Title
Notice/Advertisement Title: Housing, Homelessness, and Building Committee Budget Hearing
Contact Name: Jessica Clinger
Contact Telephone Number: 614-645-6354
Contact Email Address: JNClinger@columbus.gov
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Housing, Homelessness, and Building Committee Budget Hearing
Date: Tuesday - January 21st 2025
Time: 5pm
Location: Columbus City Council Chambers, 90 West Broad Street, Columbus 43215
Councilmembers Present: Council President Shannon Hardin, Council Members Melissa Green, Emmanuel Remy
Summary of Minutes:
- Call to Order: 5:03pm
Present: Council President Hardin, Councilmember Green, Councilmember Remy, Director Messer, Deputy Director Webster, Deputy Director Erin Prosser, John Tannous, Shannon Isom, Carlie Boos, Kelly Harrop, Ian Labitue, Kim Stands, Graham Bowman, Rebecca Brown, Sam Master, Haley Gerken, Michael Wilkos. - 25 in audience unnamed.
CP Hardin welcome and introduction to new committee. Story about resident and family member who faced eviction due to rent being raised. Residents being priced out, property taxes going up. Evictions are at an all time high, homelessness going up. Looking to listen for next 6 months, more tables for roundtable. Homelessness roundtable right before this hearing with CM Green.
CM Green - Opening remarks, keeping in mind equity and justice, humanity to this conversation. More than just bricks and sticks.
Deputy director Bill Webster - Development budget, access to economic opportunity. Budget to help those experiencing homelessness. Housing is a regional issue. Need municipal partners to do more. Affordable housing big issue. $4.2M. Slight reduction in staff due to transferring staff to Lead grant. Homelessness budget $6.1M
Deputy director Erin Prosser talked about affordable housing bond, affordable housing construction, stability. Housing is wealth building opportunity, homeownership. $141M city bond dollars allocated to date. Relocation code change, housing innovation team. Reducing displacement. CRA to include affordability in high opportunity neighborhoods. Affordable land trust. Focus on families making $50K less per year, enter homeownership.
CP Hardin - Future of ERA program post pandemic level program? Erin Prosser, innovation team looking at future funding. Focused on.
CP Hardin - Asked about access to counsel funding, build off foundation of DOD budget to help at legal counsel
CP Hardin - Asked question about focus strategies report, how are we implementing.
Prosser answered looking at report
CP Hardin asked about rule change next week for CRA
Erin Prosser - answered about changes to flexibility for CRA requirement for building single family homes. Meet affordability requirement.
CM Green - asked about how DOD plans to implemented parts of Access to Counsel in the future.
Webster - Said they are waiting for operating budget to pass for them to implement Access to Counsel. They asked for it as an expansion but wasn’t in the budget.
Director Messer - Presentation about BZS budget. Code enforcement and weights and measures moved over to BZS in the past few years. BZS collects fees according to fee schedule. Some services are general fund and some are service fee funded. Discussed new tenant protection code enforcement specialists. Zone In, zoning code update last year. 45 new projects along the corridors since Zone In passed, many commercial. More Zone In update coming and phase 2. Registry in 2025, foreclosure registry, vacant property registry. Wholesaler registry. More online services for BZS. 50K permits per year, purchase online is a convince. Sped up process to get permitting and plans approved.
CP Hardin asked question about how to streamline permitting and moving projects forward faster.
Messer said with Zone In changes some re-zoning process will be easier. Average time is 7 months to approve projects for zoning process. Project management team now being implemented, timing is now cut down to 4 months now. Implemented expedited review process, start to finish.
CM Green - 3 tenant protection code staff hired, is that enough? Cross train. How do they contact
Messer - Contact 311. Potentially hire more and cross train code enforcement.
Invited speakers - Kelly Harrop - Building Industry Association. Importance of creating housing, Columbus facing housing crisis. Applaud city council for passing progressive, much needed legislation to help address the housing crisis. Zone In, CRA reform etc. Columbus expected to grow quickly with more jobs. 1M new residents in the MSA. Home is where a job goes to sleep at night. Commends BZS and efforts to reduce regulation and red tape but must do more.
CP Hardin - asked about what can be done at the regional and state level.
Harrop said they are working at the state level and white paper released by BIA to improve zoning and regulatory regulations.
Carlie Boos, executive director, Affordable Housing Alliance of Central Ohio. Affordable housing bonds, zoning reform, ERA, fair and decent housing. Franklin County and Columbus has reduced housing stress. This budget represents future. Affordable housing trust and bond.
CP Hardin - If you could pick an area of focus: invest, preserve, build and include?
Boos - Need to do all.
Shannon Isom - CEO Community Shelter Board, difficult topic, just not enough resources, appreciate the work of former CM Favor. CSB has shelter dollars but most are housing. Prevention is a hard-working piece. Partners are given to partners like shelter partners. Van Buren is our biggest partner. New work is warming center strategy and crisis response. Focus strategy report to ensure we answered key questions. Inherent commitment that no child is on the street. We flex our system to shelter children. We have an affordable housing crisis. As we are stabilizing, we are still in a housing crisis. Unsustainable funding model. We can add more permanent supportive housing, reduce single homelessness. Current path will reduce services, increase unsheltered homelessness, loss of services. Asking for $5.4M from City of Columbus, focus strategies is an additional $5M. $18.7M overall. County is an integral part of this solution.
CP Hardin question - Is City being flexible enough to meet the moment with the winter warming centers?
Shannon Isom - Unsheltered folks die from sleeping outside and getting hypothermia. Neighbors and citizens want to help. Can we do more when we identify a crisis. We are thinking more creatively and expansively today.
CM Green - Clarified with the DOD how much was allocated for CSB in budget vs. federal allocation pass through.
Shannon Isom - Continued presentation and compared peer cities Austin, Charlotte and Minneapolis.
CP Hardin - Thank you for your work and shelter board partner’s work. This is our responsibility. This is a tight budget, colleagues in Austin pointed out to me that we can make investments now and solve this issue. Some cities get to a point where the issue seems unsolvable. Our understanding is that $5.4M is set aside for CSB budget but what I’m hearing is you need more funding to maintain shelter beds.
Shannon Isom, we relied heavily on ARPA dollars like others. It’s no longer a question of how we are using ARPA dollars but how are we replacing them. Baseline must be $13.6M to ensure partners keep beds online.
CM Green how would your partners respond if the request is several million dollars short.
Isom - could I invite up a shelter provider to speak to this? One colleague is here.
Elizabeth Brown CEO YWCA. Picture of YWCA 179 individuals in the shelter. Cold day, no school, 1/3 of families have head of household working, doing case manager work to find housing/employment, early childhood education center taking care of kids. What makes all this run, the staff of the YWCA. Center the need of the center. If we don’t have replacement funds of ARPA expire in July, CSB funds, 50% cut in budget for family center. Can’t serve these many families and take new reservation. It’s impossible and can’t do it. We are committed to this work. First to open a family center, can’t do this.
CM Green - Are you at risk of closing?
Liz Brown - Close some portion of the Family Center. But we need to plan.
CM Green - How can we be a good partner; how can we prevent this from happening?
Liz Brown - We need a permanent, sustainable budget solution. City can’t make magic every year. We need a funding solution.
CP Hardin - We are committed to working with DOD to making sure we find a way to a balanced budget, not close any beds
Ian Labitue - Introduction as incoming CEO for Affordable housing trust of central Ohio. Start February 3. Grateful to join effort. Inclusive access to affordable housing. Looking forward to strategic collaboration in the future.
Kate McGarvey - LASCO, Stout report found significant impact on legal aid assistance to prevent evictions. LASCO is asking $1.5M added to the budget to fund access to counsel.
CP Hardin - Asked DOD, how should we think about Access to Counsel funding?
Webster - After 22 years in DOD, this is a cash flow issue, looking for savings to add capacity for initiatives.
CM Green - Can we look at $5M Elevate money to bridge this gap?
Webster - Innovation office looking at how we can stretch these dollars.
CM Green - How can we square contracting issues with CSB contract.
Webster - Reason we are trying to square this type of funding. Different type of funds used for different types of services. Source the most flexible funding for organizations that can use it effectively. Less of a contracting question and more of a way to enable the work our partners are doing.
Public Comment:
Amy Klabben - Discussed the Families Flourish program. Evaluated program, mental health. Families are looking for safety. Help us become apart of the City’s budget. 60% of funding used for cities living in Columbus.
Charles Abernathy Jr - Former Public Health worker.
Michael Wilkos - United Way fund 75 nonprofits to ensure children are reading by 3rd grade. Lack of affordable housing is well documented. ALICE large number is 41%. Record number experiencing homelessness. Housing for all.
Wesley Moore - Director for My Brother’s Keepers, warming center operating. Experienced homelessness living in the short north, stayed in cars and vacant buildings to stay warm and watched for his own brother to stay safe while they took turns sleeping. Reason why they are running a warming center.
Roy Lowenstein - Increasing housing supply and development. Pattern books of design, zoning side accessory dwelling units and in fill lots, pocket neighborhoods, limit short term rentals, land bank mission expanded to hold for future development, severe ties with OHFA LITEC, not everything has to be a grant (loan guarantee), home ownership loans to be an equity partner.
Bryanna Chambers - Concerns about public safety, unhoused population is at risk, homelessness is an emergency
Stephen Cottrill - Housing resource specialist funds, need to find funds to continue emergency rental assistance funding and assistance. Renters are struggling and poverty is hurting families.
CP Hardin - Closing remarks and thank you. ARPA funding didn’t surge funding, it right sized funding for the need in our community.
Adjourned: 7:35pm