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HomeMy WebLinkAbout01 24 2017 PC MinutesMINUTES WORK SESSION - CITY OF CHARLOTTESVILLE AND ALBEMARLE COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSIONS Tuesday, January 24, 2017 Location: Water Street (407 East Water Street) City of Charlottesville Members Present: Chairman Kurt Keesecker, Commissioners Lisa Green, Genevieve Keller, Jody Lahendro, and Taneia Dowell. Call to Order: The meeting was called to order by Chair Keesecker at 5:30 p.m. County of Albemarle Members Present: Chairman Tim Keller, Commissioners Mac Lafferty, Bruce Dotson, Bill Palmer, and Pam Riley Call to Order: The meeting was called to order by Chairman Keller at 5:30 p.m. AGENDA Mr. Keesecker said he received a request to have comments from the public after each presentation for about 10 minutes, which was accepted by all members. Introduction by Missy Creasy - Affordable Housing-RCLCO Report Presentation — Stacy Pethia provided the report. y Background: 2025 Goals for Affordable Housing This report examined current inventory and future goals for the number of supported affordable housing units in the City. It offered three affordable housing goal options: • Maintain current number of supported affordable units (1,933); • Maintain current ratio of supported affordable units to total housing units as City's housing stock grows (approx. 10%); OR • Increase ratio of supported affordable units to 15% of total housing stock by 2025 In February 1, 2010 Charlottesville City Council adopted Goal 3.Since adoption of goal, ratio of supported affordable units has remained approximately 10% of total housing stock Charlottesville Comprehensive Housing Analysis & Policy Recommendations On March 2, 2015 City Council approved use of Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund (CAHF) monies to conduct this study. The study was completed by Robert Charles Lessor & Company (RCLCO). Five key objectives of the study include: • Analysis of housing market dynamics in city and county • Housing demand/household demographic analysis FINAL MINUTES OF JANUARY 24, 2017 WORK SESSION - CITY OF CHARLOTTESVILLE AND ALBEMARLE COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSIONS Page 1 Including examination of current and future off -campus student housing demand/needs • Housing supply/demand reconciliation • Workforce housing needs/commuting pattern analysis • Policy recommendations Recommendations A Subcommittee of the HAC was formed to evaluate RCLCO recommendations including: • Review report and final policy recommendations • Identify recommendations that will effectively support the City's affordable housing goals • Identify additional policy recommendations (not presented in RCLCO report) HAC recommendations were presented to City Council November 21, 2016 • HAC did not prioritize recommendations • Recommendations organized by: o Timeframe for implementation (short-, mid-, long-term). o Type of action: o Zoning related (e.g., density bonuses, Affordable Housing Overlay Districts). o Staff activities (e.g., public outreach/education, research employer assisted housing programs, develop landlord risk reduction program). o City Council action needed (e.g., increase annual contribution to CAHF, prioritize sale/lease of public property for affordable housing development). Enabling legislation required (e.g., increase amount of ADU cash -in -lieu payment). Final Steps Presentation of recommendations to Planning Commission o Collect feedback o Incorporate into further analysis of recommendations Prioritize recommendations for implementation/investment o Present final list of recommended actions to City Council for approval o March 2017 Andrew Gast -Bray — Director of Planning for Albemarle County, said he wants to thank Stacy for her remarks and he is delighted to have this joint meeting in which we can take advantage of and consider the city's expertise as helping to inform us as a county. He distributed a list of proffered affordable housing and tax credit housing in a map, and one of the reasons why he did that is because we need to ask ourselves why we care to subsidize housing because when you go around the streets and talk to people sometimes they don't understand why that is being done. Is it because we want to pay for housing for those who are struggling or that we have very generous hearts? The unfortunate reality is more about dealing with the cost ramifications of not providing a subsidy to housing which is far higher. He said when you get into that you have to start thinking about what is affordability. What do we mean by affordable housing and workforce housing? Some of these nuanced distinctions are really important. There are a lot of different ways to take them into account and opportunities for us to be nuanced in how we approach, provide or make mechanisms FINAL MINUTES OF JANUARY 24, 2017 WORK SESSION - CITY OF CHARLOTTESVILLE AND ALBEMARLE COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSIONS Page 2 to make those things available. While in West Virginia he learned that poverty is not about money, it is about time. He said you have an unreliable vehicle that breaks down every two weeks. It's about grandma having to take care of your child because you can't afford day care and when grandma heads to the hospital because she can't afford her medication and is not available to care for the child etc. Unfortunately, no one wants to live near those people but most of us are only one paycheck away from being those people by national statistics. To be sure concentration of poverty does not always lead to good effects: projects, crime, fires, and domestic situations. Mostly all occur in stressful situations that often arise in such an environment, especially when concentrated. There has been a tendency historically to push them away from where we are. If you look at the map I provided, you can see that affordable housing in the County where you might be as a tenant this could be a distance from where other things are: for instance where your grandmother is from who is taking care of that housing, or from where access to transit is. Consequently, you cannot necessarily succeed at life without a car and can expect an incidental collapse if your life is based on it. Mr. Gast -Bray said so just having housing alone isn't enough. Incentivizing adding it to just any development does not necessarily work alone either. So as you look at your discussion this evening, I hope you also consider location optimization as well. Location is important and that is one of the reasons I provided the map because there are so many things to take into account. This will be useful for your discussion as you go forward this evening. Commissioner Riley said you mentioned one of the recommendations was increasing the cash instead of built units under your ADU. She is curious if you looked at any other possibility in terms of flexibility of ways in which the developers might not build a new unit for example we have preserving existing stock. Was there more discussion about creating more flexibility in terms of how to meet those unit percentage goals? Ms. Pethia said a lot of the recommendations in this report are to incentivize developers to provide those units until the cash increases to make it more painful to pay in instead of building a unit. We are looking at taking under consideration things such as tax abatements: if you buy the unit you get a tax refund. With AHIP, they do a considerable amount in the City so that aspect was okay to preserve affordable housing particular rental housing working with what is there already. She said private owners should be working with the existing program or finding ways to help them to accept housing vouchers. She is pulling together a group of landlords to see if we can come up with ideas for that. There is a recommendation in the report to create a landlords risk reduction fund to access in case of the property management wear and tear and they would be able to repair the property using these funds in exchange for renting that unit to another low income family. Commissioner Santoski — said as he read through the materials he saw the landlord risk reduction program. The neighborhoods are a little leery of what happens when you start having low income housing in their neighborhoods. He can just imagine if they knew the landlord was getting reimburses for damages that were done by a current tenant in order to bring a new low income tenant in neighbors would start to get up in arms about it. Why take that kind of approach. We have students in our neighborhood and if there is damage done they pay or lose their deposit. Why wouldn't it be to put more emphasis on providing some Social Services to the individual living in the house so they would know how to maintain their household, take care of their house rather than making a payment to a landlord? You would almost need a case manager to help them to be better housekeepers. Ms. Pethia said that is something we can look at. She has some really good examples of that she didn't bring with her. Some of the services already have a wraparound FINAL MINUTES OF JANUARY 24, 2017 WORK SESSION - CITY OF CHARLOTTESVILLE AND ALBEMARLE COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSIONS Page 3 housing program. Housing first and those all come with Social Services support. It is a public education component to help them understand. We should look at different programs to help teach the family. There needs to be a public education component behind this to make them understand. Because we had one bad apple doesn't mean the next family is. Yes we should look at different programs, at educational program to help the family themselves, how to be a good tenant. Commissioner Santoski said especially if you are talking about a small percentage of individuals. It seems to be a long term investment for the City or the County put it into services instead of cash payments to landlords and never addressing the underlining core issues that occur. He has not seen an affordable housing unit built and asked how many workforce housing units have been built in the city. Ms. Pethia said what she sees online recently has been high end houses or student housing and even in the report there were mismatch so the workforce housing is suffering because there is not enough high end housing and the high end people are taking the housing that would normally go to people like me. Commissioner Santoski asked about the apartments that are being built on 5th street, how are they being defined? Are they workforce housing or high end apartment housing? Ms. Creasy said they are Johnson Phase 3 and they are going to be rental. There's no requirement for any subsidy. Johnson Phase 3 was approved in 2000 and we are just getting to see it built. Commissioner Santoski said he was wondering because they were defining workforce housing between 80 and 120% of AMI. Will the rent falls into that category for that property, we just don't know yet. Commissioner Riley said in your report you said you might be investigating a moderately priced dwelling place unit policy not an ADU but a MPDU that they do in Maryland. What would that look like? Ms. Pethia said she has not started to investigate that yet. It would go more to the 80-120 % category with the opportunity for the City to retain those units and to control the price points of those. Commissioner Riley asked in programs like Habitat, they are able to do right of first refusal and they can purchase those properties back and keep them in affordable housing stock or hold the land and keep it affordable over the years. What kinds of recommendations did the HAC come up with in terms of looking at keeping these homes affordable over generations. and specifically look at the role of community owned land. Ms. Pethia said what we would like to do is find a way to work with them, support them long term so they can build their inventory and that would be something the low-income people in the city could turn to. Commissioner Santoski said one of the recommendations was prioritizing the sale of public property and is it possible for the City to dictate or buy property and say developers we will allow you to develop on it but you have to build units that are affordable or for workforce housing or predominately for that? Ms. Creasy said the City has not typically been into land sales and serving as a landlord. She said right now we have been gathering some data and was actually talking about it today as to where those properties would be, what that could look like to even see if there was a feasible way to do that. Many of the locations that are left to be developed that people have any interest of doing so are difficult to develop if developable at all. FINAL MINUTES OF JANUARY 24, 2017 WORK SESSION - CITY OF CHARLOTTESVILLE AND ALBEMARLE COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSIONS Page 4 Commissioner Green said about the MPDU in Maryland - if it is something to be looked at. Not that long ago Montgomery County had a formal housing project that was good for a number of years because of a lease. She said there were a lot of units in that time frame and they all expired at the same time. She said there was a huge housing crisis at that point in that area for mid -range housing so as you are looking at that she said to keep that in mind to make sure there is some staggering. These are all rolling out at the same time because of the rent. Chairman Keesecker said regarding the most efficient use, what is the measureable or tracking mechanism that is considered when multiple choices on return on investment is tracked as if one avenue could deliver an affordable unit at $50,000 and another at $75,000. Is that part of what is considered when making those decisions or how is that tracked? Ms. Pethia said since she's been here, she has not had any proposal to come in so all of the decisions were made previously. We do collect information on all of the projects that we fund so with Habitat we do ask for the addresses and information about the families who have moved in, their size, ethnicity, income, and we also collect information on any outside funds that were leveraged through our support of a project. She said the information is there but she doesn't know if it's been analyzed yet. She said she has been talking to Mr. Ikefuna about coming up with some new ways to handle the application process. Chairman Keesecker asked is it fair to say that the City, from the city's perspective, would be more attracted to uses of those funds that are more leveraged so that's ideally the best. Ms. Pethia said ideally the best. She said going back to the 2025 housing goal report, at the time it was written, it had been assumed that the housing fund itself would only be used for about 9% of any project so that would leverage another 90+% of funds from somewhere else and that has not been the case from what she can tell so far. Chairman Keesecker said is it expeditiously different or do we know if it is half or do we know what percentage. Ms. Pethia said it depends on the project for instance Habitat does pretty good at leveraging funds into what we support. AHIP had lower leveraging in that but they are a different type of organization and she really thinks it depends on the project. Chairman Keesecker asked Ms. Pethia is it her sense that the non -profits that are active in the City and basically cross boundaries and are generally active in the County, do those non -profits communicate that their capacity to deliver affordable units is more limited by their internal organizational capacity or is it simply a funding mechanism. If there were more funds they would deliver more units. Ms. Pethia said it has been more of a land availability issue since she has been here, and opportunities are lacking. Chairman Keesecker said he read in a report somewhere that we were 16,000 units short in the County and the City as a combined market place for affordable housing to reach our goals. He doesn't know how many dwelling units there are in the City. Do we need to deliver 200 units a year or 2,000 units a year? Ms. Pethia said when they did the housing goal report they average about 157 units per year to reach that goal but that was based on the number of housing units back in 2009-2010. She has not done the math yet to see what the number needs to be. Commissioner Lahendro asked is that built units or just any affordable housing from vouchers to tax incentives to build units and was there a proportion of how many built units we should have to other incentives back in 2025 goals. FINAL MINUTES OF JANUARY 24, 2017 WORK SESSION - CITY OF CHARLOTTESVILLE AND ALBEMARLE COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSIONS Page 5 Ms. Pethia said no. There were about 157 units that were developed new or preserved in some way. She said she has not done the math yet to see what it will be. Commissioner Lahendro said those goals and vouchers versus built units are they re-evaluated based upon new research as time goes on? Ms. Pethia said it has not been if nothing else just to update the numbers 2025 goal and plug new numbers in there and see where we stand and where we need to go. Commissioner Lahendro asked do we have the data that you think we need to be able to have this discussion in a holistic manner and do you think there is other data that needs to be collected, could each speak to that. Ms. Pethia said the census data (American Community Survey) is available, she thinks there is fairly good data from there and with their POUMS data it gets it down to two smaller areas but it does include city and county in those numbers. If you wanted to separate the two out, then you should get other information. She said one thing we are lacking is particularly in multi -family rental housing is a really good understanding of what is here now and what the rent levels are so within the City naturally occurring affordable housing maybe out there but we don't know where it is or what the rent prices are so she has been talking to Mr. Ikefuna about the possibly of getting an intern to do a survey over the summer. She said she would need help to have someone collect and enter the data into a spreadsheet and make follow-up calls because %2 the people are not going to answer. She said she found a list that Kathy had left with probably 250 multi -family properties so for the City it wouldn't be a huge endeavor. Mr. Gast -Bray said he agrees with what Ms. Pethia is saying, adding that there is a lot more nuance to the nature of the housing as we mentioned because of the considerations of the relatively high rents that are here. Furthermore some of the locational aspect of it makes a huge difference whether you are a block from good transit connections or not because Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac have taught at the level of efficiency issues about how much you save when you have access to transit as being a part of this equation it dramatically changes to what kind of category. The County only has some of the data and plans to learn from the City in terms of exploring different issues. We have more development and opportunities in the County we can try to do multiple goals where the City is kind of constrained by a lot of things that are already built and they don't have . some of the opportunity but we can't be frivolous and say oh we'll just put it anywhere, it doesn't work that way and we don't have all of that mastered but he knows it makes a big difference where things are located and he likes the idea of getting a percentage of it as opposed to what we normally get is a big project that has 300-500 units. It would be a lot better to have 9-10 developments that have 10% of their units had some degree of addressing the complexity of housing needs we have. He said that is the data that is hard to get and hard to nuance out but is important to thrive and have opportunities for everybody. Commissioner Green asked what is a naturally occurring unit. Ms. Pethia said those are housing units that are affordable, particularly rental houses, and the market determines the price. They tend to be older buildings not fancy, not brand new. A lot of people won't rent them because they are looking for all the amenities that you can get nowadays. These are basic units well maintained inside but the properties are looking a little shabbier than normal Commissioner Green asked if they were only in multi -family structures or apartment buildings that we count. FINAL MINUTES OF JANUARY 24, 2017 WORK SESSION - CITY OF CHARLOTTESVILLE AND ALBEMARLE COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSIONS Page 6 Ms. Pethia said we also count a duplex that somebody rents, but those are more difficult to survey because you don't know who they are. Commissioner Green said we should make sure it's legal before it's added to the data. Ms. Pethia said her main goal would be the multi -family properties. Commissioner G. Keller said because of the zoning changes we made in 1999 and 2003 we have created a number of non -conforming, not illegal but non -conforming, for example on 2"a Street, which is one street over from my street, it is now zoned R1 S but they still have some houses with 6 apartments in them. They are perfectly legal but they are non -conforming and so in trying to upgrade neighborhoods we down zoned in a way that protected fabric but we have taken away some opportunities for housing. Commissioner Dotson said he was very pleased in the staff report to see the focus was both on developing and preserving. As he went through the recommendations it struck him that the emphasis was on incentivizing new instead of preserving. He imagined adding two columns there and checked off and this does both and this does one, but not the other to make that clear. He said below the $125,000 value, in the County there were 1783 units. He said he is concerned that they preserve those units because that is a lot more units that they would build in a number of years in terms of new units and in terms of better data what would be really interesting to do would be to map those, where are they; and examine a sample of those units in detail to find out what are their characteristics. Are they looking shabby and do we need to think about more AHIP emphasis then what we have been doing. Maybe we could speak to a few owners who could tell us about things from their point of view. What appeals to him is that it reflects a good common sense approach which is that we could be at risk of losing those units and so let's make sure we keep what we already have and add to it conceivably in certain locations but he was very pleased to see that she was talking about both development and preservation but it felt like the emphasis was on incentivizing new. Commissioner Riley said she would like to see a joint City County survey on identifying single and multi -family units that may be are naturally occurring or have AHIP subsidies already. From a strategy standpoint we need to be looking at how to preserve them over time and what the mechanism with ownership is? There's debate about whether the financial mechanisms are as strong in controlling the land legally but what strategies are we utilizing now are or what ones we can use in the future. She said when proposals come in for funds, she is hoping the County will have more funds than we do right now. Leveraging is one criteria and another is do you get more bang for your buck for rehabbing and preserving existing units versus building new. She doesn't think it is either/or but thinks we ought to evaluate. Another major advantage of preserving existing is the location you get to target it. Commissioner Santoski said one of the issues around affordable housing is transportation and there have been issues raised about how often do the buses run, where do the buses run, and how far people have to walk. He said one thing that is important is expanding mass transit. In the County it's just expanding mass transit and in the City it's having it run on a more frequent basis so people can get back and forth more readily or if you have to get a child to school. Those are the folks who don't show to work because they have to go to the school for a meeting with a principal or something like that. There are multiple things and out in the County there isn't any bus service. JAUNT may address a little bit of that but it's a tiny portion and it would seem to him that the County would want to emphasize that they need to get people to where the jobs are. Let's invest in even more so if we have 1700-1800 more affordable units are those units close to mass transit, FINAL MINUTES OF JANUARY 24, 2017 WORK SESSION - CITY OF CHARLOTTESVILLE AND ALBEMARLE COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSIONS Page 7 are they within walking distance. It is not just an issue to have units, it's what the structure is around it to make sure that those folks who are already in those units can get to where they need to go and the support they need. It is not just about giving the developers incentives and tax breaks but it's what are we doing for the people who are currently in those affordable units and they may be there in the future if we try to preserve them. He said he didn't see that anywhere in the HAC report about transportation. He said maybe taking money from the affordable housing fund and putting it into that stuff because there are some creative ways to take those funds whether it's City or County and build those infrastructures in place or at least start to leverage ways to do that. Commissioner Lahendro asked if the City tracks evictions from low income private housing. Ms. Pethia said the housing authority should track evictions, and someone in the legal department is checking into that right now. Unless it's subsidized through the Housing Authority or one of the social services programs she is not sure how we would track that. Commissioner G. Keller said there is a lot of discussion currently in the low wealth community about the need for more understanding about zoning and land develop regulations and while this is a very interesting professional study, the same critique could be applied here for both the user and served population, as well as the population at large. She characterizes this study as very aggressive toward existing zoning and land development regulations that would have wide reaching effects in perhaps in all neighborhoods but somewhere there is a statement of increasing density in all neighborhoods in the city and she will add an editorial to that. We are finding in our studies of West Main and other areas that even our staff and commissioners really didn't understand what density meant in terms of the actual parcels as they are divided and she doesn't really feel that this is a study ready for prime time because she doesn't see how we can make this understandable to the people who are going to be served and impacted by this. She doesn't see that in our community right now with a new resurgence of civic wealth that we have a lot of NIMBYs in our communities. Where are we going to find opportunities to engage our public other than a public hearing process? She said it's timely but we are just not there yet given the nature of people who come to our hearings now and she doesn't think they have been mean spirited but they have been worried about impacts on their neighborhood and would really encourage you to try to make this as understandable as possible and really illustrate what the effects are. Ms. Pethia said that was one of the recommendations for staff to start doing more public outreach and education. Commissioner G. Keller said we need more than just public education and she doesn't feel you have engaged the public yet. You want to educate them about the need for this but you haven't brought them into the process and she thinks it needs to be a two way street. We are the people on the firing line when someone comes in asking for increased density or we have to vote on an ordinance that would give increased density. How do we explain what the benefit of that is to the general public? What is in it for them, and their neighborhoods? We are just 10 square miles. The need for more housing is at all levels and how do we get that in this community and is it even realistic. Maybe we need more partnership with the County because they have more land and we need to have a little more emphasis in this on changes with the University that may not have been reflected in the earlier study in the Brandon Avenue project that is going to come online. What does that free up and a particular concern of hers is the anticipated growth at the University and the need for more faculty and staff housing as the student population grows. If we are trying to have less congestion we would want more of all of those people at all income levels in or very near the City and the facilities and she thinks that would be something great to add to this study. FINAL MINUTES OF JANUARY 24, 2017 WORK SESSION - CITY OF CHARLOTTESVILLE AND ALBEMARLE COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSIONS Page 8 Chairman Keesecker said one of the ways he was trying to understand the recommendations that were in the HAC report was to classify them in three ways that the city was taking action: 1) as an enabler in that the city would promote various zoning or incentive programs that would ask the free market to deliver these units which so far he doesn't know how successful we've been; sometimes we get payment into the housing fund that is what we have seen recently so there is this middle bar that could be labeled as the 2) benefactor so we take those funds and we group it with programs and we give it to the non -profits who are doing the work through this distribution mechanism to get what we want and that is all well and good. 3) Maybe another higher level that he doesn't know what our tolerance would be as a City but it actually is in the business of making affordable housing and he doesn't know what that would look like. It would encompass something like land assembly or true partnering of land with sales that are contingent with affordable housing delivered on site with actual activity in the market place. He said those three stratifications of actions, at least on the governments part, helped him understand where some of these things fall. Some are easy to implement because they are essentially changes to paper and others are much more difficult because they require expertise in investment. As we move forward with our conversations with the City we are layering that onto what the impacts of those actions are to what he is hearing. How does this affect the neighborhoods and the people living there? Commissioner G. Keller said she doesn't understand the character of the units that we want and who are the units for. Do we need housing for family, for singles, aging individuals or couples? The projects come at us and we have to evaluate them when you start to ask the hard questions. There is coding for this. A four bedroom with four bathrooms probably means it's for UVA students. A single unit is either for an aging individual or young professional. How do we address the individuals in the middle because she is assuming a good part of the population is that? Are they addressing needs for those in between that, and we don't see a lot of those projects? Even if a developer gets a bonus or an incentive to provide units are we getting the units that we actually need. Ms. Pethia said if the developer does provide units as opposed to paying into the fund, we have a chance to work with them and suggest that they provide certain types of units. We do not have anything at this moment that says what our need is. We do not have anything that says we need three bedroom townhouses or two bedrooms, or one bedroom accessible units. Commissioner G. Keller said we are considering and anticipating substantial changes but until and unless those changes occur if we had that kind of information we could make better recommendations to Council rather than just saying 10 affordable units we could actually break that down into so many three bedrooms and two bedrooms rather than just excepting 10 efficiencies that would be affordable simply just because they are small. Commissioner Green said we have a tendency to focus on the University which is a large part of our community but it is not our community as a whole. We need to take a step back and focus on the people who live here and work here. Commissioner Santoski said he wants to know how close the HAC works with the school board on these things because the city school enrollment has gone up. These kids are living somewhere in the city. So even if we haven't increased our stock of affordable housing, we haven't necessarily seen an overall decrease in the amount of free and reduced lunches. We know the refugee population has gone up and he is sure the county has seen the same thing. He said these apartments have two kids in a bedroom as people are trying to cope with and raise their families. Where is the apartment complexes they are living in and how are they coping? He doesn't see that reflected FINAL MINUTES OF JANUARY 24, 2017 WORK SESSION - CITY OF CHARLOTTESVILLE AND ALBEMARLE COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSIONS Page 9 in here and we need to be focused on this other type of housing so he suggests we work really closely with the school board and the school system to make sure we know what is going on there. Chairman T. Keller said that is a great point because he just went to the school board budget presentation and he encouraged everyone to look at the budget piece online. The theme was an all- inclusive look at children at risk and that means family which brings us back to family services. That kind of data needs to be incorporated into this and the sorts of things Mr. Santoski talked about are articulated quite well in the County school board budget piece making the argument why there needs to be funds. He is sure the city has comparable kinds of pieces. This brings him back to what he would hope that you all that are involved in the housing and hopefully getting integrated with social services would articulate the kind of data you would need to be collecting and sharing that you don't have with the non-profit. We are hoping to see some of that. He said his career has been as a designer and he does believe that there are design responses to this and Lisa and John were all referring to that and things that don't fit within the standard building code thinking and the standard kind of development thinking than get into the education of the financial community that has to provide the funding to the development community. Small units that can grow from the young professional individual into a household that may indeed still be a one parent household with children, we have so many interesting demographic transformations occurring in our society; and from the density experiments that he thinks doesn't get enough press in the city where you are allowed for the auxiliary buildings and that is increasing the acreage density other than having to go up, so much of the density discussion has been vertical and I think there have been interesting horizontal density increase alternatives and Lisa I am with you on those illegal units. They are real and we have to figure out some way to deal with it. He said out on Rolling Road he saw a couple of transformations but he doesn't know about building permits but houses that sold for $100,000 that were rehabilitated into pretty nice units. Commissioner Green said some affordable units in the region require residents to use extension cords to power their homes, which can be a fire hazard. We need to make sure that homes that we are saying are affordable are ones we would live in ourselves. She said, I'm sorry, but some of them I wouldn't want to put my dog in. Commissioner Riley said she is encouraged by this joint meeting with the City Planning Commission and is very appreciative of the emphasis and investment the city has done for affordable housing and hopes the county can do more in the future. She is interested in how we can take a more regional approach not just the City and the County but we need to look at the surrounding counties as well and what is the structure and the mechanism and the process for doing that and we've got staff sitting down and talking about through the MOU how we might coordinate. We need to look at capacity building and certainly the County needs to look at capacity building but if we are looking at how we are funding our non -profits or developing strategies you have to put investment into building the capacity and not just put it all into bricks and mortar. She asked what is the role of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission to bring in more resources to help with regional coordination? What are the next steps so we can assure that we are going to follow-up between the City and County in terms of the things we have talked about tonight? Commissioner G. Keller asked did you take into consideration the growing effects of the housing industry of transient lodging in the City. It would occur to her that a significant portion of the naturally occurring affordable housing could be transitioning to transient lodging over night at all price points. That could be something that is also taking housing out of the high end. When you see houses that are listed for rent and available that can house 10 people for $1900 a night. She FINAL MINUTES OF JANUARY 24, 2017 WORK SESSION - CITY OF CHARLOTTESVILLE AND ALBEMARLE COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSIONS Page 10 encouraged Ms. Pethia as she is doing this study to figure out if there were some of the naturally occurring units of single family homes that have transitioned out of the housing market to overnight lodging. Commissioner Lahendro asked how the information is going to come back to the Planning Commission. He said on the city side there is a report the Council has asked the Planning Commissioner to look at. Is this that meeting or will there be another meeting without the County present to have that discussion? Ms. Creasy said our next task is to take this on to City Council. Public Comment Jeff Werner of the Piedmont Environmental Council said he was a builder for 12 years and this has been an endless discussion about affordable housing. He said he hopes that the units that are built go to folks that are in need. He said make sure you have the hard data of what is being built and why something isn't getting built. He said if you had lesser regulations, we could build more. Travis Pietila of the Southern Environmental Law Center said he thinks it is worth pursuing some of the recommendations that are being proposed. He asked both commissions to keep in mind that the price of housing is not the only aspect of affordability, transportation cost can be a major household expense particularly when housing is located far from jobs and services. We ask you to prioritize the creation of new affordable units and locations that can minimize these costs. Areas that are walkable, bikeable, and have good access to public transit are important. The second point is on the recommendation to consolidate the City's mixed use zones into one district. We agree with the point that has been made in the code audit that the term "mixed use" needs to be better defined city wide. There may be some affordable housing related aspect to mixed use zoning that can benefit from standardization. Recent experiences with West Main and the SIA has highlighted that the character of the city's downtown in relation to surrounding neighborhoods historic resources, the streetscape, etc. We have some concerns with potentially taking this idea of consolidation too far in trying to create a one size fits all for a city that is anything but. Neil Williamson, Free Enterprise Forum, voiced support for the density incentives. He said reducing density in certain neighborhoods reduces housing affordability. Where housing is matters. What it looks like matters, but what you can impact the most is regulatory reform. Commissioner Dowell said we need to get feedback from the people who live in the affordable housing to see what they need, what they want and figure out what the groups are to do what you suggest. Commissioner T. Keller said we should continue with these quarterly meetings. Motion by Commissioner Riley to continue collaborating under the terms of a 2016 memorandum of understanding between Albemarle and Charlottesville regarding development and affordable housing; not limited identifying board community engagement, ideas where this can be applied, Seconded by Commissioner Dotson, motion passed 4-0. Motion by Commissioner Greene to continue collaborating under the terms of a 2016 meinorandurn of understanding between Albemarle and Charlottesville regarding development FINAL MINUTES OF JANUARY 24, 2017 WORK SESSION - CITY OF CHARLOTTESVILLE AND ALBEMARLE COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSIONS Page 11 and affordable housing; not limited identifying board community engagement, ideas where this can be applied, Seconded by Commissioner Santoski, motion passed 6-0. 2. Rivanna River Proiect Presentation - CURRENT FINDINGS — Chip Boyles TJDPC Chip Bow Director of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, reviewed strategic planning goals for the river that a community task force first presented more than a year ago. He said at the city level, especially, it is important to take full advantage of the river as an economic development opportunity and use it as an asset. Make it a front door, not a back door. The Rivanna River is a 42.1-mile tributary of the James River that marks part of Charlottesville's eastern city limits. Mr. Bow said we completed a lot of our work quite a while ago, and it has just been languishing, and we're just waiting for direction on where to take it from here. To create the master plan would require the assistance of consultants and design firms and is estimated to cost $300,000. He said it could be possible to accomplish some of the work through a master plan for the Pantops area that Albemarle County might pursue in the future. Most of this can be done in-house, which would lower the cost if the city and county staff devoted more time to the project. Rick Randolph, County Supervisor said that Albemarle County planned to use surplus funds to kick-start the planning process for the Rivanna River and he can assure you it is in the county's budget. County Planning Commissioner Bruce Dotson said this map should identify vistas and vantage points that we want to keep an eye on, and make sure we don't lose. Chairman Keesecker said that the city should consider including the Rivanna Renaissance initiatives in its budget for capital improvement projects. We have to make the tools that we use , WO to do our planning focus around specific places. Motion by Commissioner Green to ask City Council for funding to support the Rivanna River Renaissance corridor map from the City and County and to include Fluvanna while they may not have as much development, Seconded by Commissioner Santoski, motion passes 6-0. Motion by Chainnan Tim Keller to ask the Board of Supervisors for funding to support the Rivanna River Renaissance corridor map from the City and County and to include Fluvanna while they may not have as much development, Seconded by Commissioner Dotson, motion passes 4-0. Public Comment Jeff Werner of the Piedmont Environmental Council said he supports the Rivanna Renaissance agenda. He said for too long, the river has been a boundary between the city and county. He is delighted to see some changes. We have got to connect the City and the County. Travis Pietila of the Southern Environmental Law Center said he is glad to see the commissions taking this up again. We agree that there are many missed opportunities today to better connect the community with the river. This comprehensive master plan is long overdue and we appreciate the action taken tonight to move this forward. Moving forward it is critical that water quality remains at the forefront of this planning effort. That's not only because this stretch of the Rivanna already fails to meet water quality standards, but also because it's quality is essential to its value FINAL MINUTES OF JANUARY 24, 2017 WORK SESSION - CITY OF CHARLOTTESVILLE AND ALBEMARLE COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSIONS Page 12 as a scenic and recreational resource, the very thing that draw people to the river in the first place. To the extent possible we urge you to retain ample green space and encourage low impact uses along the river and encourage heighten screen protection for new development. Adjournment at 7:37 p.m. by: Commissioners Tim Keller and Lisa Green Adjournment With no further items, the meeting adjourned at 7:37 p.m. to the Tuesday, February 7, 2017 meeting at 6:00 p.m. at the County Office Building, Second Floor, Lane Auditorium, 241, 401 McIntire Road, Charlottesville, Virginia. Andrew Gast -Bray, S (Recorded and transcribed by Carolyn McCray, Clerk to City of Charlottesville Planning Commission — Submitted by Sharon Taylor, Clerk to Albemarle County Planning Commission) Approved by Planning Commission Sct Date: 4-18-2017 err FINAL MINUTES OF JANUARY 24, 2017 WORK SESSION - CITY OF CHARLOTTESVILLE AND ALBEMARLE COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSIONS Page 13