Housing GSO: HRA Greensboro Affordable Housing Plan

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT SUMMARY

NOTES | Community Engagement Meetings

May 28, 2019 Internal City Meeting

Attendees: Caitlin Bowers, Jose Colon (Senior Planner – Long Range Planning), Valerie Moore (Senior Housing Planner), Cynthia Blue (Housing Services Division Director) Lamont Taylor, Debby Davis (NDD – Communications Liaison), Stan Wilson (NDD - Director) Goals for Affordable Housing Plan • Make recommendations that are implementable and actionable • City is looking for a plan that identifies what the need is, reviews bond programs and current allocation levels, and recommends changes/shifts as needed • City bond money is new tool, City wants short, medium and long-term recommendations on how to allocate bond money o Bond programs parallel local and federal programs • City interested in idea of creating a new leverage fund, could be for acquisition, preservation, open to different uses • Affordable housing education campaign is also important – we want something ongoing to educate people about need for affordable housing. We get typical NIMBYism, people don’t understand mixed-income housing – we want to put face on affordable housing, we need concerted effort and campaign to do so. • Engage Council throughout plan development process Greensboro Context • Hard feelings from Housing Our Community process: some people angry about overall process, some angry that process didn’t move forward, some angry that homelessness wasn’t included • Want new plan to take some ideas from Housing Our Community, engage City Council along the way • Existing affordable housing challenges in Greensboro o East-west imbalance in terms of development, commercial, education, other quality of life factors and overall access to opportunity o Need for affordable rental production o Lack of innovative policies o Single family zoning prevents density o Low capacity organizations - local non-profits and organizations in the affordable housing space lack capacity and resources

Review of Existing NDD Programs • Workforce Housing Fund: primarily used for down payment assistance, but can be used for development o Doing about 30/month for down payment assistance, up to 140% AMI o What’s long-term sustainability of workforce fund? $10K per household, forgivable in five years, plus $5K bonus if in redevelopment area • Single family rehab: CDBG money getting used, $3M lead grant almost used up, so will soon tap into bond o Can we improve programs? What should we be doing better?

HR&A Advisors, Inc.

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