Pasco Lives housing element

1:49:47Like why don't we leave here

1:49:48at five? We just go right through downtown.

1:49:54What's people thinking, huh? Should I we get ready to call the order here?

1:50:06did Ronnie want to make a presentation?

1:50:08That's right.

1:50:09Commissioner Oakley, would you like to make a presentation?

1:50:15Commissioner Oakley, would you like to make a presentation?

1:50:32All right.

1:50:38All right, Terry. Higher.

1:50:53Oh no, we're still in Pasco Lives. Yes, we're gonna continue on. Yes, we're not moving to the other chapter until we're done with Pasco Lives.

1:50:59Okay. You ready to pick up? Yeah,

1:51:01let's

1:51:02go. Okay, so 1.2.7 There's a statement that says Pasco County Chicotinians eventually feeling school impact fee outcomes. Um it's I want to be clear, first of all that's a little bit inconsistent with 1.2.4, which makes it sound like we haven't done those things yet. So there's a sort of internal inconsistency. One point two point four D makes it sound like we're going to do that

1:51:32in the future, but then one point two point seven says we're going to continue to do it.

1:51:37Well we're talking about mobility fee and school impact fee. So so in this

1:51:42he's saying that one point two one point two four says shall we amend the code to reduce wave wave impact fee, mobility fees, et cetera, but we've already done that. And then this is shall continue.

1:51:53But w shall continue to implement. So we are implementing the mob mobility fee and school impact fee.

1:51:59Right.

1:52:01Okay. There's a couple things. I understand

1:52:02what you're

1:52:02saying. First of all, it's more than just mobility in schools. We've also we I think fire rescue. There's a whole list of libraries, parks, there there's a You've only you've only captured two of them and there was many of them. So I think you should your list should be complete in terms of the ones that we've already done in 1.2.7.

1:52:29Okay, and then

1:52:32I'm suggesting that once you have a complete list in 1.2.7, you probably don't need 1.2.4 D because we've already done those things. Am I making sense? Yes.

1:52:50So list so list out the mobility fees, the fire impact fee, school impact fee that have been reduced as a result of 1.27? And just in the

1:53:02D.1.2.7 is is we're going to continue to do what we've already done.

1:53:07Yeah.

1:53:08To me all the fee waivers that we've already done should be in 1.2.7. Did we come to some conclusion as to a

1:53:15definition

1:53:15of

1:53:16affordable What's affordable housing?

1:53:20Well that was my earlier comment. Yeah. I think we need a better and if you remember I made a comment earlier that they need to effectively create a definition that's based on our actual deficits of affordable housing and then make that a defined term affordable housing.

1:53:38But wh I where I What I'm trying to get at is when you say the term affordable housing, you mean housing which is income restricted.

1:53:52Yes and no. Okay, so and I just had this conversation with community development. Yesterday. So generally yes. You would talk about the Affordable housing is housing that is income that it's got to be income qualified to get into it. And then it's also restricted for a period of time where they can't resell it or re-rent it to somebody who's not making a similar lower income. However In

1:54:23discussing with human development yesterday, they they want to start counting housing that meets part one but not part two. So for example, if we give down payment assistance to somebody who does meet these income levels, they're they're below eighty percent AMI, they meet the income levels and it's a price point that it it's affordable to that income level, but it's not necessarily restricted to stay that way for the next thirty years. in the developments position is that's still affordable to the person who lives in it for as

1:54:53long as they live in it. Now if they resell it or re-rent it to somebody who is rich, now it's not an affordable unit anymore, but they have a way of tracking that because I'm getting into the weeds here, but 'cause then they get a the mortgage gets paid off for that assist to the that down paying assistance. So I'm not sure if I'm answering your question, but yes, there is some income qualification that occurs before it's considered affordable.

1:55:25but not necessarily restricted.

1:55:31their preference is that it be restricted because they want that unit to stay affordable for a period of time. However Because otherwise the problem is that it's affordable to the first person in, they resell it and now we've lost that affordable unit if it's not restricted.

1:55:51That being said, and discussing it with discussed this issue for an hour with Chuck Lane yesterday, he still wants to count the unit as affordable if they give down payment assistance to it as income qualified, even if it's not restricted.

1:56:05Very consent?

1:56:08Yes. You you are. What doesn't make sense is the term affordable. What what that really is is income restricted and or subsidized. housing, the point that I'm getting to And I find this interesting. is that when we want housing to be affordable, we're all concerned that the cost of housing is not affordable to most of our residents. We're looking

1:56:39at things like the way we make 'em affordable is exactly to the point I made earlier this morning. Well you need density increases, we need to find ways to reduce costs. Here you want to cut out reduced impact fee, mobilities, permit fees. We need to be careful when we make land development code amendments that we're not drop Driving up the cost unnecessarily. I I recognize that we need to have development that pays for itself. But maybe we need to be

1:57:09a little more careful about the impact fees we charge. We charge impact fees which are higher than any of the other counties around us. Well, doesn't that affect housing affordability?

1:57:22Yes, but well but you have to understand that we created targeted reduction. This is the point I was trying to make. We created waivers for mobility fees, school impact fee, most of our impact fee. The one exception would be That's okay. Water and sewer connection fees. where there may be some bond reasons why we can't do that. But but all of the other impact fee, we created a fee waiver program as long as th it's for affordable units.

1:57:50My point is is we she might want to re-evaluate some of our impact fee and the uses of those impact fees because they're causing housing to be not affordable. We have impact fees which far exceed what our surrounding counties charge.

1:58:07But arguably if you waive them, you you for

1:58:10for an affordable unit. I'm not getting at for subsidized housing. I mean for all housing. That's why the housing is not affordable.

1:58:18It it's not necessarily subsidized. So If somebody came in today, a for profit builder, It was building townhomes And they were willing to commit that that talent home would be rent sold to somebody making below a certain income through then they could get that waiver.

1:58:38I I understand that. You're not understanding the point.

1:58:42Oh, I understand. I dis disagree with you. Okay, so so the you're basically saying that we should lower impact fee for everybody because it'll just make whole housing more affordable. That's basically what you're saying, okay? And I'm saying I don't know that it you need an impact fee reduction for a two million dollar home.

1:59:00Well that may or may not be.

1:59:02How is that going to help affordability?

1:59:05It wouldn't be affordable. You take a ten million dollar home and you reduce it by twenty thousand dollars, it's not affordable to anybody still. Except for somebody who can afford a ten million dollar home.

1:59:13Well let me just say this another way.

1:59:17Housing is not made affordable because I take taxes from you and give it to somebody else. Okay, that doesn't make housing affordable, that's socialism. Alright, that's what that is. What I want to do is address the housing affordability problem What costs money is streets and sidewalks and stormwater and utilities and I'm not saying we don't need these things, but maybe we need to look at the level at which we provide these things and

1:59:47or require these things because they cost a lot of money. We need to look at the Florida Building Code. I made the point this morning we're requiring impact resistant windows inland, way away from the coast where I'm not gonna get a hundred and fifty mile an hour winds blowing two by fours through my windows, that drives up the cost of housing.

2:00:09That I agree with you on. Okay. Because we don't have a waiver program for that. Even so even somebody who was willing to commit to the sell the home at a hundred twenty percent or eighty percent of AMI, I have no program to waive the Florida building code so they can actually offer it at that price. And that's what

2:00:25I'm trying to speak to. And I think I'm probably more speaking to our commissioners when you speak to our legislative delegation We need help with the Florida Building Code. That is one of the things that is driving up the cost of housing for your citizens. So I'm not suggesting we should eliminate the building code. I'm suggesting we need to go and make a qualitative evaluation of the building code and decide what's really important and what's really necessary for safety.

2:00:56So I think you made that you got that message to staff earlier. Gotcha. I think they would look at maybe doing some general policy about supporting initiatives that on affordable housing on the changes to affordability code that would assist with affordable housing affordability. Housing something to that.

2:01:13Yeah.

2:01:14Um anyway, so I was just trying to deal with the technical point as to w the the waivers that we have in place today are not what you have in one point two point seven. So you need to have them actually be there. Um one point

2:01:34Four point thirteen. I'm almost done, I promise. Um So I think I understand what you're trying to do with this policy. You're basically saying that you want us to concentrate capital improvements in sort of what I would call Lower income neighborhoods, neighborhoods that may be lacking infrastructure, lacking public services.

2:02:02Well.

2:02:03I support that, although Mr Moody may not based on the statement he just made. Um but

2:02:11I'm not sure that just saying that it's to meet the level of service standards is really the way you should approach it because a lot of these Taking a like a holiday. I'm not sure it has a level of service issue. Okay, what it has is more I mean the way this is worded, if somebody if we wanted to say like landscaping improvements or you know, signage improvement, I don't know. There may be other things you would want to do in these existing neighborhoods that are not necessarily a level of service issue

2:02:42under in the invest chapter. Level service means you've got like a um so like for transportation it means the roads are congestion. Well They may not have a congestion issue in holiday. Okay. And so this makes it sound like we're only gonna do it if they've got a level of service deficient deficiency. I think it should be rephrased to say something like for conte created capital improvements that improve quality of life or that um you know I don't know whether or not necessarily referred to don't

2:03:12you don't I don't think you should be tying it to the L O S. uh a level of service deficiency because not all infrastructure in a older neighborhood is a level of service problem. It might be in level of

2:03:25service. I'm gonna ask you to hold that thought for when we talk about the next chapter because I'm gonna have some questions and comments about level of service. And they may be getting at that differently with

2:03:39regard

2:03:40to it.

2:03:40I'm happy to have that conversation, but I just want to focus on this particular issue. So I I don't my point is that if the goal, if the objective or policy is to provide infrastructure improvements in under served areas, it shouldn't be limited to level service.

2:03:56Okay.

2:03:57Okay. Then I think my

2:03:59own.

2:03:59And then

2:04:00question. Yeah. What do you mean by concentrated capital improvements?

2:04:06Well I think I m I support it being generally big. I mean I if for example let's just say you had an area of the county that it didn't have enough trees in it. We have we talked about the tree mitigation fund that's got a huge balance. I think that trees could be considered a capital improvement that we might

2:04:26arguing that they can't. I just asked what they meant by concentrated.

2:04:37I'm suggesting it should not be tied to that. I'm saying it should be a more general comment, a more general statement that we could That we want to improve the infrastructure of these areas, not necessarily only infrastructure that's in the capital improvements element.

2:04:57So is the concern with the word concentrated?

2:05:00No, actually my concern is

2:05:05We all pay taxes. So the way I'm interpreting this chapter is I should pay taxes and then you're gonna take my tax money and go concentrate the money I pay in somebody else's neighborhood who you feel is not as fortunate as somebody else. We all pay taxes. Why don't all the people get the benefit of the um the fees they pay to the government for service? We're just gonna give it to these people.

2:05:36Well,

2:05:39I'm assuming that when they created this policy it was because these may been people that have been paying taxes for many years that were neglected for twenty, thirty years and because we focused all of our infrastructure improvements in Wesley Chapel or Trinity or that that we we've done so much to focus on growth related infrastructure that we have somewhat neglected inf infrastructure for the older neighborhoods. That's how I interpreted this. So they could argue they've been paying taxes for fifty years and not gotten anything from it.

2:06:10I yeah, I think there's cases just like that. So I'm just I to me this is just a way th I think it's just their way of saying we need to we need to provide some care to those areas that may be lacking in infrastructure.

2:06:27I I don't think the board is gonna disagree with this. I mean we've already done it in Lakuchi, we've done it in in areas there are areas of the county w where we've already done this.

2:06:37There are older neighborhoods that are lacking infrastructure and so we have spent funds to improve

2:06:44over that. Where I'm getting at is what does that Income has nothing to do with lacking infrastructure. There's plenty of high income neighborhoods that have substandard infrastructure. So why should How much you make decide where we're gonna go improve the infrastructure. Because at the end of the day it's government's job to provide the infrastructure, regardless of how much money whoever lives there makes. If

2:07:14I live in a place that's not an HOA or a C D D, it's one of these older neighborhoods, and it's lacking in infrastructure and it happens to be filled with rich people, why should the money have to go be prioritized to go to this neighborhood over that neighborhood?

2:07:28I could I could be wrong, but I believe that some of this is implemented through state and federal programs where they require us to spend it in lower income. Um neighborhoods.

2:07:42I mean, I I believe the lot of Likuchi was funded with state or federal grants to where we couldn't have done it but for the fact that they were lower income. I mean you may not like that that that's state or federal policy, but that that that's what the state or federal. Okay. All right. Anyway, my last technical point is in one point five. Um

2:08:09And Mr. Moody may agree with me on this one. Um so and and the list So the list of the list of vulnerable populations you have in this policy I mean I'm not gonna s ne necessarily gonna commit that because I'm elderly, I'm vulnerable, but I'll put that one aside. But my main concern is you have in this list households earning below one hundred and twenty percent of the area median income. First of all, this is inconsistent with the prior policy which uses eighty percent. But more

2:08:40importantly

2:08:43A hundred and twenty percent of AMI, and I know this 'cause of the local, you' th those are rents are two to three thousand dollars a month. I think it's a stretch to be saying that somebody that can afford to pay two to three thousand dollars a month is a vulnerable population. So I'm not sure who decided that that's a vulnerable. But

2:09:05Well that depends on how much they decide to keep raising their taxes and the cost of their homeowners insurance. They can be very vulnerable.

2:09:14I I d I don't know what you know, I don't know what the intent here is, but first of all there's an inconsistency because other areas you're talking about eighty percent is vulnerable and somehow this one says one twenty.

2:09:25I I think the draft is I think it's supposed to say eighty percent there.

2:09:32That's a little more pensible, I can live with that.

2:09:36Right.

2:09:38Especially since it's talking about the other.

2:09:40I won't comment whether elderly is vulnerable, but since I'm probably technically elder most I think a lot of people on this panel are elderly and I'm not sure we're gonna call ourselves vulnerable, but I'll live with that one if everybody's willing to go with it. Ha ha. I think that was directed to be included in the finish of the older.

2:10:02Yeah, maybe Commissioner Oakley would have had something to say about that one. Should have had him comment on that one. That's right. He's listening now, I'm sure. Good place. That was my that was the end of my technical comments on that Paul chapter.

2:10:19Thank you.

2:10:22We have noted all the comments and the feedback and we will

2:10:26Oh I'm sorry I had one more that I said I was gonna raise earlier and I didn't. Apologize. So we covered it a little bit with Commissioner Moody's comments, but I didn't finish my explanation. So in one point four point one point five point four and one point five point five it's got basically Talking about community residential housing and then their citing criteria for community residential housing.

2:10:55I think somewhere there needs to be a qualifier in here that we don't apply this to the extent we're preempted because there's certain com classes of community residential homes which the state has basically said shall be deemed to be the equivalent of a single family home. And I think it's like six or And Planning Commission had a case a few years ago where we had this exact fight. I don't you all probably remember it. Um But there's not much

2:11:25we can do in terms of the siting of those types of community residential homes and so I don't want this policy to be interpreted that We are allowed to apply these criteria if it w in the state situations where we're preempted.

2:11:40So we can add a clarification or a qualifier there.

2:11:44Yeah.

2:12:04Okay. Any other comments on Pasco Lives, the housing element?

2:12:12Since David's done, just one quick clarification. I don't know that I don't think there's anything necessarily that needs to be addressed, but as it ties back to affordable housing 1.2.4 and 1.2.7, that the resolution for the tree ordinance, it removed the reduction. For the tree mitigation for affordable housing. Just want to make sure that's not in conflict with any of these incentives or things we're trying to do to assist affordable housing and lower costs, because we actually went the other way with the tree mitigation

2:12:42resolution, correct?

2:12:46Well it's it probably did did, but then it also doesn't it have a provision where we can provide some of the funds to affordable housing.

2:12:55As far as

2:12:57it says these incentives may include but are not limited to the

2:13:02But what the resolution did it actually Instead of saying that, hey, affordable housing providers can cut down trees and then get free trees was kind of a disincentive to save trees in the first place. So we close that loophole and they have to follow the rules and they can still get money to replant trees that they have to plant. Okay. Yeah.

2:13:23So they get money

2:13:24as

2:13:24a recipient.

2:13:26They can get it as a recipient, but they have the ability now encouraged or or required to save trees, not just get a pass and cut them down and get free ones. So that's what we did.

2:13:35That's a paid in order to get it.

2:13:38Well, may I mean to to there might be a better word than flexibility. 'Cause you're you're focused on half that says increased flexibility to meet. So I

2:13:47mean

2:13:48maybe the appropriate word is increased assistance to meet landscaping requirements? It's better than flexibility? 'Cause Mr. Gerardi's correct, we're not we're not waiving the requirement. We're assisting them with land

2:14:00remote. Yeah, that's correct. That makes sense.

2:14:07Okay.

2:14:09Anything else? For now.

2:14:15I take that as a no.

2:14:19We finished one element. There we go. There

2:14:22we go. Ten more to go. A drum roll. That was one of

2:14:25the easy ones.

2:14:27So