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AHAC Minutes 03/21/2023March 21, 2023 1 MINUTES OF THE COLLIER COUNTY AFFORDABLE HOUSING ADVISORY COMMITTEE Naples, Florida, March 21, 2023 LET IT BE REMEMBERED, the Collier County Affordable Housing Advisory Committee, in and for the County of Collier, having conducted business herein, met on this date at 8:30 a.m. in REGULAR SESSION at the Collier County Growth Management Department Building, Conference Room #609/610, 2800 Horseshoe Drive North, Naples, Florida, with the following members present: Chairman: Steve Hruby Vice Chairman: Jennifer Faron Jessica Brinkert (excused) Arol Buntzman (via Zoom) Gary Hains Commissioner Chris Hall John Harney Todd Lyon Paul Shea Mary Waller County Staff Members Present: Cormac Giblin, Interim Director, Economic Development & Housing Mike Bosi, Director, Planning & Zoning Derek Perry, Assistant County Attorney, County Attorney’s Office Kelly Green, Accountant, Economic Development & Housing March 21, 2023 2 Any persons in need of a verbatim record of the meeting may request a copy of the audio recording from the Collier County Growth Management Department. 1. CALL TO ORDER & PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE Acting Chairman Hruby called the meeting to order at 8:30 a.m. 2. ROLL CALL OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS AND STAFF Mr. Giblin said Mr. Buntzman was joining via Zoom and asked for a vote to allow participation, noting that he can vote, but it can’t count toward a quorum. Ms. Waller made a motion to allow Mr. Buntzman to participate in the meeting via Zoom. The motion was seconded. The motion passed unanimously, 8-0; Mr. Buntzman abstained. Ms. Green conducted the roll call. A quorum of eight was present in the boardroom (not including Mr. Buntzman). Acting Chairman Hruby told the committee: • He wanted to discuss what has occurred in the AHAC over the past roughly 30 days. • He and Ms. Waller have been on this committee for a long time. • We need to think about where we’ve come from and where we want to go as a committee. • We used to meet in this room years ago and no one would listen to us. We couldn’t get any press or the Board of County Commissioners to listen. It was impossible to get somebody to join us when we needed to replace a member. • We just had 11 applicants for the last round, so we’ve received attention and the quality of applicants is high quality people. This is a wonderful board. • He’s optimistic about where we’re going compared to where we were 10-12 years ago and where we are now. • The turning point was when the ULI report got published. Not only did the housing crisis get greater, but the report offered a road map for how we could begin to solve the problems. • He’s optimistic about what happened in the past five or seven years and where we’re going in the future. • This is a slow process. He spoke to a lot of groups around the city – community groups, philanthropic groups, business groups – and they understand the problem. • Our affordable housing crisis made national news last month in Bloomberg business news and about 20% of that article had to do with what happened to us last month. This is good and bad. The exposure helped and we know the community and nation know the problem. The bad news is that the nation knows and that affects our ability to attract businesses and tourism to Collier County. If workers aren’t able to live here, we’re not going to get services and we’re going to end up losing our market share and become a has-been community. • We need to solve the problem. Our obligation is to advise Commissioner Hall and commissioners on best practices and what we can do. • We need to keep it on the level of policy, how the county and government interfaces and performs public-private partnerships with the public sector to make things happen. That includes policy, regulation, subsidizing and filling a gap, whether it’s money, land or other resources. • Government needs to be the gap filler to provide things that the private sector needs to make things happen. That’s our role. March 21, 2023 3 • What’s happened over the past few months since we moved to the Growth Management Department has been very positive and we’re going in the right direction. • We need to let the public know that things are happening and we are doing something. It’s a slow process and it will take time. Development doesn’t happen overnight. • What we do in the next two months may take three years to come to fruition and people need to understand that. 3. APROVAL OF AGENDA AND MINUTES a. Approval of today’s agenda Ms. Waller said she wanted to add a discussion about the Housing Trust Fund to the agenda. Mr. Giblin said that could be added as 6.b. Ms. Waller made a motion to approve the agenda, as amended. The motion was seconded. The motion passed unanimously, 9-0. b. Approval of February 15, 2023, AHAC meeting minutes Ms. Waller made a motion to approve the February 15, 2023, meeting minutes. The motion was seconded. The motion passed unanimously, 9-0. Chairman Hruby told the AHAC: • We need to discuss the new chair and the member vacancy advertisement. • This week, he and Cormac spent an hour or more on how to put this agenda together and what the issues were. • We need a replacement for Joe Trachtenberg’s chairman position. • I was vice chair and am now sitting in the chair position as my obligation. • He and Cormac discussed this and there’s no regulation or code about how we elect officers here. By tradition, we do it every January 1st and Joe was re-elected then. • There are three options: You can let the vice chair assume the chairmanship, so I would become your chair and we would nominate a new vice chair to replace me. The second option is we can wait until we fill the two positions available and then conduct new elections. The third is we can have new elections today and elect a chair and vice chair, even though we’re just two months into this cycle. • It’s up to the committee’s discretion. • He opened it up for discussion. A discussion ensued and the following points were made: • It would be unfair to put new applicants in that role, so we should take a vote now. • Acting Chairman Hruby said he’s served in his role for years, is passionate about it and would take the chairman role if they supported that. • They can vote him in as chair and vote in a vice chair. Commissioner Hall made a motion to elect Acting Chairman Hruby as chairman. Second by Mr. Shea. The motion passed unanimously, 9-0. Chairman Hruby asked for nominations for vice chair. Commissioner Hall made a motion to elect Ms. Faron as vice chair. The motion was seconded. The motion passed unanimously, 9-0. March 21, 2023 4 4. INFORMATIONAL ITEMS AND PRESENTATION a. CoFuture LLC Presentation by Stephen LaMelza Commissioner Hall said he met with them in his office two weeks ago and they brought some good ideas, so he asked them to present them to the AHAC this morning because he considers what they said viable solutions in the short-term. [Mr. LaMelza detailed a PowerPoint presentation and PDF document.] Mr. LaMelza told the AHAC: • He’s a mechanical engineer from Purdue University. • His father has always been a developer . They want to solve the affordable housing crisis. • They developed a panelization product, construct all their steel studs and cut out middlemen to drive the cost down using superior quality material, such as insulated wall panels, steel studs, a TPO-style roof to create a low-maintenance, affordable home. • Our goal is to utilize manufacturing industry standards, tolerances and premium materials to facilitate builders to solve Florida’s affordable housing crisis. • He’s a panelization manufacturer, so he can do this for many builders, but now we’re using his father as a developer to build roughly 1,500 units in Arcadia. • We have the reach to go about 250 miles from our facility to subsidize Collier County. • Our vision is to deliver a premium product to builders that will decrease the labor time in assembling a home by using built-to-specification steel wall panels so homes can be erected in one day. • It’s essentially the Henry Ford assembly-line model. Instead of the product moving, the crews will move. He has one crew that does framing, one for roofing, another siding. • After 36 days, you’re turning out a unit turnkey in one single day. • Our mission is to solve the epidemic of increased housing prices by providing a quality and affordable time-saving product • The inflation rates increasing, the median value of a single family home is skyrocketing, but wages are pretty stagnant, so developers can’t keep up and provide affordable housing to those who need it, the firemen, the teachers, the low-income workers. • They’ll never build equity in their product. We want to provide an opportunity to do that. • In his competitor analysis, steel has greater tensile strength and needs fewer studs than wood. We’re not building out of block. Steel doesn’t warp, shrink or rot, it’s hurricane termite, mold and fire resistant and it’s all recyclable, so it’s a green product. • Wood is not resistant to the elements, so you have about 20% scrap when you’re building with wood versus our product. • We are using 2-3% scrap, so when we built this unit in Punta Gorda, he didn’t have a Dumpster onsite. He used his 8-foot bed in the back of his truck for a Dumpster and that was mainly drywall, nothing else. • The development is set up next to the Walmart distribution plant and that’s where his facility was before Hurricane Ian, but we’re building a new one. • This land is zoned for residential, commercial and industrial, and it’s a $37.5 million approved CD. • We’re building 419 units in Phase 1 and the back half is the remaining units, with a community center, condos and duplexes. Initially, we’re targeting single-family homes. • CoFuture is a premium manufacturer utilizing the latest technology to manufacture prefabricated steel wall panels. We do all our cold roll forming and manufacture everything in house using all American-made steel. March 21, 2023 5 • The problem with the current inflation, the shortage of craftsmen and household income is that it’s nearly impossible for the working class to afford a quality home or raise a family in a safe place. • Our vision and solution is to minimize the cost and production of the final home construction to make affordable homes a reality, stronger, better and faster. • We have a Vimeo with three videos that shows our proof of concept. Mr. LaMelza described the building process and noted that the unit he was showing was built in a day and survived Hurricane Ian. A discussion ensued and the following points were made: • Once finished, the dimensions are 69 feet, 6 inches by 27 feet, with four units per acre. • They’d like to do modular in the future. • They eventually want to turn on water and electricity the same day. • This unit in Punta Gorda has a $302,000 sale price to the end user. • Everything is tiled, impact-rated glass, open-floor concept and there are foam ceilings. • We have 411 acres in Arcadia, DeSoto County, but want to expand to Collier County. • It’s impossible to find land at a number that makes any sense. • This is the highest-rated galvanized, so you could build these houses on the beach. There are 27,000 screws so they never come apart. • Even if it’s hot outside, the air conditioning doesn’t go on even in the late afternoon. It’s the same with the garage, where temperatures are maintained in the 70s, so that helps the people buying a home with the cost of utility bills and maintenance. If it’s cold outside, it stays 70 degrees inside. • There’s no maintenance other than painting the front door and garage door. • There is no penetration in the roof. • The exterior siding is guaranteed “no-fade” for 30 years, so you don’t have to paint it. The roof reflects the heat rays of the sun, so you get a cooler roof. The roof has a pitch, but you don’t see that because the gutter runs along the side and is extended away from the house, so you never get any water going into the house. • From a land-use perspective, Mr. Bosi said four units per acre is pretty common. That’s what our future land-use map would allocate. The task is finding a parcel to build on. • The rezoning would not be difficult to obtain here. • Habitat for Humanity can’t build four per acre anymore because land is too expensive, so we’re building six units per acre. • Wiring and rough plumbing for CoFuture takes one day. The subs get the work done. We expect to be able to build two per day. • They can provide new renderings and just hired a new engineering firm and added a foot to the homes. • We’re building a new state-of-the-art warehouse that should be done within the next seven months. We’re doing all the land permitting now. • We’re in now at the highest cost for steel but it’s starting to come down slightly. If it comes down and we’re able to reduce that price, we’d reduce it for the end buyer. • We want to encourage developers like you who want to come here and build affordable housing. We’ll do whatever we can do to help you find land and go in the right direction. b. Update on Proposed State Legislation, Michael Puchalla, executive director of the Collier Community Land Trust and HELP Mr. Puchalla detailed the status of House Bill 627, the Live Local Act: • It passed the Senate. He heard the House attorney’s analysis and doesn’t know if it will March 21, 2023 6 pass. There may be revisions. • There was an update last night and it now heads to the Ways & Means Committee on March 23, then the House floor. • A lot has to do with funding for the Florida Housing Finance Corp., additional money for sale. You can offset some of your corporate income tax, potential sales tax, by investing in affordable housing, and you do that at the state level. • They’re looking to generate more than $100,000 million for affordable housing. • It’s competitive. Money will be available to support affordable housing. That will dramatically increase because of this bill and have more benefits. • It will provide multi-family and quality mixed-use developments of at least 40% affordable units for up to 40 years. • Land-use changes and comprehensive land-use amendments will enable the county and developers to do more than they can now. • It removes the authority of local governments to adopt or maintain laws, ordinances, rules or other measures that would have the effect of imposing controls on rents. • It specifies requirements and restrictions on counties in approving housing developments. • It authorizes local governments to adopt ordinances to provide an ad valorem tax exemption for portions of property used to provide affordable housing. • It revises the total amount of community contribution tax credits that may be granted for projects. • It provides a sales tax exemption for building materials used in the construction of affordable housing units. • It authorizes the department to make information available to corporations to administer the Live Local Program. • It prohibits the deduction of a General Revenue Fund service charge on documentary stamp tax proceeds. • It provides appropriations. • For the Land Trust, land can be leased for 99 years for low-income housing. It adds value to the Land Trust model. • It’s giving corporate entities an opportunity to invest in the sale program, the state Apartment Incentive Loan Program, which is somewhat unprecedented. They’re giving additional tax credits. • You can offset some of your corporate income tax/potential sales tax by investing in affordable housing. You do that at the state level. • They’re looking to generate up to another $100 million for the sale program. • The GAP funding sale program can be a very beneficial program. It’s somewhat competitive, but the amount of increase in that is substantial. That doesn’t necessarily impact the local community, but the dollars available to help support affordable housing are going to dramatically increase because of this bill. • It’s set for a roughly 10-year period. They’re going to fund an extra $150 million per year for 10 years into the sale program out of general revenue. • Rather than raiding the Sadowski (Housing Trust) Fund, which we’ve heard about for years, they’re putting more money in, so it’s a significant investment. • This will make the landscape for affordable developers more advantageous. They’re going to have some benefits they haven’t had as far as impact to local government. • The big impacts are on multifamily-rental developments, land-use and density. There are some commitments. They’re preempting some of what local governments can do, so we need to be aware that if this doesn’t change, this will probably become law. • The bill preempts counties on zoning, density and height. A county must authorize multifamily and qualifying mixed-use residential developments as allowable uses in any area zoned for commercial or mixed-use if at least 40% of the units will be affordable for March 21, 2023 7 at least 30 years and serves income up to 120% of AMI. • There’s some backlash on that because if we’re only doing 40%, it could probably go a little further. • It states that the county may not require a zoning land-use change, a special exception, conditional-use approval, variance or a comprehensive-plan amendment for such development. If this remains, it somewhat handcuffs what the community can do and will open the door for affordable-housing developers to look at areas they can’t do that now. • The bill provides that land owned entirely by a non-profit that’s leased for at least 99 years for the purpose of, and used to provide, affordable housing for extremely low, very low, low- or moderate-income persons or families is exempt from ad valorem taxation. • That adds value to the Land Trust model as we try to support developers who want to build affordable housing. • There’s a missing middle-tax exemption that was key to this. Developers who are going to commit at least 70 units for affordability for households making up to 80%, or up to 120% of AMI, can get a 75% property tax exemption on up to 120 units. • This will be administered through Florida Housing Finance Corporation. • If a builder wants to take advantage of this, they must fill out a Florida Housing application and basically swear they’re going to keep these units affordable. • There are stiff penalties if they’re found to have not complied with the terms. • To receive the tax exemption, a property owner must submit an application to the county Property Appraiser by March 1st, accompanied by a certification notice from Florida Housing Finance Corp., so they’re going to build a process into this to help local governments work through it. A discussion ensued and the following points were made: • Commissioner Hall asked if there was a time limit on the ad valorem relief, or is it in perpetuity? • Mr. Puchalla said it’s not specified here, but it must remain affordable for a minimum of 30 years. His assumption is that after the 30-year expiration, it’s going to become market rate, then at that point you’re going to lose the exemption. This still needs to be defined. • Mr. Harney said he’d like him to speak to Mr. Bosi about how that affects development. • Mr. Giblin and Mr. Puchalla agreed the county is ahead of the curve. • Mr. Harney asked if there was anything in the county that doesn’t work with this. Mr. Bosi told the AHAC: • Mr. Puchalla described mostly the finance side, which doesn’t involve the Growth Management Plan going to the BCC on March 28. • We’re considering a proposal involving commercially zoned property that sits along the East Trail or the non-Activity Centers. The properties would be eligible to be converted to residential development for affordable housing without a need for a public hearing. • Michael noted that if a developer acquired property and was proposing 40% at 120% AMI, there wouldn’t be a rezoning process. • There are pros and cons, but the Board of County Commissioners would be preempted by the state, which would require the county to allow that to move forward by right. Commissioner Hall said that means that if this passes the House and becomes law, anybody can come in and build. They could go to Third Street and they have the right to build the highest building within a mile and the highest density in the county and all they’d have to do is provide 40% affordability, so they could build 400 affordable units and 600 market rate units and you’d have a tower downtown by right. He spoke with Senate President Passidomo and mentioned that to her. It didn’t matter. It passed hours later. About 99% of the bill is amazing. It gets government March 21, 2023 8 out of the way and allows positive things to happen, but the preemptions have the potential to be very bad for our community. A discussion ensued and the following points were made: • There are always unintended consequences for anything you do and that’s a scary one. • There wasn’t a lot of opposition from the Senate or House, which passed it unanimously. • The Senate’s first committee passed it 18-3, so three people had concerns. • We’ll monitor how it progresses. • We publicize a list of lands available for affordable housing and this adds more, but with a specification on what needs to be done. • The bill requires counties and municipalities to produce their real-property inventory lists by October 1, 2023, and every three years thereafter. • That list must be made available on a county or municipal website and counties and municipalities must include real property owned by dependent special districts within their boundaries. • There are some best practices that they put forward that counties and municipalities are encouraged to adopt in creating surplus land programs. They include establishing eligibility criteria for the receipt or purchase of surplus land by developers, which sounds like our surtax program, so we’re ahead of the curve. • They’re going to encourage making the process for requesting surplus lands publicly available and ensuring long-term affordability through ground leases, which sounds like Land Trust, by retaining the right of first refusal to purchase property that would otherwise be sold or offered at market rate. • It also says the Florida Housing Finance Corporation is working with the Florida Housing Coalition, so the coalition, through its catalyst program, is offering to help local governments. • If this passes and new restrictions are placed on local governments, they’re encouraging us to connect with the catalyst program through the Florida Housing Coalition to get technical advice on making sure everything is correctly done. • The financing for developers enables them to understand what they can apply for and what kind of increases in incentives they could gain from the program. • It’s optimistic that Collier County is ahead of the game. • Commissioner Hall said the BCC is full force ahead for March 28. • Mr. Puchalla is open to exploring housing opportunities. The future may be in new technologies that speed up that timeline. But the land is the big piece. • We need to check to see if there are lands the state owns in Collier. It could be donated and they could work through the Land Trust to find models that work. • A lot involves multifamily, but we still need to focus on single-family homeownership. c. Collier Housing Trends, Shimberg Report (J. Harney Request) Mr. Giblin said Committee Member Harney asked that we include this as an informational backup to today’s meeting. It was prepared in December 2022 by the Shimberg Center at the University of Florida and has more of the same eye-popping statistics about the current state of housing affordability in Collier County. Mr. Harney said this is important information and it’s more dire now after the hurricane. A discussion ensued and the following points were made: • This changes the number we have frequently talked about, a deficit of 10,000 units. This states there were 11,000 at that time (pre-hurricane). • This is a very widely respected organization that prepares these. March 21, 2023 9 • The statistics are sound and very well documented. • This report is used all the time, even in private industry. It’s universally accepted. • The Shimberg Center at USF is mandated by the state legislature to be the affordable- housing data source for use in local government planning. d. 2022 Annual AHAC Report Review (J. Harney Request) Mr. Harney said it’s important for us to take another look back at what we’d planned for this year because we made these plans last summer and we now have new members. This is primarily for information. A discussion ensued and the following points were made: • The timeline is to work on this over the summer. • It goes to the BCC for approval in the fall. • It’s submitted to the state in November or December. • This isn’t the final product, but an annual work plan and tactical part of a strategic plan. • Some are required items by the state and some will be resolved at the BCC’s March 28 meeting. • We’ll have three meetings over the summer. • This gets us working on goals and implementation. • We need to take a fresh look at initiatives. A good example is guest-house rentals. The report says there was no appetite for that, but things changed and we’re now looking into it. • We’re looking to staff to highlight issues we should be addressing, changes in trends. • The Planning Commission voted unanimously last week to forward the Rural-Fringe Mixed-Use District Transfer-Development Rights rules, which is a very big change. • Mr. Harney asked that this be put on the calendar for the Board of County Commissioners to look at because they’re the next step. This would allow developers to build hundreds, possibly thousands, of affordable units in the Rural-Fringe area, an area that hasn’t been developed. It could be developed as villages to be self-contained communities, rather than driving back and forth to a developed area. • It’s important because those villages are going to develop into self-sustaining small entities. Now is the time to ensure we have some affordability in those villages before we end up with the same problem in the east. • The plan that Mike and Growth Management staff developed encourages commercial development there to a much greater extent than other things that have happened recently. Mr. Bosi told the AHAC: • That item is scheduled for the BCC’s April 20 agenda. • Not only does it increase the density, which is .2 units an acre, you can get up to 12.2 units an acre if you’re dedicated it to affordable housing. • It does not require the consumption of Transferred Development Rights. The TDR is not required. • Obtaining TDRs because of assembly can be costly and can put the brakes on an affordable housing project. We removed that restriction. We recognize the public benefit. • The village concept is still our aspiration, but we’ve put language in that says an affordable-housing project could have standard loan commercial and not have to meet all the design requirements, the green-space requirements, the additional aspects of cost for developing a full-blown village, so sustainability can be attained, but at a much March 21, 2023 10 lower price in terms of being able to support a public and commercial center in close proximity or within the community that is being proposed for affordable housing. That’s an allowance that has been suggested as part of those amendments. Chairman Hruby said they can start that in June. 5. PUBLIC COMMENT Peter Goodin, of Spanish Oaks Lane in Naples, told the AHAC: • He noticed they didn’t have a for-profit investor on the AHAC so he wanted to bring some issues to their attention. • Over the last year, taxes went up 24% on his investment properties while taxes on his home dropped 1%. We’re passing that increase on to our renters just to tread water. • Insurance rates are skyrocketing and with just those three things, that would push the one vacant house he has up by $300 a month in rent. • Landlords get a lot of flak over affordable housing, but all this is pushing landlords into the seasonal and vacation rental market. • Golden Gate Estates has often been held up as a problem when it was conceived. There was nothing there and now there’s a sudden transition between high-density and low-density, and the result is that in certain cases, affordable-housing folks would like to turn high-density or low-density Golden Gate Estates zoning into high-density as a means of solving the affordable housing problem. This effectively makes the estates into a land bank for high-density units. • His suggestion to the AHAC and BCC is to consider revising the ADU rules for the Estates because letting homeowners make a decision on whether to put a rental unit behind their house at the same rules for square-footage proportions is a little more consistent with the neighborhood. He believes most Estates secondary roads aren’t near capacity. • Prefab houses might work, as we heard from CoFuture. Commissioner McDaniel has indicated he might support that for the Urban Estates currently, and for the Eastern Estates after infrastructure catches up with its abilities to support that. • He doesn’t know if the state or commissioners would agree to this. It’s in the commissioners’ hands. Mr. Harney asked Mr. Bosi about the rules for ADUs. Mr. Bosi said they need to get an answer on whether it affects a homestead exemption and speak to residents in Logan Woods and Oakes Estates about their opinion of that, then present it to the AHAC and then ask the BCC. We need the opinions of the largest residential areas. We’re thinking about not just targeting the two largest areas. Mr. Giblin said he and Jamie had a conversation with an apartment developer who opened his books to them. On one unit he was renting for $2,500, and his ongoing monthly costs for management were $1,400 monthly, including insurance, taxes, staff, repairs and maintenance, more than half the rent cost. It’s the soft costs, not the actual unit, principal or interest of the actual development. It was eye opening to all of us to see what those numbers were as we continue to ask developers to hit those price points. Chairman Hruby said that’s interesting because the belief is that landlords are gouging. Those three elements have caused an impact not only on apartments, but some businesses. Seeing what’s going on is helpful. 6. DISCUSSION ITEMS a. Subcommittee Recaps March 21, 2023 11 [Mr. Giblin passed out an outline of the discussions at both subcommittee meetings.] i. AHAC Strategic Plan Subcommittee Meeting (fka Bylaws Subcommittee) Mr. Giblin provided a summary of what occurred: • This began as the Bylaws Subcommittee and morphed into the Strategic Planning Subcommittee to set high-level goals of what the AHAC would focus its work on for the upcoming year or five years. • Through discussion and by looking at previous local housing assistance plans like those we heard earlier on the agenda, the subcommittee said these are what we consider important for the subcommittee to focus on in the future. • They created a matrix to specify roles in each of these, such as AHAC, Growth Management, the Development Service Advisory Committee, or the Board of County Commissioners. • This is a working list of 14 items the subcommittee came up with to focus their production of a strategic plan, which dovetails into the Local Housing Assistance Plan we’re required to do over the summer. • He asked Mr. Harney, the subcommittee’s chair, if he had anything more. Mr. Harney told the AHAC: • Maybe this page could be updated monthly for us. • Often, after we’ve worked on something and it makes its way through county processes, we don’t know who has it next or when they’ll be talking about it. That would be helpful for the AHAC. • It’s critical because we now have Jennifer working with the DSAC and Paul is on the Planning Commission. We have those linkages, but we’re not getting all this information back to where we can all see it, do something about it and provide support for what we’re trying to do in those meetings. • It would be helpful to know the status and when they’re discussing it next. • He wants to consolidate all that so everyone can see them together and use it as an ongoing document going forward. Vice Chair Faron told the AHAC: • She didn’t envision this as the final product. It’s an annual work plan they can add to. • Because we’re not defining our goals, strategies and tactics, this is the tactical part of a strategic plan and gets us working on issues. • She’s from the private sector, which says, “Plan your work and work your plan.” • A plan needs definitive things, such as: Where are we now? What is the next step? Who’s responsible? Who are the sponsors? Who’s the staff liaison? What’s the timing for the next step? Where are we with respect to the recommendation piece that goes to the BCC? • This doesn’t say where we are at any point in time. This report can morph into more so someone could pick it up and see what we’re working on and where we are. • This could be a report card we could give the BCC to show what we’ve been doing and that they can expect AHAC recommendations. • We’re fortunate to have a BCC liaison here. We need to utilize this position better. We need to come up with three things Commissioner Hall could be thinking about with respect to the AHAC when he’s with colleagues and constituents and draw on feedback from him and others to inform what happens here. • This document needs time frames, who is responsible for each item, etc. That would allow us to track it and update it monthly. March 21, 2023 12 Chairman Hruby said this is a good summary of the AHAC’s tasks. Mr. Harney said we should spend time on this at another meeting. 1. Affordable Housing Commitment Tracking Report Mr. Giblin reported that: • The Affordable Housing Commitment Tracking Report spreadsheet came out of the subcommittee to track projects once approved or while they’re in the approval stage. • This is first draft is a little confusing and hard to read. • Jamie French tasked our Growth Management IT department to go into its CityView portal and spit out all projects that include affordable-housing commitments or those that are proposed and this is the result. • There are about 70 projects in our Commitment Tracking System or CityView now pending approvals and hearings. • Mr. French wanted to provide this to you to show you we have the data. It’s up to us to make it more manageable, readable and understandable. This is a work-in-progress. • CityView is where our planning and permitting projects are. It’s our building software. • CTS is a Commitment-Tracking System. Once a development is approved, all the development’s commitments are put into a separate system for annual monitoring and tracking through the Commitment Tracking System. Chairman Hruby said when he looks at it, his eyes glaze over. The AHAC needs to know the number of units, how many units are affordable and how many units are non-affordable. What’s the duration? Is it a 15-year, 20-year or 30-year commitment? Where are we in that commitment phase? We need to have some idea about the implications of each of those developments. The narrative and history is interesting, but he wants statistics. Mr. Giblin said that a few weeks ago, he sent Commissioner Hall a list taken from these sources that showed the number of units and the time frame. A discussion ensued and the following points were made: • It’s important for the AHAC members to attend Neighborhood Information Meetings. We can divvy them up. • Mr. Shea said the Planning Commission gets a list of NIMs with dates. Mr. Bosi could mail that to everyone. • Mr. Bosi said the list includes NIM and HEX (hearing examiner) dates. • The idea is for members to go to meetings to listen to concerns. • They should have an elevator pitch on what the AHAC does and what the county’s housing problems are so they can advocate for affordable housing. • We should have a consistent, uniform message, whether we’re having dinner with a politician or going to homeowner association meetings. • It doesn’t have to be so much about the need, but about what we’re doing and what they can be doing to help the situation. • When projects are under review, it could take a year before they go to the Planning Commission. It depends on how many resubmissions a developer needs to make to answer all staff comments. ii. AHAC Surtax Subcommittee Meeting Mr. Giblin provided a summary of the subcommittee’s report: • Based on the feedback at the previous subcommittee meeting and the previous full March 21, 2023 13 AHAC meeting, there’s a strong desire and direction from the subcommittee to look at this in totality, not only the components of the land acquisition, but also in terms of development activity. • We need to sponsor and develop a tool for evaluating both of those at the same time surtax dollars are looked at for spending. • This was presented to the subcommittee two weeks ago and with just a few minor tweaks, they voted to move this on to the full committee. • Our timeline since that meeting has been accelerated. After that meeting, the County Manager’s Office directed us to bring this to the Board of County Commissioners for adoption at the next meeting, March 28. We’d planned on bringing this to the Surtax Committee first, then the BCC, but that changed. • It’s on the consent agenda for next Tuesday’s BCC meeting. It won’t be pulled off the consent agenda unless someone wants to talk about it further. Once it’s approved by the BCC, it’ll move on and become practice. • Because it’s in the BCC’s agenda system, there have been comments from division directors, the County Manager’s Office and County Attorney’s Office. • The first change was to the scoring matrix, page 1. The County Manager’s Office didn’t feel it was necessary to award points to just for submitting a cover letter, so their recommendation is to make that a zero-point required submission and to add to the two extra points to the Property & Business Plan, so those would be 0 and 45. • The next change is on page 2 under item number 5, the fifth bullet-point down. There was some discussion by the Surtax Subcommittee about this item, as well as the County Manager’s suggestion. The bullet now reads, “A requirement that 100% of the units built to be affordable (subject to change based on individual project priorities) … • Then there’s a reference to the state statute that says, “But in no circumstance may there be less than 30% affordable units, in accordance with state statute.” • There was additional discussion by the subcommittee and some committee members thought that it should not be 100% affordable. Some thought it should be a sliding scale based on what percentage of the overall development is affordable, so that’s the percentage of surtax dollars that will contribute. If you have a $100 million property that you’re proposing to be 60% affordable, the surtax would contribute 60% of the purchase price. • The committee needs to discuss this recommendation. A discussion ensued and the following points were made: • Ms. Waller was against it being 100% affordable. • Commissioner Hall said if we want 100% affordable, a sliding scale is a good way to accomplish that. • Mr. Giblin said there could be legal challenges because if you’re buying one parcel of property, the statute requires that the county maintain title to that property if it’s being purchased with surtax money. • A developer who’s paying 40% may not agree to that, or their bank might not. • How do you divide out 40% of the property and subdivide it? That puts affordable housing on one side of the street and non-affordable housing and the other side, so there’s an unintended consequence. That legal land-use issue needs to be addressed. • That could create a non-starter for developers. They may not want to put all their land into a land trust. It could end up with non-responsiveness. • If these dollars are so valuable for affordable housing, maybe we should covet them and not allow any market-rate housing to be developed using surtax dollars. The flip side is maybe you want mixed-income or other communities. • What are the key features we want? What’s the leverage we’re getting out of it? March 21, 2023 14 • We’re setting ourselves up for something that might not attract developers, or we could end up spending a lot of money and getting few housing units. • There’s a concern about this percentage, the implications of it. The decision would be up to a selection committee. If a developer came in with more affordable housing, the project would get a more heavily weighted score, more favorable to getting funding. • Can we say we encourage 100%, but no less than 30%? • There’s still a legal land-use issue about how you put this project into a land trust when there’s only a portion of the land being used for affordable housing. • How do we account for different levels of affordable housing? • There’s a weighted scoring criteria. The level of affordability is one of those criteria. • A developer would push that up to the limits of 60% because there’s better cash flow. • The County Attorney’s Office put a legal disclaimer at the end: “The Board of County Commissioners may use all, part or none of these recommendations for future acquisitions.” Ms. Waller made a motion to accept the Surtax Subcommittee report and forward it as a recommendation to the Board of County Commissioners. Second by Mr. Harney. The motion passed unanimously, 8-0. b. Discussion on the Housing Trust Fund Ms. Waller said she added this to the agenda because when she was at the grant ranking and review, she wanted to know why the Housing Trust Fund money wasn’t part of the money we were distributing. They said that when the AHAC was moved to this building, it’s under a new umbrella and that money was transferred here. According to the policies and procedures that were put together under the Housing Trust Fund, it was supposed to have been operated the other way. Do we need to relook at the Housing Trust Fund to get that money in place so we can start giving it out to developers who come in? There were people who would have benefited from that money if it had been in the pool that we were distributing at the review. Mr. Giblin said he didn’t know why CHS didn’t include awards from the Housing Trust Fund in its annual grant-application cycle, as they historically have done. When housing policy functions were brought to Growth Management, the split was that funding, awards, application review and monitoring stayed at CHS. The policy piece came here. We’re talking about a strategic-plan surtax policy. For example, this surtax policy that we’re developing now, when it’s time to review proposals, that’s a CHS function. He’s not sure where the dollars are, but he’s been working with the new finance director and those functions and dollars should stay at CHS, or they should be given back. If it’s not in CityView and we don’t accept an electronic payment, it’s not a Growth Management function and we’re staying at the LDC, GMP and policy level. This is an ongoing discussion between CHS and Growth Management to get that formalized and back on track. Ms. Waller said when there’s another call for grants for that money, that’s something staff can work on to get that pool of money put back in that pot, so when there’s a qualified candidate, we can award that money and get some rental properties going. Mr. Giblin said he agreed 100%. We’ll work with CHS. That was mentioned at one of the last subcommittee meetings to have them start that. Even though the AHAC now falls under GMD, there are crossover items that would be good to have CHS representation on, as well. 7. STAFF AND COMMITTEE GENERAL COMMUNICATIONS (None) March 21, 2023 15 8. NEW BUSINESS Commissioner Hall said while meeting with Michael Puchalla, he brought up a state statute that was HB 1339, which says that by statute, the Board of County Commissioners can approve an affordable-housing project on lands that aren’t zoned currently for that use without having to go through the rezoning process. It’s never been used by Collier County, so he’d like to see the committee quickly review it and make a recommendation to the BCC that we implement that statute. We have people here who could greatly benefit from that and it would expedite the process and make it run smoothly. It’s a state statute, so there’s nothing to get approved, but an AHAC recommendation would carry weight. Chairman Hruby said we’re all aware of that statute. We’ve had discussions and individually, he and Michael talked about it and the Land Trust focused on that. That’s a very good suggestion. If we make a recommendation to him, he can take it back to other commissioners to see if we can implement something. He’s talked to developers who would love to implement that. They’re looking at properties and noted that we’ve never done that before. We should be the first. Mr. Shea said he also brought it up. Mr. Giblin noted that it was passed by the state a year or two ago and was seen as a silver bullet to combat NIMBYism. It basically says that if a developer meets certain affordability criteria, they can build affordable housing on a piece of land, no matter what the Growth- Management Plan, Land-Development Code or PUD says it should be. It bypasses the public approval process. It probably should be used with caution and not every time. It’s something we’re aware of and we’re looking at properties that might benefit from it. Chairman Hruby noted that there are a lot of properties on the East Trail or Pine Ridge– bulldozer bait – that don’t have NIMBY implications and would benefit. We could put that on the agenda for next month. He asked that HB 1339 be put on the agenda for discussion. A discussion ensued about the next subcommittee meeting and Mr. Giblin said he’d look at the calendar and room availability and send options for meeting dates. Ms. Waller noted that they had two presentations a month ago. Nothing was done or said. Do we make a recommendation to the BCC that we think this is a great project? We need to do more than listen to people talk. Chairman Hruby said he believed that on the McDowell presentation, we made that recommendation. We said this is interesting and it looked like something that staff and the BCC should be taking a look at and considering. Mr. Giblin said there are two types of presentations. The ones you’re referring to, such as today’s and last month’s presentations, were just public presentations. They wanted to share their good news with you about what they’re doing. Their purpose might be to garner interest and support. A committee member might visit their project and generate community buzz. If a development was seeking your actual recommendation and support, we would put them on as a discussion item. As Steve said, affordable housing developments in the past, like McDowell or an apartment complex, are looking for approvals at the Planning Commission and then the Board of County Commissioners. Sometimes, they elect to come to the AHAC first to make a presentation and get a recommendation. That would then be part of the record as it moves 9。 10。 March 21,2023 through the public process. You haven't seen one of those in a while, but when it's appropriate, the AFIAC makes a recommendation that's passed on as part of the public record. ADJOURN Ms. Woller made a motion to adjourn. Second by Commissioner Hall. The motion passed unanimously, 8-0. NEXT MEETING DATE 8:30 a.m. April 18,2023 Conference Room 6091610 Growth Management Community Development Department There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by the order of the chairman at 10:24 a.m. 'MPIITTEE 脇霧奮島冒軍 み昴 “ 16