Board direction on ADUs linkage fees and land trust

1:27:23So As David had mentioned, rent and home prices are increasing and wages have not kept paced. Florida is a hot spot. We've got population crumbing like mad, and we all want to see um to have a healthy county where everybody can afford to live, work, and play. So to wrap this up. What direction would you like to go and are we missing anything? We heard about ADUs, we heard linkage fees.

1:27:48K if I could bring something up. Um this has been brought up at my last two AHAC meetings, advisory affordable housing advisory council. Um that um AD that affordable housing is supposed to be fast tracked through perm the permitting process. And um and they say that's one of the Best um ways to help with affordability. Um I know that Habitat

1:28:19has had one heck of a time trying to build get their development going over here across the street. with I don't know how what is it, seventeen units? I mean, we have some rules that prevented them From the um moving forward that didn't make any sense when they're trying to build uh the little community that they were like Um um subdivision stuff and I mean we really have put a lot of impediments in their way. And they

1:28:49don't have that in any other county but ours. So Um thro in the regulatory process I think we should sit and meet and see what we can do to streamline affordable housing because we we can't make it so expensive for them in the development process.

1:29:07J J I'm sure you took notes on JP, I'm sure you took notes on that one. Okay, what else? Anything else?

1:29:12Am I missing anything from our AHAC?

1:29:14Well A A D Us I'm Uh why? people more flexibility to do something with their property. That's just a general

1:29:25statement. So I think that's that's something that's that's low hanging fruit. As far as the the mandatory commitment Peace and the The linkage fees and they apply to residential, non-residential and mixed use I need more time. to be educated on what this means because on face value I'm currently not comfortable with it. Um but that's just because it's new. So um not

1:29:55saying I disagree with it. I just want staff to help me understand what this what these inclusionary zoning and linkage fees slide mean.

1:30:06David, that's what the study will show. I mean you're gonna wanna comment on that.

1:30:11Yeah, so the the study um that Florida Housing Coalition would be doing would

1:30:18Um but Before anything like that could ever be adopted, we'd we'd have be having to sit down with you and explain to you Exactly how it would work in the Okay. And the board has discretion about how stringent that is. I mean, the fee in WireGrass, my recollection, it was like

1:30:37I mean that we weren't talking about a huge amount of money. I'm not saying that we're going to end up there, but I think anything that we do will help Marcy Yeah. The kind of affordable housing that we need. So I think you're gonna even if we move in that direction, you're gonna have plenty of options about how How strong a program you decide to do. We're happy to sit down with you And go over those details.

1:31:02Um Mr. Chairman Mariano. Yes, ma'am. Uh I w I wanna explore what some of the other counties are doing. I know that Palm Beach County um has a requirement that if there's so many houses being built in a development that X amount has to be workforce housing. Um and it's a sliding scale and they figured out how to make it work. And I think there's some other counties that are doing that as well. So um of course I want to talk to our development community and but I've talked to Metro about this when I told him what we were trying to do. at our blueberry

1:31:33farm, they they were all about seeing how they could participate. So I don't you know, some may resist, some may not, but let's let's get those dialogues going see because this is a problem that's gonna affect all all of us. And um we we're just gonna all have to work together and we have money. And so we need to get innovative and creative. Mr. Mayor I

1:31:54don't think Commissioner Starkey brought us someone trying to build a ADU on some on their property, a three acre lot, five acre lot. Um I've got people in my district that wanna build with allows lots of five or ten acres. Right. They want the family to move in with them, not in the same building, but on the same property. Yeah. And right now the rules we have in place are just terrible to try to make that happen. So I know we're working to change some of that right now, but I wanna say as far as like and you we we saw the last hearing we had up in Hudson. How we had to really kind of work to

1:32:24make sure it was safe for the kids to get there. I'd rather take 'em off the development pressure of having these big home builders coming in that are gonna really disrupt the whole infrastructure in there and let these families that own five acres, ten acres and and just let them build in as long as they're let's say a home's on at least an acre of property itself, make it easy to subdivide it, make it easy for that family to come in and stay there. Yeah. And and that's a way to make affordable housing because now you're taking away the land cost.

1:32:51Yeah. I've I've heard of many cases where adults Well they're elderly parents to move in on the same property, one of 'em's passed or both of 'em are unable to afford something else or even rent because the rent's so high. But the fact of it is, if they could build that ADU product on their five acres or their three acres or two acres. A a one acre lot's a bigger lot than what most people realize is. It's two ten by two ten. There's a lot of room

1:33:21on a one acre lot. And if you compare that to a forty foot lot You can see how much room there is on one acre lot. So

1:33:30Um there are I I have seen um people uh one of my friend who's a realtor, he sold a house over there on Plath. um to a actually he's a Hollywood producer. I don't know what he's doing here. Um but um He wanted to have space for his family to stay. when they come visit from California. And um the county would not let him put an ADU or you know a pool house with a bedroom. And they said for him to do that, and

1:34:00this is if you if you're driving down Plath and you see that big, gorgeous two story, you know, Georgian house, that it's that house. And um And they said if he wanted to add a guest house in his in the pool house he wanted to build. He he would have to apply for a sub to be a subdivision. And what I don't know your terms, but he have to go through plotting like a subdivision. So what what the staff what they ended up doing was saying, okay, if you build your little building over there

1:34:31and you build a covered walkway that attaches your house to that house, now it's one house and you're okay. So You know I I I've seen this in Aristida too. We had people whose parents moved in or their elderly mom moved in and they added on to their house And they and it actually has a side door, but they weren't allowed to put a kitchen in there. Because if you have another kitchen then there's you know so impact and and that's kinda shooting ourselves in our in our foot. Right. Well it sh it shouldn't be. You

1:35:01know, so you can't have your elderly people come in and why do we care? So I think we can work on those things too.

1:35:09David, do you know how long the um linkage fee study would be?

1:35:14I don't Marcy, did they give us an estimate on how long for completion?

1:35:18Okay. Just uh so that information for the uh study just came back this morning. And I think that what we're gonna do is is phase it. That that's what they recommended is is take it in phases um to to make sure that uh that Uh we are covering every base. So I I d they did not give a time frame, but I would imagine that our next step is to go into negotiations and ask

1:35:48which phase uh you know, start probably the first two or three phases.

1:35:52So My prediction is that it's probably at least a year and a half process to to do that. That's why I think we need to move on ADUs as soon as possible 'cause those are that's a much faster, easier

1:36:10I I have a question for Mike. Yeah. And I I like that because I'd like to do something ASAP. Could you explain to us what exactly a land trust is and how it works? And is that the same as a Uh a land bank, are they the same things?

1:36:25So I I will explain it in my terminology, but I'll look over to Dr. Strom and if I really go through it, she'll she'll come through and w save the day. So um and I I will say that when I was in Burlington, Vermont, I worked with the Champlain Housing Trust, which is the largest land trust in the world. Okay. Uh so basically uh a land trust is when uh Yeah. the the person owns The building but

1:36:55the land underneath it is part of the trust. And if it's home ownership and they're not all home ownership, but this one in most cases it's home ownership, then they're that appreciat appreciating value is limited. Um, so it so it's not like in a regular market where you can buy a house. Um, you know, I bought a house six years ago in Newport Ritchie for X number of dollars, and now it's doubled in value, and I could

1:37:25go ahead and sell it for that. You can't do that in a land trust. Now you brought up the fact that we don't have a land trust here, which is true. Um I actually was in Call Your County when we started these conversations about land trusts with the Florida Housing Coalition. And one of the major problems was getting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to lend on land trusts. And they've since gotten over that hump. But uh there are models

1:37:55where rather than creating an organization that runs the land trust, like the slide was the Hannibal Trust, or you know, in Burlington it's the Champlain Housing Trust, you can actually create a model where the the Each house is on its own kind of land trust with um with its as w not with zoning, but with um now I'm forgetting the word for it. And I'm gonna ask

1:38:25somebody in the back row of my team to say no. A land use re restricted allura. And so um so you don't have to whole create the whole structure of a whole nother organization. with an executive director and you know staffing and everything like that, but you can within the structure. There is a there are there are models right here in Florida and and as a matter of fact I think Pinellas County and some local that just land trust. Trust the houses. The advantage to a land trust is, you

1:38:56know, to Commissioner Weightman's point, if we are invested in people becoming homeowners and with the cost of housing being $330,000, $350,000 and up. Okay, in order to make that affordable to somebody, we might have to put $50,000, $75,000, $100,000 in to make that affordable. affordable to that person. And then five years from now they could go and sell it. Well now the next house we have to now give $150,000

1:39:26to make it affordable. Whereas in a land trust or land use restriction, that investment carries with the property. So now I'm gonna turn to

1:39:37Would you like to just say yeah, but it's basically um you know eliminating some of the ability of individual owners to make a profit beyond a negotiated amount. And so in some cases you're allowed to get back, you know, a a percentage increase every year. Um but the idea is that you're basically keeping pace with inflation and so you are accumulating equity because you're paying off a mortgage, and so you're Taking s equity out with you when you leave, but it's not that you're setting the the new price to market rate. So so

1:40:07it's a way of making sure it remains affordable in perpetuity.

1:40:11So, Professor, would that be based on like consumer price index or certain sorts of things?

1:40:16That's all part of the agreements. I've seen different kinds of agreements where it may be based on consumer price index or it may be based on some other formula for appreciation. But so that there are different models and um again the Florida Housing Coalition is really good. They have a lot of guides for creating um a a community land trust. I'm also I'm actually one of the board members on the a newly created Hillsborough County Community Land Trust where they're creating it basically to uh putting their surplus land that they see as

1:40:46appropriate for affordable housing into that land trust. Looking to develop it from from there.

1:40:52And that that's what I was about to ask, is I and I had asked for for our surplus land thing and I don't think I ever got it. But is it is that w uh it one of the reasons why we look at our surplus land to maybe put it into a land trust?

1:41:06You could do that. Um, but you could also so you the difference between a land trust and a land bank. Oh. So land banking is basically uh putting your land aside in a bank. Just like you would put your money aside, so you're putting land aside to say that at some future date you're gonna use it for affordable housing.

1:41:26And and just so all the commissioners know and maybe you don't remember and and for your for you, um I worked with the Pasco County School District and asked them if they had any surplus land and they came up with those 13 acres next to Ancloat High School. And so that is where that Dominium family um sixty percent AMI project is going, two hundred and twenty four units I think, but the the county s the school district sold that land. to Dominium, but at a good price.