Agenda - 01-22-2009 - 6e - Laserfiche WebLink

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I01 Robert Dowling, Orange Community Housing and Land Trust, stated that the figure of $1.5 million for affordability and the $1.5 million for maintenance was based upon their analysis of the existing 125 units, looking out over 25 years. Alderman Coleman asked had that been broken down into an annualized basis. Mr. Dowling stated they could do that. Alderman Coleman stated he believed all the programmatic recommendations were excellent based on what they were facing, but he believed there needed to be a very specific yearly cost analysis which could then fold into an analysis of the potential for different funding. He said it seemed that they needed to start by looking at costs that were broken down so that they could judge their potential revenues over time. Commissioner Jacobs said he would like to have the County attorney look at the proposal, noting that if they looked at the information regarding school impact fees you would see that the activity on new housing and the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school system had dropped precipitously. He said that may affect how much revenue was generated in that part of the County versus Hillsborough and the more rural part of the County. He said they needed to make sure that they could implement all of the strategies that would be countered to what was actually happening on the ground. 9:39:16 PM Council Member Kleinschmidt said his interest in affording housing was getting units on the ground to provide people places to live, and with that being a primary goal it also mattered that those people were local. He said his concern was their failure to provide other revenue streams, because that prevented them from maximizing their achievement of that goal when they accepted payments-in-lieu. Council Member Kleinschmidt said if they accepted such payments instead of construction of units, they would be left with exclusive developments that purchased their way out of participation in the affordable housing program. He said as these recommendations were enacted by the jurisdictions, they must place the payment-in-lieu option as the lowest priority, to be used only after an analysis proved that it was the only option. Council Member Kleinschmidt stated they needed to provide options that did not take away from the goal of creating units. Alderman Broun stated she was reluctantly in favor of payments-in-lieu, and that program should be looked at annually to see how well it was working. She said they also had to be very clear about what the current economic situation was, noting they would be hard pressed to convince people who were writing checks for their taxes to write another check to put someone in a home no matter have egalitarian that was. Council Member Kleinschmidt agreed, and that was why he was advocating for a transfer fee for new developments. He stated they needed to make sure there was room for such creative solutions to continue to develop. Council Member Kleinschmidt stated that new units should have sustainability built into them as well as affordability, and he wanted them to be careful in using payments-in-lieu and keep their eye on the ultimate goal. He said it was important that the housing not consist of one-bedroom condos that served no good purpose other than to achieve some percentage for the developer, but that such units be measured in terms of square footage or the number of bedrooms in order to achieve their ultimate affordability goal. Council Member Kleinschmidt stated that would require some difficult work by the jurisdictions, because it would 14