We will magically get the program.

The control.

All right.

So we are going to go ahead and get started with our Benn City Council work session.

We are all present, and we are starting with our housing work group scoping items.

So we have a lot of people in front of us ready to kick this off.

All right.

Good evening, Marion Council.

My name is Matt Stewart, the real estate facilities director, and I'm joined Steven by Rachel Baker, our housing division manager, and Chris Reynolds and Mike Schrader with Oregon Public Finance in our uh our bond council capacity.

So tonight we wanted to discuss sort of some housing funding options.

We'll first kind of talk about the housing funding need, so around our council goals, and then we'll dive into the existing tools that we've been using to date to produce some affordable housing as well as uh other housing and housing spectrum.

We'll talk about potential tools that are out there that we could look at, and then finally we'll dive into a proposal from staff to uh establish a housing funding committee, and that would just kind of spend the next 12 months evaluating some of these potential tools and coming back to council with a recommendation to then further develop work plan and move those forward.

So that will be part of the council guidance at the end, asking how we kind of put that committee together.

So for over 20 years, the city of Bend has adopted incentives or created funding programs to produce housing at every level of the housing spectrum.

Housing mobility requires an adequate amount of housing or shelter at each level of this spectrum.

When interest rates are high and moving would increase a household's property taxes, those community members cannot afford to consider moving into a new home for downsizing or a bigger home for family growth.

Unless and until there are changes outside of this city's control, more incentives and subsidies will be necessary to create much needed housing elasticity in central Oregon.

And so if we look at our housing need here, uh we've talked a lot about in the past the Oregon housing needs analysis, and that came out saying over the next 20 years, Bend in its here in our region needs about 33,000 units by 2045.

That is about 1900 units a year.

That 1900 includes how we addressed our house list situation, but also units that we have underproduced.

So currently they estimate that Ben is underproduced about 5,000 units today.

Well, if we break that down into how many units a year we need to produce to meet that number from today until 2045, that is about 1,400 units per year.

And then the last item that we always look at is the affordability.

So anything below 120% AMI.

So that's one of the big items that we're looking at tonight is how do we address some of those items?

And you can see from our housing production over the last 10 years.

If we want them to not be house burdened or house cost burden, that would be 30% of that needs to go to their housing costs and no more.

That roughly translates to a home value of somewhere between 450 to 500,000.

So we see that gap between where the median home price is and what we're seeing from our area median income here in the county, in the city and the county.

Sorry.

So awards in affordable housing development since 2004 include over 10 million in community development block grant funding, over 18 million in affordable housing funds, 500,000 for middle income housing funding, and over 360,000 in funds from the commercial and industrial construction tax.

Since 2021, the city has leveraged over 20,000 or sorry, 20 million in local, state, and federal funds for houseless services, including acquisition, renovation, and operation of shelters, expansion of the safe parking program, housing focused case management at the temporary safe stereo and other outreach and prevention.

So since uh 2007, we've produced 1,260 affordable housing units per year.

While subsidies facilitate housing production for market costs, incentives encourage housing development despite market demand fluctuations.

The city adopted incentives over 20 years ago to encourage affordable housing production, but recently adopted incentives, whether city-led or mandated by state legislature, ensure steady housing development and stabilize the housing market.

Today we share these ideas.

Oh, just so you're aware.

Sorry.

We do have a middle housing production dashboard that you can check out to see how much middle housing product has come on board since some of those state initiatives in 2022 and until this year.

Today we share ideas that could spur more housing production.

I can provide you an explanation of these listed ideas, but this presentation is not for you to get a comprehensive understanding of these possibilities.

We just want to share with you some of the potential ideas that could be explored over the next year.

With uncertainty of state and federal funding availability to sustain current affordable housing production in Bend, exploring local revenue generating options may be critical to housing for our very low, low and moderate income households.

Any new reverend any new revenue generating program would require allocated staff taken from either current work or newly hired.

And at this time, I'd like to introduce Christina Reynolds and Michael Schrader to share with all of you some of the legal requirements of complex financing mechanisms you may want to consider.

Thanks very much, Rachel and Matt.

Hi, I'm Chris Reynolds.

I've had the pleasure of working with the City of Bend my entire public finance career, a little more than 22 years as your bond counsel, and we're here today to talk about housing finance tools and excited to talk through some of those with you.

On the first page here, you see the topic of general obligation bonds.

As you may be aware, the Oregon State Constitution and many, if not most constant state constitutions, have a provision that prevents governments, including the city, from lending their credit to private parties.

So the city is not allowed under the state constitution to use its financial backing to support or guarantee loans for private individuals, companies, or organizations unless there is a specific exception.

And this is a common feature in state constitutions designed to keep public funds safe and ensure that they are used for public purposes, not private interests.

So in 20 in 2018, the state constitution was amended by measure 102, and that provides a specific exception for the lending of credit prohibition that I just described for affordable housing projects.

Oregon counties, cities, towns, and other municipal corporations can seek voter approval for general obligation bonds, property tax levy bonds to fund defined affordable housing projects.

And the great thing about the way that the Oregon Constitution was amended for these projects is that you, as a local government or municipality that is putting a general obligation on the ballot for purposes of housing, you get to define what that affordable housing means.

So you can take into account the specific needs of your community if you choose to put a general obligation bond on the ballot.

Of course, as you know from your transportation levy, geo bonds you know impose on every property taxpayer in the city an additional tax that is specific to the project being financed, and so you have to take into account the financing interest and support of the community when you consider putting a geo bond on the ballot.

Following measure, or really in connection with the same time measure 102 is on the ballot.

Metro put a geo bond on the ballot for all housing in the greater Portland metro area, and they have been administering their program since 2018.

Mike and I have advised them, and we're working with them on that.