JDS Housing Discussion – Closed Session

Members of the common council are finally going to a have a substantive discussion about affordable housing and its going to be held is closed session!

AGENDA

This is what the agenda says:

CLOSED SESSION
When the Finance Committee considers the following matter, it may go into closed session pursuant to sec. 19.85(1)(e), Wis. Stats., which reads as follows: Deliberating or negotiating the purchasing of public properties, the investing of public funds, or conducting other specified public business, whenever competitive or bargaining reasons require a closed session. If the Finance Committee does go into closed session, notice is hereby given pursuant to sec. 19.85(2), Wis. Stats., that it may reconvene in open session without waiting 12 hours as specified in the statute.
13. 57679 Judge Doyle: Negociating Team Progress Report

REPORT

This is what the attached report says:

DATE: October 3, 2019
TO: City Finance Committee
FROM: Block 88 Negotiating Team
RE: Block 88 Air-Rights Negotiation Progress Report

The City’s Block 88 Negotiating Team will provide a progress report for the Finance Committee’s October 7th meeting. Since the last progress report on September 23rd, an additional negotiating session was held with Stone House on September 26th. That session focused on the affordable housing component of the project. The next negotiating session is scheduled for Monday, October 7th.

The City’s Negotiating Team recommends that, at the Finance Committee’s October 7th meeting, it convene in closed session to review the affordable housing financing options and to provide direction to the Negotiating Team on this element of the project. Discussion of these options will include the amount of support from the City’s Affordable Housing Fund, the number of affordable units, the income eligibility levels of those units, and the interaction of these options with the developer payment for the podium and air rights.

Looking ahead, Stone House will be making informational presentations to the CDBG Commission on October 3rd, the Landmarks Commission on October 14th and the Urban Design Commission on October 30th.

MY INPUT

from: Brenda Konkel <brendakonkel@gmail.com>to: “Rhodes-Conway, Satya V.” <SRhodes-Conway@cityofmadison.com>, “Schmiedicke, David” <dSchmiedicke@cityofmadison.com>, All Alders <allalders@cityofmadison.com>, Linda Vakunta <lvakunta@cityofmadison.com> date: Oct 7, 2019, 11:01 AM
subject: JDS Affordable Housing

First of all, since the beginning of Judge Doyle Square I’ve been disappointed about the lack of public information and opportunities for meaningful input before decisions have been made, particularly as major changes have been mostly made in closed session without the public having the benefit of understanding what is being discussed.  I believe before this project was undertaken (before many of you were involved) there should have been a community discussion about what we should do on this piece of property.  Because that never happened, the community has no buy-in with this project and as changes are made, there is no community input inform your decisions.

I see you are going it again tonight – meeting in closed session with no opportunity for meaningful public input.  This time about the affordable housing elements.  The staff report indicates:The City’s Negotiating Team recommends that, at the Finance Committee’s October 7th meeting, it convene in closed session to review the affordable housing financing options and to provide direction to the Negotiating Team on this element of the project. Discussion of these options will include the amount of support from the City’s Affordable Housing Fund, the number of affordable units, the income eligibility levels of those units, and the interaction of these options with the developer payment for the podium and air rights.So, I have the following input/questions:

1.  I thought the affordable housing fund was only used as match for projects funded projects by WHEDA.

2.  How much money is available in this fund and were there other applications that went through the RFP process that could have been funded with this money?

3.  Please don’t only discuss the number of affordable units but the range of sizes of the units (in terms of square footages and bedroom count) and the location of the units.

4.  Please do not spend our money to create units affordable at 80% or 60% of AMI.   Those units end up being essentially market rate units and our money is being poorly spent.  Please have the units be affordable at 50% AMI or even lower.  At 50% AMI we are still talking about people making the following amounts of money:
1- $35,150 or $16.90/hr at 40 hours (still an $878 one-bedroom is spending 30% of income)
2 – 40,200
3 – 45,200
4 – 50,200

I much prefer 30% AMI and few units so we are creating truly affordable housing that is most needed in our community:
1 – $21,100 or $10.14/hr at 40 hours (spending 30% of income is 527.50 one-bedroom)
2 – $24,100
3- $27,100
4 – $30,100

5.  Make the housing permanently affordable.  Not 15 or 30 years, but permanent.

6.  Please consider how you will staff the enforcement of these affordable housing provisions.  Without enforcement, you are throwing your money away.

7.  Please make sure that they have strong tenant protections in place when it comes to screening and evictions.  I’d hate to see the city also spending money on fair housing enforcement and eviction prevention attorneys to get and keep people in the affordable housing you are creating.

Thank you for listening and please, make good decisions.  We can do better with the way we spend our affordable housing funds.

Sincerely,
Brenda K. Konkel
p.s. any questions, please feel free to ask!

YOUR INPUT?

Feel free to send emails before tonight.  I sent to the mayor, her aide, the committee staff and all alders, but here are the committee members, tho other alders may join them in closed session: