Okay, it's five thirty, and um we are going to start uh Grand Junction City Council workshop.

Today's Monday the 18th, and um we are going to start with uh

an

update on our housing needs assessment.

And so it's like Mike, did you want to start off?

Sure, I'll just make a couple of short comments and uh thank you, mayor, members of council or first item is to receive uh a presentation from policy, and we have more reader in person who walked through the presentation on the initial first draft that was in the packet for the public to see and for council to see.

And there's still iterations to go with uh the interviews, of course, with each of you and the county commissioners coming up

uh

this week, but tonight is to walk through the initial feedback so that you have that prior to those interviews and opportunity to ask questions and discuss.

I'll stop there and uh

I

think we'll turn the time straight to looking actually Tamar goes straight to Molly and then for the presentation.

Thank you for being here.

Great.

This is easier.

Appreciate the time on your agenda today and the opportunity to talk with all of you today.

So my name is Molly Fitzpatrick.

Um I'm a managing director of roof policy research.

We worked with the City of Grand Direction a handful of times on uh looking at housing needs as well as on uh housing strategy.

And I will not know.

We'll see if I can advance we'll advance slides in a minute.

But um, so as was mentioned, we have completed the initial draft of the housing needs assessment.

As many of you already know, um, and a lot of you listening online may know as well.

There are really two big components to this study as is now required by the state.

One is the housing needs assessment.

The second is really a separate deliverable called the housing action plan, or we'll refer to that as the hap.

Today we're kind of at the midpoint between those two processes where we have taken a look at all of the data.

We've also done a good bit of resident stakeholder engagement.

That engagement informs both of these processes, both the housing needs assessment and the housing action plan.

So tonight we're really just talking about what are the findings coming out of that housing needs assessment, so that we're all kind of on the same page in terms of kind of what we heard from the public, what we heard from stakeholders, and what we see in the data, and then that will roll into kind of looking forward to strategy actions to address those needs as well.

So the focus of tonight is really to run through um the information from the needs assessment, and then we'll be rolling through the housing housing action plan.

Um and that is uh a lot of what we'll continue to talk about as we have one on one uh conversations with you all.

Um those conversations as

well.

Um generally as we look at why are we doing this?

There is a state requirement around this.

So there are also lots of social and economic benefits for the community.

There are also lots of social and economic benefits for the community when we start to address housing needs and when we have a full balanced housing stock that accommodates the full spectrum of housing.

I'm not going to spend a ton of time kind of on that background info, but also just want to acknowledge that this is also in alignment with your comprehensive plan, both in terms of looking at needs and the way that we've done that, but also as we move into housing action planning and strategy, we want to make sure that we are staying aligned with your comprehensive plan and what you all have heard from your community, what your stated priorities are moving forward there as well.

So

I'm gonna jump into the data.

I'm gonna kind of blitz through those of you that uh have probably seen me present before.

I tend to talk fast, so I'm sorry, I will try to slow down.

Um but I'm gonna kind of blitz through a lot of the data, and then we'll take time as much time as you all would like at the end to answer questions or work through any other discussions as well.

So we'll start with demographic and economic trends.

Obviously, that is sort of the baseline of why we have housing, why we um talk about housing needs as well.

So the key trends right now that are um impacting housing choice, and this is in Mesa County as well as in Grand Junction, is that you do have steady growth.

Um, most of that is driven by people moving here, not necessarily by babies being born, but mostly by net migration.

We've also got an aging population, about one in four residents are over 65 right now.

You do have rising wages and rising incomes.

Both of those uh increased faster than national inflation, but they're not quite keeping up with home prices, as we'll see a little bit later in the presentation.

Poverty is lower than it was in 2019 and even in 2010, it's about 11% countywide, but there's some groups that experience much more, much higher rates of poverty, so disproportionate impacts on subgroups.

Um,

when we look at employment trends, the service providing sector as opposed to the goods sector uh is is growing faster, um, both in terms of number of jobs, but also the wages in that sector are rising at on average higher than in the goods producing sector.

And not surprisingly, like most places, you've got an increasing um share of workers that are working from home.

Jumping into multiple housing stock itself, uh, as well as the market trends broadly, we're seeing that housing production is starting to keep pace with population and job growth after a period of not doing that.

Um, we're also gonna take a look at some steep price and rent increases, even though we see some softening in that rental market in the last couple of years.

Um, and then uh that those price increases are still outpacing wages and inflation.

So we're still seeing some loss of naturally occurring affordable housing, even as you continue to make investments and see some delivery of income restricted affordable housing.

So,