FY 2021 - 2024 Local Housing Assistance Plan – Florida Housing Finance Corporation - State Housing Initiatives Partnership Program, CSFA No. 92.501- No Funding Required

54:36Right. R seventy one.

54:46Good morning, Commissioner. Marcy Yesberg, Director of Community Development. Today we are looking at our local housing assistance plan, otherwise known as the LHAP. Next slide. The LHAP is the county's plan for spending the state housing initiative partnership funds. As you know that last year we did not get any funding, but la this coming year we should be getting about $3.8 million and we are required to update our plan every

55:17three years and so this plan would be effective from 2021 currently to 2024. Looking for you to approve it, and then it goes to the Florida Housing Finance Corporation, who's the funding agency. If you go on to the next slide, you could see that the L HAP contains three sections. The first section goes over general program details, definitions, and the income levels

55:47that we deal with. The second section is our housing strategies, which we will go over specifically. And then the third section are incentive strategies from the county. You've seen this document before. I want to show you what has changed in it. that this year we did remove the Pasco Opportunity program, otherwise known as POP. And our developers do still have the opportunity to come and do individual contracts that

56:17we would bring before the board. And then we also changed uh how we require payback for our owner-occupied rehab program. Instead of them paying it back uh in a mortgage and a monthly payment, now they pay back uh when the property is sold, when it's refinanced, when they've lost homestead exemption or they've passed away. So let's go over in the next slide the home ownership strategies. So it's basically

56:47divided up into home ownership and rental strategies. We have to spend 65% of our funding on home ownership. So we do down payment assistance helping people, low and moderate income people to become homeowners. We do that right in-house with our own staff. Same thing with owner-occupied rehab. Once somebody gets into a home, a low and moderate income person, we want to make sure they could stay housed. And so we do help with some major rehabilitation,

57:18whether it be putting in a new AC or fixing a roof. Then we do these other strategies: demolition, reconstruction, disaster repair for Closure prevention and new construction homebuyer's assistance program with our partner agencies. And in-house, we also do tax payment and assessments when somebody becomes two years or more behind in a pay in their tax payments. Again, we want to keep them housed so

57:48we will pay their taxes. So those are our home ownership. Strategies. Mart

57:54Marcy?

57:54Yes.

57:54Mr. Chairman Mariano. I just want to ask you a quick question. On the demolition re reconstruction, uh, we've torn down a lot of homes. And sometimes I would think the people don't have the funds to go put them back up. That's why they got torn down in the first place. Do we have any program that's can be tied with those homes that we can actually someone can benefit from this funding to go rebuild that home?

58:15Yes. That would be that but but we also have to weigh the cost of investing into one h like for example, we work a lot with the HR HRE program and we can do a demolition on some of these homes but There there could only be a certain percentage and so sometimes it's two hundred and fifty thousand to rebuild a house that has is basically falling around down. So it

58:45depends on the home, but this is a strategy that can be used.

58:48So if someone let's say tears down a home, the lot's worth thirty, forty grand, whatever it may be, and now to go rebuild the home's a lar much larger chunk of money. Can we put uh do we have incentives in there for the people that want to let's say either build the home or the people that wanna buy the home that after the home is built that can be coordinated to help Let's call a neighborhood redevelopment.

59:08That's what we have been doing. That's exactly what we've been doing with that funding. And we've been doing it with the Pop Developers. The last home that we did. We put over three hundred thousand dollars in it and it sold for one hundred and forty thousand.

59:23Yeah, I don't know if I want to go down that road.

59:26But

59:26if there's a if there's another way to make it work.

59:29Yes.

59:29But l let me uh add on the thought. Sorry we're interrupting you, but and I think you were on this n nationwide call that I was on and of course that's my committee at NACO, so I get to hear of best practices and and things that are happening around the country. I think this was in Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, where the community had made uh they had a foundation. that um would add to that kind of program so that um you could build a good house in a a neighborhood, elevate

1:00:00the neighborhood a little bit and still have it be affordable for the person who's buying it. But um I thought it was a brilliant um program and uh something that our community might think about and if we have a fundraiser and um and uh collect Money that goes into a a fund that can help.

1:00:21So we also have strategies on rental uh property, which is the next slide. And Uh we do rental assistance with eviction prevention. I will tell you that some of these uh uh programs are a little bit on hold with the ship money while we have the funding from uh the uh our HART program, uh the count funding source uh is with the coronavirus relief uh funds. Uh rental

1:00:51rehabilitation, disaster mitigation, uh land acquisition with new construction rental, security and or utility deposits with rapid rehousing and that's specifically for people that are either homeless or preventing homelessness, and then we also work with special needs. So those are the strategies that are included in the LHAP. The next two slides discuss the incentive strategies,

1:01:22and that is your next item on the agenda. So I'd go straight to the final slide for the recommendation to approve the local housing assistance plan and to direct the chairman to sign the necessary documents. Be happy to answer any questions.

1:01:41Well um I I sit on this the committee that worked on this and um a lot of great ideas uh came into this. Um I just wanted to bring up another idea that I heard from Melissa McKinley at the FACT conference. Um so The uh counties were getting money to buy places to put people um through COVID, because of COVID, and many counties were buying up old hotels and remodeling them and then they get to keep them after this is over for um

1:02:11supportive housing, is that the right word? Um but like our county there aren't very many old motels. And um so what what uh Palm Beach County did in their rural areas because they didn't want to move the people who were having issues in the interior to the um cities, they wanted to keep them in their neighborhoods, they bought uh old commercial buildings. and rehab them into s into um

1:02:42townhomes or what or apartment buildings, they the remodels. old commercial buildings. I thought that was a brilliant idea and a way to use some bar vacant property that's out there and I think we should look at it. So with that I move approval.

1:02:58Second. Got a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Nay. All right. Motion passed by zero.

1:03:08Thank you.