Affordable housing study and all commissioners present

0:00Issue because it does vary based on locality. And I think what you're going to see here is some presentations that talk about an affordable housing study that has been conducted over the past year. And we're also going to talk a little bit about some of the things that we have been doing here in the county, as well as some proposed activities that we think would also help. Needless to say, it's a conversation that happens here. It also happens in the community or those that even build affordable housing that need to be brought in to the conversation too to see what it is that they need as

0:30as part of this. So it's a it's a team sport like any. And so I'll ask Kathy Pearson just to kind of moderate for us today. And

0:36but before we start, I'm getting contacted by people who have a copy of whatever's coming out here. D do any of you have anything? Because I have nothing.

0:48Where is the slide deck? Was it emailed to me? I have nothing. And I I'm I'm just really shocked that I got land use attorneys contacting me and I've n'm like, how do you know I have nothing? So

1:00Well we can certainly present the slides um and have them printed out right now for you, of course.

1:05Yeah, that would be great.

1:08Tactile person. I'd like to write notes on things.

1:15You'd

1:15like hard copy of answers? I'd say let's get going.

1:18Yeah, get going, but if some is someone listening and they'll get us some hard copies of something.

1:22Apologize for that. Kathy Pearson, Assistant County Administrator, Public Services. Welcome, Commissioner Yeager. It's great to have you on board. So uh affordable housing, we um how did we get here? So David Lambert, as you probably all know, he is the uh chair of the Pasco Housing Authority and also the executive vice president and general manager with Lacouche Electric and a wonderful partner of the county. We do a lot of projects with him. And occasionally David and I get together and we try to

1:52conquer the world and solve all people's problems and affordable housing came up. And we both sat there and said, you know, we have never had an affordable housing plan for Pasco County. So David grabbed me and took me to his PASCO Housing Authority board and convinced his board to pay for this study for us. So how wonderful is that that they did that. And so then we partnered with Dr. Elizabeth Strom from the USF School of Public Affairs. We

2:23produced a scope of work, and you're going to see the wonderful results today. And the preliminary research for this project was provided by nine graduate students in the class that they were called Fall Fall, they took a fall affordable housing class. And believe it or not, three of them were employed by Pasco County getting their graduate programs. So we actually had three Pasco County students part of this study, so that was pretty cool. So, you know, affordable housing, uh we've heard so many different terms affordable

2:53housing, we've heard workforce housing, we've heard this, we've heard that. And generally it's defined as housing that costs no more than 30 percent of a household's income. And it's very essential to our c economic stability. The more people spend on housing, the less money they spend on essentials like the food, the health care, and the education that is needed. So like Mike said, today you're going to see the results of that study. Um that will be presented by Dr. Elizabeth Strom. You're gonna see Marcy Esberg,

3:24uh Director of Community Development, talk about some of the things that we have done in community development. And then we're gonna bring in David uh Ingall and David Goldstein, who are gonna bring it in for a landing and maybe some suggestions of what we should could be and what we should be doing. And I wanna say thank you to this team. Um We had many conference calls and talks trying to put this PowerPoint together. And truly, I learned so much on going through this whole process and how important it is in affordable

3:54housing. But before I bring Dr. Elizabeth Strom up, I would like to bring David Lambert up and have him share some of his thoughts on the affordable housing and thank him publicly for what they've done. So David, come on up.

4:13Good afternoon, Commissioners. Thank you all. Um I when Kathy and I met, you know, as Chairman of the Housing Authority for the last fourteen years, We have seen a significant issue um with people being able to afford housing. So we started a program called Family Self Sufficiency, so where the Housing Authority would put a portion of Someone who was at the housing authorities rent in an escrow account and help them put a down payment on a house. This

4:44was after they went through all these financial courses and everything else and got very self sustaining, and then we went to the market to try to find Housing. There was none available. That they could even afford uh in Pasco County. And I don't call it affordable housing. For me, it's workforce housing because these people, although they lived in a Pasco County housing authority community, Worked every day. They were working in our county. They had a um We even worked

5:14with them, get them through all the courses and everything else and still could not afford a home. And when we went around and met with businesses and things like that, they were having a problem finding a workforce would actually work in the county. and uh just couldn't afford to live here. So Kathy and I had were having lunch one day and we said, you know What is the county's affordable housing plan? And we didn't have one. So you know how things get muddled and everything else? We had done a Trilby Lacucci Trilacucci

5:45strategic master plan. And we focused on that with the University of South Florida. And then I seen a plan and looked at plans from several other counties throughout the state. One the University of Florida did, I think, for Marion County, places like that. And I said, you know, we need to have takes Everybody else out of the equation and bring people in that are professional people. to do an a to analyze what we are looking to do and to present something to the county so the county could have a plan to go off of and adopt. potentially. And

6:16it was great collaboration between the county, between uh the housing authority and stakeholders. We had multiple meetings with stakeholders, developers, Uh land use attorneys, you name it, that work in Pasco County to get their input. So, you know, this is a uh I believe a good first step forward. I'd like to personally thank Dr. Strom and all the county folks that worked on this plan and Kathy uh and community development. We just were looking for something to try to give people in Pasco County uh let's find a roadmap, a

6:46way forward, uh, so we could address some of these issues. And everybody calls it one issue or another, but You know, um I look at it as workforce housing, what people can that need to do jobs here each and every day. can afford to live in our county a and work with. So That's the plan and uh uh the housing authority was really gracious in doing this, that's because we have a we're in the same business of taking care of the people in Pasco County and

7:16we wanted to see a plan that that that really worked for our citizens and uh That's how we got here today. And welcome. Uh uh thank you all for your time today and I look forward to Listen to Dr. Strom's presentation for the third time.

7:32Yeah. And and David, David, 14 years serving the community on that board. Thank you so much. You're

7:39welcome.

7:42One thing I'm proud of, y'all all have it, June 17th, we're going to have a groundbreaking for our first veterans housing complex in Pasco County. Family housing complex, and I'm proud to say half of those units will be for single veterans, which is a big part of our homeless population in Pasco County. That would not have happened without all of your staff working on it. I can remember when Commissioner Oakley And uh um Commissioner Weight, Commissioner Mariano talked about getting our own veterans family housing

8:12community, and we finally are going to have it. So thank you. And thank you to Congressman Bilarakis. He got us four million dollars in a year mark.

8:19What's good? Uh Kathy I'm gonna say one thing uh as we're starting. I did find an agenda. I wanna let everyone in put on notice that everyone, all five commissioners are present. And that we're going forward with the workshops. Okay.

8:36So uh if I could respectfully ask, um we have uh Dr. Elizabeth Strom's gonna come up and present first. If we could hold the questions till the end, because it might be three or four slides later those answers to some of those questions, that would be great. So Dr. Elizabeth Strom. Okay.

8:56Welcome.