morning today's meeting of the neighborhood and affordable housing advisory board is called to order on november 18th 2025 welcome everyone following adjournment of this meeting i will call to order the meeting of the affordable housing advisory committee agendas of excuse me agendas of today's meeting are on the wall at the entrance to the chambers please remember to turn off your cell phones to ensure a complete record of the board's actions we ask that each individual wishing to speak clearly state your name and spell your last name for the clerk i will ask the board members to introduce themselves and identify the fields they each represent starting from my left ms byers linda byers city resident good morning charisa dody affordable housing good morning frank cornier construction christine bond advocate for low and i am the board chair robin feel i represent the lending industry as it relates to affordable housing our first order of business is to approve the minutes of the board's october 14 2025 meeting may have a motion to approve move approval second all in favor all right any post most minutes are approved is there anyone here to speak on items not on today's agenda if so please step to the podium and state your name and spell your last name for the record you will have three minutes to speak on a subject that is not on today's agenda seeing no one come forward there are no e-comments so we will move to the next item item 4.1 recommend approval of a resolution of the city of clearwater opting out of providing 80 to 120 percent ami missing middle property tax exemption to developments that would otherwise qualify pursuant to the live local act for a calendar year 2026 mr may you will present this item good morning don may you i'm the housing manager live local act allows for rental properties with 71 units or more that provide housing to people earning between 80 and 120 percent of area median income or ami in a metropolitan statistical area or msa to be exempt from ad valorem property taxes beginning with the 2025 tax roll local taxing authorities had the option to opt out of this exemption the opt-out provision is available if the most current shimberg center for housing study annual report identifies a surplus of affordable and available rental units in the area the most recent shimberg report indicates that there is a surplus of available affordable units within the tampa st pete clearwater msa for households that meet the income requirements for the 80 to 120 percent of area median income based on this finding the city of clearwater is eligible to exercise the opt-out option if this resolution is approved the city will choose not to grant the exemption for eligible uh properties and will request that the pinellas county property appraiser does not provide the exemption this resolution will apply to all ad valorem property taxis levied by pinellas county for property located within the city of clearwater municipal boundaries if adopted the resolution will take effect on january 1st 2026 and will expire january 1st 2027 um with that i'd be happy to address any questions what's the purpose of this just to generate money revenue um so we find that the the 80 to 120 um we don't see that it would add any additional units so i mean it would it would give a benefit to existing property owners but we wouldn't add any additional units and on top of that the surplus was 2738 so there's 2738 uh surplus units in that category in the tampa uh st p clearwater msa so staff put it put a different way um not a what we're saying is that this will not incentivize the building of more affordable housing units is essentially what we're saying correct however there are affordable housing units already existing in the city that are comparable with hud's affordable range of rents so when i'm sure property owners would like to fill the their taxpayers would like to fill those units and if they are available then um they would be left empty unfortunately you know and to restate it would incentivize the development however we feel that it would mainly provide like that exemption mainly benefit existing property owners we wouldn't see that translate into more units um or help any existing you know renters in the area um so i think it's like the juice isn't worth the squeeze so the shimberg report shows that we have a surplus of units that are affordable in that range so the need to incentivize uh more units in that range isn't isn't there exactly because i think 120 when when you're at around 120 that's about market rate yeah so just for new development or anybody who's already receiving this are they going to still continue to get it or so just we opted out of this last year this was this was for this exemption was provided by live local so it's automatically provided but we decided to opt out of this last year same thing same reasoning still surplus last year um so we're just bringing this back this year to you know it's a new resolution to cover 26 have you had any developers saying we need this surprisingly no is this something we need to vote on uh this morning yes this would be a vote this would be a recommendation to council whatever your recommendation would be is the incentive available to those that are building under 50 percent ami or is it just the one you said 150 on 50 percent oh 50 percent so it's automatic anything under 80 percent will be automatic we can't opt out of that exemption gotcha so it's only the 80 to 120 correct um does anyone from the public wish to comment on this item do we have any e-comments hearing no further public comment may have a motion to approve so moved second all in favor aye any opposed motion carries thank you item 4.2 recommend city council approval of the city of clearwaters fiscal year 2024-25 consolidated annual performance and evaluation report or caper mr mayhew will present this item good morning again dylan mayhew i'm the housing manager um today i'll walk you through the consolidated annual performance and evaluation report the caper this report provides a comprehensive overview of how we've used federal funds throughout fiscal year 24-25 and while it's a vital document it's also a complex one to complete it requires an enormous effort from our team and this year came with the added hurdles of limited council meetings in december and also the government shutdown with there only being one meeting in december we had to meet this nahab meeting um to to get the caper and it gave us about two weeks to complete it um that being said we did enlist the assistance of weight trim this year to help complete the caper and that really helped us meet uh the schedule and that's why we're here today we actually fit put the finishing touches on it yesterday if you can believe it so it was a it was a mad dash and a photo finish but we're here um today is the first of two public meetings two public hearings rather um after this meeting there will be a 15-day public comment period that opens up before the council meeting your recommendation today will be presented to city council during the december meeting it's december 4th where they'll approve the final report once approved we'll upload the caper to hud for final submission that will be before december 31st um so first what is the caper the caper primarily pulls data from hud's integrated disbursement and information system which tracks all of our financial and accomplishment data and this is for federal funds only a couple of key points um you know the report tables if you're looking at those tables they reflect federal data exclusively state and local funds aren't included in those tables however in the narrative uh sections we do include the state and local data uh to give more of a complete picture of our work and that way the caper really becomes a a um a snapshot of everything we've accomplished over the year the tables also do reflect our matching funds um which are generally states sometimes local funds which are combined with federal funds to help maximize the impact of housing activity within the community if you go to cr05 that should be the goals and outcome section this section compares our actual accomplishments to what we planned in the annual action plan and here are a couple of nuances to keep in mind the annual action plan or the aap in the annual action plan we are we are required to budget as though all of our home funds will be expended even though we may not meet that goal in a given year unlike ship which does not allow us to roll over funds home funds do provide the flexibility to build balances across multiple years this capability is essential for funding larger projects that require significant expenditure by allowing home funds to build up we can target them for significant initiatives and projects um using a combination of federal ship and other local funds nonetheless we must still plan and set goals as though all of our home funds will be expended with that background let's start exploring some of the details so again cr05 and again bear in mind in the tables you're looking at that's only the federal funds and also it's important to note our programs were closed for about three months of the fiscal year due to the hurricane we paused our programs to determine how much funding would be required for recovery we reopened i think most of our programs in january 1st some of them trailed into later into january so under goal two that's the housing goal combined with ship home cdbg we assisted 253 persons with housing related services and the breakdown is as follows i'll kind of break down the difference between the federal and and state funding as well we constructed one rental unit we rehabbed one existing rental unit we constructed two homeowner units with the goal being seven however we closed an acquisition that added an additional three units with indigo apartments this year that project was not closed out completely as far as the funding is concerned by the fiscal year and so those will be reported on next year's caper and it's also important to note that though we only restricted and can only claim you know the accomplishment of those three units that project was 208 units and our funding was essential in getting that deal done um we rehabbed 13 homeowner units two with federal funds and 11 with ship the goal there was seven we provided 18 down payment assistance loans eight with home 10 with ship and the goal was seven we assisted 42 households with tenant-based rental assistance the goal being 60 and we and finally the city provided funding home funding for homeownership and counseling services for 176 households a little further down there are public service facilities and services we expended 1 million forty three thousand six hundred and seventy two dollars in total for public services and public facilities facilities are going to be like rehabilitation to uh public facilities so four facilities we did we we completed four projects last year those were rolled over from the previous year and then one cdbg cv project again those those five rolled over from the pre from 23 24 those projects included uh facilities improvements to sbdp's campus the arcs campus and cnhs head start facility um and then the two cv projects were directions for living and our and our club child care total expenditures of projects completed in fiscal year 24 25 include 226 737 dollars in cdbg and 44 274 dollars in uh cv the cdbg cv is a is a covet relief fund that was provided we also started four facilities projects last year um but they were delayed and therefore rolled over and so they'll be they'll be reported on next year's caper um the expenditures are uh again incompletes um will be reported next year so for public services we funded two with ninety four thousand forty eight dollars in cdbg and two with forty four thousand three hundred thirty five dollars in cdbg cv uh one of those are still open and will roll to next year this includes we funded with the cdbg funds metropolitan ministries their homeless program west care's turning point program uh and with cv we funded directions for living their homeless program and svdp's um st benson de paul's homeless program it's important that we had one additional um projects or service that we we planned to fund it was uh svdp south pinellas but unfortunately weren't able to move forward with the the program um as requested uh they had another funding source they were they were hoping to receive and that wasn't received um so that one dropped out for economic development we provided eighty thousand dollars for assistance uh for technical assistance services to hispanic business initiative um that's prospera and we care which is now doing business as upwards to assist 42 micro businesses that was the goal um prospera did um 30 of those and upwards did 12 cr 15 so it's going to be a few pages back that's going to break down our resources and investments for the year for cdbg we had two million six hundred and seventeen thousand nine hundred ninety four dollars and we expended one million forty three thousand six hundred and seventy two bear in mind again some of the funding for indigo was not counted and some of that some of those funds are conceptually budgeted for projects that um are still in pre-development our home funds we had four million eight hundred ninety seven thousand six hundred seventy two dollars we expended three hundred seventy seven thousand six hundred and ten dollars again multiple projects are underway and not accounted for in this expenditure total with our conceptual budget we have about seven hundred thousand dollars left of that 4.8 million so we have i want to say around seven to eight projects in pre-development that should they all go through and they all they all close we only have about seven hundred thousand of that budget left those projects will take multiple years in pre-development for going through and then finally um ship we have uh we had one million eight hundred ninety eight thousand three hundred seventeen dollars we expended one million one hundred and sixty nine thousand nine hundred and seventy five dollars of our ship balance cr25 that's going to break down our um our homelessness goals uh and accomplishments um one side note is the city does have a homeless initiative program where we provide three hundred thousand dollars in general fund to nine organizations um so that's separate from the caper but it's worth mentioning our housing division does administer that program um as you can see cdbg we do a lot of work with our cdbg homeless work with our cdbg funds um our funding utilize utilizing local nonprofit services went on to assist 2056 people with homeless services um under cr35 other actions um this discusses our work with other funding programs so again ship that's the state housing initiative partnership program administered by the florida housing finance corporation uh that provides affordable housing funding to local governments across florida and it's funded by a portion of doc stamp taxes paid on real estate transactions and we utilize ship quite a bit in uh in our in our department we use it for home buyer education courses uh home rehabilitation for low and moderate income homeowners construction of affordable housing units and disaster recovery um for uh housing efforts um ship it has easier guidelines to work around for those programs that's why you see some of the bigger programs funded with our federal funds and some of our you know our more residential programs funded with our ship program um something to note about ship majority of the ship funds are restricted to 80 percent ami however there is a small bucket that can go to 80 to 120 percent ami we also utilize ship to fund our disaster recovery program this is the the first year that we've we've had to utilize um that program actually put most of it together you know last year after the storms um and uh we assisted eight households with disaster recovery from the storms in 2024 with ship funds exclusively um cr40 this goes into our department's monitoring efforts uh the city ensures compliance with federal rules and regulations for agreements administered under cdbg and home programs this includes advising sub-recipients on performance and conducting regular monitoring to assess compliance and address any issues um we do monitor annually uh we have visits annually and more frequently if we determine a sub-recipient is of higher risk this approach ensures effective oversight promotes accountability and supports the success of our cdbg and home programs it's important to note that no findings were found in 2024 during our monitoring process um and so that's the caper we are asking for a uh recommendation to council to approve the submission of this report to hud with that i'd be happy to address any questions just a question about the number impacted of homeless individuals i think you said 2000 something is that taken from the reports and neighborly from monthly reports from the organization so when the sub-recipients submit the data to us we do when it's uploaded into neighborly um we do once we all confirm that everything's accurate we go ahead and download it we transfer the data from neighborly into idis for the reporting and do you do a cross-comparison of client ids i'm curious because we've served over 2500 people last year so it seems like the number would be even higher than well it's stating yours i can only do for 24 25 so the ones for your whole grant year i can only include from october 1st year september sure not just that so when we did the numbers that's where it came out so the other ones you did i believe were the prior years i could do real quick oh no no no that's okay it just seems like the number would be higher with all the different organizations serving so i can tell you from the uh homeless initiative it's a lot higher i think it's closer to 20 000 um this is just specifically in for the cdbg funds we only had two of those services that count in that number um so it's a little bit different you know the year prior i think we had maybe closer to seven or eight we also had um arpa funds that we utilized for um for some of those services and those are those are no longer uh we no longer have a balance there um and so i think this year we have a few more services than we did last year i think the idea was more funding last year was more funding for less services and make it easier for our staff capacity and then also we could get more done you know with with those services this year we took a little bit of a different route i think we did pretty much an even split between you know everyone who who um made it through the the evaluation process and so it's a little bit less we have we have more going out to a diverse um group of services so a little bit of a different strategy this year we'll see which one works out better and then we'll kind of redirect from there thank you any other comments or questions from the board does anyone from the public wish to comment on this item there are no e-comments hearing no further public comment may have a motion to approve i make a motion to approve do i have a second all in favor aye any opposed motion carries thank you mr mayhew do you have anything additional to report nothing at this time thank you do any board members have any final words before we adjourn happy thanksgiving thank you i just have to say i i'm impressed i i'm impressed with how much i'll accomplish and this is impressive the number and the dollars and and you're small but mighty that's impressive this concludes our business for for the day our next meeting will take place as a meeting of the affordable housing advisory committee really and is scheduled for december 9th 2025 no that's what it says on here is there an ahab meeting on december 9th oh yes i'm sorry that they said well so is there a nahab meeting on december 9th there's no ahac on december 9th right correct uh that yeah no no ahac on december okay so scratch that yes so our next meeting of the nahab will be december 9th here in chamber councils at 9 a.m thank you everyone the meeting is adjourned