Planning Policy, Economic Vitality, Human Services Joint Commission – Special Meeting · Thursday, January 26, 2017 · City Council Digest

1. CALL TO ORDER

Commission Membership

packet pp.3–7

Open packet at p.3 ↗

Staff report:

Planning Policy Commission About Staff Liaison Created in 1983, this commission serves as a Trish Heinonen, Planning Manager policy advisory body to the Mayor and provides Email guidance and direction for Issaquah’s future growth through continued review and improvement to the Regular Members City’s Comprehensive Land Use Plan and related 2018 - Joy Lewis land use documents. 2018 - Jon Stob 2018 - Carl Swedberg Membership 2018 - Vacant The Planning Policy Commission is comprised of 2019 - Joan Probala seven regular members, with four-year terms; and 2020 - Ron Faul several alternates, with two-year terms. All 2020 - Troy Rahmig members are appointed by the Mayor and subject to confirmation by the City Council. Terms expire Alternate Members April 30 of the year listed. For more information, 2018 - Salim Juma see IMC 18.03. 2018 - Larisa Kolcz 2018 - Vacant 2018 - Vacant

2. AGENDA ITEMS

Mission Statement and Problem Solving Statement

Jen Davis Hayes, Economic Development Manager · packet pp.9–26

Open packet at p.9 ↗

Staff report:

Housing Strategy Potential Mission Statements January 2017

Focus Group and Commission

Trish Heinonen, Policy Planning Manager · packet pp.27–39

Open packet at p.27 ↗

Staff report:

Housing Strategy Focus Groups Tuesday, October 18, 2016 Large Employers Participants include: Costco and Swedish

Strategies and Actions for Issaquah

Commission Discussion · packet pp.41

Open packet at p.41 ↗

Staff report:

Exhibit 5: Potential Actions to Address Situations Identified by Findings and Data Findings: Focus Groups and Joint Commission

1372 segments .txt ↗

0:17 ↗ Welcome to the third joint commission meeting on the housing

0:23 ↗ strategy. I want to welcome the Planning Policy Commission, the

0:28 ↗ Human Services Commission. I hope it's on. Is it on?

0:34 ↗ The light's on. and the Economic Vitality Commission. Welcome to you all, and thanks for

0:40 ↗ all the work you're about to do on this tonight. I wanted to start out

0:44 ↗ by saying you all would have received a packet, and tonight we just have sort

0:49 ↗ of three pieces we're trying to get through. And the first is to go over

0:54 ↗ the mission and problem statement that we've been working on a little bit. We had

0:59 ↗ the subcommittee work on it a little bit, and so we're bringing those thoughts back

1:03 ↗ to you. We want to look at the focus group findings and the commission homework

1:07 ↗ that you all did last time findings and talk about that for just a little

1:11 ↗ bit to make sure we haven't missed anything. And then the third part, which I

1:15 ↗ think is going to be the most exciting, at least I think it will be,

1:20 ↗ is to actually start putting some ideas together, some questions and answers and thoughts about

1:25 ↗ what kind of strategies might be workable, might make sense for Issaquah. They're not recommendations,

1:30 ↗ they're not anything in stone, they're just a really small list that we were going

1:34 ↗ to start with just to see if they made sense to you all or what

1:39 ↗ questions you have. And so with that, I want to show you, you've seen this

1:44 ↗ before, this is the famous schedule of getting through the housing strategy. And just as

1:50 ↗ a reminder, the housing strategy is the big picture of all the kinds of housing

1:55 ↗ we want in the next 20 years. And as you probably know, our city council

2:00 ↗ enacted development moratorium last September that called out six reasons that they wanted

2:06 ↗ to slow growth down for a little bit. And one of them was affordable housing.

2:12 ↗ And affordable housing is just a small part of the bigger housing strategy. And so

2:17 ↗ I want you to keep that in mind that although we're all working on the

2:23 ↗ big picture housing strategy to get through the whole 20 years of the city's housing

2:29 ↗ strategy, The affordable housing piece is what council's looking at us to be done, or

2:34 ↗ at least as done as we can be, by October. So that's why the little

2:40 ↗ group of strategies we're bringing forward tonight is in response to the council's wish that

2:45 ↗ we work on that little bit first. I'm probably going to say that again when

2:50 ↗ we start that, just so we can keep all those pieces together. Are there any

2:55 ↗ questions on the schedule before I turn it over to... My partner

3:01 ↗ in crime, Jen. Okay, go. Great. Oh,

3:06 ↗ darn. So thanks again for being here tonight. And I wanted to also thank so

3:12 ↗ if you remember the last joint commission meeting we had I guess that was in

3:17 ↗ December which seems like a long time ago. We looked at a draft mission statement

3:21 ↗ and I want to thank Elizabeth, John and Laura who is not here who took

3:26 ↗ the time in between that meeting and this meeting to look at the at the

3:31 ↗ mission statement and try to do some adjustments to it. So right now what we

3:35 ↗ ended up with are two different possibilities. So I want to talk about these. We

3:39 ↗ don't want to spend a ton of time on this, but it does help to

3:43 ↗ set the -- to help us guide us as we move forward on this process.

3:47 ↗ And so I want to open up the floor to if you -- I put

3:52 ↗ in red the words that are different between the two. And I think there's good

3:57 ↗ reasons for either one. We can have a third one which combines some words from

4:02 ↗ this and some words from that if that makes sense. So I want to just

4:07 ↗ kind of open it up and have people's thoughts about these two statements. Does it

4:12 ↗ get to the point of what we've been talking about so far in this process?

4:17 ↗ Yes. So looking at the mission statement one or mission statement two. I think you

4:22 ↗ might need to turn your microphone on if you're going to speak. There's a button

4:28 ↗ at the base. Yeah. Okay. So looking at mission statement one and mission statement two.

4:33 ↗ If I look at mission statement two, embraces the city's character, enables mobility, and enhances

4:38 ↗ the environment. So let's just take that snapshot. That isn't going to be much

4:44 ↗ value unless we have some supporting criteria that defines what embracing is, enables mobility,

4:50 ↗ what kind of mobility, and enhances the environment. How is it going to enhance

4:56 ↗ the environment? Now, I also remember just watched the last two of these council

5:02 ↗ meetings to kind of get a review, and I noticed we were talking about

5:07 ↗ character. Well, what really defines character? What is a is a is a is a

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5:34 ↗ is a is a is a is a to really make it punch. Otherwise, we're

5:38 ↗ gonna submit this to city council and they're gonna look at it and go, "Well,

5:43 ↗ that's great. "Okay, enhances mobility." Well, that's a really vague statement. - Okay. So in

5:48 ↗ the last few meetings you don't feel like the discussion has addressed the criteria for

5:52 ↗ those? We need to get a little more into detail? Well, we've talked about high

5:57 ↗ level what the mission statement is, but there's nothing to support the mission statement. So

6:01 ↗ it just kind of floats. Well, the next steps will actually help to put more

6:05 ↗ meat on the bone. So mission and vision are usually broad statements. And then as

6:09 ↗ we move forward, we're going to talk about problem statements and then eventually to strategies

6:14 ↗ and action steps. And so that... excuse me, will hopefully address. But obviously you want

6:18 ↗ to make sure we all agree on what these words mean. So I hear you.

6:23 ↗ Yeah, it's a point in a good direction. So it sounds like your next step

6:28 ↗ that you want to take with us is to further define the stuff that's going

6:32 ↗ to be underneath. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Sounds great. Yes. But if we have disagreement what

6:37 ↗ character means or whatever, that's a good point. But I think our past two conversations

6:42 ↗ seem to pretty much define it broadly. Just a question. How does

6:48 ↗ providing a range of obtainable options enhance the environment? Those

6:54 ↗ two don't go together. This is a committee discussion so

7:00 ↗ if anybody wants to address that. You can have a

7:06 ↗ period at the end of environment but the next thing

7:12 ↗ is it doesn't go with the range of options.

7:17 ↗ So does, so then, okay, I guess Troy, were you going to say something? Well,

7:21 ↗ I wasn't going to clarify what that meant, but I was going to just make

7:26 ↗ a general statement. In my view, I think the, when I compare the two, this

7:30 ↗ is a mission statement, so it is high level umbrella kind of a statement. I

7:34 ↗ think the first one's more accessible. and just sort of states the mission. Okay. The

7:39 ↗ second one has, tries to have a little too much in it, you know, I

7:43 ↗ mean, that's the detail that will come later. Okay. Mobility and etc. So I think

7:47 ↗ the first one just, I think it's more accessible to people and, you know, then

7:51 ↗ you don't have to ask all the questions like what does enhance and enable mean.

7:55 ↗ Sure. Do people agree that the first one really captures what we've discussed

8:01 ↗ so far? I think so and on the mobility, I looked at it

8:07 ↗ and there were two things that went in different directions in my mind.

8:12 ↗ One was economic mobility and the other was the ability to get from

8:18 ↗ here to there. That's a good point.

8:24 ↗ Any other comments? Yes. I was just going to say, to Troy's point on one,

8:29 ↗ I feel like you can relate to it because we want to maintain the character

8:35 ↗ what Issaquah is, and then we want to provide a diversity of various housing types

8:40 ↗ and product type to allow all levels of living and affordability. So I'm a simple

8:45 ↗ person. I think simple is better. Yes. Yes, Anna. Look at your microphone so people

8:50 ↗ can hear you. Yeah, we're being recorded. It's not that scary. Are the questions

8:56 ↗ of the Commission members here towards the parts that are enhancing, I mean, in

9:02 ↗ red, are those the ones that we're going to cut down and describe? No,

9:07 ↗ I'm sorry, the red is just the difference basically between the two mission statements,

9:13 ↗ so where the differences are, so they aren't meant to call out specifically to

9:19 ↗ those words. to barrel down, but. - I agree with the fellow commissioner's statement that

9:25 ↗ maybe we should put a period after environment, otherwise it looks like a running thing

9:30 ↗ and maybe some people will lose track of the top part by the end of

9:35 ↗ the sentence. - That's a good point. - Yeah, and I have a separate question.

9:40 ↗ Are all these slides and all the information and being put on the city council

9:45 ↗ or somewhere in the city's website? Yes, so all the agendas and minutes including in

9:50 ↗ the packets, so the packets we passed out are on the city's website under all

9:55 ↗ the commissions, the three commissions websites. Is there any effort to to translate them in

10:00 ↗ different languages for the different community members. I don't believe so at this point, but

10:05 ↗ we can, are there some community groups that you feel we need to reach out

10:10 ↗ to? We can talk about that during our, when we go for our community outreach.

10:14 ↗ I believe so because we're going to be including them in all that we're working.

10:19 ↗ They should have access to all the information. Okay. Thank you. So I'm hearing that

10:25 ↗ maybe mission statement one is the one to look at, has the clearer sense, it

10:30 ↗ addresses things that we've discussed and it doesn't get into confusing run on, what does

10:36 ↗ this mean, what does that mean? Is that -- yes, Chris. I prefer the second

10:42 ↗ one because I think it includes more things that we need to make sure to

10:47 ↗ pay attention to. I think the first one is a little more vague

10:53 ↗ and I understand a mission statement is the big picture, but I

10:59 ↗ think it's really important that we include in there what our big

11:04 ↗ goal is. And what does number two say to you that number

11:10 ↗ one doesn't? Embraces. I like that better. Enables mobility is important, I

11:16 ↗ think. A range of obtainable options. Sorry, I used to work at

11:22 ↗ the Issaquah Press. The second one just speaks to you. It speaks more

11:27 ↗ to me. What does mobility mean? It can be either. But it doesn't

11:33 ↗ have to be defined here. We can define that later. But I think it's

11:39 ↗ very important that it's included. Yes. So one of the things again, I think to

11:44 ↗ Ron's point is that whatever we end up selecting here, we're going to move down

11:48 ↗ and create policies for. And so we need to make sure that the things that

11:53 ↗ we can address in a housing strategy. Right. So this isn't a goal for the

11:58 ↗ city community wide, but it's for housing policy. So are the things in mission statement

12:03 ↗ one and two achievable with our housing strategy? So A suggestion may be that we

12:08 ↗ move on and start talking about the next issues and then maybe we can come

12:13 ↗ back to this one and look at this and kind of say, okay, yes, this

12:17 ↗ makes more sense to do this or that. I think that would be a great

12:21 ↗ strategy. Okay. Okay. Because, you know, we could -- wordsmithing and all day long --

12:26 ↗ and mission statements obviously are really important, but we also want to make sure that

12:30 ↗ we kind of -- understand all the pieces to the puzzle here. And so unless

12:35 ↗ anybody has a concern about moving on without -- I'd like to make a quick

12:41 ↗ suggestion that maybe we consider changing out the maintains and embraces and I think maybe

12:47 ↗ that might make statement one nice, clear, concise, feel a little more inclusive. Do people

12:52 ↗ agree with that? So replace maintains in the first mission statement with embraces. Well

12:58 ↗ certainly as a power word. Yeah I like that. Okay we will definitely do that.

13:03 ↗ Okay thank you guys. Again this I know this is interesting conversations to

13:09 ↗ get us prepared for our next step, which is our problem statements. I know that

13:14 ↗ when we first started discussing the housing strategy, there was some question about what is

13:20 ↗ the problem. And part of what we're going to discuss tonight is to prepare us

13:25 ↗ for our next step, which is going out to the community and doing open houses

13:30 ↗ and getting more input. We've done some outreach already around focus groups with various groups.

13:36 ↗ And actually we did a focus group since our last meeting. And I don't know,

13:41 ↗ Trish, if you want to, you'll be talking about that later. And so we've gathered

13:45 ↗ data about around that. So what we're going to do tonight is to look at

13:50 ↗ problem statements that are suggested again. And so we're looking for ideas to make sure

13:54 ↗ we hit it on the mark. And it's going to help us then again to

13:59 ↗ develop those strategies and actions. So we obviously want everything to connect. So does that

14:04 ↗ understand kind of what we're doing next? All right, so we want to, again, we

14:08 ↗ need your help because we need to go and tell the story, right? So you

14:12 ↗ guys have been reading lots of information. You've had three, this is your third meeting.

14:16 ↗ You've already soaked into this topic. But when we go out to that open house,

14:19 ↗ we need to be able to tell that story more succinctly. So we want to

14:23 ↗ make sure that the statements capture the why we're doing the housing strategy and that

14:27 ↗ the data is there to support these statements. We know some people like to see

14:31 ↗ words, some people like to see graphs, some people like to see different ways. So

14:35 ↗ tonight we're presenting both of those things. And so we want to hear from you

14:40 ↗ what really rings true, what really tells the story the best way. And then is

14:44 ↗ anything missing? Because this is just, again, the beginning draft. So the first one is

14:50 ↗ the problem state suggested problem statement is overall housing affordability in Issaquah and the region

14:55 ↗ has decreased for households at all levels. So we're acknowledging this is just not an

15:00 ↗ Issaquah issue that it's all throughout the region and it's not an issue just for

15:05 ↗ very low income people but we've heard from all of our focus groups that it's

15:10 ↗ hard to get employees of various ranges of pay scale to find housing here in

15:15 ↗ Issaquah. So the data that we're going to show talks about the rents and home

15:21 ↗ prices have increased quickly since 2012 and then housing has become less affordable for anybody

15:26 ↗ below medium income and that that how the affordable more affordable housing isn't being built.

15:32 ↗ So overall initial responses to this before we get into the power the slides and

15:38 ↗ with graphs. Does that something does that statement ring true to what we've been talking

15:44 ↗ about again for the last few months? Yeah. Okay. So we again, we've seen these

15:49 ↗ before. So looking at the affordability and actual average rents. And so this is one

15:55 ↗ of the graphs we thought told that story really well. If you remember seeing this,

16:00 ↗ so it was looking at how quickly the average rent in Issaquah and

16:06 ↗ the east side have grown while those who have earnings at the

16:11 ↗ 50% and 80% median income haven't grown as quickly. So it's become

16:17 ↗ less affordable over time. Is this a graph that tells that story

16:22 ↗ or is this not quite a get to that point? And maybe

16:28 ↗ some people aren't data graph people and that's fine.

16:34 ↗ Is this kind of linking with the overall problem statement? Okay. Is

16:39 ↗ this something in general would be a good thing to show the

16:45 ↗ broader community to tell the picture in a simple statement? Okay. This

16:51 ↗ one talks more about single-family home prices. So this I think

16:57 ↗ Again, a little bit different where the previous one was about rent. And

17:03 ↗ so, and this you can see on the bottom slide, it talks about

17:09 ↗ the different various 80%, 50% and 30%. And it looks like Issaquah and

17:14 ↗ King County is the average. And so looking again about how these groups

17:20 ↗ down here aren't able to afford housing to purchase in Issaquah and King

17:26 ↗ County, how challenging it is. It's a little bit more complicated chart because

17:32 ↗ you have multiple things going on here. Is this something that is helpful to tell

17:37 ↗ the story? Possibly. I think it'd be helpful to define MFI. Okay. Since I don't

17:43 ↗ see it anywhere. Yes, you're right. Specifically. Thank you. I also have a question. As

17:49 ↗ far as when you say King County, there are different parts of King County that

17:54 ↗ are going to be more affordable and some that are going to be a lot

18:00 ↗ less affordable, and I think a lot of that has to do with the population

18:05 ↗ density. the more dense it becomes, the more unaffordable it becomes. You go

18:11 ↗ out into the outlying areas of King County, it's not really, should we be

18:17 ↗ including that kind of data into our metrics because we're not like kind. So

18:22 ↗ having east side count east side or east King County is more appropriate to

18:28 ↗ compare to, is that what you're suggesting? Well maybe even more macro than that

18:34 ↗ because if If you look at Renton, for instance, there are some

18:40 ↗ areas of Renton that would be considered unaffordable because it's so high density. Where

18:45 ↗ you go to other parts, portions of Renton, it's going to be a lot

18:51 ↗ more affordable because it's more rural. So we want to consider those types of

18:57 ↗ demographics when we make the consideration of what we want to be affordable. Because

19:02 ↗ we can't compare to a ranch house out in Black Diamond. OK. OK.

19:08 ↗ I don't know if Arthur, do you have some thought about that? Yeah, so I

19:14 ↗ think we do have different densities of housing as well here, although that is changing.

19:19 ↗ Yeah. Go ahead, Ethan. If I might make a comment, I think the key part

19:25 ↗ is not necessarily affordability relative to different regions. It's the fact that the affordability has

19:30 ↗ decreased over time. Within the same place, the area we're talking about, Issaquah, there's been

19:35 ↗ a change that is generally negative for affordability. And I think that's more the problem

19:39 ↗ we're trying to illustrate. CHRISTIE WOOD: Gotcha. So maybe if we remove the King County

19:44 ↗ line, that might just show the-- I mean, it shows that there's a general regional

19:48 ↗ trend. CHRISTIE WOOD: Sure. But that's not the scope of our problem. CHRISTIE WOOD: That

19:52 ↗ we're following the same trend of the county. Maybe if we have like little pies

19:58 ↗ in different regions, not include the whole region like what he's saying. You know,

20:04 ↗ maybe Renton or Eastside or, you know, maybe that'll give a better picture because

20:10 ↗ as he's saying, the region, I mean, it's too much to including just one

20:16 ↗ graph here if we're focusing on Issaquah. And there's many ranges out there. Okay.

20:22 ↗ So what I'm hearing is, and for any of you who don't remember, I'm Arthur

20:27 ↗ Sullivan from March and providing assistance throughout this process. I think you very well summarized

20:32 ↗ one of the messages from this chart. There is a second potential message, and I

20:38 ↗ don't know what the right answer is. And I've heard a couple different angles on

20:43 ↗ that. And that is, is that relative to countywide averages, housing costs are currently higher

20:48 ↗ than the rest of the county in Issaquah. and they have been historically okay so

20:53 ↗ that's what the why you have the red versus the blue bar now someone mentioned

20:58 ↗ bellevue someone mentioned east king county we've usually used king county because we're part of

21:02 ↗ a county-wide planning process and so often we're looking at what's going on over on

21:06 ↗ the county if we were to do east king county you would find that the

21:11 ↗ east king counties more closely mirror the issaquah ones and i've worked for all the

21:15 ↗ cities in east king county and in general housing is more expensive in East King

21:19 ↗ County than it is when you look at countywide averages. But that's what was the

21:24 ↗ message in this. I didn't do this chart, but we do a similar one. That's

21:28 ↗ why the blue bar is there is to show you relative to a countywide average.

21:32 ↗ If there's a better way to show that or if you think that's an important

21:37 ↗ point, then somehow you need to cover that point. If you just take the blue

21:42 ↗ bar off, you'll lose that part of the questioning and for you to decide if

21:47 ↗ you think that's important or not. It seems to me that Seattle is also in

21:52 ↗ King County and relatively dense. So how different would it be from as

21:58 ↗ a whole because it isn't all rural right seattle would be in fact seattle would

22:04 ↗ be probably comparable on ownership pricing would be comparable to east king county or a

22:09 ↗ little bit below so it would be relatively close thank you okay so it sounds

22:15 ↗ like maybe this chart needs some some work on and thinking about and we can

22:21 ↗ look at the following information joan do you have a comment you know that's that's

22:26 ↗ the way everything is already done That's the way everything is already done. They

22:32 ↗ take a snapshot of everything. And if somebody isn't comfortable with this, you can pull

22:38 ↗ out one or two other cities and add a chart to go with that. So

22:44 ↗ you get this, which is everything, and then you can go down to the specific.

22:50 ↗ A city that you feel that's maybe comparable to Issaquah. I mean, you don't

22:55 ↗ want to add 50 different charts for 50 different cities, but you might want to

23:01 ↗ take one or two that would still show that Issaquah is up there. Right. And

23:06 ↗ this probably tells a story that most of us already know. It's just, again, showing

23:12 ↗ that the data confirms your suspicions, right? Do you have

23:18 ↗ something to-- Maybe add on to Ethan's point that the story--

23:24 ↗ I think one of the stories here or the problems with

23:29 ↗ this is that gap between what's considered affordable for these different

23:35 ↗ income levels and the comparative housing prices is really growing over

23:41 ↗ time, or that it's getting larger for groups of lower incomes

23:47 ↗ compared to groups of higher incomes. So I don't know if it's a

23:53 ↗ separate chart, but it seems like a problem. Okay. Yeah, so we can

23:59 ↗ look at that. So are you saying that for the ownership here we

24:04 ↗ showed how much someone can afford at 80% of median for rental. Are you saying

24:10 ↗ something similar information for ownership as well? Right. Okay. That would make sense then that

24:15 ↗ the charts look the same and they're pretty easy to, easier to read, I think.

24:20 ↗ Okay, that's a great idea. Jen, I got a statement on the next slide. Is

24:25 ↗ there any value in showing, when you say affordability, the cost associated with that? So

24:30 ↗ an 8% mortgage on a $500,000 house versus a 3.5%, interest rate on a $700,000

24:36 ↗ house. I mean, so affordability, are we looking at monthly costs, the costs associated with

24:42 ↗ living, or is it just purely the cost to acquire? Because the interest rate, and

24:47 ↗ again, I don't know if this falls into this, but when we're talking about affordability,

24:52 ↗ monthly expenses, I imagine, would fall into that. So the prior chart had those rent

24:57 ↗ charges. Do we show ownership what the average was? Yeah, so as you see the

25:03 ↗ dotted line is the average mortgage rate, so that is taken into account what as

25:09 ↗ a 50%, 80% or 30% can afford, right? So your monthly income can afford, right?

25:15 ↗ If you're looking at an unburdened 30% of your income. Does that make

25:21 ↗ sense? So I get that $700,000 house when it was 8% is

25:26 ↗ going to be cheaper now to purchase for monthly income per monthly

25:32 ↗ payment when it's 3.5%. And that's accounted for in this chart. Is

25:38 ↗ that what you're asking? No. So the line, when I look at

25:43 ↗ the Issaquah average line, that takes into consideration the interest rate.

25:49 ↗ affordability. So that's the average affordable home that can be acquired in

25:55 ↗ 2000 was $495,000, whereas now, looking at it, it's $700,000. I mean,

26:01 ↗ I don't think it takes into consideration what the monthly payments would

26:07 ↗ be on that, does it? Can I arrow on here? I don't

26:12 ↗ think so. I'm going to have to have long arms. To your

26:18 ↗ point, these bars here are accounting for the interest rate. So

26:24 ↗ when you're doing the comparison, it's just saying in Issaquah, it costs this much, and

26:30 ↗ if you were at 80% of median, you could afford this, and so that tells

26:35 ↗ you your gap. So it's sort of a complicated chart, and what we're saying is

26:41 ↗ maybe simplify it a little bit so that it's easier to see that gap that

26:47 ↗ exists. Okay. Thanks. I also have a question. Looking at this and thinking about real

26:52 ↗ estate, COMPs are always really important when you go buy a house, right? So if

26:58 ↗ you're going to buy a house, you don't look at the entire King County. You

27:03 ↗ look at the houses within that neighborhood or within the few blocks of that house

27:08 ↗ to figure out what the house may really be in terms of value before you

27:14 ↗ put an offer on it. So from our standpoint, maybe we should be looking at

27:19 ↗ who do we believe Issaquah is going to be closest to in terms of mirroring

27:24 ↗ lifestyle, jobs, So you're thinking about pure cities? Is that what you mean? Like who

27:29 ↗ compares- Pure cities and then comp ourselves to the pure cities and then determine what

27:33 ↗ affordability is. Because if, let's take Los Angeles County as a great example. You have

27:38 ↗ Bel Air, Beverly Hills, and East LA. And they're all in the same county. But

27:42 ↗ they're completely different demographics. Maybe we should be looking at the same type of thing

27:47 ↗ and say, who do we want to, who do we feel that we are closest

27:51 ↗ to? And then comp ourselves to those cities and develop our own averages. okay well

27:56 ↗ we can definitely do some comps according to those peer cities i'm not sure that

28:01 ↗ they so when you compare them to it you know you're not you're not defining

28:05 ↗ that they're actually doing well in affordable housing right it's just you're saying they're bar

28:09 ↗ peer cities right there are pure cities and those are what other people would think

28:14 ↗ that would be comparable to isaac qua gotcha okay we can definitely do that as

28:18 ↗ joan mentioned all this data is available it's just a matter of does that make

28:23 ↗ sense all right And so then this one looks at

28:28 ↗ household incomes and so then also looking at so the median

28:34 ↗ income for household and those looking at, I'm trying to remember

28:40 ↗ how this works here, so in Issaquah in 2014, so for

28:46 ↗ instance 15% of our population makes over $200,000. Right. And

28:52 ↗ just showing that the trend of who's living here. So it has the

28:58 ↗ mid range of the 50 to 100 thousand dollars has decreased as a

29:03 ↗ percentage, as well as a 25 to 50 percent and the under 25.

29:09 ↗ So there's been growth, a big jump, obviously, from 2000 to 2010 in

29:15 ↗ the higher incomes. And that continues to grow. And so, again, talking about

29:21 ↗ who's here, And I guess this shows that our diversity of income within

29:26 ↗ our community is changing. Is this important to show as part of the story? Yes,

29:32 ↗ as long as we show cost of living adjustments to go along with that. What

29:38 ↗ $25,000 was back in 2000 may not be the same as what it is today.

29:43 ↗ I think it does help show the product type, lacking a product type for the

29:49 ↗ affordability side. I mean, when we're building 4,000 square foot homes left and right, it's

29:55 ↗ bound to have an impact. Okay. Any other comments? This is a three-year-old

30:00 ↗ study. The numbers come from 2014, so three years ago. Is there any

30:06 ↗ desire to update it to see if it's any different to exactly what

30:12 ↗ it is now? I don't know. I'm actually not sure where this data

30:18 ↗ came from because we did it, oh wait, this is from the housing

30:24 ↗ the housing strategy needs assessment um and so this is the last available

30:30 ↗ data i think you know usually there's a there's a delay and we

30:36 ↗ did this in 2016 2015 wasn't available i'm guessing so so where do

30:41 ↗ you get your data we had a consultant who we'll have to look at

30:47 ↗ the report but um often you know they they data comes a lot from the

30:52 ↗ same places where they through the census and they're looking at updates and other other

30:57 ↗ tools and other proprietary tool data sources that they pull in to develop this so

31:02 ↗ there's employment security division does some some of that um looking at jobs and salaries

31:07 ↗ and so we'll have to look at that and that that. That's available so part

31:11 ↗ of I believe it was our first or second meeting we went through some of

31:16 ↗ these slides and this one is actually from there. So we can link also provide

31:22 ↗ you some of this PowerPoint the full data set if you want to see more

31:27 ↗ and where the data comes from. I just know that watching it go up that

31:33 ↗ every year you know three four years it's going to be a lot more higher

31:39 ↗ income so it shows a trend right yeah so I guess that tells the story

31:44 ↗ it's showing a trend and we don't we don't think that it's the trend is

31:50 ↗ changing from 2014 do we as a change based on on this that you assume

31:55 ↗ that everything is going to gotcha trends haven't changed yeah Great. Any other

32:01 ↗ comments? I guess for me, I like Derek's point, but maybe there's a way to

32:05 ↗ show more directly because this is kind of an output measure. The household income changes

32:10 ↗ because that's who can afford to live here. What I want to see is what's

32:14 ↗ being built and showing that those list prices, the new housings coming online requires you

32:19 ↗ to have an income of six figures in order to live here. That's the message.

32:24 ↗ Because otherwise it just looks like, hey, everyone's doing really well in

32:29 ↗ Issaquah. That's not actually a problem. That's all who can live here.

32:35 ↗ I assume that that's coming up in your future. Yeah, let's see.

32:40 ↗ Wow. So I dropped the other one. So, yeah, so this kind

32:46 ↗ of builds upon each other, right? And so looking at, again, this is from the

32:52 ↗ Eco Northwest study. And so looking at the range of home values. And so you'll

32:57 ↗ see that the top, the top, column is for those house homes that are before

33:03 ↗ to that built before 2000 and then those that are built after 2000 because again

33:08 ↗ we know that older homes while they may could be the same size but a

33:14 ↗ newer home is gonna it would typically capture a larger price in the market so

33:20 ↗ does this this tell a little bit of the story of what Ethan you mentioned

33:27 ↗ I think it does. It just simplifying might be helpful.

33:32 ↗ I know there's a lot on there. A different kind

33:38 ↗ of chart? Yeah, just sort of seeing, you know, the

33:43 ↗ growth in different segments of the market, particularly the number

33:49 ↗ of bedrooms. Right. Anything else this chart says to you?

33:55 ↗ Excuse me. Is there a way to put maybe at

34:00 ↗ the bottom of the charts and the graphs what was

34:06 ↗ the source of the information? Yep, we can definitely do

34:12 ↗ that. Thank you. And we might have

34:17 ↗ had that and just say. So the last

34:23 ↗ one was census data. Thank you. All right.

34:29 ↗ So that's so that's the last example of

34:35 ↗ data. point that we that we're suggesting for this statement overall housing affordability in Issaquah

34:41 ↗ and region have decreased for households at all levels. Is there something else we're missing

34:46 ↗ in this story and this telling of the of the problem statement? I

34:52 ↗ have a suggestion. We previously seen a pie chart that actually showed the differences of

34:56 ↗ who was occupying our community and how that has changed a lot. And so Issaquah

35:01 ↗ likes to think of itself as being primarily a place to raise families. But we

35:06 ↗ see that that demographic doesn't necessarily represent our current community. We have a lot of

35:10 ↗ single individuals. married individuals, couples who don't have children, and so I think that we've

35:15 ↗ seen before in a previous slide where there was a pie chart that really showed

35:20 ↗ what slice of the community was being occupied by each demographic. So being able to

35:25 ↗ clearly show the community how many seniors do we have and in a quick and

35:30 ↗ easy format would be helpful for the story. Okay, thank you. It's a little demographic.

35:36 ↗ All right. We'll move on because I know sometimes when you see something else, it

35:41 ↗ reminds you. So definitely speak up if there's something as you're seeing other data points

35:47 ↗ that would make sense in a different way for that problem statement. So the second

35:52 ↗ -- Arthur, do you know what the source of the data for that one was?

35:57 ↗ So the assessor -- so King County Assessor's Office was the source for these. With

36:03 ↗ Eco Northwest. Right. Okay. Thank you. So the second problem statement we're suggesting is

36:08 ↗ that individuals and families cannot afford to choose to work and live in Issaquah.

36:14 ↗ So we've seen information that only a small share of people are actually living

36:20 ↗ and working in Issaquah and that we've heard as well as have data that

36:26 ↗ shows that employers and workforce housing for the 60 to 80 percent is not being

36:31 ↗ is not being built here and that people are having to drive farther away to

36:36 ↗ find housing they can afford. So the statement individuals and families cannot afford to choose

36:40 ↗ to work and live in Issaquah. So that's a big thing to choose. We talked

36:44 ↗ before about people make choices about where they live and where they work for various

36:48 ↗ reasons. It may not always be cost. Maybe they don't want to live in the

36:52 ↗ same community they work in because they don't want to be bugged by their sons,

36:56 ↗ you know, their teacher, by their parents, you know, of their children in the meat

37:00 ↗ aisle at the supermarket. But if you choose to want to work and live in

37:04 ↗ Issaquah, can you do that? So that's what we're stating here. Is that, again, based

37:09 ↗ on the information so far that you've heard in the last few months, is that

37:14 ↗ a big enough, is that a problem statement that you agree with that we should

37:18 ↗ address in our future steps? I think it's too broad of a statement because you're,

37:23 ↗ you know, it's sort of a cause and effect thing you're trying to pull out.

37:27 ↗ And so individuals and families cannot afford to choose and live and work in Issaquah.

37:31 ↗ A lot of us here have chosen to live and work in Issaquah. and we're

37:37 ↗ here so you can't make the blanket statement that nobody does because you just showed

37:41 ↗ all the people that live here okay so so so that word specificity of not

37:46 ↗ all what are you really trying to get when you say individuals and families well

37:51 ↗ we we do live here okay some of us work here so that the statement

37:56 ↗ doesn't really make sense okay to me so it's too it's it's making it sounds

38:01 ↗ like nobody again versus some okay the second statement down there Only a small share

38:07 ↗ of people both live and work in Issaquah. And is it

38:13 ↗ also possible that only a small share of the people can

38:18 ↗ afford to both live and work in Issaquah? Actually, I think

38:24 ↗ the problem is even bigger than that. I would rather live

38:30 ↗ and work in Issaquah, but I can't find a job in

38:35 ↗ Issaquah that pays enough for me to live here.

38:42 ↗ It's really twofold. I want a job here in Issaquah. So if

38:48 ↗ we want affordable housing, maybe we should also be looking at what

38:53 ↗ can we do to bring other organizations into Issaquah to support an

38:59 ↗ economy so that we are sustainable, so that we don't impact traffic,

39:05 ↗ so we don't create other problems. Because now we're bringing people into

39:10 ↗ Issaquah to work. Yet the people that are in Issaquah would rather stay

39:16 ↗ here some and work here like myself. So I think it's two arguments there. And

39:22 ↗ you're sitting among the Economic Vitality Commission, which, you know, that's one of their efforts

39:28 ↗ is to to do that and to definitely bring in more jobs that people don't

39:33 ↗ have to move outside the city. So, yeah. Yes. When you had your focus groups,

39:39 ↗ did you get a number of how many people that from the

39:45 ↗ various work companies have employees that live outside

39:50 ↗ the city? It's nice to say that only

39:56 ↗ 1,534 live here, but how many really want

40:02 ↗ to do that? Yeah, I don't know. The employers that we spoke to

40:07 ↗ could speak generally about that, but not specifically. Because I don't think, if you think

40:12 ↗ about it, I know that my employer has never asked me, do you want to

40:17 ↗ live in Issaquah, right? No, it's not a question of wanting. How many are actually

40:22 ↗ commuting? Oh, yeah. So we can actually... dig a little bit deeper into that. Those

40:26 ↗ who work here, and we actually have data in our sector analysis that we did

40:31 ↗ for the economic vitality strategic plan that shows where actually people are commuting from So

40:37 ↗ even like you know that they're coming from 10% from from Seattle, 10% from Bellevue,

40:43 ↗ some other places and so we have we can get to that granular granular amount

40:49 ↗ of information. What we do have is this chart. This again shows that 20,000 people

40:54 ↗ are coming in, 13,000 people are leaving the city in order to work someplace else.

41:00 ↗ So but we can get a little more granular if this doesn't address what you're

41:05 ↗ asking and you think it's an important thing to show. This is a quick thing

41:09 ↗ to show again. you know for again the 1500 is the people who live and

41:15 ↗ work within Issaquah maybe putting that number in parentheses 1534 out of how many the

41:20 ↗ total so you would the previous one oh yeah right okay gotcha you could rotate

41:25 ↗ the arrows and have them coming up Issaquah Hobart Road in front street yeah they're

41:30 ↗ all they're all working in North Bend I think it shows they're all ski bums

41:35 ↗ I don't know or ski instructors So, and this isn't exactly a get to the

41:41 ↗ point you're making Joan, but is this a graph that tells that story? Like okay,

41:46 ↗ wow, we have a lot of people that aren't staying in the city. And I

41:52 ↗ get that it's not just about the housing, you know, it's about the jobs.

41:57 ↗ Actually really good graph. I never thought of it that way. I didn't do it,

42:02 ↗ but it is a good graph. Jen, I'd make a suggestion that we add total

42:07 ↗ population in there. Sure. I don't know what the total population is of Issaquah. 35,

42:11 ↗ about 35,000. So that includes children, so non-working people. And old folks. On the other

42:17 ↗ slide, I guess one of the questions I have about the statement of choose to

42:22 ↗ live here, I guess the other thing is quality of product you choose to live

42:27 ↗ in. I mean, having done quite a bit of things down in Beverly Hills, you'd

42:33 ↗ be surprised what it costs for a studio. So I guess the question is, when

42:37 ↗ you say affordable, cannot choose to afford to live or work here, I guess if

42:42 ↗ you're comparing it to buying a three-bedroom house in Auburn versus a three-bedroom house in

42:47 ↗ Issaquah, back to I think what we were talking about earlier, which was who are

42:51 ↗ we comparing it to on what you choose. Well, I guess that's the statement that

42:57 ↗ was coming from the employers we've spoken to and the data we've seen. And so

43:01 ↗ that's what we're trying to tell that story. So if the data so far isn't

43:06 ↗ showing that, then that's, we need, because we're not comparing it to Auburn or to

43:11 ↗ Renton or to Bellevue in this statement. what we're looking at and so this goes

43:17 ↗ a little bit to the jobs and this is a funky chart because it came

43:22 ↗ from a different report. I believe this is from the housing report card perhaps or

43:26 ↗ somewhere and the housing needs analysis and so it looked at the jobs and the

43:31 ↗ annual wages and where those where those jobs are by percentage and so you know

43:36 ↗ our biggest percentage is at 70. This is for is this for jobs within here

43:40 ↗ or people who work here or live here? This is for people who work in

43:45 ↗ Issaquah. And so the biggest portion

43:51 ↗ is $75,000 or more at 25, a quarter. Yeah, it's

43:56 ↗ only 25%, yeah. So that means 75% aren't getting to

44:02 ↗ the affordability. And then this is jobs here and then the other

44:08 ↗ one this is harder to see it's similar it's a little bit more detailed about

44:13 ↗ the types of getting to more specific so looking at our four major industries and

44:18 ↗ I wouldn't put something like this up into a community chart but it does show

44:23 ↗ like in our software health care and computer electronic manufacturing and admin like the Costco

44:28 ↗ headquarters and other headquarters the jobs within that because we also know that there's different

44:33 ↗ paying jobs at every company, every corporation, right? So this may get into too

44:39 ↗ much detail. So this was one that we didn't have a lot of data

44:44 ↗ points to pull from our current housing and economic vitality strategic plan. Are there

44:50 ↗ pieces, things that we need to gather to tell this story better? Yeah, actually

44:56 ↗ the 13, if we have 30,000 people that live in Issaquah and only 13,000 are

45:01 ↗ commuting out, we have a really high unemployment rate. Well, you have people who choose

45:06 ↗ not to work. You have people who are seniors. You have children. And so I'm

45:11 ↗ looking at, I don't have the numbers in my head right now of what percentage

45:16 ↗ is those, because usually they count 65 and older and under 18. They just remove

45:22 ↗ that from the workable population when they're talking about. Right, but that's still 50% unemployed.

45:27 ↗ That's really high. I don't know that, again, that some people choose. You have to

45:31 ↗ look at the demographic. Choose not to. If the population is 35,000, you've got about

45:36 ↗ 15,000 and change working. So that's almost, that's a little bit less than half the

45:41 ↗ population. And then you do the demographics and take kids out and seniors out. That's

45:45 ↗ probably about right. And those who don't want to work.

45:52 ↗ I didn't add the last part just for the record. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. So

45:57 ↗ we can put in a point. We can look at our unemployment is pretty low,

46:02 ↗ like the region as well. But we can look at that. I should have thought

46:07 ↗ of it the way Carl brought it up. I've been in numbers all day. No,

46:12 ↗ this is good stuff. Yeah. Any other thoughts about, so is this statement, so

46:18 ↗ now that you've seen a little bit of the data that we have, again, so

46:23 ↗ I go back to, is this statement, whether, you know, if we rewrite it, is

46:27 ↗ this statement something that we want to have as a problem statement that we are

46:32 ↗ addressing in our housing strategy? It seems like we need to do a little wordsmithing

46:37 ↗ on it. Yeah, okay. Should we maybe, what I almost had. Yeah, because they can't

46:42 ↗ hear you. I mean, they can't hear you. From the comments I've heard you making,

46:47 ↗ it almost feels like there's two statements going on here. In other words, if you

46:52 ↗ see the sub-bullets we had, they were really getting at very different kinds of issues.

46:56 ↗ One is how many people are working and living here, and some of it's the

47:00 ↗ out-migration and the in-migration, and you raised some good points about that. And then the

47:04 ↗ other is there's a profile of the workforce, which is relatively large, which would have

47:08 ↗ a hard time with that choice, given the choice, because of the housing pricing. And

47:12 ↗ so the first -- I think the two main things are for the choices are

47:17 ↗ affordability and the job opportunity. Right. That's what I'm saying. And they should almost be

47:21 ↗ -- we should almost maybe have two statements -- Exactly. -- so that those two

47:25 ↗ very different things can stand out. Right. Instead of trying to blend it into one

47:29 ↗ comment. Agreed. Okay. Yes. Okay. So affordability and job opportunity. So we can go back

47:33 ↗ and we'll adjust this and we'll send it out to you guys to think about

47:37 ↗ once we do that and make sure we get some good data there. So the

47:42 ↗ third problem statement, everybody want to shake their arms and legs and get ready for

47:47 ↗ the next data set, is that housing types not meeting diversity of demand. So what

47:52 ↗ does that mean? So we've had a lot of discussion in the last two meetings

47:56 ↗ about I think it was mentioned earlier, you have a bunch of

48:02 ↗ family household sizes that are one or two people and what's getting built are three

48:07 ↗ and four bedroom homes. The one and two bedroom homes, the smaller homes aren't being

48:12 ↗ built and the ones that are here are very high in demand. So we talked

48:17 ↗ about the cycle, about how typically, and actually one of these slides does this, you

48:22 ↗ know, typically this is the the flow of what happens as you have a family,

48:27 ↗ then you move into an apartment and then you may move into a townhome to

48:31 ↗ get your own house. go to a larger house and then move back into something

48:36 ↗ a little bit more. And what we're seeing now with a lot of baby boomers

48:41 ↗ is that they may want to move into that smaller home, you know, could be

48:45 ↗ detached or attached, as well as millennials looking for that same product and it's not

48:50 ↗ quite, it's not being built in the community. And this doesn't look at bedroom sizes,

48:54 ↗ but you know, you get the general idea. so this is a little bit of

49:00 ↗ the demographic of the one person the size of the household at the top and

49:05 ↗ then what we have uh in the market down below so again the mismatch of

49:10 ↗ uh well four plus bedrooms we have a lot of homes that are four plus

49:15 ↗ bedrooms um and a lot of apartments that are the two bedrooms right so if

49:21 ↗ you want to actually have a home uh you're not able to that that market's

49:26 ↗ not really here in um issaquah I'm not sure this again

49:31 ↗ gets to that point. Thoughts? - So far we're going deeper and looking

49:37 ↗ at this, I'd probably want to compare this back to the, yeah, the

49:42 ↗ stacked bar chart earlier as I came in that had where the income

49:48 ↗ levels were going. And so you had 200,000 or above was, had gone

49:54 ↗ up to double digits. And yeah, so from five, nine, 15, 18, 30,

49:59 ↗ 30s gets you 100 and above. you stack that, is that the diversity you're

50:05 ↗ talking about? Because I think even these numbers don't necessarily line up with that. I

50:11 ↗ think you need to look at these somehow side by side to make that statement

50:16 ↗ live correctly. Okay. Go back to this. Jen, for the housing types not meeting diversity

50:22 ↗ of demand, I don't see anything on here about housing for people with disabilities. Okay.

50:32 ↗ And I think that there's definitely sectors of each the populations at different ages and

50:38 ↗ different size that within that seniors and millennials, baby boomers, but that's a good point.

50:44 ↗ So this one's again I think a little harder to kind of show with data.

50:50 ↗ It may be something more about again more in an anecdotal or telling the story

50:56 ↗ in a different way than a chart, but we can look at how those things

51:02 ↗ line up Carl. Ethan looks like he's Well, I guess the household type, what is

51:08 ↗ that in Issaquah? Yes, yes. Okay. Because I think if what we're saying though is

51:12 ↗ we want people that connecting to the last point, people in the workforce to be

51:17 ↗ able to live here be, I don't know if you can get this data, but

51:22 ↗ the interesting data would be of people that work in Issaquah, what is that mix

51:27 ↗ of household type and then how does that line up? Oh, mm-hmm. Sure. You can

51:32 ↗ see. We probably can't get that. No, no, no. I see another demographic that we're

51:37 ↗ missing and that is senior housing. So, and I think, again, that may be a

51:43 ↗ strategy underneath something like this, right? Under this problem statement. So these are the problem

51:49 ↗ statements we need to address. Senior housing. So what would you say is a problem

51:54 ↗ statement within senior housing that we should show as a data point? Baby boomers, or

52:00 ↗ not baby boomers, but the Generation X who have aging parents. Yeah. So are

52:06 ↗ you thinking more multi-generational homes? Are you talking about... Well, not necessarily multi-generational because

52:12 ↗ not all of us want our parents living with us. The idea is that

52:17 ↗ Izaqua doesn't really have a place for seniors. We have Providence Point, and I

52:23 ↗ can't think of another... Timber Ridge is a pretty large space. There's Aegis. Hutchison

52:29 ↗ House. University House. There's actually a couple more that are being on the development. What's

52:34 ↗ that? There's a smaller memory care facilities back behind. Yeah. There's a. Back behind Target

52:40 ↗ area. Aegis maybe? Is that the one? Mm-hmm. So there are. So now affordability, I

52:45 ↗ don't, you know, that's something that for the senior homes, I know that some of

52:51 ↗ those we've mentioned are a little higher. And here comes Arthur to address that. Would

52:57 ↗ it be nice to do a match of senior income and senior housing? Well, one

53:02 ↗ thing that we managed to put together very recently is a graphic in which we

53:08 ↗ try to show for all the cities, for each city in East King County, how

53:14 ↗ many housing units you have that are targeted for seniors relative to the number of

53:20 ↗ seniors per thousand seniors in your community. So it shows the rate of quote senior

53:24 ↗ designated housing. Not all seniors want to live in senior housing or designated senior housing,

53:28 ↗ but at least it gives and we've done we did it for all the cities.

53:32 ↗ So you could see relative to other cities in East King County, how much housing

53:36 ↗ do you have that is targeted to seniors relative to the size of your and

53:40 ↗ we did it to senior population. We could do it to your whole population, but

53:44 ↗ we did it to senior population. Is that would that help show the comments that

53:48 ↗ are being made now? because we could bring that to the next meeting or something

53:53 ↗ for you to look at. I'm not even aware of all the senior housing options

53:57 ↗ that we have here, so having that information would be helpful. Okay, we have, we

54:01 ↗ do have that as well. So I just want to go maybe back. Yes. Higher,

54:06 ↗ higher level on that problem statement. I mean, I think housing types not meeting

54:12 ↗ diversity of demand is it's a good problem statement but then you know we have

54:16 ↗ the data basically like what's available now so it seems like we need to have

54:21 ↗ it just that one more chart that it's at the meeting demand part and we

54:25 ↗ may not be able to get that data or whatever but It's like only half

54:31 ↗ that chart is only half the story. Right. Yeah, I think we're making some assumptions

54:36 ↗ that if you're a two person family, you want to live in a one or

54:41 ↗ two bedroom apartment. Right. But that's assumptions. So I want to go back to tonight.

54:46 ↗ So did this do the statements capture the why as we move forward of the

54:52 ↗ housing strategy? Are we missing any large Big scale, not specific, yes. I'll

54:58 ↗ go back to slide page 26. Okay, you have to tell me.

55:03 ↗ The housing types not meeting diversity of demand. It was the... This

55:09 ↗ one? Yeah, that one. Okay. Maybe if there's a little blur to

55:15 ↗ explaining what those numbers at the bottom mean, that way they can

55:20 ↗ relate to the top bars. Okay, okay, thank you. Thanks. Some more

55:26 ↗ labels. So one thing with respect to the problem

55:32 ↗ statements, there's been, we're talking about availability and demand and you know, mobility and accessibility

55:37 ↗ and all that stuff. But there's a lot of discussion even earlier when we were

55:41 ↗ talking about the mission statements about character, kinds of housing character, whatever. So, and I

55:46 ↗ don't know if there's a way to construct a problem statement around that or even

55:51 ↗ data to, like I don't know if we know what we want. We want it

55:56 ↗ to be diverse and mixed in terms of character. But they're maybe addressing that somewhere

56:01 ↗ in the problem statements. So do we feel that the character is changing in a

56:06 ↗ negative direction? Well, that's what I mean. I don't know. That's the question, right? Yeah.

56:11 ↗ Right. Yeah. Okay. Good point. Just when we put all the stuff on the board

56:15 ↗ last time, everybody, that was something that everybody was interested in. Right. Is there anything

56:20 ↗ missing that kind of red flag? Well, number three is not included in the papers

56:25 ↗ here. We've updated it just a little bit. Yeah. I mean, we'll

56:31 ↗ send you this updated one. And actually, again, what we'll do is we'll take your

56:35 ↗ input and then send it out to you so you can look at it. So,

56:40 ↗ yes, we have to get this out a week ahead of time. So sometimes we

56:45 ↗ have better ideas as we move along. So, okay, we're going to move forward with

56:49 ↗ the findings now, I believe. And again, this is a flowing conversation. So if there's

56:54 ↗ something as we're discussing the next step that triggers something for you, please, you know,

56:59 ↗ raise your hand or make a note and let us know because we really want

57:03 ↗ to make sure we get this right because when we go out to the community,

57:08 ↗ we're going to expect all of you to help us describe and talk about this.

57:13 ↗ So this isn't just about us. And so we really you know while it may

57:18 ↗ not be perfect because as anybody who knows who works with data you

57:24 ↗ can't always get exactly what you want but between data the information we've

57:30 ↗ gotten from focus groups and and stories what you know how do we

57:36 ↗ move forward with this so Trish is up next thank you a quick

57:42 ↗ review In your packet, you have like the long version of the focus group findings.

57:47 ↗ And we did have one more focus group since the new year started. And that

57:52 ↗ was with realtors and a representative that works with master builders. So that the highlights

57:57 ↗ of all of those are in your packet. And these are the ones I went

58:02 ↗ back to the three problem statements that we came up with. And all of those

58:07 ↗ problem statements are reflected in the focus group findings. So I thought that was very

58:12 ↗ interesting that the data showed also what the different focus groups are finding in their

58:17 ↗ world as well. So I would encourage you, if you haven't looked at the highlights,

58:22 ↗ they're very interesting. We had some really good discussions. The other piece that I found

58:27 ↗ really interesting was the homework that you all did. And the first one got to

58:32 ↗ what Troy was talking about, about values. That it's hard to put a problem statement

58:36 ↗ about, you know, the whole character, safety, family friendly. You know, that's a hard thing

58:41 ↗ to collect data and to see if it's changing or if it's different or if

58:45 ↗ it's not what we want or if it's exactly what we want. But those were

58:50 ↗ all really great answers from the first question that we asked you all. The second

58:55 ↗ question we asked you is what trends should we be addressing? And you came up

59:00 ↗ with some really great ones for that item too about workforce housing that we've talked

59:05 ↗ about tonight. Don't build in or near critical areas. We need that circle of housing

59:10 ↗ that Jen showed for when we're seniors, when we have families, when we're single, that

59:15 ↗ we need that whole range. and that infrastructure needs to keep pace with growth. That's

59:20 ↗ a piece that hasn't always been in with the housing strategy. And that's partly the

59:25 ↗ mobility piece is you have to have ways of getting around that doesn't include a

59:30 ↗ vehicle. So those were very good that we want to keep in mind when we

59:34 ↗ go out to the public. And the last question we asked was how do you

59:38 ↗ envision Issaquah's housing in the next 20 years? And you had, there were also some

59:42 ↗ really good answers there that we want to keep in mind when we go out

59:46 ↗ to the public and ask them for their thoughts. Are there pieces when you went

59:50 ↗ through them that now in retrospect that you've had some time to think about it

59:54 ↗ that we missed? in any of the homework assignments or any of the focus group

59:59 ↗ findings that don't make sense to you or that you would want us to explore

1:00:04 ↗ a little more? I have something to add to the values piece. I'll put it

1:00:10 ↗ out there and see if others agree. I do think there's something of just sort

1:00:15 ↗ of for lack of a better phrase, in harmony with nature. I think that the

1:00:21 ↗ natural surroundings are a big part of Issaquah and at least why I choose to

1:00:26 ↗ live here and something that separates it from other surrounding cities. So that would be,

1:00:32 ↗ for me, something that I would put in values if it were up to me.

1:00:37 ↗ OK. Does that ring true with-- Yes. --a lot of nodding heads? Totally agree. Okay,

1:00:42 ↗ okay, anything else that's missing or that needs clarification or

1:00:48 ↗ it's still building on the story that we're trying to

1:00:53 ↗ tell? Anything? Kristi? So when it says next 20 years

1:00:59 ↗ increase in smaller units, do you mean allow smaller footprint

1:01:04 ↗ or do you mean less product? I think it was the idea that we're

1:01:10 ↗ building so many four-bedroom homes, but the demand seems to be, and all the focus

1:01:15 ↗ groups, people kept saying, you know, what happened to the little two-bedroom little cottage that

1:01:20 ↗ is the starter home or the empty nest home? And so people were adding that,

1:01:25 ↗ that maybe we need to somehow get back to making smaller products. I hate the

1:01:29 ↗ word for houses, but smaller places to live versus the bigger houses to live.

1:01:35 ↗ I'd like to add a slide actually. I wrote some of my homework answers out

1:01:41 ↗ because I wasn't here part of the last, but higher debt in the core for

1:01:46 ↗ the next 20 years, I think it should be very high density mixed use, extremely

1:01:52 ↗ high walkability, high walk and rollability, immediate location to public transportation facilities. And I don't

1:01:57 ↗ see much of that on there. Well, that's in the bigger homework. There's like four

1:02:02 ↗ pages of the homework answers. I was just trying to pull, like walkable neighborhoods, better

1:02:07 ↗ transportation. I was trying to pull that into, and this isn't the core versus the

1:02:12 ↗ rest. This is the whole city. in 20 years. But I would encourage you to

1:02:17 ↗ go back and read the homework. And if you want to send it in late,

1:02:21 ↗ there's no penalty for late homework here. We love getting comments. We could think of

1:02:25 ↗ a penalty, but we won't think of a penalty. Because those are good. We'd love

1:02:29 ↗ to add those around to the mix. And that goes for anybody that wasn't here

1:02:34 ↗ for the second meeting. We did homework. Second or third meeting? No, this is the

1:02:38 ↗ third meeting. Hello. It was the second meeting. It was a good meeting. Anything else

1:02:42 ↗ to add to these? before we move on to the next exciting part.

1:02:48 ↗ Okay. I'm going to say this again. These were just the first group of

1:02:54 ↗ strategies or actions. They're a small group, very small group. They have mostly to

1:02:59 ↗ do with affordability. They're not a recommendation. Let me say that again. They're not

1:03:05 ↗ a staff recommendation. We're just thrown it out there for you all to talk about

1:03:10 ↗ since you had all this background in these meetings. To just get your feedback is,

1:03:14 ↗ does it make sense to you? Does it make no sense at all? Do you

1:03:18 ↗ have questions about what it even is? It's just a time to get to understand

1:03:23 ↗ some of the strategies that are out there in this very small list. And again,

1:03:27 ↗ these are the affordable, some affordable ones, because we're working on the moratorium piece that

1:03:31 ↗ has to go a little sooner than the whole strategy. Later, we'll come back to

1:03:36 ↗ you with all of the options for all the different kinds of housing for the

1:03:40 ↗ whole housing strategy. But tonight, we just want to start with just a little bit

1:03:44 ↗ just to get our feet wet and to have you tell us how does this

1:03:49 ↗ how do they fit in with what you've learned and what you see out there

1:03:53 ↗ and what the story that we're telling because maybe they don't fit at all. Maybe

1:03:57 ↗ they fit spot on. But but but we're asking you, we need your help on

1:04:02 ↗ that. Are there questions before we jump in? I'm not absolutely clear. But is

1:04:07 ↗ timing part of the strategy? Timing. Well, they're very good questions.

1:04:13 ↗ In terms of is this a piece which needs to be

1:04:19 ↗ addressed sometime in the next 20 years? Or is this something

1:04:25 ↗ that needs to be addressed in the next five years. And I

1:04:31 ↗ would say, given what the council has told us, that they've put affordable housing in

1:04:37 ↗ their moratorium bucket, that I would say, based on that, that they would like to

1:04:43 ↗ see the affordable housing piece implemented sooner in the first five years rather than in

1:04:49 ↗ the 20 years. And so that's why we're using that impetus to work on that

1:04:55 ↗ first. Is that something that needs to be part of our problem statement or? Well,

1:05:00 ↗ I think that's the part that will come out to council as a separate little

1:05:05 ↗ piece of what's in the bucket than the whole 20-year bucket of strategies. But you're

1:05:09 ↗ right, that does have a bit of a fire under it because council's put the

1:05:14 ↗ moratorium, it's in the moratorium piece. So that's a very good question. But don't think

1:05:19 ↗ that this is all of them because we're going to get to talk about all

1:05:24 ↗ of them. Oh, yes. Yes. It's a really good

1:05:30 ↗ question and is one that comes up in almost every city. And so Tricia's is

1:05:35 ↗ one kind of an answer to your question. Another part of an answer to that

1:05:40 ↗ is when you're listing at a wider list, even amongst the ones we're going to

1:05:45 ↗ talk about tonight, is there something going on in your community that makes some of

1:05:50 ↗ these particularly timely? Because if you don't do it now, the opportunity will be lost.

1:05:55 ↗ So in other words, we in some cities, we have some sites that are being

1:05:59 ↗ considered for development or a rezone. And if you put off some of the actions

1:06:03 ↗ for three years and the zoning happens, then you lost your chance to deal with

1:06:07 ↗ something. So that's one layer to put on it is when you look at some

1:06:11 ↗ of these, is there something going on like some of the other communities have manufactured

1:06:15 ↗ housing communities? and there's pressure for redevelopment. So if they don't deal with it now,

1:06:20 ↗ if they wait three years, they might have already been redeveloped. So that's an example

1:06:26 ↗ of what we're going through in one or two other cities. So keep that also

1:06:32 ↗ that kind of timeliness lens on as you're looking at these. - Yeah, we have

1:06:37 ↗ a limited supply of buildable land. - That's a very good criteria 'cause that's very

1:06:43 ↗ true. This chart probably looks very small. It's on the last page of your packet

1:06:48 ↗ for those of you that have a paper packet. And what we tried to do

1:06:54 ↗ here in a very colorful way is the findings from the focus group and from

1:06:59 ↗ your meetings are the blue, the blue line in the top. And the data, the

1:07:04 ↗ factual sources that we found are the orangey, peachy stripe in the middle. And then

1:07:10 ↗ the actions that we thought might address what we've been hearing from those two sources

1:07:16 ↗ are on the side. And again, they're not all the actions. They're just a handful

1:07:21 ↗ of actions just to get us started. And then we tried to figure out the

1:07:27 ↗ checkmarks are For example, I'll go to the first corner, accessory dwelling units. Some communities

1:07:32 ↗ call them mother-in-law apartments. Some of them, you know, they have granny flats. There's all

1:07:37 ↗ sorts of names for them. But that would... answer a lot of the issues or

1:07:42 ↗ could answer a lot of the issues that we've heard by allowing and we do

1:07:46 ↗ allow them in the city but perhaps we could do we could allow them with

1:07:51 ↗ an easier process perhaps we could waive any you know hookup fees or whatever for

1:07:56 ↗ you know maybe there's a way that we could really zip up our our accessory

1:08:00 ↗ dwelling unit production here that might be a strategy that we could use to add

1:08:05 ↗ some of the to answer some of the housing issues that we have in those

1:08:09 ↗ one, two, three, four, five places. So we're trying to figure out what strategies

1:08:15 ↗ are out there that could match to some of the issues that we're facing.

1:08:21 ↗ So starting with that, does anyone have any thoughts, good, bad, or indifferent on

1:08:27 ↗ accessory dwelling units as a strategy? Does it make sense for most of Issaquah,

1:08:33 ↗ part of Issaquah? It seems to make some sense, and we might want to

1:08:39 ↗ look at other areas that have tried this strategy and where

1:08:44 ↗ it worked well and where it didn't. The vertical slope of some

1:08:50 ↗ of our land may make it difficult. Right. And I think we

1:08:56 ↗ have, what did we say, 80? We have 80? Oh, 39 right

1:09:02 ↗ in the city right now? Okay. I don't know that I agree

1:09:07 ↗ with that particular strategy, and here's the reason why. A

1:09:13 ↗ lot of the properties and neighborhoods were designed to handle the capacity of usually two

1:09:19 ↗ to three cars per house maximum. The houses were built in the 1950s and 1960s,

1:09:24 ↗ which is a majority of the older neighborhoods. Those are the lots that could support

1:09:30 ↗ a granny flat. So for instance, let's take Squawk Mountain. There's no parking on the

1:09:36 ↗ street, not allowed to park on the street. So where are those people going to

1:09:41 ↗ park? Usually those houses have already two to three cars. Question is, I don't

1:09:47 ↗ know that that's really sustainable for some of the older neighborhoods because the lots may

1:09:53 ↗ support it, but there's no infrastructure to support the vehicle attainment. And I don't know

1:09:59 ↗ that some of those neighborhoods want a lot of people moving in to granny flats

1:10:04 ↗ because now that's going to change the neighborhood demographic. Okay. Okay. And I have a

1:10:10 ↗ question. Mm-hmm. Does... I'm not familiar with the code. Is there code that

1:10:16 ↗ allows the micro mini units that are say 250 to 300 square feet and

1:10:21 ↗ also cottage style housing? We allow for cottage style housing. The micro units, I

1:10:27 ↗ don't think we allow them unless they're allowed in the villages. Do you know

1:10:33 ↗ if they're allowed in the villages? So they wouldn't be because the profit margin

1:10:38 ↗ was more on building bigger expensive houses?

1:10:44 ↗ Oh, the answer was they weren't precluded in the villages, but they weren't chosen to

1:10:49 ↗ be built because of the price margin. Did I get that right? Oh, now we

1:10:54 ↗ have a footnote. Yeah. Related to micro units, there's probably nothing in your code that

1:11:00 ↗ precludes them in any of your multifamily zones. And it gets a little bit at

1:11:05 ↗ what Keith was saying is now up in the highlands, you only could do so

1:11:10 ↗ many units because of traffic counts and everything like that. But where you use FAR,

1:11:16 ↗ like in the center, there'll be nothing to preclude it. And if you now go

1:11:20 ↗ into downtown Redmond and downtown Kirkland, there is a developer who is building developments with

1:11:24 ↗ micro units and he seems to be building them as fast as he can. Because

1:11:28 ↗ every time he finishes one, they fill up and he goes right to the next

1:11:32 ↗ one. So he's already done two in Redmond and working on a third and he's

1:11:36 ↗ done one in downtown Kirkland. So Micro units just could happen naturally through the market

1:11:40 ↗ and so the question would be, do you have anything in your codes that would

1:11:44 ↗ preclude the market coming in and having to use the FAR in that way? And

1:11:48 ↗ that might be something you might want to look at. What is FAR? I'm sorry,

1:11:53 ↗ floor area ratio. So you build it based on the building size and not based

1:11:57 ↗ on the number of units per acre.

1:12:04 ↗ One thought that popped into my head as we were talking about kind of

1:12:10 ↗ alternative housing styles, I really like the cottage housing concept. I think that's kind

1:12:16 ↗ of in line with the character that we talked about. It kind of seems

1:12:21 ↗ more friendly and neighborhood-like, I guess, at least when you're thinking about kind of

1:12:27 ↗ the valley floor area. Another kind of trend, which I don't know how

1:12:33 ↗ big it is or profitable or anything like that, but is the tiny homes.

1:12:38 ↗ And I guess I just think that a lot of people that tend to

1:12:44 ↗ live in those probably like nature and that a lot of people that like

1:12:50 ↗ nature like to live here. And so maybe there's an opportunity somewhere in town

1:12:55 ↗ for small experimental development that facilitates that. Tiny homes. Mm-hmm. Trish, where do

1:13:01 ↗ ADUs show up in the current inventory demographics? I'm thinking of Iskua Highlands where

1:13:07 ↗ I live, and I know there's two areas not too far from where one

1:13:13 ↗ of our houses was that had a lot of accessory dwelling units, but do

1:13:19 ↗ they show up separate on the inventory because they were purchased as a single unit

1:13:24 ↗ and then there was a garage or facility. So how do they show up? And

1:13:28 ↗ I think they come out in our building data, don't they? They do. In our

1:13:32 ↗ permit data that we have, when someone builds one, you include a single family house

1:13:36 ↗ and then there's a slot that says, is there an ADU? And you check the

1:13:40 ↗ box. So that's how you get the ADU count? Right. And And there's regs on

1:13:43 ↗ how they can't be bigger than the main unit and someone that owns the property

1:13:47 ↗ has to live in either the main one or the ADU. So it's got to

1:13:51 ↗ have some owner occupied part of it, whether it's the little one or the big

1:13:55 ↗ one. And when you looked at the cost of housing, would it show up as

1:13:59 ↗ one house, bought it $600,000 or would it show as two separate units? So when

1:14:03 ↗ you're looking at total data. No, I think it shows up as one. Yeah. So

1:14:08 ↗ that's, you know, I don't think we have that many that it's worth worrying about,

1:14:12 ↗ but it sort of skews the data because if there are two units to live

1:14:17 ↗ in, but they're one house with a single price, numbers are off a little bit.

1:14:22 ↗ Right. Hey, Carl. Yeah. Do you know if the Highlands Regulations actually allow you to

1:14:26 ↗ rent them to someone else, though? Yeah. They do? Yeah. Okay. One of the

1:14:32 ↗ other things I'm not seeing up here, and it's kind of out of the box

1:14:37 ↗ thinking, is co-op housing, where people will own a stake in a building. They'll have

1:14:43 ↗ a bedroom or a two bedroom, but they'll have shared bathroom facilities and shared kitchen

1:14:48 ↗ facilities. And that is kind of where I'm thinking is a lot of millennials may

1:14:53 ↗ be looking towards, because they can start their real estate investment, but they're not in

1:14:59 ↗ a house which is too big, and they don't want an apartment.

1:15:09 ↗ That's different than like a boarding house where you just have your own room. Right.

1:15:14 ↗ I'm just making sure I understand where you're going. You're a corporate owner or you're

1:15:19 ↗ a shareholder owner in a piece of actual property. So you own a piece of

1:15:25 ↗ the property, so to speak, as a shareholder. So your money can actually increase in

1:15:30 ↗ equity, but you're your private living space is your bedrooms and then your public

1:15:36 ↗ living space is your family room and bathroom and kitchen facilities. Like a little college

1:15:41 ↗ room. Exactly. So you know a lot of us are probably living in condos or

1:15:46 ↗ apartments or houses so we don't think of it that way but I think that's

1:15:51 ↗ going to be the future of a lot of people is going to be starting

1:15:57 ↗ to look at that type of housing alternative. I don't see any of that

1:16:03 ↗ for Izaquah. So we're talking about high density. Well, that's a really great way

1:16:08 ↗ to have high density where you have shared facilities. Mm hmm. Okay. Good. Right

1:16:14 ↗ down. Other thoughts on types of housing since the ADUs got us all thinking

1:16:20 ↗ about different different types, different ways of no. Um, how do you feel about

1:16:26 ↗ land acquisition? The city were to purchase x piece of land and use it for

1:16:32 ↗ something that we don't have whether it's senior housing or whether it's for um co-op

1:16:37 ↗ housing almost called the boarding housing co-op housing or a plot for tiny houses how

1:16:42 ↗ would you feel about a city investment in that is that a good strategy some

1:16:47 ↗ of the affordable stuff will probably happen unless the city acquires the land because the

1:16:53 ↗ cost of the land is i'm sorry right no it won't happen because It won't

1:16:58 ↗ happen without city acquisition because the cost of land is so high. So if

1:17:04 ↗ you need affordable housing, it may be necessary for the city to acquire some

1:17:10 ↗ property. It's true. You add in that impact fees and all

1:17:15 ↗ the other fees that it costs a developer to build a property. It's not just

1:17:21 ↗ the land at this point in time, it's all the fees and when they're scheduled

1:17:27 ↗ to be paid. They have to be paid up front before the builder gets any

1:17:32 ↗ money in selling the condos. And the last line there is probably one of the

1:17:38 ↗ most important things in developing our city. I just added that after the Realtors

1:17:43 ↗ meeting. Because yeah, that was a really good discussion. Okay, so it sounds like

1:17:49 ↗ land acquisition sounds like it would fit with this aqua. How about- Can I

1:17:55 ↗ object on land acquisition real quick? Yes. Something that my, I have a nephew

1:18:01 ↗ who lives in California and his city is doing something, they're not acquiring the

1:18:07 ↗ land, but for residents who want to buy a home and can't, and they

1:18:12 ↗ can afford the monthly payment but they have a hard time getting the down payment

1:18:17 ↗ the city instead of acquiring the land and building housing they're assisting them with the

1:18:21 ↗ down payment amount so assisting the families to just like a it's kind of like

1:18:25 ↗ a separate loan but they don't have to pay it back it's more like more

1:18:29 ↗ like a grant i guess sort of like a bucket of money to help with

1:18:34 ↗ yeah at first to help so they can get in stay in the city okay

1:18:38 ↗ and get a home Trish, are you saying the city would buy the

1:18:44 ↗ house and actually build the house? For the land acquisition? Or you would leave it

1:18:50 ↗ open to builders and developers to come in and actually do it? So I can't

1:18:55 ↗ see the city actually building the homes. For which one? The land acquisition or for

1:19:01 ↗ the transfer? What's the value of the city acquiring the property for building if the

1:19:07 ↗ city is not going to build on it? so you have the property then you

1:19:12 ↗ have are you going to then sell it to a developer or what how is

1:19:16 ↗ that going to work yeah we talked the other night at evc about the city

1:19:21 ↗ not necessarily being the their core skill is not as a developer so i think

1:19:25 ↗ that's so so over what what's happened to sort of address your question what cities

1:19:29 ↗ have done and typically they haven't bought land but the city of redmond bought land

1:19:33 ↗ from the federal government and then turned around and did figured out what they wanted

1:19:38 ↗ to go on the land And it ended up being some homes for habitat, some

1:19:44 ↗ homeless housing, and then some entry level condominiums. It's out on Avondale Avenue, right where

1:19:49 ↗ Novelty Hill hits Avondale. So what they did is they managed the surplus, the transfer

1:19:55 ↗ of that property to three different developers. It was big enough. to get what they

1:20:01 ↗ were after a community process what they thought was most important to do and then

1:20:05 ↗ they set a price that below market some of the land was free and because

1:20:09 ↗ i had to pay for it from the federal government some of the recover costs

1:20:13 ↗ so what you're doing is you're putting the local community into the control process of

1:20:17 ↗ finding developers who may bring in other subsidies in order to make the housing work

1:20:22 ↗ or discounts on the land wide range but this way the city and the community

1:20:26 ↗ is in control of not only you know what gets built and also some design

1:20:31 ↗ and elements like that and we've probably over the years have had a dozen or

1:20:35 ↗ more properties made available through City process where the city doesn't develop it but they

1:20:40 ↗ set parameters of affordability and types of housing that might get built. So we've had

1:20:44 ↗ senior housing built, we've done housing for special needs populations, and some of that's been

1:20:48 ↗ done here. Essentially, you did that with the property with the YWCA up in Issaquah

1:20:52 ↗ Highlands. The city didn't own it, but through the process, they got to control how

1:20:57 ↗ that was developed. And then there was a second and then a

1:21:02 ↗ comment about would you do a down payment assistance? That sort of becomes a subcategory

1:21:08 ↗ under the sort of levy which is if you have cash, how do you use

1:21:13 ↗ cash? And so actually right now the cities are funding a down payment assistance program

1:21:19 ↗ mutually through actually the State Housing Finance Commission. So we use some of our dollars

1:21:24 ↗ to help create that. So that is something that could be done, but that's sort

1:21:29 ↗ of when you talk about number five, it's like if you had money, how would

1:21:33 ↗ you want to use it? Just a comment on the land acquisition. I think that

1:21:38 ↗ was a really helpful example. I do think, though, If you play it out, if

1:21:43 ↗ the last time I checked, you know, the city has to balance its budget. And

1:21:47 ↗ so it only really works. You don't want to be bidding against other developers because

1:21:51 ↗ talking to some developers, I know it's hard to find land in Issaquah. So to

1:21:55 ↗ me, it only really works in that example you gave where somehow the city has

1:21:59 ↗ land or is able to get land for development that a normal developer would not

1:22:02 ↗ have access to. And then that puts them in more of a driver's seat. So

1:22:06 ↗ obviously, In the development of urban villages, that was the case. If there are other

1:22:11 ↗ parts-- and again, I'm out of my depth at this point-- but if there's other

1:22:16 ↗ parts of state-owned land or currently not developable city land that the city could move

1:22:21 ↗ forward with and open for development, that's where I think it makes sense. Otherwise, that

1:22:25 ↗ cost of acquiring the land, you'll be paying as much as a developer would and

1:22:31 ↗ then giving it to the developer. And then it'll come back to the citizens in

1:22:37 ↗ taxes in some way. That's a good point. Any other thoughts on the land acquisition?

1:22:42 ↗ Actually. Arthur, there's another thought? There are examples, and I don't know if it would

1:22:48 ↗ be relevant for your community, where the development community has loved that the city goes

1:22:54 ↗ out because there might be a lot of little parcels. that are hard to for

1:22:59 ↗ them to buy a little bit of time and accumulate so sometimes they call it

1:23:04 ↗ you know accumulating several parcels that don't work by themselves and so the city will

1:23:08 ↗ eventually get reimbursed their funds but they're they're acting as a catalyst to get pieces

1:23:13 ↗ of property that would work for forms of housing and they're sort of cash flowing

1:23:18 ↗ it they may not be subsidizing it because builders have a hard time taking the

1:23:22 ↗ five years to accumulate those properties into one. So that is one example of where

1:23:27 ↗ actually development community have appreciated it when cities have taken some initiative. that's just

1:23:33 ↗ an example so so the because the city is taking a longer view of it

1:23:38 ↗ you're saying they're taking a longer view and they can hold the property they know

1:23:42 ↗ eventually they get reimbursed that's hard for developers to do and then once they have

1:23:47 ↗ the sites accumulated to something that can work because it's larger and then the city

1:23:52 ↗ then also has the benefit of controlling which developer gets it and what kind of

1:23:57 ↗ development they do on it and the next one is um transit oriented development um

1:24:02 ↗ that we're working on um that would even work with a multifamily tax exemption. And

1:24:07 ↗ that is also something that the city would control, but we'd be partnering with others

1:24:13 ↗ on that. And that would be near transit, obviously with the transit oriented piece. So

1:24:18 ↗ there'd be some mobility pieces to that because it would be near the transit center.

1:24:23 ↗ Are there thoughts on how that would fit in or do you like that a

1:24:28 ↗ lot or do you not like that at all? Or does it make sense? Is

1:24:34 ↗ this something where the city maintains some control? It seems to me

1:24:40 ↗ that in some of the surrounding areas where they've done transit-oriented development,

1:24:45 ↗ it immediately raised the price of all the property because it was

1:24:51 ↗ close to transit and then it was not affordable. Right. Right. Yeah,

1:24:56 ↗ the different transit places like Portland, all the stops got to be

1:25:02 ↗ very expensive. This would be more like a... figuring out like a

1:25:08 ↗ pilot project that that like land that that might we might own near the transit

1:25:13 ↗ center or in the vicinity that we would try to do a partnership project and

1:25:19 ↗ maybe try out some things like multifamily tax exemption that allows the applicant to not

1:25:24 ↗ pay the taxes right up they can use that to invest in the project And

1:25:29 ↗ so the city loses out on the taxes for a little bit, but then we

1:25:34 ↗ gain the housing that we wanted at the end. So it's sort of a partnership

1:25:38 ↗ that can be complex. Oh, I thought you were going to get up and speak

1:25:42 ↗ to this. No, you're just smiling. only if I get into the mud. But so

1:25:47 ↗ it would be a small version that maybe if it works really well, we could

1:25:51 ↗ try to do more of them, but it's something that we think might be worth

1:25:56 ↗ trying because it might fit into some of the categories that we're missing. Can you

1:26:01 ↗ give us an example of what that would look like? Yeah. So I think this

1:26:06 ↗ is an example actually of the land acquisition, right? And so if we, the city,

1:26:11 ↗ can acquire some land that is at a good location and we can have some

1:26:17 ↗ influence over what's built there, So right now the city is looking at developing work,

1:26:23 ↗ working with a developer to build a transit or a development site. And one of

1:26:29 ↗ the things that Arthur mentions about the opportunities that exist currently, the King County Council

1:26:35 ↗ last summer allocated $10 million for what's called a TOD, transit and development fund, which

1:26:40 ↗ requires affordable housing to be part of that. So they're trying to because like you

1:26:46 ↗ mentioned, land prices increase around transit stops because it's a very because they understand they

1:26:51 ↗ get more density and that's where people want to live so we're trying they are

1:26:56 ↗ trying to balance that out and require some affordable housing in those locations so last

1:27:01 ↗ year king county council allocated 10 million dollars for what they call the i-90 corridor

1:27:06 ↗ so that's issaquah through north bend or suquamish and um so we feel that we

1:27:11 ↗ are strong a contender for that because of our transit center And so we are

1:27:16 ↗ right now working, I can't provide too many details because we haven't solidified them yet,

1:27:21 ↗ but we're working to look at a building near the transit center at SR 900,

1:27:25 ↗ right? So we have some properties that we're talking to people right now about, so.

1:27:31 ↗ And so that would mean that it would be a mixed use. So as you

1:27:34 ↗ mentioned, you know, it would have apartments above that would have mixed income. So you

1:27:38 ↗ have not just affordable housing, but you also have some market rate housing. We have

1:27:42 ↗ some amenities on the on the ground floor, some public amenities. So you're right across

1:27:46 ↗ the street from a park. You're right next to a transit center. We want to

1:27:50 ↗ make sure that integrates well into the community. So there's lots of things that, depending

1:27:54 ↗ on where the location of the sites are, we want to make sure they fit

1:28:00 ↗ into the community. So, did that answer your question? Well, I guess that was part

1:28:05 ↗ of number two, but it's also part of number three. And then number four also.

1:28:11 ↗ Number four is inclusionary zoning and bonus density. You kind of hit on all three

1:28:17 ↗ of those categories in that one example, which is great. I think the inclusionary zoning

1:28:22 ↗ and bonus density relies mostly on developers to provide those things so but I will

1:28:27 ↗ let Trish talk about that because I'm not a planner. Jen is that property gonna

1:28:32 ↗ be acquired by the city or is that property that's already the owners you're talking

1:28:37 ↗ to those lands about doing this development? So we will there's gonna be a land

1:28:42 ↗ swap yeah so but we do have some property that is by the transit center

1:28:47 ↗ that we could also potentially look at so Yeah, we're kind of getting into a

1:28:52 ↗ little bit too many details about one specific project. But that's the idea, is that

1:28:57 ↗ the city then has some ability to influence what goes there. Because otherwise, they could

1:29:01 ↗ choose to build the most expensive housing they can get at that site. And so...

1:29:06 ↗ And when you look at all these options, I mean, we could probably add another

1:29:11 ↗ 30 options, but what you gotta think about is what makes the most sense, what

1:29:16 ↗ may get you the biggest bang for the buck, what opportunities are there, and what

1:29:21 ↗ is gonna meet, again, the needs that we've identified. - Maybe a way to think

1:29:26 ↗ about, and you're right, two, three, and four can overlap a lot. I can give

1:29:32 ↗ you, there's examples in Redmond and Kirkland of housing that has been built above transit

1:29:37 ↗ parking rides or immediately adjacent to parking rides, one in downtown Redmond, one in Overlake,

1:29:43 ↗ and one in South Kirkland. And I think what these rows are sort of getting

1:29:48 ↗ at is those developments might occur naturally on their own with private development, and they'd

1:29:54 ↗ all be market rate. What these columns are getting at is sometimes if a public

1:30:00 ↗ in control Is it worth trying to take a parcel and use those as a

1:30:06 ↗ catalyst to use some other tools such as multifamily tax exemption or bringing in the

1:30:11 ↗ King County TOD funds that would allow and leverage the city's activities to get more

1:30:16 ↗ that property to be other than what the market would build on its own. So

1:30:22 ↗ they would have a mixture of market rate units with units that are below market.

1:30:27 ↗ So that's sort of what these are getting at is does the city act proactively

1:30:32 ↗ in some areas in order to affect and to bring in other subsidy dollars that

1:30:38 ↗ exist in the region or the state in order to get mixtures of affordability in

1:30:43 ↗ different developments in your community. And so one is using the control of land. Every

1:30:48 ↗ time we've seen a city have control of land, they don't just use their own

1:30:52 ↗ resources. They pick a developer who's going to go out and try to find some

1:30:56 ↗ other resources to go with it. They don't always have to. The one in downtown

1:31:00 ↗ Redmond, it was pretty much just the land itself, and they didn't get a lot

1:31:03 ↗ of other subsidy dollars. And so it's almost all market rate and the affordable is

1:31:07 ↗ a little bit below market, whereas in the other two, they brought in some outside

1:31:11 ↗ dollars, the developers. So they pick developers who are good at doing that. Okay, so

1:31:15 ↗ I think that's what these rows are sort of getting at is does the city

1:31:20 ↗ try to leverage beyond the market still make it all work and bring in some

1:31:24 ↗ of these other tools into developments in your community. Arthur, does that have to go

1:31:29 ↗ through an RFP process? If the city controls the land, they have to put it

1:31:33 ↗ out to open bid to develop? That's pretty much what we have suggested communities do,

1:31:36 ↗ and we have been involved in a number of RFPs. Sometimes they do them different

1:31:40 ↗ ways, but generally, yeah, it doesn't hurt to get the opinions of different people about

1:31:44 ↗ what they might do if they had the opportunity. TRISH, CAN I

1:31:50 ↗ ADD THAT AFFORDABLE HOUSING NEXT TO A TRANSIT CENTER WOULD BE ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT

1:31:55 ↗ FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES? BECAUSE THAT'S THEIR ONLY WAY OF GETTING AROUND, AND

1:32:01 ↗ THEY NEED TO BE ABLE TO AFFORD A PLACE TO LIVE AS WELL.

1:32:07 ↗ SO REALLY HIGH IMPORTANCE. I'D ALSO LIKE TO STRESS THAT WOULD BE AN

1:32:13 ↗ IDEAL LOCATION FOR SENIORS AS WELL. AND SENIORS, MANY OF THEM DO NOT

1:32:18 ↗ DRIVE. which is also part of the ADUs, if

1:32:24 ↗ the ADUs are for seniors, that may not impact the number of

1:32:30 ↗ vehicles. Right. True. And actually, intermixing would be an ideal solution as

1:32:36 ↗ well, because you'd spread out the demographics. So you would have seniors

1:32:42 ↗ throughout the campus, I guess, if you have a campus of buildings.

1:32:48 ↗ Right. Right. Young families, you have seniors, and so kids growing up can

1:32:54 ↗ see seniors and they can start relating to them. Right. That's all good. It's

1:33:00 ↗ all good. The number four, although it does overlap, if you will, with

1:33:05 ↗ two and three. What it was meant to do also is right now in

1:33:11 ↗ central Issaquah, if you're in the core and you develop housing, you have to

1:33:17 ↗ provide a percentage of it, 10% at below market rate, market rate or below.

1:33:22 ↗ And so, And so far no one has built in, they built right on the

1:33:27 ↗ edge of the core. And so this item is, do we want to try that

1:33:32 ↗ in any other areas of Issaquah to see if it would work somewhere? Because someday

1:33:37 ↗ it will work in central Issaquah when the market gets there. But is this something

1:33:41 ↗ that we would like to try in other areas of town so that when it

1:33:46 ↗ is getting developed, that there would be a percentage required for affordable housing? That's what

1:33:50 ↗ that one is for. And that's what bonus density also is, is when you build

1:33:55 ↗ a certain height in central Issaquah, you have to give the community back some amenities.

1:33:59 ↗ And one of the amenities is affordable housing and the other is open space. So

1:34:03 ↗ this is asking, is that something that we should see if we can craft for

1:34:07 ↗ the rest of the city or another part of the city and not just for

1:34:11 ↗ central? That's what number four. That's the gist of number four. Does that make any

1:34:17 ↗ sense for Issaquah to you all, other than in the central area? It does to

1:34:22 ↗ me. OK. Where else would you put it, though? So you look at Old Town.

1:34:28 ↗ Old Town's built out. Highlands is almost built out. About the only place left is

1:34:33 ↗ the core. So demographically, you wouldn't be putting affordable housing anywhere else in the city

1:34:39 ↗ except in the core, right? Could. What do you think? That's a good question. Where

1:34:45 ↗ would you put it, though? Sometimes. Let's define the core. So in your mind, are

1:34:50 ↗ you saying the core of central Issaquah or the smaller part of central Issaquah that

1:34:54 ↗ we truly call the core, that's the core zoning? That's what I'm referring to. The

1:34:59 ↗ 900 acres. The core zoning, right. Right. Because that's where it is now. CHRIS RODGERS:

1:35:04 ↗ You need to include also the Gateway, Old Town. I mean, the redevelopment plays in

1:35:08 ↗ some of the older projects. If there's land accumulation and you bring them all together,

1:35:13 ↗ there could be opportunities for development in some of those older locations. So to encourage

1:35:18 ↗ more density to get more affordable housing, I think, is a good thing. CHRISTIE WOOD:

1:35:23 ↗ And there are places where we're tearing down existing housing and putting something in its

1:35:27 ↗ place which usually is less affordable than what we tore down. Mm-hm, often

1:35:33 ↗ that's the case, true. True. Any other thoughts on inclusionary? The city just has

1:35:39 ↗ to be very careful when they allot so much for affordable housing because that

1:35:45 ↗ increases the price of the ones above it. Mm-hm. And so you have to

1:35:51 ↗ make sure that there's enough give in the city in order for a builder

1:35:56 ↗ to do that. Mm-hm. Right. I think it was mentioned earlier about the impact fees.

1:36:02 ↗ I mean, I think it's close to 18,000 now a door. 14. It's not as

1:36:07 ↗ bad as Bonnie Lake, which is $25,000 a door. But, you know, as you're looking

1:36:11 ↗ for more affordability, it could be some time span is put out there. It says

1:36:16 ↗ if you develop it, then these impact fees are reduced for a certain, at least

1:36:20 ↗ enough to get it kind of primed the pump, so to speak. Right. I was

1:36:25 ↗ just going to make a little note. Right now, for affordable housing, we waive all

1:36:29 ↗ the impact fees. And I think a lot of the connection charges to it. CHRISTIE

1:36:35 ↗ WOOD: OK. Connection fees? Some of them? CHRISTIE WOOD: OK. But I know there's a

1:36:40 ↗ big package that we offer for affordable housing just for that reason. CHRIS JERRAM: Is

1:36:45 ↗ it just for that 10% or is it for the entire project if you meet

1:36:49 ↗ the 10% affordable housing? CHRISTIE WOOD: It's just the affordable housing part of it. I

1:36:54 ↗ wouldn't suggest the city change that. CHRIS JERRAM: OK. The reason why I say that

1:36:59 ↗ is because Issaquah, even though we may not have a lot of takers right now

1:37:04 ↗ in terms of developers wanting to develop Issaquah, we are a very competitive place to

1:37:09 ↗ live. And I think long term, we'd be shooting ourselves in the foot if we

1:37:14 ↗ gave that away. And I think developers will in time come to Issaquah to develop.

1:37:18 ↗ And so I don't want to give up any developer fees in lieu of affordable

1:37:23 ↗ housing except on the units that are affordable housing. State law requires that if you're

1:37:28 ↗ exempting for affordability, once you set your overall fee system, if you exempt for affordability,

1:37:34 ↗ you must have covenants for the affordable units. And those are the only ones that

1:37:40 ↗ can get the exemption. Okay. Any other thoughts on that one?

1:37:45 ↗ Okay. It says propose a housing levy, but as Arthur reintroduced it, it's

1:37:51 ↗ really if you have extra money through whatever mechanism that we might have

1:37:57 ↗ available to us, is that something that would make sense for Issaquah? One

1:38:02 ↗ of the examples is a housing levy. I think Arthur had other examples,

1:38:08 ↗ but that's just if you're But that would be if that

1:38:13 ↗ would make sense like that for the housing for the renters

1:38:19 ↗ assistant or that down payment assistance that kind of thing is

1:38:25 ↗ that something that that would make sense for us acquire has

1:38:31 ↗ any merit. So I think there's a couple ways to sort

1:38:36 ↗ of look at this row it's the city currently is helping

1:38:42 ↗ to fund housing. um and so one of the questions is if you're funding housing

1:38:48 ↗ how do you do that and then second what would you use it for and

1:38:53 ↗ keith wants to say something too so so part of this whole chart you know

1:38:58 ↗ when you talk about developing strategies I think you have to start with who's going

1:39:03 ↗ to pay for it, right? And so if you look at this table, you know,

1:39:07 ↗ a lot of it is on the developer's back, and that's fine, but you can't

1:39:11 ↗ expect it all to potentially come from the developers. And so some of it is

1:39:15 ↗ -- has to come from this community. If we want more affordable housing, I think

1:39:20 ↗ we have to reach into our pockets and pay for some, too. So what the

1:39:25 ↗ housing levy is, is it's a tax. It's should this community tax

1:39:31 ↗ itself to get more affordable housing. Now it's you know, you could set

1:39:36 ↗ the tax rate at whatever you want, and that would be all part of a

1:39:41 ↗ community conversation. But, you know, some of these, like buying property, you know, sometimes we

1:39:45 ↗ have property, sometimes we buy property, but, you know, you guys are paying for that

1:39:50 ↗ too. So what this table is really trying to do is to split out the

1:39:55 ↗ pain of affordable housing. It's not coming by market, right? So we're having to incent

1:39:59 ↗ it either by private means or by public means. And so these action strategies that

1:40:04 ↗ are being proposed are possible. And at this point, they're just possibilities. And I think

1:40:09 ↗ what we're doing is trying to incite a conversation about whether these are good ideas

1:40:14 ↗ or bad ideas. There's no one silver bullet. If there was-- every city in Puget

1:40:18 ↗ Sound and in Northern California and a lot of other places would have already done

1:40:22 ↗ it. And so what we're trying to find is a balanced approach to how do

1:40:27 ↗ we get more affordable housing in our community because I think we've all realized that

1:40:31 ↗ is a problem. so that's what i want to say so that's a great introduction

1:40:37 ↗ and so like he said somehow the community tax base that the whole community contributes

1:40:42 ↗ to today the council has just pulled it out of their general fund okay the

1:40:48 ↗ cities in rh are all talking about if we want to grow this a levy

1:40:54 ↗ some new type of fees that don't exist now. Right now there's like, you know,

1:40:58 ↗ there's a wide range. I'm not saying any of these are realistic because they're going

1:41:02 ↗ to need state legislation, but there's a portion, you know, there's real estate transfer tax

1:41:06 ↗ fees. Can any of that go to it? And so there's a lot of different

1:41:10 ↗ ideas. But the point is they'd all be eventually coming from the community as a

1:41:14 ↗ whole's tax base. And so the first question is the idea of doing that and

1:41:18 ↗ growing that a little bit more than what it has been historically. And then second,

1:41:23 ↗ if they did grow, what would be good ways to you? What are particular ways

1:41:28 ↗ that you think would make sense in order to address needs in your community to

1:41:33 ↗ use those resources? Well, I have a question for you, kind of a strategy and

1:41:38 ↗ finance here. If the city wants affordable housing and let's say we as a city,

1:41:42 ↗ we subsidize some affordable housing and I'm going to just say, let's take a $100,000

1:41:48 ↗ house and we put $10,000 towards that affordable housing package. Couldn't the city actually become

1:41:54 ↗ a shareholder in the unit itself and own that 10%? And so when that unit

1:41:59 ↗ sells for a profit, We take a portion of those proceeds and put it back

1:42:05 ↗ into the pot so then the affordable housing component becomes a sustainable package for the

1:42:09 ↗ city. So the key word you just made there is there's a way to do

1:42:14 ↗ ownership that's sustainable, and it can be done a couple different ways. One is you

1:42:18 ↗ just put a covenant on the property. This is what we do with land use.

1:42:23 ↗ So if there's a density bonus, you know, that one where you do density bonuses,

1:42:27 ↗ you have some in your town, We have 600 homes in East King County created

1:42:32 ↗ through land use incentives that are owner occupied and which is a covenant in which

1:42:36 ↗ the resale price is dictated. And then there's other provisions in there that said for

1:42:41 ↗ any reason, and it's for 30 to 50 years. So that creates a sustainability, but

1:42:46 ↗ there's also provisions that say if we ever lose it, it's year 31 or year

1:42:51 ↗ 51, or there's a foreclosure that if there are any extra proceeds, when it sells

1:42:56 ↗ beyond what the owner would have gotten under the formulas of the covenant, if there's

1:43:01 ↗ anything else after that, it goes back to the local government. So, yes, you can

1:43:06 ↗ do it. The other way we've done it is we give money to a developer,

1:43:10 ↗ and usually what they'll do is a land trust. So the nonprofit owns, quote, owns

1:43:15 ↗ the land. So Habitat does that. So that's what they did up in Issaquah Highlands.

1:43:19 ↗ There's Habitat development there. And we did provide them some cash through the cities. And

1:43:24 ↗ so they have a land structure that accomplishes essentially what you're saying. So we've done

1:43:28 ↗ that through both land use and direct assistance. Does Issaquah make any effort to

1:43:34 ↗ set up partnerships with the faith groups that run housing programs? For

1:43:40 ↗ example, Mercy Housing, Plymouth Housing, all these different groups? Yes. in other

1:43:45 ↗ words we um we could give you a list of all the projects that have

1:43:50 ↗ been funded over the years by the cities and one of the columns shows you

1:43:54 ↗ who the partners were now plymouth hasn't done stuff over here but we have hopelink

1:43:59 ↗ and we also have imagine housing actually started out of st luke's church in bellevue

1:44:03 ↗ so you could sort of put them in that category that very much like plymouth

1:44:07 ↗ housing so we've supported the housing authority which is publicly created organization. We've helped nonprofits,

1:44:12 ↗ Habitats, Hope Link, Imagine Housing, so a wide range of groups. And we've even, we'll

1:44:17 ↗ even, the cities are willing to even give it to a private developer as long

1:44:23 ↗ as we're getting the good covenant that gives us long-term affordability. When we've put cash

1:44:28 ↗ into properties, Usually the minimum is 50 years. Okay? So, in fact, there's someone in

1:44:34 ↗ the audience who's from another group called Dash who we've done a number of developments

1:44:39 ↗ with, and all of those properties are owned by them, but they're covenants for 50

1:44:44 ↗ years minimum, and usually those groups are intending to use it that way forever. Arthur,

1:44:49 ↗ I got a quick question for you. Has there ever been seen any incentives given

1:44:55 ↗ to current landowners or current apartment owners to keep their units affordable? versus we're talking

1:45:00 ↗ about new construction but elizabeth brought up a good point of you know we're tearing

1:45:04 ↗ down things that are nice properties but there's a higher and better use quote unquote

1:45:08 ↗ so for the property i'm going to answer your question but first i'm going to

1:45:12 ↗ ask the group a question what do you guys think of the idea of doing

1:45:16 ↗ preserving existing properties rather than doing new construction that to diminish new construction but does

1:45:20 ↗ that sound like a good idea too to people. If there's ways to take existing

1:45:25 ↗ housing and preserve it as affordable housing. Does that make sense to you? It depends

1:45:29 ↗ on the quality of the housing. Okay, good. All right, that's the qualification that makes

1:45:33 ↗ that it is to make sure. Now what we've often done is we'll help fix

1:45:37 ↗ that property up a little bit when we do that so that it is in

1:45:41 ↗ good condition. But what I'm hearing from you is, well, yes, as long as the

1:45:46 ↗ quality of that housing is okay. When I went to a meeting in Bellevue that

1:45:51 ↗ was talking about affordable housing and issues around that, one of the things that they

1:45:56 ↗ stressed was that you got a better bang for your buck. - With preserving housing.

1:46:02 ↗ - As someone who's funded housing recently, you don't always get a bigger bang for

1:46:07 ↗ your buck, but it still doesn't mean it's often, you know, your older stuff is

1:46:12 ↗ centrally located. It's in good locations, right? And stuff like that. And one community saw

1:46:18 ↗ this as a way to upgrade those properties at the same time as preserving the

1:46:23 ↗ affordability. So there's other benefits, and so that can be good for a neighborhood. So

1:46:29 ↗ to answer your question, the answer has been yes. And usually though, it's ended up

1:46:35 ↗ involving a group like Dash or Imagine or Hopelink buying the property from the existing

1:46:40 ↗ owner and then using public dollars in order to do that and keep the rents

1:46:46 ↗ low or even lower the rents. Because what we have found is in the housing

1:46:51 ↗ built in the 1960s and 70s, if you look at the income profile Remember we

1:46:57 ↗ gave you data on cost burden households that are paying 50 and 60 percent of

1:47:02 ↗ their income to live in their housing? Where do you think they live? In the

1:47:07 ↗ older apartments in your community. And what we found is that we would sometimes buy

1:47:12 ↗ or we help a group buy a market rate complex built in the 60s or

1:47:17 ↗ 70s, about that age period, and they would make the units affordable at 30 and

1:47:21 ↗ 50 and 60 percent of median income And they did not have to move anybody

1:47:27 ↗ in order to meet the income qualifications because that building was full of people earning

1:47:31 ↗ 30 and 50 and 60 percent. It's just that a lot of them were paying

1:47:36 ↗ 50 and 60 percent or 40 percent of their income to live there. And so

1:47:41 ↗ it stabilized not only the building, but a lot of the residents were now able

1:47:46 ↗ to afford a rent at a reasonable percentage of their income. So we have done

1:47:51 ↗ a number of properties where it's buying existing that are market rate owned by private

1:47:56 ↗ developers. We have also tried to take federally assisted properties that were privately owned and

1:48:01 ↗ have those be not them flip them to market rate because the owners have the

1:48:07 ↗ right to do that. And more times than that, that's also been done the same

1:48:11 ↗ way where we bring in someone to buy them out. But we actually did do

1:48:16 ↗ one project once where we kept the existing private owner in place. We gave him

1:48:20 ↗ money in order to agree not to convert it to market, to fix up the

1:48:24 ↗ property, and to put a covenant saying, I will always use that federal program if

1:48:28 ↗ it's available, and if the federal program ever goes away, I will at least have

1:48:32 ↗ it affordable at like 60% immediate. So we have worked with a private developer once

1:48:38 ↗ before even in that situation. But normally it involves having them voluntarily sell

1:48:44 ↗ it to somebody else. I have a question. Going a little bit back

1:48:49 ↗ to when you were talking about levies and taxes. Where or how can

1:48:55 ↗ we help the population that cannot or might choose not to vote when

1:49:01 ↗ decisions about taxes and things come in the ballot or housing and such?

1:49:07 ↗ that would be part of the outreach that we'd have to do because anything like

1:49:11 ↗ a tax or a bond or a levy or something would need a lot of

1:49:15 ↗ outreach so we would have to be very thoughtful on how we did that and

1:49:19 ↗ and and reach out to communities that would would help us do that i couldn't

1:49:23 ↗ tell you exactly how we would do it at this point but we would make

1:49:27 ↗ an effort and be thoughtful about how we would do that because you raise a

1:49:31 ↗ super good point And I know we're almost out of time. This has been a

1:49:36 ↗ fabulous discussion, but there's some public here that probably wants to speak to this group.

1:49:41 ↗ And so if it's okay with you all, I'd like to allow a little bit

1:49:46 ↗ of time for public comments. If any of you would like to come up and

1:49:50 ↗ speak. You don't have to. Oh, you don't have to. No pressure. But in case

1:49:55 ↗ you wanted to.

1:50:03 ↗ Hi, my name is Steve Pereira. I live at 170 Northeast Dogwood Street for about

1:50:07 ↗ nine years. So a couple of thoughts. One is, first of all, thanks to the

1:50:11 ↗ city and each of you for contributing to this idea. I think it's a really

1:50:15 ↗ fundamental thing. So the city for hosting it, and thanks for your time and contributing

1:50:20 ↗ to it. A second thought is that in the mission statement, it seems the word

1:50:24 ↗ gets used is encourage. And it seems like the city has been talking about encouraging

1:50:28 ↗ for a while now, and we haven't really seen affordable housing happen. If there's stronger

1:50:32 ↗ language such as require that would make that happen.

1:50:37 ↗ I know there's some legal boundary on that and I

1:50:43 ↗ don't know the mechanisms for making that happen. It just

1:50:49 ↗ seems like that would be more encouraging of it. My

1:50:55 ↗ other thought is that this has been a learning opportunity

1:51:01 ↗ for me, so that's mostly why I'm here is to

1:51:07 ↗ learn and contribute as part of that community. So thank

1:51:13 ↗ you. I'm Chris Brandt. I'm the CEO of At Work.

1:51:19 ↗ and at work has been providing services to Issaquah citizens with intellectual and developmental disabilities

1:51:25 ↗ for 54 years, I think. And we do that at 690 Northwest Juniper Street on

1:51:30 ↗ city-owned property for which we have a long-term lease. And I'll echo some of your

1:51:36 ↗ thoughts that I really commend the work that you're all doing and the effort that

1:51:42 ↗ you're putting into this. This is the first meeting I've attended, but I watched your

1:51:47 ↗ other two. And there's a lot of really important discussions happening here. And I have

1:51:52 ↗ learned a lot about the housing situation in Issaquah just by watching those two meetings

1:51:57 ↗ and being here today. Thank you, Chris, for bringing up people with disabilities

1:52:03 ↗ as I think one of the populations that you really need to consider

1:52:09 ↗ as you're looking at affordable housing. Issaquah and the surrounding area graduates between

1:52:15 ↗ 30 and 50 children from your school districts. with intellectual and developmental

1:52:21 ↗ disabilities every year. And those young adults often need to leave the area

1:52:26 ↗ in order to find housing that's affordable to them. And At Work is

1:52:32 ↗ also a small employer. We operate several small businesses here. and the majority of

1:52:38 ↗ our workers, many of them who have disabilities commute into Issaquah from places

1:52:44 ↗ like Bothell and Auburn and Kent and so having affordable workforce housing

1:52:49 ↗ not only for our staff that provide services to people with intellectual and developmental

1:52:55 ↗ disabilities, but our workforce in those small businesses where we're trying to also help

1:53:01 ↗ with the economic vitality of the community. So just encourage you to keep that

1:53:06 ↗ population in mind and to consider at work a place where you can come and

1:53:12 ↗ learn more about that and certainly a partner in whatever way we can help you

1:53:17 ↗ in reaching out to that community and helping you make decisions that are really good

1:53:21 ↗ for this community going forward. So thanks.

1:53:44 ↗ And I just want to echo the words of everyone here tonight that this conversation

1:53:50 ↗ is very exciting for us. I'm Alicia Camp, I'm from Downtown Action to Save Housing

1:53:55 ↗ and we're an affordable housing developer here on the east side of King County. We've

1:54:01 ↗ done a lot of work in different cities using a lot of these tools and

1:54:07 ↗ strategies you're talking about tonight. So I just really deeply appreciate the work and conversation

1:54:12 ↗ you're having right now. So thank you. Okay. We're almost at the end

1:54:18 ↗ of the needs analysis piece of the whole strategy, and we're going to present our

1:54:23 ↗ findings and what we've learned with you all in the three meetings. We're going to

1:54:28 ↗ present that to the council at a work session in March. And then we're going

1:54:32 ↗ to figure out how to take this out to the neighborhoods at the end of

1:54:36 ↗ March. And we're hoping to have your help with that, whether if it's, you know,

1:54:40 ↗ asking people about it at a wine walk or at the community, you know, the

1:54:44 ↗ art walks or something where we actually go out to them to talk to them

1:54:49 ↗ where people already are at the library, at the community center. We're still trying to

1:54:53 ↗ work out what would be the most effective way to ask them about housing questions.

1:54:57 ↗ And then on to the policy conversation where we'll actually take some of the strategies

1:55:03 ↗ that we've thought about and start talking to developers to ask them, you know, what

1:55:08 ↗ would it take for you to help us with these kinds of projects and strategies?

1:55:14 ↗ So it's all very exciting. Any questions about the next steps or parting thoughts? Okay,

1:55:20 ↗ then. Thanks so much for being here tonight. It was a great group. Most we've

1:55:26 ↗ ever had. Thank you. Just a quick announcement

1:55:32 ↗ if anyone is interested in seeing or visiting the

1:55:37 ↗ YWCA campus, the village campus up here in Highlands,

1:55:43 ↗ please come see me. Thanks.

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