Clark County Commission on Aging

0:00 [MUSIC] >> Good afternoon. I will call to order this special public meeting of the Clark County Commission on Aging. It is Monday, February, it's March 16th, and my name is Ellen Rogers, and I am the Chair of the Commission on Aging. Meetings of the Clark County Commission on Aging are held in a hybrid meeting room. This means that commission members, guests, and members of the public have the option to attend in person or remotely or by watching it online as well. For members of the public attending remotely, other event participants cannot see or

0:59 hear you unless they are acknowledged by the commission chair or staff and your audio is unmuted. I will be announcing the agenda items as we move through the meeting topics in case you do not have the agenda in front of you. And an opportunity for public comment will be held at the beginning of the agenda, following a few business items. We will start with a roll call of commission members who are present for this meeting. Commission members, please say here after I call your name. And as a reminder to all of us, please don't forget to mute yourself when you are not speaking. Mike Anderson. >> Here. >> Julie Donovan. >> Here. >> Cass Friedland. >> Here. >> Donna Mason. >> Here. >> Kendon Masterson is not here. David Moss.

1:59 >> Here. >> Ellen Rogers is here. So given that we have more than five commission members present, we will have a quorum. So we are allowed to take decisions as a group or to vote on things. >> Okay, we will now move on to business items. The first item is approval of today's meeting agenda. I will take a motion for approval of the agenda. >> So moved. >> Second. >> Is there any discussion on the motion to approve today's meeting agenda? Hearing none, I will request a vote. All those in favor of proceeding with the agenda for today, please say aye. >> Aye. >> Aye. >> Anyone opposed, please say nay.

2:56 Hearing none, then the motion passes. Moving on to the meeting notes. The meeting notes have not been completed, so we will push approval of the February 18th meeting to April. Do we need to vote on that, Susan and Amy? Okay, the next agenda item is a proposed amendment of the bylaws. Due to scheduling conflicts, the date and time of future commission on aging meetings needs to be changed. Staff have prepared a proposed bylaw amendment outlining that future meetings will be held on the third Monday of every month from 3.15 to 6 PM. Is there any discussion of the proposed bylaw changes?

3:52 I am seeing no discussion. I will take a motion for approval of the bylaw amendment. >> So moved. >> Seconded. >> Is there any discussion on the motion to approve the bylaw change from the third Wednesday to the third Monday of every month? Okay, hearing no discussion, I will take a vote for all those in favor of the bylaw change. Please say aye. >> Aye. >> Aye. >> Aye. >> Anyone opposed, please say nay. Hearing none, the motion is passed. >> Chair, I apologize. We should have added this to the agenda.

4:49 We need to do public comment to see if there's any comments on the bylaw changes. >> So do I just open up public comment? So we have one person online and we have a couple of people in the room. So why don't we start by asking those in the room if they'd like to make public comments. And then I can read the intro and see if anyone online wants to make any comments. >> Okay. >> Is there anyone in the room that would like to comment on the bylaw changes?

5:27 >> If the essence of it is moving to Monday, the time is the same. >> The question was if it's the same time on Mondays, and the answer to that is yes. Okay, so if you can bring the public comment up on the screen, I will read the intro. If you're using a computer, tablet, or smartphone, if you would like to make a comment, please raise your virtual hand. There are instructions on the screen on how to do this. Typically, the hand icon is located towards the bottom of the screen. For anyone on the telephone, please dial *3 on your phone's number panel on how to raise your hand. And staff will be able to see hands once they are raised and will request to unmute you one at a time.

6:22 I'm just giving someone more time to raise their hand, but I do not see any raised hands. Thank you. >> So is the motion then passed, or do we need to revote? Okay. Okay, so now we will move on to the next item on our agenda, which is general public comment. So we request that any comments that are made are completed within three minutes to accommodate time for all speakers. We will also request that before you make your comment, you state your name for the record. Are there any guests in the room that would like to make a comment? Please, can you come here and make your comment? >> I see we got a green light.

7:23 >> Thank you, Madam Chair and commission members. First off, just want to say how grateful I am for each of you serving as you do. And I know a few of you from some of my past activities. Donna and I worked together in community development back in the early 2000s with Interact and Identity Clark County. And also the, what was the name of the Healthy Communities Project that Clark County Public Health had been driving. So that really fired up my juices around community development. And we launched a community development, a non-profit community development corporation in the mid-2000s in support of the Fourth Plain Quarters revitalization effort. And we were blessed to serve in capacity around mobilizing grassroots efforts

8:19 to support some of the initiatives around the submarine plan that the city had developed. That was the second submarine plan that the city developed. And they had found there was significant resources available in the community. So the strengths really dictated that even though the community went, or the economy went south, it was really time to move forward with what we could. And so we helped with that process. And our focus was in three arenas. One, food security, housing security, and small business development that aligned with those efforts. I've had the opportunity to serve on both the Affordable Housing Task Force for the City of Vancouver. And then we developed a demonstration project around housing renovation to create affordable housing opportunities and to move forward with,

9:16 get the community to move forward with the community land trust model. Part of that work helped to bring proud ground to the community. And we also helped Habitat for Humanity in terms of shifting its approach to a one and done sort of contribution to affordable housing to using the land trust model so that those investments would continue in perpetuity. I served on the county's housing options study and action plan as the city's representative for neighborhoods and affordable housing. And grateful to see the report you had in your 2024 annual report as to how you've been moving some of those initiatives forward. I've been in the background watching as the county's focused on the implementation of those policies and we're standing ready to move forward with a couple of initiatives that we think are going to facilitate getting more affordable housing.

10:13 In particular, we are proposing an initiative that supports existing families, in particular people in financial need on their single family dwelling lots to get into the housing affordability density improvement agenda. And in doing that, help these people to be able to stay in their homes as a part of that initiative. So it's a fairly complex move, but it's going to be grounded primarily in what the county's provided in terms of access now within the urban growth boundary and particularly outside of the municipalities right now. So comprehensive plan right now is going to play a key role in all of that. So I came today in particular to listen to the presentation by our friends at the Vancouver Housing Authority and they have continued to be a great resource for us.

11:10 And so a big piece of our work is focusing on elderly housing and how to incentivize that, particularly with the faith community. We've got a couple of faith bodies here in the community have done some exceptional things around development of their properties and we think that given the significant discretion and latitude the state provides to religious institutions, we see that there's a very good opportunity for if not just the church itself or the faith body itself to serve its own members, but also to be able to extend that out to the broader community. Thank you for your work. I will just say I served as a part of the housing committee for the commission in 2016. Chuck Frayer had put together a team of about five or six of us to help the commission in that process. And I would just direct your attention to the summation of that.

12:07 We held a community-wide forum for the 2016 initiative and I believe it's still on your website, some excellent information and recommendations that here we are 10 years later and we're just starting to scratch the surface of some of those. But it's not surprising given the complexity of the situation we have around housing, how that system has been developed and developed in a way that worked because that's the way it was set up. And now we're really coming to a head with looking at how do we reclaim some of this middle housing that really created this relief point for folks to move forward, both economically as well as to assure their ability to remain in the community. So, thank you for your work and I'm grateful for it. >> Thank you. Can you state your name? I didn't get it in the beginning. >> I'm sorry. Mark Maggiore and I live in the Rose Village neighborhood in the city of Vancouver.

13:07 Lived in a neighborhood since 2005 and I moved here in 1990 from Central Oregon. >> Thank you. >> Oh, and I was going to share. Mike and I share some history on ski patrol. I was a National Patrol or Mount Basher for 40 years, so appreciate your service. >> Thank you. [ Inaudible ] >> Yeah, if you're using a computer, tablet, or smart phone, if you'd like to make a comment, please raise your virtual hand. And for anyone on the telephone, please dial star 3 to raise your hand. No raised hands. >> Thank you. Commission members, do you have any clarifications or questions on our public comment that we got today?

14:06 Okay, so this concludes the general public comment. Thank you very much, Mr. Maggiore, for coming. We next move to our moderated discussion that will focus on housing. We are joined by a guest from Vancouver Housing Authority and Cass Friedland is the moderator for the session today. So I will hand over the agenda to Cass. >> Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much, Ellen. So good, I have evening, but I guess afternoon evening. And thank you for joining us today for the second of four panels focused on the exceedingly complex issue of housing for aging adults in Clark County. It's an honor to welcome our panelist, Danny Ledesma, who is dedicated to ensuring that

15:00 every senior in our community has access to a safe, stable, and affordable place to call home. In January, we invited Samantha Whitley and Michael Torres to talk about their work and share their perspectives. And we learned that we are in a perfect housing storm. There's an acute need for housing in Clark County because we have a deficit of housing units, and our region is experiencing unprecedented population growth. We also heard about a variety of housing initiatives that are available to residents, but now understand that funding those programs that support aging adults continues to face budgetary challenges. We were thankful to learn so much more about the houseless crisis response system at the federal and state levels. And because of that conversation, we now know that many of our aging Clark County neighbors

15:59 might already be on the road to homelessness, even though we might not see it or experience it in our daily lives. To underscore comments from our January panel, it is clear that the need for senior housing in our county is rapidly accelerating. By 2035, nearly one in five people in Clark County will be over the age of 65. The safety net for aging adults is very porous, as low income seniors are now the fastest growing segment of the newly unhoused population in our county. Many others are living on the edge, one rent increase, one medical bill, one financial setback away from losing their housing. And waiting lists for access run months and often years behind. With these factors in mind, we are absolutely delighted to welcome Danny Ledesma,

16:58 Chief Real Estate Officer of the Vancouver Housing Authority and Executive Director of Columbia Not-Profit Housing. Today, she will tell us about great work that is happening through a robust, dynamic city nonprofit partnership. But first, let me share details about Danny's really interesting professional life. Danny believes in the power and potential of public organizations to connect resources, expertise, and advocacy with the needs of underserved communities to create housing, health, education, and equity solutions. She has served in executive level roles in the public sector as an Assistant County Administrator in Washington County, Oregon. Senior Advisor for Racial Equity and Social Justice at Portland Public Schools.

17:55 And the Equity Policy and Communications Director at the Portland Housing Bureau Managing Policy, Rental Development, and Home Ownership Programs. Danny worked in local politics as a policy advisor to Oregon Governor's, is it Kitzhaber or Haber? >> Haber. >> Haber, thank you. And Brown and Portland City Commissioner Nick Fish. She's also worked extensively with culturally specific and housing nonprofit organizations. As a consultant and served as an interim executive director of the Coalition of Colored Communities of Color. At VHA, Danny is thrilled to work with the talented members of real estate department to increase and improve the supply of affordable homes to meet the needs of our community. Danny, the Commission on Aging truly looks forward to your presentation. We have provided some questions to you, but following the presentation, you may find

18:54 instead that COA members may enthusiastically jump in with their own questions. So we'll see how that goes. At the end of our question and answer session, we will entertain questions from our audience. And without further ado, Danny, please, thank you. >> Thank you so much, I'm just really honored to be here. And I usually just help everyone that I'm a housinger, so thank you for indulging and reading my bio there. I thought that today what we could do is sort of talk about the question of, can we afford to age in place in Clark County? There, you can hear me, sorry about that. Can we afford to age in place in Clark County? But I wanted to do it from the perspective of an owner operator, someone who is really charged with building and operating affordable housing. And so I thought I could tell you a little bit about the Vancouver Housing Authority,

19:51 a little bit about CNPH, or Columbia Nonprofit Housing. And then talk a little bit about that perfect storm that you've heard about. And then go from that into a little bit about the development process. And we might make nonprofit affordable housing developers out of you in 15 minutes, we'll see. So I've been at the Housing Authority for a brief time, a little bit over a year, and it is really fabulous. Should I do the clicker, or? Okay, next slide. So I'm so honored to work with Andy Silver, our CEO, and the team of people that we have. It's so wonderful to be able to walk into a community where folks see the public sector and certainly a housing authority as a true partner. I know that that's just been tons and tons of work that the staff does, and we're really wanting to make sure that we're meeting the needs that are there.

20:45 As you know, our mission is to provide housing options for people who are experiencing housing barriers. And we do that in three ways. We are the county's basically administrator of project-based section eights and tenant-based section eight. It's the only rent assistance program that the federal government funds. And so as a housing authority, we administer that program. We also have an operation site of our house that really owns and operates all of our housing. And then we have a real estate team that is sort of charged with developing more housing and keeping in good repair the housing that we have. In Vancouver Housing Authority portfolio, we own and operate about 52 different properties that's close to 4,000 units.

21:43 And we're unique from a lot of other public housing authorities in that we're very active. Some would even say aggressive developer of housing because we really see both our leadership and our board really see that need for what I like to think of infrastructure of housing that's affordable. The market, unfortunately, does not provide for enough affordable housing, and so that public investment in this infrastructure of housing, I believe, is really important. And we have some strategic priorities. We passed a strategic plan a little over two years ago. And I'll talk a little bit about the one that we're really charged with on my team, which is expand affordable housing. And we'll talk a little bit about demand and supply. So if you remember economics or if you just, we're going to talk a little bit about that and

22:37 sort of why we think the supply side strategic notion is really important, especially for our community here. On the next slide, I'll tell you a little bit about Columbia nonprofit housing. The CNPH, as we call it, was established by the Vancouver Housing Authority in early 80s. So just after the LA Olympics, so you can imagine we're about coming on to the next LA Olympics. So it's been a while and we CNPH owns and operates about 14 total properties. It used to be 13 and we just added a new one. So we need to update our website, which is about close to 486 units. We'll round up and say 500, but 486 units, six of the 14 serve populations with special needs, but the majority are really focused on housing for older adults.

23:33 And so I've listed on the slide here the different properties and the number of units that are there. And you can see that it is, and maybe you've seen or driven by and seen that these are a really important part of our community's portfolio, because these are properties that have really scarce and really dynamic federal funding that supports these. And as you'll hear later, that federal funding is really kind of not even at risk. It's really sort of like gone. And so we'll have to think as a community how to be creative and think about how we can, since the 1980s over 40 years, really try to not just do this amount of housing, but we would have to triple it to meet the need.

24:26 So we've got to try to think about as many tricky and strategic actions to take to be able to meet the need. So I like to start with what is affordable housing. And I like to always ask people when I talk about housing, which I always do, is how many people live in affordable housing? And a lot of people are like, well, I don't live in affordable housing. But the way that HUD, which is the Department of Housing and Urban Development, conceives of affordability, and the way that the entire affordable housing industry thinks about housing is based on this definition of what is affordable. And according to HUD, what is affordable is and you live in affordable housing if you do not spend more than 30 percent of your gross income on your housing,

25:20 which includes like utilities, you know, parking, all of those, all of your housing costs. Anything that is more than 30 percent, they start to give different categories. So you are considered rent burdened if you spend more than 30 percent of your income on housing. OK, you're considered extremely rent burdened if you spend more than 50 percent of your income on housing. And they have a new designation of housing need called worst case needs. And this is defined as folks who have incomes that are below 50 percent of the area median income. They do not receive any form of government assistance.

26:13 And they have over 50 percent of their income there that extremely rent burdens and or they live in substandard housing. And what we know about the United States is that there are eight point five over eight point five million households that qualify as worst case needs in our country. In twenty twenty six. So there is a lot of need in Clark County. What we know is that 74 percent of renters who live in Clark County that have incomes at the 30 percent of AMI are severely rent burdened. And that makes sense, right? Folks who have lower incomes are going to face a bigger rent burden. But we also know that 27 percent of renters, regardless of income, are severely rent burdened.

27:11 Nearly a third of our community here in Clark County and nearly two thirds of our community at 57 percent of renters, regardless of income, are cost burden. So they're spending more than 30 percent. So for folks who have been a long way away from a statistics class like I have, you know, when we talk about median, we're not talking about the average. We're talking about if there were 100 people that lived in Clark County and you lined up from folks with no income to folks with the highest income, you would look at number 50 and you would say, what's your income? And that's the median income. That's kind of, you know, when you think about your home and, you know, the cost that you put for home and the things that you'd like and how you'd like to age in place. You know, a lot of people don't start to think about, like, area median income. A lot of people think about their budget.

28:04 And when we talk about affordable housing, we want people to be able to afford their housing and not have to make a choice between paying their light bill or paying their grocery bill or paying their medical bill or their prescription bill. Right. And what we find is that in Clark County and throughout the country, that many people are having to make this choice. And for folks who are on a fixed income or limited incomes, this choice is excruciating. I've got some more bad news, so we'll keep on going. So the according to U.S. census data and you brought up the statistics about how the fastest growing folks who are becoming houseless are folks who are older. What we know is that 13 percent of Clark County residents have a disability where independent living or mobility is difficult for them.

29:00 And so that is going to be really challenging when you're looking for a home. Right. So you can't have like a walk up like a four story walk up to be able to get to that home. And we know that there is a significant amount of Clark County residents that have those challenges. Seven percent of Clark County residents live in poverty. But we know for folks who are over 65 years old, it's nearly 10 percent that live in poverty. So there is a disproportionate in terms of and you are you already know this. But when we talk about Clark County and what's affordable, 33 percent of the population are renters. So a third. Right. The average renter earns about forty nine thousand dollars a year or about twenty three, a little over twenty three dollars an hour. Right. So the national the National Low Income Housing Coalition puts out a report every year called Out of Reach.

29:59 And they talk about what is the state's housing wage, what is the country's housing wage and also what is our county's housing wage. And so for Clark County, which is part of the MSA that includes Washington County, Multnomah County and Clackamas County in Oregon, the housing wage that you need for just an average two bedroom apartment is closer to thirty eight dollars an hour. So you need to be making seventy nine thousand dollars an hour to be able to afford what the real housing wages or. If you're making twenty three dollars an hour, you would need about two point three full time jobs to be able to afford rents at that wage. It's untenable, right? OK. I think one more.

30:54 Well, two more two more sad pages. The next thing is just talking about housing affordability. Right. So what we know about our current inventory in the city of Vancouver between 2011 and 20, 2021, you know, rents increased by 70 percent. That's huge. Right. In a decade, wages did not follow that same trajectory. Wages not even increased by 20 percent. They increased by a little over 18 percent, close to 19 percent. So what we also know that in 2010, folks who were receiving federal disability payments, whether it be Social Security, folks who are on fixed incomes, that the folks who received the largest of those federal disability payments, eighty nine percent of that was needed to pay for a rental unit.

31:52 This is in 2010. Right. In 2023, one hundred and twenty percent of that payment is needed. Untenable in Clark County, the basically there are twenty two thousand households that earn 50 percent of the area median income. Right. So. And there's only eleven thousand affordable and available units. So we have a pretty significant inventory issue. And then what we also know is that, you know, that chart that I showed you before that showed, like, you know, the rents that would be affordable to folks at different percentages.

32:46 At the end of the day, you know, a thousand dollars starts to be, you know, a rent that gets affordable. If you can get rent under a thousand dollars, you're doing great. In Clark County, 10 percent of the occupied rental units. That's 10 percent of those have rents for less than a thousand dollars a month. In the United States, there's over a million a million unit shortage. And the fastest growing number of units that become unaffordable is our units that are at rented at a thousand dollars or less a month. It's just not out there in our inventory. We also know that in Vancouver, that there are market units. You can't really see in the screen, but those are I can't tell the colors, but they're on the screen.

33:45 It was like kind of blue, green and the market units. There are way more market units than there are affordable units, which creates unmet need. And what we know is that every year in in in Vancouver, that in addition to the regular production, we need a thousand of those units to be affordable for folks who are 80 percent of the median income and below. But recent data and a recent study, if you haven't read it, I would encourage you to read it. I'm such a nerd. But the Georgetown put out this report called Abundance for Who. And we've long been saying, especially for affordable housing developers, have been saying is that, you know, in addition to needing rent assistance, in addition to needing services for folks who have housing needs, we just need more supply and we need to be able to find out ways to build it more efficiently,

34:40 more responsive to the physical needs, and done more cost effectively. And so we are just getting out of a housing boom where in the past five years after after after the covid epidemic, we went into a housing boom. And in in Washington, the Seattle area was one of the top five areas in the country that had the most housing production. And what this report says is that in those five areas where there were the most housing production, the growth of unaffordability did not go down because most of that housing boom, most of what we're producing are housing that rents for more than a thousand dollars a month and for way more than the average person can afford. Certainly the average renter or certain or someone who's on a fixed income.

35:39 So what do we do? Right. So we also know that we're in really unfortunately we're in really uncertain times from a policy perspective. At the federal level, there is a lot of uncertainty and certainly policies that are challenging the way that we typically do housing. We are in an environment where the cost to own and operate housing is more expensive than ever before. Right. So the cost of finance. We've heard about interest rates. Right. Every affordable housing I'm going to show you in a minute needs some amount of debt and equity. Right. And so the cost of debt is going up and that means either fewer units or less affordability. Right. The cost of construction, materials and labor is skyrocketing. You've heard about in the past year about the threat of tariffs, the cost of steel, the cost of timber.

36:35 All of these have an impact on the real estate industry. But it's not just the cost of materials and the cost to get it built. The cost to operate housing, you know, is going up as well. In addition to labor, insurance costs, for example, have gone up by over 40 percent in one year. But then in our our market here in Clark County, vacancy is is increasing. Typically, you're in a market where most folks experience like vacancy between like four to five percent. Five percent typically is what we model out when we're doing our budgeting and we're closer to seven percent. There are some markets in some neighborhoods in unincorporated Vancouver where the vacancy rate is closer to 13 percent.

37:30 And we also know that rents now, speaking from the perspective of an owner operator, rents typically increase so much every year, just like your cost of insurance, your cost of materials, your cost of like fertilizer and trees and all the things that make a affordable housing property run and rents are stagnating. Right. So that means it's great for tenants. Right. Except that you can't get a project built or you can't get a bank underwriter to be able to give you funding for the project unless they see rents that can support the debt. And if rents are flat, then you can't support that. So I'm telling you all this because at the Vancouver Housing Authority, we're like rates of we're going to create some production goals.

38:23 And despite all of this, all of this bad news that I'm telling you, because the need is so great, because our community is in so much need, we decided to create production goals where we said we're still going to try to create 400 new units of housing a year. We still have goals around who we want to serve. And certainly we want to make sure that we're serving folks with the with the greatest need. So how do we do that from a development perspective? So really quickly, go to the next slide. These are the stages of development. How many of you have heard from concept to commitment? Have you heard that? So basically, you come up with a concept, you go through some feasibility, you get funding commitments, you close. That's when you sign all the papers, you go into construction and then you lease it up and you close out. Right. Simple. The development usually takes anywhere from, you know, two to three years.

39:20 We just closed on our battleground portfolio where we're doing new housing and we're also renovating two of our other projects. And that project was six years in the making. So and as you can imagine, that that costs a little bit of money. Right. That adds the cost of it. So really quickly in feasibility on the next slide, you know, we think of things. We start to think of things like, you know, what what do we want in terms of this this project? Like, you know, what's the concept? And two big issues in coming up with the concept are on the next slide, location, location, location, location. Right. And I know that transit is very important to folks and thinking about, like, how do folks who may not drive, who rely on public transportation or who want to walk or bike or any of those things?

40:14 That's really important. And so location becomes more and more of a driving factor about where to where to build the housing. And unfortunately, you know, some of the best locations are also the most expensive places to purchase property. So in a couple of early earlier slides, there was like a chart where we taught where you saw some where we were looking at, like, well, in some places we have greater need for folks who are older or folks with disabilities. We might have more children who are on free and reduced lunch. And so we were trying to sort of rank where is need with also the concept of like, how do we get folks to live in properties that are close to other properties so that we can have some economies of scale for operating them?

41:06 How do we also sort of like meet people where they are, you know, and so location becomes something that is a really big factor in developing housing on the next slide. Oh, this is the sorry. This is the sort of like we worked with Cascadia Housing to develop a housing guide and we tried to look at housing need and some of the issues around location are, you know, have to do with like gentrification and displacements also where there's high opportunity. Like, what are the places that are next to a grocery store? And so based on that, we also have these dots where we're looking at density of VHA owned properties. And so we wanted to sort of see, like, how can we cluster? And you'll see that a lot of our properties are in that sort of like pre gentrification area or bordering folks, places that are actively gentrifying.

42:00 And you'll see that, unfortunately, there's not that many of our housing in high opportunity areas. And so that, you know, when you think about that from a policy perspective, what does that mean in terms of for folks who might have lower incomes who are living in those high opportunity areas? What is their housing choice? And how do folks age in place if they are, you know, living in those areas? So we we try to think about all of those issues when we were developing housing. We're thinking of that concept. The other thing that we think about is need. And, you know, the the next slide is about amenities. Oh, no, feasibility. No, it's amenities. Sorry, it's about feasibility. So so we have to make this work, right? So a lot of times what happens is that we dream up the most beautiful, like, look at this. It's a beautiful building. Do you see the trees? Do you see those stick figures that look like they're, you know, it's like an intergenerational family.

42:59 You've got people with different abilities on their right. And then the cost to build it becomes more than the costs that we have to be able to get it done. So then we start to to value engineer, which is a very technical term of sort of like cutting out the wants and the needs. So on the next slide, we start looking at the program. And so this is the most recent sort of like income and rent limits. So a lot of times we start to think about, like, okay, where's the greatest need? And so if we think about it, it's like for folks who are earning less than 30% of the area median income. So if we were to look at a two person household, that would mean that folks would qualify. They'd have to be earning $29,000 a year or less, right?

43:47 But the rent that would be charged for someone who's making 29% 29,000 or less would be for it to be affordable. Less than that 30% would be around $698 a month for one bedroom or a little over 800 for a two bedroom. And so that's where leasing, when we talk about leasing up and dealing with vacancy, a lot of times you have to find that perfect tenant who has enough income to be able to pay rents at $600, $700 a month, but not too much income so that they're not over that 30% set aside.

44:29 And so a lot of times when you hear folks talk about, like, affordable housing, affordable to whom, we're using that sort of metric. And that doesn't necessarily often -- I think that explains a lot of why we have some high vacancies even in affordable housing. If you look at, you know, a three bedroom should be rented close to $1,000, and we think that someone who makes 30% of the area median income would be able to afford that, right? It starts to get tough when you look at those two things. But if we're going to serve designated populations or specific populations, we also want to make sure that we're providing, like, adequate services. So then we start thinking about the combination between, like, what does it cost to pay for staff to be able -- enough staff to be able to adequately provide services in addition to property management.

45:27 We start thinking about, like, issues like accessibility. How can we lean into universal design, and how do we not make sure that we're not value engineering out those critical things? And so developing that program becomes a lot of throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, but also doing a lot of, you know, what's really a need and what's really a want, and how do you sort of match that with the need that's there. So then we start to talk about amenities, which I think is the next one. Sorry. And that's where we're trying to find the balance between wants and what the budget will allow. And it's hard to think about, especially when you think about older adults and the need for social, you know, social interaction and creating community. One of the first things that a cold-hearted developer like myself will say is, oh, let's not go too big on the community room because that's unrentable space, right?

46:24 Like, I'm not getting any funding for that. That's not paying the rent. And so you can start to see those community rooms start to shrink in the value engineering process, right? The community gardens, like, you know, when we go out to especially our properties, our senior properties, you see so many amazing stories and experiences where you have older adults working with like the local grade school, you know, learning not just, you know, gardening, but like all the things, all of the social capital that you get when you have that intergenerational mix. And oftentimes, you know, the gardens, it starts to be like if I could get more envelope, I could get more square footage in the building, you know, like lesser impacts, less room for the gardens, then you start to see what that looks like. And then, you know, pools and weight rooms and dog parks, it all becomes part of balancing that, especially when you're thinking about like feasibility.

47:21 Another big part of feasibility on the next slide is talking about the budget. So for folks who, you know, potentially bought a house, I like to tell folks that, you know, anyone can be a developer and well, you know, there's lots of folks who like, you know, get really fancy with Excel. If you basically think about when you buy a house, affordable housing development is pretty similar to that, right? You're starting to think about like how much equity can you bring? Like what's your down payment? And in affordable housing, the largest program in the country for providing equity is the low income housing tax credit program.

48:02 And so recently, as part of the president's big beautiful bill, while there were a lot of painful cuts to services, one of the things that they did in that is that they increased the amount of low income housing tax credits that are available for each state to allocate. And also some of the requirements to have other types of funding, like a match program, they lowered that. So tax credit equity has resulted in, you know, thousands, tens of thousands of units of affordable housing throughout the country. It's a great program, but it is a little bit, it's a little bit of a dance, right? So we're basically trading in tax credits for investments.

48:52 And there are middlemen, if you can imagine, that sort of helped to match developers with these investors. And there's lots of rules and lots of lawyers and a tax credit property is more expensive to build because you need all that additional expertise to be able to do that. And then to operate that, that building, you need a lot of expertise as well, because you've got to do compliance and make sure that people's income is up to date. And so you can see that it's a great program, but it also, you know, adds to some of the cost of affordable housing. But right now, that's one of the best ways that we can get equity into a project. The state housing finance agency administers the program. It's pretty great. But then you also need some amount of loans, right? And there's different ways that the housing authority has access to financing.

49:47 But basically, we're trying to, in a budget, make sure that the cost to construct it and the future costs of operating it can be paid for with a loan and that the rents can cover payments of that loan, right? So it's very similar to buying a house. So if anyone says that you can't be an affordable housing developer, you let them know. It's very simple. So on the next page, I have to tell you about another challenge. So between 2021 and 2024, when you're developing housing, you want your budgets to balance, right? So the sources, we used to get pricing for tax credit equity between 90 and 95 cents, right? Great. That means for every dollar of tax credit, we would get 95 cents up to 95 cents back to put into the project for equity, right?

50:41 We also are very fortunate in both the county and in the city in that we have elected officials who are not just committed to developing affordable housing and affordable housing in word, but in action. We've got lots of resources here in Clark County to be able to do that. But local subsidy really covers that gap between the equity that we have and some of the interest rates. So if you want to be able to have lower rents, you'll sometimes have a bigger gap and places like foundations or the city of Vancouver's affordable housing fund can usually fill that gap. So it matches. Oh, no, look what happened. So as land, as construction, labor, soft costs, insurance, as all of those things increased, something else happened.

51:34 Equity prices started to go down. So instead of having 90 cents on every dollar, now we have, if we're lucky, 85 cents. So right. So that's 15 cents per dollar. That's not gone. And interest rates are so high that you really can't cover that spread. So your gap becomes bigger. Right. And so that local subsidy or whatever else becomes really important. And so I think a lot of times people are like, oh, why can't the math math, you know, why does rent have to be so high? Like, why are things so expensive? And it's because this is the real estate market. This is the reality of the real estate market here.

52:23 So we're really trying at the housing authority to think about how can we be creative to bring down the uses. Right. So we're trying to think of ways to build more efficiently or more cost effectively using different materials that might be more cost effective, getting better and more efficient as a team. And then we're also trying to think about, are there ways that we can work with the city to think about different ways to obtain debt? Are there ways that we can work with different types of investors to help with the local subsidy and so on and so forth? So that really becomes the tough nut to crack, especially when you think about, you know, you wouldn't want to compromise all those things around the uses. You wouldn't want to compromise on something like design if it meant like we were having universal design. Right.

53:15 A place where you can age in space. You wouldn't want to compromise on some of the materials that, you know, could be more durable or could be slip resistant or, you know, any of those things that help contribute to what could make a home not only safe, but also meeting the needs of older adults. So we're really trying to sort of figure out how can we grow the sources and at the same time not think about how to control costs as well. And so it becomes a little bit of a dance. So if you get through that piece, and that's really one of the tougher pieces, then we go into funding commitments. Right. So we start to apply for all of these funds and the Section 202 program, which is a large program that for a while has been responsible for most of the senior housing that's subsidized in the country.

54:12 And so a lot of those projects that you saw in the CNPH portfolio were funded with Section 202. And we have a project that's in our pipeline in Washougal that's planned for Washougal and it'll serve older adults. Washougal is a high opportunity area. We know that there's a population, an aging population, and it's great to have some housing opportunity there. And so we were so excited. We've been working with the city of Washougal. We're very excited. And we applied and we didn't get funding. And we were like, oh, no, what happened? And so we went through our debrief and they were like, well, you were close. There was so much need. We can't fund everyone. That's fine. So we're like, when is the next NOFA? And they said, oh, not for a while. And we were like, oh, no, what? And they're like, we're probably not for at least the next four years. This program, this funding isn't available.

55:05 So that critical leg of the stool is now sort of like gone. And so I think when we think about advocacy, I think a lot of times we focus on that local layer because they're so responsive to us, right? And our local electeds are doing so much to respond. But there is an infrastructure at the federal level as well, and that is being slowly eroded. And it's complicated and the federal budget is nuts, right? But this is one where I think that because not that many people get into the weeds of what are these development tools, especially for older adults, that this kind of has just gone a little bit unnoticed.

55:52 So funding commitments are very important. At the state, we have a lot of resources. The state legislature just put more funding into affordable housing on the capital budget side. We just came out of their annual funding round where they provide gap financing, and they were oversubscribed by so much. We had a conversation with them. One of our projects that funded another one didn't. And so when we talked to them about our project, they were like, oh, you're in such good shape. You're part of this like tier one of folks that are going to be prioritized. And next year, you know, you'll be in that tier one. We're like, great, awesome. And then on a whim, we said, how many people are in that tier one? And they were like, oh, 90. So, you know, they weren't kidding. You know, they are really oversubscribed. They talked about going from having like 50 applications to like 250 applications across the state.

56:51 So it's a reflection of the affordability crisis. And I think, you know, living in Washington and being a community member in Washington, there are so many folks who are really trying to address the problem. But it can't be Washington. It can't be Clark County alone. We really need a larger effort to make sure that there's adequate resources there. So let's say you get all your funding commitments. You go through closing. The lawyers are making sure that everything gets recorded, that we're following all the rules. The investors are making sure that we've got enough, you know, skin in the game and they're like, you know, making sure that we'll pay them back. You close and then you start construction and construction is fun and there's a science to managing construction. But I won't talk to you about that. And then the last is close up and lease up. A lot of times the way that you're able to get your tax credit equity, they pay it in installments.

57:48 And those installments are predicated on an agreement that you say will be leased up by this amount of time. So when you start to think about, like, that big risk that we take in sort of thinking that if we set rents affordable for folks who are earning 50 percent of the AMI and below and we're going to charge this rent, then leasing becomes that exercise of trying to find those perfect tenants that can qualify to be able to live there but also have enough of that income to be able to pay rents that at 50 percent MFI and the larger units start to get over $1,000. So the good news is you all can be affordable housing developers now. You know what? And it is I think that it is a really challenging time right now.

58:41 But I know that there's a strong community of affordable housing developers, a strong community of folks who are really trying to think about how we prioritize and how we get this done. But any time you go to a grand opening or a ribbon cutting or groundbreaking, you'll notice that there's tons and tons of partners. And that's because we really are trying to braid together and cobble together as many partners as possible to make this work. Because, you know, and even even our friends who are who are developing market rate housing is becoming more and more difficult. And so we really need that sort of like network of friends and partners to be able to make it happen. >> I went way over 50 minutes. >> Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. Sharing wonderful information. Now let me ask the group, let me ask maybe chair.

59:39 Should we jump in with questions or should we ask these questions? What do you think? Why don't we take some questions first from the commission and we'll see how that all pans out. And then we can always grab up these questions afterwards. Who'd like to ask some questions of Dan? >> Excuse me, I've got a cold. >> No. >> This is Mike. One of my questions has to do, I know a large cost of development is the property. Okay, but I also realized that Vancouver has height restrictions on buildings where if you go to the east coast or other places in larger cities, height restrictions are much higher. And I've wondered if that has been addressed, I think right now it's at like four stories. >> Well, so the city of Vancouver is adopting their updated codes and comp plan.

1:00:38 And I understand that it'll interact with the counties as well. And so they've really, they've been great in sort of thinking about, so it's the, there's a couple of things that sort of impact. So once you have a lot, let's say you've got a lot of property for, you know, a dime, right? Then what starts to impact the ability to get it done is height, right? And also parking, and the cost to build both. So right now there are height restrictions. But their building code requires a different level of building type once you go above a certain amount of height. And so what I can tell you right now is that given the cost of still, given the cost of anything, you're probably not going to be in the business of building like those towers that get you more density any time soon. It's just so cost prohibitive to be able to do those.

1:01:37 So what we're focusing on and what the new building codes are allowing for is more of the sort of like garden style or four stories or below in doing that. So we're really, if I were to prioritize, you know, some of the hindrances to getting projects built, the height requirement just because of the cost is something that we, you know, we just typically can't get to. I've heard rumors about, like, you know, mass timber and, you know, but that I think is still in early stages. And so that might be able to compete with the cost of still in terms of performance and cost. But I don't know that we're exactly there yet. I haven't seen numbers that show that, you know, that savings that would make the height going high good.

1:02:29 I think the other thing that's really challenging is that elevators, although not very expensive to install, are incredibly expensive to meet. There's like maybe four elevator repair companies. And so it's just it's really it's really tough. We're spending quite a bit money of money on an elevator modernization project where we have properties where the elevators or one elevator, you know, needs a repair. And it's they're really expensive. So we're trying to figure out, like, is there something in the design of our buildings where we can think about maybe part of the building is like a subgrade so that you don't have to climb three flights of stairs. You can get to the entrance and then only have a want to up and one down. But we in general, we're trying especially for older adults. We don't we wouldn't build a building higher than three stories without an elevator.

1:03:25 And even then, we would probably stay between four, you know, around four stories and all of the code allows for that. OK, thank you. Sorry, I complained about elevators. I always do that. So you talked about a seven percent vacancy rate in Clark County. Did I hear that correctly? Where is that? If it's not is is it in like higher in a higher expense? It's so it's it's the average of the of Clark County is the seven percent. So if you if you'd looked at all of the for rent properties, regardless of rent, it would be seven percent in. We've heard in some markets. And so we use a platform called Coastar and they pulls like, you know, property information. When we pulled property information for some sub markets, we were starting to see 13 percent vacancy rates and like Hazel Dell.

1:04:24 So it's really it's really intense. So doesn't that mean that there's less of a problem with supply? Well, I think the issue is that we're seeing more vacancy at the higher at the higher if you look at what it is, but it also is, I think, indicative of the fact that folks don't have the same like eviction prevention tools that we had during during the pandemic. A lot of that sort of like emergency housing or eviction prevention funding has has sort of expired. And then I think it's also indicative of the fact that we haven't been able to issue new tenant based Section eight vouchers. And there there really isn't a, you know, a rent assistance that's sustainable for folks who are there.

1:05:20 So we're seeing a lot of folks move or unfortunately who are unable to pay rent. And in our portfolio, we've seen we've had a lot of issues with folks that have moved in, haven't been able to pay rents or they're you know, maybe some of their support has gone away and then they they move. And so we see a lot lower sort of shorter tenure times. This is Ellen again, is that also related to the fact that we have so much more supply now with all of these larger complexes coming in and Clark County, and they're all starting to come online.

1:06:01 And so because I anecdotally know people who are small landlords, and I know that they have empty units as well. Yeah, I think there's a little bit I was talking to someone and they were like there is no filter, you know that sort of like as people move. They sort of like filter into like the different affordable units. The, you know, the experts declared the housing boom over in 2026, and we are seeing in Clark County, quite a bit of that sort of, you know, the product from the boom. Go and rented but a lot of what was built during the boom was, you know, properties that were at the, you know, who could serve higher than 80% we're seeing, and where vacancy is really acute and I don't have the exact numbers.

1:06:56 But we, we do see higher vacancy for those units that are targeted for runs that are affordable to folks that 120% of the median family income. So I think that we are seeing more units, but those units are are really sort of targeted and have always been targeted for higher incomes, and that Georgetown study, you know, kind of basically reinforce that they said we had this great housing boom. The US, you know, did great and sort of being able to supply and build, but we were pretty agnostic when it came to prioritizing at what levels and what need and there, there probably weren't enough incentives to build for folks who are, you know, either zero or, you know, zero to 30% of the area median income.

1:07:48 One last question, though. Are there programs to help people get in people at lower incomes, get into some of these units that are at higher income to help them cover that spread and rent. Those, those section two or two funds that are gone. Yeah, so the section two or two, you know, had provided like a subsidy, but the subsidy went to the unit. So you could rent the units at whatever the tenant could afford. And then the subsidy paid paid, you know, the rent that it costs to build. And so we don't have as a community, we, the housing authority isn't able to issue new, new, new vouchers, either project based or tenant base, and probably won't for for a while now.

1:08:40 So it's, it's really tough. A lot of times when you hear like that, the federal budget or the HUD budget stays flat, but that actually is, is a cut because rents increase, you know, labor increases. And so that means that we couldn't certainly couldn't add new families to the, to the program, but also, you know, we don't want to try to do that. So the, so the biggest program is the section, section eight program. But that is, you know, harder. I think after the pandemic, we had more programs like eviction prevention or rent assistance. And so there are, there are some the folks go through the council for the homeless. We have like a centralized like intake system where folks can find those resources. There are through our counties services around aging.

1:09:37 We have, we work really closely with a lot of state and local programs. We just, the, the Laurel manner that we just opened the 82 units that was does have, it is a subsidized project. And so we worked really closely with our partners to be able to match folks and we were able to at least have really quickly, but it was because they had those resources. Are there any other members on the commission who would like to ask questions of Danny?

1:10:23 This is Donna. I guess, you know, there's a vacancy rate that you've talked about, but like, you know, I've been working with a granddaughter to help her get her first apartment on her own. And like so many of the new units that are being constructed, like the big complex, just off mill plain and, well, before 136 it's bacon, but they're starting rents are like $1,700 a month, coupled with for studio studio small studio parking section.

1:11:07 And that's just for flat lot parking. And of course, our community. It's moving, but it's still pretty auto dependent, coupled with one of the things I found and from a few months ago when I talked about the humane society and doing everything we can to help. Pets companion animals stay with senior citizens. The rent that is now charged for pets is one complex out of 136. They charge $500 a month for a pet, coupled with the deposit.

1:11:53 So if you had two pets and you report those pets, that adds $1,000. Oh yeah. So what most people do is smuggle them in, which is tricky if you got a big dog, but anyway, point is, you know, seniors want those and they're not going to, they would rather live in a tent with their pet than they can't afford. You know, that average rent, I think, per pet, plus the deposit is about $30 to $40 a month that you add to your rent plus everything else.

1:12:36 So it's an incredible, I mean, I really appreciate everything you present, but it's just incredibly complex problem. How specifically do you relate to the VHA? Are you a totally separate organization from the housing authority? Are you part of it? So the CNPH is a totally different entity and that has its separate board of directors that are sort of like charged with the governance of CNPH, but VHA basically supports by staffing. But I'm an employee of the VHA. I'm also an ED there. So part of my salary is supported through CNPH. It's a great program. Really respect what you're doing.

1:13:34 You know, a lot of times when we talk about like what's affordable and, you know, that sort of calculation of the 30%, you know, you shouldn't spend more than 30% of your gross income on housing and your rent payment or your mortgage payment and associated costs. One of the things that we hear a lot, especially from like our resident advisory board, is that, you know, when we calculate like utility allowances when we're trying to figure out like what's affordable, we hear a lot about like, but all of it's not just your, you know, your, your trash and electricity and heat. It's also required renters insurance, required pet insurance, required pet fee, parking fee. And so we've really tried with some of the policy flexibility we have as a moving to work agency to make sure that like when we are calculating income or we're calculating rent that we're taking all of the must pay fees.

1:14:34 And we're counting that as as affordable. Sometimes when we are, you know, working with other partners, we see that some folks are like, oh, like that doesn't count as rent. And we're kind of like, well, realistically, if you're requiring a tenant to pay that, that's it's, you know, it's a required fee. It should be considered as a housing cost because, yeah, we, you know, we the the the need for animals and pet companions. It's it's very important. So, yeah. Thank you so much, Danny. I mean, I feel like we have had the benefit of a college level course. No, but in a great way, because we hear numbers all the time. I mean, they publish the paper, but you gave us the threads and the context and the meaning under that, which is priceless. So thank you so much for educating us and for sharing with us. But I do think that we might have perhaps others in our audience, either online or here that might want to ask a question.

1:15:34 Can I pass it over to you, Susan? Yes. Why don't we start in the room? Is there any one in the room that would like to ask a question? Mark Majora live in Vancouver, Washington. Not really a question. I just want to compliment you and Vancouver Housing Authority for doing everything you can with the existing structure we have. And I think you laid out a very clear picture as to how the existing structure and systems are not going to get us out of this problem.

1:16:24 In my mind, Vancouver Housing Authority needs to go back to square one and the war housing production effort and look at some innovative approaches that take those components that make up the financing package and turn them on their head. Single family zoning is the predominant land base. And that's where most of the problem resides in terms of people's ability to be able to live on those properties. So part of the solution has to involve how do we incentivize increasing density on single family properties.

1:17:05 And when you start to add up all of the revenue and equity that's available there, all we really need is some systems in place that allow us to create financing tools that address the needs on a local scale and stop depending upon these higher level systems that are so subject to the whims of whomever. And really come together as a community and say this is what we need to do and this is going to be how we do it. The city has established a new community development financing institution in 4th plane. A number of bankers in this community came together and took the existing community development financial institute and wove it into Rivermark. So we have a huge philanthropic community.

1:17:58 So it's simply a matter of how do we create a structure that allows us to start to capture that existing value on single properties and weave it into a strategy where we can support people who do not have the means to do the development. But we can set some structures up in a trust sort of a model. Continue to do things like the affordable housing fund that the city has and it's a huge asset. For every dollar they collect, it generates about 8 to 9 dollars worth of return on value because of the access it gives to other capital. So we've got to really rethink this thing and start investing in how we're going to make that happen. The other piece of it is the systems that are in play will not facilitate the scope of development and construction we need to do. So that has to be grounded back on new business development.

1:18:53 And we should be designing some initiatives that allow new people that want to get into the construction industry a way to build their capacity to do so. And I'm excited that Fourth Plain is going to take on that with this new grant that they've used with some of the ARPA money. So in my mind, you folks, the institutional players are doing the best job you can do. Probably better than anybody else in the country when you look at where things are at. But new tools have to be generated and somebody has to step up and say how we make that happen. Well, I totally agree. I think that we're trying to be as innovative as possible. I think we just released an RFP where we were seeking out development partners for a project where we were sort of like, how can we reduce the cost per door?

1:19:48 And so we're in the negotiation process, but we're trying to think about how to use some of the technology that goes behind modular development. But think about modularity and not necessarily an implementation, but use the efficiency and the design and the planning for the project. And so hopefully we continue to move forward on something like that. And if all goes well, we could significantly reduce the cost per unit. We're looking at modeling anywhere close to $100,000 per unit of savings. So I think it's really a credit to not just VHA, but the partners and the development community. The local foundations here are really amazing.

1:20:39 The Community Foundation for Southwest Washington has a SWIFT loan fund, which it's great because they're providing that sort of like short term capital that you might need at the beginning of a project. And so just knowing that that's there and they've really grown that. We've got a couple of philanthropic leaders on our board of commissioners and they're constantly going to other parts of the country to sort of seek and learn. And certainly the mayor kind of ran on the code changes to try to think about how you incentivize density. And, you know, as like a planner nerd, too, I was like, you know, when did politics ever, you know, when did anyone think that, like, you know, planning decisions could hold like the attention of like the political climate of the day? And it's it seems like really brave and courageous and, you know, kind of aligned with everything.

1:21:31 So I think we do have a really great community and you can see from all sectors, people really trying to to, you know, kind of crack the nut there. OK. For our online guests, if you would like to make a comment, please raise or ask a question, please raise your virtual hand. And there are instructions on how to do this on the screen. And for anyone on the telephone, please dial star three on your phone's number panel. I do not see any raised hands. OK, so I'd like to say thank you to Danny. Your presentation was great and I loved we had a presentation about a year ago on housing and you were echoing some of the things that we learned about then.

1:22:25 So we are almost ready to become public housing developers. Last week, we are last month, we learned to become transportation planners. So we are all, you know, honing our portfolios. Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you very much. Thank you, Cass, for orchestrating this. This was excellent. And if there are no other are there any other comments, we're going to close out the fireside chat. Thank you. OK, so that wraps up our agenda from now on, our meetings will be moving to the third Monday of each month. Our next regular meeting will take place on Monday, April 20th at four thirty p.m., where we will be discussing mobility challenges with no other agenda items to discuss.

1:23:22 This meeting is adjourned. Thank you.

1:23:52 You.