Housing GSO: HRA Greensboro Affordable Housing Plan

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT SUMMARY

NOTES | Community Engagement Meetings

October 16, 2019 Meeting with Gene Brown - Community Housing Solutions

• Brought up interest in countywide participation — city typically administers HOME funds for Guilford County and Alamance County, sometimes o 55-65% of CHS’ work is in Greensboro • Background on CHS o 2005: They were birthed out of a housing summit and CFGG affordable housing plan o Goal: become an organization that helps to preserve housing for existing homeowners — their main goal is preserving homeownership o 180 home repairs a year, roughly $900k to primarily elderly/disabled/single-parent families (this is 90% of the work) • Subgoal of preserving homeownership becomes stabilizing neighborhoods o Because they work in low-income neighborhoods, they also have developed a skillset at renovating vacant/abandoned homes and do scattered-site infill o They’ve gotten this work because of their existing trust through home repairs, and now they’re doing 6 homes that they build and sell each year • Their home repairs go up to $20K, and CHS will refer higher-priced rehabs to the City’s homeowner repair loan program o $20K is their max, with privately-raised funding o They see themselves as more of a non-profit general contractor (with 6 of their staff doing the work themselves), so they keep this limit there in order to touch more people • Supportive funding o Wells Fargo has helped them locally o NOW: competing for national grants, and just awarded $200K to build 10 homes in the tornado area o About 30% of funding is employers, 30% is foundations, and 30% is city/state o Others come from individual civic organizations o Average home repair cost: $5K • Do you have the capacity to go up? o They have a waiting list, and turn away 5-10 people a year o Their capacity issue would be funding to do more projects (partially through hiring more staff) o They can turn very quickly in projects, and feel that NDD likes it — they can address one issue without getting wrapped up in other city regulations • What about infill development? o Different financing for this ▪ $1.6M operating budget, $900K of which is home repairs ▪ Other $700K is for new construction ▪ About $150k costs for the house, and they can get sales prices up to $119K (usually $110-$130K sales prices)

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