go back and add them, it may be. Sorry. Sorry, so I was just looking at the second bullet and it says look for income property rather than only solicit projects. If you could modify that and just say housing authority seeks to purchase property and then solicit proposals or something like that. In other words, you know, where the housing authority would take funds by land and then solicit developers to build the housing. So it's buying funds to purchase land and then solicit, say that last part again for me and then solicit proposals to build.  Yes, I am. Proposals to build rather than respond to proposals. All the time. Hold it, respond. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay, great. Commissioner Downey and then chair test. I think I'm using the right term but I'd like to see the creation of a housing czar. Somebody whose sole responsibility is to help neighborhoods develop across social economic lines, ethnic lines and just facilitate some of the projections that we have towards people who are different and people who we may perceive as not wanting to be, you know, in our neighborhood so that conceivably if there was a piece of land that opened up in Fountain Grove or if there was a piece of land in Recon Valley or even South Park for that matter, that the housing czar could go in and help prep the conversation address the myths and concerns and help to build a vibrant community that wants to be accountable to each other. Yeah, and the example I can give you is, you know, I grew up about a block and a half from a jail and there was never any incidents in the neighborhood. People never talked about their houses depreciating or safety issues. Yeah, we just knew that there was a jail at the end of the streets and they would let some of the inmates out to work on the grounds and as a way of rewarding good behavior and letting people get out in the sunshine. So I think a facilitator a czar would be constructive as far as problem solving and really getting things from concept to action as quick as possible. Okay, Chair Tist. Yes, just to build on to the comments by Commissioner Burke regarding the housing authority finding properties to purchase. On the city website under housing authority, there is an interactive map that shows where all the affordable projects are within Santa Rosa. So you can get a pretty good glimpse of where most of them are occurring and where some of them are not and you can even dive right in there and see what the actual addresses are. So we have the tools, we have the virtual tools to if we decide to move forward and have the housing authority purchase properties, we have those tools to look for those kinds of opportunities that are available and not actually keep going in the same direction where a lot of the houses are or buildings are, but to some other area of town. I made a note of that so that we can add it to not on this particular, well, actually I guess it could be on this particular slide. So the city has tools available to map out existing properties and identify opportunities for future investments. Well, I believe the recent housing element also had the availability to take and look at properties, actually targeting properties that could be purchased. Which could be purchased, okay. All right, any other thoughts for this slide? All right, so we're gonna go ahead and move along to the next one. We have a couple more, this one and one more to go. All right, so next we would like to, we've heard some people touch on it already, but we wanna have a concentrated conversation around an overview of housing types needed. So for families, seniors, homeless, veterans, people with disabilities, et cetera. So when you think about it in terms of the different housing types that are needed, what would be some areas that you would want to focus on as part of your envisioning the future? So again, you've already started touching on this, but if you wanna elaborate a little bit more. So yes, Vice Chair. I think if you look at what you have listed, the answer is yes to all of that. But more importantly, it doesn't have to be done individually. So what works well are mixed income projects where you have market rate mixed with affordability. What works well is, and hasn't worked that well in Santa Rosa is it was a push to have housing units with retail underneath, small shops. That hasn't worked very well in Sonoma County. The city is working very hard to have market rate housing units downtown. There is one project being built on 4th Street that will test that theory. But to have mixed used, mixed affordability in projects, projects that have housing as well as a commercial component to it is smaller units. I know of developers that are doing small apartments to have more density. So that the units themselves are actually less expensive than a market. There's still market rate, but the units are small. So the rents are far less and the common area is bigger. So it's mixed use housing with, and there's small aspects to it where you have houses that are rented by bedrooms rather than units. That's something that can be looked at. So it's being more creative than just what you have listed there and how do you mix those things? The one thing that I've always thought of is, higher density units in Sonoma County, people find that in cities. Normally people moving to Sonoma County don't look to, and we started off by talking about how open space around here and how well you can get out to live in a mid-rise or high-rise apartment building in Sonoma County doesn't quite mix with the ability to be out in nature. So it's not necessarily the same kind of thought process. Yes, Mr. Rawhouser. Yeah, I was just thinking of one population we haven't really had much of a conversation about because in my mind's eye, I consider a lot of our veteran population to be basically older single men. And we have a population of older single women that weren't military available due to maybe cultural beliefs and that creating small communities like tiny houses for those women that maybe were service people in service industries and definitely to put some consideration into the mobile home living and also the tiny home living to have a variation compared to the big huge complexes that we're doing, such as the one on Kiwana Springs. Can we shoot a video? Yeah. One thing that the past two people have mentioned, I wanted to mention that I think manufactured homes slash mobile homes are what fit into that area and with a revised rent control ordinance can make the word affordable very strong in that area. And all of those because the manufactured homes you can get from maybe one bedroom 750 to 900 square foot home or the maximum ADU size of 1,200 square feet. So it works very, very well and it's affordable. Yes, Mr. Schubert. Thank you. You know, following up on the comments, all really good comments, I'm trying to think, I guess Megan and Jeff in particular, maybe others have insight into this. How would you go about, and maybe it's in the housing element already in the details, have to go back and look at it from that perspective to answer the question myself, but if that doesn't provide the information. In other words, if you say, okay, here's the kind of housing that really we need now for the thing we need to do now and we have limited resources, how do we find out what that is so we can be more proactive, more of a rifle shot than a kind of a scattered gun approach at achieving, meeting that particular need. It's kind of like a market city for the city of Santa Rosa, Jeff, I don't know. And it's something like that that would kind of guide our decisions on how best to use resources. If I could jump in, you were developing plans like the consolidated plan which we submit to HUD and identifies the needs in Santa Rosa, we rely on census data. And so that's where other groups like Generation Housing extract information on overcrowding and the number of units we have at each bedroom side. So that is one of the primary areas where we're able to pull data. It does lag a little bit behind the current stop. But the other component that I think it's important to remember as we're looking at where you might want to influence the market is that the housing authority provides a portion of the financing for a project. So the project does need to be competitive in other funding arenas in order to get to construction. So what I mean is kind of a focus study to kind of give you more detail on what that would look like in the next three to five years. We could certainly look at doing a more in-depth study of what we think we would need. Okay, Commissioner Warholzer. I'm sorry, I didn't lower my hand. Anybody else like to comment on this particular slide? Oh yes, Commissioner Downey. I don't know if Commissioner Owens is helping out with this, but moving forward, creating financing opportunities so that people who are in these specific categories can have the opportunity of owning their place to live as opposed to being perpetual renters for their entire life. All right, any other closing thoughts for this one? All right, moving along to our last one. Okay, so solicitation process for funding resources. So it seems to be you're already kind of going that direction with the conversation. So it's a good segue. So who would like to begin with this slide? And when you think about it in terms of what you're currently doing, are there things that you're already doing that you want to continue that you think are working? Are there things that you would want to potentially see changed? I think we already have some of those potential changes that we've already discussed around looking at need versus just exclusively the need for the need for the need we've already discussed around looking at need versus just exclusively funding sources, but I don't know enough about your process to speak in an educated way. So please, what would you like to see different? What to see?  I think maybe trying to boil it down what it would look like. And I guess it would be an analysis by a competent consultant to take a look where the focus ought to be for our funding for preservation of housing vis-a-vis new construction and then to provide additional detailed information about the housing types that can successfully be funded and developed. Are you thinking like three to five years, 10 years? Like timeline-wise, do you have any thoughts? I'd say three to five. I mean, that's the one thing I learned about government is that whatever you do today it's out of date six months from now. So it's always a problem, but you do your best. Yes. Okay, Mr. Downey. I don't believe the cities of 501, C3 but within the same vein, creating a position for a fundraiser to look at different avenues as opportunities unfold that could be brought into Santa Rosa for the purpose of helping to supplement and step up our ability to develop housing. You have thoughts about what some of those different avenues would potentially be? Somebody who would be very adapted understanding the state laws, the federal laws. And I think we have an attorney with us. I don't even know if it's legally possible for the city to have an identified person for the purpose of identifying funding resources for the city for a particular program and in the same sample, a football housing. And then the last point I wanted to make is I know we're permanently concentrating on partitioning groups of people but kind of giving back to what Commissioner LePenna was saying is that the ability to earn and what you can do is so uneven that it would take some amazing creativity to fill in the gap of making sure that people could afford something if that makes any sense. So increase options for folks regardless of income levels. Affordability options, subsidies, grants. There's something to help narrow the income disparity between what I'm capable of earning and what I'm capable of affording. Any other thoughts for this slide? Yes, Chair Plastik. Oh, you're on mute. Thank you. Years ago, when I was more involved in housing, there at that time was an idea that was put together by one or two banks where a number of banks would come together in the effort to build affordable housing whether it was a house, in the effort to build affordable housing whether it was ownership or whether it was rental. And I don't think there's anything like that happening now. Maybe there's a prohibition of that. I don't know. It could be the Community Reinvestment Act may be able to handle something like that and any feedback that Vice Chair Owen might have if there is something like that or has been thought of at Exchange Bank. I'd like to know. Yes, Chair Owen. Okay, so I'll take my Housing Authority cap off and put my banker hat on. There used to be a consortium of lenders here that would do loans together that some of those banks have been sold for no longer in the marketplace. CRA or Community Reinvestment Act is very important to every single bank. Exchange Bank being in... We'll keep my bank's name out of this, but I'll talk in general terms. It's very important to... Every bank is a conscious effort to always try and provide affordable housing because of either mandate or because it fits the goals and the culture of the organization, which my employer fits both of those. So that is something that's been looked into. It hasn't been put together in a little while. Everybody kind of does their own thing recently in terms of doing CRA type of financing. But I don't see that being a detriment to what's being done. The project being highly regulated organizations, we have to make sure a deal underwrites and is a solid loan, regardless of if it's CRA or not. Yes. Some of you may remember Jay Strongren, who was very active in the consortium when it was meeting and working on reviewing projects that would be a benefit to the community. As Jeff Owen just mentioned. And they did some pretty amazing things. One that really stands out in my mind was they funded the purchase of a multifamily development, existing development in the Apple Valley-Papago neighborhood as a part of helping to bring stability into that neighborhood and to deal with some of the problems. And then I'm not sure where they got their additional funding. Some of it was public, but they also went out into the conventional banking community and purchased a number of other properties in that neighborhood so that they had a real influence on the way that those properties were managed and maintained. And so when it's used in that way, it can be very effective. That's for this one. We went along to next steps. So we wrapped up the primary points that we would like to, we planned to cover for today. So as far as next steps, I may need to turn to Megan and Diane to help me out a little bit here. I definitely think that there are a lot of things that really showed up in multiple slides. So on the staff in the side of things, we can take a look at all of the points from today, compile them, essentially seeing them, and identify them, narrow them down. And I'll ultimately come and then I'll share with Megan and she can take it from there. So I'll have to turn your bird away in a little bit more on the next steps. But as far as other topics to discuss, I just wanted to bring that back up. And I'm going to turn to Chair Tess and Megan to see if you want to just stop that today, because there is still some time, but this is a wrap. Or if you want to defer to another meeting, which is what Kushner Burke was talking about, bear with me, it's not entirely understanding at all that there's a nomination committee. And then there are, there were an interest in maybe reviewing some bylaws and maybe officers and how they're selected. So that was just brought up at the beginning. So I wanted to commit to bringing that up again and see if that's something you want to discuss now or if you wanted to table it for a future agenda. I think Megan had suggested that the nomination committee issue be brought up at the October meeting. Okay. Okay. I'll add that in here so that everything is captured in the presentation together here. So review, nomination, committee, that October meeting. Okay. Is there anything else from the next step's perspective that came to mind for anybody? Oh, yes. Did you ask her? Oh, Mr. Gowey, did you? Oh, I'm sorry. I think it would be really interesting to get together with some identified professionals and rank. What's would be the most feasible and what would be the most far-fetched as far as creative ideas that we're coming up with and then coming up with our conclusions as to what's the most doable and seeing what it would take to put that into an action plan. And, you know, I'm sorry, Jeff, but I think of you as a consummate banker. So, you know, I think that you have some amazing insight as to how that whole process works. So you'd be the example of somebody who I would want to see be, you know, part of this conversation. Can I just get volunteer? Fisher Burke. Yeah, just on the nominating committee status, Megan, is it, is it going to be put in a format where we can talk about the possibility that I mentioned of kind of just sliding things forward until after the council has decided on new commission members? Yeah, I'm thinking I'll work with the city attorney's office to form it as an item so we can take either action or have direction. So there will be some kind of formal outcome with that. Yeah. Okay. Good. Good. And then another thing is I agree with what the commissioner and Danny said about the process and getting, you know, some better information from more in-depth analysis. And I think the way that you do that is you really focus on what are your questions? What are the specific questions that you want to ask a consultant to provide answers to? Anything else for our next steps that you wanted to capture? Okay. And Megan, I don't know this, but are you intending to summarize this information and bring it back at a further meeting or how are you thinking we take it from here? Yeah. Thank you, Serena. I think there's been a lot of great information and ideas that we've shared today. So certainly we've achieved one of our desired goals in having a conversation about this. But I think it'd be beneficial to all of us if this is put into a document. We'll share it at an upcoming meeting and maybe have some further discussion about what we want to do with the results of this afternoon and how to proceed. Because there's a lot of ideas that have been shared. Some involve potentially hiring consultants. So we would need to talk through that process and what that would look like. So we'll certainly be coming back and sharing this information and having more conversation. Okay. So let's see here. All right. So now we are at the wrap up. So this is a way for us to have some closing comments about today. I wanted to hear from Megan and Diane or a chair test about how you've seen today and then hear from each of the commissioners or whoever would like to speak about what do you think would be needed for you to be successful moving forward? And then also what do you think staff would need to be successful in moving forward? I'll include those talking points here on the slide. But Ed, you start to think about that. But so what would you as commissioners need to be successful? What would staff need to be successful? This arena, if you want me to start, to be happy to as the director and the liaison between the commissioners and staff, certainly understanding what your goals and what the housing authority sees as success and what they can be proud of helps me understand what direction we should be moving and where we should be focusing our staff resources and efforts. Yes, chair test. Yes. Just as a follow-up, I think it's important for the commissioners to have a summary of some of the things we've talked about today. There are very many good ideas. And I think the fact that if we can actually see them, hone them down, and then come up with a plan, that would be most helpful. Mr. Everett. Just what chair test said, kind of focused, I would call it a scope of work. If we can come up with a scope of work that someone, be it staff, be it a consultant, would perform to provide the information to guide the implementation of our goals. And then to share that with key entities like city council and the planning commission and any other appropriate board. I couldn't share it with you. Yeah, I couldn't agree more with what Steve just said. I used to have to write scopes of work for contractors when I was in the construction business. So that's a very important thing. Also, no, well, let's just put it this way. I hope we don't have many more Zoom meetings. I want to meet in person. We've never been in the chamber, council chamber. I want to meet with my commissioners in person. I guess. The housing authority has some fairly specific rules and regulations and compliances that they have to abide by. What I'd be curious to know is within the parameters of what this organization does. Is there any room for flexibility without triggering a violation or what are you doing, even though you're trying to provide housing for people? What would some of that look like for you? Types of housing being built, stacking funding sources, being gentle with staff. So we're not creating this oppressive amount of work, but just being very, I don't want to say thrifty, but just being very, okay, where are we going to get the most bang for our buck? Anyone else? And it could be success look like for you personally as a commissioner as well. Not just about the totality, but it could be something specific that you would need personally to be successful as a commissioner. More of these retreats, more than every three years. Oh, yes. I was just going to agree with Mr. LePenna about meeting in together in the chambers would be really nice because it's just such a different energy that we could create together. One of the, when we outlined what the housing authority is made up of and the five commissioners and then the two tenant commissioners, I was struck by the fact that the tenant commissioners are only have a two year term unlike the five of us who have a five year term. And just knowing the length of time it takes to understand some of the concepts, some of the wording, some of the processes, two years is about the time you're finally understanding things and can make meaningful contributions. And I wondered where that two year thing came from because I find the tenant commissioners have just as much good information to share as the rest of us do. And I'd like to see or understand why they're only two years and not the four years. Unless there's any other thoughts, that brings us to the end of the, to the retreat portion of the session today. So I think I will turn it over. I'm not sure who goes to at this point. So I'll look to chair tests and Megan to take it from here. At this point we move forward for public comments for this item 14.1. If you wish to make a comment via zoom, please raise your hand. If you were dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. You will have three minutes. Chair test of the we have one raised hand from generation housing. So I will allow them to speak. Good afternoon chair test vice chair Owen and staff. My name is Cal weeks. I'm the policy director here at generation housing. I just wanted to take a quick moment to, to really just thank all of you for being here today. It is a bit of a time commitment. I really appreciate all your thoughtful comments. I don't want to color any of that conversation because I really think it was just a really productive, a really productive use of time. So, so I'm, I'm incredibly grateful and, and I would just add that I'm actually equally excited. I'm on a local city board myself and we're excited because we're, we're actually having our, our first meeting this week actually that will be hybrid. So I take that as a positive sign of, of, you know, more, more great things to come. So again, thank you so much for, for everything that you all do and for taking time out of the day to be here. I really appreciate it. And if you ever want to chat, I'm more than happy to sit down and, and, you know, talk policy. It's what I do day in day out with that. Thank you so much and have a wonderful day. Thank you. Thank you for your comments call, Callum. And chair test. I see no other hands raised at this time. Megan, do you have anything further to add before we adjourn this meeting? I just want to thank the commissioners for taking the extra time out of your days today to contribute to this. I think it was very helpful to be able to a lot of great ideas and information that we'll be able to look at going forward. I hope improve the housing that we assist here in Santa Rosa. So thank you so much. And with that, we will adjourn the meeting. And I'd like to thank everyone for helping and Serena happy. Thank you for your guidance on this and putting this together for us. Very much appreciated. And we got through several zoom codes. So we're doing well. Have a good, good couple of days ahead. Thanks.


Welcome back. Yes, it's time for Winner Home on Afternoon Express. We follow three very talented young designers as they transform three empty properties at the Valdivia State into dream homes using finishes provided by Caesar Stone and Plaskon and at the end of it all you guys get a chance to be entered into the grand prize where you could win a one of those properties to the value of three million rand. Yesterday we saw our design contestants meeting with their mentors to discuss plans for their bathrooms. They've been hard at work and with only two days left to finish. Let's head over to Valdivia to see how far they've come. I don't know about the other guys. I heard they're a bit behind but as you can see everything looks perfect and I'm loving it. I have a few final touches to look after and some cleaning to do, but I think let's just do the final touches. So these are beautiful marble holders for anything that you might need in the bathroom. Just the final two. Right here. I've always wanted to design a vanity like this and Caesar Stone made it possible. So I collaborated with Crip Creations for the vanity underneath it that's floating against the wall. I love the angles, the color, the base of it. It's amazing and it brings the whole space together. Final day for the bathrooms and I'm nowhere where I thought I'd be. Like if you asked me last week if I'd be here I wouldn't have said I'd be at this stage. Right now I still need to get my mirrors on. The shower I'm standing on is not tall yet. So that's like one of my biggest worries and I've had to make a few sacrifices with my design like the screen that's coming in here. It's no longer going to be the one that I had designed initially because of time. While Minante still seems relatively calm about the situation, his mentor Bal Bellingham who paid a surprise visit is less impressed. This is not where I thought it was going to be at this stage. I thought I was coming in for final touches. Yeah, I'm not, I am, I am shocked. I am really shocked. What is the big hold up? What do I mean? Honestly, I was supposed to be a team to add in final touches, to add in, you know, plants, all the final things and it's now... Like my biggest worry from the beginning was the tiling. I've been trying to push that to be done but that's the thing that's been holding us back because even the board can't go in because we've seen it's way for the tiling to be finished. So is the mosaic the problem? Yeah, because even now we still need to wait for it to dry and clean it up and sort out there on top. I can't waste my time coming through, driving through for nothing. Honestly, I can't. So wait through from here. I mean, what do we do now? We're going to miss our deadline. We're just going to hope that the viewers love you. Which I think they do, but I mean, no one's going to see what your vision was. You spend so much time planning this, painstakingly planning this and no one's going to see it now. I'm devastated. I honestly am. I'm worried. I'm concerned. I also feel bad. I feel bad permanently. To a degree I feel that I... I thought he had it. I thought he had it in the bag. We went through everything. We made all the decisions, the stylistic decisions. We planned it and I handed it over and I really... I thought it would happen. I really did. Maybe they still hope. Maybe they can still pull us together in a few hours. I'm not optimistic though. And again, I'm just... I feel... I'm devastated. I'm devastated. Our plan is to get the shower... the shower floors as done as soon as possible. And then the tiling is done that I'm happy about. Because that means that my part can then go in. And then with this, it's just a matter of waiting for the music to try out.  And my vanity and the steel stand are ready. It's just a matter of putting it in. To be honest, at the moment, I'm not sure if I'm going to be done on time. So, it's very worrying. I must be honest with you. While Rudolph isn't much further ahead than Menendley, his bath and shower have been fitted and he's outsourcing the finishing touches. Oh wow. Only two days left. Gents and Lady Menendley better pick up his game in this competition if he's hoping to obviously win this competition. This afternoon we are once again having a private property chat where we focus on a beautiful property and its surroundings as well. So as well as we're going to be focusing today on specific rooms in it, today being the bathroom. So with us to do this chat and to join us in the loft today is franchisee and principal of Real Nets Durbanville, Cape Town, Christine Appel. Welcome to our loft. Thank you. Lovely being here. Thank you. I always ask all of our guests that are involved in property, could you take our loft and sell it for millions? Yes. Give it to me. Oh, I'll be glad. Fantastic. Christine, it's so good having you here in the loft. And I've been so looking forward to having these conversations because there are, I think a lot of stresses that come with buying new properties and private property has got amazing, amazing places to find for a new neighbourhood in people's lives. So which one are we looking at today? We are looking at the Wellgefonden Estate in Durbanville. It is a, I would say a medium sized estate, 168 properties with more than four hectares of parks inside the estate. So it's a lifestyle estate. It's man security and it's very good value for money and that's what makes it so attractive. That's the place where children still play in the streets. Get there on the summer evening, 7th City. The streets are alive. Mummy don't have to worry about little one going to a friend, couple of houses away. It's safe. Also it's beautiful, beautiful views outside living. The owners there are very proud of their estate and then also about the future, plan developments in the area. A lot of emphasis placed on education. What is planned for the near future is a primary school. Shortly after that we'll follow a secondary school and what very few people know about at this stage is that there is a university being planned and all within a five kilometre range of the estate. Wow, so it is investment time. People better start getting their assets liquidated to get ready for this, but which property specifically are we looking at in Valcher Fonden? We are looking at a property which is quite large, 520 square metre property and it is in a very, very prime position in the estate. It borders on the... It's beautiful. It is beautiful. It borders right on the park of the estate with unlimited views of the Burland Mountains. So it is absolutely prime, prime, prime and as it looks from the outside, so it is on the inside a huge emphasis on design and on quality of finishes. Okay, so let's talk through some of those because I've seen that they've got an incredible kitchen and a cellar. Yes. The kitchen, let's start with the kitchen. Very well equipped. I think it's any women's dream. It's part of an open plan setup with dining room, living room, adjacent, bright, enclosed, bright patio. Just for the cook of the house, there is induction cooking and gas cooking and there are three ovens, of which one is a steam oven. Oh, it's my dream. It's an absolute dream. Yes, isn't it? Isn't it? And then just adjacent to that, which is actually part of the kitchen is the scullery, which offers a walk-in-cool room. As one client who I had through the house asked me where she's going to put her double fridge and I said, but you don't need it, why would you need it? And so it's absolutely, the extras are there that you normally won't find in a house. Also, there's this beautiful little wine cellar and from the cellar, if you really want to cool it, or the cellar is cool enough, but if you really want to have cold wine, you take it to the cooler room. The cooler room. That is so nifty and handy. So it is absolutely lovely. Absolutely lovely. So our contestants are currently working in the bathrooms. Well, two of them are working, and then the other one hasn't finished quite just yet, but they're very important rooms in the house. The bathroom in this property is beautiful too. Yes, the bathroom is... Actually, I'm talking now of the ensuite bathroom of the main bedroom. The whole main bedroom setup is a suite, comprising of the study, the main bedroom, a huge dressing room and then this wonderful, beautiful bathroom. It's a spacious bathroom. There's a travertine seam in this bathroom. Oh, okay. Yes, everything travertine, from the floor to the ceiling, spa bath, there's the toilet with a bidet and then you've got double vanities and a large shower and underfloor heating. Electrical towel rails. Wow, so it's designed beautifully. It's gone into all the little details and just taken into consideration who would be inside that bathroom, making it a space that is welcoming, that is friendly, that is warm, at the same time, it's also homely, which I think is great inspiration for our design contestants. And it's your lifestyle for the owners of the house. Exactly. Let's talk a bit about the area because I'm very interested in the investment side of property and the market seems to be doing all sorts of things in South Africa and you mentioned the study of safety within the estate, which does elevate the price slightly if it does, but maybe try and justify for us and explain to us what the property market is doing in a place like Durbanville because, I mean, anybody who's looking to start to maybe invest in a property, whether it be for investment or for living in, wants to know that they are choosing something that is going to have a future plan, that is going to add value to the investment. So what is the property market doing there? Is it a viable place to buy property? Yes, we find that all the time, after the drop in 2008 to 2010, it is as if the market just taken off from where it has stopped. It didn't fall. It was as if there was never a standstill. What's the reason? It just moved on. A popularity. It's good value. People move there. People live there. It's a place where families can live. You have all the beautiful wine farms around. It's a lifestyle. You're part of the city, yet you're not in the city. And what we find currently is demand exceeds supply. Good properties are not readily available, and when it comes on the market, it gets scratched up. Yeah, very, very quickly. So yes, it's a well-priced property gets sold, just like that. But then a property that is not well-priced will still stay on the market. Yeah, true. But the current situation, it does push the price up. Awesome. Christine, thank you so much for all your insights. I really appreciate it. I'm feeling inspired. This house sounds beautiful. It's going to get snapped up like this, I'm sure. Thank you. Remember that you guys can also head over to privateproperty.co.z and vote for your favorite design contestant's bathroom, the ones that have been complete. By casting a vote, you stand a chance of winning paint from Plaskon to the value of 5,000 rand. You can also be automatically placed into the grand prize draw, where you could win one of those completed apartments at the Valdivia State worth more than 3 million rand. Winner Home is proudly brought to you by privateproperty in association with Netbank. We'll be right back after this.