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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2012-10-16; Housing Commission; MinutesMinutes of: HOUSING COMMISSION Time of Meeting: 6:00 P.M. Date of Meeting: OCTOBER 16, 2012 Place of Meeting: CITY COUNCIL CHAMBERS CALL TO ORDER Chairperson Smith called the Meeting to order at 6:00 p.m. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE Commissioner Igoe led with the Pledge of Allegiance. ROLL CALL Present: Commissioners: Emelda Bradwell Susan Igoe Craig Kirk Bobbie Smith Absent: Brian Andrews Staff Present: Housing & Neighborhood Services Director: Debbie Fountain APPROVAL OF MINUTES Minutes of June 14, 2012, meeting were approved as written. VOTE: 4-0 AYES: Bradwell, Igoe, Kirk and Smith NOES: None ABSTAIN: None ABSENT: Andrews ITEM NOT ON AGENDA There were no items not on the agenda. NEW BUSINESS Debbie Fountain, Director of Housing & Neighborhood Services, said the item on the agenda is a financial assistance request from the partnership of C&C Development and Irvine Housing Opportunities for an acquisition and rehabilitation project on Carol/Harding. Todd Cottle from C&C Development as well as Pat Whittaker from Irvine Housing Opportunities gave their presentation on acquiring 21 duplexes (42 units total) and rehabilitating them for low income restricted affordable rental units in the historic Barrio neighborhood of the Village Area (Magnolia Avenue, Harding Street, and Carol Place). Barry Cottle and Scott Berring were also present. Ms. Fountain said this is different than what we have done in the past. Most of the projects we have brought to the commission have been for new construction. Many of them have been directly related to inclusionary housing requirements; they are developers and they bring in partners and they make the units more affordable. Typically, our subsidies are focused on helping those partnerships work their project through and providing some financial assistance. This is an acquisition and rehabilitation. It is not being done as a part of our inclusionary housing ordinance so we would get additional units out of it above and beyond what our inclusionary would require. It does have a different financing scenario that works for it. HOUSING COMMISSION MINUTES October 16,2012 PAGE 2 of 9 This is approximately a 15.5 million dollar project. That works out to about $369,000 a unit, which is a fairly high number. It is not unreasonable considering that it is an acquisition of existing rental units. It is located west of the interstate, which typically we do find the land cost higher. West of the interstate is within close walking distance to the beach, and even though the units need a lot of updating and need a lot of rehab, they have done a fair market appraisal on it and they have appraised at about $400,000 a duplex. They are within a fair market price for the property they are paying for, and as you saw in the presentation, they are doing substantial rehab on the units, about $75,000 a unit. It is a lot of work that is going to have a major change of the quality of life for those who are currently living in it and will live in it in the future, plus it also improves the overall area and that is an area we have focus on now. It is an expensive project. Most of our projects coming through in the last few years have been fairly comparable in price, even though they may be new construction projects. I think what you will see when these units are done is pretty close to a new construction project. They also have about $300,000 to $400,000 included in their costs for relocation. That is required if anybody has to move out because they are not eligible for the project any longer because they would not income qualify or maybe there is an overcrowded situation and this unit really doesn't work appropriately. There may be other reasons. They have done a fairly extension relocation report and review and are confident in those numbers. Those do all have additional costs that aren't part of a new construction typically. The Summary Proforma gives you a basic breakdown of the costs. In the overall uses of funds there are about 8.4 million dollars in land acquisitions, the property and the buildings that are on this site. That works out to a little over $200,000 a unit. You have construction costs, which are the rehab costs and related costs associated with the facilities that were shared by the developer. It is about 3.1 million dollars, just shy of $75,000 a unit There are a number of indirect soft costs, which are typical types of costs associated with construction such as architects, consultants, etc., at about 1.7 million dollars, a little over $41,000 per unit. We always pull out the developer fee and talk to you specifically about that because whenever you are putting public money into a project, you want to make sure there is not undue gain to the developer with the use of that public money. In this particular case, they are proposing a 1.6 million dollar maximum developer fee, which is about $38,000 a unit That is about 10% of total project costs, which is consistent with our policies. Our policies are that we don't want to see more than 10%. Our projects in the past have ranged anywhere from about 7 to 10% in the developer fee, so they are at the top of the range but within what is determined to be reasonable by the city. General development and financing costs are about $600,000. Then you get to the bottom line of about $15.5 million dollars. The most recent project, Tavarua on Harding, was a 50 unit complex, senior only, 100% affordable. It was very similar in affordability. They were about $12,000 more a unit for new construction. It is not always cheaper to do acquisition in rehab. If you are doing the type of job this developer is proposing to do, it has a significant cost and it is not always cheaper. In some ways it is a better way to do this then to just proceed directly with a high density project in an area that is used to the low density. You get them used to the idea of having some affordable housing within that neighborhood, and then over time you can change and build a larger project Forty-two units is still a good sized project. Knowing that you are going to add that to your affordable housing inventory is a plus. We look at all of those. We look at how they compare to other projects in terms of the different parts of that and the uses of funds and they are fairiy consistent in all of the areas. The land cost per unit is definitely higher than we have seen in other projects, specifically because they are buying buildings on them and those buildings are already serving in the rental inventory and they have rental income. When we look at the sources of funds, this is where you will see more change than we have for new construction. New construction actually has access to higher levels of equity so typically they wouldn't need as much money from the city as this project is proposing that it would need. They are looking at doing tax exempt bonds; they have about 3.3 million dollars. They are looking at tax credit investor equity. You have seen tax credit projects before, a lot of them have been 9% tax credits, which bring more equity into a project, but those are new construction projects. That is a very competitive process to get the higher equity. In this particular case, they are doing 4% tax credits, which is not as competitive a process but there is not as much equity that is available to come through that. We have done other 4% bond deals with new construction, but typically that money is brought in from the master developers for HOUSING COMMISSION MINUTES October 16,2012 PAGE 3 of 9 the inclusionary housing requirement. In this case, you don't have a master developer so the only other place the developers can actually come if we are going to provide affordable housing, is to the city. You will note the city contribution that is requested is 7.4 million dollars. That works out to about $176,000 a unit. As I mentioned in the report, that is more than we have spent on any other project to date. The closest that we had was the Habitat for Humanity project on Roosevelt Street; it was 11 units that was a for-sale project for very low income. In working with Habitat, a number of sen/ices are donated, but there is still a large amount of money on that We are in that project for $142,000 a unit It was a different project, different type, different product, but it had been our largest to date. The senior project on Harding Street under construction now was at $75,000 per unit. Again, they went for the 9% tax credit, which can bring more equity into it. They also had to look for other sources of funding, even with us putting in $75,000 per unit They had a little bit better access to other funding because it was a new construction project. The acquisition and rehab projects have a little bit more difficulty and have more limited resources to go to. We looked at this from a staff standpoint and asked what the public will benefit if we put that much money in a per unit cost; what is the public benefit? Todd went through some of those public benefits, but I want to tell you why staff was interested in recommending approval of this. A lot of the reasons are the same as what the developer already shared with you. Normally I probably wouldn't have brought this deal fonfl/ard if It hadn't been for the location that this project is proposed, because the historic Barrio area is currently a high priority project area for the City Council in terms of trying to encourage new development in the area as well as encouraging properties to be cleaned up, updated, social issues to be addressed, so we have it on our priority projects list for the City of Carisbad. One of our projects in our department this year is to develop a neighborhood enhancement plan for the Barrio, and it will include a variety of programs. It might address lighting, address work with the police department on security issues if we are having teen issues out past curfew or gang related problems, those are all things that would go onto our action plan that those are areas we are going to address. In this particular neighborhood, I asked the police department to run statistics for this area in terms of crime. Just in the blocks of Carol, Harding and Magnolia, last year there was over 200 calls for police sen/ices, which is a very high number for the number .of housing units in that area. What struck me the most was that 34 of those calls were for calls for extra patrol, which means people don't feel safe in the neighborhood so they are asking for extra police patrol to come in because something is making them nen/ous or scared and they need some additional assistance? When you combine that this has long been an area that needs updating; it needs upgrading in its units, and there has been obviously deferred maintenance in these units, and you combine them with the social issues that are going on in the area, such as people paying too much for rent and can't pay attention to some other issues because all their money goes into paying rent and they don't have disposable income to address some of the issues or the rules aren't being enforced in the area as was mentioned, there is not an on-site manager to continually address things as they come up so you don't let them get worst. We looked at that as one key issue of why we thought this was appropriate to send some public money into it. If you combine not only your affordable housing and use your affordable housing to provide that type of housing for low income households, then you can also improve the neighborhood as part of it. That was the part I thought was a good reason for participating in this and going higher than we normally would go. In your report we also talked about some other benefits of it. We do have the benefit, since this is outside the inclusionary housing ordinance, that developers can purchase credits. It is an expensive opportunity, but there are a number of developers that just don't feel they can put the units within their projects and would much rather buy housing credits to do that. We also have the Tavarua project where credits can be purchased. If we had 120 housing credits now available in the village area, in the northwest quadrant, developers can purchase those and would support the development of about 680 market rate units. We don't have that many projects in for review yet, but when you think about the economy improving and housing starting to be built, again as the Barrio area being identified as the area for higher density as part of the General Plan update there is actually support for encouraging higher density housing in the Barrio village area. This would hopefully encourage that to happen as well. When you start cleaning up areas and updating areas and they HOUSING COMMISSION MINUTES October 16,2012 PAGE 4 of 9 become more attractive, then it starts to interest the market rate developers. At the same time, however, this particular neighborhood is not going to be as desirable for the market rate developers just because of its location next to 1-5, next to Tamarack, adjacent to commercial properties. Not that it is necessarily undesirable but the market rate developers are probably not going to start there and so if we can provide the affordable housing in that location, it allows them to more centralize their market rate housing. We think there will be a desire to do that in the future. As we already mentioned, it will provide for long-term maintenance as Todd stated. They own their projects; they manage them themselves so they can quickly respond if we have any issues. That has been really helpful to the city in that if we start to have an affordable housing development that we are starting to have problems with or the police are starting to experience problems, we can immediately call the management company, we either call the on-site manager or the asset manager and tell them about the problem and they need to respond and they always do. We find that the affordable housing developments are often times better managed than a lot of the market rate rental housing, though not all. If there is an off-site owner who doesn't live in the neighborhood, they may not pay as close of attention to what is going on and wouldn't know about something until they are contacted. In this case, they are combining them and they will all be under the same ownership and the developer will provide affordable housing and do it well because it is their reputation. The first project that we had built in Carisbad, Villa Loma, in 1996 looks as good today as when it was built in 1996 and that is because you have an affordable housing developer that cares about the project, that is their mission to do and they are very good at what they do. Just updating the physical appearance is going to have a huge impact just on pride in the area, on image of the area and it is amazing sometimes that just those improvements such as painting a building, can bring new life to an area. In this case, they are actually going to change the look of the buildings so they are not only going to be pretty, but they will be useful and they will be managed well. That was another key component for us, the fact that the residents would then possibly have more disposable income. As long as they are responsible, that disposable income often allows for people to go back to school or it may improve their quality of life because they are able to do something they couldn't do before. There was a number of reasons we looked at to recommend approval to you and ultimately to the City Council. The first step is coming to, the Housing Commission, and it is your recommendation that goes to the City Council at this point. We come to you, share all the information, let you ask questions, and you will be the one deciding if this has appropriate benefit to be able to recommend financial assistance to the city. We will have our normal types of loan documents for this project like we have with others where we do all of our assistance in the form of a loan, and their residual receipts loans are surplus cash loans so they are paid after they pay all their operating costs and other expenses, a portion of that comes back to us to repay the loan. If they can't repay the loan in any given year because they don't have surplus cash and typically that happens in the first five, eight, sometimes ten years, they might not have the cash and then it accrues interest at 3%. It is a 55 year loan. In the past, we have seen we do start getting loan payments that goes back in the Housing Trust Fund and then we use that for new projects. This money we are proposing for this specific request is Housing Trust Fund money. In the past, sometimes we have recommended to you CDBG money or HOME money, but in this particular case we felt it was more appropriate to use the Housing Trust Fund money. It is our most flexible fund. It has the least amount of restrictions in terms of just processing on it. It also is intended for affordable housing, its only purpose. It cannot be used for building parks or roads or anything else within the city. It has to be used for projects within Carisbad. Sometimes the CDBG money has so many strings attached to it; it becomes very difficult to use it. In this particular case, just because of the timing and the fact that we are trying to move this foHA/ard a little quicker, we are going with the less restrictive money, which is the Housing Trust Fund. As a reminder, that Housing Trust Fund, the way money comes into that fund is through loan repayments, also in-lieu fees, so projects that are six units or less if they are building a market rate housing and they are six units or less, they pay an in-lieu fee. That money goes into the Housing Trust Fund. Currently we have about 18.3 million dollars, which may seem like a lot but we do work through it and it builds back up by earning interest Unfortunately, it hasn't been earning as much interest lately as we would like, but we hope that will improve in the future. We do have adequate funds to be able to fund this project. We HOUSING COMMISSION MINUTES October 16, 2012 PAGES of9 currently have no other projects in the works. It doesn't mean there won't be another one coming soon, but I don't know of anything at the moment It has slowed down on our market rate developments over the last few years, which means the inclusionary housing is not getting produced. We have to look at these types of opportunities to continue to add to our inventory a little more creatively than through the inclusionary. Eventually that will pick up again and we will get new projects again. We are recommending that we approve the 7.4 million dollars in financial assistance for this project as a standard loan as we do most loans. We would probably put into our agreement something about trying to assure this future development happens as well. We are not asking you to approve that tonight, but that would be the ultimate goal that we could assure that it moves fonfl/ard as well because then you can look at your subsidy and feel a little bit better. It will ultimately produce 140 units and then increase the amount of benefit that you have. You can't approve it tonight with the thought that is going to happen because that hasn't been approved. You have to approve it tonight and be comfortable with the 7.4 million dollars is okay for the 42 units with the other benefits that we have talked about. Commissioner Bradwell asked if someone could clarify something for her. Can you tell me if the previous owners of these properties were affiliated with Magnolia Manor Apartments at all? Mr. Cottle said yes they are. The same family owns those. At one point in time when they put the gas station in and the karaoke bar on Tamarack, they moved some of those over there. They continue to own those. I don't know what the plan is for that. These are a little bit more unique because they are scattered ownership and with the individual duplexes. I know in the past they have been getting pressure from brokers to sell off the individual duplexes. I am not sure what the long term plan or the goal is for that property. Commissioner Kirk asked Ms. Fountain about her mentioning that ultimately the city wants the phase two. Is there a timeline? It was said to be roughly 15 years. Ms. Fountain said it will probably not be before the 15*^^ year, simply because of the other financing sources and requirements they would have. They would have to maintain them for at least 15 years. In the timeframe, we would look to them to start working on acquiring the other properties they might need; working on the permits and plans. We still would have to process our revisions to our zoning code to actually be allowed to be able to do them out of density that is being proposed so there are a number of steps that would have to be taken and sometimes 15 years seems a really long time out, but it isn't. We would like to be able to put into the loan agreements that we would like them to move towards that. Mr. Cottle said our goal as the developer, there are five duplexes out there but there are two that don't have a front yard that drive us absolutely crazy. It is the same individual who owns both of them but you can tell which buildings he owns because they both have dirt in the front yard. Chairperson Smith asked a question regarding the relocation of the present tenants. Are you saying they would have to move out? Mr. Cottle said there is a portion when we go through and do a rehabilitation project; we do an individual survey of each of the households out there. We have a company that we work with called Overiand Pacific Cutler and all they really do is relocation, they do residential and commercial. They talk to everyone in each of the individual residents, their family size, about where their income level is, it is all done on a verbal basis. After we acquire the property, we go through and we actually collect because we are certifying the income to the city every year and some of the lenders we have involved. We will collect more detailed information, but based upon that original inten/iew, they put together a relocation report. There are 42 households out there right now that are occupied. Through the initial inten/iews there are six household that don't qualify because they are over income, which means their income exceeds what our new restrictions are going to be. There is one household that they were not able to get in contact with over a number of weeks. They were not available so we included that household just to be consen/ative in that potential relocation. Out of 42, seven households, six that we know about for sure, that would end up be permanent relocation. What they get is they earn relocation benefits so the consultant company HOUSING COMMISSION MINUTES October 16,2012 PAGE 6 of 9 that we use, Overiand Pacific, they work with them on an individual basis. They find a replacement unit, they pay for their cost of moving, their cost of hooking up their new utilities, shutting down their old utilities, and then we pay them to the extent that it exists, the difference in their rents. In all the households that we inten/iewed, indicated that they want to stay in the City of Carisbad. They want to stay preferably in that same area, but it just depends on what is available at any particular time. If we see another unit that has $100 more, or even $50 more in rent, they get that difference of over a period of about four years. They either get that in a lump sum payment, which gets paid to them at the time of moving, or they can take it on a monthly basis, even just to cover that difference. It varies from household to household in the unit that they move to. Chairperson Smith said she knows rehabilitation is altogether different from a new home. Would the people who qualify to live in that particular unit, would they have to move out while you are working on it? Mr. Cottle said yes they would. With the type of rehabilitation we do, without getting into it too deep, in the bathrooms we take everything down to the studs. We have 1960 style or 1950 style buildings and you would be amazed at what you find in 60 year old walls when you open them up. Especially with dry rot and other things. We are fortunate that everything here is on a concrete slap. Sometimes if you have units upstairs it is scary to see what is holding stuff up. The rehab we do requires the people to move out. The way we try to structure it is when we go through and we do our ultimate relocation after we buy the property, we identify those households and then we break up our rehab project into phases. There will be three or four phases, depending upon where those households are in that initial relocation process. Then we work our way through the property in those three or four phases. It is our goal to create a situation where every household doesn't need to move more than one time. We move them out and move them into a new unit. As a result, we give them an option to go back to their original unit. That may require people to move twice, but again, we pay for their cost of moving, their cost of setup. The situation in the process really goes well. They end up coming back into a unit, their rent is being reduced and they have a brand new unit Commissioner Igoe asked if he noticed when he was doing the surveying of the neighborhood there, the density of the amount of the people that live there. Do you suppose it might go down? Mr. Cottle said they actually don't know that. The relocation isn't as high as we see on other projects; we have seven households out of 42. Those households are all over income. We will typically get a portion of our relocation of people who are over income and people who are overcrowded. We did not see the overcrowding in this particular project, which is a good situation. We have occupancy restrictions in place, but if we keep that same household makeup and those same households are staying in the project, we don't anticipate the density going down a lot more. Commissioner Igoe said she just thinks it is a great project and we have needed it for a long time. It is great for that neighborhood. When you have the pride of living in a nice place, it changes everything. She commented about how the parking at Jefferson Elementary School is really very good. Commissioner Kirk asked what is the timeline for the project. Mr. Cottle said the next step after receiving approval from the city is to apply to the state for the tax bond financing and then the tax credits. We look to apply to them either in an allocation round that would occur in December or March, essentially depending upon our time with City Council. From there we typically start construction within 60 days. If it is December, we will start in February. If it is the March round, we will start in May. We budgeted for about an 18 month rehab process. If we were building it new or if we had all the units vacant, that would be a lot quicker. We will try to phase it to limit the temporary relocation, which keeps people out of the property. Especially when we have something over such a large area. Once the property achieves final stabilized occupancy, eariy 2015 is the timeframe we are probably looking at. When we complete construction, the majority of the units are already going to be occupied so it is really just leasing up that last phase. Commissioner Kirk asked Mr. Cottle if he feels it will occur in four phases. HOUSFNG COMMISSION MINUTES October 16,2012 PAGE 7 of 9 Mr. Cottle said three or four phases. It is going to depend on the initial block of units and where they are throughout the property and how we are able to determine that. We budget for four, but we hope for three, which speeds the process up. Commissioner Kirk asked those residents which are displaced during that phase would be displaced roughly four months? Mr. Cottle said right, about four months. Commissioner Kirk continued when the initial cycle begins, are the residents who are initially displaced, will they stay in that general area because they have kids in the schools? Mr. Cottle said yes, they would. The goal of the relocation project would be to identify the units within the neighborhood. If someone is a permanent displacee, we will give them the option of the area they are looking for. Sometimes in the past we have had people take a larger benefit and go out and buy a single family home. We have had people in the past who were originally from the Midwest and didn't have enough money to move back so they take that money and move. Normally most people want to stay in the neighborhood. That is when we work with the consultant, identify all the vacant households out there, and then try to find something that works the best with them. If they have kids in the school, it is keeping them within that neighborhood. As long as we have enough notice, and we do once we have the tax exempt bond allocation, we have notice. It isn't a lot of people at one time. Commissioner Kirk said given that this certainly seems to be a very positive improvement to our area, I would still like to know from the city's perspective, other than doing nothing or this alternative, is the city considering any other options for this area. Ms. Fountain asked for this neighborhood specifically or just the Barrio? Commissioner Kirk said the neighborhood. Ms. Fountain said we haven't proposed to buy the units ourselves or do anything like that. We prefer to stay out of that business. We do own one project, the Tyler Court senior project, but generally we would rather those be privately owned and privately managed and prefer somebody take care of it with experience and expertise in that. Generally, this is what we like to see happen, to partner with a developer. Another option is we don't approve the funding and see what happens in the private sector to see if these get privately purchased. What is expected is that if they did get privately purchased, it probably wouldn't be all of them. It would probably be a few here and few there so we don't think we would see this same amount of rehab. We feel good about this project in terms of the fact that all of them became available at once. They are a single owner. You don't get those opportunities often because there are a lot of multiple owners in the Barrio area. We think this does have a lot of benefit. It doesn't mean that in the future there might not be other programs available to help rental owners upgrade. I know we have had it suggested to us that we should consider a slum landlord ordinance and that the city get into that business. We don't want to be in that business. That can be a fairiy expensive proposition to staff. It is difficult to address some of these issues where properties are not getting upgraded and people are not living in quality situations. There are other things we could look at doing, but we have decided at a staff level that we wouldn't propose that the city purchase the properties and then try to find a manager for them. We just don't know what would happen in the market if they weren't all taken down at once in terms of acquisition. It doesn't mean there aren't other options. It just seems that this is a really good one at this time with a willing developer that is willing to do that It is a good opportunity from a timing standpoint. Commissioner Kirk asked if the widening of the 1-5 will affect this area. HOUSING COMMISSION MINUTES October 16,2012 PAGE 8 of 9 Ms. Fountain said this area is not impacted by the widening. There are substantial areas, but between Tamarack and Carisbad Village Drive this area is not seen for widening. There may be improvements but they will not lose property. Commissioner Kirk asked about the other homes along Jefferson, are they also owned by an individual property owner. Mr. Tuttle said they are all individually owned. So you get different styles of management, different styles of maintenance. Commissioner Kirk asked if there are any property owners occupying their homes in this area or are they all rentals. Ms. Fountain said she thinks there are three. Ms. Whitaker said she thinks there is two or three. Ms. Fountain said absentee ownership was one of the things we looked at a while ago when we were working on the Barrio plan. It is all rental except for two or three. Ms. Whitaker said it makes it really difficult because small investors take the funds that should go towards deferred maintenance and use it for their own finances. Very often those buildings just continue to run down. It would be nice to put it under one project so that the appropriate level of repairs can be down. Commissioner Igoe said the property, at the east end of it, goes up along the freeway, but it is actually the off^-ramp if I am correct; is there any plan to put in along that east side a retaining wall or have you considered that at all? Mr. Cottle said we priced into our rehab a sound wall. Right now it is just the chain linked fence. The nice thing about the sound wall too is that it could be reused in a future development or redevelopment as well. Commissioner Kirk said just for clarification you do have funding for that, right ? Mr. Cottle we do have that in our budget right now. Commissioner Igoe asked, what would that sound wall look like? Mr. Cottle said we had envisioned it when we priced it out as an eight foot wall and then we priced it out like a slump stone block, a concrete block but not a flat block. It has a rounded look. The style of the wall would be something we would work with the Planning Department. Ms. Whitaker said there will be appropriate lighting back there for the playground area. Mr. Cottle said one surprising aspect that we did learn about the project is that the project actually pays for the street lights, which you normally do not encounter. Commissioner Kirk asked if the city has any requirements for sound walls or is it just a height requirement. Ms. Fountain said it is mostly related to height, but a lot of times we will work with developers or property owners on the look depending on where they are located. If they are in a scenic corridor, they might get a different attention. Generally if it is in a residential area, usually the owners want it to look somewhat nice too because it reflects on the quality of the project. Mr. Cottle said we like walls with ivy growing on them. HOUSING COMMISSION MINUTES October 16,2012 PAGE 9 of 9 Ms. Fountain said generally we will ask for landscaping up against them or something to break up the look of the wall. Especially if it is going to be fairly lengthy. Ms. Whitaker said if they are not able to acquire all of those properties, we will just go ahead and put that one wall on the one property anyway. Mr. Cottle said the only thing that is subject to is the fourth one up on the bottom. We have not talked to them about putting that across their back property line. If they are not paying for it, it is typically something they would want. Ms. Fountain commented about the amenities like the community garden and the play area, things they don't currently have in that area. Presently when I ran this project by our Economic Development team in the city, everybody was very supportive of it and thought it was a good idea. One thing they commented on was it would be nice if they would add a community garden. So I went back to the developers and asked them about that, but they were already way ahead of us. Ms. Fountain continued that if there is anything specific the Commission would like to share with the City Council, we will get them in the minutes too. Commissioner Kirk said he no further comments. He things it is a great opportunity. Chairperson Smith said Ms. Fountain said it all when she said it will give the tenants that are in the community a sense of pride to see their community being brought up. Commissioner Igoe made a motion that the Carol and Harding duplex acquisition and rehabilitation recommendation of approval to the City Council to provide $7,408,000 in financial assistance for the acquisition and rehabilitation of 21 duplex rentals, 42 units total restricted for low income family households in the historic Barrio neighborhood of the village area of the northwest quadrant of the city. Commissioner Kirk seconded the motion. VOTE: 4-0 AYES: Bradwell, Igoe, Kirk, and Smith NOES: None ABSTAIN: None ABSENT: Andrews DIRECTOR'S REPORT Ms. Fountain did not have anything to report. ADJOURNMENT By proper motion, the meeting of October 16, 2012, was adjourned at 7:15 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Deborah Fountain Housing & Neighborhood Services Director PATRICIA CRESCENTI Minutes Clerk _ . MINUTES ARE ALSO TAPED AND KEPT ON FILE UNTIL THE WRITTEN MINUTES ARE APPROVED.