Good morning, everyone.

Today's meeting of the Afford We're not live yet.

I thought you said we were.

Okay.

Take two.

Good morning, everyone.

Today's meeting of the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee is called to order on this day, November 18th, 2025.

Welcome everyone.

Agendas of today's meeting are at the entrance to the meeting room.

Please remember to turn off your cell phones.

To ensure a complete record of the committee's actions, we ask that each individual wishing to speak clearly state your name and spell your name, your last name for the clerk.

We ask that you limit your comments to three minutes.

At this time, I would like to ask the board members to introduce themselves and state the fields you represent.

I'm going to start from my right.

Michelle Chenal, Community Development Board.

Frank Cornier Construction.

All in favor?

Any opposed?

Minutes are approved.

The main item on today's agenda is to continue our discussion, led by Amanda Warner of Wade Trim.

Ms.

Warner, the floor is yours.

Thank you.

Good morning, everyone.

All right, so welcome.

So today is our fourth and final meeting of the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee for 2025.

So just to review, uh, we have worked our way through the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee process, uh, beginning with selection of the AHAC in August, uh, and then through our meetings in September, October to workshop the recommendations of the local housing incentive strategy report.

Today we're holding a public hearing to approve, hopefully approve the updated LHIS report.

And then from this point forward, it will be taken to City Council on December 4th.

Uh, if City Council approves the LHIS report on December 4th, then it will be transmitted to the state of Florida as a requirement of the uh SHET program for the city.

Uh, after that, uh, if it's uh then accepted by the state, then it will be incorporated into the local housing assistance plan and will be uh again submitted in the spring of twenty twenty six as part of the local housing assistance plan.

So again, this is our fourth meeting.

We're holding this as a public hearing today.

And during our meetings that we had proceeding in September and October, we reviewed the values, principles, and visions of the local housing incentive strategies report.

During those meetings, the committee revised one of the affordable housing values.

So there were four affordable housing values.

You can see them there on the screen, A, B, and C.

Affordable Housing Values C was revised to read aspires to have housing that fits the city's residents, and this was done to incorporate not only the workforce but retired residents and other citizens of the city of Clearwater as well to make that more open.

With that, the affordable housing principles stayed the same.

There are six of them.

So those were kept as were originally approved in the LHIS report.

And then the affordable housing vision was kept as well.

So the affordable housing vision for 2025 was that the city of Clearwater will incentivize the development of a diverse supply of housing that is safe, accessible, affordable, sustainable, and energy and cost efficient that blends into the aesthetic character of all the city's neighborhoods, proximate to public amenities, employment opportunities, and which supports an inclusive community and the diverse needs of residents.

So that was the final vision statement that was incorporated.

Alright, so the local housing incentive strategies, just as a reminder, and for those listening today that this is their first time listening to the meeting, the local housing incentive strategies are required by Florida statute as something that the committee is required to review in support of the city ship program, which is the state initiatives partnership program.

So for the incentive areas, there are 11 required by Florida statute.

Those are listed on the left hand of the screen, and the affordable housing advisory committee is established to review those 11 incentive areas, look at the city's processes and procedures related to those incentive areas, and decide whether any recommend recommendations can be made for the city to utilize any of those incentives.

On the right hand side of the screen are five additional incentive areas, and those are ones that have been added over the years by the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee.

Those are not required by Florida statute but are incentive areas that the city has chosen to pursue.

So those are the five on the right hand there.

So this year in our preceding workshops, the committee identified several barriers and incentives for affordable housing that the city of Clearwater should review, and those are for the bare list of barriers.

It would be lack of affordable housing supply generally, a lack of housing options for senior citizens specifically, the renter cost burden, high cost of rent and utilities, real estate taxes and insurance costs for homeownership.

These are what we refer to as third-party barriers, land use and zoning regulations, another barrier, and then two incentives were discussed previously this year, and those were accessory dwelling units as an incentive area and infill density as an incentive area.

So those are the broad overarching barriers and incentives that were identified during the first few workshops that we had.

So after that discussion, so over the last probably two AHAC meetings, the committee reviewed the recommendations of previous committees that were included in what would have been the 2024 local housing incentive strategy report, and then made decisions about whether those recommendations should be modified or continued.

So to summarize, so the committee reviewed the 11 incentive areas required by Florida statute as well as the five incentive areas added by the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee over the years.

Of those 34 recommendations, there are two incentive areas.

I should say of the 11 incentive areas.

There are two incentive areas that had no recommendation, and those were infrastructure capacity and modification of street requirements.

However, the other nine incentive areas, there were recommendations related to those as well as the five optional incentive areas.

So and during that review, it was identified that many of the recommendations over the years have been implemented or they are currently in progress.

So the 2025 committee continued 28 recommendations out of that 34 and modified six recommendations.

So the six recommendations that were modified were recommendations 1.2, 1.3, 1.5, 9.2, 13.1, and 16.1.

And I'll go over those today just to review the changes that were made.

So looking at the 2025 LHIS report, and everyone should have received that as part of the agenda packet.

It looks like this document here.

So this is the latest version, and the latest version has a watermark that says public hearing on the back of it, so that'll help you identify which one is the current one.

So in that report, recommendation 1.2 over our discussions over the last few months.

1.2 was to revise this to include single family as well as multifamily affordable housing projects.

So single family was added to this recommendation.

And then city staff also made some changes to this one to adjust the roles, the titles of the persons responsible for implementing this.

So the recommendation as modified reads recommendation 1.2, the housing manager and development services division manager will continue to be the primary and secondary points of contact when submitting single family and multifamily affordable housing projects.

Through close coordination, these two staff positions will, and then it goes through a list of the actions that those staff positions will take to help encourage affordable housing.

So that was the change to recommendation 1.2.

Is everyone still comfortable with that modification today as we're continuing with the final report?

Okay.

All right.

So the next modified recommendation was recommendation 1.3.

This was a very minor modification to this one.

So precedingly, there was a bullet point in here that required a list of potential mentors experienced in affordable housing development to be prepared.

That list had not yet been prepared, so the timeline for that was adjusted from 2025 to 2026.

So that was the monarch modification to this one, recommendation 1.3.

So 1.5 is the next modified recommendation.

This recommendation was modified to add accessory dwelling units as a type of plan that could be submitted in advance as a plan on file.

So the new recommendation 1.5 would read encourage affordable housing developers of single family homes and accessory dwelling units to submit frequently used building example plans for pre-screening by the building official to further expedite the staff permit review process.

Is everybody okay?

Okay.

Alright, uh the next modified recommendation was 9.2.

Uh this was revised because the senior executive team no longer carry out the care carries out this process.

Uh so this is done interdepartmentally between the economic development and housing department and planning.

So basically, this was revised to say continue the city's interdepartmental review process through which any new regulatory instrument created in the city, ordinances, regulations, etc.

or by related state legislation can be evaluated for its effect on housing affordability.

Okay.

All right.

And then the next modified recommendation was 13.1.

Uh the discussion at our last meeting on October 28th.

Uh there was discussion about accessibility features being incorporated into affordable housing products in discussion with city staff.

This is currently not in the code and is not something that's being discussed currently.

However, it could be considered in future iterations.

So just to make it clear that section 3-920.A, point three, point C, 0.1 through 3.

That section of the code currently does not include this.

These are aspirational, the bullet points that are under that.

So the revision is to say to continue to incentivize developers to address recommended design standards for affordable housing developments consistent with section 3 920 of the City of Clearwater Community Development Code.

Other future criteria to be considered could include but are not limited to, and then we've added provide accessibility features there.

The other bullet points are similarly aspirational, provide direct and visual access to open space, play areas, night or outdoor illumination, etc.

and things to be considered in future revisions.

Okay.

All right.

Seeing no comments, I'll move on.

Um 16.1 partnerships.

Uh so this was to develop public and private partnerships for the provision of affordable housing.

Uh in one of our preceding meetings, uh, the committee had discussed uh how persons basically obtain information about affordable housing in the city in terms of development, and there was a suggestion to add uh a bullet point under here directing uh persons to the City of Clearwater's website and specifically the affordable housing web page.

So now it reads direct persons seeking information about affordable housing development in the city of Clearwater to the city's affordable housing web page and then provides that of the drafts.

So that was the change on that one.

One small question.

If you could go back to 13.

Yes.

In your experience, in your experience, does that um I know we talked about it last meeting, but does that language further restrict developers and builders from looking at design features for affordable housing?

And the reason I'm saying that is because I remember last meeting discussing that there's only like nine or ten all year if that and but I don't recall that we um added the language that added um play areas, nighttime outdoor elimination.

I think some of that's already in the code, actually.

I think that part is uh landscape standards and buffers, those are those are kind of already in the in the code.

So do we want to for lack of a better word, scare builders and developers in reading that again?

They already know it's well, this is my question.

Is this restricting affordable housing development, or is this opening it up from where we were before?

Yes, so I will say it's common with density bonuses to have some kind of criteria tied to them.

So, you know, in order to obtain that density bonus for that specific whatever that ends up being, um, that there is some kind of criteria that they would have to meet because there's something that um they're basically complying with in order to get that additional density.

However, for the pro the pure incentive of affordable housing, obviously that is an incentive of an in and of itself.

Right, correct that's um that you would be giving that density in order to get affordable housing in return.

Okay.

Um there is criteria in there.

Um, specifically, I don't have it called out in here which ones are already in that density bonus criteria listing um in the code.

Um, but this is again something that's more aspirational in terms of it could be considered in for future iterations of revisions to that density bonus, but it's not something that's being done right now.

And um, I don't know, Lauren.

Do you have any other comments?

No, okay.

Okay.

I mean, I was gonna say that if you read the sentence, it says future criteria to be considered could include but are not limited to.

So that's good.

So we're not we're not restricting, we're not trying to right, correct.

So the way this is written, it's more of potential, and I think that the concept behind enter adding this as something that could be considered in the future is that when it would be considered, it would be weighed as this uh barrier or not when that's revisited against all the other criteria that's already in that density bonus.

Um thank you very much.

Yeah, okay.

I appreciate you indulging me.

Yep, happy to answer.

So um, did anybody else have any other comments regarding this one before we move on?

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

So then uh we went over 16.

So 16 was about um adding a reference to the affordable housing website.

So I'm gonna pause there on 16 because that's our our last recommendation of this set of recommendations.

Um does anybody have any other comments to discuss before we go into um asking for approval to move forward to city council?

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Um just uh in an effort to share.

I don't want to go back and redo anything, so please don't let me scare anybody.

Uh I am the elected member that sits on the AHAC workshop.

So I just uh sat on two regional meetings since our last one, so I wanted to make sure I shared what's being discussed across the region.

Uh that this we're doing an amazing job.

You know, there's very very, very limited gaps on what we're discussing.

Um I just wanted to highlight three things that are being uh pretty heavily discussed in other regions that we may not be.

Number one was Yigby.

Yes, and God's backyard as a tool.

I don't know, and I don't recall us having any deeper discussions regarding that.

Uh the state identified as a tool that could open up upwards of 30 plus thousand parcels of land uh across the state for affordable housing.

Um, so maybe future discussions that can take place.

Uh we discussed 1.5 ADUs, ADUs was talked heavily across every region, understandably so.

And the last one um was we discussed it in here as a barrier of senior housing, senior housing being a future gap that they're noticing that continues to grow uh in all of our communities across the region.

So those were just the three things I wanted to share before we move too far.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um regarding the the availability for using properties that are currently um utilized for religious purposes.

That was something if I'm remembering correctly, was opened up through the Live Local Act changes this year, and so that is something that we were um evaluating in terms of the parcels and everything to bring forward to city council at a later date.

Gotcha as part of our updates for the the changes for Live Local.

Yeah, we're very limited on property.

I wasn't sure if that affected us at all or if we identified some parcels.

I'm sure we'll find out some right.

I mean, it it's kind of strange the way it's written because it's used by or adjacent to right if I remember correctly, and so it's also written as a May enable, so that we felt was a policy decision for city council.

Well, yes, and God's backyard is an interesting title.

There are a lot of new apparatives related to housing these days.

Isn't that used to be called MIMBI or not in my backyard?

Yes, so that's the thing.

It's funny.

It's funny.

There's some pretty interesting acronyms these days.

Thank you.

A question, please.

Uh, under the uh land use for the city of Clearwater, they you've got residential, commercial, industrial, and auto-related.

Where does the the religious fall within land use regulations?

If, for example, you've got 59.3 residential, 2.1 industrial, 8.8 commercial, and 1.1 auto-related.

So, where would that fall within the code?

Um, the community development code has a use called place is a how places of worship, and those are permitted in institutionally zoned district, the institutional district.

However, some maybe predated the 1999 code, many did, and it's possible that there are some places of worship that aren't necessarily zoned institutional.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I just wanted to show and tell.

So um, all right, anything else before we move on.

Okay.

All right.

So um so the next uh stop on our agenda today is uh to um basically for the uh committee to consider approval of the 2025 LHIS report.

Again, that would be the full document uh that looks like this.

The summary of recommendations are in the back.

Uh you'll see um that the recommendations are discussed throughout the report, but appendix E is the comprehensive summary of the final recommendations.

Um so the next stop would be for the AHAC to consider approval and uh make um uh if the committee so desires make a motion and uh vote on the approval to send this to city council.

The city council meeting is on December 4th.

I think you said that we had a copy of that, but I don't have a copy.

Do you all have copies?

I don't have a copy.

So if it can just be emailed if you guys change, yeah.

Yeah, we can have changes.

If it can just be emailed to us, can it should have?

Yeah, yeah.

I'll get it over to all.

Okay, thank you.

So um, just to summarize the recommendations that changed from the previous version that you received were all the ones that we went over today on the slides.

Yes, madam child, make a motion if the board's comfortable moving forward to approve the 2025 LHIS report.

Second, all in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Thank you very much.

Thank you, everyone.

So uh I just want to say um so next steps.

Uh we are going to um the city council meeting on December 4th.

That's at 6 p.m.

That's a Thursday.

Um this will be on the agenda that evening.

Uh and then once uh if city council approves it at that meeting, then it will go to the state and get submitted to the state of Florida, and this is all in support of the city's state housing initiatives partnership program um grant funding.

So um, with that, I want to thank everyone for their time this year.

Uh it's been a delight uh working with you, and um I look forward to next year's committee as well.

So all right, take care.

Happy holidays.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Item four, is there anyone here to speak on items not on today's agenda?

If so, please step to the podium, state your name, spell your last name for the record.

You will have three minutes to speak on a subject that is not on today's agenda.

Seeing no one come forward, there are no e-comments.

I will now close the public comment period and ask if there are any final comments from committee members.

Yes, sir.

Madam Chair, I just wanted to thank you for your leadership.

You've done a wonderful job uh walking us through this and holding our hands, but thank you all and thank you, everyone for uh your service.

It's very important to the community, and I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I also would like to thank everyone on the committee.

Um, I guess I've been here the longest, which scares me.

But anyway, lastly, I'd like to ask Dylan Mayu if he has anything additional to report to the committee.

Just that I appreciate everyone be able to make it today and uh for your time.

I know this is some of these meetings are a few hours, everyone's very busy, so I really do appreciate it.

And uh, other than that, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Again, thank you to all my fellow board members, staff, and the public for your input in this process.

I'm excited to see Clearwater progress its affordable housing inventory over the next year.

The meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you.