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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2008-03-13; Housing Commission; MinutesMinutes of: HOUSING COMMISSION Time of Meeting: 6:00 P.M. Date of Meeting: March 13, 2008 Place of Meeting: CITY COUNCIL CHAMBERS CALL TO ORDER Chairperson Smith called the Meeting to order at 6:05 p.m. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE Board Member Wrisley led with the Pledge of Allegiance. ROLL CALL Present: Commissioners: Emelda Bradwell Craig Kirk Doris Ritchie Bobbie Smith Hope Wrisley Absent: None Staff Present: Housing and Redevelopment Director: Debbie Fountain Housing Program Manager: Bobbi Nunn APPROVAL OF MINUTES Minutes of February 14, 2008, were approved as written. VOTE: 4-0 AYES: Bradwell, Ritchie, Smith and Wrisley NOES: None ABSTAIN: Kirk (not present at the February 14, 2008, meeting) ABSENT: None ITEM NOT ON AGENDA There were no items that were not on the agenda. NEW BUSINESS Debbie Fountain, Director of Housing and Redevelopment, presented the item on the agenda as the Carlsbad Public Agency Annual Plan. Ms. Bobbi Nunn, Housing Program Manager, will make the presentation. Ms. Nunn said she will be bringing forward the Carlsbad Public Housing Agency Annual Plan for Fiscal Year 2008. The background on the plan is that it is required pursuant to the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act of 1998. Public Housing Agencies are required to submit a five-year and annual plan. The annual plans must be adopted by the Housing and Redevelopment Commission and a copy with required certification submitted to the Department of HUD. A streamlined five-year plan for fiscal year 2005-2009 was adopted by the Housing and Redevelopment Commission back on April 12, 2005. The Plan does require public participation, a public review and comment period for 45 days prior to adoption and the 45 days will end on April 8, 2008. Any public comment on the proposed annual plan or public input on needs and priorities and oral communication will be recorded at the public hearing which is scheduled for April 8, 2008, if the plan is approved this evening. Comments will be addressed in the final plan. To date, we have received one comment. It was a letter of recognition of the affordable housing we are providing in the City of Carlsbad. Commissioner Wrisley asked how we publicize the fact that we are now taking public comment. HOUSING COMMISSION MINUTES MARCH 13, 2008 PAGE 2 of 5 Ms. Nunn said it is publicized in the newspaper and it is also on our website. Ms. Nunn continued we have to only submit a streamlined annual plan, which as you can see it is extremely streamlined. Because we administer a Section 8 Voucher Program only. The only thing we have to identify in our streamlined plan is if there is a significant change in policies, programs, or planned components since the last annual plan submission which was submitted in fiscal year 2007. We have not had any changes. We are submitting the "certification" that we are submitting the annual plan. Since the annual plan is so streamlined and there isn't as much information, I am going to give a general program update on what is happening with the Section 8 Rental Assistance Program. Then if you have questions, we can discuss them. Our first topic is funding, participant statistics and waiting list statistics. HUD has changed our funding to a calendar year. At one time we had funding based on the agency's fiscal year, and that has now changed to the calendar year. Right now our calendar year 2008, even though this is March 13, 2008, is still proposed funding. We have not received our final funding for the year 2008, which will be retroactive back to January 1, 2008. Our proposed funding is approximately 5.3 million, which will cover housing assistance payments for our families. The proposed administrative funds that we are anticipating is $649,500. In the past few years, the administrative funds have been a block grant amount of money they have established how much they will pay a housing agency. As of the calendar year 2008, we are going back to a per unit leased per month calculation, which is based on the number of units we have leased on the first of every month. Right now we are anticipating receiving $90 per unit leased. With that information, that is how we determine we are anticipating $649,500 in administrative monies. As you can see, this is definitely an advantage for us because it has brought our administrative fees up quite a bit. When they discontinued doing the per unit fee, we actually lost a significant amount of administrative money. At least this will bring us back up to being able to support the Section 8 Program administratively. Last year calendar year 2007 final funding was a little over 5.3 million in housing assistance payments. We also received $475,987 for administrative money. At this point, with the funds that are being proposed we will probably only see about 84% of that amount for the housing assistance payments. I have not heard anything yet on the administrative money. The reason for that is that HUD is still in the process of determining what the housing agencies require on a nationwide basis for funding for the calendar year. Then they will take into consideration what is actually budgeted and whatever percentage they can give us is what we will get. The last information I received from one of the industry groups that keeps an eye on this information, is we are looking at receiving about 84% of what we are anticipating for the housing assistance payments. We are still hoping we will be receiving the full amount of administrative money. For calendar year 2007 we actually ended up getting about $150,000 less than we originally had anticipated at the beginning of the year so about 3% less than we expected. For the administrative funding, it was approximately $19,000 less or 4% less for 2007. The calendar year 2008 funds are not final yet. This is just what has been proposed. As soon as we find out those figures, it will be retroactive back to the first of January. With the anticipated funds, we have determined we can assist approximately 634 households based on our average assistance payment of $698. Our average household units we felt we could support is actually going down 16 units or 2% based on the increase in the average assistance payment. We actually have 703 baseline units that have been authorized from HUD. But if we don't have the funds to support those units, then we can only lease our clients up to the units we can support with our budget. After we use our budget, there isn't any other money. Even if we have 703 units, they will not fund us up to the 703 units. We have to use the funding we have and support as many families as we can. However, if we have extra funding, we cannot go over the 703 units. So that 703 units is a cap for us. Our average housing assistance payment, which was $698 as of this month, was $665 last year at this time. So it did go up about 5%. Thirty-four percent of our program are seniors, 62 and over, 22% are disabled members, 33% of the clients on our program have earned income, which is working income. The average family size is two and our average annual income for a family size of two is $15,372. HOUSING COMMISSION MINUTES MARCH 13, 2008 PAGE 3 of 5 Based on all members that are being assisted, not just the head of households, their ethnicity are as follows: 89% of our program identifies being Caucasian or white; 7% black; less than 1 % are American Indian; and 3% are Asian. Under ethnicity, we have 33% that identify as being Hispanic and 67% that identify as not being Hispanic. At our last meeting, the question was asked if our clients that are utilizing the Section 8 Program were spread out throughout the city. We actually have 17 census tracts within the City of Carlsbad. I pulled up a report that gives you information about the different census tracts and the percentage of families that are leased within those census tracts. There is some concentration in the 179 census tract, which is in the Village area. That has the highest concentration, 24% of the program. I did provide a map of the census tract so you could get an idea of how it correlates with the different percentages. The census tract map is based on information from 2000. Right now we have approximately 2,000 applicants on the waiting list. We have done two purges in the last year. Of those 2,000, approximately 23% are elderly and 22% are disabled, head of households. Households with residency preference qualify for a higher preference because they are either living in Carlsbad or they are working in Carlsbad. Of the 2,000 people only 22% are considered residents or have the residency preference. This is quite a bit lower than it has been in the past. That is just because we have been pulling so many people off of the waiting list and purging so many people off of the list that the percentage has gone down quite a bit. We do intend to open our waiting list within the year because our goal is to assist first our residents of Carlsbad or people who are working in Carlsbad before we assist people who are non-residents or people who are not working in Carlsbad. Commissioner Wrisley asked how many of the people who live in our affordable housing are college students. Ms. Nunn said that is a difficult question to answer. Under the Section 8 Rental Assistance Program if someone was a college student, they most likely would not qualify for the program. However, some of the affordable housing developments will allow a single person to rent a one-bedroom. Ms. Fountain may be able to answer a little more about what some of the requirements are for the different affordable housing developments. We do have a lot of college students that are getting the benefit of assistance. It is usually mothers who are going back to school to gain education to get a better job and we have a lot of adult children who are living with their parents still so they can go to school and be more successful. If you are interested in getting figures on the number of people who benefit from the program that are full-time students, that would be easy enough to get that information. Commissioner Wrisley commented most of them aren't what you would call college age, like 18 to 22, right? Ms. Nunn said no. Actually our senior population went up by 11% so 33% of our program now falls under the senior category, then we have a high population of disabled individuals, and then the rest are families. Commissioner Wrisley asked if a lot of the disabled are in the group homes that are down in the Village or not necessarily. Ms. Nunn said they are spread over Carlsbad. They can choose wherever they want to live. Disabled doesn't necessarily mean physically disabled or having physical limitations. It can be a wide variety of disabilities. Chairperson Smith commented that she is a Section 8 recipient. When she applied for Section 8, she was not a senior. She was not old enough, but she was disabled and so was her son. Because she taught school in Carlsbad, she was pushed up on the waiting list. She wasn't a college student, she was a college graduate. Ms. Nunn said we have a wide variety of clients that are benefiting from the Section 8 Program. HOUSING COMMISSION MINUTES MARCH 13, 2008 PAGE 4 of 5 Commissioner Wrisley commented there are a lot of blank spaces. Ms. Nunn said those are things that do not apply to our agency. Before they didn't have the streamlined plan, so we had to fill out the standard plan, which was 40 or 50 pages because it had public housing and things that did not apply. This streamlined plan they developed for Section 8 only housing agencies. HUD has been re-evaluating the template so they can come up with something that provides a little bit more information. Maybe next year when we do this again we will have something a little bit more informative. Commissioner Kirk said he has one question with regard to the funding model. What drove the change to the $90 per unit? Was that a recommendation? Ms. Nunn said the industry has been pushing it for the last few years because in the past that is the way HUD funded the program. They funded you by unit lease per month so you have X amount of dollars per month so it gave you the incentive to make sure you kept your program up. They also funded you based on your actual units. So they would give you an estimate of funding based on your prior year usage and say this is what we think you will use, and you could lease up to the 703 families. If you did not have enough money to support it, then you would reconcile your funds with HUD at the end of the fiscal year. HUD would replenish your funds to make up for the funds you didn't have available to support your full program size (703 units). Conversely if you had enough money to support more than your baseline, you could help more families. They eliminated the helping more families first, and then they did a budget based program for both the housing assistance and the administrative money. The different industry groups that support the housing agencies have been lobbying to get this legislation changed again because it is just not working. As you can see, it is going to be a significant increase for us this coming year as long as nothing happens between now and when they actually determine the actual funds allocated. When this first happened, it made a big impact on us and what we had as far as funds to administratively support the program. Commissioner Wrisley asked if this is taking it up to what it was before. Ms. Nunn said it is a little bit higher, but if you take into consideration inflation for the last five years, it is probably in line. Commissioner Bradwell said for a while the Section 8 had frozen funding right? Ms. Nunn said yes. Commissioner Bradwell asked, is that still in effect? Ms. Nunn said we still have a closed waiting list because we opted to close the list since the funding had been cut. Since we weren't getting as much funding each year as we were used to getting, we closed our waiting list so we weren't giving families false hope by putting them on the waiting list. That way we are helping the families that are already on the waiting list. The funds aren't frozen per se. We did give payment standard increases, in fact a significant amount. If we don't increase our payment standards, our clients can't use the program in the rental market. This isn't doing anybody any good because we can't keep our lease rate up if our families can't find affordable and acceptable housing. We have been able to increase our payment standards to make the program more marketable for people to find suitable units. However, technically we have 703 families that we are authorized to assist, but with the funds, we are looking at assisting 620 or 650 families. Chairperson Smith commented she has been a commissioner now for about four or five years and being on the Section 8 Program, as stated before, she knows how important it is to receive assistance when you can barely make it. Especially with the recession we are going into now. These women work very hard. I want to say thank you. Ms. Nunn said if anyone has any questions or would like additional statistics; she provided her e-mail and phone number. HOUSING COMMISSION MINUTES MARCH 13, 2008 PAGE 5 of 5 Commissioner Kirk made a motion to recommend approval of the Streamlined Annual Plan for 2008 calendar year. Commissioner Ritchie seconded the motion. VOTE: 5-0 AYES: Bradwell, Kirk, Ritchie, Smith and Wrisley NOES: None ABSTAIN: None ABSENT: None DIRECTOR'S REPORT Ms. Fountain asked the Commissioners if they received their invitation for the Habitat for Humanity groundbreaking. It is on March 27, 2008, at 9 a.m. and it is at the Roosevelt Street site in the Village Area. If you are not familiar with the site, it is the property that is all the way near the end of Roosevelt Street at Laguna. It is a vacant lot, on the east side of the road, and there is a large sign in front which says Habitat for Humanity Program. You are all welcome to attend. We will send you a copy of the invitation so you will have the information as well. If anyone is interested in volunteering to work on the Habitat for Humanity Project, you can contact my office and I can give you the numbers of the volunteer coordinators. They have all sorts of jobs you can do all the way from helping to frame, to painting, to all sorts of fun things. If you are interested, you can contact Habitat for Humanity directly but you can call my office for the phone number. The other announcement I wanted to make that you should have received notice about your Conflict of Interest forms that need to be filled out and sent back to the City Clerk's office. Please make sure you do that. Those are very important they get turned in. Commissioner Kirk said he does have a question on that. On the form he received, the annual period covered is from January 1 , 2007, through December 31 , 2007. Shouldn't it be for 2008? Ms. Fountain said no, it is for the previous calendar year. Next year you will get one for 2008. Commissioner Wrisley asked if it will be on line by then. Ms. Fountain answered she is not sure. Staff has been able to do it on line, but she is assuming it will be available to the public by next year. ADJOURNMENT By proper motion, the meeting of March 13, 2008, was adjourned at 6:30 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Deborah Fountain Housing and Redevelopment Director PATRICIA CRESCENTI Minutes Clerk MINUTES ARE ALSO TAPED AND KEPT ON FILE UNTIL THE WRITTEN MINUTES ARE APPROVED.