Housing GSO: HRA Greensboro Affordable Housing Plan

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT SUMMARY

NOTES | Community Engagement Meetings

October 16, 2019 Meeting with Tammi Thurm, City Council District 5

AREA ONE: AFFORDABLE RENTAL HOUSING

• •

AREA TWO: SUPPORTIVE HOUSING o Require percentage of supportive units in 9% deals, provide the City with best practices on how to achieve this • AREA THREE: NEIGHBORHOOD REVITALIZATION o Opportunity Crescent is moving into the west as well — and they consistently get ignored o Question that she has about order to demo — may need to reevaluate if they could be potentially be repaired and moved back to the market faster than before, now that there’s a category for repair • AREA FOUR: AFFORDABLE HOMEOWNERSHIP • Neighborhoods to add to our list o Areas off Merritt Drive around Random Woods: high crime area with very active neighborhood watch programs and long-term residents working very hard to make their neighborhood successful ▪ It’s “teetering on the edge, and with a smaller investment, you can stop the neighborhood trajectory” ▪ Starting to have problems with maintaining the creek bed ▪ Pocket park and elementary school already exist there — how can we save this neighborhood to keep it from going totally off the rails? o Area around W Market Street from Spring Garden that has begun to turn into an immigrant community: has a plethora of international markets, not in a top priority, but there could certainly be some support ▪ Residential around commercial activity ▪ Older apartment complexes — these are struggling, but could need to be protected from becoming slumlord dwellings ▪ These residents are rent payers, but can’t pay a lot • What do you see as the necessary steps to implementation? o In the past, we haven’t been good about talking about our successes— we can’t underestimate the PR piece of this work o Successful models in GSO: Parks and Rec Department o “Greensboro is a city of no”: part of that is about how you tell the story, and doing a good job of that o Need to have all of City Council agree about where to start , and genuinely agree to it! Everyone has to see the logic behind it, and why that is the right place to start. ▪ Not because it’s the politically right place to start, but because it’s the logical place to start. Everyone wants to start w her e they’ll get the most for their people, but everyone has to be able to defend it

HR&A Advisors, Inc.

Page 125