good good morning everyone we are about to get started if everyone can please take their seats group of adults can get quieter quicker than two kids good to know good morning everyone my name is sandra vese einhorn and i am welcoming you to our morning uh the state of housing affordability in broward county i'd like to thank our partners broward county sue carano keith darby ralph stone the entire team thank you for everything i'm going i'm really honored to be able to turn it over to our first speaker for some welcoming remarks please join me in welcoming commissioner hazel rogers from the board of county commissioners district 9 and member of the broward housing council good morning everyone well i can tell you it's a good morning it feels good got an app opportunity to put on something comfortable to enjoy this cool weather that we're experiencing right oh when we get it we take it but it's good to see everyone here i'm scripted by staff and usually when they script me they know i'm not going to read it that way because i am me and i'm here to just talk about housing and thank you first for all that you do every day when we are not there and we can't see or hear it but some of us do live it maybe my staff has a hard copy it makes it a lot easier for me thank you sir all right i'm more comfortable i'm a paper girl thank you for being here today at the broward performing arts center as we tackle one of the most critical issues facing our community right now as you talk about elections you hear housing i should ask you that question one of the top topics of discussion is housing right did you get that from everyone that they're ready to truly deal with the housing issues that we're facing across this nation but broward county in particular because this is a place that have the sunshine it has the beaches it has that airport seaport we are ready for every resource every economy everything we are prepared for it but most of all we must prepare the housing you can't work here and not afford to live here do you agree thank you very much i know i'm talking to the right audience i want to expect extend a special thank you to our sponsors and partners who have made today possible the broward housing council the coordinating council of broward the broward county housing finance authority and wells fargo i'm also sharing the stage this morning with leo toka from wells fargo philanthropy and community impact and i want to thank him and his team for their incredible support today is about moving from data to direct action i'll say today also includes us looking at broward county budget how we have allocated funds to support the different housing issues and to see whether or not it's current and relevant that's the discussion i would like to know that will be included in whatever we do today because it must match fit the needs of the community right now as we plan for the future can we agree on that all right i'm interactive this morning because i'm energized this morning because i'm frustrated sometime with the process and we understand there's limited funds but there's a lot of knowledge here and we can do it together and that's is the reason this audience this morning this morning is so very very important every single person in this room plays a role in solving or housing challenges whether you are a policy maker a developer an advocate or a community partner your voice and your collaboration are what drives us forward don't let anyone else tell you differently you are uniquely made and built and you should represent that uniqueness and be responsible inclusive and fair thank you for your time your expertise your dedication to broward county let's have a progressive productive and inspiring workshop have a blessed day thank you commissioner rogers thank you for your service and for your leadership and for your stewardship and advocacy of housing affordability on the dais much appreciated it is now my honor to bring up leo toka vice president of philanthropy and community impact for wells fargo you're just a partner to me so to have to look at your official title uh but i do just want to share wells fargo has been a partner of the coordinating council for a number of years and the work of advocacy and education and awareness does not happen easily and so i really want to thank leo for his continued support and his continued partnership thank you so much leo good morning thank you sandra it's great to be here with so many familiar faces and leaders of this community again i'm leo toka i manage south florida for community relations um and i i'm just happy to be here um on behalf of wells fargo thank you for the opportunity to join today's coordinating council meeting we appreciate the council's leadership in bringing together residents non-profit organizations businesses public sector partners and community leaders around one of broward county's most important priorities ensuring that more people can access and sustain a safe stable and affordable place to call home we also recognize that housing affordability is not a challenge any one organization can solve alone progress depends on coordination trusted partnerships practical solutions and a shared commitment to accountability that is why the council's role in convening and stewarding the housing brower 10-year master plan is so important wells fargo is a proud supporter of the steep dive into the housing the state of the housing affordability in broward including the people and partnerships needed to convene stakeholders share information advance implementations and keep the community engaged in this long-term effort our support reflects a broader commitment to helping communities address housing needs and strengthen economic opportunities just as important we are here to listen we want to learn from the people closest to the work understand where collaboration can be most useful and help turn shared priorities into measurable community progress thank you sandra vizi einhorn and the council's leadership staff partners and participants of the work you do every day i look forward to today's discussions and to continuing our partnership and support of a stronger more inclusive broward county thank you thank you so much leo and you will find an updated uh broward county housing white paper on in the middle of your tables funded by wells fargo thank you for that i am so excited to be turning the stage over to dr ned murray he is the associate director of the fiu george m perez metropolitan center uh to reveal our most recent updated broward county affordable housing needs assessment dr murray perfect timing welcome up dr murray will present his findings from the newest broward county affordable housing needs assessment discussing current market conditions demo demographic trends affordability challenges production needs and how the data compares with previous assessments and as a spoiler alert i don't want anyone to become too dismayed by some of the data because we'll then spend the rest of the morning talking about all the great things that we have done despite some of the data so dr murray come on up thank you so much good morning everybody i wasn't sure i was gonna make it always something on the roads these days um thank you sandra thank you broward housing council for the invitation broward housing finance agency for supporting financially the update of the housing needs assessment uh of course the collaborative and we've got also wells fargo so um great to see you all kind of bright so i can't see all the faces but i'm sure i probably know 90 of you or at least met 90 of you so let me um just mentioned we got some great panels coming up and so i want to save the best for last but so i'll provide more of an overview of the key findings um let me just say this um i think many of you know this we've all been hanging around for about 20 years right in fact it occurred to me i'm going to drive in today that was about 20 years this month 20 years ago that i made my first presentation of the first housing needs assessment that we had done here in broward county just as the bubble was just about ready to burst and we started to see some funny numbers starting to show up sure enough uh but 20 years ago the broward housing partnership with the support of the broward workshop funded that first housing needs assessment broward you were first followed by palm beach and miami day the keys and now i think folks are getting a little more concerned up north in central florida and and of course the tampa bay area so but we were the first and we're also the first to do a 10-year master plan miami had a shot they decided to table it for a while back in 2018 and it's important to understand some of these um these trends and i'm just going to touch upon that briefly as i get into it though because is this important because a lot of people ask why how is this happening and what happened 20 years ago what happened in 2018 what happened now there's reasons for it there's driving forces behind it as many of you know and we can talk about that but the bottom line is what are we going to do about it and and i it's so good to be here and providing an update of broward housing needs assessment at a time when we have a master plan in place this is the first master plan that we um i should say first needs assessment that we've done since the master plan so we had all those needs assessments going on for 20 years and now we have a master plan that's only in its third year but as sandra may uh just mentioned we're making some really good progress um and we still have a long way to go three years in but we i think we've created a lot of the partnerships and a lot of the activity that we were hoping to see but we can talk about what more needs to be done uh uh in in on the panels in particular later on but we have some suggestions too when we do these needs assessments we do lay out a few challenges and policy directions so we'll get into those but just briefly i don't okay um um so what the needs assessment i don't know if i can go back i did want to see okay let me just once again just quickly and and in the afternoon or not the afternoon but the sessions ralph and others can talk about what's going on with the master plan what's going on particularly as it relates to the funding but also the densification piece which is a key real key element of the master plan and when we talk about densification we all know that we have to we have to do it many of our commercial corridors and our transit locations do not have the the appropriate density to really make the numbers work as even some of our downtown so that was a real real uh focus area as was funding and the third area was all the program and regulatory improvements that could have been made just really really easy stuff and we suggested a number of programs uh from uh accessory dwelling units to middle uh missing middle housing um different types of multi-tenant housing there was just a lot of different the whole agenda or should i say maybe a menu of options that municipalities could have tapped into how many you have i don't know we're going to find that out because the other piece to this is a scorecard which uh ralph will be speaking on a little bit but the scorecard and dashboard was a real critical element we need to be accountable and if we're going to really focus in on this this whole this whole uh uh idea of of sharing the burden we we really need to be thinking in terms of what each municipality can contribute as well as major employers institutions philanthropists we all need to be at the table so what did we come up with well let me say this we the numbers are still really scary but remember we kind of knew that when we began this plan three years ago and we also knew it four years ago when we started the 2022 needs assessment update because we saw what was going on we all saw what was going on in terms of the the market post-covid we were already in a housing crisis that we've kind of forgot about in 2018 a lot of that was triggered by the 2018 tax tax act jobs tax cut and jobs act so there's always been something that seems to trigger and of course covid and the move of investors and and population south here to here to florida or south florida in particular uh obviously was a driving force so there's always been something even going back to the housing bubble in in 2004 five and six so we can talk about those things later but there's always a reason for it there are driving factors that we need to be mindful of um what really concerns us here is that the level of unaffordability has has really taken on a different dimension because we we when we used to in fact i was going to say to myself before i uh got here today i was going to use the word cost burden we use it so often but it's it's almost become we will become desensitized to it number one but if your cost burden today you're probably a severely cost burden and that's that that increase in severely cost burden rent is here in broward but it also applies to miami-dade and and palm beach to the north is that that 50 percent and threshold is now become sort of the the norm and and the numbers speak to that and and also in terms of owners we're seeing more owners who are severely uh cost burden and there's reasons for that as well so that's one of our biggest concerns because that may be the number one driving force behind a lot of the economic numbers that that i'll be presenting as well okay so we're talking about this prolonged um uh affordability crisis beginning like i said we could you could actually look at the dates and see june of 2020 is when the numbers began to change i'm thinking many of you probably saw that june of 2020 we were wondering when covet hit what the heck was going to happen to the housing market because we met we were already in a housing crisis but we figured you know the market is going to have to make some kind of corrections or changes in order to address this this economic shock brought on by covert we didn't know i don't think any of us saw what was coming and we now know so we started seeing those numbers pop up in the 2021 census a little bit but as we said back then watch each successive census as we get into 23 24 now now we're seeing it all play out in the first slide i'm actually going to show you that with with the numbers and the graph it really reflects that and that's so we do this trend analysis of this current housing crisis it's just really really clear what happened and how we got to where we're at but that's not to say we were doing real well before that either so we just added it another layer or maybe we went hypersonic as far as the housing crisis come 21 22 and 23 but there's been some changes and we'll have to watch that just as we were watching some of the indicators back in 2006 and seven um so the once again the it's this growing affordability uh crisis which is affecting so many of our workers that um we really have to be mindful of that because when we were talking about this three years ago when we were doing the master plan a lot of it was anecdotal because i remember ralph would be asking me what do you what is the number what are you seeing well they're not showing up quite in fact broward really did well coming out of cover we we recovered much faster than miami day palm beach did pretty well along with us but then all of a sudden uh things have changed but back when we did the 2023 master plan there were a number of economic people uh in the audience back then including the chamber of commerce who were saying you know we're hearing some things out there with our workers we're hearing some things out there from our businesses but the numbers weren't really picking picking that up because the number the economic numbers are current you know the census numbers are always a little bit delayed but the economic numbers come out monthly so we're tracking those and we're trying to put two and two together and and guess what we now have the hard evidence and we'll talk about that um this and i the slowdown is really interesting because when we look at the numbers um we were looking at each in the industry sector but we're mainly focused on our core sectors okay i think you all know that south florida has three core industry sectors and they have to be very successful they have to be competitive leisure and hospitality health care and trade those three that that's our economic base in terms of employment the majority of our workers work in those industries unfortunately the majority of occupations within those industries are in low wages so on one hand we have these three strong core sectors but on the other hand they create the biggest problem as relative to how are we going to house them so it's it's a real wicked problem that we've been trying to deal with but it separates us out maybe from other areas of the country where you have more diverse economies and higher paying jobs so we can talk a little bit more about that as well now how do what does this add up to well we were waiting for this we were waiting for these numbers um the domestic out migration we were first seeing it in miami-dade and you can see with those numbers there miami-dade's been experiencing this for over a decade now uh the only thing that offsets that is immigration numbers but broward you are now part of that group you are losing your part your existing pop your domestic population moving away and we're up there in the 90 000 range now not close to miami-dade but we're now there and palm beach would be next real concern because a lot of that out migration that domestic out migration is among our younger workers in the 20s in the in their 20s not a good group to be losing uh this is this is our future workforce but these are our future families these are our future leaders you know think about that okay this was the the graph i wanted to put right up front when i was talking with my colleague david ortiz because this one shows it all in terms of how we how quickly this all happened and how um really devastating it really became particularly for our renters but also for our owners as well we have the numbers for both but you can just see that that 2021 that that 39 overall during that time we were in the 50s 50 people who were investing in rent the renter housing was certainly getting good return on investment uh but that has gone flat in the last few years and that's you know the great thing about data you know when you combine census data which is more from a population standpoint we use census data uh households and families but we combine that with the economic data and what's actually happening out there in the real estate market you begin to start saying well some things are starting to happen they always do now would we call this some kind of a correction i don't think we're there yet but it's part of an overall trend and we're going to have to see over the next six months particularly as it relates to the economy because we're always we're always looking at both you know we're looking at the housing from a supply demand but we're always looking at those job numbers and and the labor force itself and the labor force rate here in broward county labor force participation rate has been declining a bit and the only reason we have a labor force participation rate that's competitive it's because of the larger influx of hispanic and latino households that have moved into broward county over the years um and along with and along with um black households the largest labor force participation rates in in within um broward county are within minority now majority minority households in broward county same for the single family and condos we saw that jump that we talked about earlier once again we'd be kind of stuck in that 650 range here in broward county uh obviously you know i was thinking back when we were doing these housing needs assessments back during the housing bubble of the first decade i don't think we ever broke 400 000 right ralph i don't think we did um but 350 390 sounded really bad back then and it was uh but now we're just in this 650 640 650 range condos you know that there's that's an but that's another whole story especially when you get into the types of condos and we can talk about that all day um but condos right now at least the ones that are um accessible in various ways do provide some measure of affordability and a critical measure of affordability for existing condo owners but also for prospective owners as well um but we need to be really mindful of the fact that that that this number the 640 650 whatever it is 610 620 whatever it may be it's it not only is it that reflect a level of appreciation but it's really um inflated and we we could talk about that too but especially if we get into some of the older housing stock which is going to be a key finding here a lot of those numbers are inflated so the question is what happens down the road with properties you know that you look at them and you hear how much they're going for and it's just impossible but so something's going to have to change down the road and if then that that may be where one of our biggest opportunities lie okay so the last time we did the needs assessment we want to show this because it is really important on a couple different levels is to show not what's just being built but what about our existing housing stock because we got hundreds of thousands of units out there both on the renter side on the owner side what's happening to them so because we always wanted to make that point yeah we need to build more affordable housing but what about that existing housing stock because if we're losing our existing housing stock through market appreciation then guess what it's gone it's gone for the households that we're trying to accommodate especially at that 50 80 percent level so and well and all the way up to 120 and 140 if we look at it from a from a owner and uh and uh renter perspective so we we track using the existing housing supply we attract we we analyze the the uh appreciation that that's occurring within that market so a lot of those homes that were once affordable certainly 20 years ago but even 10 years ago five years ago each year you can see we're losing upwards of five six thousand units on the rental side this goes right up to 120 percent um we're losing once again about six thousand units a year uh it was actually worse than that it has started to change a little bit by the way there's a little smudge there in terms of the data but when we copied and paste but the bottom line here is is that all the way up to 120 we're we're beginning we're starting to see once again losing all that housing and from an affordability perspective as that housing moves into the next rung of value but you can see that it is diminishing somewhat and part of the reason that's happening is because our income in parent groward county have gone up and that's and that's reflected in the ami we're now 102 000 450 on the ami but it's also reflected in the census so we are the the overall household income the median household incomes of broward county are now higher which means that there is less of a gap at that higher end in fact at the moderate end we actually have a bit of a surplus so once again a lot of dynamics here to digest now here's the one i really wanted to focus in on uh how many of you have heard the term it came up on an earlier slide the other housing crisis well it's becoming more of a popular term some of you have heard that term well this is what it is the aging of our housing stock and the condition of our housing stock the livability of our housing stock because right now almost 70 percent of broward's housing was built prior to 1990 in fact the median age is 1981 and what's that tell you well most of this housing was built prior to the florida building code and i brought this up before for those of us who were around hurricane wilmer uh category one but i'll be dying a bit it wasn't a three before but we saw blue tarps for how many months or years it's about broward county can you imagine what would happen if that was a more intense hurricane but we have an older housing stock that's vulnerable it needs a lot of repair and it's now being recognized nationally uh and there's not a lot of funding out there less than two percent of the federal housing money goes towards housing repair less than two percent and yet that is one of our greatest needs so we're going to keep that existing housing stock which is most of what we have that's aged right now and not in the best of condition or at least deferred maintenance right and we know what deferred maintenance means because we own homes and we we know it takes it doesn't take long before your roof and windows and doors and everything go so really important but the other point here is that only seven percent of broward's housing stock has been built since 2010 seven percent since 2010 so we just haven't built and we certainly haven't built at the affordability levels that that are required um i'll just go too quickly so these i do want to show you you need to see those gaps those gaps are really really significant um and it does reflect now the full um the full effect of essentially that trend that that i outlined earlier we now have four years of of all that data and all that analysis and and it really does we kind of anticipated this that there would be it would only get worse and worse for the next few years when we were doing the master plan and we were doing the last needs assessment where we go from here i guess is the big question and of course a lot of that might have to do or will have to do with what we do about it on the renter side same thing uh although we are starting to see uh some softening in that moderate income range uh that our numbers uh gap uh supply and demand gap analysis will show that so there is some improvement going on but that's really happening because of uh the increase in the median household income and of course what what that also provides from an ami perspective you're getting more and more people into that uh moderate income range so there's more maybe some more opportunities that will come about but we still have to keep in mind who that worker base is because most of that worker base is still earning well below eighty percent of uh median income and this is the number so this is what we do and we do this analysis by the way for every municipality in broward county so we know where you are we have your data so when we finalize the municipal scorecard and dashboard we'll be using this as your baseline and and looking at what what you're doing what you're accomplishing now you can see here we do combine uh both the moderate income owners with renters because it's important to think about that in terms of first-time buyers because the first-time buyers are going to be in that moderate uh income range right so we want to make sure that when we calculate these numbers that we we include moderate income renters as part of that demand all right and on the uh on the renter side here's where we have of course some good news because as we see it and once again in that moderate range we see a surplus now we had a surplus when we did the assessment four years ago as well but but but it's holding and so there is some hope at least if you're in that range that there are there is a supplied out there now if we keep losing 6 000 units a year to market appreciation that may that may not last much longer but let's hope that we can continue to build you know through light tech and and other projects other programs that are out there and begin to you know tap into that but at least these gaps have not gotten worse uh and that and we're only three years into the master plan so perhaps if we can really ramp it up over the next few years we can begin to really address some of these existing affordability gaps we had to show this because we want to always remind you of our economy because when we go back to the numbers in terms of job loss and domestic out migration we have to remember once again who what is our economy we like to talk high tech we like to talk about all these other uh industries i mean and that's great i come from an economic development background i want to see a diversified economy i want to see better paying jobs uh but on the other hand as someone who comes from an economic development background i know how essential your core industry or your or your economic basis is and we have to remain competitive as an economy in those three sectors leisure and hospitality health care and trade so it's it's it's a challenge but we but remember that that that that is our economic base and the workers and the occupations within those industries are the folks that we we see every day so you can see those numbers now what's concerning here you can see how small their weight these are these are your top 12 occupations employment wise in the county you can see those average wages right um and you can see where they might fall within that that household income continuum but the other thing that popped out because we are making projections the state does provide uh eight year projections as you probably know in terms of employment and we have that indones assessment but what that what those state projections didn't show even though they're saying we're basically going to be the same economy as we are now eight years down which is true um look at some of the reds we're losing even though these are some of our leading occupations we're losing numbers we'll lose and that's probably where those those numbers came from that the numbers i showed you earlier the 15 000 job loss it's it's probably happening among a lot of the within a lot of these occupations so something to keep in mind it's no longer anecdotal there's now hard evidence of job loss of domestic out migration a real slow down after several years of coming out of covid coming out of that economic shock shock favorably that's all changed that's no longer the case so we we have to be thinking about this as we go forward so always important that we show that and we have various ways when you read our housing needs assessments you're going to see that a lot of our demand is based on the economy right because you need to understand that you need to understand that it's not just about what some people are going to afford no you need to understand the industries because the industries are comprised of occupations and the occupations are comprised of workers who make up households so it's it's all fundamental so these were the four that really kind of popped out we we have we have some others included in the and this is the final slide um but these are the ones that we think really need really need to be we need need to be thinking about sharing the burden once again we're not seeing enough now we haven't released uh the the scorecard yet but from what we're seeing the county once again is is really driving a lot of the uh financing and and and providing the uh the gap uh financing support for for um a number of different developments i think over a billion dollars in gap financing over the last uh since 2018 um some communities have stepped up there's always going to be four or five that bear the brunt you know share the burden and they are but we've got 31 in all so we need to we we need to make sure that they all have some every community has some contribution whatever that is adus right that's a pretty simple one um missing middle housing along your commercial corridors pretty simple increasing your density on your commercial corridors a lot of things that can be done creating your own affordable housing trust fund all things that can be done at the municipal level you don't need to be looking up at the county or looking up at the state the other one is we need to be we need to leverage our housing uh uh investments every project that occurs whether it be transportation infrastructure whether it be large commercial development every discussion concerning sea level rise everything we do has has to have a a must i should say must have a housing component a housing element to it where does housing fit in on this project where does housing fit in this plan we need to be thinking more holistically in a much more integrated way because we we need to keep we need to move this needle i think we have moved a little bit over the last couple years but we still have a lot of work to do and the only way to do that is to make sure that affordable housing is front and center in every discussion not hard to do you shouldn't be you shouldn't have a discussion about transportation infrastructure and not bring up housing simple as that land use housing sea level rise housing commercial development housing okay the third one um is is once again given my background in economic development i see no reason no reason why we can't be talking about economic development and housing as a in terms of a dual goal what we need to accomplish i know we like to take a lot of credit for different things that might happen in the economy but unless we're really providing better paying jobs creating a more diversified economy creating economic opportunities in our neighborhoods and our communities this all needs to be tied together housing the economy jobs training all of that needs to happen together and then the last one addresses this it's all we needed was another affordable housing problem huh but we have to address this if nothing else just from a safety perspective because we know what would happen if a major hurricane came up i-95 but from an opportunity standpoint in terms of home home ownership from a from a from from the aspect of uh of looking at our housing stock in terms of um this huge supply most of it built before 1990 70 of it what are we going to do about all that housing i mean granted some of it's in good condition a lot of it but we did a study in miami-dade that really looked at this we haven't done one in broward but i can tell you a large proportion of these homes built prior to 1990 are vulnerable and they they they need work so we need to think about that that's a that's a big ask for certainly county or municipal governments without the federal money there that used to be there when i was in government for rehabilitation but we need to figure that out what are we going to do with that existing housing stock uh that aging and and and and does provide probably the best source of affordability we there was no such thing as naturally occurring affordable housing in broward county south florida even though that term gets kicked around a bit um it does exist in other parts of the country so we we need to make sure that that 70 that 70 percent of our housing inventory is taken care of uh and and we need to figure out ways to do that and with that um thank you very much thank you so much dr murray uh next we are going to bring up ralph stone ralph is the executive director of the broward county housing finance authority and to my other panelists be prepared i'll call you up in a minute welcome ralph morning everyone i i already feel some level of success making it up the steps i think many of you know that about about a year ago i had a total knee replacement it was hell so i'm just getting into the step mode and i'm i'm happy i made it going going down may be a different challenge so i wanted to just take a few minutes to talk about another piece of the 10-year master plan which was an initiative to create a municipal scorecard and really that's a misnomer yes we want to pick up all of the 31 cities and what they're doing but it also includes the county as you might know but uh when we uh embarked on trying to figure out a system to capture this data um you know we were working off dr murray's um needs assessment and you can see and i'm not going to spend much time on that um i hope i pushed the right button here uh what the demand is and what the supply needs are uh in those areas so one of thank you one of the things that we did was we just really quickly uh took and this is focused on on rental because we know that uh the cohort that that dr murray talked about the the four key sectors are all earning 60 percent of area median income it's about 40 000 a year coincidentally uh every year when the schimberg institute or simberg schimberg center does the the annual report demographics for florida housing they do a rental needs assessment on every county in the state at the 60 percent level for years broward county persistently has been last in the state number 67 in the number of units that are available for households earning 60 percent of area median income less than 25 units for every 100 of those households so we're focused on the needs assessment primarily on the need for rental housing although we know uh getting into the neighborhoods and continuing to support uh home ownership is really really important so we we just simply listed uh the need by city and you know there i think except for southwest ranches there's not a a city in the county that doesn't have a demand or a shortfall in the extremely low very low and low income housing and um you know i'm not going to go into all that but uh that's uh available to all of us and is available to all the cities so we started in on a process to kind of track this stuff and i think we really overreached honestly we we hope this morning to kind of roll out the results but in working with the cities and starting to gather this data we wanted to integrate it in into to modern technology we were shooting to have it uh demographic based where you could go in and you could touch a point on on the map and it would show you what that particular uh piece of the uh new product so to speak would be whether it would be a tax credit deal or a home ownership deal and you could get the uh the number of units the the uh funding associated with it and it would all totaled up well that's still a work in progress so what i did just a week or so ago just to kind of demonstrate where we went ahead is developed an analog approach um that simply takes on the far left side it would be the jurisdiction in this case i was starting out using broward county and this is just an example and there's the supply and demand and of course we would have it for both home ownership and for rental we originally were trying to break it down by cohort and we kind of broke it at eight percent uh low income and below and higher and i think that that's aspirational and then someday we'll get there but simply i went in and started looking for fy 95 because we know we have data on that first full fiscal year what did what did the county get done and uh so let me go through those real quickly we know in terms of state and federal grants and by the way this is home block grant and ship and it does include all 15 cities that are entitlements in the county so there's 16 entitlement entities in the county so this is just not uh broward county but for um for the fiscal 25 year uh those grants produce 355 units and a little over 24 million dollars um we'll be talking about the gap program in a few minutes which is kind of our our go-to funding vehicle to really energize the development of the rental properties but in that year we happened to do nine deals and the board allocated 24 million dollars and um 33 33 million dollars and did 954 units now this is where the scorecard gets tricky because you go into the next column and we provide a priority for any deal that gets gap financing for the hfa bonds the hfa does about a hundred million a year in bond allocation so those nine projects rolled into 189 million dollars worth of equity and subsidy from the hfa but we can't double count those so that that's a challenge for us in the cities and then on top of it we started offering and i'll talk a little bit about this in the next panel award points for sit for projects that got the city that they were in to contribute in that particular year uh the uh cities that those projects were in contributed 15.7 million dollars but it's the same 954 units so we can't triple count them either and then then we go on in to what's going on at the state we know we get a couple of tax credit uh nine percent deals a year which is like you know the that's the golden goose of funding if you get a nine percent deal you're usually fully subsidized and you can go right to to construction uh we happen to get two nine percent deals that year of about six million dollars but for for those of you in the business and i know uh milo's here and and uh we have other other developers in the audience when you get a nine percent deal that six million dollars unlike our gap which is the one time six million dollars it's time to 10 years so that's 60 million dollars worth of equity that goes into the deal so we also got a couple of sale deals so that totals 64 million dollars for the 200 units that we got through the state then we bump over to a project that i started when i came here we've done seven of them now i call it project-based tax increment uh and we happen to do a deal that year another 200 units and the county's contribution was a little over five million and so all of those numbers are real numbers from fyi 25 but we know that there are other things going on out there and that's the next four columns live local bonus density development conditions uh and non-profits and um you can see that live local particularly and by the way these were numbers that i got from um uh the staff that's been tracking live local since they started uh doing deals so it's really a three-year horizon but it's really significant so in that that horizon there were 733 units and 293 million but also in that same period of time there was a total of 29 projects that have been submitted they're in the review pipeline in all of the cities in the county and among the the 29 projects that 4368 units are the affordable units embedded in those projects if you if you take kind of a standard 400 000 bucks a unit construction costs you're talking about 1.75 billion dollars that that's being provided through the live local process we know that uh you know barbara black boy is here someplace and doing her good work with with the the planning council and the rest of the cities who have bonus density and then conditions of development i won't go into those you can see the numbers there uh and then we know that we have non-profits that are producing every every day of the week so i just generally took uh habitat the urban league the land trust and minority builders the united way and said 100 units a year so if you total all of those up we're talking about 2500 units of production a year and an equity value the construction value of 450 million dollars so the point of the scorecard really is to capture all that production that's going on in every single city and let the city see how they're they're migrating toward their need and what we're doing on an overall basis so uh it is still a uh a work in progress as the slide indicated but it's i think an extremely valuable piece of information for us all and uh more more news to follow thank you ralph thank you so much for that and i could please have the members of our first panel discussion join us we will be joined by mitch rosenstein principal and co-founder of green mills group al milo jr principal and president of related urban development group we've already got ralph stone our executive director of the broward county housing finance authority barbara blake boy executive director of the broward county planning council and the honorable walter duke the third the chair of the housing affordability committee of the broward workshop and the former mayor of dania beach and if you all don't mind i think i'm going to pull this back sorry guys don't be mad so that i can see the panelists okay sorry sorry about that watch my head thank you chris remember this for next panel because you're moderating all right good morning everybody happy to have such a great group of really friends and colleagues there are mics to either one of you we have a room full of people but i feel like these are some of the folks i love talking uh housing with the most all right our panel discussion for this morning is obviously about housing affordability but really what we wanted to talk about especially after hearing dr murray share some of those findings is we recognize that in order to address housing affordability it requires strong partnerships between public private and our non-profit sectors and so this uh this panel presentation will we will discuss and explore how successful developments move from concept to completion the partnerships that make the projects possible and the community benefits that they generate so i'm going to kick it off with the first question and would love to actually hear from from all of you and really want to give credit i'm asking since 2018 and 2018 is is significant 2018 is when the ballot measure passed to create the affordable housing trust fund i certainly want to acknowledge senator rich i know that we acknowledged uh commissioner hazel rogers earlier but really senator rich has been the architect and and really the the champion behind housing affordability so when we talk about housing affordability in broward county they're sort of pre-2018 and then there's there's now so for the panelists and and perhaps we'll start with mr milo at the end since 2018 broward has made significant investments in addressing its affordable housing needs from your perspective what has changed the most in the way housing deals get done in broward yeah i think broward is you know that initiative is is setting a a standard for for what these developments need to look like and as you mentioned and dr murray mentioned before public private partnerships are important right um and broward county has not just uh had a program to to fund gaps but it's also had a program to to make strategic acquisitions right and and and redevelopment has got to be a big part of this equation you heard about the uh dr murray talk about old housing stock and old projects um and i think broward county has been very uh innovative in that approach right and and and trying to use some of their their resources to buy some older properties that can then be uh put into a public private partnership and redeveloped and i think that's been a very strategic approach i don't i don't know of other counties that are actually doing it like that obviously our home-based county is is miami-dade and they they don't have a program set up like that their program is mostly uh to to fund gaps and and and we they do do a lot of public private partnerships but i think broward county's approach you know has been very innovative in in that regard anybody else walter since 2018 broward has made significant investments in addressing its affordable housing needs from your perspective what has changed most in the way housing deals get done in broward sure um first of all thank you sandra i mean we we have a real unicorn here in broward county with sandra einhorn she just represents us so well so thank you for that um i really got involved in 2020 uh the business community felt that this was a top issue not only a top social issue but a top economic issue as as ned mentioned um and what i think has really changed is that i think that there's a lot more awareness i mean one of the initial things there's two two of my initial findings were one there was not a dedicated funding source so we had to solve that and two there was just a real lack of education and understanding about what is affordable housing primarily from the cities to be candid and and so there was a lot of education a lot of work that we did to reach out to the planning community to the um to the to the local elected officials and i think the difference now is that there's a lot more education there's a lot more collaboration the planners the local elected officials city managers they all understand that they have a role to play in this collaborative effort and so i just think for me the way that deals are getting done now is that there's just a lot more awareness and a lot more education and and honestly we're just getting started there's a lot more work to do i mean we see there's precedence in monroe county where they're literally busing employees into that county to serve their tourism industry we don't want to get there and we could get there we are landlocked we are land constrained it is very expensive to build here you see some of the information that dr murray presented so we have a lot of work to do but i think we've made a tremendous amount of progress in five years or seven years as you said i would just add to that um from a planning perspective um when walter was duking was mentioning the planning community reaching out i think one of the things that we've seen from a planning perspective is the trying to say yes right finding a solution within our land use plans and how the zoning code and site plan uh how all of those work together and how to say yes um instead of just being like well we're not sure we want this but really recognizing uh what it adds to the community from a value perspective and i think that that's been um there's been a big shift in that mr stone i definitely want to hear you answer that question we had some really exciting conversations in 2018 um i don't know if we have that slide on the the gap uh to put up we have the gap slide that we can that we can throw up it's my it's my favorite one pager we'll come back to that while they're looking for that uh but it's our favorite one you know 2018 really is a a benchmark in terms of uh programs and uh getting at the kind of funding that we need to operate the program so you know just a quick short history uh prior to 2018 and after uh right after the uh charter amendment um we were looking for that that resource to create the gap because we knew we had this dynamic and and market here to do these deals but we weren't getting any deals it turns out that the what really set them off was the gap that was needed and so we were looking for that source of uh revenue in miami-dade they have their sir tax which this year is generating i think over like i don't know 70 million dollars or something like that but at the time we were looking to do 30 because they were at 30. so we kind of reverse engineered the tax base and said what level of millage rate would we need to to raise 30 million dollars it turned out to be two tenths of a mill which wasn't bad in terms of the carry on a single family home or uh on the business side but it was a tax increase and the board wasn't buying it and then uh commissioner rich rolled in and said well we have to do something aggressive and she proposed a 500 million dollar bond issue and the finance department took a serious look at that and what we found was that the carry on that 500 million was almost 500 million so dollar for construction a dollar for finance that year was the first year that of the 13 cra's that have tax increment financing expired uh and so i took a look at that and where it was headed through this current decade and at the end of the decade it will be have a value an annual value of over 80 million dollars at the time it was about five but we took a program to the board that reverse engineered the expired tiff and what we found is and when nan proposed the 500 million she was looking for for 20 000 20 000 units over a period of time we found that using the expired tiff on a pay-as-you-go basis we could get to that many units in half the time and half the cost so that we took that to the board and that resulted in the current policy of using the the expired tiff for funding gap financing and so that first year we had a deal a hundred unit deal with cornerstone for five million bucks since that time the board has awarded 180 million dollars in gap constructed 5 000 units local governments have contributed 67 million the hfa has done 845 million in bond allocation and we've got a whole bunch of economic impact numbers here that walter duke provided for us but but the program is is the shining star it's what we rely on what the development community relies on and now that we have that kind of institutionalized they can go out start to put together properties get site control with some confidence that they're not going to lose half a million dollars because there's no gap there to do a deal so i mean the history behind this it goes goes from almost nothing getting done to where we're at today the board just allocated 27 million in this year's budget we'll do three more deals probably another 500 units and um uh last night i'll close with this last night we had this month's housing finance authority meeting we have a couple of our board members here the hfa at one point in time was lucky to do a deal or two a decade there were years where there was no deals we have 21 deals in the pipeline in uh over 4 000 minutes and uh so that 100 million a year in bond allocation is is being leveraged by that five million in gap and that's how the program works great and we were able to get the slide up for those of us that play the housing affordability insider baseball this is like our favorite one pager uh mitch and and al this question is for you when you look at a potential housing development today what are the key factors that determine whether a project is financially viable and what's changed in that equation over the past several years uh let's just start with the basics for a second in our world rents are capped they they can change a little bit year over year depending on the median income uh but but rents are fixed costs are not and that's that's the math challenge that we have right uh land costs are higher insurance premiums are higher cost of electricity is higher uh cost of concrete is higher uh electrical panels you you name it our costs have gone up but our rents are fixed and that means that the gap has widened right for every single development we have to balance a budget it's become harder and harder to do it and we've taken it everything but the kitchen sink approach we need uh predictability and partnership with our local governments which means a known process and predictable support if we're chasing a site and we can build uh an extra 50 units relative to what a market rate developer can build that means that the land price per unit has come down for us we need local subsidy we need to leverage uh state subsidy and federal subsidy and then go get private capital to to add to the pie um all of those layers certainly add complexity it certainly adds time but that's what it takes to get an affordable housing development done these days it takes patient land patient money and uh and a lot of expertise yeah um it's interesting to hear rich say that because i'm not a very patient person um so i i think one of the biggest challenges we have you know right now is is time of execution right um you have differing market conditions he mentioned numerous uh different factors but one of the things that can help you be you know make a difference between a deal that's going to be viable uh or a deal that's not going to come to fruition is time uh right that that is a that is a commodity that few people in this industry put a value on you know everybody talks about um the challenges that we have and mitch mentioned them all but the only way to kind of short circuit some of those challenges is to shorten that time frame why because you need to uh try to eliminate as many variables as possible to get to a closing um and so i'll just give you an easy example we had a closing i guess it's been about a month or so now it was it was a large deal in miami-dade county of close to 130 million dollars we had to come up time to close and and lock our interest rates at the time the the 10-year t-bill was at 4.79 and my staff was like hey do we go are we going to wait we're waiting on this news cycle and whether iran cuts a deal doesn't cut a deal this that i said guys you know what we got to go what's predictable that's locked let's do this we got to get to closing well a week later 10 days later that 10-year t-bill was at five and a quarter that was the difference between that deal happening and not happening and a deal of that size it's it would have been 10 million dollars of difference in that deal right so so i think speed of execution is important you know um aligning different um regulatory agencies that are required to break ground on these projects um it is very important because broward county or a particular municipality might be focused on a deal because it's important to them but it might not be as important to fdot it might not be as important to fdep you know and so you're pushing the hfa's pushing um everybody's trying to get but there's other regulatory barriers that that sometimes slow you down and and and there is no bigger challenge than than deals that languish in time that because you thought it was a 30 40 million dollar deal and as mitch said and now it's a 45 million dollar deal so how you're always kind of like the hamster in the wheel you're running but you're not getting anywhere um so i think that's the most important thing is to is to really focus on aligning your timelines to to get to closing as as expeditiously as possible great thank you this question is for barbara and ralph and and walter i'm going to ask you to put on your former dania beach mayor hat for this one but what role can municipalities play in making a housing project work are there specific policies land use decisions incentives or processes that can make the difference between a project moving forward or not sure thank you and it's true i am a recovering politician um it always works everyone loves that one um predictability cities and municipalities can be more predictable in their processes as i think mitch mentioned that's very helpful um also to to just let the development community know that you're open for business number number two and number three we talked about the time of execution if i told you that our overarching goal is to make the rents as as as as low as possible or make the cost of living as low as possible and one way to do that is to bring the cost of the development down so we can provide less subsidy to subside development well then everybody would have a stake in the game to make it get done quicker if i told you that every month it takes to get a development approved six months versus a year versus 18 months every month the rent might go up five five bucks or ten bucks every month wouldn't we all have a collective um you know uh uh goal to to to get this done as quickly as possible so i would say just have somewhat of a understanding of a sense of urgency and how that would benefit the ultimate tenants that are going to be living in these buildings one of the things that has really uh been heartening is to see the uh the response from from our local government partners particularly to the gap program uh when we first started it uh you know we're always pushing the development community to go into the city where the project was at and bring them to the table and bring their dollars to the table and about two years into it we decided to give five bonus points for every million dollars that a developer could convince a local government uh to bring to the project that first year uh there was a fort lauderdale project that that fort lauderdale kicked in 10 million dollars of course that put them right at the number one ranking and since that time uh local governments in our deals and we've done over 45 of them have contributed 67 million dollars i'll mention that 180 million that the board has kicked in that's that's at least a third of that which didn't exist we didn't even imagine it when we started the program so uh and i will say that the other significant thing that happened was in conjunction with the adoption of the master plan uh that year senator rich was a mayor and upon adoption of the plan she sent the the plan to every city manager and every mayor in the county all 31 of them that was i think in march when it got adopted i started getting getting calls from mayors and city managers almost immediately in surprising locations sunrise miramar plantation and sitting here today i can tell you in the past couple years we've had affordable housing deals in all those cities and many others where the city has actually come to the table and pressed the developer to get in the game and brought money or land or parking or whatever incentives could be so it's been a game changer at the local level and i think everyone understands how important affordable housing is to our economy but to have the local elected officials jump in with us and get to the table and help us take the lead on that has just made a huge difference yeah just to follow up on that i think local government's being prepared for for the proposal of these projects and knowing the tools that are available bonus density not being afraid of a different kind of development in their community and helping to educate their their residents and elected officials on how all of these things can work positively towards the future future of the cities because you know the county's really shifted away from the suburban model and we're really seeing redevelopment along the transportation corridors we're seeing the shopping centers we're seeing these things become available and i'm trying to eliminate that fear factor from the residents and the community at large thank you uh next question is well mitch and al will know that certainly i'm speaking to them but anyone else as well and while i don't have favorite developments i'm going to start with mitch we often hear that affordable housing requires public private partnerships can you share an example from broward where government developers non-profits or other partners came together in a way that accelerated or improved the project thank you sandra what a thoughtful question uh we we've uh the the the name of the game is is really public private partnership and i'll share two very quick examples al and related have done a number of their own as well uh recently uh seven on seventh and lofts on six both here in the city of fort lauderdale are examples of uh uh partnerships with non-profits and local governments where the land was owned by by both actually the non-profit and the local government underutilized um and we we worked together formed a joint ventures uh where the non-profits are material partners in the development uh 99 year ground leases and we've developed mixed use mixed use mixed income communities with long-term affordability most recently we're now under construction on a 45 million dollar development in uh like i said in the city with the pantry of broward they had an aging warehouse the city of fort lauderdale owned an adjacent lot we were able to tie up both and we're we're building in that example 90 homes for seniors with 99 years of affordability uh and uh about 10 000 square feet of new spaces warehouse and office spaces for for the pantry uh layers and layers of subsidy on every from every level of local government uh like i mentioned publicly owned land we had to use what we'll i'm sure we'll find a moment to talk about uh the live local act it's been the topic du jour for for a number of years but in this specific example uh there was this vestigial strip of zoning towards the back of the site and uh uh with infill redevelopment especially you know here in broward county um every foot of setback requirement has profound ripple effects on on the feasibility of development how many stories you have to go how many decks of parking you need um the city uh fortunately worked with us to to look at this old strip of zoning that had nothing to do with reality it was probably 30 years old defunct um and and they worked with us and they said okay yes you can build on this bizarre xp zoning that that's really unused and that that decision right meant that instead of three decks of parking we could uh uh make the development work with two decks of parking that saved over two million dollars the development cost which let let us build more homes um it's a great example of a public private partnership uh uh not just from a subsidy perspective but from a predictability and an execution perspective couldn't have gotten it done without uh the city county state and federal subsidies and of course our our our public partners um well our my work at related urban is mostly private part uh private um public private partnerships um saying 90 of our work involves that um as it relates to in broward our we have a current deal and and and i touched on it earlier where broward has taken a a a a very innovative approach in and in acquiring properties for redevelopment in this case of uh of the uh the property we're working on in the cross creek is was an old motel um and the county acquired it and and it's now we're redeveloping it into into housing so that's a very innovative approach it was you know large large large piece of property um so it allows for for a good amount of of redevelopment uh potential and there's going to be about 400 units in in two phases so that that's one one a concrete example of being able to look at the development of affordable housing a little different because it wasn't a uh it wasn't a redevelopment of a public housing asset it wasn't a you know i know there's a big talk now of of of schools school board sites um you know there's always been you know different talks about underutilized government assets whether they're parking lots or older offices that are no longer uh necessary um but this was again the county being proactive in in purchasing a motel to a motel to to redevelopment and we also you know participated in the fat village project with the county uh again just a piece of property that that was acquired the the county was uh they had the foresight to to to invest in the area prior to you know some of the prices you're seeing now um so those are two examples of of of working with uh brower county directly and public private partnerships that we've done with you thank you mr stone anything to add uh great not not directly in a public private partnership but i i i think it's important in terms of the the structure of the program which leads to these partnerships uh to understand that unlike most of the grants which are just that you put the money in the deal and it doesn't come back on our our gap deals uh it's a 30 year zero interest loan and at the end of that 30 years the money is paid back if the the project refinances during that period which a lot of them do like the 15-year mark we get paid off when they get paid off so i call it a slow rolling revolving loan fund and you know we we've bumped the program from a 30-year affordability period up to a 50-year affordability period and now we're giving bonus points for a 99-year affordability period and if you do the math on a 50-year affordability period with our average gap which is about a little over 35 000 a unit which by the way is the lowest in the state you end up with a unit that's available for 50 years for about a dollar 75 a day if you do it over the 99 years it's like 95 cents a day for for an affordable unit for a century so you know it's kind of pieces of the program that that go unsaid for the most part but they're so valuable when we we take advantage of those kind of uh soft opportunities i'll call them and turn them into hard numbers yeah i just quickly want to add that it it's very common to um to talk bad about the development community or developers but i want to say that in the affordable housing arena these are some of the best people that i've ever met these are people that are developing affordable housing which is a much more difficult path to get done which is highly technical that's the layers of subsidies so i really want everybody to understand that especially in affordable housing we need developers we need to nurture new developers we need to support our existing developers because they are the most one of the most important parts of this whole process is to get the actual development completed so i really think we need to support our development community in the affordable housing arena thank you walter before i go to my next question ralph you mentioned the 67 million that municipalities have thrown in and i neglected to give a shout out city of hollywood my hometown that certainly has tremendously stepped up so yay hollywood uh all right back to our our presentation uh next question and barbie barbara i'm going to kick it over to you what have you learned about creating an environment where developers are willing and able to bring forward affordable and mixed income housing what can cities or the county do differently or better i think over the past couple years we've really tried to focus on our efforts on how we can provide densification opportunities how we can reward developers that are coming in for low and very low um you know with even more density one of the latest policies that just got updated actually increases density availability to 75 units per acre if there's a lower very low um uh portion of the of the development and that's been a shift because we do see so much moderate but i think overall really it's the openness and awareness of oftentimes the policies do exist within our plans it's within our plans it's finding how we can use them and when i say like creative interpretations working with our legal staff to make sure things will line up and we're able to provide that opportunity for the development community when they come in and pass that on to the local government so that they're aware that they're fully supported um if they need to make an interpretation and you know any guidance we can help from the county's perspective you know that's what we're there for all right since mitch brought up live local i didn't actually have a live local question that was for the next one but it's fine uh how have changes in state policy and programs since 2018 affected what is possible at the local level what opportunities have those changes created for broward and i think that's a great question for everyone on the panel well uh probably everyone has heard of live local and and what is kind of misunderstood is it's a complicated program there's like five pieces to it everyone is familiar with with the height and density exemptions that you know for example developers that are using in the gallery mall site in fort lauderdale but there are about four different pieces of tax exemption and they work in different ways and they have different values and they're tied to different cohorts but the live local piece of legislation was uh it it was a an incredible step forward in terms of the the state taking a lead in affordable housing and basically letting local government know you're you're lagging behind you're not getting it done we're gonna we're gonna do this for you uh and then creating multiple opportunities for the private sector to take advantage on the the uh real estate exemption so it's an extraordinary piece of legislation i'll let mitch talk about how it really works um have you you all have seen the movie jerry mcguire right uh you know the scene early in the movie jerry mcguire where he he freaks out he he has like a like a tantrum i did that on a panel recently i'm embarrassed to say i i i freaked out i was it was it was i think five mayors uh across the tri county area and me and one by one they were just absolutely destroying live local and i was the lone developer on the panel and i probably embarrassed myself but um i'm sure i embarrassed myself and i and i'm sure i didn't make any friends that day um live local is not perfect it's far from perfect um but it it expanded the universe of potentially developable properties and it forced local governments to the table now they're they might say well we were always at the table and and we had a process and we prefer our own process and we don't want density you know forced upon us and we don't have the infrastructure and there's a lot of truth in all of that but if nothing else live local forced the conversations and brought local governments brought municipalities to the table and that that that i think uh in addition to the to the incredible strides that that broward county has made um has has really changed uh the nature of affordable capital a affordable housing development here in uh here in broward county and that that those factors have really been um the most impactful change i i i feel you i feel your pain i got invited to a panel the other day and chamber and there was a lot of folks in miami on on there and and and and again i i agree with what mitch is saying live local is not a perfect legislation however i had the opportunity to work when that was um getting drafted and i will tell you that it is the most important legislation for housing affordability in the country bar none ralph touched on it there's the the part of live local that everybody gets very excited about and anxious about is the density and the height everybody gravitates to that that's what hits the front page of the newspapers that those are the you know and there are some shock projects right you mentioned one of them there's some shock projects and and and i i don't think many of those projects are going to come to fruition that might be a different type of tactic for for a development but but i will tell you this um not not only does it have the uh benefits of different tax exemptions and different benefits that that help us finance these projects because there are there are inherent pieces within that legislation that allow us to monetize the the developments and by monetize i mean leverage private equity or debt to build these projects versus not having to rely on local gaps that's huge that's not talked about in this local i'll give you another piece that just got amended last legislative session and we're working on on a few projects in partnership with the miami-dade county school system i see lisa martinez martinez there in the audience previously when you were trying to we the the the next evolution of of of this housing is we have a lot of employers that approach us and say hey listen i have this vacant piece of property school board in in our case we're doing uh also a deal with in partnership with the public health system in miami-dade the jackson health foundation have the same issues they have they have um parcels that they want to redevelop but their main question was not necessarily generating revenue yes they'll generate revenues in these public private partnerships however their question was how can we provide preference to our employees because we have a problem recruiting and retaining our workforce and but for a year and a half ago when we embedded that into live local you couldn't do that in the state of florida without running a file of federal housing laws at the at the federal level right well now you can now you can do that because it's codified in the live local act to be able to do that again you don't hear about that nobody talks about that but government workers hospital workers school board personnel we can provide preference housing preference legally in the state of florida that's part of live local local you know so i just caution everyone on the and and and i'll leave you with this thought it isn't perfect i agree with mitch however you turn back the the page to 2023 before it got adopted what other mechanism exists what other tool do we have at our disposal to again to shorten the timeline and get these projects to closing quicker if not for live local so i think that you know the dialogue should continue i think the local officials continue to share their concerns there's always room for improvement but but in addition to the taxes now also there was over a billion and a half dollars of funding attached to live local i mean sandra sat on the florida housing board if you saw there was a lot of resources that were put not just hey we're going to do this from a zoning perspective that they put a lot of money behind behind the thoughts so i just you know i i hope that in the environment and the and all of the dialogue that happens you know when you hear about you know a 30 or 40 story building that that doesn't drive the narrative and you throw out the baby with the bath water because it is it is very very very important legislation that needs to stay in this state uh albert thank you for your work on that legislation i know you were out in front of that quietly getting that done and that's important and i'll tell you here in broward county yeah for sure here in broward county we're having those discussions on that topic right now at nsu at broward community college at uh at broward health memorial hospital system um on and on and on and on they all have employees they have nurse crises right now there's a real shortage in those employees and ned talked about the 16 000 people that have left the county those are mostly service industry folks so that is useful legislation that is being discussed right now in broward county and is another tremendous tool in our toolbox add to this that i think that the opportunity that the local government should take from this is the lesson right this is a 10-year legislation and it will expire but it i think also provides the foundation for local governments to think about how they can work their policies better um in the future to provide these opportunities and include some of the parameters they're looking for right so kind of a blending or hybrid of what are the best what's the best of live local and um what's the best for their community great thank you so much and this might end up being our last question for time but it's a great one broward has a number of tools available to support housing development from local funding which we had discussed in land to tax incentives and state and federal programs which tools have proven the most effective and where are there still gaps well i the tool that is the most effective is the is the master plan that was adopted under nan's leadership in 2024 it includes funding mechanisms it includes land use policy recommendations it includes city engagement those are all that those are the three legs of the affordable housing still here in brad county so certainly that the work that barbara's office has been doing with um and the dda and the broward workshop collaborated on amending downtown land use policy that has result i see chris cooper in the back who had the city for otterdale who was instrumental in making that happen and there's close to 88 million dollars sitting in an affordable housing well designated for an affordable housing trust fund that emanated from some of those land use policy changes that we did so we are really trying to put more tools in the toolbox and then also at the same time let the development community aware of what we have and what's available i just reference back to the the value uh and the uh the staying power that the gap financing program has had you know the we're going into 10 years on this and the board uh has uh committed to it uh moving forward and uh nothing has been as significant as that to in changing not only uh the the number of projects that we've got with the attitudes on the part part of local government to get in the game with us and and start looking at that so um i that that kind of program i don't know what we have in the future that could duplicate that it's all about uh funding the gap uh affordable housing is a real estate deal with the subsidy there you go i knew i'd get that in and uh so it's all about that subsidy alan mitch uh this is multiple choice i'm going to take the easy way out here and and and say e all of the e all of the above and and i and walter i will not freak out this time uh it's it's an all of the above approach and and the proof is in the pudding right we we went from developing uh you know 100 to 200 units a year in broward county and and we're we're pushing thousands uh and and and so and but but it's it requires every piece of the of the puzzle coming together uh in a in a more predictable way and it it took many years to to create the process and and the funds and and now now we're seeing uh seeing the results yeah i think there there is no silver bullet you know every deal is is different i i think that you have to have a multitude of many options at your disposal to to get these deals uh across the finish line and another thing that i think is important you know as as you have different cities and and and and in the county thinking about these processes i think it's important also to have if you're gonna embark on some public private partnerships to have developers also that have the ability to co-invest with you as a municipality and as a county i think that that also gets lost a little bit in the shuffle i i understand the you know um the the the the want to to to to do you know numerous projects and and and and and and and and serve different uh different interests but ultimately if the goal is to get a deal across the finish line you also need a development partner there that has the ability to co-invest with you um because there's no way to make these deals perfectly pencil there's always going to be what i will call you know in in that that that last gap there's always a last gap component um and you can't always align the timelines with another funding source so that last gap piece um usually has to get filled by your development partner two beautiful words i like to hear self-source developer shows up and says we're going to put money in the deal too they go to the front of the line as far as i'm concerned all right i'm not going to have a full temper tantrum but i just will notice that i think that the question was primed to acknowledge funding from florida housing finance corporation that didn't happen so i'll remember that the next time i'm speaking speaking speakers developers in the room note that no i'm just kidding i do want to thank barbara did you have a comment for that okay i do want to thank all of our panelists if everyone can please give them a round of applause again thank you to al milo from related urban development thank you to mitch rosen from green mills group ralph stone broward county housing finance authority robber blake boy broward county planning council and walter duke housing affordability committee chair of broward workshop and former mayor of dania beach we are going to take a brief break for five minutes and then we will reconvene with our second panel thank you we all right we are going to ask everyone to please return to their seats we want to make sure that the trains are moving on time and get everyone out for lunch hey breaking up great conversation but i want to keep us on task crowd's a little rowdier now than first thing in the morning but all right everyone's so excited everybody's everyone's hyped up from the last panel oh yeah that's what i do if you could hear me clap once there we go if you can hear me clap twice that's how we do it all right doesn't work for my kids but seems to work here any any order all right careful we are going to continue with our next session looking ahead the next chapter for housing in broward as broward continues to grow housing policy and development strategies must evolve this forward-looking regional conversation will examine emerging opportunities innovative development models and state policy initiatives that can help expand housing choices while strengthening communities i am happy to bring up on stage our mon our moderator chris kresman the chair of the broward housing council and our panelists dr christie cade the vp and southeast market leader for enterprise community partners tim wheat partner at pinnacle chris cooper the acting city manager for the city of fort lauderdale suzanne cabrera thank you for coming down president ceo of the housing leadership council of palm beach county and rounding it out of course mayor michelle gomez mayor of the city of tamarack shorter than sandra i gotta pull my microphone down here give me one second let me get technology working for me uh so thank you everyone for being here today and thank you to our panel for uh joining us here uh this morning uh certainly important conversation that we have going uh today we've talked a lot about um housing policy and development strategies we're going to take a look at basically what's next for broward county uh talking about the impact and future of the live local act which we had briefly touched on in the previous panel uh we're going to talk about yes in god's backyard and expanding opportunities for faith-based land development mixed income communities as a long-term strategy workforce housing and economic competitiveness redevelopment opportunities public private innovation we're going to touch on some more as well as regional collaboration and next steps for broward county uh that being said uh we've spent a lot today a lot of time today talking about the progress broward has made since 2018 uh thanks to senator nan rich of course doing a lot of great work for us uh but looking ahead five to ten years what do you all believe needs to happen next to make housing affordability a permanent part of browards economic and community development strategy uh that being said maybe we'll uh we'll kick it off to mayor gomez uh to start us off lovely sure good morning everybody oh microphones i got it for you i have a big mouth that's okay all right oh shit good morning everybody apologies i have not yet had my coffee so for just um starting with me is always fun um what do i think right now is the most important thing to help us with our housing and i call it attainable housing not affordable housing because you can afford it but if you can't attain it because of all the roadblocks in the way then it doesn't matter that you can afford it eventually um i would say we also have to work on transportation because it really shouldn't take us 1.2 miles 12 minutes so there are certain things that we have to work on together all of our policies have to work in unison whether it's transportation housing um infrastructure purposes for people to have running water um electricity and good housing there's a lot that goes into it so i don't know how long i have permitted because i kind of missed the opening segment so i apologize but that's my initial comment no problem maybe we'll go over to uh chris yeah i agree with a lot of what you said i think transportation is really key you know with the city of fort lauderdale where we look at our workforce and where they come from a lot of them don't live in the city of fort lauderdale they live throughout broward county so it's really important we look at that housing transportation index not just focus on what their housing costs are but also how they're getting to work and back and forth so i think you know whatever we can do as a region as a county you know working with broward county to improve that transportation network to bring those folks in and out of our cities is is really important and i i agree i think um the partnerships and the interaction between our municipalities and broward county and the county is important in terms of our housing policies i think the geller amendment was a good example of that and how that was was intended to increase affordable housing in our main corridors and transportation areas and i also want to continue to look at those p3 opportunities that was discussed a lot in the last panel so fort lauderdale has been very successful in leveraging our city-owned property our trust fund dollars our housing dollars to partner with our development community and support them in producing more affordable workforce and attainable housing so everywhere from that you know low income 30 range all the way up to 120. awesome tim dr kate suzanne anything to add there yeah i agree with everything everyone else just said what chris said we're doing a two-phase development for seniors in fort lauderdale that's near the tri-rail station at cypress creek so that synergy of transit-oriented development i think is really important like the mayor said you know it's it's hard to uh uh attain having a your head in bed at night if it takes a very long time to get to all kinds of places so um i think that uh you know as long as we continue through p3s to create nexus and synergy between the housing and community-based services including transportation i think that's the next big leap forward in broward good morning everyone i think that a couple of things that we need to do um we talked about having housing and economics i think dr murray spoke to that earlier but we really need to embed it in economic development uh oftentimes we come together as housing providers and we all talk to each other we invite each other in around housing but how often do we get together invite transportation to our meeting and dod to our meetings and likewise attend their meetings and then make sure that we're embedding housing into their plans and they're embedding we're embedding their plans into our plans as well so that we can see and track along where is the development happening what are the resources happening there are resources beyond what the city the county the state has related to housing that can further the attainable accessibility of housing and then the second thing i would say is that we also need to take the plan and think about who else needs to be engaged if we're going to do adus it's not going to be our large developers that are developing multi-family housing so how do we activate uh develop builders and contractors that can do adus if we're going to do adus how do we set the vision for owners who have land and help them see themselves as a part of the work of the plan as well if we write the vision we need to write it for everyone so that they can see themselves in it and they can run with it and make it happen so we've got to have a multi-pronged approach that includes contractors smaller developers as well as our owners of land should include the homeowners themselves and how they can be a part of the solution and i agree with everything that everybody else has said um it's so intertwined and i want to invite you next week if you can come we're having an economic mobility summit at our convention center next thursday you all are welcome to attend but we're really going to dive into how everything is so interconnected we can't look at one issue without the other and i've really learned that one county can't do everything alone we depend on broward and and miami-dade and so many others to really make our vision happen with housing so um yeah it's all connected we have to make it really work together what's the time and location next thursday it is oh gosh i am gonna send sandra the uh link to it but i think it starts at you know bracket kind of this time frame but it goes to uh 4 p.m and then there's a networking session from four to six okay so we would love to have everybody and you can see how we're trying to fit it all together and all the cogs and wheels intertwine and turn each other thank you uh so housing affordability does not stop at municipal boundaries so how should broward and south florida think differently about housing as a regional issue rather than simply by uh simply a city by city or county by county uh issue and what would meaningful regional collaboration actually look like in practice and maybe suzanne will stick with you on that one yeah this is something i'm so passionate about that we all need to work together on this because people don't see the lines we do i had a friend that got a position at fau and she's like i'm going to be living in your county and then she sent me your address she's in deerfield beach she has no idea it didn't she still thinks she's in palm beach county i think but you know when i was driving down today it is pretty far north yeah you guys might think it's palm beach county but um you know there's no stopping line there's no way to tell you're in in one county and definitely municipalities we have 39 municipalities in palm beach county so we share so much in common with broward county and i think um i didn't pick up i picked up my wrong name tag from florida housing this morning but i think that was on purpose because we're really going to make an effort to do more regional things because they depend on us so heavily we have a third of the population in south florida and when things come up in tallahassee and even nationally we have got to start working together to have our voice heard whether they're doing something good for us or maybe some things coming up on the ballot that won't be so good for us we really have to work together there's safety in numbers and i think we really need to start working on that so we're going to plan regional meetings and find a way for everyone to show up i think that in the past um week or so i've gone and down a miami date and here and and really getting around and there's nothing like being in the same room with people and really talking so i am going to commit to really work on this regional effort and i have a real advantage that um sandra and i have known each other forever and really work well together in the same with folks in miami date but we have to take advantage of our our powerful uh lobby we can have uh or not lobby education advocacy in tallahassee to really get things done for housing chris and mayor gomez i'll jump over to the this side of the stage what do you guys think yeah so again i mentioned earlier the geller amendment and i think you know looking at the broward county land use plan and how that um allows us to develop in our in our areas throughout our cities are important so the idea of building and how we build along our transit corridors and bring that affordable housing into those areas is is really important to be aligned and make sure that we're kind of developing in a consistent manner that really complements each other rather than conflicts with each other again i think you know we look at our our county as a whole and you know for lauderdale doesn't have an affordable housing problem lauderdale doesn't plantation doesn't hollywood doesn't tamarack doesn't we all have an affordable housing problem right so we all have to work together to make sure that we're complementing each other i totally agree with the economic development perspective on affordable housing and what we're doing in that area because again with our workforce it's so diverse it's so spread out but you know it's important for us all that we continue to provide those opportunities for people not just to live but also work here and get back and forth to their jobs thank you i agree with all and actually was said earlier of trying to get the other entities and agencies into what we're writing for our cities and for our county is really important in bringing them all to the table um and people don't know where they live um i have the post office forgive me i'm not trying to bash them but for some reason tamarack now has sunrise zip codes so that's even confusing people one woman lives in a place called tamarack village and she insists that she lives in sunrise because it says three three three five one so when people don't know where they live and the confusion is of well you're north lauderdale or your sunrise or your lauderdale and your tamarack when all of our lines blend and it's not like it's a map that is straight or lined i always say that tamarack is a square rectangle and a fishtail and when they made this they were drunk because you can't figure out certain things so how do we get our people to understand and how do we get other entities that are not down here and working within our cities to understand what we need their help with to realize that there are certain things that our cities know our cities best but there are certain things that really truly should be more regional and working together for that connectivity makes it a lot smoother for us and look we've got rail systems that are only on the east they don't pay attention to the west um but they connect us all the way to orlando or port st lucie or wherever it goes um there's got to be something to make it work because we can put all the great items into what rules should be followed but if they don't make sense and they're not practical they're not going to be followed or they're going to be a hindrance or the government agencies that have those grants that we're talking about earlier will not provide them because it doesn't meet their markers and half the time they want to make sure that you are in more duress before you're preventative they want you to be more reactive and that's also part of the problem we need our rules and regulations and our people helping us govern to let us be more proactive you know we're building 335 homes you know that our grid is to the capacity of maybe 125 000 people then don't wait until we're at 75 000 people and now we have no room on our roads to then try to get people to agree to let us do construction they'll complain about it but then we don't have the money and the capacity to fix it if we all work together and say i'm doing something in parkland i'm doing something down in sunrise and we have to go along university pine island or even if we're going east and west let's work together on this project and we make it a lot better i know that with the half the penny surtax is being worked on and we're trying very hard but sometimes the other governing agencies don't agree so we can't get what we need or we can't get it done in a timely manner for each of the cities chris i also think uh enterprise works across all three you know and we think of it as a regional effort and i would like to encourage everyone to say come up with a campaign that says south florida is home right and that whether you're in palm beach or broward or miami dade south florida is home and it's home exists for the existing residents so existing residents has been a long time it's home i live in this particular neighborhood but you also have new residents that have come as you said that don't even know where they are right but they need to know that south florida is home right and it's home to places where they work places where they play places where they live and then you have residents that will be coming housing is choice and opportunity and as families change the needs change the desires change and who's coming to community is changing and so how do we do a campaign that says south florida's home when enterprise and some of the funders that we work with to help create more funding opportunities for your development and residents in your communities come to come and we look at those housing plans if we stack them on top of each other there's a lot that's very similar there's a lot of land that needs that is underutilized there's a lot of of the workforce that makes twenty dollars an hour as we heard earlier there are housing prices that are at over five hundred thousand dollars and so when we think about there there there are some things that we can work on regionally to make this south florida home and work together for that thank you um i would like to say that there's a lot of regional coordination going on now and there's connective tissue and dna in the housing for all plan that the housing leadership council i'm suzanne is my boss i'm one of her board members so i i have to tout that as a person watch what you say i know as a person who lives in palm beach but also does a lot of affordable housing work here in broward there's a lot of connective tissue between the 10-year plan the county commission adopted here for affordable housing and also the housing for all plan that the housing leadership council developed uh in and was endorsed by palm beach county's board of county commissioners so there's a lot of coordination and communication and thought that goes into that and a lot of leadership by a lot of people in this room what i find kind of troubling is that and this is a battle that i know suzanne has fought and many of our board members in palm beach is getting all of the cities to be players in this mosaic of creating housing so the state's playing its role and i know our chairman would want me to mention that the florida housing finance corporation does a fabulous job in so many levels amen okay there you go i heard the last panel she seemed a little aggrieved but um uh you know but the state and the county and cities come together but not all cities are joining in this fight some are opting out some are passing ordinances saying that live local units need to be 50 percent bigger than standard units i'm not naming any cities by name but it's easy to look up so we need the regional planning needs to be able to persuade and convince cities you know that attainable housing is good economic development business and also this thing we're talking about with traffic if people are working in cities that aren't providing it that exacerbates the traffic problem yeah you don't have to mention their names i think ralph's going to put them up on the scorecard at some point um is mitch rosenstein still here i think i might need a bodyguard because we're going to start talking about live local um so the live local act uh fundamentally changed the conversation about what can be built and where it can be built so what do you believe its greatest opportunity is for broward and where do we still need to make adjustments for it to reach its full potential and i'll offer that as a jump ball whoever wants to go can i go first go for it i think live local for those and obviously we do as a company affordable and also workforce housing but i actually believe that live local is a tool but and it's a precision tool but not a hammer and it should be used as a precision tool okay um and when we've utilized live local it helps us leverage dollars because we can uh pick sites that by right now are technically permitted for what we're intending to do which is a key threshold to cross when you're dealing with funders whether it be broward county or florida housing or palm beach county or or or a city that's making a decision but when it comes to the entitlement process i believe that we need a cooperative and collaborative effort uh to pursue entitlements using some of the prescriptive methods that already may exist because that to me starting out my career as a planner i think that leads to a better quality development and chris i compliment fort lauderdale that's the process we did with our development with you all we we were entitled to live local but we went through the the process and went to the city commission because we took advantage of certain code benefits that helped the development be a better development so that's my little you know thought that's my little you know speech about live local to all of you is that yes it it allows you to do large-scale developments and it leverages opportunities but we need to be mindful of our friends in municipal government and county government and citizens that have a voice in what development looks like and i'm just not on board with this whole idea of like it's allowed the state legislature said so you know your your concerns and input fall on deaf ears you're saying don't be a bully i appreciate it dr kate go ahead um i like to think about live local act in reverse activating the ability to live local right and what do we need to do that shakirya and i were talking earlier and we are seeing the work that started 20 25 years ago with consolidated plans and working jim you were part of that and and working with policy and legislation to try to get us to this point alberto wasn't the you know related wasn't the great developer at that time because we were starting out in some work some of the funding that we were providing with through cdfis and through the state hadn't even been thought of and so now we have the ability to activate the ability to live local and so how do we act take this legislation activate vacant and abandoned properties activate our faith-based organizations to get involved activate regional national other partners we are excited enterprise is excited because we can look at the live local act and say oh there's a place we can get in there's some things that we can do there's some ways we can help you activate that work by having that that live local uh activating live local is has been really a stimulus for others to be involved with you as well excellent so from a city perspective the city of fort lauderdale has has seen some really good live local projects since that legislation was adopted and a lot of those projects were were done by people that are in this room today so mitch mentioned one earlier tim mentioned some of the locals um we we've had some very good projects we've incentivized local projects through some dollars and other things so the city has engaged in in these local projects pretty heavily what we have seen though are some live local projects that give us pause and a lot of that is because our city is a has a very permissive zoning code so when you look at you know being able to develop to the highest density in your municipality or your jurisdiction we have districts that have no density limitations so that means any local project can really just have whatever density there's some guard rails to that you can look at you know your water store capacity your transportation network and other things but you know for all intents and purposes that's an opportunity for folks to develop without a density cap we also have our downtown core which has an unlimited height um allowance so it's based on faa approval so anything within a mile of our downtown can go very high and those two things in particular have caused both our commission and our residents a lot of frustration so our commission's advocating for tweaks to live local and we talked about this at our commission meeting on tuesday so it's very fresh but everything from opportunities for a little bit more public engagement in the process live local is an administrative process there's not a requirement that we have for other projects to have like public meetings or outreach or engagement so that's one thing we're looking for we're also seeing a lot of live local projects come in that are proposing to go up to the 120 percent ami which in our area that's about 120 thousand dollars for a family of four we want a little bit more leverage on being able to make sure that it's a more of a mixed income development that those income levels can come down to what we're seeing in our actual workforce that that housing is intended for and we're also looking for more i'll say control but maybe more um say in what those heights are and how these projects are compatible with their surroundings again the ones that have been approved the ones that are actually breaking ground and being constructed they do they meet all those things that we think we want to see in the local projects and the ones that have come in that are really exceeding and maxing out on those entitlements you know we haven't really seen much progress on so again you know we're working with live local we think we have other programs and incentives and policies that you know could be beneficial and worthwhile for developers to look at but if they choose to do live local we just want to make sure we're working with them to make sure that project is the best project we can get for our community can i just echo what tim said about just developers going beyond what they need to do we were just hearing about one in palm beach county where the developer didn't have to reach out it was part of mandatory yigbee but he did he's like we got to be a good neighbor and we've got to work with the municipality that we're living in so i think we're we are seeing that as well and those do seem to to move a little bit more quickly but i don't know for the longest time we heard housing is local and now maybe it's not so local but i really do applaud the efforts to kind of tweak live local and all our legislation to make it work we do learn and i know at florida housing coalition you can call our legal director cody glazier all the time and tell him this is what i'd like to see in a new bill because he is intimately involved in like making the sausage up there and he'd love to hear from everybody and get that input about what really could improve the bill and and maybe how they could do it slip it in whatever it takes to to make this work locally because i don't know housing still is local to me so cody's been a great friend of the broward housing council i certainly appreciate his time yeah mayor gomez what do you what are you saying well i will admit to everybody i am not a fan of the live local act the way it is written i have not been a fan of the live local act the way is written because it tries to take control over what cities have planned for their cities and for what they believe they know how to do i do not like the idea of having someone come in and say you have an industrial zone you've got space in there and i'm taking it because i do not have the infrastructure there for you to have a community a condominium all the stuff that needs to go in there and that creates a problem because i also don't really have transportation i don't have certain things if i'm forced to have to do it and accept it because someone as i call it up north thinks they know better about my city so i have a little bit of a control issue and i do believe that local government knows their city best do i think that those who are coming to us there is one that has come to us and they have worked with us and i greatly appreciate it because in the conversations they realize that what they were planning for our city was not really what was good for the people that were going to live in there i do not agree that everything should be a one-bedroom house because there are people who are couples there are people who get older they might need a relative to move in they might need an aide to move in and they need to have the ability to feel like they're living not just being put into a dormitory and when you want to have a house you want to feel a home you want to feel comfortable and thankfully this developer has worked with us and we are working to make sure that our tamarack employees get first dib our veterans get first dib and then our seniors and making sure that we are able to make this development be what it actually says it's supposed to be attainable affordable wonderful housing a good community where people want to live not just a place to go and say this is where i live and um i do appreciate that plus i don't know some of them are not working because they come into the city and say you're going to give us six hundred and thirty thousand dollars and i ask them what part of our budget do you think i have to just strike a check for six hundred and thirty thousand dollars so i want to work with you but i'm also a city that has planned my budget and we have certain things that we have to spend on the people here and we got to fix those roads and we got to fix all these things so i do appreciate that some of the changes that are being made some of them need to be made a little better and i'm happy to work to make sure that we have attainable affordable housing that works for everyone the city the developer and the new residents that we will love to have them call tamarick home so let me ask a follow-up question do you think that there are areas where uh live local could be uh changed in order to make things better for you as a municipality yes as getting more community input we worked hard to make sure that we started telling the residents we're going to have a meeting this is what's going to happen on this property let's hear your voice even if the because sometimes you hear the voice of the people and realize i can actually make that change and one of the developers the one who's doing it realized he did need a little more parking because the people that are living in my city have to drive to work we're not getting people out of their cars ladies and gentlemen as much and as fast as people want us to we are not new york we do not have a subway our bus system works as well as the roads can have the capacity and some of our people are uber drivers so where do you expect them to park their cars so if we tell them that we're not even going to park to the capacity of the residents in there then we're automatically saying we don't want you so by working with the live local act to make sure that it takes into consideration each locale where they're building it'll be a little bit less of no it'll be a little bit more of that partnership of let's work together and get the housing that people need and get our community to grow in a smart growth manner thank you chris did you have anything to add yeah so um i agree with a lot of what was said i think and i mentioned earlier about some of the things i think our commission's interested in addressing in the live local act if that act's going to continue on at the legislative level but there's also a section of the act that we've used in the city we've actually only used it once but it's it allows you to negotiate with the developer to place housing in an area that typically wouldn't allow it so an industrial or commercial district that your city doesn't always permit so we worked with the habitat for humanity and we came up with the development agreement with them to build a series of townhomes in our northwest area of our city we were able to negotiate some zoning constraints they had with the site it was an oddly shaped site so they needed some flexibility there but it was through that section of the live local act that allows us to do that so there are opportunities if you have a developer that's open and willing to it for us it did require development agreement to go to our city commission but again when you when you work with the city you work with staff you work with the community you put that package together there are opportunities to make a case to your elected officials that this is a worthwhile endeavor for them to pursue okay chris and mayor gomez i'm going to stick with you guys at this side of the uh of the stage as state policies increasingly influence local housing decisions what is the appropriate role for local government and where should cities have flexibility and where might greater consistency actually help us produce more housing you know whenever we're dealing with a state issue you know advocacy is tremendously important and especially having a unified voice or at least a you know some you know compatible voice so you know i think through events like today and other things that we do when we get together if we can go to tallahassee and carry that message as a as a group rather than as an individual city or county it's very very important so i would encourage us to work together whether that's through my counterparts and your city managers or our elected officials you know both in broward county but also palm beach miami-dade county you know i think we're uniquely situated where some of these impacts can affect us a lot differently than it can in the rest of the state so it's it's really important that we we are unified in that advocacy in tallahassee as much as we can be and i think going forward it's sharing the stories about what these decisions do for our communities we've seen the impacts of live local now it's been three or four years that has been implemented we've seen projects that seem to work we've seen projects that don't we've seen things that have given us concern and given our residents concern we need to tell those stories at that level and make sure that our legislators legislators are are hearing that and understand what the real tangible impacts are to our communities thank you and there's one word that you used unique each of our cities are unique and you're all got to be some part of real estate right what do they say about real estate location location location my property on my street is different than my neighbor and my other neighbor and one of the things when you put a one size fits all it doesn't really make it flow well which leads to what chris was saying if we can get some of the regulations modified to see each of us in our cities and in our region then these things would probably flow a lot better and a lot easier with a lot less consternation than me talking about a county up in the north part of the state and setting rules and i have no idea about their limitations for the agriculture for urban for neighborhood for anything and how they do their their landscape so if we can work on making it a little bit more regional and understanding i think we'd be able to not get rid of some of the heat against live local for some of us i'm going to jump over to the other side of the stage here uh let's talk about yigby and faith-based land development uh basically can open up significant new opportunities for housing what would it take for broward to see more projects coming up uh in the ground and what role should municipalities play in making these partnerships easier yigby is something i'm so excited about yes in god's backyard and it really did allow um we have optional yigby where that's basically under three acres but you still have to go through the municipality and three acres or more when you're doing multi-family is mandatory yigby which falls under lib local but we've talked about the tweaks we need there but it's something we share in our counties we are running out of space to build we don't want to go into our ag reserves and other places we've set aside and god gave us some new land to build on an opportunity for our faith-based entities and the first thing we did when we heard yigby was coming was get a list of every single faith-based entity organization from our property appraiser 1400 in palm beach county alone mapped them all out and saw really what was available and then tried to get to them quickly because developers were getting to them too and we want to make sure for me it's a personal mission to make sure that the faith-based entity does well too i think that's something so critically important and when it's done right we had the opportunity um to have a project that was before this legislation and christine can tell you how enterprise was so fundamental in that but to me it's almost the perfect partnership where the faith-based entity is going to get what they need and we're going to get 101 new units of housing for seniors and i just think done right this can be the biggest win-win it's better than the developer coming in and just swooping up the land but sometimes that's what they need is a big check at the end of the day but i think it's just been such a tremendous opportunity because some of these faith-based entities are in perfect locations they have everything we need transportation they're next to a church and it's kind of in their manual that they're gonna most of them that they're going to serve and feed people so i think it works out well i've seen really the faith-based entities be very sincere in the fact that we want to do this because we're going to house people and that's part of our mission so i couldn't be more excited and we have to give a lot of thanks to enterprise who was thinking about this years and years ago before florida even had wind of it so um i agree with you um this has been really exciting for us as well and we have houses of worship in all three counties that are actually activating their land to create housing but they're not just creating housing they're creating also community facilities several of the faith-based organizations are including health care child care senior services so this is a way to act to really bring what the needs are in community and it continues their mission with land that they currently own to make this happen more diligently in brower county a lot of things that we've learned is that there needs to be pre-development resources because churches don't have they're not developers they have resources for the services and mission that they have but real estate development is real estate development so access to some pre-development to assess the land to your point you know acknowledging how many houses of worship are in the community the local jurisdiction can help with that and say here are the houses of worship here's where they're zoned is there zoning that we can uh do to help them activate their land uh for housing or community facilities i think the other is uh churches are not developers and so creating pathways where they can understand the development process is one of the things that enterprise does but also makes a match with developers who understand the mission and the purpose that they have and not just are there for development so i think there are three ways that uh broward county and the cities can help uh houses of worship who are interested in bringing forth uh both housing and community facilities on their land yeah i think you brought up a really important point churches are not developers and they could use all the help that they can get in order to to educate them on what is possible tim did you have something to add yeah just a couple of things these two people are the people to have for this conversation who do great work and you know yigbee is a national phenomenon now and enterprise is leading nationally and i you know suzanne does feel super passionate about this the um and is doing great work in palm beach county this cooperative effort with the housing leadership council and palm beach county uh community services to educate churches and with education comes confidence you know and churches don't know our world and don't understand our space and a lot of times when we developers approach them they're you know questioning our motives in a lot of cases as they should but but as they get better uh confidence and learn about the process and can work collaboratively we can partner and team up and help find the pre-development money and find a plan the last thing i'll say is the cool part about yigbee when there's enough scale is something that i'm passionate about and that is seeing personally is seeing affordable rental housing be a stepping stone to home ownership um and yigbee developments have an opportunity when there's enough scale to do a little bit of both and allow uh transition from renting to owning and that's something that i just feel personally very strongly about well that's a good segue actually into the next question i just want to yeah go for it i know i sound like a complete against the live local type stuff and i'm not i just like smart procedures but i am very happy to know something i'm not maybe supposed to know um that there is a wonderful organization that is working with one of our churches to bring in some affordable housing in an area in the city that i know will work and so i'm looking forward to that because again it's also doing things in a manner that is communicating and working together with the community and we're trying to help them be able to give more units without a lot of restriction in the area of that location and it will help the church as well excellent uh so there is uh obviously a growing interest in mixed income communities rather than separating affordable housing from market rate housing so what does a successful mixed income community look like and what policies or incentives are needed in order to make those projects financially feasible and i'll offer that as a jump ball for whoever wants to take that on go ahead mayor well we're trying it we're hoping it's going to work out um it's not yet built but i do know i've served in the national league of cities transportation infrastructure and i will tell you in my travels and meetings with them and stuff that i'm hoping we're going to bring into the city we've put some rules in place to allow it but we haven't seen it in effect but you have a full apartment complex and you have units that are combined nobody knows which are the affordable and which are not people live together and that's what makes the community strive because when you're not designating and not stigmatizing people for where they live they feel better about where they live and they have that better chance to grow there's also certain entities that their mortgages the way they're written for the affordable part of it in the same mixed use complex are in a way to not make that same stigma there so there's a way to create the incentives we just got to figure it out um because in the end all you really want is to make sure that people are happy and healthy and living where they're living and you can give various things to the developers on the levels of what they're going to do and we are working on that we have a program we have certain programs that were put into place again they just haven't been implemented yet excellent point uh the big question is do the numbers work so um mixed income housing as the mayor said earlier it's location location location and a lot of times when you're merging some of these programs together that we use in the affordable housing world um you know such as the low income housing tax credit or tax exempt bonds sometimes there are challenges in doing units that are market rate within them if it's not in a in a location where the spread of rent that you can get for those market rate units is significant enough to cover the costs and if they're not then you're going to need some incentives and then some of the incentives on tax abatement you can't always necessarily under the live local act can't always in all instances be combined with some of these federal programs that we use in the tax credit program so you know there's a it's a structure and uh there are a lot of instances where it would work um we've had some success in that including in fort lauderdale with pinnacle at tarpon river we did like 10 12 years ago where we have market rate units in there and they the residents are fully integrated and there's no distinguishing between uh you know a quote-unquote affordable income restricted unit and an unrestricted unit but again those are circumstance appropriate and you've got to crunch the numbers on it yeah the numbers are tough and i'll just say palm beach county is mandatory inclusionary zoning so we end up with more of that than i think a lot of other places because we incentivize building it on site and the thing i have to stress is you don't know who's who in it and i think it is the ideal way to set up things i remember growing up on a street and we had the ultimate mixed income housing the postman the factory worker the doctor the lawyer everybody we all lived on the same street nobody we mix you know it just was a neighborhood and that's what we want to see so i think we have to create those incentives and make the financing work so many times people want to do something but you know do the numbers work is an important issue to deal with so we we have to work on that side of it one more thing is that as we think about increasing more mixed income housing there's the built structure that we build it and you can't tell the different but also thinking about who's in those units and so what services do they have access at different income levels there's different levels of support that help you to stay sustainable and for your household so are we developing close to other resources that are available or their partners and community some health care incentives or other things from the local hospital or other things that can help the family stay sustainable as you look at the different incomes that would be occupying the property excellent i just had my uh five minute warning and i've got six more questions to get through so i'm going to take a little uh privilege here and i'm going to choose two and we'll get just some quick rapid fire answers to questions that don't have rapid fire answers so good luck to all of us um let's let's start with this one i think it's an important question broward obviously is competing for business and we're competing with other communities for businesses for workers for investment so at what point uh did the housing affordability become an economic competitiveness issue and what should our business community specifically uh be doing differently to be part of the solution for us well the housing leadership council was actually founded by the business community it was the economic council the bdb and all the chambers coming together saying if we don't solve this we're going to have a real problem in our area and i know when i work with the head of our bdb kelly smallridge her basic thing is let's get it in south florida like let's keep it away from texas and all the other booming centers right now so i think if we can work together on that and if she can just say and everyone can say gee we we have the housing covered in this area because once we get them looking in south florida we can work out the details and i think we've come together on like amazon applications and other things where we can keep doing that but um housing is so critical to economic sustainability i'm hearing collaboration is key anything to add yeah i think just continuing to work with cities and the county on bringing in business to our community that has good high wage high paying quality jobs we recently worked with the alliance and the developer of the fat village project on andrewson six and they brought in gsx which is a huge company to fort lauderdale and they came here one because there was housing available there was transit available there were all the things that their they and their employees wanted i even think fab village might have an affordable component to their residential section so again i think continuing to work with us on economic development bringing those jobs in that are paying good high wages but are also very skilled is is really important for us to do a quick add is just that's why the city is trying to make more mixed use give our we have a lot of plazas that are older and you have to redevelop and giving them the ability to redevelop without a lot of red tape that will tie their hands and what we're finding is when the businesses come in they want to know there's housing there because they want to know that people are going to shop there because brick and mortar is not dead it just needs to be restructured excellent and i would add that that having housing as the center of the ecosystem for education and employment a lot of the workers that are coming in are also thinking about their children our companies are thinking about ways to improve the skills of their employees and so how do we tie in education and employment together as well one final thing i would say is really having meetings with the chamber about the ebbs and flow i think dr murray had 14 categories you know and some of them are losing jobs and some are gaining jobs and so as we look at the ebb and flow of jobs and the incomes that are there what type of housing and kind of putting that out there for the market to say if you're creating housing here's the type of housing we need if you're looking for housing here's the type of housing we have and so i think that combination is important as we go forward fantastic well ladies and gentlemen we had uh dr christine cade enterprise community partners tim wheat pinnacle housing group chris cooper from the city of fort lauderdale suzanne cabrera from housing leadership council of palm beach county as well as mayor gomez from the city of tamarack please give them a round of applause thank you very much for joining us we really appreciated that conversation uh if you guys do have more questions please seek them out to find out how you can help in this conversation uh that being said we are going to bring up our next panel you are all free to go thank you thank you very much appreciate it okay wonderful thank you so much thank you very much for your time yes ma'am so next up we do have uh chelsea la france is coming up she is uh research and data program manager office of civic and community engagement with the university of miami this session is the university of miami community scholars and affordable housing program presentation welcome chelsea the floor is yours right here you know what i can move this forward for you so you don't feel like you're in the back of the room like that sounds good uh so good morning everyone i appreciate your patience i know it's been a long morning you've had great sessions uh but today uh wait let me just make sure okay so today i'm going to be uh describing the community scholars and affordable housing program it's a initiative that's led by the university of miami's office of civic and community engagement and has existed since 2014. um so just to okay so to introduce you to the office um our mission is to strengthen university and community um collaboration by connecting the community with academic resources uh and our work just emphasizes engaged scholarship which really just translates our research into practical solutions that benefit the community um so to give you a lay of the land and a program overview um this is an immersive professional development program uh that is really intended to introduce emerging professionals to the field of affordable housing and community development practice and policy in south florida and so it's led currently with our two partner organizations we've always had a non-profit um at least two non-profit organizations our current partners are miami homes for all and neighborhood housing services of south florida uh but this program really it is a six-month initiative uh where we bring together a cohort of people uh and who are interested in learning more about affordable housing and the ways that they can strengthen their networks and really contribute to the field and uh it's designed to impact folks that are across a variety of sectors we have people that are working in non-profits for profits uh real estate finance design public administration advocacy and community development so the curriculum is really focused on introducing people to the national context and then the local context of what that really means so that we can address housing challenges that are specific to south florida and so the scholars are learning from local experts national experts and they visit affordable housing developments uh and really learn from each other in a community of practice model um so traditionally the program has um run on 10 bi-weekly sessions we meet on a friday morning you have breakfast uh we learn from our speakers and then uh convene to talk about um our research focus uh and now i'll get into program themes uh so we always start with what is a community of practice and really just the history of affordable housing to make sure that there's like a level playing field uh and these themes do um fluctuate over time but most of them are like the core focus that multiple cohorts experience we'll adjust things if there are pressing um if there's a specific issue that folks are concerned about or if their community needs that indicate there's something else we should include then we do so but it's really just to provide scholars with an opportunity to think about these issues and how they intersect with each other when we're thinking about just the landscape of housing affordability um so now some historical information on the program as i said before it's existed since 2014 um and we've had 10 cohorts in the past we've had 117 participants that make up our alumni network we've been to 35 different site locations that are spread out across south florida most based in miami-dade um but we're really hoping to get our folks engaged so that's why i'm here today uh explaining the program uh and we're really thinking about in the next iteration um sort of centralizing things to be more uh between miami-dade and broward um so yes the community of practice what is it uh it's really something that it's a network and it's an opportunity for people to engage in like peer-to-peer knowledge and it's really each cohort is unique we have uh i should have i should have uh okay so this this chart uh sort of helps you understand just like the diversity of scholars that we have within our alumni network um we've got people that are predominantly from non-profits and public sectors but everyone who's interested in housing in some way is welcome to be a community scholar if they're interested um so yeah the community of practice model it's really just a way for people to share concerns and um identify solutions by learning from what other folks have experienced thinking about hey what's worked in your organization maybe that's something we can implement in our own uh and really thinking about the ways that they can address shared challenges and exchange ideas and so every effective community of practice requires trust equitable participation knowledge sharing uh and is really focused on tangible outcomes and so this each cohort is its own mini network but you still have access to the broader alumni network so through these programs we um have sessions that are focused on different topics but in the first session will really get people to start thinking about a capstone that they want to develop and so these are usually centered around collaboration building capacity and innovation but the goal is that you identify an issue that matters uh to your organization and you think about it like as you're going to these sessions learning about different topics uh and trying to identify solutions um so we're doing it gives scholars a chance to identify an issue a need that there is in the community to do some research and think about what what potential solutions could meet that need uh and then at the end of the program we have a final presentation of learning and uh the scholars present their findings uh to a group of folks that could include advocates government officials policy planners um and and just people that are potentially even able to help you move your capstone project uh into reality um and so yeah it's always a great convening we usually we always invite our speakers to attend that as well um so there are folks that come into this program knowing what they want their capstone project to be but that's certainly not a requirement i think that experiencing the sessions really sometimes might bring scholars to realize that there's a topic that they didn't have in mind or just addressing needs that are emerging through these sessions um so this is just a sample of some of the previous capstones that have been done in the past um we have all of our capstones available on our website so that you can see everything that's been done in the past uh and just thinking about some uh examples that really i think are impactful we had a member from our first cohort in 2014 uh george damien de la paz uh who was really data focused and realized that hey the data is showing that we have a substantial amount of very low-income residents in miami-dade and the amount of available housing units just isn't there to meet their needs so he advocated for um increasing set asides for funding to support those households uh and it's important to know as i said this is a six month program a lot of scholars end up working on their capstone projects beyond the program session because it's just something that they're passionate about and want to see realized so after george did his presentation he went to the board of county commissioners he was able to advocate for um them to make changes to the affordable housing uh revolving loan fund and to um dedicate set asides for targeting households that are extremely low income and very low income so that's an example of someone who was able to take their capstone and make change for the county uh and that's just one of many uh we have uh another alum from 2019 audrey ardanas uh with finding homes for all uh she was focused on youth homelessness at the time and uh was just acknowledging that there was a pain point we only had 15 days of notice uh that folks were given for eviction uh and that just isn't enough time for people to find adequate housing so uh she advocated for that to be extended to 30 days and that was successful um and then a last thing i'll mention we had another scholar in 2019 jose felix tides who was really focused on affordable housing for artists in winwood and one thing that was really cool was last year we were able to actually go to the housing development that they ended up building so i feel like it was a really good full circle moment uh and it just highlights that these are projects that are actually able to if you're interested in it and you're willing to put in the time and and to making it happen it's something that is actually impactful for the community um so thinking about alumni um i honestly i love that whenever i go to a housing event i will see as a community scholar alum at some point uh and i thought that broward i wasn't expecting to see as many familiar faces in the audience but i'm pleased to see at least one alumni member and several scholar speakers that have participated in the program in the past so we bring alumni back as speakers um if they have a area of expertise that they can share their knowledge to future um up and coming leaders and um we really uh encourage our alumni to continue networking with up and coming uh cohorts of community scholars so it really just allows them to build more connections that so that they're able to achieve their their goals and and actually come to solutions that are actionable uh and build partnerships for collaboration um so yeah that is the community scholars program uh i have a qr code so if you're interested and if you know of anyone that you think might could could be a good fit uh we encourage you to leave your information um so that we can let you know when the next application cycle opens um i don't know if there are any questions i can answer a few because i think i'm good on time if not you can feel free to send me an email thank you everyone thank you very much chelsea that's fantastic excellent work that uh um is doing i'm glad that we've got a program like that and uh who's the alumni that's in the audience here raise your hand okay very cool well glad that uh somebody is still uh uh that they that they came here to learn even more fantastic um so we are going to close out our program uh every once in a while you meet someone uh whose passion and dedication and sheer determination to really make a difference are nothing short of extraordinary yes ma'am i'm looking at you uh senator nan rich is one of those people uh tireless champion for affordable housing as you all know a fearless advocate for our communities and really quite frankly a force of nature her leadership compassion and commitment to making broward county a better place are truly unmatched we are incredibly fortunate to have her in our corner and even more fortunate to have us with her uh have her with us today so please join me in giving an enormous well-deserved welcome to the one and only senator nan rich and those knees are still kicking thank you thank you thank you so much chris for that lovely uh introduction uh i'm really pleased to be here today uh this is a passion of mine and uh i want to thank all of you for coming here today to join us and uh to thank our panelists each panel has been brought a wealth of information today and um so i'd like to ask you to give them all a round of applause i also want to thank all the staff who have made this possible uh as i came in all of the our housing finance and so many so many staff people planning council so forth uh we're here uh and uh but the one thing i do want to say is the reason we we are where we are is because of ralph stone who's sitting in the back you know i i remember uh this wasn't part of my remarks but i have to say when we reconvened the um coordinating council of broward which is a made up of many of the large human service organizations in the county um things like our hospital districts school board united way many many others um one of the first things we did was to try and decide what our focus would be as a coordinating council and so we invited different people to come in well the minute after we heard ralph stone we knew exactly where our focus had to be and so that's how we really got uh to be involved in this so much and um i know that the broward housing housing council the coordinating council of broward um uh and uh certainly our county and wells fargo also have been um uh responsible for being able to put this together so i want to thank all of them as well today we heard that more than 340 000 i want to see is dr murray still here here there he is okay let me just say you heard a lot about the master plan and every everything that we did has involved dr murray and it is why we have the information necessary to move ahead and to have people realize how important this is and how it's actually even though we're doing a lot that there's so much more to do but we're able to do it because of the work that the county does with contracting with dr murray to do um he did our affordable housing he's done uh the commission on the status of women it's done through him too so uh we're very fortunate to have him uh at uh university of no fiu excuse me fiu and uh be be with us so thank you um but you've heard a lot today on these statistics and some of them i know you've heard but just thought in the recap i would mention some of them today we heard that more than 340 000 broward households spend more of their income more 30 percent of their income on housing and of that the 340 000 175 000 are spending 50 of their income they are severely cost burdened less than five percent of households in broward and this has been pretty steady could afford to purchase a single family home today at the median sale price of six hundred and twenty thousand dollars that is nearly six times what the typical household earns in a year the average two-bedroom apartment costs twenty six hundred and seventy five dollars a month i remember when we first started this i think it was nineteen hundred dollars ralph is what it was going for and it's even more than that in many cases um on the positive side we have an influx of high wage earners moving here from out of state which has driven up our median income in the recent years but at the same time we have lost more than 96 000 residents to other parts of the country or other parts of our state who don't have as expensive a cost of living so that's since 2020 and our population of young adults has been shrinking again this data comes from the research work that dr murray does shrinking since 2018. that's not what we should want for the residents who lived here who worked here who raised their families here and have called broward county home more than half of our workforce earns less than 60 percent of the area median income and for every 100 families at 60 percent ami fewer than 25 can afford affordable rental units on that we we have excuse me fewer than than 25 affordable for each hundred on that measure broward ranks dead last in all the 67 counties when workers cannot live near their jobs employers feel it small businesses feel it and our whole economy feels and it's been mentioned time and time today as i've been listening about economic development and i just want to assure you you you saw the chart that was put up about the number of jobs the the the um the the funding that we've generated the 12 500 jobs um and we've made quite a difference there but you know homes homes we we've been able to our average subsidy as was mentioned is about thirty six thousand dollars per home is the lowest in florida that's on the good side homes that once had to stay affordable for 30 years and this is incredibly important now have to stay affordable for 50 years and every project it was mentioned earlier due to incentives every project funded last year committed to 99 years and that's incredible because it can't turn to market rate that's what we don't want to have happen this is a model that works and it works because of our collaboration in this county with all of our partners we have more municipalities than ever providing their own gap financing on these projects and ralph mentioned that and that is so important when i start when we started on this maybe three cities i think were involved at all in doing this and now we have a much larger maybe 12 or so or more cities that are involved um we also have seen our non-profits work with developers to provide services on site like broward partnership for the homeless uh which which has seven on seventh and soon to have aspire at the north hack we're finally going to get there miami jewish health systems and residences of douglas gardens and coming soon to cis drunk boulevard the pantry of broward is working with green mills to develop lofts on six so it's very exciting all the different things that are in the pipeline our pipeline is the largest in our history 23 projects and more than 4 600 homes at full funding our master plan which support could support about a thousand new affordable homes a year for the next 30 years but none of that is locked in much of our dedicated money i'm going to talk about something today and i want to preface it by saying that i can educate i can't advocate but i think you all know where i am much of our dedicated housing money depends on the growth of our local property tax revenue the county estimates that amendment three could reduce revenue by 195 million dollars in the first year and 334 million in the second year the bulk of the gap financing you've seen those numbers up all day that gap financing puts in the budget each year has come from the sun setting cra's and the tiff funds coming back to the county in our master plan we saw that over 30 years if we committed 90 percent of those funds to affordable housing the county commission each year it would amount to a two billion dollar investment without raising taxes or paying a dollar in debt service which was mentioned also because i did have that idea about the bond and it turns out that this is a much greater idea than that one so if amendment three passes the 70 million that we're expecting in expired cra funds for about 2028 you have to go to help plant plug the 195 million dollar gap in our budget we can't expect the state to fix the problem that they caused unless they come back and decide if this doesn't work out that 2027 is when the constitutional tax and reform commission is supposed to meet every 20 years they meet and they have the responsibility of sitting down and looking at the global outlook of everything that impacts services and and and what we're able to do in our communities and our state so this is an incredibly important piece we we can't um we we we also don't get our really our fair share you saw there were two deals from florida housing corporation we don't get our fair share of that either so what we we must protect what is working and gap financing works it brings everybody to the table getting cities to contribute dollars as you've heard so many more cities doing incredible things to bring more affordable housing and put up money to support it to my fellow elected officials i don't know if they're any here except for ralph about walter duke who's a former elected official um oh there are a couple here thank you um protect dedicated affordable housing funding get ready to compete for new federal dollars and make approvals faster and consistent across our cities i agree with the people who sat here on the panel and said we need to change live local there are things about live local that constrict us and we we need to talk about home rule every county is different every municipality is different in this county to our business leaders we urge them to put capital in five million dollars in local philanthropic investment can be leveraged into a 20 million dollar loan fund consider housing your own workforce as you've heard some of the uh entities in broward are considering doing and bring those numbers to every budget hearing to every resident here stay informed share your findings with your neighbors and show up when housing decisions are made at commission meetings at public hearings and at the polls let me close with the people behind these numbers when i attended the ribbon cutting for residents at douglas gardens in pembroke pines one of the residents spoke this is a new affordable housing appropriate program development out in pembroke pines there are several buildings and they surround a lake it is an idyllic site it is just beautiful so this gentleman spoke he's he was a senior who had come down here his wife had died he had health problems so he was living with his daughter when he applied for one of the 410 affordable housing units that were about ready to open he got one he he loves his new community and the fact that there is a pace comprehensive health medical center just across the breezeway from his apartment he said that the greatest benefit of living there is that his daughter no longer needs to worry about what's going to happen to him we can multiply that by hundreds thousands of people in this community i think about when that whenever one of my colleagues on the dais has something to say about how we can't build enough units to make a difference you know so why are we doing this well because every unit we do build makes a difference in the lives of a person of a family their business and the future of our community these residents are the people who make broward work and they should be able to live here we have a plan we have the proof we have the tools what we need now is the will to keep going together thank you