Reiner >> here, >> Trusty Gomesh >> here, >> Trusty Schulty >> here, >> Trusty Jeepson >> here, >> Trusty Meisner >> here. >> And we're all here this morning. Uh we'll go to item number three, which is the approval of minutes from the AC board meeting on September 23rd, 2025. Do I have a motion? >> So moved. >> Been moved by Trustee Schulty. Do I have a second? >> Second. >> Second by Trustee Jeepson. Any changes? >> Hearing seeing none. All in favor signify by saying I. >> I oppose. hearing none. It passes unanimously. Uh I have no chair's remarks this morning. We'll move down to the AC management committee report from October 14th. Um which is item number five. Uh okay, let me get to here. We've gotformational items only. For theformational purposes, the committee re reviewed the local affordable um housing LA uh LAA or the statewide affordable housing SAHA legislative platform items for possible inclusion in the 2026 in Noa County legislative platform. And basically um that is what we're going to talk about and that's the thing we have to actually pass today. um that that's the legislative platform of us trying to get the state to include some additional some funding for administration. >> Um and that was on our it's kind of in that >> support with others. We'll be talking about that later this afternoon. Um so that was one of the items. The other is the um going over the plan for those two programs. So >> okay. So that was item um so that's going to be item six of six of our other ones. So there's nothing really we have to do with the work the pro from the committee report. >> No. >> Got it. Okay. So we'll move right down into item number six and that's to consider approving the proposed plan for the 2025 2025 local affordable housing aid and the statewide affordable housing aid programs. >> Yes. >> Tanya. >> Uh thank you trustees. Um chair and trustees. I just wanted to go over it a little bit so for for your purposes because I know um Trusty Hinrich wasn't there. Um, but also for the public's purpose. I put together a much shorter PowerPoint than the one I put in your in your file. Um, so the housing housing aid programs or our 2025 plan. Again, this is similar to what you guys were just talking about with the capital needs plan for the county. It's a plan, right? So, we can change it. We can make modifications. Um, but I just want to kind of go over the parameters in which we can use the funding for. Um, so again, this is the two programs we're talking about is the local affordable housing aid and the statewide affordable housing aid. Um, so local affordable housing aid um was created um by Metro sales tax u 25 cent sales tax. And so this is just a breakdown of of the sales tax comes in 50% of that goes to the counties, 25% to cities, 25% goes straight to the state for rental assistance program. Um, and then the statewide affordable housing aid, um, which is almost the same exact language except for it's an a state appropriation versus a sales tax. Um, and that goes to all the counties. Um, and so we're one of them. Qualified projects. So, the things we can use the funds for, again, this is a very housing focused um, program. Um, so it can be used for emergency rental assistance uh to support nonprofits and affordable housing providers, construct, acquire, rehab, demolish or remove existing structures, construction financing, permanent financing, interest reductions, refinancing, financing and operations and management of financially distressed properties, funding of support services, and costs of operating um emergency shelter facilities including services. So there's a pretty wide range of things that we can do with the funding. um they do have to be spent on a qualifying project which was that previous list. Um we also are required to prioritize um low-income households. So for home ownership that's at or below 80% AMI. Um and then for rental it's at or below 50% AMI. So those are things we have to do. Um, but there's other things you potentially could do um to provide more additional priorities like serving even lower income households, um, reducing disparities in home ownership, reducing cost burdens. Again, that's at housing stability work, improving the ability of homes, creating accessible housing, and creating more efficient energy efficient or water efficient homes. Um things that aren't eligible again [clears throat] are things that aren't really housing construction or creating housing. Um so housing or zoning study, but any cities that are part of our HA potentially could use their HA dollars to do those studies. They've done them many times to create a housing improvement area. We can't use the funds [clears throat] for that. This is the um can't use it for staff and service related for general housing quality lensure such as code enforcement. can't use it for administration, which is the the um support with others to try to get the state to understand that like we're we're probably a little bit different than I think we are different than other um counties that the counties have kind of control over the whole levy and can do what they they create plans to use the funds up and not not like we have not all most other counties are complete um county has and we're not that way. And we also allow the cities to determine what they want to use the funds for where other counties kind of put in a pot and do a similar thing to what we're planning to do with the the funding here. Um obviously things that are outside of Minnesota are not available in commercial industrial space. So what is affordable housing in the big scheme of things? Afford stuff is affordable if you're not spending more than 30% of your income on housing. Um, and that's really the basis of of how we're going to manage and and look at the programs is that's that's our focus. So, I just put in some slides you guys. I sent all this stuff to you, but just kind of give you an idea of what the current income limits are. Um, so the the programs using the HUD limits just like our federal programs do. Um, so you can see a pretty big difference between what the AMI or the area median income is for our area versus like a 30% household. And that creates a different um dynamic when it comes to then looking at what's affordable for rents um to different household sizes for the different bedroom sizes. Uh this chart I got from I can't remember where I got it from, but it includes tenant paid rental uh utilities. So it's a little bit higher than probably just straight out rents on a on a lease. Um we did a maxfilled study um in November of 23 right before I got here. Karen was finishing that up. And there were recommendations on the rental side, there were recommendations on the home ownership side, and there are pretty much recommendations for every city using census data. So, there's really a demand over the whole county for 6,000 more units, rental units in the whole county. Um, some that are market rates, some that are affordable, and some that are subsidized. So, it's kind of a mix of of need there. And then home ownership. um really like a a a good stable thing is to have a three to five year lot supply, but we don't. Um there's a demand for about 8,000 more units of single family um or home ownership houses. And then that 250 to 500 is the highest demand. Um but really our my focus will be on using these funds to kind of serve that firsttime buyer group that you know the 250 um and below range. That was just kind of a overall need thing. I gave you guys a whole bunch of other data statistics and I could talk all day about the need. Um, but just want to get to the actual plan itself. Um, so these are the aid amounts that we've received in 23 24 and then 25. Uh, the 23 and 24. If you remember, you guys have allocated that to essentially that Columbia Heights project. Whether we'll need it all there or not, I don't know yet. Um, and I think I gave you guys an update that both of the projects that we have kind of given funds to are have not received no letters from the state housing finance agency. So fingers crossed that's a really good um good indication that they might get their funding this round to so we'll be able to do the Columbia Heights and that Blaine project. Um, so then we're really just talking about kind of about the 25 funds. Um and kind of again that housing continuum of this isn't exactly the same one as before but you can kind of see the prevention emergency shelter housing stability. Most of our work is going to be in that housing stability area which are is serving the the zero to 80 or 115% AMI households. We are um going to do some um service funding um to give to human services for the prevention and the shelter work too, but most of them does that. So again, there's kind of three big buckets um that we're proposing to use the funds in that homeless and prevention work um which again that'll be um to the human services department. Then gap fine financing for rental projects whether that's new construction, acquisition or rehab or um helping out any um existing pro like I'm I'm thinking about like AAPS um whole portfolio of properties that maybe they those would be those don't have any additional existing um restrictions on them. So they kind of fall into that Noah or naturally occurring affordable housing group now because they don't have restrictions on them anymore. Um, and then gap financing for home ownership, whether that's development, so like the work that we've been doing with the federal funds with Habitat, um, and other developers or down payment assistance programs or homeowner rehab programs. And that could include single family. It could include, um, manufactured homes. It could could be like the the gamut of things there. And then this is just our recommendation or what we're proposing to use the funds for which again to give um human services kind of that an annual allocation of the funds or piece of the money to do that prevention um and homeless work. Um and then most of the funds will kind of fall into the other two groups of rental and home ownership uh development. Um I think that's that's all I have. So anybody got any questions? I know you guys had a few questions at the management team meeting. Sure. Question. Um, Trusty Jeepson, >> thank you. Um, so with a lot of fraud uh concerns going on, rightfully so, in the state of Minnesota, what uh parameters within the legislation, or what parameters have you thought about um in how we distribute these dollars and knowing that they're going to the people, the organization, the land owner, whoever, uh that these dollars are actually being used for the purpose in which um they're intended. Well, that'll be part of our RFP process. There isn't anything, I'll be honest, there isn't anything that I've read in the statute um that created both these programs that talk about that at all. I think they my best guess is that the state was assuming that everyone, a lot of the people that would get the funding have programs already that they would just add the funds to and increase the number amount of work that they're doing. We will have a a pretty strenuous RFP process like we do with the federal money because we obviously have to worry about the federal program. So for like the rental projects, it will have the same kind of requirements of making sure that you know the developer has the experience and capacity to do the work and that they also have the experience and capacity to keep the projects affordable for the long term. Um so we're we're we're planning to do kind of a coordinated RFP with our federal funds and these funds. Um a home ownership and a rental application. Um, but we'll be going through making sure that people have the capacity to do it and then we would be doing ongoing um, compliance monitoring of some kind. We haven't figured all that stuff out yet. Um, I'm guessing that most of the rental projects will be paired with other funding sources like the two the Columbia Heights and the and the Blaine project. they'll have tax credits on them and so they'll the state obviously has a million the state housing finance agency has a lot of layers and a lot of protections in in the work that they do. Um and then we'll have ongoing compliance with that. So I'm sure we'll piggyback on some of that so we're not doing it over again. Um, but we have a lot of things in place and I think we talked a little bit on the home ownership side. Um, that it would be a needs-based program if we did like down payment assistance and that we would be striving to make sure that whatever program we create creates stability and successful home ownership. And so that's just a lot of kind of how you put the programs together to kind of keep people making sure that we're owner occupying. That would be one of the requirements. If you get down payment assistance, you have to own or occupy that property during the period of time that you have the loan, just like we do with our federal programs. So, we check that every year. We have somebody go through and check the county records. And then we're also typically on on their homeowners insurance. So, we're getting information about them living in the unit or not living in the unit. And then we have people that follow up on that, too. So, there'll be some stuff at the beginning of the RFP process and then some will be compliance monitoring that we'll be doing. >> Thank you. Other questions? Seeing none. Okay. Anything else you want to add before we >> Nope. I just appreciated the feedback at the the meeting. And if you guys have questions anytime, you can let me know if there's anything that comes up or some of your cities call you. I'm I'm I believe that I'm showing or giving our this presentation or some version of it um in a couple of days to the city staff that's working on their own funding to kind of they wanted to see what we were planning to do and so I'm just going to kind of lay it out for them as well. But if you have cities that are asking you questions, I mean, we're once we get stuff created, I'm happy to give it to people. I did that many times during the the neighborhood stabilization work that I did in Henipin um where I created programs and then Minneapolis copied and Dakota County took stuff and I mean I we don't own we don't own anything while we're here. It's all county stuff. So happy to share and and help people through it too. >> Excellent. Um Trusty Schulty. >> Yeah, Mr. Chair, I would go ahead and move the 2025 LAa and Saha program plans. >> Thank you. Do I have a second? >> Second. It's been moved by Commissioner Schulty and seconded Trustee Shulty and seconded by Trusty Reiner. Um, any other comments? Commissioner uh, Trusty Reinard. Uh, I just want to thank you for your good work that you're doing on this. It's u really impressive since you've entered into the position to take care of our CH uh businesses and um it it just continues to be impressive to watch you work. So, >> thank you. >> I appreciate it. >> I appreciate the job. So, [laughter] Yeah. >> And I was just going to say that we'll probably um Ham Lake has talked to me about um potentially taking on their funding. They haven't sent me anything official yet, but we'll probably be bringing that back if they come back and decide they want us to try to administer it for them. >> Yeah. Okay. >> So, >> very good. All right. Um we have a motion and a second. All in favor signify by saying I >> opposed hearing none. It passes unanimously. Anything else to come before the uh Noa County HR? Hearing none, we are adjourned. Thanks, Donnie. >> Thank you. >> I'm glad to hear [laughter] they got [clears throat] a lot of