As we do with every public meeting, we allow 15 minute public comment period.

Please keep your comments to three minutes per person.

And we'll go ahead and begin that now.

Do we have anybody on the list?

Nobody on the list present.

How about online?

We have one for

one person online.

Who's

actually?

Julie Morris, 210 East Street.

I just wanted to make sure council was aware that yesterday, the Planning Commission voted both things as a yes to move forward, one of them being a development on Walnut Street.

And the other thing is a home being annexed from Shawnee Acres into Milford.

Despite four people from the community there against the Ashburn realtor development.

Four people speaking against it because of a variance.

Just wanted to pass that on.

Okay, thank you.

Anyone else online?

Yeah.

Okay, we'll go ahead and close the public comment period.

We'll begin the workshop.

We'll call it to order.

Uh tonight's workshop is a uh affordable housing discussion and uh various items.

And tonight the first presenter will be the Delaware State Housing Authority.

And Secretary Henkles is here to present.

So welcome.

What's there?

Rob

will control your presentation and just let them know when you need to move the slides.

Great.

Well,

good evening.

And uh thank you for the opportunity to uh engage with you on housing issues.

Uh my name is Matt Heckles.

I'm the director of the Delaware State Housing Authority.

Um not a secretary.

That's a quirk of state law.

Um, but I oversee the operations of the Delaware State Housing Authority and have some other uh responsibilities uh in code and with me tonight.

Alex Medeas is our uh uh

uh

director of policy and planning, uh very involved in uh uh the parts of the agency that are not really running programs, but are moving either the agency forward or moving state policy and and uh and other issues uh that we're concerned about forward.

And also uh Ashley Dawson, who's uh uh our director of uh public relations, so she's here to make sure I don't say anything that's gonna get me in too much trouble.

Um

so

obviously affordable housing uh is what I've done for my career.

I have uh spent um I started off in in 2000 uh working for Governor Miner.

Uh some of you uh may remember her.

Um I worked on her campaign in 2000 and uh worked in her office as a constituent liaison for about uh three years, three and a half years before coming to DSHA in 2004 as a legislative person mostly.

I I did a lot of policy work and some presentations and things like that.

But uh, as I grew into understanding housing and housing policy and programs, uh I I evolved in in my career at DSHA.

Um about uh 10 years ago, maybe 11 years ago now almost, I was exiled to the state of Maryland, where I ran the housing finance agency uh for the state of Maryland for uh five and a half years.

Uh my wife and our kids still lived in uh in in Wilmington, and I just did a really long commute um back and forth every day.

Um when uh Joe Biden became president, I was uh asked to be a part of his administration and became the regional administrator for the U.S.

Department of Housing, Normand and Development covering the Mid Atlantic region, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Virginia, Maryland, DC, and Delaware.

So for about you know 25 years or so, I have been thinking about housing, thinking about community development, thinking about better ways for government to uh engage uh with people who uh low and moder income families who need housing, uh, try to uh make progress on ending homelessness uh the whole way through the spectrum to you know how do we uh uh finance, provide good financing for uh first-time homebuyers, first generation home buyers, um, and even repeat buyers with DSHA's programs with down payment assistance and and lower interest rates, uh the whole way through now to talking a lot about housing supply and um and and understanding that that is not something that the state uh has a magic wand for.

Uh much of what has to happen around housing supply is uh held at the local level with zoning and and permitting and and and and those processes and opening up those processes to allow for uh housing supply.

And we'll talk a little bit more about that later on.

But just thought it'd be helpful to know a little bit about about me and and and what I bring to uh this new role uh at DSHA.

Okay, let's get into

it.