Welcome to the third joint commission meeting on the housing
strategy. I want to welcome the Planning Policy Commission, the
Human Services Commission. I hope it's on. Is it on?
The light's on. and the Economic Vitality Commission. Welcome to you all, and thanks for
all the work you're about to do on this tonight. I wanted to start out
by saying you all would have received a packet, and tonight we just have sort
of three pieces we're trying to get through. And the first is to go over
the mission and problem statement that we've been working on a little bit. We had
the subcommittee work on it a little bit, and so we're bringing those thoughts back
to you. We want to look at the focus group findings and the commission homework
that you all did last time findings and talk about that for just a little
bit to make sure we haven't missed anything. And then the third part, which I
think is going to be the most exciting, at least I think it will be,
is to actually start putting some ideas together, some questions and answers and thoughts about
what kind of strategies might be workable, might make sense for Issaquah. They're not recommendations,
they're not anything in stone, they're just a really small list that we were going
to start with just to see if they made sense to you all or what
questions you have. And so with that, I want to show you, you've seen this
before, this is the famous schedule of getting through the housing strategy. And just as
a reminder, the housing strategy is the big picture of all the kinds of housing
we want in the next 20 years. And as you probably know, our city council
enacted development moratorium last September that called out six reasons that they wanted
to slow growth down for a little bit. And one of them was affordable housing.
And affordable housing is just a small part of the bigger housing strategy. And so
I want you to keep that in mind that although we're all working on the
big picture housing strategy to get through the whole 20 years of the city's housing
strategy, The affordable housing piece is what council's looking at us to be done, or
at least as done as we can be, by October. So that's why the little
group of strategies we're bringing forward tonight is in response to the council's wish that
we work on that little bit first. I'm probably going to say that again when
we start that, just so we can keep all those pieces together. Are there any
questions on the schedule before I turn it over to... My partner
in crime, Jen. Okay, go. Great. Oh,
darn. So thanks again for being here tonight. And I wanted to also thank so
if you remember the last joint commission meeting we had I guess that was in
December which seems like a long time ago. We looked at a draft mission statement
and I want to thank Elizabeth, John and Laura who is not here who took
the time in between that meeting and this meeting to look at the at the
mission statement and try to do some adjustments to it. So right now what we
ended up with are two different possibilities. So I want to talk about these. We
don't want to spend a ton of time on this, but it does help to
set the -- to help us guide us as we move forward on this process.
And so I want to open up the floor to if you -- I put
in red the words that are different between the two. And I think there's good
reasons for either one. We can have a third one which combines some words from
this and some words from that if that makes sense. So I want to just
kind of open it up and have people's thoughts about these two statements. Does it
get to the point of what we've been talking about so far in this process?
Yes. So looking at the mission statement one or mission statement two. I think you
might need to turn your microphone on if you're going to speak. There's a button
at the base. Yeah. Okay. So looking at mission statement one and mission statement two.
If I look at mission statement two, embraces the city's character, enables mobility, and enhances
the environment. So let's just take that snapshot. That isn't going to be much
value unless we have some supporting criteria that defines what embracing is, enables mobility,
what kind of mobility, and enhances the environment. How is it going to enhance
the environment? Now, I also remember just watched the last two of these council
meetings to kind of get a review, and I noticed we were talking about
character. Well, what really defines character? What is a is a is a is a
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gonna submit this to city council and they're gonna look at it and go, "Well,
that's great. "Okay, enhances mobility." Well, that's a really vague statement. - Okay. So in
the last few meetings you don't feel like the discussion has addressed the criteria for
those? We need to get a little more into detail? Well, we've talked about high
level what the mission statement is, but there's nothing to support the mission statement. So
it just kind of floats. Well, the next steps will actually help to put more
meat on the bone. So mission and vision are usually broad statements. And then as
we move forward, we're going to talk about problem statements and then eventually to strategies
and action steps. And so that... excuse me, will hopefully address. But obviously you want
to make sure we all agree on what these words mean. So I hear you.
Yeah, it's a point in a good direction. So it sounds like your next step
that you want to take with us is to further define the stuff that's going
to be underneath. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Sounds great. Yes. But if we have disagreement what
character means or whatever, that's a good point. But I think our past two conversations
seem to pretty much define it broadly. Just a question. How does
providing a range of obtainable options enhance the environment? Those
two don't go together. This is a committee discussion so
if anybody wants to address that. You can have a
period at the end of environment but the next thing
is it doesn't go with the range of options.
So does, so then, okay, I guess Troy, were you going to say something? Well,
I wasn't going to clarify what that meant, but I was going to just make
a general statement. In my view, I think the, when I compare the two, this
is a mission statement, so it is high level umbrella kind of a statement. I
think the first one's more accessible. and just sort of states the mission. Okay. The
second one has, tries to have a little too much in it, you know, I
mean, that's the detail that will come later. Okay. Mobility and etc. So I think
the first one just, I think it's more accessible to people and, you know, then
you don't have to ask all the questions like what does enhance and enable mean.
Sure. Do people agree that the first one really captures what we've discussed
so far? I think so and on the mobility, I looked at it
and there were two things that went in different directions in my mind.
One was economic mobility and the other was the ability to get from
here to there. That's a good point.
Any other comments? Yes. I was just going to say, to Troy's point on one,
I feel like you can relate to it because we want to maintain the character
what Issaquah is, and then we want to provide a diversity of various housing types
and product type to allow all levels of living and affordability. So I'm a simple
person. I think simple is better. Yes. Yes, Anna. Look at your microphone so people
can hear you. Yeah, we're being recorded. It's not that scary. Are the questions
of the Commission members here towards the parts that are enhancing, I mean, in
red, are those the ones that we're going to cut down and describe? No,
I'm sorry, the red is just the difference basically between the two mission statements,
so where the differences are, so they aren't meant to call out specifically to
those words. to barrel down, but. - I agree with the fellow commissioner's statement that
maybe we should put a period after environment, otherwise it looks like a running thing
and maybe some people will lose track of the top part by the end of
the sentence. - That's a good point. - Yeah, and I have a separate question.
Are all these slides and all the information and being put on the city council
or somewhere in the city's website? Yes, so all the agendas and minutes including in
the packets, so the packets we passed out are on the city's website under all
the commissions, the three commissions websites. Is there any effort to to translate them in
different languages for the different community members. I don't believe so at this point, but
we can, are there some community groups that you feel we need to reach out
to? We can talk about that during our, when we go for our community outreach.
I believe so because we're going to be including them in all that we're working.
They should have access to all the information. Okay. Thank you. So I'm hearing that
maybe mission statement one is the one to look at, has the clearer sense, it
addresses things that we've discussed and it doesn't get into confusing run on, what does
this mean, what does that mean? Is that -- yes, Chris. I prefer the second
one because I think it includes more things that we need to make sure to
pay attention to. I think the first one is a little more vague
and I understand a mission statement is the big picture, but I
think it's really important that we include in there what our big
goal is. And what does number two say to you that number
one doesn't? Embraces. I like that better. Enables mobility is important, I
think. A range of obtainable options. Sorry, I used to work at
the Issaquah Press. The second one just speaks to you. It speaks more
to me. What does mobility mean? It can be either. But it doesn't
have to be defined here. We can define that later. But I think it's
very important that it's included. Yes. So one of the things again, I think to
Ron's point is that whatever we end up selecting here, we're going to move down
and create policies for. And so we need to make sure that the things that
we can address in a housing strategy. Right. So this isn't a goal for the
city community wide, but it's for housing policy. So are the things in mission statement
one and two achievable with our housing strategy? So A suggestion may be that we
move on and start talking about the next issues and then maybe we can come
back to this one and look at this and kind of say, okay, yes, this
makes more sense to do this or that. I think that would be a great
strategy. Okay. Okay. Because, you know, we could -- wordsmithing and all day long --
and mission statements obviously are really important, but we also want to make sure that
we kind of -- understand all the pieces to the puzzle here. And so unless
anybody has a concern about moving on without -- I'd like to make a quick
suggestion that maybe we consider changing out the maintains and embraces and I think maybe
that might make statement one nice, clear, concise, feel a little more inclusive. Do people
agree with that? So replace maintains in the first mission statement with embraces. Well
certainly as a power word. Yeah I like that. Okay we will definitely do that.
Okay thank you guys. Again this I know this is interesting conversations to
get us prepared for our next step, which is our problem statements. I know that
when we first started discussing the housing strategy, there was some question about what is
the problem. And part of what we're going to discuss tonight is to prepare us
for our next step, which is going out to the community and doing open houses
and getting more input. We've done some outreach already around focus groups with various groups.
And actually we did a focus group since our last meeting. And I don't know,
Trish, if you want to, you'll be talking about that later. And so we've gathered
data about around that. So what we're going to do tonight is to look at
problem statements that are suggested again. And so we're looking for ideas to make sure
we hit it on the mark. And it's going to help us then again to
develop those strategies and actions. So we obviously want everything to connect. So does that
understand kind of what we're doing next? All right, so we want to, again, we
need your help because we need to go and tell the story, right? So you
guys have been reading lots of information. You've had three, this is your third meeting.
You've already soaked into this topic. But when we go out to that open house,
we need to be able to tell that story more succinctly. So we want to
make sure that the statements capture the why we're doing the housing strategy and that
the data is there to support these statements. We know some people like to see
words, some people like to see graphs, some people like to see different ways. So
tonight we're presenting both of those things. And so we want to hear from you
what really rings true, what really tells the story the best way. And then is
anything missing? Because this is just, again, the beginning draft. So the first one is
the problem state suggested problem statement is overall housing affordability in Issaquah and the region
has decreased for households at all levels. So we're acknowledging this is just not an
Issaquah issue that it's all throughout the region and it's not an issue just for
very low income people but we've heard from all of our focus groups that it's
hard to get employees of various ranges of pay scale to find housing here in
Issaquah. So the data that we're going to show talks about the rents and home
prices have increased quickly since 2012 and then housing has become less affordable for anybody
below medium income and that that how the affordable more affordable housing isn't being built.
So overall initial responses to this before we get into the power the slides and
with graphs. Does that something does that statement ring true to what we've been talking
about again for the last few months? Yeah. Okay. So we again, we've seen these
before. So looking at the affordability and actual average rents. And so this is one
of the graphs we thought told that story really well. If you remember seeing this,
so it was looking at how quickly the average rent in Issaquah and
the east side have grown while those who have earnings at the
50% and 80% median income haven't grown as quickly. So it's become
less affordable over time. Is this a graph that tells that story
or is this not quite a get to that point? And maybe
some people aren't data graph people and that's fine.
Is this kind of linking with the overall problem statement? Okay. Is
this something in general would be a good thing to show the
broader community to tell the picture in a simple statement? Okay. This
one talks more about single-family home prices. So this I think
Again, a little bit different where the previous one was about rent. And
so, and this you can see on the bottom slide, it talks about
the different various 80%, 50% and 30%. And it looks like Issaquah and
King County is the average. And so looking again about how these groups
down here aren't able to afford housing to purchase in Issaquah and King
County, how challenging it is. It's a little bit more complicated chart because
you have multiple things going on here. Is this something that is helpful to tell
the story? Possibly. I think it'd be helpful to define MFI. Okay. Since I don't
see it anywhere. Yes, you're right. Specifically. Thank you. I also have a question. As
far as when you say King County, there are different parts of King County that
are going to be more affordable and some that are going to be a lot
less affordable, and I think a lot of that has to do with the population
density. the more dense it becomes, the more unaffordable it becomes. You go
out into the outlying areas of King County, it's not really, should we be
including that kind of data into our metrics because we're not like kind. So
having east side count east side or east King County is more appropriate to
compare to, is that what you're suggesting? Well maybe even more macro than that
because if If you look at Renton, for instance, there are some
areas of Renton that would be considered unaffordable because it's so high density. Where
you go to other parts, portions of Renton, it's going to be a lot
more affordable because it's more rural. So we want to consider those types of
demographics when we make the consideration of what we want to be affordable. Because
we can't compare to a ranch house out in Black Diamond. OK. OK.
I don't know if Arthur, do you have some thought about that? Yeah, so I
think we do have different densities of housing as well here, although that is changing.
Yeah. Go ahead, Ethan. If I might make a comment, I think the key part
is not necessarily affordability relative to different regions. It's the fact that the affordability has
decreased over time. Within the same place, the area we're talking about, Issaquah, there's been
a change that is generally negative for affordability. And I think that's more the problem
we're trying to illustrate. CHRISTIE WOOD: Gotcha. So maybe if we remove the King County
line, that might just show the-- I mean, it shows that there's a general regional
trend. CHRISTIE WOOD: Sure. But that's not the scope of our problem. CHRISTIE WOOD: That
we're following the same trend of the county. Maybe if we have like little pies
in different regions, not include the whole region like what he's saying. You know,
maybe Renton or Eastside or, you know, maybe that'll give a better picture because
as he's saying, the region, I mean, it's too much to including just one
graph here if we're focusing on Issaquah. And there's many ranges out there. Okay.
So what I'm hearing is, and for any of you who don't remember, I'm Arthur
Sullivan from March and providing assistance throughout this process. I think you very well summarized
one of the messages from this chart. There is a second potential message, and I
don't know what the right answer is. And I've heard a couple different angles on
that. And that is, is that relative to countywide averages, housing costs are currently higher
than the rest of the county in Issaquah. and they have been historically okay so
that's what the why you have the red versus the blue bar now someone mentioned
bellevue someone mentioned east king county we've usually used king county because we're part of
a county-wide planning process and so often we're looking at what's going on over on
the county if we were to do east king county you would find that the
east king counties more closely mirror the issaquah ones and i've worked for all the
cities in east king county and in general housing is more expensive in East King
County than it is when you look at countywide averages. But that's what was the
message in this. I didn't do this chart, but we do a similar one. That's
why the blue bar is there is to show you relative to a countywide average.
If there's a better way to show that or if you think that's an important
point, then somehow you need to cover that point. If you just take the blue
bar off, you'll lose that part of the questioning and for you to decide if
you think that's important or not. It seems to me that Seattle is also in
King County and relatively dense. So how different would it be from as
a whole because it isn't all rural right seattle would be in fact seattle would
be probably comparable on ownership pricing would be comparable to east king county or a
little bit below so it would be relatively close thank you okay so it sounds
like maybe this chart needs some some work on and thinking about and we can
look at the following information joan do you have a comment you know that's that's
the way everything is already done That's the way everything is already done. They
take a snapshot of everything. And if somebody isn't comfortable with this, you can pull
out one or two other cities and add a chart to go with that. So
you get this, which is everything, and then you can go down to the specific.
A city that you feel that's maybe comparable to Issaquah. I mean, you don't
want to add 50 different charts for 50 different cities, but you might want to
take one or two that would still show that Issaquah is up there. Right. And
this probably tells a story that most of us already know. It's just, again, showing
that the data confirms your suspicions, right? Do you have
something to-- Maybe add on to Ethan's point that the story--
I think one of the stories here or the problems with
this is that gap between what's considered affordable for these different
income levels and the comparative housing prices is really growing over
time, or that it's getting larger for groups of lower incomes
compared to groups of higher incomes. So I don't know if it's a
separate chart, but it seems like a problem. Okay. Yeah, so we can
look at that. So are you saying that for the ownership here we
showed how much someone can afford at 80% of median for rental. Are you saying
something similar information for ownership as well? Right. Okay. That would make sense then that
the charts look the same and they're pretty easy to, easier to read, I think.
Okay, that's a great idea. Jen, I got a statement on the next slide. Is
there any value in showing, when you say affordability, the cost associated with that? So
an 8% mortgage on a $500,000 house versus a 3.5%, interest rate on a $700,000
house. I mean, so affordability, are we looking at monthly costs, the costs associated with
living, or is it just purely the cost to acquire? Because the interest rate, and
again, I don't know if this falls into this, but when we're talking about affordability,
monthly expenses, I imagine, would fall into that. So the prior chart had those rent
charges. Do we show ownership what the average was? Yeah, so as you see the
dotted line is the average mortgage rate, so that is taken into account what as
a 50%, 80% or 30% can afford, right? So your monthly income can afford, right?
If you're looking at an unburdened 30% of your income. Does that make
sense? So I get that $700,000 house when it was 8% is
going to be cheaper now to purchase for monthly income per monthly
payment when it's 3.5%. And that's accounted for in this chart. Is
that what you're asking? No. So the line, when I look at
the Issaquah average line, that takes into consideration the interest rate.
affordability. So that's the average affordable home that can be acquired in
2000 was $495,000, whereas now, looking at it, it's $700,000. I mean,
I don't think it takes into consideration what the monthly payments would
be on that, does it? Can I arrow on here? I don't
think so. I'm going to have to have long arms. To your
point, these bars here are accounting for the interest rate. So
when you're doing the comparison, it's just saying in Issaquah, it costs this much, and
if you were at 80% of median, you could afford this, and so that tells
you your gap. So it's sort of a complicated chart, and what we're saying is
maybe simplify it a little bit so that it's easier to see that gap that
exists. Okay. Thanks. I also have a question. Looking at this and thinking about real
estate, COMPs are always really important when you go buy a house, right? So if
you're going to buy a house, you don't look at the entire King County. You
look at the houses within that neighborhood or within the few blocks of that house
to figure out what the house may really be in terms of value before you
put an offer on it. So from our standpoint, maybe we should be looking at
who do we believe Issaquah is going to be closest to in terms of mirroring
lifestyle, jobs, So you're thinking about pure cities? Is that what you mean? Like who
compares- Pure cities and then comp ourselves to the pure cities and then determine what
affordability is. Because if, let's take Los Angeles County as a great example. You have
Bel Air, Beverly Hills, and East LA. And they're all in the same county. But
they're completely different demographics. Maybe we should be looking at the same type of thing
and say, who do we want to, who do we feel that we are closest
to? And then comp ourselves to those cities and develop our own averages. okay well
we can definitely do some comps according to those peer cities i'm not sure that
they so when you compare them to it you know you're not you're not defining
that they're actually doing well in affordable housing right it's just you're saying they're bar
peer cities right there are pure cities and those are what other people would think
that would be comparable to isaac qua gotcha okay we can definitely do that as
joan mentioned all this data is available it's just a matter of does that make
sense all right And so then this one looks at
household incomes and so then also looking at so the median
income for household and those looking at, I'm trying to remember
how this works here, so in Issaquah in 2014, so for
instance 15% of our population makes over $200,000. Right. And
just showing that the trend of who's living here. So it has the
mid range of the 50 to 100 thousand dollars has decreased as a
percentage, as well as a 25 to 50 percent and the under 25.
So there's been growth, a big jump, obviously, from 2000 to 2010 in
the higher incomes. And that continues to grow. And so, again, talking about
who's here, And I guess this shows that our diversity of income within
our community is changing. Is this important to show as part of the story? Yes,
as long as we show cost of living adjustments to go along with that. What
$25,000 was back in 2000 may not be the same as what it is today.
I think it does help show the product type, lacking a product type for the
affordability side. I mean, when we're building 4,000 square foot homes left and right, it's
bound to have an impact. Okay. Any other comments? This is a three-year-old
study. The numbers come from 2014, so three years ago. Is there any
desire to update it to see if it's any different to exactly what
it is now? I don't know. I'm actually not sure where this data
came from because we did it, oh wait, this is from the housing
the housing strategy needs assessment um and so this is the last available
data i think you know usually there's a there's a delay and we
did this in 2016 2015 wasn't available i'm guessing so so where do
you get your data we had a consultant who we'll have to look at
the report but um often you know they they data comes a lot from the
same places where they through the census and they're looking at updates and other other
tools and other proprietary tool data sources that they pull in to develop this so
there's employment security division does some some of that um looking at jobs and salaries
and so we'll have to look at that and that that. That's available so part
of I believe it was our first or second meeting we went through some of
these slides and this one is actually from there. So we can link also provide
you some of this PowerPoint the full data set if you want to see more
and where the data comes from. I just know that watching it go up that
every year you know three four years it's going to be a lot more higher
income so it shows a trend right yeah so I guess that tells the story
it's showing a trend and we don't we don't think that it's the trend is
changing from 2014 do we as a change based on on this that you assume
that everything is going to gotcha trends haven't changed yeah Great. Any other
comments? I guess for me, I like Derek's point, but maybe there's a way to
show more directly because this is kind of an output measure. The household income changes
because that's who can afford to live here. What I want to see is what's
being built and showing that those list prices, the new housings coming online requires you
to have an income of six figures in order to live here. That's the message.
Because otherwise it just looks like, hey, everyone's doing really well in
Issaquah. That's not actually a problem. That's all who can live here.
I assume that that's coming up in your future. Yeah, let's see.
Wow. So I dropped the other one. So, yeah, so this kind
of builds upon each other, right? And so looking at, again, this is from the
Eco Northwest study. And so looking at the range of home values. And so you'll
see that the top, the top, column is for those house homes that are before
to that built before 2000 and then those that are built after 2000 because again
we know that older homes while they may could be the same size but a
newer home is gonna it would typically capture a larger price in the market so
does this this tell a little bit of the story of what Ethan you mentioned
I think it does. It just simplifying might be helpful.
I know there's a lot on there. A different kind
of chart? Yeah, just sort of seeing, you know, the
growth in different segments of the market, particularly the number
of bedrooms. Right. Anything else this chart says to you?
Excuse me. Is there a way to put maybe at
the bottom of the charts and the graphs what was
the source of the information? Yep, we can definitely do
that. Thank you. And we might have
had that and just say. So the last
one was census data. Thank you. All right.
So that's so that's the last example of
data. point that we that we're suggesting for this statement overall housing affordability in Issaquah
and region have decreased for households at all levels. Is there something else we're missing
in this story and this telling of the of the problem statement? I
have a suggestion. We previously seen a pie chart that actually showed the differences of
who was occupying our community and how that has changed a lot. And so Issaquah
likes to think of itself as being primarily a place to raise families. But we
see that that demographic doesn't necessarily represent our current community. We have a lot of
single individuals. married individuals, couples who don't have children, and so I think that we've
seen before in a previous slide where there was a pie chart that really showed
what slice of the community was being occupied by each demographic. So being able to
clearly show the community how many seniors do we have and in a quick and
easy format would be helpful for the story. Okay, thank you. It's a little demographic.
All right. We'll move on because I know sometimes when you see something else, it
reminds you. So definitely speak up if there's something as you're seeing other data points
that would make sense in a different way for that problem statement. So the second
-- Arthur, do you know what the source of the data for that one was?
So the assessor -- so King County Assessor's Office was the source for these. With
Eco Northwest. Right. Okay. Thank you. So the second problem statement we're suggesting is
that individuals and families cannot afford to choose to work and live in Issaquah.
So we've seen information that only a small share of people are actually living
and working in Issaquah and that we've heard as well as have data that
shows that employers and workforce housing for the 60 to 80 percent is not being
is not being built here and that people are having to drive farther away to
find housing they can afford. So the statement individuals and families cannot afford to choose
to work and live in Issaquah. So that's a big thing to choose. We talked
before about people make choices about where they live and where they work for various
reasons. It may not always be cost. Maybe they don't want to live in the
same community they work in because they don't want to be bugged by their sons,
you know, their teacher, by their parents, you know, of their children in the meat
aisle at the supermarket. But if you choose to want to work and live in
Issaquah, can you do that? So that's what we're stating here. Is that, again, based
on the information so far that you've heard in the last few months, is that
a big enough, is that a problem statement that you agree with that we should
address in our future steps? I think it's too broad of a statement because you're,
you know, it's sort of a cause and effect thing you're trying to pull out.
And so individuals and families cannot afford to choose and live and work in Issaquah.
A lot of us here have chosen to live and work in Issaquah. and we're
here so you can't make the blanket statement that nobody does because you just showed
all the people that live here okay so so so that word specificity of not
all what are you really trying to get when you say individuals and families well
we we do live here okay some of us work here so that the statement
doesn't really make sense okay to me so it's too it's it's making it sounds
like nobody again versus some okay the second statement down there Only a small share
of people both live and work in Issaquah. And is it
also possible that only a small share of the people can
afford to both live and work in Issaquah? Actually, I think
the problem is even bigger than that. I would rather live
and work in Issaquah, but I can't find a job in
Issaquah that pays enough for me to live here.
It's really twofold. I want a job here in Issaquah. So if
we want affordable housing, maybe we should also be looking at what
can we do to bring other organizations into Issaquah to support an
economy so that we are sustainable, so that we don't impact traffic,
so we don't create other problems. Because now we're bringing people into
Issaquah to work. Yet the people that are in Issaquah would rather stay
here some and work here like myself. So I think it's two arguments there. And
you're sitting among the Economic Vitality Commission, which, you know, that's one of their efforts
is to to do that and to definitely bring in more jobs that people don't
have to move outside the city. So, yeah. Yes. When you had your focus groups,
did you get a number of how many people that from the
various work companies have employees that live outside
the city? It's nice to say that only
1,534 live here, but how many really want
to do that? Yeah, I don't know. The employers that we spoke to
could speak generally about that, but not specifically. Because I don't think, if you think
about it, I know that my employer has never asked me, do you want to
live in Issaquah, right? No, it's not a question of wanting. How many are actually
commuting? Oh, yeah. So we can actually... dig a little bit deeper into that. Those
who work here, and we actually have data in our sector analysis that we did
for the economic vitality strategic plan that shows where actually people are commuting from So
even like you know that they're coming from 10% from from Seattle, 10% from Bellevue,
some other places and so we have we can get to that granular granular amount
of information. What we do have is this chart. This again shows that 20,000 people
are coming in, 13,000 people are leaving the city in order to work someplace else.
So but we can get a little more granular if this doesn't address what you're
asking and you think it's an important thing to show. This is a quick thing
to show again. you know for again the 1500 is the people who live and
work within Issaquah maybe putting that number in parentheses 1534 out of how many the
total so you would the previous one oh yeah right okay gotcha you could rotate
the arrows and have them coming up Issaquah Hobart Road in front street yeah they're
all they're all working in North Bend I think it shows they're all ski bums
I don't know or ski instructors So, and this isn't exactly a get to the
point you're making Joan, but is this a graph that tells that story? Like okay,
wow, we have a lot of people that aren't staying in the city. And I
get that it's not just about the housing, you know, it's about the jobs.
Actually really good graph. I never thought of it that way. I didn't do it,
but it is a good graph. Jen, I'd make a suggestion that we add total
population in there. Sure. I don't know what the total population is of Issaquah. 35,
about 35,000. So that includes children, so non-working people. And old folks. On the other
slide, I guess one of the questions I have about the statement of choose to
live here, I guess the other thing is quality of product you choose to live
in. I mean, having done quite a bit of things down in Beverly Hills, you'd
be surprised what it costs for a studio. So I guess the question is, when
you say affordable, cannot choose to afford to live or work here, I guess if
you're comparing it to buying a three-bedroom house in Auburn versus a three-bedroom house in
Issaquah, back to I think what we were talking about earlier, which was who are
we comparing it to on what you choose. Well, I guess that's the statement that
was coming from the employers we've spoken to and the data we've seen. And so
that's what we're trying to tell that story. So if the data so far isn't
showing that, then that's, we need, because we're not comparing it to Auburn or to
Renton or to Bellevue in this statement. what we're looking at and so this goes
a little bit to the jobs and this is a funky chart because it came
from a different report. I believe this is from the housing report card perhaps or
somewhere and the housing needs analysis and so it looked at the jobs and the
annual wages and where those where those jobs are by percentage and so you know
our biggest percentage is at 70. This is for is this for jobs within here
or people who work here or live here? This is for people who work in
Issaquah. And so the biggest portion
is $75,000 or more at 25, a quarter. Yeah, it's
only 25%, yeah. So that means 75% aren't getting to
the affordability. And then this is jobs here and then the other
one this is harder to see it's similar it's a little bit more detailed about
the types of getting to more specific so looking at our four major industries and
I wouldn't put something like this up into a community chart but it does show
like in our software health care and computer electronic manufacturing and admin like the Costco
headquarters and other headquarters the jobs within that because we also know that there's different
paying jobs at every company, every corporation, right? So this may get into too
much detail. So this was one that we didn't have a lot of data
points to pull from our current housing and economic vitality strategic plan. Are there
pieces, things that we need to gather to tell this story better? Yeah, actually
the 13, if we have 30,000 people that live in Issaquah and only 13,000 are
commuting out, we have a really high unemployment rate. Well, you have people who choose
not to work. You have people who are seniors. You have children. And so I'm
looking at, I don't have the numbers in my head right now of what percentage
is those, because usually they count 65 and older and under 18. They just remove
that from the workable population when they're talking about. Right, but that's still 50% unemployed.
That's really high. I don't know that, again, that some people choose. You have to
look at the demographic. Choose not to. If the population is 35,000, you've got about
15,000 and change working. So that's almost, that's a little bit less than half the
population. And then you do the demographics and take kids out and seniors out. That's
probably about right. And those who don't want to work.
I didn't add the last part just for the record. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. So
we can put in a point. We can look at our unemployment is pretty low,
like the region as well. But we can look at that. I should have thought
of it the way Carl brought it up. I've been in numbers all day. No,
this is good stuff. Yeah. Any other thoughts about, so is this statement, so
now that you've seen a little bit of the data that we have, again, so
I go back to, is this statement, whether, you know, if we rewrite it, is
this statement something that we want to have as a problem statement that we are
addressing in our housing strategy? It seems like we need to do a little wordsmithing
on it. Yeah, okay. Should we maybe, what I almost had. Yeah, because they can't
hear you. I mean, they can't hear you. From the comments I've heard you making,
it almost feels like there's two statements going on here. In other words, if you
see the sub-bullets we had, they were really getting at very different kinds of issues.
One is how many people are working and living here, and some of it's the
out-migration and the in-migration, and you raised some good points about that. And then the
other is there's a profile of the workforce, which is relatively large, which would have
a hard time with that choice, given the choice, because of the housing pricing. And
so the first -- I think the two main things are for the choices are
affordability and the job opportunity. Right. That's what I'm saying. And they should almost be
-- we should almost maybe have two statements -- Exactly. -- so that those two
very different things can stand out. Right. Instead of trying to blend it into one
comment. Agreed. Okay. Yes. Okay. So affordability and job opportunity. So we can go back
and we'll adjust this and we'll send it out to you guys to think about
once we do that and make sure we get some good data there. So the
third problem statement, everybody want to shake their arms and legs and get ready for
the next data set, is that housing types not meeting diversity of demand. So what
does that mean? So we've had a lot of discussion in the last two meetings
about I think it was mentioned earlier, you have a bunch of
family household sizes that are one or two people and what's getting built are three
and four bedroom homes. The one and two bedroom homes, the smaller homes aren't being
built and the ones that are here are very high in demand. So we talked
about the cycle, about how typically, and actually one of these slides does this, you
know, typically this is the the flow of what happens as you have a family,
then you move into an apartment and then you may move into a townhome to
get your own house. go to a larger house and then move back into something
a little bit more. And what we're seeing now with a lot of baby boomers
is that they may want to move into that smaller home, you know, could be
detached or attached, as well as millennials looking for that same product and it's not
quite, it's not being built in the community. And this doesn't look at bedroom sizes,
but you know, you get the general idea. so this is a little bit of
the demographic of the one person the size of the household at the top and
then what we have uh in the market down below so again the mismatch of
uh well four plus bedrooms we have a lot of homes that are four plus
bedrooms um and a lot of apartments that are the two bedrooms right so if
you want to actually have a home uh you're not able to that that market's
not really here in um issaquah I'm not sure this again
gets to that point. Thoughts? - So far we're going deeper and looking
at this, I'd probably want to compare this back to the, yeah, the
stacked bar chart earlier as I came in that had where the income
levels were going. And so you had 200,000 or above was, had gone
up to double digits. And yeah, so from five, nine, 15, 18, 30,
30s gets you 100 and above. you stack that, is that the diversity you're
talking about? Because I think even these numbers don't necessarily line up with that. I
think you need to look at these somehow side by side to make that statement
live correctly. Okay. Go back to this. Jen, for the housing types not meeting diversity
of demand, I don't see anything on here about housing for people with disabilities. Okay.
And I think that there's definitely sectors of each the populations at different ages and
different size that within that seniors and millennials, baby boomers, but that's a good point.
So this one's again I think a little harder to kind of show with data.
It may be something more about again more in an anecdotal or telling the story
in a different way than a chart, but we can look at how those things
line up Carl. Ethan looks like he's Well, I guess the household type, what is
that in Issaquah? Yes, yes. Okay. Because I think if what we're saying though is
we want people that connecting to the last point, people in the workforce to be
able to live here be, I don't know if you can get this data, but
the interesting data would be of people that work in Issaquah, what is that mix
of household type and then how does that line up? Oh, mm-hmm. Sure. You can
see. We probably can't get that. No, no, no. I see another demographic that we're
missing and that is senior housing. So, and I think, again, that may be a
strategy underneath something like this, right? Under this problem statement. So these are the problem
statements we need to address. Senior housing. So what would you say is a problem
statement within senior housing that we should show as a data point? Baby boomers, or
not baby boomers, but the Generation X who have aging parents. Yeah. So are
you thinking more multi-generational homes? Are you talking about... Well, not necessarily multi-generational because
not all of us want our parents living with us. The idea is that
Izaqua doesn't really have a place for seniors. We have Providence Point, and I
can't think of another... Timber Ridge is a pretty large space. There's Aegis. Hutchison
House. University House. There's actually a couple more that are being on the development. What's
that? There's a smaller memory care facilities back behind. Yeah. There's a. Back behind Target
area. Aegis maybe? Is that the one? Mm-hmm. So there are. So now affordability, I
don't, you know, that's something that for the senior homes, I know that some of
those we've mentioned are a little higher. And here comes Arthur to address that. Would
it be nice to do a match of senior income and senior housing? Well, one
thing that we managed to put together very recently is a graphic in which we
try to show for all the cities, for each city in East King County, how
many housing units you have that are targeted for seniors relative to the number of
seniors per thousand seniors in your community. So it shows the rate of quote senior
designated housing. Not all seniors want to live in senior housing or designated senior housing,
but at least it gives and we've done we did it for all the cities.
So you could see relative to other cities in East King County, how much housing
do you have that is targeted to seniors relative to the size of your and
we did it to senior population. We could do it to your whole population, but
we did it to senior population. Is that would that help show the comments that
are being made now? because we could bring that to the next meeting or something
for you to look at. I'm not even aware of all the senior housing options
that we have here, so having that information would be helpful. Okay, we have, we
do have that as well. So I just want to go maybe back. Yes. Higher,
higher level on that problem statement. I mean, I think housing types not meeting
diversity of demand is it's a good problem statement but then you know we have
the data basically like what's available now so it seems like we need to have
it just that one more chart that it's at the meeting demand part and we
may not be able to get that data or whatever but It's like only half
that chart is only half the story. Right. Yeah, I think we're making some assumptions
that if you're a two person family, you want to live in a one or
two bedroom apartment. Right. But that's assumptions. So I want to go back to tonight.
So did this do the statements capture the why as we move forward of the
housing strategy? Are we missing any large Big scale, not specific, yes. I'll
go back to slide page 26. Okay, you have to tell me.
The housing types not meeting diversity of demand. It was the... This
one? Yeah, that one. Okay. Maybe if there's a little blur to
explaining what those numbers at the bottom mean, that way they can
relate to the top bars. Okay, okay, thank you. Thanks. Some more
labels. So one thing with respect to the problem
statements, there's been, we're talking about availability and demand and you know, mobility and accessibility
and all that stuff. But there's a lot of discussion even earlier when we were
talking about the mission statements about character, kinds of housing character, whatever. So, and I
don't know if there's a way to construct a problem statement around that or even
data to, like I don't know if we know what we want. We want it
to be diverse and mixed in terms of character. But they're maybe addressing that somewhere
in the problem statements. So do we feel that the character is changing in a
negative direction? Well, that's what I mean. I don't know. That's the question, right? Yeah.
Right. Yeah. Okay. Good point. Just when we put all the stuff on the board
last time, everybody, that was something that everybody was interested in. Right. Is there anything
missing that kind of red flag? Well, number three is not included in the papers
here. We've updated it just a little bit. Yeah. I mean, we'll
send you this updated one. And actually, again, what we'll do is we'll take your
input and then send it out to you so you can look at it. So,
yes, we have to get this out a week ahead of time. So sometimes we
have better ideas as we move along. So, okay, we're going to move forward with
the findings now, I believe. And again, this is a flowing conversation. So if there's
something as we're discussing the next step that triggers something for you, please, you know,
raise your hand or make a note and let us know because we really want
to make sure we get this right because when we go out to the community,
we're going to expect all of you to help us describe and talk about this.
So this isn't just about us. And so we really you know while it may
not be perfect because as anybody who knows who works with data you
can't always get exactly what you want but between data the information we've
gotten from focus groups and and stories what you know how do we
move forward with this so Trish is up next thank you a quick
review In your packet, you have like the long version of the focus group findings.
And we did have one more focus group since the new year started. And that
was with realtors and a representative that works with master builders. So that the highlights
of all of those are in your packet. And these are the ones I went
back to the three problem statements that we came up with. And all of those
problem statements are reflected in the focus group findings. So I thought that was very
interesting that the data showed also what the different focus groups are finding in their
world as well. So I would encourage you, if you haven't looked at the highlights,
they're very interesting. We had some really good discussions. The other piece that I found
really interesting was the homework that you all did. And the first one got to
what Troy was talking about, about values. That it's hard to put a problem statement
about, you know, the whole character, safety, family friendly. You know, that's a hard thing
to collect data and to see if it's changing or if it's different or if
it's not what we want or if it's exactly what we want. But those were
all really great answers from the first question that we asked you all. The second
question we asked you is what trends should we be addressing? And you came up
with some really great ones for that item too about workforce housing that we've talked
about tonight. Don't build in or near critical areas. We need that circle of housing
that Jen showed for when we're seniors, when we have families, when we're single, that
we need that whole range. and that infrastructure needs to keep pace with growth. That's
a piece that hasn't always been in with the housing strategy. And that's partly the
mobility piece is you have to have ways of getting around that doesn't include a
vehicle. So those were very good that we want to keep in mind when we
go out to the public. And the last question we asked was how do you
envision Issaquah's housing in the next 20 years? And you had, there were also some
really good answers there that we want to keep in mind when we go out
to the public and ask them for their thoughts. Are there pieces when you went
through them that now in retrospect that you've had some time to think about it
that we missed? in any of the homework assignments or any of the focus group
findings that don't make sense to you or that you would want us to explore
a little more? I have something to add to the values piece. I'll put it
out there and see if others agree. I do think there's something of just sort
of for lack of a better phrase, in harmony with nature. I think that the
natural surroundings are a big part of Issaquah and at least why I choose to
live here and something that separates it from other surrounding cities. So that would be,
for me, something that I would put in values if it were up to me.
OK. Does that ring true with-- Yes. --a lot of nodding heads? Totally agree. Okay,
okay, anything else that's missing or that needs clarification or
it's still building on the story that we're trying to
tell? Anything? Kristi? So when it says next 20 years
increase in smaller units, do you mean allow smaller footprint
or do you mean less product? I think it was the idea that we're
building so many four-bedroom homes, but the demand seems to be, and all the focus
groups, people kept saying, you know, what happened to the little two-bedroom little cottage that
is the starter home or the empty nest home? And so people were adding that,
that maybe we need to somehow get back to making smaller products. I hate the
word for houses, but smaller places to live versus the bigger houses to live.
I'd like to add a slide actually. I wrote some of my homework answers out
because I wasn't here part of the last, but higher debt in the core for
the next 20 years, I think it should be very high density mixed use, extremely
high walkability, high walk and rollability, immediate location to public transportation facilities. And I don't
see much of that on there. Well, that's in the bigger homework. There's like four
pages of the homework answers. I was just trying to pull, like walkable neighborhoods, better
transportation. I was trying to pull that into, and this isn't the core versus the
rest. This is the whole city. in 20 years. But I would encourage you to
go back and read the homework. And if you want to send it in late,
there's no penalty for late homework here. We love getting comments. We could think of
a penalty, but we won't think of a penalty. Because those are good. We'd love
to add those around to the mix. And that goes for anybody that wasn't here
for the second meeting. We did homework. Second or third meeting? No, this is the
third meeting. Hello. It was the second meeting. It was a good meeting. Anything else
to add to these? before we move on to the next exciting part.
Okay. I'm going to say this again. These were just the first group of
strategies or actions. They're a small group, very small group. They have mostly to
do with affordability. They're not a recommendation. Let me say that again. They're not
a staff recommendation. We're just thrown it out there for you all to talk about
since you had all this background in these meetings. To just get your feedback is,
does it make sense to you? Does it make no sense at all? Do you
have questions about what it even is? It's just a time to get to understand
some of the strategies that are out there in this very small list. And again,
these are the affordable, some affordable ones, because we're working on the moratorium piece that
has to go a little sooner than the whole strategy. Later, we'll come back to
you with all of the options for all the different kinds of housing for the
whole housing strategy. But tonight, we just want to start with just a little bit
just to get our feet wet and to have you tell us how does this
how do they fit in with what you've learned and what you see out there
and what the story that we're telling because maybe they don't fit at all. Maybe
they fit spot on. But but but we're asking you, we need your help on
that. Are there questions before we jump in? I'm not absolutely clear. But is
timing part of the strategy? Timing. Well, they're very good questions.
In terms of is this a piece which needs to be
addressed sometime in the next 20 years? Or is this something
that needs to be addressed in the next five years. And I
would say, given what the council has told us, that they've put affordable housing in
their moratorium bucket, that I would say, based on that, that they would like to
see the affordable housing piece implemented sooner in the first five years rather than in
the 20 years. And so that's why we're using that impetus to work on that
first. Is that something that needs to be part of our problem statement or? Well,
I think that's the part that will come out to council as a separate little
piece of what's in the bucket than the whole 20-year bucket of strategies. But you're
right, that does have a bit of a fire under it because council's put the
moratorium, it's in the moratorium piece. So that's a very good question. But don't think
that this is all of them because we're going to get to talk about all
of them. Oh, yes. Yes. It's a really good
question and is one that comes up in almost every city. And so Tricia's is
one kind of an answer to your question. Another part of an answer to that
is when you're listing at a wider list, even amongst the ones we're going to
talk about tonight, is there something going on in your community that makes some of
these particularly timely? Because if you don't do it now, the opportunity will be lost.
So in other words, we in some cities, we have some sites that are being
considered for development or a rezone. And if you put off some of the actions
for three years and the zoning happens, then you lost your chance to deal with
something. So that's one layer to put on it is when you look at some
of these, is there something going on like some of the other communities have manufactured
housing communities? and there's pressure for redevelopment. So if they don't deal with it now,
if they wait three years, they might have already been redeveloped. So that's an example
of what we're going through in one or two other cities. So keep that also
that kind of timeliness lens on as you're looking at these. - Yeah, we have
a limited supply of buildable land. - That's a very good criteria 'cause that's very
true. This chart probably looks very small. It's on the last page of your packet
for those of you that have a paper packet. And what we tried to do
here in a very colorful way is the findings from the focus group and from
your meetings are the blue, the blue line in the top. And the data, the
factual sources that we found are the orangey, peachy stripe in the middle. And then
the actions that we thought might address what we've been hearing from those two sources
are on the side. And again, they're not all the actions. They're just a handful
of actions just to get us started. And then we tried to figure out the
checkmarks are For example, I'll go to the first corner, accessory dwelling units. Some communities
call them mother-in-law apartments. Some of them, you know, they have granny flats. There's all
sorts of names for them. But that would... answer a lot of the issues or
could answer a lot of the issues that we've heard by allowing and we do
allow them in the city but perhaps we could do we could allow them with
an easier process perhaps we could waive any you know hookup fees or whatever for
you know maybe there's a way that we could really zip up our our accessory
dwelling unit production here that might be a strategy that we could use to add
some of the to answer some of the housing issues that we have in those
one, two, three, four, five places. So we're trying to figure out what strategies
are out there that could match to some of the issues that we're facing.
So starting with that, does anyone have any thoughts, good, bad, or indifferent on
accessory dwelling units as a strategy? Does it make sense for most of Issaquah,
part of Issaquah? It seems to make some sense, and we might want to
look at other areas that have tried this strategy and where
it worked well and where it didn't. The vertical slope of some
of our land may make it difficult. Right. And I think we
have, what did we say, 80? We have 80? Oh, 39 right
in the city right now? Okay. I don't know that I agree
with that particular strategy, and here's the reason why. A
lot of the properties and neighborhoods were designed to handle the capacity of usually two
to three cars per house maximum. The houses were built in the 1950s and 1960s,
which is a majority of the older neighborhoods. Those are the lots that could support
a granny flat. So for instance, let's take Squawk Mountain. There's no parking on the
street, not allowed to park on the street. So where are those people going to
park? Usually those houses have already two to three cars. Question is, I don't
know that that's really sustainable for some of the older neighborhoods because the lots may
support it, but there's no infrastructure to support the vehicle attainment. And I don't know
that some of those neighborhoods want a lot of people moving in to granny flats
because now that's going to change the neighborhood demographic. Okay. Okay. And I have a
question. Mm-hmm. Does... I'm not familiar with the code. Is there code that
allows the micro mini units that are say 250 to 300 square feet and
also cottage style housing? We allow for cottage style housing. The micro units, I
don't think we allow them unless they're allowed in the villages. Do you know
if they're allowed in the villages? So they wouldn't be because the profit margin
was more on building bigger expensive houses?
Oh, the answer was they weren't precluded in the villages, but they weren't chosen to
be built because of the price margin. Did I get that right? Oh, now we
have a footnote. Yeah. Related to micro units, there's probably nothing in your code that
precludes them in any of your multifamily zones. And it gets a little bit at
what Keith was saying is now up in the highlands, you only could do so
many units because of traffic counts and everything like that. But where you use FAR,
like in the center, there'll be nothing to preclude it. And if you now go
into downtown Redmond and downtown Kirkland, there is a developer who is building developments with
micro units and he seems to be building them as fast as he can. Because
every time he finishes one, they fill up and he goes right to the next
one. So he's already done two in Redmond and working on a third and he's
done one in downtown Kirkland. So Micro units just could happen naturally through the market
and so the question would be, do you have anything in your codes that would
preclude the market coming in and having to use the FAR in that way? And
that might be something you might want to look at. What is FAR? I'm sorry,
floor area ratio. So you build it based on the building size and not based
on the number of units per acre.
One thought that popped into my head as we were talking about kind of
alternative housing styles, I really like the cottage housing concept. I think that's kind
of in line with the character that we talked about. It kind of seems
more friendly and neighborhood-like, I guess, at least when you're thinking about kind of
the valley floor area. Another kind of trend, which I don't know how
big it is or profitable or anything like that, but is the tiny homes.
And I guess I just think that a lot of people that tend to
live in those probably like nature and that a lot of people that like
nature like to live here. And so maybe there's an opportunity somewhere in town
for small experimental development that facilitates that. Tiny homes. Mm-hmm. Trish, where do
ADUs show up in the current inventory demographics? I'm thinking of Iskua Highlands where
I live, and I know there's two areas not too far from where one
of our houses was that had a lot of accessory dwelling units, but do
they show up separate on the inventory because they were purchased as a single unit
and then there was a garage or facility. So how do they show up? And
I think they come out in our building data, don't they? They do. In our
permit data that we have, when someone builds one, you include a single family house
and then there's a slot that says, is there an ADU? And you check the
box. So that's how you get the ADU count? Right. And And there's regs on
how they can't be bigger than the main unit and someone that owns the property
has to live in either the main one or the ADU. So it's got to
have some owner occupied part of it, whether it's the little one or the big
one. And when you looked at the cost of housing, would it show up as
one house, bought it $600,000 or would it show as two separate units? So when
you're looking at total data. No, I think it shows up as one. Yeah. So
that's, you know, I don't think we have that many that it's worth worrying about,
but it sort of skews the data because if there are two units to live
in, but they're one house with a single price, numbers are off a little bit.
Right. Hey, Carl. Yeah. Do you know if the Highlands Regulations actually allow you to
rent them to someone else, though? Yeah. They do? Yeah. Okay. One of the
other things I'm not seeing up here, and it's kind of out of the box
thinking, is co-op housing, where people will own a stake in a building. They'll have
a bedroom or a two bedroom, but they'll have shared bathroom facilities and shared kitchen
facilities. And that is kind of where I'm thinking is a lot of millennials may
be looking towards, because they can start their real estate investment, but they're not in
a house which is too big, and they don't want an apartment.
That's different than like a boarding house where you just have your own room. Right.
I'm just making sure I understand where you're going. You're a corporate owner or you're
a shareholder owner in a piece of actual property. So you own a piece of
the property, so to speak, as a shareholder. So your money can actually increase in
equity, but you're your private living space is your bedrooms and then your public
living space is your family room and bathroom and kitchen facilities. Like a little college
room. Exactly. So you know a lot of us are probably living in condos or
apartments or houses so we don't think of it that way but I think that's
going to be the future of a lot of people is going to be starting
to look at that type of housing alternative. I don't see any of that
for Izaquah. So we're talking about high density. Well, that's a really great way
to have high density where you have shared facilities. Mm hmm. Okay. Good. Right
down. Other thoughts on types of housing since the ADUs got us all thinking
about different different types, different ways of no. Um, how do you feel about
land acquisition? The city were to purchase x piece of land and use it for
something that we don't have whether it's senior housing or whether it's for um co-op
housing almost called the boarding housing co-op housing or a plot for tiny houses how
would you feel about a city investment in that is that a good strategy some
of the affordable stuff will probably happen unless the city acquires the land because the
cost of the land is i'm sorry right no it won't happen because It won't
happen without city acquisition because the cost of land is so high. So if
you need affordable housing, it may be necessary for the city to acquire some
property. It's true. You add in that impact fees and all
the other fees that it costs a developer to build a property. It's not just
the land at this point in time, it's all the fees and when they're scheduled
to be paid. They have to be paid up front before the builder gets any
money in selling the condos. And the last line there is probably one of the
most important things in developing our city. I just added that after the Realtors
meeting. Because yeah, that was a really good discussion. Okay, so it sounds like
land acquisition sounds like it would fit with this aqua. How about- Can I
object on land acquisition real quick? Yes. Something that my, I have a nephew
who lives in California and his city is doing something, they're not acquiring the
land, but for residents who want to buy a home and can't, and they
can afford the monthly payment but they have a hard time getting the down payment
the city instead of acquiring the land and building housing they're assisting them with the
down payment amount so assisting the families to just like a it's kind of like
a separate loan but they don't have to pay it back it's more like more
like a grant i guess sort of like a bucket of money to help with
yeah at first to help so they can get in stay in the city okay
and get a home Trish, are you saying the city would buy the
house and actually build the house? For the land acquisition? Or you would leave it
open to builders and developers to come in and actually do it? So I can't
see the city actually building the homes. For which one? The land acquisition or for
the transfer? What's the value of the city acquiring the property for building if the
city is not going to build on it? so you have the property then you
have are you going to then sell it to a developer or what how is
that going to work yeah we talked the other night at evc about the city
not necessarily being the their core skill is not as a developer so i think
that's so so over what what's happened to sort of address your question what cities
have done and typically they haven't bought land but the city of redmond bought land
from the federal government and then turned around and did figured out what they wanted
to go on the land And it ended up being some homes for habitat, some
homeless housing, and then some entry level condominiums. It's out on Avondale Avenue, right where
Novelty Hill hits Avondale. So what they did is they managed the surplus, the transfer
of that property to three different developers. It was big enough. to get what they
were after a community process what they thought was most important to do and then
they set a price that below market some of the land was free and because
i had to pay for it from the federal government some of the recover costs
so what you're doing is you're putting the local community into the control process of
finding developers who may bring in other subsidies in order to make the housing work
or discounts on the land wide range but this way the city and the community
is in control of not only you know what gets built and also some design
and elements like that and we've probably over the years have had a dozen or
more properties made available through City process where the city doesn't develop it but they
set parameters of affordability and types of housing that might get built. So we've had
senior housing built, we've done housing for special needs populations, and some of that's been
done here. Essentially, you did that with the property with the YWCA up in Issaquah
Highlands. The city didn't own it, but through the process, they got to control how
that was developed. And then there was a second and then a
comment about would you do a down payment assistance? That sort of becomes a subcategory
under the sort of levy which is if you have cash, how do you use
cash? And so actually right now the cities are funding a down payment assistance program
mutually through actually the State Housing Finance Commission. So we use some of our dollars
to help create that. So that is something that could be done, but that's sort
of when you talk about number five, it's like if you had money, how would
you want to use it? Just a comment on the land acquisition. I think that
was a really helpful example. I do think, though, If you play it out, if
the last time I checked, you know, the city has to balance its budget. And
so it only really works. You don't want to be bidding against other developers because
talking to some developers, I know it's hard to find land in Issaquah. So to
me, it only really works in that example you gave where somehow the city has
land or is able to get land for development that a normal developer would not
have access to. And then that puts them in more of a driver's seat. So
obviously, In the development of urban villages, that was the case. If there are other
parts-- and again, I'm out of my depth at this point-- but if there's other
parts of state-owned land or currently not developable city land that the city could move
forward with and open for development, that's where I think it makes sense. Otherwise, that
cost of acquiring the land, you'll be paying as much as a developer would and
then giving it to the developer. And then it'll come back to the citizens in
taxes in some way. That's a good point. Any other thoughts on the land acquisition?
Actually. Arthur, there's another thought? There are examples, and I don't know if it would
be relevant for your community, where the development community has loved that the city goes
out because there might be a lot of little parcels. that are hard to for
them to buy a little bit of time and accumulate so sometimes they call it
you know accumulating several parcels that don't work by themselves and so the city will
eventually get reimbursed their funds but they're they're acting as a catalyst to get pieces
of property that would work for forms of housing and they're sort of cash flowing
it they may not be subsidizing it because builders have a hard time taking the
five years to accumulate those properties into one. So that is one example of where
actually development community have appreciated it when cities have taken some initiative. that's just
an example so so the because the city is taking a longer view of it
you're saying they're taking a longer view and they can hold the property they know
eventually they get reimbursed that's hard for developers to do and then once they have
the sites accumulated to something that can work because it's larger and then the city
then also has the benefit of controlling which developer gets it and what kind of
development they do on it and the next one is um transit oriented development um
that we're working on um that would even work with a multifamily tax exemption. And
that is also something that the city would control, but we'd be partnering with others
on that. And that would be near transit, obviously with the transit oriented piece. So
there'd be some mobility pieces to that because it would be near the transit center.
Are there thoughts on how that would fit in or do you like that a
lot or do you not like that at all? Or does it make sense? Is
this something where the city maintains some control? It seems to me
that in some of the surrounding areas where they've done transit-oriented development,
it immediately raised the price of all the property because it was
close to transit and then it was not affordable. Right. Right. Yeah,
the different transit places like Portland, all the stops got to be
very expensive. This would be more like a... figuring out like a
pilot project that that like land that that might we might own near the transit
center or in the vicinity that we would try to do a partnership project and
maybe try out some things like multifamily tax exemption that allows the applicant to not
pay the taxes right up they can use that to invest in the project And
so the city loses out on the taxes for a little bit, but then we
gain the housing that we wanted at the end. So it's sort of a partnership
that can be complex. Oh, I thought you were going to get up and speak
to this. No, you're just smiling. only if I get into the mud. But so
it would be a small version that maybe if it works really well, we could
try to do more of them, but it's something that we think might be worth
trying because it might fit into some of the categories that we're missing. Can you
give us an example of what that would look like? Yeah. So I think this
is an example actually of the land acquisition, right? And so if we, the city,
can acquire some land that is at a good location and we can have some
influence over what's built there, So right now the city is looking at developing work,
working with a developer to build a transit or a development site. And one of
the things that Arthur mentions about the opportunities that exist currently, the King County Council
last summer allocated $10 million for what's called a TOD, transit and development fund, which
requires affordable housing to be part of that. So they're trying to because like you
mentioned, land prices increase around transit stops because it's a very because they understand they
get more density and that's where people want to live so we're trying they are
trying to balance that out and require some affordable housing in those locations so last
year king county council allocated 10 million dollars for what they call the i-90 corridor
so that's issaquah through north bend or suquamish and um so we feel that we
are strong a contender for that because of our transit center And so we are
right now working, I can't provide too many details because we haven't solidified them yet,
but we're working to look at a building near the transit center at SR 900,
right? So we have some properties that we're talking to people right now about, so.
And so that would mean that it would be a mixed use. So as you
mentioned, you know, it would have apartments above that would have mixed income. So you
have not just affordable housing, but you also have some market rate housing. We have
some amenities on the on the ground floor, some public amenities. So you're right across
the street from a park. You're right next to a transit center. We want to
make sure that integrates well into the community. So there's lots of things that, depending
on where the location of the sites are, we want to make sure they fit
into the community. So, did that answer your question? Well, I guess that was part
of number two, but it's also part of number three. And then number four also.
Number four is inclusionary zoning and bonus density. You kind of hit on all three
of those categories in that one example, which is great. I think the inclusionary zoning
and bonus density relies mostly on developers to provide those things so but I will
let Trish talk about that because I'm not a planner. Jen is that property gonna
be acquired by the city or is that property that's already the owners you're talking
to those lands about doing this development? So we will there's gonna be a land
swap yeah so but we do have some property that is by the transit center
that we could also potentially look at so Yeah, we're kind of getting into a
little bit too many details about one specific project. But that's the idea, is that
the city then has some ability to influence what goes there. Because otherwise, they could
choose to build the most expensive housing they can get at that site. And so...
And when you look at all these options, I mean, we could probably add another
30 options, but what you gotta think about is what makes the most sense, what
may get you the biggest bang for the buck, what opportunities are there, and what
is gonna meet, again, the needs that we've identified. - Maybe a way to think
about, and you're right, two, three, and four can overlap a lot. I can give
you, there's examples in Redmond and Kirkland of housing that has been built above transit
parking rides or immediately adjacent to parking rides, one in downtown Redmond, one in Overlake,
and one in South Kirkland. And I think what these rows are sort of getting
at is those developments might occur naturally on their own with private development, and they'd
all be market rate. What these columns are getting at is sometimes if a public
in control Is it worth trying to take a parcel and use those as a
catalyst to use some other tools such as multifamily tax exemption or bringing in the
King County TOD funds that would allow and leverage the city's activities to get more
that property to be other than what the market would build on its own. So
they would have a mixture of market rate units with units that are below market.
So that's sort of what these are getting at is does the city act proactively
in some areas in order to affect and to bring in other subsidy dollars that
exist in the region or the state in order to get mixtures of affordability in
different developments in your community. And so one is using the control of land. Every
time we've seen a city have control of land, they don't just use their own
resources. They pick a developer who's going to go out and try to find some
other resources to go with it. They don't always have to. The one in downtown
Redmond, it was pretty much just the land itself, and they didn't get a lot
of other subsidy dollars. And so it's almost all market rate and the affordable is
a little bit below market, whereas in the other two, they brought in some outside
dollars, the developers. So they pick developers who are good at doing that. Okay, so
I think that's what these rows are sort of getting at is does the city
try to leverage beyond the market still make it all work and bring in some
of these other tools into developments in your community. Arthur, does that have to go
through an RFP process? If the city controls the land, they have to put it
out to open bid to develop? That's pretty much what we have suggested communities do,
and we have been involved in a number of RFPs. Sometimes they do them different
ways, but generally, yeah, it doesn't hurt to get the opinions of different people about
what they might do if they had the opportunity. TRISH, CAN I
ADD THAT AFFORDABLE HOUSING NEXT TO A TRANSIT CENTER WOULD BE ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT
FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES? BECAUSE THAT'S THEIR ONLY WAY OF GETTING AROUND, AND
THEY NEED TO BE ABLE TO AFFORD A PLACE TO LIVE AS WELL.
SO REALLY HIGH IMPORTANCE. I'D ALSO LIKE TO STRESS THAT WOULD BE AN
IDEAL LOCATION FOR SENIORS AS WELL. AND SENIORS, MANY OF THEM DO NOT
DRIVE. which is also part of the ADUs, if
the ADUs are for seniors, that may not impact the number of
vehicles. Right. True. And actually, intermixing would be an ideal solution as
well, because you'd spread out the demographics. So you would have seniors
throughout the campus, I guess, if you have a campus of buildings.
Right. Right. Young families, you have seniors, and so kids growing up can
see seniors and they can start relating to them. Right. That's all good. It's
all good. The number four, although it does overlap, if you will, with
two and three. What it was meant to do also is right now in
central Issaquah, if you're in the core and you develop housing, you have to
provide a percentage of it, 10% at below market rate, market rate or below.
And so, And so far no one has built in, they built right on the
edge of the core. And so this item is, do we want to try that
in any other areas of Issaquah to see if it would work somewhere? Because someday
it will work in central Issaquah when the market gets there. But is this something
that we would like to try in other areas of town so that when it
is getting developed, that there would be a percentage required for affordable housing? That's what
that one is for. And that's what bonus density also is, is when you build
a certain height in central Issaquah, you have to give the community back some amenities.
And one of the amenities is affordable housing and the other is open space. So
this is asking, is that something that we should see if we can craft for
the rest of the city or another part of the city and not just for
central? That's what number four. That's the gist of number four. Does that make any
sense for Issaquah to you all, other than in the central area? It does to
me. OK. Where else would you put it, though? So you look at Old Town.
Old Town's built out. Highlands is almost built out. About the only place left is
the core. So demographically, you wouldn't be putting affordable housing anywhere else in the city
except in the core, right? Could. What do you think? That's a good question. Where
would you put it, though? Sometimes. Let's define the core. So in your mind, are
you saying the core of central Issaquah or the smaller part of central Issaquah that
we truly call the core, that's the core zoning? That's what I'm referring to. The
900 acres. The core zoning, right. Right. Because that's where it is now. CHRIS RODGERS:
You need to include also the Gateway, Old Town. I mean, the redevelopment plays in
some of the older projects. If there's land accumulation and you bring them all together,
there could be opportunities for development in some of those older locations. So to encourage
more density to get more affordable housing, I think, is a good thing. CHRISTIE WOOD:
And there are places where we're tearing down existing housing and putting something in its
place which usually is less affordable than what we tore down. Mm-hm, often
that's the case, true. True. Any other thoughts on inclusionary? The city just has
to be very careful when they allot so much for affordable housing because that
increases the price of the ones above it. Mm-hm. And so you have to
make sure that there's enough give in the city in order for a builder
to do that. Mm-hm. Right. I think it was mentioned earlier about the impact fees.
I mean, I think it's close to 18,000 now a door. 14. It's not as
bad as Bonnie Lake, which is $25,000 a door. But, you know, as you're looking
for more affordability, it could be some time span is put out there. It says
if you develop it, then these impact fees are reduced for a certain, at least
enough to get it kind of primed the pump, so to speak. Right. I was
just going to make a little note. Right now, for affordable housing, we waive all
the impact fees. And I think a lot of the connection charges to it. CHRISTIE
WOOD: OK. Connection fees? Some of them? CHRISTIE WOOD: OK. But I know there's a
big package that we offer for affordable housing just for that reason. CHRIS JERRAM: Is
it just for that 10% or is it for the entire project if you meet
the 10% affordable housing? CHRISTIE WOOD: It's just the affordable housing part of it. I
wouldn't suggest the city change that. CHRIS JERRAM: OK. The reason why I say that
is because Issaquah, even though we may not have a lot of takers right now
in terms of developers wanting to develop Issaquah, we are a very competitive place to
live. And I think long term, we'd be shooting ourselves in the foot if we
gave that away. And I think developers will in time come to Issaquah to develop.
And so I don't want to give up any developer fees in lieu of affordable
housing except on the units that are affordable housing. State law requires that if you're
exempting for affordability, once you set your overall fee system, if you exempt for affordability,
you must have covenants for the affordable units. And those are the only ones that
can get the exemption. Okay. Any other thoughts on that one?
Okay. It says propose a housing levy, but as Arthur reintroduced it, it's
really if you have extra money through whatever mechanism that we might have
available to us, is that something that would make sense for Issaquah? One
of the examples is a housing levy. I think Arthur had other examples,
but that's just if you're But that would be if that
would make sense like that for the housing for the renters
assistant or that down payment assistance that kind of thing is
that something that that would make sense for us acquire has
any merit. So I think there's a couple ways to sort
of look at this row it's the city currently is helping
to fund housing. um and so one of the questions is if you're funding housing
how do you do that and then second what would you use it for and
keith wants to say something too so so part of this whole chart you know
when you talk about developing strategies I think you have to start with who's going
to pay for it, right? And so if you look at this table, you know,
a lot of it is on the developer's back, and that's fine, but you can't
expect it all to potentially come from the developers. And so some of it is
-- has to come from this community. If we want more affordable housing, I think
we have to reach into our pockets and pay for some, too. So what the
housing levy is, is it's a tax. It's should this community tax
itself to get more affordable housing. Now it's you know, you could set
the tax rate at whatever you want, and that would be all part of a
community conversation. But, you know, some of these, like buying property, you know, sometimes we
have property, sometimes we buy property, but, you know, you guys are paying for that
too. So what this table is really trying to do is to split out the
pain of affordable housing. It's not coming by market, right? So we're having to incent
it either by private means or by public means. And so these action strategies that
are being proposed are possible. And at this point, they're just possibilities. And I think
what we're doing is trying to incite a conversation about whether these are good ideas
or bad ideas. There's no one silver bullet. If there was-- every city in Puget
Sound and in Northern California and a lot of other places would have already done
it. And so what we're trying to find is a balanced approach to how do
we get more affordable housing in our community because I think we've all realized that
is a problem. so that's what i want to say so that's a great introduction
and so like he said somehow the community tax base that the whole community contributes
to today the council has just pulled it out of their general fund okay the
cities in rh are all talking about if we want to grow this a levy
some new type of fees that don't exist now. Right now there's like, you know,
there's a wide range. I'm not saying any of these are realistic because they're going
to need state legislation, but there's a portion, you know, there's real estate transfer tax
fees. Can any of that go to it? And so there's a lot of different
ideas. But the point is they'd all be eventually coming from the community as a
whole's tax base. And so the first question is the idea of doing that and
growing that a little bit more than what it has been historically. And then second,
if they did grow, what would be good ways to you? What are particular ways
that you think would make sense in order to address needs in your community to
use those resources? Well, I have a question for you, kind of a strategy and
finance here. If the city wants affordable housing and let's say we as a city,
we subsidize some affordable housing and I'm going to just say, let's take a $100,000
house and we put $10,000 towards that affordable housing package. Couldn't the city actually become
a shareholder in the unit itself and own that 10%? And so when that unit
sells for a profit, We take a portion of those proceeds and put it back
into the pot so then the affordable housing component becomes a sustainable package for the
city. So the key word you just made there is there's a way to do
ownership that's sustainable, and it can be done a couple different ways. One is you
just put a covenant on the property. This is what we do with land use.
So if there's a density bonus, you know, that one where you do density bonuses,
you have some in your town, We have 600 homes in East King County created
through land use incentives that are owner occupied and which is a covenant in which
the resale price is dictated. And then there's other provisions in there that said for
any reason, and it's for 30 to 50 years. So that creates a sustainability, but
there's also provisions that say if we ever lose it, it's year 31 or year
51, or there's a foreclosure that if there are any extra proceeds, when it sells
beyond what the owner would have gotten under the formulas of the covenant, if there's
anything else after that, it goes back to the local government. So, yes, you can
do it. The other way we've done it is we give money to a developer,
and usually what they'll do is a land trust. So the nonprofit owns, quote, owns
the land. So Habitat does that. So that's what they did up in Issaquah Highlands.
There's Habitat development there. And we did provide them some cash through the cities. And
so they have a land structure that accomplishes essentially what you're saying. So we've done
that through both land use and direct assistance. Does Issaquah make any effort to
set up partnerships with the faith groups that run housing programs? For
example, Mercy Housing, Plymouth Housing, all these different groups? Yes. in other
words we um we could give you a list of all the projects that have
been funded over the years by the cities and one of the columns shows you
who the partners were now plymouth hasn't done stuff over here but we have hopelink
and we also have imagine housing actually started out of st luke's church in bellevue
so you could sort of put them in that category that very much like plymouth
housing so we've supported the housing authority which is publicly created organization. We've helped nonprofits,
Habitats, Hope Link, Imagine Housing, so a wide range of groups. And we've even, we'll
even, the cities are willing to even give it to a private developer as long
as we're getting the good covenant that gives us long-term affordability. When we've put cash
into properties, Usually the minimum is 50 years. Okay? So, in fact, there's someone in
the audience who's from another group called Dash who we've done a number of developments
with, and all of those properties are owned by them, but they're covenants for 50
years minimum, and usually those groups are intending to use it that way forever. Arthur,
I got a quick question for you. Has there ever been seen any incentives given
to current landowners or current apartment owners to keep their units affordable? versus we're talking
about new construction but elizabeth brought up a good point of you know we're tearing
down things that are nice properties but there's a higher and better use quote unquote
so for the property i'm going to answer your question but first i'm going to
ask the group a question what do you guys think of the idea of doing
preserving existing properties rather than doing new construction that to diminish new construction but does
that sound like a good idea too to people. If there's ways to take existing
housing and preserve it as affordable housing. Does that make sense to you? It depends
on the quality of the housing. Okay, good. All right, that's the qualification that makes
that it is to make sure. Now what we've often done is we'll help fix
that property up a little bit when we do that so that it is in
good condition. But what I'm hearing from you is, well, yes, as long as the
quality of that housing is okay. When I went to a meeting in Bellevue that
was talking about affordable housing and issues around that, one of the things that they
stressed was that you got a better bang for your buck. - With preserving housing.
- As someone who's funded housing recently, you don't always get a bigger bang for
your buck, but it still doesn't mean it's often, you know, your older stuff is
centrally located. It's in good locations, right? And stuff like that. And one community saw
this as a way to upgrade those properties at the same time as preserving the
affordability. So there's other benefits, and so that can be good for a neighborhood. So
to answer your question, the answer has been yes. And usually though, it's ended up
involving a group like Dash or Imagine or Hopelink buying the property from the existing
owner and then using public dollars in order to do that and keep the rents
low or even lower the rents. Because what we have found is in the housing
built in the 1960s and 70s, if you look at the income profile Remember we
gave you data on cost burden households that are paying 50 and 60 percent of
their income to live in their housing? Where do you think they live? In the
older apartments in your community. And what we found is that we would sometimes buy
or we help a group buy a market rate complex built in the 60s or
70s, about that age period, and they would make the units affordable at 30 and
50 and 60 percent of median income And they did not have to move anybody
in order to meet the income qualifications because that building was full of people earning
30 and 50 and 60 percent. It's just that a lot of them were paying
50 and 60 percent or 40 percent of their income to live there. And so
it stabilized not only the building, but a lot of the residents were now able
to afford a rent at a reasonable percentage of their income. So we have done
a number of properties where it's buying existing that are market rate owned by private
developers. We have also tried to take federally assisted properties that were privately owned and
have those be not them flip them to market rate because the owners have the
right to do that. And more times than that, that's also been done the same
way where we bring in someone to buy them out. But we actually did do
one project once where we kept the existing private owner in place. We gave him
money in order to agree not to convert it to market, to fix up the
property, and to put a covenant saying, I will always use that federal program if
it's available, and if the federal program ever goes away, I will at least have
it affordable at like 60% immediate. So we have worked with a private developer once
before even in that situation. But normally it involves having them voluntarily sell
it to somebody else. I have a question. Going a little bit back
to when you were talking about levies and taxes. Where or how can
we help the population that cannot or might choose not to vote when
decisions about taxes and things come in the ballot or housing and such?
that would be part of the outreach that we'd have to do because anything like
a tax or a bond or a levy or something would need a lot of
outreach so we would have to be very thoughtful on how we did that and
and and reach out to communities that would would help us do that i couldn't
tell you exactly how we would do it at this point but we would make
an effort and be thoughtful about how we would do that because you raise a
super good point And I know we're almost out of time. This has been a
fabulous discussion, but there's some public here that probably wants to speak to this group.
And so if it's okay with you all, I'd like to allow a little bit
of time for public comments. If any of you would like to come up and
speak. You don't have to. Oh, you don't have to. No pressure. But in case
you wanted to.
Hi, my name is Steve Pereira. I live at 170 Northeast Dogwood Street for about
nine years. So a couple of thoughts. One is, first of all, thanks to the
city and each of you for contributing to this idea. I think it's a really
fundamental thing. So the city for hosting it, and thanks for your time and contributing
to it. A second thought is that in the mission statement, it seems the word
gets used is encourage. And it seems like the city has been talking about encouraging
for a while now, and we haven't really seen affordable housing happen. If there's stronger
language such as require that would make that happen.
I know there's some legal boundary on that and I
don't know the mechanisms for making that happen. It just
seems like that would be more encouraging of it. My
other thought is that this has been a learning opportunity
for me, so that's mostly why I'm here is to
learn and contribute as part of that community. So thank
you. I'm Chris Brandt. I'm the CEO of At Work.
and at work has been providing services to Issaquah citizens with intellectual and developmental disabilities
for 54 years, I think. And we do that at 690 Northwest Juniper Street on
city-owned property for which we have a long-term lease. And I'll echo some of your
thoughts that I really commend the work that you're all doing and the effort that
you're putting into this. This is the first meeting I've attended, but I watched your
other two. And there's a lot of really important discussions happening here. And I have
learned a lot about the housing situation in Issaquah just by watching those two meetings
and being here today. Thank you, Chris, for bringing up people with disabilities
as I think one of the populations that you really need to consider
as you're looking at affordable housing. Issaquah and the surrounding area graduates between
30 and 50 children from your school districts. with intellectual and developmental
disabilities every year. And those young adults often need to leave the area
in order to find housing that's affordable to them. And At Work is
also a small employer. We operate several small businesses here. and the majority of
our workers, many of them who have disabilities commute into Issaquah from places
like Bothell and Auburn and Kent and so having affordable workforce housing
not only for our staff that provide services to people with intellectual and developmental
disabilities, but our workforce in those small businesses where we're trying to also help
with the economic vitality of the community. So just encourage you to keep that
population in mind and to consider at work a place where you can come and
learn more about that and certainly a partner in whatever way we can help you
in reaching out to that community and helping you make decisions that are really good
for this community going forward. So thanks.
And I just want to echo the words of everyone here tonight that this conversation
is very exciting for us. I'm Alicia Camp, I'm from Downtown Action to Save Housing
and we're an affordable housing developer here on the east side of King County. We've
done a lot of work in different cities using a lot of these tools and
strategies you're talking about tonight. So I just really deeply appreciate the work and conversation
you're having right now. So thank you. Okay. We're almost at the end
of the needs analysis piece of the whole strategy, and we're going to present our
findings and what we've learned with you all in the three meetings. We're going to
present that to the council at a work session in March. And then we're going
to figure out how to take this out to the neighborhoods at the end of
March. And we're hoping to have your help with that, whether if it's, you know,
asking people about it at a wine walk or at the community, you know, the
art walks or something where we actually go out to them to talk to them
where people already are at the library, at the community center. We're still trying to
work out what would be the most effective way to ask them about housing questions.
And then on to the policy conversation where we'll actually take some of the strategies
that we've thought about and start talking to developers to ask them, you know, what
would it take for you to help us with these kinds of projects and strategies?
So it's all very exciting. Any questions about the next steps or parting thoughts? Okay,
then. Thanks so much for being here tonight. It was a great group. Most we've
ever had. Thank you. Just a quick announcement
if anyone is interested in seeing or visiting the
YWCA campus, the village campus up here in Highlands,
please come see me. Thanks.