Going forward strategies ADUs duplexes and redevelopment

57:23Um so Marcy's doing a fantastic job, um, but he's got limited resources and so what David and I said, okay, what can we do on a going forward basis What's kind of some of the low-hanging fruit that we can do to eat into this deficit? And we still have a deficit. If you remember, I showed you the Schinberg numbers report before, in the below 80% range, we clearly still have a deficit. So we thought David and I put our heads together. Um he's got a little more hair than me. Um

57:54And we tried to come up with some kind of quick things that we could work on to to start the ball rolling on addressing this deficit. One of them you've already done. So this was kind of our carrot approach to live local. We did this last year. We we reduced our mobility and impact fees for affordable housing. We created a hundred percent reduction for housing below eighty percent of AMI. And And a 75% reduction for nonprofits that are below 120. So the reason for that second one is you might have

58:24a nonprofit like Habitat that's doing primarily 80 percent, but they may have a few homes that are in the 80 to 100 range, and we didn't want them to not get some kind of benefit for providing that housing. It's less of a need, but there's still a little bit of a need in the 80 to 100 range. Um however that one's important because We made it clear that you can't do that and we won't give those reductions if you invoke Lib Local. So that one's already done. Um that's the easy one. Second easiest one, this is the one that you want to talk

58:54about, Commissioner Starkey, Commissioner Oriana, you raised this as well, ADUs. Um I do think this is probably the easiest thing for us to he to accomplish very fairly quickly. Um we probably have about, as Elizabeth mentioned, about seven or eight MPUDs currently. that allow for accessory dwelling units, but it's really only allowed in MPUDs. So Commissioner Starkey texted me at the last Planning Commission meeting and said,

59:18I'm going

59:19to

59:19bring that up.

59:19And said, Why don't why aren't we allowing an ADU on that on that lot? Um

59:24five acres. He wanted to build a home for he wanted his parents to be able to live on his five acres.

59:29And so my answer to her was well we have to legalize ADUs on other on these kinds of lots, which we currently don't have. So I do think this one is fairly easy. Um It's just simply a matter of amending our zoning code to allow these ADUs. We we already have standards that we came up with the MPUDs in terms of how they generally have to be subordinate to the principal structure. Um but those standards are fairly easy to put into the code. So I think this one is something I'm guessing we could do in the next Six

1:00:00months.

1:00:02the original house there? Is it tied to the

1:00:05Yeah, you need to have a principal building before you can have an accessory dwelling unit. And generally the accessory dwelling unit tends to be a smaller unit than the principal building. And so in the M P Ds that we've approved, we have required that it be a smaller structure than the principal building. Right. And there may be some really small lots, you know, I Can't guarantee you that every forty foot lot you've approved you can fit an ADU. Yeah. Um you may or may not be able to, but Most of our lots

1:00:35in the county are not forty foot lots, they're they're larger lots and so I suspect that they could fit ADUs on them. The one that Commissioner Starkey texted me about clearly could have fit an ADU on five acres. Um so I think this one's fairly easy to do and many other jurisdictions have done it. I know it was fairly successful in California. They had a lot of ADU permits when they loosened up the regulations to allow ADU. So I think this one could be done fairly quickly and it's an easy w easy way to increase the supply of housing. The

1:01:06next one um Do we have a lot of calls for that that time? Uh by any use. I don't know how many we're getting currently. I

1:01:13I do see it a lot in BCS. That's one thing that we do reject, particularly on the larger size acres. They maybe want to bring another structure in. Right. Um

1:01:21and if you drive through Longleaf. If you go through you won't you won't notice them on the main streets, but if you go through the alleys There's quite a few ADUs in there. Yeah. And some people use 'em just for when their kids are visiting from out of town, but some people um rent them out. I wanna we we One of my aides has has a one bedroom that she's got to be.

1:01:46Well i if it's rear loaded it's that's a different story because you have a garage in the back and a separate access above. above the grass.

1:01:53Okay, I think the thought would be to allow them County wide, but there may be some lots that they're just too small to allow them. Right. Yeah.

1:02:01Mr. Chairman

1:02:02Mariano

1:02:04they had for housing, um, it was very very popular in California. But it didn't start out that way 'cause it had so many restrictions.

1:02:11Yeah. So

1:02:11I think we need to look at what California did first. Find out how they throttled back and then maybe to take a look some other areas and and bring back. It could be it could be a whole separate meeting, I think, or presentation on just that alone. But there is some great opportunity that You could help a lot of let's say seniors that may have a home or a poor family's got a home. that want to either bring a parent back or b bring a parent out of out of out of a place or a a child that wants to stay by. So there's a lot of opportunity, but I think we'll I want to take a look and see what others have done.

1:02:39Yeah we'll look at what California did. But I think my understanding is in California they started for really restrictive but then they loosened it up and then they got a lot more ADU permits. So Um we'll use that as a starting point, but we want to get the moving on that one fairly quickly. I know David Engel has expressed an interest in getting that one moving pretty quickly. Um the next one requires a little more effort, and that's what Elizabeth referred to as gentle density or kind of infill density. And it's basically the concept of allowing single family homes to convert

1:03:09to duplexes, quadruplexes. Yeah. Now this is one clearly you're not gonna get a quadruplex on a forty foot lot, okay, but Yeah. There could be areas of the county where you've got larger lots where the conversion of a single family home to duplex or quadruplex could work. But this one requires a little more study because you gotta make sure you got the right lot sizes. You want to make sure there's adequate infrastructure to support that, the conversion of single family homes to to quadruplexes or duplexes. That one's gonna require

1:03:39a little more study on our part. That's why we want to start with ADUs because that'll kind of be the trial balloon to see how this working. But we think the next step would be to allow start allowing more duplexes quadruplexes in some of the single family neighborhoods. The last one I want to cover probably requires the most work. Um And that's inclusionary zoning and linkage fees. So David actually started this. Um he he he actually had a few projects where he said, Hey, if you're gonna be increasing density,

1:04:10you should be setting aside some of those units for affordable housing. And so he started it, but then Live Local kind of derailed that effort. So he kind of tabled it. Um but the concept is basically w when you're approving a new development You're allowing additional density or even non-residential development, that you require that development to set aside a certain percentage of their units to be affordable housing. Um typically these re regulations require you to have a fee and lose. So if the developer says, I don't

1:04:40want to provide affordable housing, At least they have a way of b sort of buying out of the the the mandatory requirements. So they can pay a fee in lieu of that, which then Marcy can use to help provide affordable prousing projects elsewhere. Um it can apply to both residential and non residential and I think David Ingle will tell you that It's kind of important to also look at non residential too because Uh, McDonald's is generating the need for affordable housing. I mean it's it's generating low wage workers that need affordable housing. So It's it's

1:05:10something you probably need to look at both from a residential and non resid non residential standpoint. I would do want to point out that we actually used to have a requirement like this in the county. Wiregrass actually the Wiregrass DRI and there were a few others, actually the Starkey DRI had it originally. Um V O P H had it, Central Pasco Employment Village. They all had affordable housing requirements similar to what I'm talking about. The problem we had was that at least in WireGrasp we said We're gonna pursue something county wide. Well we never did. And so Wiregrass

1:05:41said, You never pursued what you said you were going to do, so we want out of the requirement because we're the only ones doing it. And I agree with Wiregrass. It's not fair if they're the only ones that are subject to this requirement. Affordable housing is a community-wide need, and so Wiregrass shouldn't be the only one that's having to deal with that need. So I think if we did something on a countywide basis, it would be more equitable instead of just targeting projects here and there. Um

1:06:06David? Uh and can we go back to um The D R I days. When when we had D RIs, River Ridge was a D RI. Um we have a lot of developments with DRIs and when ten percent of the housing in a DRI had to be affordable.

1:06:23And that that was the origin? It actually originated because Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council, as part of that DRI process, was saying was pushing for us to have a certain percentage of housing that was affordable.

1:06:34There

1:06:35were no

1:06:359J2 rule that

1:06:36we have

1:06:37a while. Yeah.

1:06:38So yes. So yes. So that's why the larger projects like the Wiregrasses, the Starkey DRI, and others had that requirement. But when we didn't do it county wide, then they also why are we the only ones having to to deal with this problem? And I tended to agree with them. Why w why are we singling out just a few large projects and saying you're the only ones that are responsible for dealing with affordable housing when it's really a community wide need? So the thought process of this is that it would be a community-wide program. We have now there is a statutory

1:07:09requirement that you offset the cost of that housing to the developers. So you have to create other incentives, whether it's additional density, some of the impact fee waivers we talked about, you have to give them other incentives to offset that additional cost. And so that's something that we've already started looking at. We actually prepared a scope that we sent to the Florida Housing Coalition. I think they've given us a price already to do that work. Um so we want to start that initiative as well. That one's gonna take a little more time because that's not an easy

1:07:39program to do because you've got a Do that analysis about how you're offsetting the costs and come up with the right fees in lieu and so it's n That one's gonna take a little more time and so

1:07:50I think that's a good direction for us to go. Yeah. So

1:07:53we

1:07:53look into that.

1:07:56I view affordable housing like any other piece of infrastructure. I mean it's like parks and libraries and roads and fire stations. It's a It's a needed piece of infrastructure and so It's not to say the development committee is going to fully solve the problem, but they should be part of the solution. In other words, use what we do with this, combine that with some of the money that Marcy's talking about. I think we can come up with a comprehensive plan that actually addresses our affordable housing needs. But there there's no one silver bullet

1:08:27when it comes to affordable housing. That's why we're giving you multiple strategies so that we're not putting the burden on any one particular group and

1:08:35I think solve that problem. The avenue going out to the whole county is It's looking at it. Everybody has to do that. Um We got we've had I've been in office now. I'm in my eighth year, so I've been here seven years. And we've had to look at not having an affordable housing the entire time I've been here and I always feel like we need it there's forty percent of our workforce, forty percent of all of our citizens. that need affordable housing and we need to do something about it. And we can't just keep

1:09:05Turn our backs to it. We need to take care of that. And that that will be a start. But then we need to figure out other projects that will come along at the same time.

1:09:14The other reason I think this is important is we saw what happened with Live Local. Not a good way of attacking this issue. We all agree on that. But There's still a need. We know there's still a need in that below that eighty percent range. So if the legislature is not gonna solve the problem, I think we need to take steps to solve the problem so we can help ourselves and we're not getting a top down mandate to try to solve this problem.

1:09:36We have people that haven't even moved here yet that need affordable housing. housing. I mean

1:09:41they want to

1:09:42be here, but they're not going to be able to do that.

1:09:46Lower wage. The number was 43 percent. Well, just look at school teachers. School teachers were in the the group that need affordable housing and we're not How we're not providing it. Yeah.

1:09:59Yes. Thank you. You we're talking a lot about rental.

1:10:03Right.

1:10:04There's different mm, I wasn't talking about rental.

1:10:06Well there's a to be clear, the the need at below eighty percent of AMI is there whether it's rental or or home ownership. We we need both. I don't think anybody's suggesting I don't think any of the prior speakers suggested that that the need can only be met with rental.

1:10:24And and Chris Ross is going to speak to that in a moment.

1:10:29Hi, uh welcome Commissioner Yeager. Uh my name is David Engel. I'm the Planning and Economic Direct Growth Director. And as a planner, we don't just take snapshots in time. We do p projections and forecasts of the future. And two weeks ago, Zillow issued a study showing a tremendous gap between the inflated costs of housing and salaries not keeping up. So our our need for housing keeps growing organically. on top of

1:11:00the people that are moving in and the jobs are being created. And to support Marcy's discussion about the jobs we're creating here in the county, so we track in our office the jobs creation incentive payments that go out the door for board-approved economic projects. And many of them, because they were approved just two or three years ago, are basically the average wage is well below eighty percent of AMI and those are those are things that we can even incentivize because

1:11:30we incentivize by average pay. Example, Gary Plastics. Gary Plastics, I believe, had about 125, 150 incentivized jobs. But their payroll is five hundred and twenty-five. And uh the the delta on that are people that can't afford to live here in Pasco. And our job creation and uh I our Our office of um Uh Dr. Bellis' office. He he's committed and is is initiated three business

1:12:00surveys here in Pasco County. And the three drivers Or uh available workforce, affordable housing. And traffic and blight and redevelopment. Those are what our businesses are telling us they need to grow and be successful. So to that end, we have uh big opportunities here. Affordable housing justn't doesn't have to be just, you know, a new singular development, whether it be apartments or townhouses. It can be many things. But the area

1:12:30that I think is the biggest opportunity is our west side of Pasco County called the West Market area in the harbors. Because we have older um neighborhoods, unfortunately, that are in decline that were built in the 1970s. They were designed for people that were retiring. Now the housing has been recycled through several homeownerships. And now there's people living there because that's our affordable housing stock here in the county. the preponderance preponderance of ownership is their landlords.

1:13:00Most of those units occupied off a US nineteen in our older neighborhoods. are renter occupied. and using you know and and I didn't have a lot of slides today and a lot of granular discussion because I wanted to give time for the board to give us some policy direction. But um this redevelopment area, we could use transect zoning, form-based zoning, do quadruplexes and different types of innovative. Techniques. And what that does is it elevates the property values. It also creates

1:13:32a proof of concept where where these renter-occupied units, the landlords are selling land, there's consolidation. And it really economically upgrades the entire area, not only to the Rose County product, but also into our general fund. So in the west side we have uh we have the infrastructure, we have the Best coverage for public transportation. Along US 19, we're gonna redevelop that. We have activity centers where there'll be employment. So we c we have a lot of opportunities

1:14:02to work in the U.S. 19 area and the peripheral neighborhoods. Land values are less. And there's a lot of la a lot of lots that have been acquired through tax sale and other, you know, are county owned because people didn't pay their taxes. So I I believe that if the board gave us that direction to move progressively towards affordable housing, because not only the current need but the growing need. Um I will come back with some land use and zoning recommendations and that will provide um the re the the air the

1:14:32the the resources for Marcy to apply her tools to fill that housing with people in need. And I I just wanted to say uh when we talk about the need of eighty thousand or units of housing. Right now our our employment pipeline is over 101,000 new jobs and the projects that are under design or the board is approved. Uh those are those are office, those are um advanced manufacturing and those type of activities. And they're gonna be coming here. And and just to show you the scale,

1:15:03now Moffitt has announced they're gonna create fourteen thousand five hundred jobs at the Spiro's project. But that's only their jobs. If if you look at the totality of the Moffitt development and their business plan, there's going to be joint ventures, partnerships, other activities, there's going to be over thirty thousand jobs in there. And you know, if you go over to I-75 and 52 and all the other things. I mean we even have job creation going on now in Commissioner Mariano's district. up in the the the Lacucci area and down

1:15:33by the airport, we're gonna have a tremendous need for housing in the future and it has to be receptive for the workforce. Thank you.

1:15:41Let me just add one thing to answer Commissioner Weightman's question. So yes, I definitely think that fee simple housing can be affordable. The problem we have today currently, and that's not usually for rent, that's for sale. The problem we have is that the market on its own is not necessarily resulting in an affordable town home product. So And I wish Mr. Lambert had given his story about his search for housing for his daughter. Good. He went searching for a town home or something and he

1:16:11couldn't find anything less than three hundred thousand, is that right? Okay, so even Right. Our s our sort of highest density single family or or fee simple product, which is a town home, is not necessarily affordable today. And I think that's the issue is that there's kind of a misconception that townhomes and forty foot lots are just automatically affordable. They're they're not. And so You probably need something like inclusionary zoning or linkage fees to encourage developers to at least provide

1:16:41some percentage of their Yeah. or their forty foot lots or whatever the smaller product is to be truly affordable. Mr. Lambert's daughter still can't afford anything.

1:16:54Um I I have some I have some photos that I sent to Sonia. Sonia, just like the last five or six, not the ones I sent you earlier. Um This is a project that Dave and I went to look at when we were in Cincinnati. This is a duplex. Um I was trying to find the one that's a quadruplex. It looks very similar to that. So the I think there's one door Uh that's a quadruplex. There's four units. And that's And you know, right next door is a regular

1:17:24house. And then and then next door to that's a townhouse. So I mean but that's That's very nicely fitting into a community. Um I think there's a few more. I just I just went online here and I put in duplex and and this came up. So Um

1:17:41You know, our a lot of our neighborhoods are regular neighbour regular neighborhoods, not rear loaded, the kind that I like, walkable communities. Um what do you what do you show me there? Oh well send send that to Sonia. Um and so I think I think it's really It's not that difficult to ask our builders that for every that's another duplex. Just throw in a few duplexes in your single family neighborhood. Um and

1:18:12And this is a triplex. There's three. in this building. One, two, three. Um So uh You know, I'd I'd love to talk with the building committee about being you know seamlessly putting some of these houses in their

1:18:30neighborhoods. Commissioner Oakley you're not gonna have any difficulty getting the builders to put more duplex duplexes, villas, quadruplexes, townhomes. But I'm just telling you that currently they're still selling them at

1:18:49I'm just being honest with you. They're

1:18:51there's a that's I think six units. That's a that's six units. Yeah. This was uh outside

1:18:59of Louisville.

1:19:02Yeah.

1:19:02No, I do think that a duplex or quadruplex or town home is more likely to become be affordable. It's easier for them to get it to Yeah. an affordable level. But currently it's not happening. And that's why we have a deficit.

1:19:16Well I think we're gonna have to pitch in on the cost too. I think um I don't and I don't know how we do that. In a for sale home. Because it has to if we're helping to subsidize

1:19:31Then how do we ensure that the when the person who got that benefit when they go to sell that it goes to someone that also is income restricted? So then we need a land trust.

1:19:43So Marcy's team is very good at this. They have mortgages or deed restrictions or land use restriction agreements. But we

1:19:48don't have a land trust in Pasco County.

1:19:50I don't know if we have a land trust, but we've done plenty of projects where we've restricted their affordability for a period of time. And if they don't sell it at an affordable price, they have to basically repay us that subsidy. So

1:20:04You've done that?

1:20:07Yeah.

1:20:09So there's tools in place to ensure long term affordability. But we just have to put them in place.

1:20:14And there's also funding tools as well. Uh for redevelopment, since you're trying to elevate the property values in an area that's impressed. So there there are many tools and for redevelopment, if you are trying to redevelop and revitalize an area that's depressed and use affordable housing as one of the mechanisms, you can uh you can establish a TIFF and as the property values elevate So the the general fund is getting more money and you can take some of the increment of rising property

1:20:44values and Recycle it back into affordable housing. So there's a number of self sustaining financial mechanisms you can use.

1:20:52And we saw models of those at our conference. Yeah.

1:20:55I think Commissioner Weightman had a question.

1:20:57Mr. Point. Uh I said

1:21:01Jack was next

1:21:01to you.

1:21:09What's that correctly? Where's your little

1:21:13I'm touching it.

1:21:16Listen.

1:21:20causing an issue over there. No, you're done. He can't talk fine. Go ahead, Wait. Thank you. Thank you.

1:21:31Murphy about this and I've talked to Car I'm pretty sure I talked to Carval, but what about the Have have we done any further exploration on if you are if you're at least on the public employee side since we're using them as an example The uh impact fee credits and to have that. the formula set. to whatever it needs to be to where that they wouldn't have PMI. Recall a song about that, Mike?

1:21:58I do recall that conversation.

1:22:01And J Day where his past life I talked with him about it first and they actually Did this.

1:22:10Commissioner O we are uh meeting I think uh later this week or next week uh with HR to talk about Uh employee incentives in the future for corrections and Uh I think that was gonna be a topic that was gonna be discussed. Looking at ways to get our employees to live here in Pasco County. Especially our correction officers were listed uh you know

1:22:35on the list there. Yeah, the basic the basic crux of the conversation was and this is just another piece of the this story that we're talking about today. Well as as long as the public sector employee Yeah, they want to build a home and live in Pasco they receive a certain level of impact fee. credit over time and if they were to move or sell then obviously it would end. But the formula be set to where they wouldn't having to pay be paying that one hundred fifty, two hundred dollars in PMI or whatever it would be. uh on their mortgage it should also

1:23:05be a savings. So

1:23:06so I can address the impact fee part of that 'cause what you did last year already allows us to waive the impact fee if it's below eighty percent of AMI, which is Most of what our employees need. So but The mortgage part of it is not something we typically handle through impact fee.

1:23:24No, I I think what with what the commissioner was striving at is you know the impact fee are a significant portion of of of the cost of a of a new home, for example. And so is there a way, for example, the a program is really what what was being suggested to kind of help buy down uh the down payment. I mean it it's really tantamount to down payment type. Assistance to where you get it to a certain level they wouldn't have to pay a PMI insurance, right? Which could be a couple hundred bucks a month on the mortgage. So it it would be an

1:23:54emp it would be an employee benefit, is really what it would be. So there is a cost associated to doing that. It would have to come from probably general revenue or or somewhere else, but it's it's an idea that's being floated around as as an incentive to attract and retain a workforce but also to encourage a home ownership. So it's something that's getting vetted as Mr. Murphy had pointed out.

1:24:13I think Marcy has something to add.

1:24:15Yeah so we do have a down payment assistance program uh with our ship money and we could help people that earn up to 120 percent of the median income. And is it $35,000, $50? $25,000 for the higher income? $25,035 or $50,000. And that can also be paired with the state's Hometown Heroes down payment assistance. So there could be a considerable considerable amount of down payment assistance going to people who

1:24:45earn 120% or less of the median income.

1:24:48Okay.

1:24:49Uh Mr. Mariano? Thank you, Mr. Chairman Mariano. Yeah, th there's a bunch of different things as far as that can be done. Um We've approved a lot of apartments and just blanket them coming in, they kinda build what they want to build. We've never pushed the buttons to say, I want to see a bunch of one bedrooms, I want to see a bunch of affordables, I want to see a bunch of Under the eighty percent A uh AMI. So I think that's an opportunity we've got and we should be implementing for the future. Um As far as duplexes in neighborhoods, I think it works great. Uh

1:25:20duplexes even for new neighborhoods could work well. The benefit of someone who can afford a duplex is you could they can buy the duplex, they can rent out part of it, live in part of it. That can be part of your thing if you want to tie into ownership to get an extra discount of some sort. Uh the townhomes same type of way. Uh I think the ADUs are a a big benefit that's gonna be that can be out there. And you've got a lot of neighborhoods. You can go to several different neighborhoods on the on the west side that didn't fully get built out. So you get like one one offs that

1:25:50are just simple lots of this sitting in. I know Sea Pines is probably about ten or fifteen. Uh there's a place up across Sea Pines, a nice little waterfront community.

1:26:01They're just sitting I mean the land just sitting there not not done. There's trailers everywhere and frankly um I'm not a big fan of spending a lot of money on rebuilding a mob mobile home. I'd rather build something nicer. And if you want to go that way. give people a huge credit. You know, s sometimes they talked about you know different improvements could be done. May maybe you make those things like tax free for like fifteen years if you put a single family home in and go along that way. We had one gentleman who was a veteran He was in that leisure lane. Uh Van Dorn

1:26:32area. that he had a mobile home, he went to go improvement. By the time he started his demolition, which got a permit for, He had to improve it more than fifty percent. The gentleman lost his home. Town and country, you can look at that whole area there, you get all those empty lots of sit in there. instead of doing something on the on the one-offs You know, there's potential there to do some other things. But I think that mobile home product in uh even along the water do you get chances to improve that dramatically as well from from all that's there. And that'll make it a lot safer 'cause You know, if that storm

1:27:02Ian had hit us direct. All those things are wiped out, you're starting over again anyway. Mm-hmm. So I mean there's opportunities out there and there's a lot of good discussion we're having here today, but we've got to keep an open mind to what can what we can bring back to these solutions down the road. Yeah.

1:27:16Mm-hmm.