For uh joining us for our uh hearing on the affordable housing bond package.

Um just gonna have a few opening remarks.

Just uh I'm really overwhelmed and grateful for how many folks have uh shown up today.

I think it speaks to the the interest and the power and the crises around housing that our community currently faces.

Uh time and time again, voters have said yes to investing in affordable housing, and last November they did so at an unprecedented level, approving a $500 million bond, the largest affordable housing commitment in our city's history.

That vote represents more than dollars.

It represents trust, and with that trust comes a responsibility to steward these funds carefully and transparently and in a way that has the greatest possible impact for the people who call Columbus home.

And what I've heard clearly during last year's election while talking with voters and community members and even uh candidates for office, including the colleague who is sitting next to me today, is that residents want to see a more open and transparent process for how these bond dollars are spent.

They want sharper strategies, more public input, and a willingness to think big about how we address our housing challenges.

That is why last year, late last year, I committed publicly to holding this hearing.

Today is part of a broader effort to do robust outreach through public hearings like this one and through a citywide survey to hear directly from residents and stakeholders across our housing ecosystem.

We wanted to create a space not just for experts and advocates, but for people most affected by these decisions.

At Council, we believe outcomes are stronger when the circle is wider, when more voices are invited in, and when we when lived experience is valued alongside technical expertise.

So today we are here to listen.

We will hear from Deputy Director Aaron Proster, from invited speakers and advocates, and from members of the public.

And just as importantly, we want to hear from everyday residents, people who know what it's like uh to rent an apartment in this city, to try to buy a first home, or to hold on to a home as costs rise around them.

And I want to be clear.

I come to this conversation with ideas, and some of them are big and audacious, but I want us to build more public and transparent process for allocating these funds and to pursue strategies that use every dollar as effectively as possible.

I want us to be laser focused on preventing displacement, whether driven by rent rising rents or skyrocketing property taxes or lack of housing supply.

I want to see our circle of partners expand, bring in minority and emerging developers, faith-based institutions, educational institutions and nonprofits that own land to be a part of the solution.

I want us to diversify the types of housing opportunities we invest in and to continue to push Columbus to innovate, including exploring models where the city is an early investor and a partner in projects.

But while the administration and city council can and will put forward ideas of our own, today is about partnership and hearing from the community.

This is this hearing is the beginning of a shared conversation to work alongside residents and stakeholders to craft a plan that truly lives up to the promise and the potential of this nearly half a billion dollar investment in our future.

So we are grateful that we have a standing room-only hearing.

Again, it speaks to the challenges that we have in front of us and our commitment to do so together.

That is why I am uh so grateful.

Um had to make uh at the beginning of this year was around committee assignments.

And um I knew right away what would the right decision was, even though uh it was hard for me to give it up.

Um to give up to give the housing chairmanship or chairwoman ship to Councilmember Ross.

Her long history uh and her deep uh commitment to making sure that folks are safe in their homes made her makes her the perfect fit.

And so I am honored to um co-host this hearing with you.

And so I'll turn the floor over to you, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

Um Council President Harden and thank you to all of you who are here today.

And I'm gonna tell you, I'm very nosy, so I listen to side conversations a lot, and I realize that what Mayor Coleman told me years ago is still true.

That the only person that people recognize in the streets is the mayor and the coach of Ohio State Buck Guys.

And so with that said, my name is Tiara Ross.

I am your newest council person.

If you did not know who I was, and I am so honored to be here today.

I'm honored to see so many of my friends who have been working in the housing space alongside me for so long, but I'm so honored to see residents of Poindexter here, community members here to offer insight on what we should be doing with this um historical investment that we will have the opportunity to steward in our community.

So thank you again to Council President Hardin, certainly for your vote of confidence in me chairing the housing committee.

I am truly honored to stand alongside so many committed leaders and who have dedicated themselves to the work of advancing equitable housing solutions in our city.

Today's hearing represents more than just a procedural step in advancing the housing bond initiative.

It reflects a collective commitment to transparency, to accountability, and intentional investment in the long-term support of the needs of our residents.

It is an opportunity to reaffirm our shared values and to demonstrate that we are serious about addressing one of the most pressing challenges facing our community, which is housing.

And now all of you are gonna look at Councilmember Bankston as he sits down.

Everybody welcome Councilmember Bankston to the panel.

Exactly.

First the first class of the evening.

I will say again what I said yesterday at the mayor's rollout of this investment framework, and that is that as we spend this these dollars, it is truly a value statement about who we are as a city and what we believe our residents deserve.

That in this city, housing is both a priority and a right, the accessibility of which should be afforded to every single resident in this community.

That housing is urgent work because the privilege of time that those of us who do this work may have is not a luxury that the folks that we serve have every day.

Housing is truly a life and death matter, and it is incumbent upon us to be successful in how we distribute and deploy these dollars.

So today is a very serious conversation, a conversation that I do not take for granted, and a conversation that I encourage all of you to engage in, not only with your brains, but also with your hearts.

It must be the single most important thing that we do as we deploy these dollars, which is to make sure that the voices of the voters who allowed us the opportunity to spend these dollars to ask for these bonds to sell these bonds are centered in how we deploy them.

So I am so so excited to see all of you here today.

I am honored to be able to serve all of you, to work alongside of you, and I think what I'm supposed to do is hand it over to Councilmember Bankston for remarks.

Um thank you, uh Housing Chair uh Ross.

I don't have any opening remarks.

I'm excited just to get it in uh to it and hear from residents and uh I was late because this is a packed house in here with nowhere to park out there, so that's why.

But no, um, I think uh echo many of the sentiments that uh you said this is a uh historic investment uh in uh not just housing but what I believe to be critical infrastructure.

Uh infrastructure uh that is about our residents and centers them in the the growth that is coming, but also our residents that are here today, and also critical infrastructure to our economic viability, ensuring that uh if you work in the city of Columbus that you can live in the city of Columbus.

Uh I tell folks we are now at a place where this isn't about not about meeting the moment.

We know that we have done that.

We can win the deal.

Uh we see all of the investment that is coming.

It is now about who will seize the moment.

And we have to ensure that the residents of today and the residents of tomorrow have that opportunity uh to call Columbus home.

So again, thank you for leading us through the conversation and looking forward to the discussion.

And I think now we're going to um welcome up our gracious host uh who has uh opened their doors for us.

And I want to welcome up our friend Bob Bitzenhofer, the vice president of planning and development for CMHA.

Bob, thank you so much for having us.

Thank you all, as President Council President said, my name is Bob Bitsenhofer, and I serve as Vice President of Planning and Development for the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority.

On behalf of our board, uh, our President CEO Charles Hillman and our residents, uh, a lot of who are here, uh, welcome to Point Dexter Place.

Uh this is our 104-unit fully affordable senior community um located on the site of the original Poindexter Village, uh, which is our first public housing uh community here in Columbus, Ohio.

Uh thank you to President Harden and Columbus City Council for asking us to host today.

Uh and to be a part of the conversation around the future of housing investment uh in the city of Columbus.

Across the city, CMHA has used a variety of tools uh to build and preserve housing and strengthen neighborhoods, including bond financing uh to support many of our housing developments.

We've been lucky enough to partner with the city uh on a number of projects where you invested your housing bonds uh in the projects, including McKinley Manor, Broadly Lost, which is a veterans community, country rich, Sinclair Apartments, and most recently Nelson Park.

Um in addition, CMHA has issued over 425 million dollars of our own bonds to finance mixed income projects like Aspire Columbus, um, West Rich, the Falls, and many others.

Um while there's certainly a place for traditional financing mechanisms for affordable housing, at CMHA we're always looking to push the envelope and think creatively uh about what we can how we can best use the tools we have to serve even more members of our community.

And so uh as you all uh discuss this today, I would expect that um you know, as the city we would take a similar approach as the City Crafts its bond strategy.

There are tried and true policies that you know will work, but there are also can be room for innovation and creativity that can unlock new opportunities we didn't even know existed.

So thank you again, President Harden, uh, for the opportunity to host today, and I look forward to hearing from uh the rest of the members of the community.

Thank you all very much.

Thank you, Brian.

Thank you for your leadership in this space.

Next, I would like to introduce Deputy Director Erin Prosser.

She is going to give you an overview of the administration's framework for how the administration envisions the investment of these bond dollars will look like.

Um it is a framework.

I know that she's going to tell you that.

That means big, big buckets.

That means big, big opportunity for partnership as we move along in this journey.

And so, Aaron, thank you first for the work that I know that you do day and night thinking about um where we are as a community and where we can be.

I appreciate all of the time that you have spent to strategize about what really is going to save lives in our community.

And with that, I will hand it over to you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Ross, Council President Harden, Councilmember Bankston, um, housing partners, community members, advocates.

Um, I'm really excited to be here this evening uh to be able to join you all for this important conversation.

Um I'm gonna make my presentation relatively quick uh because I too am excited to hear from the community members and kind of get this conversation started around the opportunity um that this historic bond package uh provides for all of us doing this important work and and as we know in Columbus, we have um changed a lot over the last couple of years.

And so as we look at let's see if I got this right.

Okay.

Apologies.

Uh soops, I went back too far.

There we go.

Um so just to kind of level set the conversation.

I know we all feel the change tremendously in our community.

Columbus uh is a growing place, which is really amazing for economic opportunities and and the growth that we're seeing in this place that we've all called home for a long time and loved for a long time.

Um, but we feel that change in accessibility to afford our housing.

There's two primary reasons for that.

One that we talk about a lot.

We are growing a lot, we are adding a lot of households.

Um, a lot of folks see us as a place of opportunity and a place to have a good job.

So they're coming into our community.

We have not kept pace with the housing construction over the last 10 to 15 years as that's happened.

Um in the last 10 years, the house number of households in the city of Columbus grew by about 15 percent.

Our housing stock only grew by about 10 percent.

And we see that reflected 10 years ago.

We had a really healthy little over 5% vacancy rate on our rental, which allowed us a lot of um flexibility and elasticity in that marketplace, a lot of choice for residents.

Um by the time we get to 2024, which is my most recent census data, we're down to just 3.6 percent on the vacancy.

We feel that constraint.

Um, as you look at the graph that I've put up, the scarcity-driven price increases go beyond even what it costs to build the new housing.

That scarcity allows for some of that opportunity for exploitation for rising prices.

That is certainly something that we're dealing with.

And I'll talk a little bit about the progress we're making on that front as we all partner together to build the housing infrastructure we need.

But additionally, the thing that we have to be really clear about is it has gotten exceptionally expensive to build new housing.

The cost of construction, even if we had enough housing to build new housing and make it affordable to low and middle income families, is prohibitively expensive.

And therefore, that is where our bond dollars become just an incredible tool to be able to build that new construction, but make sure that it's affordable to low and middle income families and not only less expensive, but also income restricted and protected.

That means the families that live in those units meet those income qualifications, right?

They're not just less expensive, but we make sure that the family in that unit meets that income restriction as well.

So bad at this.

Here we go.

And as we look at Columbus, you know, I think we I if you've seen me present recently, this is something that I put up a lot.

We talk about the need for pricing at all how housing at all price points, and I just want to make clear why that's so important.

If you look at the graph on the left, we've got families earning above 75,000 in our community.

That scarcity, what it ends up looking like for them is lack of choice.

And what that does is they make choices then to identify housing in different neighborhoods or in older homes or smaller homes, places that were previously affordable to our low and middle income families.

That lack of choice, they're gonna solve for scarcity by expanding their options, right?

They've got the resources to do that, and they're gonna be able to solve for that scarcity by looking into other places throughout our city.

What that means is our families earning between 35,000 and 75,000, our middle income families, they end up lacking opportunity then, right?

They have to solve for that scarcity by making pretty significant compromises.

Compromises that keep them from being able to build skills, add extra education, increase their employment abilities and their wages, their ability to live close to work, right?

They're gonna make decisions to move quite far away.

They're gonna lose time with their families and being able to be active members of their children's PTA, all of that opportunity, and certainly lack the ability then to save for home ownership, right?

All of those compromises, they're gonna find a way to solve for that scarcity, but it will be at the cost of opportunity.

The final category of families, those earning less than 35,000 in our in our community, those are the most vulnerable.

They don't have a way to compromise their way out of this housing scarcity.

They are going that down pressure system is gonna push on them to the place where they are gonna be at high risk for exploitation, substandard units, they're gonna make um less stable choices like couch surfing, staying with friends and family.

They're going to be solving it in real time on a day-to-day basis to be able to stay housed and keep a roof over their heads, and they're gonna be extremely vulnerable for experiencing homelessness.

That is why it's critically important to look at housing at all price points.

However, in terms of those families above 75,000, as we think about building out that housing infrastructure, this is a very large graph, but what I really want to focus is on on the far right.

When we look at the opportunities to build just more housing and increase that choice for those families above 75,000, we do that through tools like zone in.

We do that through tools like adjusting our regulatory framework.

We make it easier to build the housing we need.

This is not a place where we put resources like the bond into these deals.

This is where we really are allowing more housing to get built.

You can see that activity at council on a weekly basis.

You can see that through the big initiatives like zone in.

We need to build more housing.

But that's really where we enter that conversation for those families above 75,000.

And we're seeing the fruits of that.

We're seeing stabilizing rents over the last year.

We're seeing that slow of that really immense increase.

We are up over that 10,000 mark for the annual construction for 2025.

That puts us on the trajectory to meet our goal of the City of Columbus providing 100,000 units to support that overall housing infrastructure.

We see a decrease from 25 between 25 and 24 in our eviction filings.

It's not a significant decrease.

It's nowhere near enough, but we're starting to see those really steep indicators start to flatten out a little bit.

We will keep doing that work.

We partner with our with council.

It's again, it's an every meeting conversation that we have, but also in these bigger initiatives that I know a lot of community members have come out to support.

So this is the worst slide that I have to show you.

And so I apologize ahead of time.

I tried to make it as simple as possible, but I do want to kind of walk through how do we use these bond dollars to invest in affordable housing.

On the top part of the graph, I want to just call out all of this process.

This conversation will be an ongoing thing that we do.

The market changes regularly, the challenges facing our community, but also the opportunities that we get to invest these dollars will change over the next few years as we as we get them out the door.

That will result in that ongoing community engagement.

It will result in continuing to watch to make sure that those trajectories do remain flat.

Do we see things that are creating additional challenges to our community?

We want to be nimble and flexible as we deploy these dollars underneath that framework and with that connectivity with the community.

So there's two primary drivers about getting these dollars out the door.

I think if you've heard anyone talk about the bond package, there was no moment where a large amount of cash dropped into a bank account that we are now able to deploy.

What the voters gave us in November was the authority to sell bonds.

And we do that in conjunction with partnership with Department of Finance in the city, but also the city auditor and understanding what is our capacity for bond sales, and that's balanced against some of the other critical infrastructure like roadways and making sure our utility infrastructure is where it needs to be.

Those are ongoing and annual conversations about how best to utilize the capacity we have.

We've had a really robust engagement with our teams around those bond sales, and to date we've generally been looking at around $50 million a year that we've been able to sell and deploy in those dollars.

So we're looking, or at least for the $200 million bond package, where we're able to deploy those dollars again on that annual basis.

So the top, we identify the needs.

That was an activity that we went through last summer with a lot of our housing partners really asking questions of we've deployed a lot of these dollars on the two on the both the 2019 and the 2022 bond package.

What are the impacts?

What are you seeing?

What are the additional challenges as we headed into that that vote with a with in November?

We were able to really identify, yes, of course, there's still an additional need.

What we really understood was that the way we were investing was certainly adding affordable units, but there were still additional strains on what people's choices were in this community.

So we'll talk a little bit about what we found during that process last summer.

Voters uh authorized the bond package.

We establish a broad framework.

We did this in 22 as well.

You saw that yesterday.

We talk about those kind of broad priorities, and they're based on where we see the housing market and where we see not only what we need, but also the opportunity of this really robust investment that the voters gave us.

While we can still continue to do a lot of the work we've been doing, we now have the capacity to truly look and see what else we could be doing to support much more, much broader and much more specific needs for the community.

At which point we establish the framework, and twice a year, our team in the housing division, which does an amazing job working with our partners on the housing provider side, they will issue a notice of funding opportunity twice a year.

And that historically we've coupled with other state and federal funding uh processes so that we can maximize the amount of dollars that we spend, right?

We have the what we're going through right now.

We're in the middle of the the notice of funding opportunity application process right now for what we call the 9% low-income housing tax credit process, and that aligns with where Ohio Housing Finance Agency is going to release their money.

So we would like to pair our dollars with those dollars.

I'll talk a little bit about why that impact is so important a little bit later on.

And then in the summer, we release another notice of funding opportunity aligned with Ohio Finance, Ohio uh housing finance agencies uh Ohio low-income housing tax credit process and their bond gap financing.

So again, trying to couple as many of those other public dollars in with our dollars so we can stretch them as far as possible, the goal being getting as many affordable units out into the community as possible.

At which point we issue commitment letters after, well, we do an initial underwriting and make sure the project is delivering what we expect around affordability.

Developer has the capacity to not only build what they say they're gonna operate and really provide the housing looking for for the community.

Uh we then include it in a capital budget that we put before councils for passage.

We do that on the annual basis, then we go into final project underwriting.

Again, I think the housing providers in this audience may be uh well aware of the strenuousness of that process.

We go through and we really want to make sure that not only can you build what our community needs, but the residents, the folks who are gonna be living in those units have high quality, good units under good management, that that's really part of affordability.

It's not just cheaper housing, but making sure that it's of a high quality and safe and stable and habitable.

We then enter into a housing development agreement, which we do in partnership with our with council, and then we finally get to the bond sale.

Once we've kind of aligned and said these are the projects that we have in the pipeline that are ready to be funded, we go and work with our partners at finance and the auditor's office to initiate that bond sale.

Again, historically they've been able to do that for us, and then we are able to come back to City Council for the actual funding allocation.

When we allocate that funding into the project, it comes in a series of draws over the course of the project.

We retain some amount of money until the very end so we can make sure that that developer is delivering what they promised.

And we do not follow through with the full funding until that commitment has been fully made.

So again, this slide is a little bit chaotic.

There's a lot to unpack there.

The headline being we, you know, it is a very complex process, and it is part of making sure that we are diligent with the dollars, making sure we're getting what we want out of it, and that it truly is a long-term affordable housing project that not only benefits the residents in that community, but also makes sure that it's a benefit to their neighborhood that they're moving into as well.

Um, so I can answer any questions on this later on.

I will not go much deeper into it.

Um, but as we've gone through those processes, again, we've had these bond dollars.

Initial uh allocation from the Columbus Voters was in 2019.

We have been deploying those dollars every year across time with partners in the community, again, really pairing them with those other public funding sources.

Uh allows us to stretch our dollars quite far.

It allows us to make sure that those affordability periods are met.

There's a lot of infrastructure that comes with those other dollars, it's very helpful to us.

To date, we have more than 6,000 income restricted and protected affordable housing units for those earning below the 80% AMI.

Back to that original diagram.

Again, we don't invest these dollars to meet those choice needs of those above 75,000.

They're really targeted for below that 80%.

We have 300 permanent affordable homeownership opportunities.

These are where we invest in not just the person to be able to get enter home ownership affordably, but that affordability stays with the property so the subsequent buyers also get to realize that affordability.

We have amazing homes in really high opportunity neighborhoods where the price point is affordable to those folks and allowing them entry into a place that they would otherwise be shut out of.

We've added nearly 700 units of permanent supportive housing.

This is the most challenging and difficult housing to bring into the community.

We need we need to make a capital investment, and that's what we do with the bond dollars along with some of our federal funding.

But we also have to be aware that they also need operating uh subsidies as well.

So building those deals is among the most complex.

But adding 700 units is really remarkable in making sure that we have those that housing for those folks that earn below 30% of the area median income.

We've also deployed more than $7 million in emergency and critical home repair for the existing low-income homeowners in our community.

So this is critical in emergency repair.

These are critical systems that make the house habitable.

Uh things like uh heat and making sure that they have water and just and we also have a roof program, things that will really make sure that that low-income homeowner, again, remains in that affordable unit, it is affordable for them, but it's also safe, stable, and habitable.

Um, as I mentioned before, we are pairing our dollars with these other public and private dollars that they bring in from other financing mechanisms.

And in just the rental alone, we've leveraged more than 1.4 billion dollars of investment in the community through the deployment of these dollars.

That is really impactful.

It takes that original 250.

We've spent about 200 million so far of the 250 that's been authorized.

We've stretched that into a 1.4 billion dollar investment.

That's extremely meaningful and allows us to expand the number of units that we get to market, but also make sure that we are being diligent and responsible with the funding that we have.

65% of the projects we funded are open.

Again, when you think back to that pipeline I showed earlier, we have a lot of projects that entered pipeline a number of years ago.

They now have residents living in them.

We also have projects that are still making their way through the pipeline under construction or about ready to get to welcome their residents.

And about 78% of the projects are new construction.

We have been investing also in making sure that we're shoring up that additional that existing affordability in our community, extending those affordability periods for places that were invested in years ago and making sure that those stay in the community.

So going back to the beginning part of the slide I showed earlier and identifying the ongoing needs.

This was the conversation that we were able to have last summer ahead of the bond package, working with a lot of our partners, not just those delivering housing, but also making sure we were talking to those serving those experiencing a housing crisis.

What were those folks seeing?

What were what were the pressure points?

What were the opportunities, knowing that if we were going for the 500 million, we could continue to do what we've been doing, right?

That really diligent work of making sure that we're pairing our dollars with those other funding sources, getting those affordable units, but also having an incredible amount of capacity to expand that.

None of those bullet points I think will be surprising to anyone in this room.

I think we know that we've got rising housing costs that continue to pressure our low and middle income families.

When I talk about some of those big numbers and the trajectories kind of starting to level off, that's really for the whole city.

We know that each different group of folks in our community are experiencing that very differently.

We also identified there's a mismatch between the location of affordable housing and where we find opportunities like jobs, education, amenities, services, and even the upcoming civic infrastructure like Link Us.

How do we pair those together so that accessibility to affordability is available throughout the city?

Again, we talked about high the high cost of construction.

We know there are limitations on other dollars, those other dollars.

As we continue to monitor what happens at the state and federal level, we'll continue to make sure that we have an ability to adjust as those other funding streams may fluctuate over the coming years.

And then we certainly know that there's operating constraints.

I mean, again, as we think about new construction, that's something that we've we can use the capital dollars for, but we need to be mindful about how do we build housing that's also really efficient to operate.

So those rents don't have to go up to make sure that they can continue to pay their insurance and keep the lights on.

And so those were a lot of what we heard last summer and led to what is a very, very, as council member Ross mentioned, a very broad framework of kind of the opening understanding of our priorities around how we expend the dollars.

And so the the first one will be to continue to invest in affordable housing.

Again, the way we've been investing with partners, making sure that those units come online at a very quick clip every year.

We're continuing to open doors, we're continuing to add those apartments, not just in rentals for those earning between 30 and 80 percent, but also for the folks who are interested in affordable homeownership and then continuing uh to work with our partners to deliver the permanent supportive housing that we know we need in our community.

And this is where we start to see some opportunities beyond what the way we've invested, and that's why this important conversation is coming at the perfect time for us to be able to talk about these other three buckets.

When we talk to partners, as we have these conversations out in the community, we know that housing stability is a significant challenge.

Oh, you're good, you're good.

Um I know this this continues to be a uh yeah.

Um we know that housing stability is a really uh significant challenge.

And as I mentioned, part of serving those most vulnerable, those folks earning below those households earning below 35,000, is it does not historically it's not just about the capital investment, but it's also about that operating expenses and making sure that we can keep those places in good shape.

We know that there are ways to invest our capital dollars to support housing stability.

We know that the comprehensive shelter system that we have today doesn't really reflect the challenge of homelessness that our our residents face, and we want to make sure that we're aligning it with the needs.

We have really amazing partners.

Um kind of looked at emergency shelter as one component of our infrastructure and housing as a separate one, and we'll talk a little bit about the kind of interstitial space between what does it look like to not need emergency shelter but also not be ready for permanent housing and how do we fill that gap?

And these dollars are really something that can help us be more surgical and really responsive to the needs of that population.

We will continue to invest in our low-income homeowners.

We want to make sure that they can stay in their homes and again they're safe and stable.

And we will continue to invest in that permanent supportive housing for our very low-income households.

We want to invest in access to opportunity.

As I mentioned, one of the things that was really identified was that spatial mismatch between where affordability is and where opportunity is.

We know that it's extremely challenging to even identify land right now, right?

To be able to go out and do an affordable project and be able to purchase land in high opportunity areas is very expensive, and it's highly competitive.

And so, how do we show up in that space to say that we want to do that strategic acquisition aligned with these civic investments so that we can make sure that there's affordability aligned with those big investments and that access to opportunity is not just for our highest earners, but available to everyone in our community.

And then finally, we know that we can continue to deploy these bond dollars.

However, we also know there's not been enough innovation or disruption in the housing space in construction, management, typology, diversity of housing types.

We want to make sure that we set aside resources so that we can start to work on some innovation and think about how do we build things better, how do we build it faster?

How do we use these dollars to spur some of those conversations?

How do we look at different financing options so that we can make that financing piece less expensive too?

Because that gets passed along to our residents as well.

And that'll be a space where we really think differently and and are able to sort of supercharge some of those ideas that folks have.

Again, this is a framework very high level.

It's based on what we have heard from community members.

It is meant to be the opening of this conversation.

Each one of these pieces, as you can see from the even the bullet points that I have on the slides, lack a good deal of specificity.

And that is really where we get to have the conversations over the next few years as we deploy those the bond dollars across time, as we continue to figure out what that pipeline looks like, um, that will be the opportunity for this conversation.

And so I'm very excited.

I think the one more slide.

I always I, you know, this is a slide I always like to end with.

The bond dollars are really critically important.

Um however, they have to be part of a larger strategy, and we have to be thinking about continuing to keep our foot on the gas of adding units, right?

Continue the efforts through zone in, continue to make sure that we're unlocking housing where people want to live and expanding those opportunities, expanding that choice, relieving the displacement pressure, really making sure that we're managing that overall housing infrastructure as we grow.

We need to support families to stay housed.

This is a really critical part.

It is the best way to address homelessness is to prevent a family from becoming homeless.

In the spring of last year, we stood up the division of housing stability in the city.

We now have a team that is dedicated every day to showing up to making sure that through a locally funded uh rental assistance program, we can keep people in their homes.

We can keep people uh housed through the uh programs and the and the impactful tenant uh protections that councils uh passed over the last couple of years.

All of these things help support those families to just stay housed.

Um we don't want you to end up in crisis, we want you to stay housed.

Um we need to have that homelessness response system that meets the needs of families who lose their housing so that it is it is short, it is decent, and it is um not traumatic that we're not adding to the challenges of your family, but giving you a place that we can get you back on your feet quickly.

And then finally, when we talk about affordability, it's the question I get most often what do you mean by affordability?

And and the answer I have to give is I don't want you paying more than 30% of your income on your housing.

Um it's not a great number, it's not uh uh ideal number, but we know that crossing that threshold is when you start to see that instability.

And so when we talk about that 30 percent, the key that we also have to remember is it's a fraction.

And part of it is your housing costs, and the other c the other part of that fraction is what you bring home in your paycheck.

And so we have to make sure that we're also balancing to make sure that folks have access opportunities, education, uh, upskilling, workforce, all of those different components to make sure that we don't want you paying more than 30 percent, and that is partially by driving down the cost of housing, but also making sure we're making we're also addressing the wage issue as well.

So I want to always say the bond is part of the strategy.

Um it is a really critical and amazing part.

I will tell you, I spend a lot of time looking around the country at what other cities are doing.

About a dozen other cities around the country have initiated this level, this kind of bond, um, and the ability to invest in our housing infrastructure.

Among those, not many have even gone back to their voters after their initial bond package.

Um we don't see a significant number of units as we've been able to deliver in the other communities.

Um we have an incredible team in the housing division that is working hard every day to with our partners in the affordable housing space to get these units under construction built and occupied.

Um I'm really proud of the team.

I'm proud of our city for stepping up in a way that I just I can't find any other evidence around the country of another city that has stepped up prior to there being just an absolute dire crisis, right?

We all acknowledge that the minute our most vulnerable started to feel that pressure, we were gonna act.

And over the last five, six, seven years, we've been diligently showing up together.

And so really excited about this conversation and the ongoing opportunity to to work with partners at council, partners in our in our uh housing provider community, advocates, and certainly the community members.

So obviously I will be here for questions, um, but just wanted to at least give a level set on where where the bond dollars have gone today, what's our process, and kind of how are we thinking about um the next few years as we develop the the as we deploy those additional dollars.

So I appreciate it, Chair Ross.

I will hand it back over to you.

I'm actually handing it back to you, Council President Hard.

Well, thank you so much uh to Director uh Prosser.

That was uh in-depth, and as folks could hear a lot goes into uh the housing bond package and how they are uh how it is dispersed, but even what it is, and when uh Chair Ross and I talked about this hearing a lot, it was how can we also educate folks along the way?

Uh slow it down.

She leaned over at one point like this seems like a lot, but we could actually do another hour just on the housing bond of what it is.

So actually we will.

That's what she said.

We're gonna do another hearing just on this housing bond, what it is.

Uh and so um, so thank you for uh being uh going in depth.

Uh one of the questions that I I have, Aaron, is around the transparency of the process.

Uh how how this was something that we heard uh over and over again.

It's something actually that first was peaked to me from our former colleague, Councilmember Beatty, uh, who was uh is a housing builder and he said, you know, there's not not a place where I can go online and just see this is the criteria, this is how you get it, and and this is how you how one would go about um accessing it.

I'm looking out in the crowd, I see um folks here who are uh emerging developers.

How are we leveling the playing field so that as we have this historic opportunity in front of us that we are making sure that folks understand the process for how um they can partner with us?

Absolutely, and I think again the the complexity, I don't want to overstate because there is also a tremendous amount of opportunity uh, especially with this historic investment to expand and make a much bigger table.

Um as we were um initially looking at how we would deploy these bond dollars and the incredible need for affordable housing that we really had at the beginning.

We really focused in again on how could we pair it with those other public funding processes.

So we do have those two notice of funding opportunities that go out twice a year really built into the existing um structure that we had.

And I think it worked really well.

I mean, I think again, we've we've built more units.

There are more families with roofs over their heads today than any other city I can find.

And I think that was really meaningful to kind of really supercharge that system, make sure we get those units online.

The benefit and the opportunity of the 500 million is we can keep doing that, and we can keep working with those partners to get those affordable housing online, but also expand to have a much broader conversation and expand what the purpose of these bonds are, and part of it is to who's who is the developing, who is at the table, how do we use these to support those.

We are our team spends a lot of time in that what we call the underwriting phase, which is partially to also make sure the deal can be delivered.

And we've gone through process in the past where we've gone through with folks where we just can't get to that point of of getting to funding.

We keep doing that work with folks and we keep showing up.

There's a lot to learn to engage in this space.

We are ready to um we have a team that we actually have two new team members that are starting on Tuesday, and we're very excited.

Um so we are building out the team to to really absorb that 500 million and give that staff capacity so that there is a lot more of that um transparency, opportunity, clarity around what that looks like.

Um that'll really be what we build out this year.

We will be hiring a new housing administrator that will be coming online this year to also build out that capacity just and that's part of what we charge that new leader with as well to make sure that as we look.

This is now part of how we do business.

Right?

The first 2019 bond was really um did this did was this impactful?

I think there were questions initially as to whether or not we could even sell the bonds.

There was there was a lot of questions at the beginning.

Um when we got to 2022 and we really got to understand how best to deploy these dollars to get those units built.

We are at a space now where we really do have an in-depth understanding of how we're gonna deploy those dollars and being able to really expand that table and bring more folks in.

A couple follow-ups to that, and we have 50, 11,000 speakers.

So I'm gonna try to be very brief to give speakers time to speak.

But council president talked about notices of opportunity when they go out.

Are notices of opportunity, do they go out every time the city itself has dollars to deploy, or is this a different jurisdiction that the city is working with, and is the city kind of stuck on their timeline?

A little bit of both.

So we do there are two notice of opportunities that go out.

One is around late December, um, and again, it's aligned with that 9% low-income housing tax credit process.

That is really the the place where we get the most bang for the buck because those are the most valuable of the federal funding.

Um so it is typically where we see our permanent supportive housing partners show up in that space, and it allows us to really maximize that.

And then in the summer, we pair it with the Ohio Housing Finance Agency issues there, Ohio low-income housing tax credit and bond gap financing.

We align our process there so that these the housing developers can utilize all those pots of money at the same time.

So we have a traditionally now we have we are this past summer, we was the first time that we opened it up so that you did not have to bring those other resources to your project in order to apply.

So that was an initial expansion.

We're looking at moving from the two application uh courses a year to four.

So again, when we get our staff on Tuesday, that will be something that that will move forward.

You answer my question about expanding the the application opportunities.

Who do those notices of opportunity go out to?

And if I was a developer that wanted to engage in this type of work or receive this type of funding, how do I get on whatever list that is?

Yes, so we do post the notice of funding opportunity, and then we do also keep a database of partners that have engaged with us, folks who are are delivered who have been partners with us in the deals in the past, but also anybody that's inquired, we will add those folks to the list, but it does get posted uh publicly as well.

What is publicly mean?

On our website.

Great.

All right.

So if someone wanted to get on that list, they go to the website.

Yes.

I think we have there's a rental, there's a web, there's an email address that people can sign up.

Um and then anybody that comes into any of our programs or any of our events, we everything gets gets signed up in there.

Very good.

You mentioned um capacity of the department to deploy a certain amount of dollars per year.

I want to walk back that timeline just a tad.

So obviously we don't have 500 million dollars today, correct?

At what point do you believe the city will be ready to sell kind of that first set of bonds?

Um, is that a one year from now, two years from now, and then as we prepare to do that, what are the critical milestones that the community should be aware of to look out for, and maybe that we can schedule some additional opportunities to talk to the community so that they can get prepared for those critical milestones.

Yes.

So historically, um the bond sales have been relatively annual and pretty predictable as we continue to experience some economic uncertainty.

Um the auditor has moved more to a fractured bond sale.

Um, so we're kind of reacting in real time as we're able to get those projects.

So, what I would imagine is as if let's let's assume we go to those four application periods.

As we build that pipeline, we're able then to communicate back with the finance department and with the auditor's office to say here's the pipeline.

The bond sale comes really kind of late after we've programmed a lot of that.

So this year will really be critical.

We won't be in a position to sell those bonds until we get into I I mean conservatively, I think, into 27.

We have deployed 200 million, we have capacity this year for another 50 million of the original allocation.

This will be building that pipeline towards that 500 million this year.

So this will be the year for a lot of those conversations.

I think we can continue to keep you posted, especially as we bring the new administrator on, um, what that schedule looks like and and being more front-facing about what that looks like.

Okay, last question for me, and I promise.

You said there were 50 million dollars, you still have capacity to deploy 50 million dollars from the 2022 250 million dollar bond.

Have commitments already been made for those 50 million dollars, or is there still an opportunity to access money from that bucket?

Those could we have commitments for those dollars again, and when you think about that timeline, I showed that lengthy um space.

We're kind of in the space now of that pipeline has been set.

Does it doesn't mean all those projects will come out of you know all the way through, but that'll be kind of where we are, and then we're looking now to build the pipeline for the next round.

And director picking up from there, as the city decides which uh projects to fund outside of feasibility, are there other criteria that are just are just basic set that you that we use to kind of narrow down to um to get even the letter of intent that we have out for the 50 million that we have going?

So there's three primary kind of basic ones that we look at.

One, you have to be able to deliver the affordability, and again, it's not just less expensive, but it's can you deliver the income restricted and protected units?

Um is there a mechanism by which we are ensuring that those affordable units are not only available on day one, but over the course of the affordability period as agreed upon.

Um the second, we're gonna ask you to demonstrate that you have the other financing, um, that you can bring those other dollars to the table that either through private financing, a lot of our partners are still getting debt from banks in order to what we refer to as the capital stack where they are putting a lot of different funding sources together.

We need you to demonstrate that you've aligned those other funding sources as well.

So we know you can ultimately build it.

Um, and then we're gonna look for your your capacity to do that construction and that operation.

Um, what we know is we want to build really high quality units, and so we're gonna do some vetting on whether or not that partner is able to bring those to bear.

Um, it's a little bit of a balance to make sure that you know we are doing that vetting in a way that also allows access for folks that may not have a lot of big projects, but we have a lot of partners like um this most recent funding around this past summer, we were able to make a commitment to Franklin Tonising, um, which is a very small partner that's really delivering uh amazing housing in Franklin, but also that workforce development piece that's really critical.

And so I think those are the ways we know that partner can deliver.

It doesn't mean that you have to be a big developer to demonstrate that.

Okay.

I'm already breaking promises.

I said one more question.

I really have two.

Okay.

One, from a priorities perspective, um when the department has dollars to deploy.

Uh we obviously know where some of our largest gaps are to build a healthy housing continuum, which is in that permit permanent supportive housing space, that deeply affordable housing, as we sit here in Pointexter Village talking about seniors being the um most the the largest uh portion of our community that is going into homelessness.

Are those units units that you prioritize in time?

As I'm just thinking about those are folks that are most vulnerable and don't necessarily have the time for us to wait, and so I'm hoping that if we are prioritizing in time based on the need in our community that we can do that, and is that something you're considering?

Yes.

And I the the caveat being that we are it really is truly a partnership with the housing developer.

Um they are stacking those other funding sources, so it's dependent on whether or not those other funding sources are available to support those units.

Um when we think about permanent supportive housing, they have to be able to demonstrate that they can also do the operating subsidy as well.

Um so it's a little bit of a back and forth in that we have priorities, but we're also reacting to what the other what the what folks can bring to us to help fill those.

So it is an ongoing partnership as well.

Okay.

Thank you.

I just wanted to say um, Aaron, if you could also just level set uh because for folks here, when we say bond, right?

That means capital, uh, which is hard infrastructure.

And so one of the barriers I think too for uh smaller or emerging developers is that when we hear these big numbers, we just see dollar signs.

Uh but because these are uh bond dollars and capital, they're restricted in what they can and cannot be used for.

So can you just talk a little bit about why some of the other financing is so important and what our dollars typically go to in a project and what they can't go to?

Correct.

So the the bond is um has some some restrictions around what it can be spent on, and we it broadly speaking as it has to be a permanent investment, right?

So it has to be something that um lives on after after that investment, and I think you know those are the spaces that um we can enter in a way that is really meaningful, but there's also all these other ancillary pieces to that development.

Um so they're gonna be looking to stack a lot of different capital.

I think one of the opportunities for the 500 million when you look at that innovation bucket is can we use them in more creative ways around that financing piece?

I think we are extremely open to looking to figuring out what that looks like.

It's an unclear path at this point, but it's certainly something that we should be exploring to understand how does it become something that can enter a project a little bit differently.

Uh, but it is it is the straightforward capital cash that can go into a project.

We're very careful as we enter projects not to create other challenges with other financing.

Um so one example would be our our uh partners in permanent supportive housing where uh because of the other funding they have, they there's questions around things like eligible basis and some of these other weirdly technical things that we're trying to find a way to insert ourselves really surgically so that we are not making it more difficult for them to get the other financing, and that we're really showing up in the most um delicate way possible so that those units get built.

Um, and that's really where that that opportunity is with the 500 million two to expand.

Are there other ways we could be showing up?

Thank you.

Thank you so much, uh Director Fosser for uh the presentation and for answering questions today.

One of the things that we're really excited about at council is making sure that we have these types of um uh community engagement opportunities so folks can, as Councilman Brankson really understand uh this package and understand the opportunities that uh it may bring.

So thank you so much.

Thank you for your leadership.

Uh next, I want to welcome Paul Williams.

Paul is the executive director of the Center for Public Enterprise, and Paul is a national expert on models of public funding for innovative housing development to grow housing production.

Uh, the way Columbus has historically invested bond dollars is last dollar uh in to fill gaps when they can't make the math work for affordable housing.

But there are new models emerging in places like Montgomery County, uh Maryland, Atlanta, Chicago, Chattanooga, and others where cities and counties instead invest early and up front in the project and get actual equity back.

And it creates a revolving fund that helps uh the dollars get used over and over again.

Uh just this last Monday, City Council entered into a technical assistant agreement with Paul and his team to see how he could uh help how we could potentially replicate some of these types of programs.

So we want to welcome Paul Williams to our hearing Paul, are you muted?

Paul, are you muted?

Can you hear me now?

We can.

I've never seen this little floating call thing before.

No, it it gave me the option, showed me floating in front of the screen, and I checked the box.

So maybe we're going to try it.

Hi everybody.

Nice to see some familiar faces.

My name is Paul Williams.

I'm the executive director of Center for Public Enterprise.

We're a nonprofit organization and think tank.

And we also do a lot of work directly with state housing finance agencies, housing authorities, and municipalities and states across the country, helping them efficiently and effectively use their limited resources to facilitate more affordable housing production.

So I'm going to share some slides and a little bit of information about what kind of what drives the solutions that we're interested in, you know, what constraints cities and states are under, and what the kind of emerging best practices are for efficiently using new capital dollars to get as much new affordable housing supply online as quickly as possible.

So I'm going to just jump right into it.

So right here you can see today's really number one big constraint for affordable housing production.

And this is a nationwide issue.

And actually, to Deputy Director Um Prosser's point about Columbus is in a really nice position of start of addressing this problem before it gets before it gets even worse.

So this chart is showing how much of the tax exempt bond authority that states have for affordable housing production gets used every year.

So the states that are dark colored on this map are states where they are oversubscribed, right?

So they may have $1 billion of tax exempt bond authority, and they may have two, three, four billion dollars worth of projects coming and applying to them every year for resources, right?

And so you can think of uh you know the agencies, you have you know certain number of slots of projects that you're able to do in each round of funding, but you have two, three, four times as many projects waiting in line out the door.

Um and uh Ohio is not quite there yet, right?

Ohio is what's considered at parity, uh meaning it's roughly one to one, right?

So the amount of uh resources available um for the tax exempt bond program are roughly in line with the number of applications that come in um each year.

Um but this is a problem that you know more and more states are going uh going into oversubscribed every year.

So it's a growing uh challenge that the states face.

And then here's another issue that's that's a little bit separate from that, but kind of paints a picture of where um housing production is at in uh across the country generally.

So what this chart is showing is um the number of uh multifamily, you know, apartment housing units um um that get authorized or get permitted um but don't actually start construction.

Um and so you know, for about 20, 25 years, you see it's you know pretty flat, right?

You know, it's all kind of in this 50 to 70,000 units per year range.

And then um over the past five years, it really spiked up significantly.

Um and part of this was due to interest rates going up, inflation causing construction costs, materials and labor, all of these prices to go up, made a lot of projects that were otherwise viable and and needed in in communities like Columbus, uh, made them unviable from a kind of financing perspective.

So, what this really shows is that there's an opportunity for cities and states um uh to find these kind of stalled projects and unstick them uh uh with you know really uh efficient uses of resources uh to get that housing bill.

Um so now I'm gonna talk a little bit about you know, those are two of the problems, right?

We have you know limited availability of these kind of scarce federal resources that do the bulk of our deeply affordable housing production, and then we also have challenges in the market with interest rates, uh construction cost inflation, uh, and and those sorts of things.

So uh there are a number of states across the country that have uh in the past couple of years stood up what they're calling um housing acceleration funds or production funds that are really focused on doing mixed and middle income um housing development without using those scarce federal resources that we normally pair with uh to get our affordable housing production done.

And so New York State, where I live now, although I am a Columbusite, I grew up in Columbus.

I went to Clinton Elementary, but I do live in New York now.

New York State Housing Finance Agency created the acceleration fund.

Michigan State Housing Development Authority created their accelerator fund.

Massachusetts housing finance agency created a program called Momentum Fund, which is part of the build.

So you can kind of see a theme emerging from these housing agencies that they really want to, you know, they see this backlog of projects both in their affordable pipeline and the market pipeline, and they really want to find tools that can help accelerate that production.

So they're going with this kind of theme of speed.

And then there's also a lot of programs like this, very similar that are emerging at the local municipal level.

So in Montgomery County, Maryland, just north of Washington, DC, they created a tool like this, the Housing Production Fund about five years ago.

I'll talk a little bit more about that.

Atlanta followed soon after them with uh uh uh tool called the Atlanta Urban Development Corporation, kind of a municipal subsidiary.

Um, and then the city of Chicago did something similar um last year with their residential investment fund.

And all these programs are really structured in a very similar way.

Um, and as I said, and I'll get into focused on getting mixed income and middle income production above and beyond what we're already doing with our uh you know scarce federal resources.

Um here is a uh a little bit of a demonstration of the kind of uh capital stack that's used in in these types of projects.

So there's a couple of differences, but I I'm gonna focus on the on the one on the left uh today.

This is the kind of structure that Michigan's uh housing agency and New York's housing agency are using for this program.

Um so you see here um on the left on the construction side, you know, normally when you do a new construction project that's um that's market rate, there's a really significant portion of the capital stack that that comes from debt.

Um and then the rest of that project, uh, you know, a lot of times it's you know 60, maybe 70%.

And then the remainder uh typically will come from an equity investment.

And that equity investment can be um particularly expensive and hard to find for developers.

Um what these uh housing agencies, cities and states have identified is um they can use their capital as a revolving loan that is kind of uh first capital in rather than kind of the last grant dollar in the door.

Um and that revolving loan can displace the need for additional um equity in the project and um allow that project to get through construction and get through lease up and stabilization at a much lower capital cost.

Um and then once that project is built and stabilized, that revolving loan that you put in, it's a kind of a smaller portion of the capital stack, can actually come back out back into your revolving fund and can be redeployed to another project that's waiting in line.

So you know, to talk a little bit more about that, this is really one of the key features that I think is um one of the most valuable things about this uh for a uh city with um limited resources is this is a use that allows you to take one chunk of your resources, set it aside, and it can revolve in perpetuity and not need to be replenished, right?

So uh, you know, to give an example uh in Montgomery County, Maryland, they created uh first of a $50 million revolving loan fund.

And over the course of a couple of years, they made two loans out of that fund into large multifamily projects, you know, uh I think about 900 units worth of um uh housing production.

Those projects are now completed and leased up.

That money has come back into the fund, and now this year it's going out to new projects already.

Um, and then those projects will get built, and that revolving money will come back again, and then it will go into another project in a couple of years.

And so um the value there is that you know it's a one-time capitalization that you can uh kind of rinse and repeat.

So here is one of these are the two first projects that I just mentioned, actually.

Um the the to give you an example of the um type of thing that's being built and the affordability that they're able to put into these projects um uh without federal resources um to kind of demonstrate that.

So the laureate at Shady Grove, this is in Montgomery County, Maryland.

Um the story with this project is I think really interesting and and you know, I think there are going to be some opportunities similar to this in Columbus.

This project was uh initiated by a private developer and was originally going to be just a market rate, uh, 100% private market rate project.

However, the developer of that project, because of um um construction costs rising and interest rates, was unable to get financing um uh uh to complete that project so that you know they were ready to build shovel ready and titled um uh but just couldn't get the um you know any of the investment that they needed.

The housing opportunities commission came to them with this new housing production fund that they had and said, I can be a co-investor in this project with you.

I have my revolving fund and I'm gonna do this as a joint venture with you.

And the outcome that I want um, you know, to use my investment to get is I want to maximize the amount of affordability that that pencils without long you know, without uh federal subsidy, right?

I already spent all my federal subsidy for the year.

And what I want to do is find out how much affordability can I get without any of that.

And um uh so they built this project, it's about 270 units, and about 90 of those units uh of housing um are in the 50 to 60 percent AMI range, um, which uh you know for um the affordable housing uh wonks in the room.

That's about one to one and a half uh you know conventional low-income housing tax credit deals worth of um affordable homes uh in a property, and they didn't spend a dollar of low-income housing tax credits, they didn't spend a dollar of tax exempt bonds, didn't spend a dollar of vouchers, not because there's anything wrong with those resources, but because they'd already spent all of those resources for the year, right?

This was all in addition to that.

Um so they were you know thrilled with this project, obviously.

Uh the next one, Hillendale Gateway is another uh project nearby, uh also in the county.

Uh it was the second one using this housing production fund.

Um and it's actually two buildings on on one site, and it's actually much larger.

Um, and that one is finishing construction now and should open up to tenants um uh this summer.

So it's really exciting to see that moving along.

Um, and I'll give one more you know municipal example.

Um the city of Atlanta uh pretty soon after Montgomery County created their program, the city of Atlanta.

Uh, we worked with them to create a uh very similar kind of copycat program.

Um they established a um something called the Atlanta Urban Development Corporation, which is a partnership actually with the housing authority in Atlanta.

And um uh they gave the Atlanta Urban Development Corporation similarly a revolving fund.

Um, and again, you know, one-time capitalization of these dollars, and they'll revolve and allow this entity to you know continue producing this kind of mixed income housing um uh uh into the future.

And what they're really focusing on uh in Atlanta is is um using this tool uh to put new mixed income housing on publicly owned parcels that they have.

So they did a big study where they found all of these kind of underutilized public parcels um that should be activated for development.

And so you see this this one on the left is a they have a single-story fire station on a on a um you know somewhat larger parking lot um in in the middle of midtown Atlanta.

Um the fire station needed a rebuild, and they said, you know what, why don't we rebuild this fire station and put um and put a couple hundred homes um on top of that, uh a couple hundred mixed income homes on top of that new fire station.

Um just to give um another uh glimpse of of kind of the sizing of these funds around the country.

Um there's a lot of different sizes of municipalities that have um created a tool like this.

Chattanooga, Tennessee, uh obviously a much smaller city, they created a uh 20 million dollar revolving fund um uh to do these kinds of projects and created a municipal entity to kind of manage the the program called Invest Chattanooga, Atlanta, a little bit bigger, about 40 million.

Uh and then there's a couple of these state level programs.

Um and then there's a big city like Chicago with a much larger fund.

Um so I'm gonna leave it there and then open it up to questions.

Um and you know, looking forward to uh hearing what folks uh have to say.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Paul.

Can you hear us?

I'm gonna make sure as we uh open it up for questions.

And we still have about three more uh presenters to go.

So I think we'll just all ask one question, maybe.

Um darn, I have to.

Um guess how long and what are cities seeing in terms of the maturation of these projects where funds are coming back in to uh the revolving fund.

Uh do are these programs um old enough in cities where we're actually starting to see um uh the revolving fund uh uh in action.

Yep.

Um so in you know that first Montgomery County project I showed you, um uh the laureate that project was leased up in 2023.

Um and about a year after it leased up, those revolving fund dollars came back into the housing production fund, uh they you know secured permanent financing, that money came back in, and it is now being redeployed to second project.

Um actually uh they're building another uh building right next door to that same site.

Um this one even larger, about 400 homes.

Um so you know, the revolution is in action with these funds.

Um, you know, one thing I'll note on that, you know, there's a little bit of a difference in in timing depending on the market, the size of the project, um, the lease up timeline.

There's a lot of different factors.

And so um uh, you know, in places like New York City, where the construction timeline um itself might be three years, three years plus, um, you know, you're gonna be leaning more towards five years of uh needed for the funds to evolve, right?

Because you need to build the project, and then you have um, you know, maybe a year to fully lease up and then maybe a year to secure permanent financing, uh, and then the funds revolve.

Um whereas if you're doing a smaller project that's maybe you know 75 units in in uh suburban Michigan outside of Detroit, um your construction timeline is not going to be three years, right?

It might be 18 months, um, and your lease up might um you know might be another 12 months.

And so a three-year uh revolve is going to be much more feasible for a project like that.

And that's what you know, Michigan State Housing Development Authority is targeting um uh for their fund.

We have a question.

Thank you, Paul.

Um, can you talk about so this particular type of partnership feels more like an equity partnership, which is something different than what you would see generally from a municipality, generally we're coming in as kind of gap fillers.

To me, that means there's an additional risk that the city takes on to participate in this type of model.

Can you let me know how like other cities have tried to mitigate that risk or counter for that risk?

Have there been any projects where increased risk has negatively affected the municipality and how um how we kind of work through that?

Great question.

Um yeah, so you know, the way that I think about this is um when we put grant dollars um into a project, um, we're also taking risk.

Um, right, that you know, when we're putting grant dollars or or soft debt into a project, we have you know very little prospect of repayment, right?

That money is going into that project and it's staying in that project forever.

Um and so when you structure an investment like this, um, you know, you are taking risk, right?

You're you're you know, partnering in a uh in a project, you're you know, adding um, you know, providing this kind of subordinate loan um or preferred equity or some other type of vehicle.

Um, but in this case, you are uh also participating in the you you do have a prospect of repayment, right?

These projects are going to repay that loan on a on a you know three-year or five-year term.

Um, you may have uh uh risk of um non-repayment or default.

Um, but typically when we put grants into projects, we have a 100% risk of of non-repayment.

Um so you know, the way I look at it is this is a um this is an improvement on that type of risk.

Um and I think that's the way that the housing finance agencies uh view the program too.

Um they're able to um uh they're able to activate development and create additional supply um you know on top of their scarce federal resources just by making a loan that has a strong prospect of repayment.

Um and they're you know they've been very happy to do that from a risk perspective.

Council?

Yeah, Paul, I have really more of a technical question on that revolving loan piece.

What is I and I'm guessing is that interest rate on that revolving loan lower than what one would find?

And then if that be the case, then what is the mechanism in place that makes that developer seek that permanent funding if in fact the permanent funding would have a higher interest rate?

Yeah, great question.

So um so the way to think about this is think about a market rate, a pure private market rate development.

So if I'm a market rate developer, I want to do a project that's you know a hundred million dollars.

I'm gonna go to a bank and ask them for a construction loan.

And if they like my project and it looks like it pencils, they might give me 60, 65 percent loan to cost, you know, 65 million dollar check.

Um, but I have a hundred million dollar project, so I need to go find you know 35, 40 million you know, additional dollars.

Most of the time, what you're gonna have to do is go to equity investors who are gonna um you want to look at your project and they're gonna want to see 12, 15, 18 percent um return prospect on a seven, nine year timeline, um, or they're not gonna cut you a check.

And so what this revolving capital is really doing is saying um wow, raising you know 35% of your costs or 35 million for a hundred million dollar project um from an equity source like that can be really challenging in a market um where you have a high supply need, but you don't have these like you know, where you don't have New York City rents.

And um, so if you can uh create a you know this kind of subordinate construction piece um in between the senior financing and the equity and call it you know uh 20, 25 percent of the capital stack, then the amount of equity that you need to raise for the project um um is is much lower.

Uh and um and that means the amount of you know uh return that it needs to generate to that equity investor um does not need to be so significant.

And then to your question about um and the way you do that is you you have that um uh subordinate construction financing um at an interest rate that's more comparable to your debt financing interest rate.

Um and then to your question about uh who's coming in for the permanent financing.

So once you when you want to revolve that investment, right, you need to um uh you want to pull it out and you need to put some uh investment in its place in the project.

Once the project is built and leased up and stabilized and performing, um it's much easier to find that mezzanine financing to come in in its place because all the you know um the reason that the interest rate is higher for the equity investor at the beginning is because they want to get paid for the um construction and lease up risk, right?

Once you're built and leased up, that risk is no longer there, and it's much easier to find that mezzanine capital to come in in its place for the for the perm phase.

That answer your question.

Yeah, yeah, it does.

Thank you.

Aaron, do you have a question?

Oh, well, thank you so much, Paul.

Uh, as we talked about, and even yesterday the administration, the mayor talked about an innovation uh component.

Um innovation is about doing things that we have not done before.

We have not done or seen uh a model like this in this market yet, and just appreciate um the city's willingness to look at this model but others as well uh to to bring more housing uh uh onto the market uh as soon as possible.

So thank you so much, sir.

My pleasure.

Talk to you all soon.

I am trying to uh continue to move us along in a timely manner.

We had uh a portion where we had five uh we wanted to go over the responses of council survey.

We like I say received over 500 responses to uh that survey.

Jessica, do you want to do just the top lines of what you heard or Stanley?

Just the top lines of the top two or three things that we heard so that we can get to.

Next up will be Carly Booz with the Affordable Housing Alliance.

Thank you, Council President.

Yes, as you mentioned, we conducted a survey over January and February to understand public feedback from the larger public on the affordable housing bond.

We got over 500 responses, primarily from residents, also local community and neighborhood leaders, some nonprofit and housing advocates.

And this survey was analyzed by our legislative research office, so Dr.

Katie Fallon.

And what we saw kind of the top line was that more than a third would like to see a focus on more deeply affordable housing options in a quarter wanted to focus on high utility costs and growing homelessness.

Overall, we saw a large focus on the high and increasing costs of all housing types.

And what we also saw was about 70% wanted to see housing that is close to transit and amenities.

And we also saw folks wanted to see a greater focus on, like I mentioned, the very deep, deeply affordable housing options.

So those were kind of the high-level responses, but this is also something we can we can share later on the analysis of the survey.

So we need policy somewhere as well.

Yes, we can post it, and we also have a one-pager that I'm able to share with stakeholders so that they can see kind of a breakdown of all the different survey responses from, like I said, over 500 uh residents.

Thank you so much.

Next up, we're gonna have Carly Booz from the Affordable Housing Alliance of Central Ohio come up.

Uh and uh brief us, thank you, and welcome.

Well, thank you, and good evening, uh Council President Harden, Chair uh Ross, and uh Councilmember.

I want to thank you all for hosting this evening's conversation and for inviting the alliance to participate.

Um as we've said before, these bonds are a really essential tool to protect and expand affordability.

From AHACO's perspective, any deployment which is informed by public engagement, backed by research, and which meaningfully advances affordability for lower earning households is a good one.

Uh with that said, we are always really conscious to note that bonds are just one tool and that they are really most powerful when they're acting in concert with other strategies to meet a whole range of really diverse housing needs that are present in our community.

Conversations like tonight let us understand what those underlying pressures are that our neighborhoods are facing and how they impact people on the ground so that we can build these kind of multi-faceted solutions around them.

Um tonight I'm gonna use our testimony and a few moments of your time to illustrate what some of those are bigger picture challenges are.

These are illustrative, it's certainly not exhaustive.

Sorry.

Uh if you couldn't hear anything I said, just pick up.

We're good.

So I think we're gonna talk just very briefly about some of the challenges that we are facing, these holistic issues that our our community has in front of us, which are certainly challenges, but they're often intertwined with opportunities.

It's always two sides of a coin.

Uh and these are likely issues that require not just bond financing, but operational support, public policy change, and community partnerships to really be able to tackle them.

Uh and with such a great list of speakers that are coming after me.

I think it's fun for me to be able to play that wide angle lens a bit for you.

Uh so one of these challenges that we have in front of us is the advantages that we are expected to gain through the link us transportation investment, balanced by and juxtaposed against the risk of gentrification that come along these transportation corridors.

Columbus's use of bond funds to secure land and to build affordability in those areas is a really smart way to reduce displacement risk and protect our existing residents.

Delivering equitable transit-oriented design as that strategy is envisioning also requires nimble and responsive land use laws, which zone in is poised to deliver, addressing things like strip mall revitalization, the demand for walkable neighborhoods and live work play neighborhoods, and the demand for duplexes and other more naturally affordable housing styles.

Moreover, CODA's ETOD action plan articulates other goals like strengthening community development corporations with predictable funding, evaluating the right of first refusal laws that can help renters achieve home ownership, and allowing accessory dwelling units throughout the corridors, which Bexley, uh the City of Columbus and Whitehall have already moved to do.

Columbus uh separately uh from Link Us is also assessing how we can nurture healthy human sector services such as affordable housing and how that can be integrated with things like senior services, child care, economic mobility, and health care.

Bonds can create housing in amenity rich areas, which connect our people to these existing resources.

They can foster collaborations between housing and other mission driven partners, which can create new amenities that don't exist today, and bonds can help expand deep affordability, stabilizing our families and our young people upstream to avoid the need for more intensive services later.

Monday's Yigby ordinance uh is a really wonderful example of how adding process efficiencies to this bond toolkit can help our grassroots organizations take a more active role in neighborhood development.

By further adding pro bono legal services and pre-development support, our faith and nonprofit-led housing projects can really flourish.

Once again, zone in can play an instrumental role in this conversation.

Converting exclusionary zoning into mixed use spaces allows these trusted social service providers to co-locate with the clients they are trying to serve in holistically affordable communities.

And complementing all of these strategies are programs like Resiliency Bridge, which was documented to increase household income by 900% in less than a year.

The shallow subsidy program for our senior citizens, hosted by COAA, which reduced emergency room visits by 55% for households that were affected, and housing counseling, uh, where clients are 70% more likely to be able to resolve a mortgage delinquency and avoid foreclosure.

Finally, and most briefly, we are always constantly monitoring the step-up step back problem, where the creation or expansion of a resource stream subtly signals to other funders that they can reduce their role.

We want to be really purposeful about creating incentives that keep all of our stakeholders at the table so that we are expanding the pot of funding that is available and not just shuffling around responsibilities.

And this is something that Columbus is fantastically well positioned to be able to continue doing.

In closing, I just want to express our gratitude.

Uh most uh importantly, I think to the people of Columbus for putting housing as the top priority for us and giving us the ability to look at bonds and be creative with our funding strategies, but also to council and to the mayor's administration for allowing us to be part of that conversation, represent a segment of our community.

I really look forward to hearing the other ideas that come out tonight, and I'm happy to answer questions if I can.

Well, thank you so much for your presentation.

You are uh in AHACO is a long-time uh permanent partner with the city, and we're grateful for um uh all that you uh give to us uh uh in terms of housing support.

So thank you.

We have so many folks that we will that um there's so much information here that we want to get out to folks.

We also want to hear from residents.

So what we are going to do, and I ask for um uh a little grace uh from our presenters is take a few community members for a second, and then we'll hop back to our presenters and kind of do three or four uh community members and then uh hop back uh back and forth in between.

So with that, we're gonna go to uh community representative uh and just so that we can get through as many folks as possible who signed up, if we really could limit your testimony tonight to three minutes and uh and then open will open up for questions.

So the first speaker to come before council is Rob Lowenstein.

Rob, welcome to council.

And where are we taking Eric uh good evening?

Um I was I was not expecting to be called on so quickly, so there we go.

Um quickly.

Um I I I heard a few things today that were positive that I I'm glad to hear.

Um the main thing I wanted to try to get across was as somebody who's a practitioner in the field for like just about 50 years now.

We need to turn this money, if not all of it, then a lot of it, into what I would call a program.

Programs have rules, and they have I'm not saying the program hasn't had rules, but um the rules have to be ones that everyone understands.

So for example, if you're looking for gap financing, there should be a maximum that you can apply for, a maximum on a per unit basis.

There should be terms that are understandable and transparent.

So I I think having four rounds in a year, that sounds good because projects come up at various times.

The other thing though that I think is really important is I think we need to split the program off from so much of a tie to the Ohio Housing Finance Agency.

Um we've had mixed results with that over the years.

I worked with this program uh when I was doing consulting work for home port.

It's it's fine, it it except that we we really can't predict what projects are gonna get approved through competitive application rounds with OFA.

We might get one or two OLITEC projects in a year, and we might get a couple of nine percent ones, the nine percent ones for the most part don't require a ton of money, and the other projects that might get approved through OLITEC might require some assistance to make them feasible.

What we really have though is a backlog of larger projects that don't get competitive resources from OFA that people need to know if I that the City of Columbus could be my gap financing partner, and we're only gonna do a few of those in a year, but at least the ones that we do, people need to know that's a source I may be able to get and what its terms are.

The other thing I want to say real quick is just there are a lot of smaller projects, and I heard some things about that today that were encouraging.

I I just want to say we have a lot of developers in the city that can do smaller projects that are real.

I I see this in my role as zoning chair for the nearest dairy commission.

We have people come in who want to do a fourplex or eight units or something like that.

And if they could get access to some money from the City of Columbus, um they'd be able to make more that more affordable or some of the units they're doing fully affordable.

And we have a tremendous capacity to do that.

One last thing I want to say is don't overlook the need for housing that that aren't tax credit projects for people with special needs.

We have a tremendous backlog of need for people who are developmentally disabled and other populations that we don't provide anywhere near enough housing for in the city.

And so we just need to be flexible about what we're making this available for, not just the biggest developers, the biggest projects.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Lowenstein.

And uh you do the hard work of being a zoning chair.

So thank you.

Thank you, thank you.

So we're gonna take Stevie Pasamante, Amanda King, and Teshe Lee, and then we'll go back to uh our presenters uh and then go back and forth.

So Stevie's out okay, Amanda King.

Amanda, welcome.

Perfect.

Um great opportunity here tonight.

Um I'm Amida King with Spatialist.

I'm an affordable housing uh uh development consulting firm here in Columbus.

Um wear a lot of different hats.

One of my favorite ones is working with uh nonprofits who are getting into affordable housing development, working with emerging developers, minority developers.

Um, and so I'm here to advocate for using some housing on housing bond funds for these smaller neighborhood scale projects, uh, what we call missing middle housing, um, that is neighborhood scale, um, that's usually very easy to approve, uh, can be done on a couple of land bank lots or smaller lots, and they're a great scale of project to get um emerging and minority developers and contractors into this work and get projects funded for them.

Um so one of the neighborhood or one of the nonprofit organizations I work with um is called Motherful.

They serve a collective of over 1,200 single mothers here in Central Ohio.

Um, and what they are looking to do is provide uh co-housing for single mothers that's not just affordable housing, not just four walls, but it's wraparound supportive services led by motherful or organizations like that, but also led by the moms themselves, um, reducing their housing costs, but also reducing their child care costs by 40 to 60 percent because you have a neighbor that you know that you live amongst that when an emergency comes up, they're they're there uh to watch your kid and they know your kid and they're watching them every day anyway.

Um so looking for some of these more intentional co-housing communities that um can stretch uh city bond dollars further by reducing um not just housing costs but uh food, transportation, energy, child care costs for our moms.

Um we probably know that single moms face like the biggest housing burden in the city.

Um, you know, we could rattle off a lot of statistics, but one of one thing recently that one of our moms experienced was um she was able, she was uh she's a teacher on the Far East Side, she's been a teacher for 20 years, she's in about 50% AMI, she has four kids, she signed a lease on a home, she shows up with the U-Haul all packed, uh, someone else is moving into the home because they found the landlord found somebody else that's willing to pay more.

That just happened, that's real, that's going on in the city right now.

We need to think about housing for families and not just multiple units, tons of leverage, lie tech projects to get those units, but thinking about um how we're housing our families.

So uh cooperative co-housing where uh folks can be sharing resources, those that built-in child care, residents are staying longer in these communities.

Um, this is a different kind of project than we see co-housing in Columbus, but they're doing it in Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Madison.

We visited some of these places, and what we're what we're seeing and what we're analyzing with our project is we're gonna put yes, affordable units uh for moms, but they're gonna have an extra 500 to 1,000 a month in their pocket through those additional savings, not just the housing costs.

Um so obviously they're by you know able to buy food and clothing, but they're going out to restaurants, they're putting that money back into the community.

Um so I would advocate for housing bond funds to be used not just for LITEC projects, but some of these smaller projects where we can see some of those additional community benefits and stretch those dollars in that way.

Um, obviously, this funding is once in a generation.

I've been in Columbus for 20 years working in affordable housing and never seen anything like it, and it's so exciting.

Um, so happy to be um working with so many in the community to to make sure these uh funds are done right.

So thanks so much.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Amanda.

That was good.

Director, do we have we uh received any applications that were like that co-op model that uh Amanda was just speaking of, and how would we um uh uh how would we uh what kind of criteria will we use to see if that was a you know anything that we could invest in.

And the conversations that we're having around a lot of these different spaces.

I love the phrase intentional housing.

I think it's you know, we talk about transitional, and it there's it's not really what we mean, right?

We mean the service-enrich spaces that are um more tailored to specific populations.

The challenges facing um victims coming out of domestic violence situations will be different than um youth aging out of foster care, right?

And so, how do we get a little bit more surgical about how we respond?

And I think that's where we envision that housing stability space and the ability to really use this 500 million to look at some of those opportunities to do that type of more, I hate to use the word creative, but uh more responsive housing to what those needs are.

And I think those are all things we can look at this year.

I know I've had conversations um with lots of partners that we have this historically there's sort of an emergency shelter or there's been affordable housing that interstitial space in between of where does it look like for us to support those families, get them stabilized, but in a way that's not short-term but really meaningful, and I think those are opportunities we'll be exploring, especially under that stability banner.

Okay.

Um more question.

I do think that I I've heard and seen a lot of interest in this space and and smaller developers wanting to do this work.

If there was a way to provide information to developers who haven't maybe set their heart on the type of housing that they're going to provide, or the people in which they're going to serve in that housing, they just want to provide just affordable housing opportunities.

How can the department kind of partner to provide that information and say, here's where our gaps are as a city?

It would really be helpful if we could have housing for this space or this space.

And I think it is that ongoing conversation.

I know a lot of our folks who are serving people in those spaces are meeting today and understanding kind of what that looks like, and being able to go back and forth and understand what is the need, what are the other resources we could bring to the table, how would we design it?

So again, it's that long-term sustainability to support those families.

But I know those conversations are pretty robust at this point.

Um, and and something that we're definitely seeing is the need that we'll need to answer with this bond package.

Thank you, Director.

Next up we have uh Tisha Tisha.

I is right here, Tisha Tisha Lee from Accari uh properties, and then we'll have Ian Labatu uh come up and do a presentation.

Good evening, Council President, members of city council and housing stakeholders.

My name is Tisha Lee, and I'm a founder of Akari Properties, a black woman-owned affordable housing business rooted right here in Columbus.

I currently own 13 rental units, 12 of them are located within city limits, serving individuals and families in Brittany Hills, Somerset, and the Hilltop.

Many of my tenants are Section 8 participants, single parents, individuals transitioning from homelessness, and residents returning from incarceration.

People who deserve safe, stable, and dignified housing.

This work is deeply personal to me because Columbus is the city that raised me.

I grew up in the 43219 zip code and graduated from Mifflin High School.

It is where I committed to building, giving back, and creating general generational change through housing.

You said equity must be at the center of this bond, and this is where that shows up.

Too often black and brown developers, women, small mission-driven operators are excluded.

Not because we lack vision or skill, but because we lack access to the first 50 to 100,000 dollars, not the last.

By investing in early emerging developers, the city would expand the diversity of our development ecosystem, accelerate smaller high impact projects in underserved neighborhoods, strengthen local capacity and community ownership, and build wealth, not just units.

It is about more than just construction, it is about power, equity, and who gets to shape the future of Columbus.

I'm not just asking for funding, I'm asking for foresight.

I I want a housing system that reflects the people who live here.

We have to invest in the people who are grounded here and ready to build here.

We are not looking to scale fast and sell out.

We're looking to scale impact, and that starts with access to capital.

I also welcome the opportunity to collaborate with City Council, the Affordable Housing Trust, the County and City Staff, the Community Shelter Board, and other stakeholders to help design and implement these funds transparently and effectively.

Thank you for your time, your leadership, and your commitment to inclusive to the inclusive progress.

This is my home, and I look forward to building with you.

Thank you.

Right.

Um what we call cutting more folks in on the deal.

It's about cutting more folks in on the deal and making sure that we're being intentional about building wealth as we're building homes for community.

And uh that is that's a big part of this conversation, it's a big part of the the um oversight and engagement we'll have with uh the administration, and I know uh the housing chair is getting really excited uh uh to meet to work with you as well.

Director, I I ask I I I was just sitting here thinking, we talk about access to apply for these bond dollars, and we talk about um the criteria in which we use to um uh award these uh dollars.

Do we track who we don't award to?

So is there a list of folks who have applied for housing bond dollars that we did not execute?

Because as we think about equity and we think about how do we hold ourselves accountable, um tracking the data seems like it could be helpful for holding ourselves accountable.

I think um we continue to have conversations because historically, up until last summer, we were qualifying it that you had to bring that kind of light tech or bond gap financing to the table.

Um so, quite honestly, the projects that didn't make it through is because other funding fell through, not necessarily because we did not accept them.

Correct.

So I think that's where as we build out these systems, understanding that level of risk and entering earlier will just be something that we discuss and figure out where that risk tolerance is and understanding how we can unlock some of those opportunities, pairing folks up to get some of these more non-traditional deals done.

And I think that's the opportunity for the 500 million, expanding beyond that kind of looking for those really significant other capital funding sources because they were it was a way to really turn the spigot on hard and make sure we got those affordable units in the community.

We have we have done a really amazing job.

The 500 million lets us keep that spigot on.

We'll keep doing that work.

And now we have this challenge of how do we what how do we appear in these projects in a way that that same ethos of making sure that we're being complimentary, not creating additional challenges, but also making sure we're being good stewards of the money that the voters have authorized for us, and that's going to be the conversation that will kind of be undergoing over the next year as we plan out that pipeline for that first deployment.

I guess as Ian is coming, it's I don't know if it's a question or a thought, but what I'm hearing around smaller projects and a need there, uh director.

I do think that there's also uh uh a technical and there's a difficulty sometimes of working with these dollars.

So I'm just thinking out loud that as we talk about simply access to them, we need to think about also I think the operating side of how do we get uh these smaller developers, the technical know-how to also uh take advantage of those dollars because the last thing I think we would want is to set folks up for for failure or misuse right the bond dollars, but I think that there's some technical assistance that we can be thinking about as well, which is of course not a capital expense, but more of an operating expense.

I think as we add additional staff, I know the woman who currently leads our rental housing production and preservation program is extremely interested in having that time to be able to support folks that may not come in with a deep knowledge of how to navigate this space.

Um getting her staffed up and and her team fully ready to go, I think will give us some of that staff capacity too to do a little bit more of that, more detailed work with some of those folks that may not have a long history with us.

Next up, we'll have uh our uh another permanent partner uh very important part of the ecosystem, Ian Labitu uh with affordable housing trust.

Followed by Oman, Anna Marie Parellis, and Jordan McLaughlin.

Council President, thank you.

Uh Councilmember Ross, Councilmember Bankston, Deputy uh Prosser.

Um I'm Ian Labitu, I'm president uh and CEO of the Affordable Housing Trust.

I'm gonna go off script for just a quick second and thank Tisha for her testimony.

Um, you know, our emerging developers are one of our most uh important resources, and one of the things that we continue to do is think about the type of loan products and the type of capital that they need.

Um, and so you know, this is just a reminder, a validation um for us to continue doing that kind of work to understand what's needed and provide the products that that are needed.

So thank you.

Um, this has been a significant week uh in housing for Columbus.

Uh we saw the mayor's announcement uh about the city's framework for how bonds will be allocated, uh, which is a clear signal of priorities and a roadmap for how this historic investment of 500 million dollars in affordable housing will take shape.

And now council is taking the important step of inviting residents and stakeholders like AHT uh to bring forward specific ideas for projects and initiatives that can bring this framework to life.

I do want to acknowledge Council President Hardin's ideas that were shared in his opinion piece, um which offer thoughtful guidance on how Columbus can move from simply building units to building pathways.

So thank you.

Uh together, these efforts demonstrate that city leadership is not only highlighting the continued need for housing affordability, but actively seeking input while providing direction.

It's exactly how public investment decisions should be made.

And I'm grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this conversation.

Today I'm here to talk specifically about home ownership, um, how the affordable housing trust as an organization can help expand pathways to home ownership for families who are currently priced out of that market.

We know that traditional single family home ownership is increasingly out of reach for first-time buyers in Columbus.

The median home price has risen dramatically, and for families earning moderate incomes or less, those in the gap between subsidized housing and what the market offers.

The math simply doesn't work.

They earn too much to qualify for deep subsidy programs, but not enough to compete in a market where prices have doubled in many neighborhoods over the past decade.

One of the most promising solutions that I've seen in this market and one of the most trusted partners that we have is the Central Ohio Community Land Trust, and their solution is the shared equity model.

The land trust retains ownership of the land and sells the homes to income qualified buyers, making homeownership accessible while ensuring that affordability is preserved in perpetuity.

When that homeowner eventually sells, they keep a share of the appreciation they helped create, building real wealth, while the next buyer can also purchase at an affordable price.

It's a model that builds family wealth and community some uh stability simultaneously.

HT has been proud to partner with the land trust, and we see significant opportunity to deepen that partnership.

Here is our broader vision.

A dedicated home ownership fund that just doesn't support the land trust, but creates an ecosystem where multiple participants can drive in their lanes of expertise.

Established developers like Homeport, Simmons Corporation, and Habitat for Humanity with track records and for sale housing, uh, can access low cost capital for acquisition and construction.

Emerging developers like T Shalee, uh, including other graduates of our EDAP program can build capacity in the homeownership space, and the land trust can continue to steward the shared equity model that keeps these homes affordable for generations.

Each participant brings something different to the table, and together we increase the total number of homes that can be built for purchase.

My proposal is to dedicate a portion of the bond funds to capitalize a revolving homeownership fund administered through AHT and other like organizations, designed to supercharge for sale housing production across this ecosystem.

The fund would provide low cost available financing for land acquisition and construction, the kind of readily available capital that de-risks projects, accelerates timelines, and makes the numbers work for affordable home ownership at scale.

As homes are sold to qualified buyers, capital flows back into the fund and the cycle repeats.

It's not a one-time grant that's spent and then gone, but it's an investment that recycles, creating more home ownership opportunities with each turn of the capital.

From a lender's perspective, for sale affordable housing has historically lacked the data dedicated financing infrastructure that rental housing enjoys.

Traditional lenders struggle to underwrite these projects, whether it's a shared equity home on land trust property or a duplex built by an emergency developer.

Because the models don't fit conventional underwriting typically, a dedicated fund capitalized with bond dollars and administrated by a CDFI with experience can bridge that gap and unlock production that otherwise would not happen.

HT is here as a ready partner with the city and with the community to make this vision a reality.

Thank you for your leadership on this issue, uh Council, and thank you for the opportunity to share in these ideas.

Uh if you have any questions.

Yeah, thank you, Ian, uh, for for bringing um that idea.

Have you uh sketched out or thought about uh what level of investment you uh a fund would need to be seated to have any questions?

I was gonna say, are you asking me that question?

Yes, we we have taken a look, and what we're wanting to do is work backwards.

We want to understand how many homes are going to make a real impact, and then understand how much does it cost to build those homes, what is the subsidy required in order to provide those homes at an affordable cost, and then at scale, how many of those homes will we need to finance?

Um we're working on that specific information.

I don't want to throw a number out there because again, we want to be very intentional and thoughtful about the actual impact that's made.

Um we don't necessarily want to just have 20 homes, even though that's going to be impactful for those 20 people.

If we can finance 100 homes, um, then we'll back into that number and let you know what what that dollar amount is.

Appreciate that.

Thank you.

Next up, we'll have a couple community folks that we'll have Vincent Coleman, Anna Marie Paralis, and Jordan Malaffin, and then we will go to uh Jeff uh uh beam as well.

Well, good evening, Council President Harden, Chair Ross, Councilmember Bankston, Deputy Director, uh, for the opportunity to provide testimony today on behalf of Columbus Realtors and our nearly 10,000 members across Central Ohio.

Columbus Village represents professionals who work every day with home buyers, sellers, property owners, and communities across the region.

Our members see firsthand the challenges facing Ohio's housing market, and more importantly, the opportunities we have to address them through thoughtful, locally driven solutions.

Across the region and across the state, communities of all sizes are experiencing housing supply constraints.

And in growing regions like Columbus, demand is outpacing available housing, driving up costs, and limiting options for working families.

In smaller legacy community communities, aging housing stock and development barriers make it difficult to add new homes or reinvest in existing neighborhoods.

And while these challenges look different from community to community, the underlying issue is consistent.

Ohio needs more housing choices at a variety of housing points, price points.

I want to take a moment to talk a little bit about our uh Housing Ohio Tools for Development Initiative, which was passed on to your offices.

Uh, Councilmember Bangkson, I'll make sure you have eyes on that later tonight.

Um, but uh this initiative was created to help communities respond to uh these challenges with practical, scalable tools rather than a one-size-fits-all uh mandate.

The initial brings together best practices, technical assistance, and proven uh development strategies that help local governments, developers, and community stakeholders, uh work collaborating and expanding housing uh market opportunities.

First, it supports small-scale missing middle housing, including infill housing, accessory dwelling units, and attainable starter homes that fit within uh existing neighborhoods.

And Council President Harden, reading your your op-ed, um, we struck a chord in terms of uh advocating for building new pathways to homeownership.

Um we understand the uh need to challenge the status quo, to be bold and to think creatively is needed to provide a diverse uh and housing stock for our residents.

Second, the initiative um provides technical assistance and model resources to local governments.

Uh many communities want to encourage housing development uh but lack the uh capacity.

And I want to thank you all for your leadership in passing the Columbus Growth Strategy Plan, truly leading the way, and blame the foundation for what's to come.

We believe that this could be a helpful tool for council and other communities, um, especially as this body explores ways to leverage the bond dollars, and also in reference to the recently passed Yes and God's backyard uh pilot program.

In closing, housing availability directly impacts economic opportunity.

Employers that are considering expansion look at whether their their workforce can find attainable housing.

Young professionals deciding whether to stay in the Columbus region, look at whether they can afford to buy their first home.

Seniors looking to downside need options that allow them to remain in their communities, and so addressing the housing supply is therefore not just a housing issue, it's truly an economic economic development issue.

Columbus Realtors appreciates the part uh the opportunity to continue to partner with council and local leaders uh to advance solutions that support uh housing growth uh with with respecting global decision making pro uh decision making processes.

Uh we believe that the housing Ohio Tools for Development and If it provides a practical framework to help communities meet today's challenges and prepare for future growth.

Again, thank you all for your leadership in this space, and we look forward to our continued partnership partnership.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Vincent, and uh we appreciate the partnership with the Columbus Realtors.

Next up, we have Miss Anne-Marie Perelis.

She's gone.

Yeah, okay.

And uh after that, Jordan McLaughlin.

And then we'll so we'll have Jeff Beam and then the next group will be Ms.

Ann Bischoff, Sue Valillo, and Mattina Bliss.

Yep.

Good evening, and and thank you, Council President Harden, uh, Chair Ross, uh and the council.

Um my name is Jeff Beam, and I'm here on behalf of OCCH.

Um, we're a Columbus nonprofit that is uh, I think a longtime partner of the cities um to in advancing affordable housing in the community.

Um I want to thank you for this opportunity to speak and for your leadership along with Mayor Ginther and this in the administration in championing the bond package, um, overwhelmingly approved.

So the level of support that that bond package received reflects urgency and trust.

I think residents are asking us to act boldly and wisely.

And I actually appreciate the flow that this testimony has gone because it's important to go all the way down and see the human stories and the real sort of retail level and neighborhood level impact that can happen.

And then I want to take this opportunity to zoom back out and look at the sort of generational opportunity that a half billion dollars creates in our housing system.

Columbus is growing fast, and so with that growth comes responsibility.

You've embraced a framework that understands housing is a dynamic system.

It balances three essential elements at all times.

The supply of homes we build, the stability that keeps people housed, and the subsidy that makes affordability possible when the market can't.

This balance is the right lens for policy.

It's also the right lens for how we think about housing finance.

The city is correctly and justly focused on solutions at all scales and for all residents.

But my my testimony specifically focuses on the part of the system where we have deep experience, large multifamily rental housing.

The strongest engine for producing that kind of housing in Columbus is the Federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit, or LITECH, administered by OFA.

In the 2025 program year alone, LITEC Awards will support 2,086 affordable apartments across 14 developments in Columbus.

Those represent the vast majority of affordable units that Columbus produces in any year.

These 14 developments deliver what residents have said we need most from new affordable homes for individuals and families to preserving existing deeply affordable homes to independent and assisted living for seniors and supportive housing for our most vulnerable.

Few tools deliver this level of scale and impact.

But our recent success, and we saw Aaron's slide before with the big spike in 2025, it's created a new challenge.

We are now so productive in using the LITEC that we're outpacing investor demand in the capital markets.

That imbalance, as developers will tell you, is creating diminishing returns, widening gaps, and making it harder for strong projects to reach financial feasibility.

The city's traditional gap funding from the previous bond rounds, it remains essential, but it can't carry the full load, especially when Columbus needs tens of thousands more affordable homes than our existing tools can produce.

This is where the scale of the new of the bond creates real opportunity.

Beyond just filling gaps, Columbus can work with local housing finance organizations to create financial structures that restore balance in the market and help developments reach feasibility without crowding out private or state investment.

Tools that leverage rather than replace LITEC and other capital sources, and they keep projects moving.

They support new construction and preservation and ensure the city's investment draws in additional funding rather than unintentionally discouraging it.

And importantly, tools that can be structured not just to drive production but to be paid back to the city to be used again and again.

If we get it right, the bond can elevate the public-private partnership to a level that meaningfully accelerates affordability across the city and most effectively uses the funds Columbus voters have pumped into the system.

OCCH and other committed local finance part partners are ready to support that work.

Our role as a long-standing local nonprofit helps ensure the city's investments lead to strong, lasting, well-operated, affordable communities.

We're prepared, along with our peers in this space, to collaborate on tools that reinforce the balance of supply, stability, and subsidy, and that leverage federal, state, and private capital to meet the needs of Columbus residents.

Thank you for your leadership and for your commitment to our housing system that works for everyone.

And I appreciate the opportunity to share these recommendations and look forward to continuing this work with you.

Jeff, thank you so much for that presentation and that thought process.

That assessment, I had not heard that before, that the market is getting um tight in terms of uh investors.

Um are we seeing that and how do we are we think how do what would your response kind of be to that?

Yeah, and I think as we and the other, you know, we've talked a lot about that softness, but also just as we think about the broader tax cuts and the value of tax credits is lowered, and there's sort of those other funds that we've historically relied on to shore that up are shifting and changing.

And I think that's really where we have to be constantly responsive in figuring out we can't keep doing it the way we've done it and expect the same outcomes.

We know even now as I look at our per unit contributions are rising just because of the construction costs.

And so that sort of balance of how we're entering the projects in 22 looks different today, and balancing out all these other funding sources, but making sure that these bond dollars can re respond and react.

Because we we're not gonna live in a world where all of those other sources remain constant.

And I think I I am it makes me even more excited about the bond and and the impact of it because a lot of cities don't have another resource to turn back on, and and to sort of figure out how to plug that hole, and I think that's part of the responsiveness that this package has to have over time.

And I think that's part of the responsiveness that this package has to have over time.

And I just want to add because I know that you work at the state level and not to throw politics into it, but we have a real challenge at our state house in the way that uh OFA and the tax credits are awarded.

Uh we see the most demand and the most crunch in central Ohio, but yet there's still this peanut butter spread approach across the entire state, and we see projects uh going to places that don't necessarily need them.

And so I would say for us, as we think about how we spend our dollars, we also have some advocacy to do at the State House to ensure that we are getting our equitable portion in Central Ohio because we put much more into the state coffers in that we get, and I'll leave it at that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jeff.

That wasn't a question.

I have I was like, he's not the right one.

I can't ask him the question.

I should have just made the comment.

I'm literally talking about that right now to Aaron.

Like, how do we score higher?

Council was yeah, she was having the same point for here, so it was good that you brought it to the community.

Uh Ms.

Ann Bischoff, welcome.

Thank you, President Harden, Chair Ross, Councilmember Bankston, and Deputy Director Processor.

I usually call you Aaron, so that wasn't easy to get out.

Um, my name is Ann Bischoff, CEO of Starhouse.

Right now in Columbus, as you know, there are four people waiting for every one deeply affordable housing opportunity.

And at Starhouse, we see every single day infants waiting with their parents, college students waiting, young people working two jobs and still waiting.

When young people don't gain housing stability early, homelessness too often becomes chronic.

Shifting impact to emergency rooms, shelters, and other public systems.

As part of the city's broader housing strategy, preventing chronic homelessness through deeply affordable housing options with wraparound services is smart policy with lasting impact.

And this housing bond gives us a historical chance to do just that.

In 2020, with the city's investment, Star House Finance Fund, CMHA created Carol Stewart Village, a motel conversion with 62 efficiency apartments and on-site access to jobs, education, health care therapy, case management, and more.

As a result, young people are complete completing school, launching careers, not just housed today, but prospering and to sure fire independence.

This model is especially effective because it creates deeply affordable housing, yes, with on-site wraparound supports, but it also helps sustain human services through rental revenue.

That's a significant return on investment.

A public as public and private funds for human services continue to tighten, nonprofit agencies with housing development capacity are uniquely positioned to stretch every public dollar further, creating housing and sustaining critical services.

Starhouse is ready to scale.

Our goal is to create 250 more units of housing in the next five years.

In our next development, we'll partner with an experienced LITEC developer who will help build our internal capacity so that by our third project, Star House can be the independent developer and generate greater long-term revenue to support our youth services.

We see this as a model, this coaching.

Today we respectfully request investment, of course, in Star Houses, housing development, but also in like projects with on-site services.

Every dollar of rental profit will be reinvested in helping young people exit homelessness and thrive.

We're grateful for the thoughtful housing strategies council has advanced, and we see the amplification of nonprofit-led housing with on-site supports as a strong complement to those efforts.

Investing in these projects prevents repeat homelessness, strengthens nonprofit funding sustainability and a precarious economy, and reduces long-term strain on public systems, all the while delivering lasting uh benefit to Columbus taxpayers.

Thank you for your leadership and your time.

Thank you, Ann.

And I and this idea of uh the nonprofits becoming uh entering the development market is really intriguing and uh innovative.

And so I I think this is the right conversation to have at the right time.

And and if I'm not uh mistaken, there are other nonprofits also who are talking about this as well.

You're absolutely right.

There are a few of us in town who are talking about the opportunity we we have to pool resources to support.

idea of of uh the nonprofits becoming uh entering the development market is really intriguing and uh innovative and so i i think this is the right conversation to have at the right time and and if i'm not uh mistaken there are other nonprofits also who are talking about this as well you're absolutely right there are a few of us in town who are talking about the opportunity we we have to pool resources to support I think it was Tisha who mentioned the um the back office support of legal uh costs and those sorts of things and also to create some sort of EDAP program um for people who are leading nonprofits thank you so much thank you so much I think it's just important to to pause because I think some of our results in the survey I think overwhelmingly folks trust nonprofit leaders as housing providers and I think it's important to to honor that because again being a developer sometimes is is just not enough nonprofits generally know the exact need of the folks that are benefiting from what they are offering and the folks are trusting of them to provide that which oftentimes just makes for a better more healthy home environment so thank you for thinking about this whatever we can do to support I know when Aaron's eyes light up what that means and so look forward to continued conversation.

Thank you I appreciate appreciate it thank you.

Ms Sue Valillo followed by Matina Bliss good afternoon Council President Harden Council Chair Ross, Councilmember Bankston and Deputy Director Prosser my name is Sue Balillo and I serve as the Vice President of Clinical Services for the Alcohol Drug and Mental Health Board of Franklin County or Adam H.

I'm also a board member for the Franklin County Continuum of care which oversees the use of HUD funds.

First I'd like to acknowledge the voters of Columbus for approving the affordable housing bond package this past November.

That vote sent a clear message that this city understands housing is foundational not only for economic stability but also for the health safety and dignity of residents.

The EMH board serves as the county behavioral health authority and is statutorily empowered under the Ohio revised code to plan fund and evaluate mental health and substance use disorder services across Franklin County Adam H contracts with and supports approximately 50 community based nonprofit providers to deliver a broad range of services I'm here today to underscore the importance of directing a meaningful portion of the bond dollars towards housing that is affordable to households at or below 30% of the AMI the individuals our provider network serves every day including people living with severe and persistent mental illness substance use disorders and other disabilities often fall within this income range.

For them housing at even 50 or 60% of AMI is out of reach.

This concern is not anecdotal EMH completed a housing plan in 2023 that identified housing instability as a key driver in repeated crisis service utilization, hospitalizations and disengagement from care.

While housing needs when housing needs are not met recovery is often delayed or derailed completely providers regularly report to us the lack of housing and wraparound services is a central issue affecting client stability and outcomes we know that housing alone is not enough models such as permanent supportive housing and supportive services such as those funded by Adam H, including case management and peer support are essential to keeping people housed as the city moves forward with the implementation of the bond Adam H strongly encourages a meaningful share of the funds dedicated to housing affordable at or below 30% of the AMI and continued support for housing models that pair housing with supportive services.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you tonight for your leadership in this community and for my opportunity to share Adam H's perspective we look forward to our continued partnership as these investments move forward and I am happy to answer any questions.

Well thank you so much Sue and thank you for the work that Adam H does taking care of our residents here in Columbus.

Do we have any kind of thoughts or responses back to that deeply affordable the it's tough tough tough and but for bond dollars we wouldn't you know be building it uh these types really at all so do we have I mean are we thinking about that it is the most challenging housing and part of it is because the rents below 30% there's not enough capital subsidy to make it up and so pairing it with that ongoing uh rental subsidy is critical as we think about advocacy at the state and federal level um we are challenged right now we have two projects that we're just kind of on hold right now and we're ready we have the bond we're ready to invest in those projects until those that ongoing rental subsidies attached they're just kind of sitting and I think that's where we don't have that level of resource on the operating side to backfill that gap and so as we think about our opportunities to talk to our other governmental partners that's a really critical place where we can get it so far but without that final um commitment of that rental subsidy it's a challenge.

And I think that's where we don't have that level of resource on the operating side to backfill that gap.

And so as we think about our opportunities to talk to our other governmental partners, that's a really critical place where we can get it so far, but without that final um commitment of that rental subsidy, it's a challenge.

But I there it is an extremely important part of the housing ecosystem.

It's difficult to deliver.

We have amazing partners in the city that do really great work in this space.

It's just getting all those resources to line up to get those projects across the finish line.

And I know the projects in particular, as we think about some of those dollars around acquisition, the populations they serve, have very specific needs around access to bus lines and groceries and other ways in which they're very um thoughtful about how they cite those projects.

And I think that's another way we could be entering the conversation as well, um, to make sure that they're sited in the best locations too to support those residents, not just what's inside the units, but also where they are in the city.

Thank you.

I I appreciate your comments about the difficulty in in the ongoing funding for those projects, and certainly understand that, but also appreciate you keeping this at the forefront of future planning for the city and the needs of truly the most vulnerable people among us.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Sue.

Uh, next we have Matina Bluis.

Matina here.

Vicky Lamaster.

Uh Leo Rodriguez.

Leo's here.

Welcome.

Good evening, everyone.

Thank you all for sticking it up.

I know we've been here a minute.

Um, Council President Harding, members of council, uh, deputy director.

My name is Leo Rodriguez.

I thank you for the opportunity to come before you tonight to provide testimony.

I know to talk about housing, it's to talk about one of the most defining challenges of our growing region.

Columbus, like many other cities, is reckoning with what it means to grow, right?

So I came to Columbus as a young person looking for opportunity and stability.

I found neighbors that were embracing institutions that open doors in a city where it felt possible to build something for myself.

But like we know that access is becoming increasingly challenging.

So uh here's the truth that we all know.

The demographics of who lives in our city have changed more rapidly than the housing typology we have to offer.

So our neighbors are more diverse in age, in income, family structure, and the experience in life experience I never before.

And a lot of our housing stock doesn't reflect that diversity.

So if we are to meet this moment, we must diversify our housing ecosystem, and that means building all kinds of housing for all kinds of people, investing in co-ops, transitional housing, and all these other options that we've talked about before.

Uh we need housing that reflects the real lives of people who call this city home, right?

People like me, people like seniors, uh aging in place working family, individuals exiting homelessness, people with disabilities, and others.

Subsidizing low-income housing in high opportunity areas.

I know it's challenging, but it does is an investment in generational mobility.

Uh, when we concentrate low-income housing in low-income neighborhoods, that only deep and deepens inequality.

I'm a testament of that.

I grew up in government subsidized housing in a low-income neighborhood, and I can attest to the inequality that that already creates.

When somebody looks at your zip code and says, I don't want you here because I don't like the zip code, that's a real challenge.

So I believe right now we are in a moment where we have seen that the safety net that supports housing initiatives is not immune from a change in federal and state priority.

And so I believe that we have a responsibility to become a leader and take an approach by establishing a local revolving fund that allows Columbus to sustain housing developments, regardless in who's in the White House or in the State House.

So as a city, we have a responsibility to not just attract new residents, but to ensure that people are able to stay and build a life here, regardless of their income, their life experience, or their background.

Columbus gave me an opportunity, and the question before us is whether we want the next generation to have one.

Thank you for your time and your leadership.

Leo so we have three more um uh speakers uh that have signed up.

We do have one more um presentation.

Kim, would you do would you like to do your presentation?

And then we'll get to Mark Dunham, Hassan uh Sheed, and Dana Messer.

Dana, you're gonna close us out.

We don't have a presentation, and I'll be under three minutes.

So, Council Chair, thank you very much for having me.

Kimberly Sharp, I am a city planner, and I'm the chair of Urban Land Institute, the Columbus chapter.

So Urban Land Institute is a global organization of sustainable focusing on sustainable development.

And Columbus is doing a great job.

I do want to give kudos for the bond package for all of the work in zone in and for the recently adopted Columbus Growth Strategy.

Those, along with Link Us and Zone In, really are the strongest alignments of land use, mobility and housing policy that Columbus has ever seen.

It's a very strong force.

And of course, there's a lot of planning behind that.

I think we've all been involved in that planning for a long time.

And so I'm really proud of those efforts, and I'm very happy to be involved.

I'm gonna focus on two things briefly, and then my recommendations, and they really are your number two and your number eight in your write-up.

Um, Council President Harden.

So number two, emerging developers.

I think that's a very important piece of in fill development is really helping the emerging developers find their place and be able to do the work that we know the larger developers can't or won't, and we need them.

We need them to be successful.

And so a lot of the tools I'm pulling out of the equitable transit oriented development action plan, which we worked on together.

Uh, number one, we do have a couple of really good programs, the Ready program through ULI, and there's also an EDAP program um through the Affordable Housing Trust, and they can really support the growth of those uh developers to continue to doing that.

How important an infrastructure bank is for NFL developers along the corridors, of course, is what I'm thinking.

But to have access to the sidewalk, um utility upgrades to really make that profile more work is really important for the small developers.

And then the last thing for emerging developers that I have on my notes.

Um education utilities, oh, utility upgrades, the utility upgrades in the plan.

So then I'm gonna shift to transit oriented development, and that's what I really wanted to talk about.

And that's your number eight, how important that is for our community.

All of these awesome suggestions.

I really appreciated hearing from everybody.

They're all so important.

There could be a focus to put as much of that along the corridors as possible in thoughtful ways for walkable communities, not just plugging in buildings, but really thinking about what happens around those stops so that they are walkable neighborhoods for people with different housing types, different incomes, community amenities that really make a difference.

And so the investments you've already laid it out in the in the bond framework, um property acquisition, supporting the affordable housing.

It's there.

It's just what how is it going to be focused in a way that makes it easy for people to choose to use transit or walk a bike?

And that's all I have.

Thank you for a few moments to speak.

Kim, I can't believe I allowed this hearing to go an hour and a half before we talked about transit-oriented development.

That's pretty sad.

Uh Director, it was a part of the mayor's framework.

Land acquisition has been something that as a chair of this committee I've I've pushed for a long time.

How are we driving transit-oriented development, those walkable communities, and hopefully even affordability along those new transit corridors?

I think the broad headline is how do we make it easier to build housing where we want housing?

Right, right.

And we know that along some of the transit corridors, there are just fundamental challenges to getting that that feasibility for that development site.

And when we think about the city engaging in acquisition and assembly and really creating a site that is feasible for that development, and when we are engaged, we get to um provide affordability as part of that equation.

And I think that's where we see that that connectivity where we don't want to see that net loss of affordability in some of these places, right?

They're naturally affordable today as we make those civic investments.

We can see it in other cities that things change in those marketplaces.

And so, how do we engage to say this is where we want housing to be built?

This is particularly where we want affordable housing to be built.

How do we increase that feasibility?

Make it easy to do what our citizens are looking for and connecting it with that transit.

So that'll be a really fun part of the conversation over the next couple of years as well, is just kind of being more proactive and identifying where we want that development to happen.

Do you do you think, Director, that the preservation kind of goal and landscape would also align with this?

I've I am thinking just of large multifamily apartment complexes like the former colonial village, right?

That has so much space in land around that area to kind of build resources, right?

There used to be a a strip law that provided food, and now it's a food desert.

Like our will the preservation model kind of align with kind of the where space place for some of that design.

Yeah, and I think it's about not only connecting housing with opportunity, but making sure opportunity is connected to where we have that existing affordability and the opportunity to look about both the feedback loop from both directions.

So that it's not just about adding affordability in connectivity to that opportunity, but bringing that opportunity to places that are not affordable.

And I think when we add that link us investment, when we build that transit, it it becomes a great, you know, uh geography shrinker, right?

It can it makes those connections in a way that's really efficient and effective to where it's it allows more of the housing to be proximate to opportunity because you have access to transit um and it really shrinks that distance for a lot of families without having to own your own car or multiple cars to support your family.

That's a huge impact to the broader affordability for a family.

Um while the rents and and we may be able to um do mixed income buildings and have some of that affordability, just the fact that you may not need to maintain and own a car or multiple cars for your family becomes a pretty big impact on the broader affordability question and not just around what is the rent or what is the home price question.

Thank you.

Thank you, Director.

Thank you, Kim.

Uh next speaker we have uh is Mark Dunham.

Mark, welcome to the hearing.

Great.

I know it's been a long day and uh a great hearing.

I'm gonna really try and be sure it so you can get home.

Um Mark Dunham, I'm with all inclusive living or all in for short.

Um we're committed to expanding housing options for a really important population that candidly needs to be more part of the conversation, and that's adults with disabilities.

So uh we're a Columbus-based organization that is actually launching our first project all in Dublin, uh, received a 9% Light Tech uh last year.

We just got final approval last month from the Columb from the uh Dublin Planning and Zoning Commission.

76 unit development, 25% of the units deeply affordable for folks with disabilities, a 40% preference for older adults, and the remaining units workforce housing for people, um, individuals and families.

The idea is to create not only affordable housing, but a sense of belonging that leads to social connection and a reduction in social isolation, which is a big big issue for folks of all abilities and ages, but particularly for older adults and people with disabilities.

So this is modeled on a project in Columbia, Maryland, just very quickly.

Uh Tuxent Commons opened uh in November.

76 unit development directly identical uh to this all in Dublin project.

When the housing lottery opened, 2385 applicants for 75 units of housing.

It's not just the affordability, it's the need for housing that's particularly attuned to the needs of folks with disabilities, and that also creates what we all crave, which is a social connection and community.

So we are thrilled with all the great progress in Columbus, not only this affordable housing bomb, but the passage of the zone in and the growth strategy, which you've all been a part of, and we want humbly to ask for a greater role for folks with disabilities in setting this course because it is a uniquely um vulnerable population, but also a uniquely um gifted um asset that we can all find better ways to uh to serve and to utilize in the community.

So we are very excited about what's happening.

We'd like to see um more transit-oriented developments that have this intentionally intergenerational and cross-disability approach happen in Columbus.

Um we see great opportunity not only um to use these bonds uh to leverage what exists, but frankly, philanthropy philanthropy um can be leveraged, I think, for projects like ours in a very effective way to further extend the value of these bond dollars.

Um so our housing model really is about creating not only safe and supportive housing, but connection, as I said, and we firmly believe it offers incredible potential.

The advocacy today is broader than that.

We just want to make the case for you to pay particular attention to the unique needs of this population, but also do it through an intergenerational lens because the connection between generations in a setting like this can be marvelously productive for everybody involved.

So, in closing, um, you know, the Columbus voters have entrusted the council and the mayor and the and the government with an incredible opportunity.

Um, it's a historic tool that they've given you.

Um, and we see great opportunity to put folks with disabilities and older adults not at the margins but at the center of civic life by embracing approaches like this.

Thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Mr.

And I wrote that down that inner intergenerational developments.

Uh how we could uh and cross that with disability that is something that I'm sure we'll be having conversation about.

Thank you.

Uh the next uh speaker is Hassan Sheed is a son here.

All right.

Well, then our final community speaker is Mr.

Dana Messer.

Hello, fellow Columbus housing advocates.

I'm Dana Masoner, Vice President of the Bronzeville Neighborhood Association.

Welcome to Bronzeville, that's where we are now.

And this neighborhood, almost 200 years old, has a very deep, rich catalog of housing building projects, dreamed, proposed, attempted, built, torn down as not being correct.

We are a neighborhood we're stunning.

And in this community of Bronzeville, we have uh Willis Brown as president, and those of us in the Bronzeville community have worked with several churches in this area to bring housing onto their vast land holdings.

And has been discussed recently in council by Council President Harden with building on church property, a wonderful idea.

We've been advocating this 20 plus years.

We've had our Bronzeville meetings once a month, and we've been talking about this.

We've talked to council, we've talked to other agencies, we've gone to churches, and we've had a success.

Shiloh Baptist Church completed their project approximately two years ago, and we facilitated the coming together of Reverend Gilead at Shiloh Baptist, who has since passed, and Kelly Development.

They came together and came with an agreement that we think is a workable model for other churches in the neighborhood, and they have a completed project.

It's mixed income.

It's there at Mount Vernon in Hamilton.

It's a nice project.

And in addition to that, we've had discussions, like I said, with other churches, with the um Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, and we've come close, but we continue with that model.

And addition to that, in this uh in this neighborhood, we have at least eight churches.

We have many, many more churches, but we have eight large historic churches that are sitting on vast acreages of land.

Long Street, 17th, uh Atchison.

I mean, you can go down the list.

Some of them go for blocks.

These churches own the land free and clear.

Now, combining their holdings with other groups, we can do some housing.

But what we are saying in this neighborhood, we need compassion, not only for the residents who need the housing, we need compassion for those of us who live in the neighborhood.

We need the architecture to be successfully work with those of us that are here.

We want all income groups, which means any of these developments need to include from top to bottom.

We want market rate, and we want the people that need the most help, no matter if they have disabilities or not.

So thank you very much for coming.

Thank you so much, Dana.

And like I can say, like uh most good ideas, uh, most of them are stolen, so maybe I stole that idea from uh you and yes and guys backyard.

Um thank you all for for being here uh as a part of a conversation, an ongoing conversation.

This past November, voters entrusted this city with uh a historic opportunity, an historic opportunity to continue to build on the great work that we have been doing, but also to uh explore new ways to bring more affordability into the city of Columbus.

Uh as uh Kim was speaking at, we are really at a uh zenith of an opportunity where we have many different um plans uh that are uh all coming together at the same time.

And so we will uh look back at this time, 10, 15, 20 years from now, and ask ourselves were we bold enough?

Um did we stretch enough?

Were we strategic enough?

Did we bring enough people into the process?

Did we use this opportunity to build uh generational wealth in our community?

Uh did we think about the least of these uh and make sure that we use this opportunity to uh build uh housing for all.

Um I think that is the process that we will all be a part of uh over the next several years.

Uh and what I hope and what will I will push for is that the community is a part of these conversations all along the way.

So we should not see this as a one-off or a check the box.

This is a part of ongoing engagement uh with the community because you gave us this uh opportunity, uh, and we will not, and we want you to be a part of the process.

Um, I also want to acknowledge that we received over 25 uh written testimonies as well that we will share with uh the council members.

I'm gonna turn it over to Councilmember Bankston, and then I'll turn it over to the chair to close us out.

You good?

Turn over to the chair or refer to the director.

I just again privileged to be part of the conversation.

Um it is a historic opportunity, and just really enjoyed hearing from everybody tonight, both our housing partners but also the community members as we kind of embark on a really really historic investment in housing.

I certainly want to thank Council President for your leadership.

Thank you, Councilmember Bankston, for spending your evening with us today to Director Process and to all of you.

Um what Council President said was right.

This was uh never intended to be performative or a checkbox moment, but the beginning of real intentional conversation around how we um fill the void in our community that literally is going to save lives and literally is going to change the trajectory of lives between now and the future of our city.

And so I would ask that all of you remain as connected and engaged as you were today.

Um I'm literally just thinking that we probably missed a moment.

We should have taken everybody's contact information.

But if you were here today and you want to remain part of this conversation, because again, I think we've organically kind of fallen into a public hearing schedule uh with certain topics that we are going to come back to the community with and flesh out and work through as we start to walk our way through the mechanics of what 500 million dollars and potential investment looks like in our community.

Um so I want to make sure that I am continuing to engage with all of you in a real and meaningful way.

Please make sure that we have your contact information.

You can always reach out to my office.

I'm getting ready to give you my email address right now.

My aid is here.

Raise your hand, Mercedes.

Mercedes Wiley in the bat.

Um, but my email address is Tiaz and Tom in as in Nancy Ross at Columbus.gov.

If you want to remain a part of this conversation, please, please, please make sure that you reach out to me.

If you don't want to remain a part of this conversation, I'm probably going to bring you into it anyway, uh, because that's just the type of person that I am.

But I look forward to continuing this conversation and look forward to the great work we'll be able to do together.

And when I say we'll be able to do together, that is exactly what I mean.

We will be able to do this work together.

Thank you all.

Thank you.