to order the uh Richfield Housing and Redevelopment Authority meeting of January 20th, 2026 to order. Um start with roll call. >> We've noted attendance. Thank you. >> Okay, this is an opportunity for the open forum. Participants can share their comments in person by voicemail or email and may also request to uh participate uh virtually. Uh for more information on submitting comments, refer to the housing and redevelopment authority H agenda and minutes page on the city's website. Uh there's there's no one here in the council chambers at the moment. Did anyone send any other uh messages in? >> No, we received no messages. >> Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. And with that, I'll ask for approval of the agenda tonight. >> I move approval of the agenda. >> Second. >> Motion has been made and second to approve the agenda. All in favor say I. >> I. >> I. >> Any opposed? And next, I'll uh entertain a motion for approval of the minutes from the regular housing redevelopment authority meeting of November 17th, 2025. >> I so move. >> A second. Okay, a motion has been made and seconded. All in favor say I. >> I. >> I. >> Any opposed. Okay. Uh we don't uh have any presentations tonight and that will move us to the consent calendar. >> Yes. Thank you uh acting chair Hansen. The consent calendar contains separate items which are acted upon by the HA in one motion. Once the consent calendar has been approved, the individual items and recommended actions have also been approved. No further HR action on these items is necessary. However, any commissioner may request that an item be removed from the consent calendar and placed on the regular agenda for HA discussion and action. All items listed on the consent calendar are recommended for approval. There's a single item on your consent calendar tonight. It is to consider approval of a temporary permit allowing Mindot or the Minnesota Department of Transportation to access properties owned by the HR at 1600 and 162078th Street East to rebuild the sidewalk during the I494 project 2 construction and I submit this for your consideration. >> All right. Um I move approval of the consent calendar. >> Second. >> All right. Okay. Motion has been made and seconded for approval of the consent calendar. All in favor say I. >> I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Okay. Uh we don't have any public hearings or resolutions this evening on the agenda. Uh that moves us to item number 11, the consolidation of a professional services agreement. >> Thank you, Acting Chair Hansen. I'm going to have um Assistant Director Julie Urban present the report. >> Thank you, Acting Chair Hansen. members of the HR. Uh during the CO 19 pandemic, the HRA contracted with VEP to provide emergency rental assistance to people who were economically impacted by the pandemic. Following that initial response, significant funding became available from the state and Henipin County to cover the need. FEP administered funds on behalf of the county and was able to serve many richfold households with emergency rental assistance without needing HRA funding. Funding for emergency rental assistance is expected to be significantly less in 2026 due to the expiration of pandemic error resources. The county has also reduced the number of service providers that administer this assistance and VEP was not selected to be an administrator. While Richfield residents will still be eligible to apply for rental assistance through the county's portal, VEP is seeing and expects to continue seeing a need greater than the resources available and is concerned that residents in its surface area will receive less effective services. The county is also focusing its funding on households earning less than 30% of the area median income, which leaves other low-income households without options to maintain their housing stability in cases of emergency. VEP is asking the communities it serves to assist in filling some of the gap in resources and staff recommends that the HR direct $50,000 of the city's local affordable housing aid or LAA to VEP for emergency rental assistance. Households earning up to 50% of the AMI would be eligible for up to three months of assistance. VEP also provides case managers who work directly with both residents and landlords to come up with solutions for maintaining housing stability. And one of those case managers currently offices in the municipal center here in Richfield two mornings a week. Up to 15% or 7500 of the LAA funds may be used for quote unquote navigation and servicing related to providing the rental assistance. That is language directly from the LAAHA statute if you are curious as to that kind of unique language. So VEP anticipates that they would be able to serve between 10 and 30 households with the funds. Since I wrote this report 10 days ago, I think that circumstances have changed a little bit um in that we expect pretty high significant need um in the in the coming weeks just because of the federal activity going on and how that has impacted people's ability to get to work. So, I would just um add that because I know that that's a concern that was brought before the council last week and uh just leave this item for your consideration. I'm happy to answer any questions. >> All right. Any uh any questions? >> I I did have a question that a resident sent to me earlier today and their concern was about housing um help for seniors. So, this is not age restricted. So, someone that is a senior could apply for this just long along with anyone else that was interested. >> Correct. Yep. It's it's open to to all. Yes. Regardless of age or status. >> All right. Thank you. >> I am curious just knowing how this situation is evolving. Is there anything about this action tonight that prevents us from doing a similar action if that were appropriate in coming months? No, we and I did include some information in the financial section to show, you know, we received, if you remember, quite a bit more in Laha than we were expecting. And so we have um over $250,000 of uncommitted funds. So, um yes, there would be additional funds um that you could consider if that's what you so chose. Okay. >> The original plan when I started talking to VEP last fall was that we would start with this amount and then reassess come summer. I'm guessing we will probably need to reassess sooner than that, but >> Okay. >> Remains to be known to see. >> Thank you. >> I had um one other question that I had asked staff earlier. Um it came up about how the LAA funds could be used and so we can we can add to what we're doing. We just can't supplant. Is that what I was understanding? Can you explain about whether or not how that works and what how we can use these funs? Yes. So there's specific language that says you you can't replace your current efforts. You can't use LAA basically to to um reduce your own funding. So when we go into report, I have to show how much we have spent on housing efforts for the past three years and then compare it um so that they can see and then we have to explain if there's a reduction. We did have a couple of reductions and it and the answers were things like the funds ran out. We were using sales proceeds and so to date we've just provided an explanation for those changes or those reductions. >> So that's good to know that it is open in the future if we need to add more we could. Yes, certainly at in this case, right, we weren't we weren't putting money for several years into rent assistance and so it would be considered new new money, right? A new effort. >> Any uh any additional questions? >> No. I will move uh the staff recommendation to approve a professional services agreement with FEP to provide funding for emergency rentals assistance and the related navigation and servicing of the program using $50,000 in local affordable housing need. >> Second. >> Okay. A motion has been made and seconded. All in favor say I. >> I. >> I. >> Any opposed? >> Okay. Thank you. >> I I just wanted to add that I am very much in support of this and I think it's very timely and it's something that really is needed in our community. So, I'm grateful for VE for um offering to administer this program and I think they do great work with it. I I think this is really kind of one of those areas where Richfield can really kind of stand up and be proud of itself. I know that BEP was started um many years ago by 13 churches here in Richfield. People who saw a need in the community and it was a very grassroots effort and today BE course has grown into this very professional organization uh that administers these type of programs with high excellence. All right. Um well that will bring us to the executive director's report. >> Thank you. I don't have anything specific to to uh share today. >> Okay. Uh any uh HA discussion items? >> So I had I don't know if this technically is probably an EDA discussion item. I know there's been a great deal of concern with a lot of our small businesses are struggling right now um due to concerns about the safety of their workers and their customers with the um surge in immigration enforcement. And so we have a number of businesses that have cut back hours or um have closed temporarily. And I'm wondering if we can work together with the economic development authority or somebody to to assess the economic impact and and whether or not there's anything we can do to help those businesses so that there's not a long-term negative effect. >> Right. Thank you for the question. Um we did hear this. We're hearing it from the community. We're hearing it. Um we heard it at the open forum last week as well. Um we're aware of roughly 10 businesses that have uh tempor at least temporarily closed and then several others that have cut back their hours. Right now um we're having a lot of conversations. We're talking to our peer communities and some of the larger communities that have um entire economic development departments uh and staff um to get some ideas of what they are looking at. I will tell you that this is unfortunately more complicated than providing housing assistance. There's a lot more protection for people um in regard to housing and your lease there than there are for businesses. But we're starting with those conversations. We're having some conversations with the uh HA and EDA attorney. There are some considerations when we're providing assistance um how we would perhaps structure a program that we want to make sure that we um we're consulting with our attorney. We're also having conversations with businesses as we can. Um, you can imagine it is difficult to get in touch with some folks right now, but we're compiling lists um of contact information that we do have and reaching out uh to see if we can assess what would be most helpful. The nice thing about being able to provide this assistance to VEP is that while it isn't directly helping the business, it is available to those who have lost their income due to either owning their business and closing it and also the people that are working in those businesses. So, it's an indirect assist, but it is something. Um, I would say that if you are in contact or if you're a small business uh owner that is watching this, I'd recommend um if you're willing to get in touch with Jan Youngquist, who's our economic development manager and share your experience. It is going to be difficult for us to quantify the economic impact. We know it's there um but it's going to be a challenge, but I can tell you we're working on it. Thank you. I had one other question that's tangentally related to all of this. Um I know there's the concern because those businesses are um closing or people are not being able to get their income right now because they're temporarily closed and we've talked about rental assistance. Um has there been any discussion of what to do if somebody's having trouble making their mortgage payments for the same reason? You know, we've talked about a lot of the rental, but what about the people that are homeowners that are struggling as well? And I don't need the answer right now, but I just want to throw that out there for thought. Yes, that's also on our mind. Um, there is perhaps going to be a little bit uh more leeway for those with a mortgage. Um, but we are thinking about that as well. We I don't have answers for you tonight, but it it is on our list. Thank you. >> Any other discussion items? All right, that moves us to approval of claims. >> I'll move approval of the claims. >> Second. >> Motion has been made and seconded. All in favor say I. I. >> Any opposed? Okay, that looks like that completes our business for tonight. So, we'll call the meeting ajourned.