commissioner closing comments NACO housing shortage

2:50:43Okay, who's next? You? That would be me. Okay, thank

2:50:45you.

2:50:46But I don't have anything, so thank you.

2:50:51I don't I don't have anything either, thank you. Wow. Well you're going so fast. Nicely we're done now. And I ba I barely have anything. Um so I I have a stack of papers back in my office, but since I've been on vacation and I traveled twenty

2:51:07Mm-hmm. Um half of uh nine and a half hours of which I was trapped in my seat by someone who should have had two seats could not use my right arm for nine and a half hours. I literally had to eat with my left hand. Um Um I'm not gonna go into it in detail, but I I am gonna um remember something that the one of the top guys at the National Association of Home Builders said to us at my community economic development workforce board. And

2:51:37and this was also told to me at the ULI conference. is the United States is three and a half million residents is short.

2:51:47And their capacity is about a million and a half a year. And so they're not keeping up with with it and um there's a national home shortage and we had this discussion in my committee about Um you know, homeless and it's happening the challenges that we have are everywhere. Um although uh one of the gentlemen actually someone that moved here recently said that Denver is now the San Francisco of the Rocky Mountains as far

2:52:17as homeless people living in their downtown area. So pretty sad. Um

2:52:22while I was in Oregon I saw the tent cities

2:52:26near the interstates there in Oregon. Yeah, they live under the bridges and on the highways. So um but but and I I should have texted her earlier Um before I left to go out west I was listening in in on a conversation and um I heard one of our local people who um runs one of the uh shell the five oh one C threes that helps um Out on the nineteenth corridor. She had mentioned that in the last

2:52:56ten days she had fifty families approach her organization for help with housing because they were all about to be homeless because their rents had gone up. And they couldn't afford it. And at and this was two or three weeks ago, they had placed eight families, they were able to place eight families in motel rooms, which is not sustainable. And I do not know what happened to the rest of those families that they went into the woods. or what happened and um

2:53:27So we we I think we have 'em. some big challenges coming to us, especially on our side because you know it's very dense and that's where a lot of those families that are phys uh monetarily challenged live. Um Uh I am having a town hall. I don't remember the date since September. The county administrator will be there. I think Kathy's gonna be there. This is this is not a typical town hall for us to bring ideas and information to our residents. This

2:53:57is for us to be able to listen to our residents, uh specifically in that area of southwest Pasco County. So just um wanna make sure we We all get um understand uh what's going on over there. So um With that, I I'll just talk more about NACO next time. I was very happy to be reappointed vice vice chair of CEWD and Vice Chair of International and I'm on the LUC in um large urban

2:54:28county caucus, though I didn't really learn much on that one this time. So um with that, oh one more thing. The National Home Builder Guy said, you know those green boxes that go into subdivisions and have the power? It's kind of a some kind of electrical junction box. Yeah. One year backlog. You can't get those for one year.

2:54:48So yeah. Can I bring up one thing that I I mentioned to you as far as at at the NACO Summer one things they talked about and they had a great economic development presentation. Yeah. And this presentation talked about how people nowadays, kinda like what Richard Florida said years ago with his book about, you know, who's your city, the people picking where they want to live first. It is now even more essential. that every area looks to attract people for different reasons. People picked a where they want to live even more so

2:55:18now. And they s and they stated so much the amenities were critical. Boulder Colorado they say now. So it's outside of Denver. It's like the riding capital of the world. Trails. All the trails they have.

2:55:29Yeah.

2:55:30Just phenomenal. All the extra activities are out there. So Everything we can do to improve our amenities every step of the way is gonna bring jobs because it's gonna bring people by improving quality of life. That's what they're focused on. So all these years of year trails is like mirrored around the nation right now. Commissioner Yeah.

2:55:47You know, we w our county is so special in that You know, before it was a real negative ask n negative thing that we had the other counties' well fields. But now those are giant areas of conservation that we can look to as as like open park space if we if we access them like that. And I know we're working on a plan that will be coming back to all of us on crossbar. And um and I've liked to see that kind of utilization Um used