If we're not ready in the back, let me know.

Okay.

You got it?

Call to order the meetings of the housing, health and education committee.

We'll start with the Pledge of Legions.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands.

One nation.

Indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you all.

We are Council Member McShane should be joining us momentarily.

And we will turn the um until we have a third, I guess Derek, you and I can approve the minutes.

The minutes of July 17th.

So move.

Second.

Those in favor?

Okay.

That's good.

Okay, so the first discussion is on the moderately priced dwelling unit funds utilization.

I believe we have President Nash and Stuart Campbell here to do the presentation.

I'm going to turn it over to them.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So we have three items that are all pretty dense in detail and in thought process.

And I want to compliment Clara.

She put together a heck of a uh memo that sort of outlines the MPDU program, the history of the program, how we've gotten to where we are.

Uh, and I'll just also draw your attention, and I appreciate Clara for you including this in the backup.

All the way, so it's a thirteen-page backup document, and at the on the thirteenth page, we have a balance sheet, and we're going to get to that.

But we always get questions about that.

So I wanted to make sure that everyone knew that it was available online.

It was also meant to provide some history and some information to them so that as we continue this conversation, we don't miss a beat.

Sort of why it exists, and Stuart certainly is the uh the expert here and can correct me, back me up, or or and certainly at his piece.

Initially, the creation of the MPDU in Lou of program, and MPD, we're gonna throw around that that's moderately price-dwelling unit.

Initially, that was part of a movement, and I want to say it was in the nineties, Stuart, but it might have been earlier, where we had sort of this revelation that we had to use zoning to be more inclusionary.

So you hear this term called inclusionary zoning.

And it was this concept that we acknowledge as a and it's not just us.

If you look around the country, this was happening all over the country.

We acknowledge that left to our own devices, governments were using zoning to be exclusionary, right?

So we were having neighborhoods over here and neighborhoods over here that you know didn't resemble each other in terms of income and needs and all that, and and even just how they looked.

And you see you see how that's evolved, right?

You see some you know, purely single family neighborhoods, you see, you know, and it's kind of been there was this sort of revelation that we needed to do more to bring everybody together.

It's a mass generalization, but that's that's really what the inclusionary zoning uh is about.

And I think that's important for the context of the conversation because there's been a lot of talk about um price appropriate housing, affordable housing, housing at all levels of uh of affordability, and the the the use is always zoning, right?

It always comes back to how as a government we're using our laws to to basically um influence the market and and to move the market and in and move that supply chain accordingly.

So the MPDU of program, or excuse me, the MPDU program looks different for many different jurisdictions, but a lot of jurisdictions have them.

And the good thing about that is it provides us with information to gather, and Clara's done an excellent job of trying to get this in the most succinct way.

It's still a 13-page document to try to explain um not just what we do as a city, but also what other jurisdictions have done, what uh and and kind of the genesis of the program.

I'll just say that there have been changes since the beginning of the creation of the program.

There have been changes, and Clara's outlined those changes with any legislative action.

You don't set it and forget it, you come back and you keep revisiting it.

I think there's universal agreement that the current MPD, well, let me back up.

I think I've heard universal agreement that the current MPDUF program deserves a look.

And I think that one of the indicators that we have, um, just like with our AD, yes, our ADU ordinance that we're gonna discuss later, our accessory dwelling ordinance, you know, we have data that suggests that we need to make changes, right?

So the the most glaring change here with the MPDU in Lua or MPDU program, excuse me, is that we aren't ever seeing construction of units.

We always see the opt to purchase.

That is a great data point to suggest that we need to make a change and what those and those changes are, I believe what uh are on the table for discussion, as well as, and I always I always try to be very front up front about this, the option to have in lieu in the first place.

That's always an option, that's always something that we should discuss as a policy matter, the benefits of having it, the benefits of taking it away, all on the table.

So with that said, um we are not, you'll see in your backup, there's not a there's not a draft ordinance of anything.

This is the first conversation we've had uh since we've changed sort of the structure and and like I said, we've certainly had many conversations.

But currently, as it is constructed, we have in and in lieu of program, we have which essentially means that when developers are purchasing and building, or excuse me, when they're building and developing uh neighborhoods, they have the option to buy out of of constructing affordable housing.

And that program has yielded a certain amount of money, and we've had a lot of discussions this term about the use of that money, getting the money out the door.