Okay, we'll go ahead and get this uh work session of uh housing needs assessment um started.

You can go ahead and take us off.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um so we're very excited to have the final report of the now 2026 housing needs assessment for you all tonight.

Um, the plan for the work session is we have our um consultant team on the line, and they're going to walk you through the the process to do a brief overview of the process just to kind of revisit what we spoke about at the last work session midway through the project, and then really take you through the key findings of the needs assessment, and then also at the end um take a look at some of the preliminary policy recommendations.

You know, as you know, this project the goal was really to dive into the details of the housing need in Valdez.

We all know and you have set your priorities as such.

We know housing is an issue in our community, but we really wanted to do a detailed assessment with the support of an outside firm to give you specifics of exactly what type of housing is needed here and really what's realistic, what what can be afforded and what we can do in our community to help with those issues.

So the community development department team that worked on this project was myself and Nicole Chase, one of our senior planners.

And then on the line, um we have Shanna Zospan and Michelle Bolds from AgNUBEC who are going to take it away and do the bulk of the presentation tonight.

Um, and then I'll be available to assist with questions at the end.

And um, as time allows, you could start to talk about some of those preliminary um policy recommendations too if you'd like.

So, Shanna, can you take it away, please?

I can.

Thanks, Kate.

Um, maybe Michelle just go ahead and go to the next slide.

Oh, there we are.

Um, so yep, I'm Shanna's Pan.

I was um before you all in July with Aaron Mandata, who was also an analyst on this project.

Um, and then Michelle Bowles is here today as well.

So we think we have about 20 to 23 slides.

Um, I'm going to take the first few.

Michelle will kind of walk through a lot of the results of the analysis, and then I'll circle back to some of the highlights around the policy strategies.

Next slide.

Yeah, I kind of just did that part, so maybe next one.

Um, next one.

Okay.

Um, this is a graphic that's in the report that talks about um kind of the overall housing planning process, just to kind of put the study into context.

Um, you had done some work on thinking about housing in Valdez.

You had put in place some of the some of the incentives.

Um, and then like Kate said, wanted to do a deeper dive into the housing need in Valdez, and that's really the work we've been doing over the last year.

Um again, this study does set the stage for some policy strategies.

Um, but really the next step is kind of that action planning piece.

And that can come in many different forms.

It can be prioritizing some of the ideas that you may see and read about in this report, and maybe thinking of new ideas and maybe assigning roles to different organizations because housing is really um, you know, developed in in most part by the private sector and by the nonprofit sector.

Um so sometimes it's a formal process, sometimes at ad hoc committee that comes together, um, but really kind of moving into that next implement next planning phase and then ultimately implementation and tracking of the of the strategies.

And so there's a whole section in the policy recommendations that kind of looks at that ongoing um data tracking and implementation.

Next slide.

Um, this is our overall approach working with the community on the kind of goals and desired outcomes of the assessment, data collection, collaboration, and then sharing of the findings.

Um I think I'm gonna go into more detail here.

Um when we got started on this project a little over a year ago.

I feel like Valdez had a pretty good sense of some of the goals that they wanted to um meet in terms of this study.

So kind of understanding local data, under identifying housing opportunities and challenges throughout the region, um, connecting to the people who live and work here, understanding the housing market conditions and identifying those recommendations and strategies.

Um we kind of just built from that set of goals to develop our scope of work.

Let's go to the second step.

This is kind of where we spent a lot of time both at the beginning of the study, and then I would say probably three quarters of the way through the study.

So our first approach was to kind of just do a first cut of the various data sources that were used to forecast housing need.

Those include like the Department of Labor, the US Census, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, HUD.

We did secure data from AirDNA to help kind of start you in the process of tracking the short-term rental.

We looked at the MIT living wage calculator, National Low Income Housing Coalition, as well as some of the local data sources in Valdez around building permits and MLS data.

And we kind of honed that forecast.

So Michelle's going to kind of walk through that after we did the first cut.

And then on step three in the next slide, really kind of built up that model using information, qualitative information directly from the people in Valdez.

So there was kind of like a pause in that quantitative analysis last spring where we really worked hard with your staff to feel the pretty successful survey, I would say, about 462 responses and questions around housing status, interest in moving, housing preferences.

And as we go further, you'll see like how we were able to like directly tie some of the responses in the survey to that pent-up housing need in Valdez.

So we did a separate little questionnaire and that connected with 21 employers and had about 22 different questions focused on the impacts to sort of their business viability due to any housing need.

And then we also did about 13 different key informant interviews to kind of better understand what we were learning and make sure we had a better sense of some of these themes and results.

And then I think step four is sharing.

So yeah, like I mentioned, um, Erin and I presented mostly on the survey responses on at the July 13th council presentation.

Um Michelle and I did fly out in late September to meet with businesses and share a little bit about the questionnaire and learn more from the businesses.