Sam, we can go ahead and get us all started here.

And will Mike pass immediately over to you.

Great, thank you.

So thank you all for having me again, Bill Wazileski with Mullin and Lonegan Associates.

And here just to kind of share our overview.

We're kicking off.

You all hired us to do a comprehensive housing plan.

And so we just wanted to kind of update you on that, just give you a little bit of sense of what it's going to be, why we do it, how we're doing it, and then just to have an opportunity for you all to answer questions.

And so I can just let you know that we're here doing in-person stakeholder sessions this week.

And so we have meetings this morning and this afternoon, all the way through Thursday in person.

So we're meeting with all the key agencies.

We're gonna have more outreach after the first of the year.

We're gonna do some virtual stuff, but we really want to do some neighborhood meetings coming up to get citizen participation at various locations within the city.

We haven't really thought through how that and when that's gonna happen.

Um January, they said is really not obviously a good time to do it.

So it'll probably be most likely end of February to be able to do that.

And so we're we're thinking through how we're gonna do that and get the word out to get again citizen participation uh related to this plan and get input on this plan.

But I just wanted to kind of go through what we're doing, how we do it, why we do it, and just give you all opportunity to ask questions as you see fit.

So I just have a brief PowerPoint here.

These are what we've been using during our stakeholder sessions uh for our trip here.

So again, what is a comprehensive housing plan?

It's uh it's a plan that does really two things, right?

It analyzes your current housing.

Um it talks about uh thing and these bullet points that you see there, that was what the city really put in their RFP.

These are real questions that they wanted answered uh as it relates to housing in the city of Erie.

So they really we you all really want to know who needs housing, uh, what are the factors uh impacting housing affordability?

Uh how is blight impacting your city city's housing stock, uh, who is paying more for housing than they can afford, what are the substandard housing found in clusters and high clusters within the city, um, what are housing gaps in needs by income level?

And I'll talk a little bit about that a little bit more detail and why we do that and why it's so important.

Uh and then finally, uh, what is the projected housing need by type and income over the next five years?

And we use projection data for that.

These are all data-driven kind of things.

We're looking at uh ACS data, demographic data.

We got data from the Board of Realtors, uh, and so and we're gonna buy projection data.

So um it's really to look objectively at what the data and the numbers are saying.

We've gotten a lot of data from your city departments in terms of housing, uh, in terms of things such as blight, such as housing um availability, that sort of thing, zoning issues.

Um so the idea is to really get at that objective view of what the data is saying.

Uh, we're also again using stakeholders as a secondary source to kind of not vet it, but really get input from citizens and stakeholders to see really if that makes sense, if the data is matching up with what people are seeing in the field.

And so we're doing that currently.

And then more importantly, the second part of it is really to create and develop a strategic solutions-based recommendation that could be implemented to enhance housing opportunities across the city of Erie uh over the next five years.

And I'll talk a little bit about that as we go on.

Why is this study needed?

And this is a again a big question that uh we always uh ask uh before we enter into these engagements.

And I think the first one is the most important.

Uh the city has never had a comprehensive housing plan, if you can believe that.

You've had comprehensive plans, you've had how um you know economic development studies, you had how your studies for your federal resources, but you didn't have a real comprehensive housing plan.

Uh and it is important given the affordability crisis we're in in this country to have that.

So I think should get be given credit for choosing to do that.

I think it's really important to do that.

It could all we talked uh also today, it could be part of if you choose to do a comprehensive plan moving forward, it could be the housing piece of your comprehensive plan moving forward, so it's really important.

The city is also experiencing various housing challenges, including an aging housing stock and lack of available housing units at various income ranges.

Um the cost of housing is increasing while incomes are decreasing or falling or remaining the same.

That's a huge issue that we have to think about and see how it impacts the city.

The amount of housing income spent on a monthly housing cost base uh base is rising, so how much people are paying for housing, generally the standard is no more than 30% of your income.

And we look at that to see how how affordable the housing stock is, and I'll talk a little bit about that later.

Um rents and housing prices have significantly increased over the last five years.

And again, I'm preaching to the choir, you all know this, but it it's it's just something that we're really uh really trying to address these issues as we move forward here.

Uh there is a need for more quality housing in for both renters and home buyers, especially first-time home buyers in the city.

So there's two slides here that I want to just kind of show.

These are examples of previous housing studies that we worked on.

So if this map doesn't look familiar to you, it is the city of Pittsburgh with the three rivers.

We did a little housing study for them back in 2012.

One of the key things that we look at, um, and we we are going to do here for the city.

We haven't done it yet, but we are going to do, is really look at how um how cost burdened households are.

How many how many households in the city are paying more than 30 percent of the rent towards housing, and where are those things happening?

And so you can see on this map, those areas that are darker green have higher incidence of cost burden.

And so that really helps paint a picture of hey, you know, of what's really happening here from a cost burden, where is that needed, where is our intervention strategies needed to help address those cost burden households.

And that's that's one thing that we'll be doing.

Again, this is just a sampling of things that we look at.

The second one is probably even a more important slide, and it looks kind of complicated, but it's really not when you think about it.

So, this is an analysis that we do, it's called a gap analysis.

And what what the what's it intended to do is to look at both owner-occupied housing and renter housing, again at all income levels.

So we're looking at zero to 30 percent of AMI, 31 to 50 percent of AMI, 51 to 80, and 81 and above those small uh those market rate housing.

And so, just to take, for example, to explain what we try to show here is that um if you look at that zero to 30 percent uh block there, you can see on the left hand side of that chart 9,450 households are at zero to 30 percent income in the in this community.

This is not this is from a previous study that we did.

However, those two below purple blocks down below show that only 200 and uh 2,565 uh are occupied units in the marketplace by persons of those incomes.

So those match.

There's their income matches a uh a unit in the marketplace that's available and affordable to them.

However, there's additional 2,854 units that are occupied by persons who are higher income but are living in this market in this unit, and the reason for that is because they can't find available units at higher income levels at 31 to 50 or whatever their income is, and so they're down renting or downowning.

And so you can see what happens is it causes a gap in that housing.

So there's a need for additional housing units of 6,885, I think is that number.

Uh, and that's what we want to look at at every.

This is another city.

This is not to this is not eerie.

This is not just showing what you can do.

This is what we will be doing for the city.

This is an example purpose only.

This is another study that we did.

But the purpose of showing you the slides is the type of analysis that we're going to be doing so that it helps identify where those gaps are by income and by tenure, both homeownership and rental, to see where those needs are, where those gaps are.

And the real purpose of this is to help develop and design strategies, solutions, and recommendations to address those gaps in the marketplace uh as we move forward here.

So I just wanted to kind of provide that to show you the types of analysis that we're doing.

And it's really powerful when we start looking at this by both renter and for sale, and it helps drive and develop policy and recommendations.

No, I'm good.

We've done some initial demographic observations.

This is by no means final format, final in final format, but we just uh did some general kind of sense of uh of observations that we've seen so far.

So these are just some typical things that we've seen so far that we wanted to share.

Um we're doing the analysis for you all uh on this neighborhood map basis.

So we're uh we're gonna be preparing data and showing analysis based at the neighborhood level, and these are the neighborhoods that we're working on.

And um we're doing this for a number of reasons uh because uh again it relates to the majority of the other planning documents that you guys have in place.

Uh it's part of your eerie refocused uh study that you did.

Uh so there's a lot of reasons that we've uh decided to present the data in this manner.

Um in addition, we're gonna be providing you with name what we call neighborhood profiles at the end of the day, and that's a real helpful tool.

So uh if you're looking to do a strategy in uh you know the green garden area, you'll have a demographic snapshot of that area for for grant applications or for analysis or for whatever we think in there.

So this is the this is the basis that we're gonna present this data.

Just some demographic points.

I'm preaching to the choir, I'll go through these really quickly because you probably already know this stuff, but the city's really has a decrease in population since 2012, a loss of almost 7,479 residents.

Um there's a larger concentration of foreign-born residents in the city compared to the county.

Um this next bullet point is will change.

Uh we've had some more current data this afternoon when we met with the immigrant community uh related to the number of immigrant community and foreign-born residents that have come into the city over the last three or four years.

So this was just based on ACS data.

We have actually more data related to this.

And it's actually more.

You have an increase of foreign-born residents coming into the community over the last two years.

So we'll address that as we move on here.

Your housing, your your median age of residents in the city is increasing from uh you know in 2018, uh, I think it was 34.7 in 2013 is 33, and now it's about 35.

So you have an aging population.

Um this is a really good slide.

It shows the tenure of housing.

So the good news is the city is pretty evenly split between home ownership and renters 5347.

We'd like to see a balance of that in communities, so that's really good.

Um you all know that the majority of the housing in the city are single family homes.

That's about 63% of the units.

Umiddle housing options, such as duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes account for about 22 percent of the housing stock.

Um and larger housing options, such as mid-rise, high rise in mobile homes account for about one percent of the remaining 15 percent of housing types.

Will you be breaking this down by demographic information as well, like you did on the last slide just to see like you know how many are like of this age or okay?

Yes, we'll provide that by tenure and by age.

This is again just an overall kind of snapshot of that.

Rental housing market.

Okay, just one question back to that.

Um says what 15 percent is other what what are some examples of what other might be?

I feel like this is pretty comprehensive list.

In this case, other would be mobile home, both, trailers, uh, things like that.

Um that one percent after low loan to the other.

So like high-rise buildings, high-rise apartment buildings, that sort of thing.

Okay.

Mid-rise apartment buildings, four stories and higher.

I guess I was looking at the pie chart, and it seems like that would have been covered in the you know the 20 to 49 or the 50 or more.

No, the census separates those out separately.

Okay.

All right, thanks.

Yeah.

Uh so your rental housing market, um, so median gross rent of all houses rental housing in the city was estimated about 836 in 2023.

We feel just based on conversations we've had today, um, that that is even higher today than it is uh in 2023.

So it's probably closer to 900 to a 950, maybe a thousand.

Um, even though it was what's that?

Yeah, close to 1200.

1200, okay.

Um again, that was 2023 data ACS.

We'll review that as we go on.

There was only a slight increase uh compared to 2018 when the median gross rent was 847, adjusted for 2023 dollars again.

That's probably not 100% correct, but uh that's what the ACS data is showing.

Uh the average studio apartment in 2023 was estimated to be 572, one bedrooms at about 661.

We think we heard today one bedrooms are probably closer to 700 to 800 range.

Uh and the average two-bedroom apartment was probably it says here 861, but it was probably closer to 900 to 1,000, most likely.

This uh item actually shocked me when I saw it.

Rental vacancy rates in the city were almost 8%, 7.6 percent in 2023.

And again, that's high compared to the state average of about 5%.

So that's um that was kind of shocking to me.

Oops.

Umer occupied.

And uh before we go any further, I and I don't forget, I just want to really thank uh the greater Erie Board of Realtors for providing this data to this to us.

Uh it's um really proprietary data from their multi-list service, and they were multi-list service are really um not likely, don't like to give that data out real um easily, and they were very cooperative and did provide us this information.

And the good news is is it is very current.

Um so some of the key things that we've seen uh so far from them is that the medium sales price of a home sold in 2025 is 158,361.

Um the median average sales price has steadily risen over the past five years with a 34 percent total increase since 2018.

Back in 2018, the uh median annual sales price was 118,205.

Um since 2021, the number of owner-occupied homes sold has decreased annually with a peak of 771 homes sold in 2021 and a minimum of 571 in 2024.

That's probably explained because of the increase during COVID.

Interest rates went way down to 2% and was shot up over the last two or three years.

Um is now six and a half, seven percent in some cases.

So when interest rates rise to that level, it makes homes less affordable to individuals, so they're not able to purchase a house, so that's probably why you're seeing a decrease in sales uh since 20 uh 23 and 24.

Are we able to break down how many of those homes are bought now?

Like so look, I see that we sold like 582.

How many are bought by people who actually reside in Erie versus people who are buying them from outside of the city and renting?

Do we know that?

So I I mean if out-of-the-s, you're right.

Right, yeah, because I think that that's been something we've seen quite a big increase.

And we have heard that there's a lot of out-of-town investors uh currently.

We are we'll follow up related to that.

So I'm not a hundred percent sure what that number represents, but we can follow back up and figure out what that is.

But we did hear that in both of our meetings today that out-of-town investors are buying property, not even going through the rental registration program, just running it as is.

And a lot of cases it's really poor condition housing, which is really really sad.

In some cases, they don't have water.

It just terribles.

Especially with our refugee immigrant population too.

Yes, that's where it came out in that conversation.

Yep.

Do you want to come up?

And sit with us.

You're welcome.

There's lots of empty seats up here.

Um the good news is uh 2025, January 25 through September, a total of 580 uh two homes have been sold, indicating increase in more and more market activity.

Um again, that's I think people are just getting used to the fact that these are the new rates of interest rates uh that are going to be here, and they're just taking the plunge.

Um so that's good news.

Uh and on average, home uh that we look at what we call days on market.

So on average, homes for sale tend to remain on the market for about a month, and it's been maintained that way since 2021.

That's an indicator of a fairly strong uh demand market and tight market.

Uh so we always want to look at that.

Um and you're probably not surprised from the supply side, the city has a very low owner-occupied vacancy rate of less than one percent.

That's pr that's pretty pretty amazing to me that there's very little vacancy rate in owner-occupied units.

Can you repeat that last part that you just said?

Yeah.

So about the vacancy or the days on market.

Days well, right after the days on the market.

Yeah.

Yeah, the city has a very low owner-occupied vacancy rate.

So that means the number of vacant owner-occupied homes in the city is less than one percent in 2023.

And so what's that saying is that the supply, it's a very tight supply.

There's very little homes available for purchase, even if they wanted to purchase that are vacant and available for sale.

Uh it's less than one percent of your overall housing stock, owner-occupied housing stock.

Does that make sense?

Thank you.

And then just a little overview of what we're going to include in the housing plan.

Um, so again, the public outreach, again, I said we we did we're doing stakeholder in-person stakeholder sessions today, uh, this week uh through Thursday.

Uh, we're gonna do additional up to 10 virtual sessions after the new year.

We haven't scheduled those or know when they'll be, uh, but we will be doing those at uh some point during um the month of January and February, most likely.

I also, as I indicated earlier, we really want to make sure we somehow get various neighborhood resident input in the neighborhoods at some point, most likely in February.

We heard that uh there's a lot of a lot of neighborhood organizations meeting in January.

They basically take the month of January off, but looking towards February, maybe early March, having a series of uh of meetings in the neighborhood to get residents out to provide comment on their types of needs.

At that time, we should have more detailed demographic data as well to share with them uh and give them the opportunity to provide input.

We feel really important that the general population and community residents provide comments and input on the housing plan, and so we really want to make sure we do that.

Uh how are you doing that?

Like who are you con what groups are you contacting, and like how are you identifying like who's gonna be the stakeholder that's invited in?

For the in-person session.

Um for the just any of the sessions, yeah.

So we worked with uh Renee to get the in-person sessions, the stakeholder sessions that we're doing.

So we did the immigrant community, uh, we did housing authority, redevelopment authority, planning commission, planning um planning department, your um uh codes department.

Um we're also meeting with the home team on Thursday.

We have another immigrant session tomorrow for folks that weren't able to make it today.

Uh I know I'm missing one.

We have all the year and all the workers and community centers?

Yes.

Tomorrow evening in city council chambers.

Uh so they'll be doing that.

That's just one piece again.

Uh we look at stakeholders, but we also look at general population, general community to participate.

We haven't really lined up the um on uh the virtual ones yet, so we wanted to see how this session went.

We usually get recommendation of other organizations that need to be present and participation.

Um if you all have really strong feelings about groups and persons that we should be inviting and inviting to the uh virtual sessions, we'd really want to know that.

We had a uh uh opportunity to meet with the incoming administration's chief of staff today uh to kind of think about how they envision and want to get people out and who they feel we should meet.

So I think it's an ongoing conversation.

We haven't finalized that yet, but we really want to finalize that process and who we're reaching out to, both on the public uh community side as well as uh uh in-person virtual or the virtual sessions in January.

So is there a way to get a list of who's already like been pulled in so that we can add to that list?

I believe we have that right, Renee.

I've listed who we invited so far.

Yes, we do have that.

We can send that to you.

Thank you.

Yeah, I was gonna say um definitely anything that you guys are gonna be advertising.

Um I recommend that you guys notify the food pantries and also the library.

Yes.

Because there's regular people who use these areas quite a bit.

So we kick we kicked around the idea of potentially doing what we call a pop-up meetings, like going where people are.

So, like you're saying, we could do a food patron.

We could do the library, just set up a like a little station and just ask people input uh on housing needs within the community.

So these are all things we're thinking about.

We haven't finalized them yet, but we we definitely are not done with the outreach process yet, but we'll we'll be working on that in January and February coming up.

Uh and then finally we'll present to you all.

We'll present to the mayor um once we have a final draft document for review and comment.

Um, and obviously we would want your input and your analysis and your thoughts on on the document before it goes public.

So we will be in touch with you throughout this process.

Um you'll see that uh we also want to do our document also talk about data analysis.

You you just saw a snapshot of the things we're looking at, but we're really looking at people, housing, economy, and blight, so there'll be a lot more demographic uh analysis done.

And really the supply and demand analysis is a key piece.

This is that housing mismatch that that chart I showed you, where the gaps in the housing are by income and by tenure is really important.

We're also gonna buy projection data.

So that helps us look forward about five years to see what the demand may be in five years.

All this data really and the supply and demand analysis really helps focus recommendations uh that we would provide as part of this plan.

We also are uh doing a side analysis um for the housing authority.

So part of our assignment is to do a feasibility study for the Erie Heights uh housing development for Dusty at the Housing Authority.

So if you're familiar, that's on the west side.

Uh it's really close to our Lady of Peace, right on the city line there.

Uh that's an affordable uh development that the housing authority owns.

It's not public housing, it's not Section 8, it's just affordable affordable housing.

She feels that there's an opportunity to rehab some of that to potentially expand affordable housing in that area.

Uh so we're doing a little feasibility.

What would it look like from a development perspective to uh put sources and uses together initially to develop or redevelop that site?

Uh we have an architect on board to do some schematics, so we'll be sharing that as well with you.

Um the other thing that we're looking at behind the scenes is really looking at your organizations locally, see what they do, um, see what all the organizations organizations do.

Make sure that there's not duplication of services or provisions, making sure that maybe an organization could be doing more to address identified housing need within the community.

So we're doing that analysis.

We're also looking at service gaps.

Uh so that would be for your uh your homeless, your supportive housing, your permanent supportive housing, your shelters.

What does that look like?

Are we missing anything?

Are there are the things we're providing services, but are they really meeting where people are in the needs that they're that they're need?

So we'll be reviewing a lot of those service gaps and identifying any ways that maybe we could recommend some tweaks to that.

We're also asking folks to provide any insights on obstacles, identifying obstacles, specifically as it relates to the development, especially of affordable housing.

So is it a land cost issue?

Is a lack of availability?

Is it blighting conditions that uh that's taken up space?

So we're gonna be looking at we're gonna be looking at those um obstacles that potentially may be prohibiting further development, especially of affordable housing.

And then finally, um uh we're gonna be doing crafting this solutions-based strategies and recommendations to assist in addressing those housing gaps at the city level across neighborhoods.

Uh and then again, don't we can have this now, but this was just our stakeholder at this time generally during our stakeholder sessions.

We ask the organizations to provide a discussion on housing needs.

We're also in in several of the sessions.

Um, we have a little exercise that we've been doing.

So tomorrow evening with the neighborhood growth partnership.

Um, we hope that we get good attendance here.

So we have this little mapping exercise that we ask people where they live, we ask them the assets in their neighborhood, and we ask them what some of those constraints in their neighborhood are.

Uh and then more importantly, we do a budgeting exercise.

We have these fake dollars, and we give everyone five dollars, and we have five buckets of like what do you think the most need is rental housing, affordable rental housing, market rate, rental housing.

We have like five options.

They have to decide where they feel their best the resources, those five dollars can be put in.

And again, we do the and we want to do that in the future when the neighborhood groups when we meet, uh, just to get general input on what people think the resources should be allocated in that way.

So we are doing these exercises uh in some of these groups where we have more neighborhood residents and and participation.

So it's worked out pretty good so far today.

So that's all I have.

Do you all have any questions?

I don't think it's necessarily question, it's just our fear of the lack of community involvement if they're not given the information early enough, and then also to know that, you know, um we're planning this, because tomorrow, I don't know how many community members are gonna realistically show up.

Right.

Just because it's the debt of our winner.

I know.

It gets dark so fast.

I know.

And people sometimes don't find out about things until after the fact.

So I just want to intentionally reiterate the need for the neighborhood watch groups to know and the food pantries and even let the school district know so that they can let families know at the school because most of our city school students are probably in families that rent.

Um I just I want the study to be adequate and I want as much community involvement as possible.

So just making sure it's not the same hundred or two hundred people who answer all of our surveys would be great.

I agree.

And again, we will coordinate that with you.

I I believe that we need at least a month lead time.

So that's forefront of my mind that we get things done and we would hope that you all would help get the word out for us.

Uh we will do our best to get it out to uh organizations, school district.

Uh we'll do the blast.

But really, when you all invite your constituents to meetings, I think it really helps uh that they are there and participate.

But we'll keep you posted on that, and we'll absolutely um make sure there's enough lead time and then we do it in different locations so it's not just here at City Hall or on the West Side or these will have different locations for folks.

Okay.

Thank you, Bill, for this presentation.

This is huge.

Yes.

And this is really close to my heart.

So if it's okay if we all get a timeline of the dates and the times, because I would like to attend if I am able to.

I wish that we could go and hop back before uh COVID changed everything because it is unaffordable for the average person.

And then it affects higher education.

How are you going to pay for uh private uh institution or college because you're paying so much into housing?

And uh, you know, I purchased my home for 499 with uh first-time home buyers and a 35-year mortgage plan.

And it was doable, and I did it in my 20s.

People in their 20s can not do that anymore.

We heard that today.

1987.

How much were you making then?

Well, I was at, you know, St.

James, not right now.

Right.

So not a lot.

You still would made it work.

You were still able to make it.

You were able to make it work, that's right.

You know, and they were trying to sell us a home above 49.9.

And we knew that that was going to be a stretch.

But 35 years and it was doable.

What one of the things we will look at is what we call the missing middle.

You probably heard that term.

It's that that that exact type of housing that you're looking for.

It's called the missing middle.

It's middle income housing, you know, housing that's available for you know that that type of income tier that you're talking about.

The issue is is that developers, it costs them the same to build a new unit in Summit or Millcrake or Fairview as it does in the City of Erie.

So there needs to be incentives for developers, whether it be a land cost or development subsidy to help write down the cost of that construction.

Those are things we're looking at to help make it more affordable.

The other interesting thing we heard at the immigrate immigrant session this afternoon is that yeah, they have a lot of individuals that are that could potentially purchase homes.

They're making, I think the number was sixty thousand dollars a year, fifty to sixty thousand dollars a year, forty to sixty thousand, I think was the number that they said.

They have zero bad credit, which is something we don't bump into everywhere we go, bad credit is what's holding people back from being able to get a mortgage.

Their issue is that they don't have enough money for down payment and closing cost assistance.

And so just with a little help and a little incentive to help pay for that $8,000, $10,000 downpayment closing costs, they'd be able to purchase a home at $150,000, the median, basically the median income.

So we're looking at those types of things to be able to incentivize and be able to help those types of households purchase how homes in years.

We think it's really important.

I don't think somebody with $40,000 or $40,000 salary could purchase $150,000 house.

I literally just did the math on that.

With the amount of groceries, food costs, everything else.

30% of your housing cost being $1,000, $30% of your house costs.

That would actually, it's exactly $40,000.

Which your house adjusted for inflation into today's numbers would be $140,000.

So someone with today's salary of $140,000 could buy a house.

My houses in my neighborhood are selling well over $200,000 if you have student loan.

Just the other day, not even thinking of this home thing.

I posted on my Facebook page, a house on uh Middle Drive, uh Cape Cod.

They want $249,000 for it.

And they will get it, but it's absolutely crazy because the summer, within a few blocks away, they were getting there was three other houses that sold for the same or more price.

Right.

But where are the where I I just don't get it?

It's hard.

Because you have to make a lot of money to purchase that.

For their house.

Yeah.

Like I could sell my house, but I don't have a house to move into.

Yeah, right.

I don't have that kind of thing.

Well, that's what's going on.

So these pre people are paying more than 30 percent of their income towards housing.

So they might be paying 50 percent to beat that mortgage.

That's that's the reality.

That's what they have to do.

So you know, we have to look at alternatives, you know.

Um, how do we get that help to that down payment and closing costs to make it more affordable?

How do we write down mortgages to make it more affordable?

People, we will look at all these alternatives as part of the recommendations.

Uh working with private banks, looking at other ways to leverage resources to help people achieve homeownership and and and rent, you know, it's not just on the homeownership side, it's also rental.

I don't know how people afford rent.

You can buy a house if you have the resources, as much as it costs to rent.

I mean, the mortgage, I don't I don't I heard the mortgage uh of $158,000 is about $1,000, $900,000.

Uh that's rent, you know, $1,200 is, you know, people are paying $1,200 for a two or three bedroom unit.

So it, you know, if they have that ability to be able to get some assistance on the down payment closing cost side in the marketplace, that's that makes all the difference in terms of home ownership.

I would be also very curious when as you're doing this, is data collection around um the like the Airbnb, like how many, how much how many properties have now gone into that stock?

We are looking at that.

The the the we talk a lot about tiny homes.

Um the capacity for us to actually do that, though.

Like so because you you build one and you don't build up, so those those tend to take up a lot more space as we're just kind of thinking.

I there's there's an opportunity there, but I I would be very curious just like how we look at the Airbnb, uh, the tiny home and and just like the algorithmic rental prices that are being, I think, falsely inflated and in some capacity, just where we're seeing some of that.

We are looking at that too.

The other thing too is we're looking at your uh zoning code, right?

Uh we heard today from your planning department and planning commission that um it's very outdated and antiquated.

And so um that's also a potential uh uh thing that we could look at really adjusting and and recommending updating your zoning code to help address doing more form-based codes uh that allow for different types of housing mix within certain areas as opposed to your traditional R1 or two kind of thing.

So and I think looking at that waterfront uh conditional around the equity of just some of that too.

Uh we've talked about that.

We'll chuck spread up a couple of times.

So look, we also talked today about doing an affordable housing overlay.

What does that look like?

You know, does it have a developer, a private developer on the waterfront wants to build market rate units?

Okay, maybe we were we require them to do 10 percent of the units as affordable for whatever we define affordability as, or make them pay into an affordable housing trust fund for the so that you have a resource of dollars to help reinvest in however, whether it's going to down payment and closing cost assistance, whether it's going to help acquire uh properties and rehab resale, whatever the case may be.

So we're thinking about all these types of things as part of this study to help address that.

Thank you.

What is the uh I'm just gonna like the the the partnership or the collaboration with like groups like Infinite Eerie or some of these other coasts who are great questions?

Yeah, so we're willing to meet with them.

Um we do have uh you uh Renee have provided us with all the reports that have done in the city over the last 10 years.

So we have all those infinite area re-eary revoked, all of the air economic development plans.

There's been a ton of studies done.

And we actually are um Hannah, our colleague has just finished a uh a review of all those studies, so we have a good uh you know, kind of overview of what the recommended, uh what it said.

Uh we'll um I haven't reviewed yet.

As soon as I get done reviewing it, we'll we'll forward it to the city, so you have that, but we are taking into consideration all of those plans that have been previously done.

Look at it and say, hey, what makes sense?

Hey, this made sense, but it didn't move forward, why didn't it move forward?

And really looking towards making actionable uh implementation plan that's able to be implemented over uh the next five years.

So uh we're very cognizant that we're gonna provide real world implementable actions that you can take as opposed to just some pie in the sky.

We're really cognizant about not doing that.

Well, I look forward to all the data and the research that we're going to be um presented in the coming months.

Um the housing plan has been something that I I'm in favor of.

I I understand the need for affordable housing and I understand the need of our community for new housing and the fact that we haven't been able to build much in our city gives me hope that once we have this plan, maybe the next administration is gonna have the opportunity to apply for grants and see if we can get some investors and developers to come forward.

Um I know that Erie is a beautiful place to live.

We just need to be able to make it more um affordable for some of the low income wages that we have here because we do have an abundance of low wages, and until the minimum wage is increased, I think we're gonna just have to figure it out as far as how to afford to survive.

But like you said, most places in order to rent have to be able to approve three times your income to even qualify.

So if we can try to find ways to help these people who are going to live here be able to find closing costs, it will definitely secure the lack of growing um what is it, the population because people are gonna be like, oh, we can buy houses in the city.

We have these programs, so I'm I'm looking forward to that.

Um I was able to buy a house in July of 2025, thanks to Erie Black Wall Street.

They had a program for the uh closing.

So they gave me a $10,000 grant to close, and that was a very youthful program.

I gave you four weeks of knowledge and you had to qualify.

Um, but your income and all the other qualifications had to be met before you even got the approval.

So you have to be able to uh get the bank approval first.

So you can with a salary of 40,000 dollars, maybe a little 45, that's what I'm roughly at, qualify for a first-time homeowner loan.

Your debt to um income just needs to be less.

So luckily for me, I'm less than 20,000 of student loan.

But somebody with 150 or 200,000, yeah, it's different.

It takes that opportunity off the table completely.

That's the real issue.

I don't know how these kids are graduating with 200,000 of debt.

They're never gonna be able to find a floor.

Never.

I mean it's insane.

And that's the thing is that so many people who went to school for masters or their doctrine are now so far in the hole that they're never gonna be able to buy homes.

Right.

And I thank myself for going to a technical school versus a four-year institution because my golly, because I didn't go to a four-year college, I'm in a home now, whereas some of my friends have a lot of student loans that they're paying back and they're never gonna be able to buy a house, and it's very sad.

So anything that we can do in the city to help people be able to close is where I want to be.

So yes, we need more programs for first-time homeowners because that's the way to go.

Uh 35-year mortgage seems like they're rooted and they're gonna be here for a while.

So I like that.

Excellent.

Thank you.

And again, just to be clear, this is uh a we're looking at all market segments, not just affordable, but we will focus a lot on affordability.

Will you be talking with like the land bank and our meeting this morning?

Yep, yep.

They were all in our meeting this morning.

So talk with Aaron at length.

And I I think that this plan is gonna help us too be able to navigate what we do with all of the vacant lots that we just allow to be sold for 250 dollars because that's land that potentially we could develop on if we do what we need to do.

So, you know, hopefully we are looking forward to the next five years.

Excellent.

I think the and then I'll get up get off the sociological side of it for a second.

Um another area though that and you briefly touched on this is the inability to like secure loans.

Um when we see there's such an an overlap when we see um people who who are being arrested for uh various things that and and or having back due child support or things like that that go on the record and now they're unable to get you know so we don't have banks and lenders who are willing to to take a chance on this person um or employment opportunity.

So I am very curious to see how the loan distribution is going and if we're still seeing um because I know it exists, but seeing it in the data, like the redlining when it becomes renter versus homeowner and and who who gets to buy and who doesn't get to buy.

Okay.

Thank you.

Um are you finding the same similar situation in Pittsburgh than Erie?

Or can't you compare?

Oh no, the affordability issue is everywhere.

So um it's pretty intense in Pittsburgh right now.

The affordability is um even more insane.

I don't know if you guys know what the numbers are from an affordability perspective in Pittsburgh, but I know in my neighborhood, it's 400%.

Wow.

Yeah.

She's in Lawrenceville, in all fairness.

That's a uh gentrifying neighborhood.

Like, is that a good area?

Yeah, the gentrification, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

That's true.

That is true.

And that's like my biggest my biggest fear.

Because this Erie is right now a very affordable place to live, but our nest our job market is not matching.

Um so we are we are really primed for wealthy remote workers to and to really push out those who have the jobs that we are offering here in Erie.

So that's that's there's and that's not for for you all to solve too, but to have the data and the analysis to show like this is where the blocks are, and then to go to the community colleges or go to the high schools and go to like this is what we need to help people build up so they can buy and stay.

Um because I don't want a 400% increase.

And truly, like, you know, I have a brother uh that lives in uh North Carolina, a brother that lives in the uh Annapolis area, and housing down where they live is crazy.

Absolutely crazy.

So yeah.

That's a lot of money.

$29,000 less than the same terrible tile.

Wow.

It's worth just because of where it's there.

Well, Kathy, you'd be a millionaire.

But you would have a million plus to buy a new home somewhere.

Oh my lord, the house, the housing prices have just ballooned.

Wow.

It's insane.

Well, if I guess I should have just bought a house when I was one year old.

If there are no other other questions, I don't want I don't want us to like feel like we have to stay till seven.

I think we're good to wrap.

We're okay with wrapping.

Yeah, thanks.

Appreciate it.

Anytime if you have questions, um you can reach out to us at any time.

We'd be happy to answer anything.

We'll keep you updated as we go on.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yep.