Minutes 08/26/1980 - Laserfiche WebLink

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August 26, 1980 Subsequent to the adoption of the March resolution, City and PRHA staff explored numerous alternatives ~or accomplishing the fair housing objective of providing long-term increased housing opportunities for the low and moderate income outside impacted area. While substan' time and effort was expended during the investigation of these alternatives, each subsequently proved to be infeasible for the 198~ program year, except for the new construction alternative. This realization was confirmed in Ms. I. Margaret White's June 12, 1980 correspondence an~ related contract, which assured the infeasibility of the last alternative considered, sub- stantial rehabilitation. Ms. White, the HUD Area Manager, again in July reinforced this posi- tion by authorizing the public issuance of a Notice of Fund Availability, soliciting private proposals for the construction of one hundred new units of Section 8 subsidized housing in unimpacted areas of the City. In discussing this situation, it was the consensus that local control in this matter should be retained, and in view of the fact that all possible alternatives had been ~ully explored and rejected, it was decided that it was again £or the City to review all available sites for the construction of one hundred new units of Section 8 subsidized housing in a non-impacted census tract consistent with the City's newly adopted Comprehensive Plan. This review was accomplished during July, and a site in census tract 125 wa.s selected as the best site. This site was subsequently confirmed by HUD as meeting City and HUD approved site and neighborhood standards. On August 12, 1980 City Council directed ~he PRHA to amend the 1979 Housing Assistance Plan and other necessary documents, in order to £oster the development of one hundred units of Section 8 new construction in census tract 125. If approved by HUD, the site in quention will be the City's selection for the location ~f one hundred new units of Section 8 housing. Otherwise, HUD will have no choice other than to choose one of the four proposals received under its Notice of Fund Availability. It should be emphasized that only these five sites can now be considered by HUD, and there is no guarantee, should Council approve this site, that HUD will accept it over the other four proposals. It should be further emphasized that everything comsumated here tonight is subject to HUD review and approval. Still to be resolved is the release of the City's 1980 C~mmunity Development funds. The City and PRHA staff firmly believe that the approval of the amended Three Year Housing Assistance Plan before you tonight and subsequently by HUD, combined with substantial progress toward the construction of the one hundred units of new Section 8 housing, will result in the release of the 1980 Community Development funds. To give you an overview of the site and why we selected 125, I would like to tur~ it over to Mr. McGinnis." The following statement was presented by ChetMc~krmis, Assistant City Manager: "We~r~ h~r~ ~o~i~h~t ~-o~discuss t~ merits"~o~ t~sit'e tocated i~ ~e~nsus tract 128, to be used for the construction of one hundred new units of Section 8 subsidized housing. If Mr. Forehand will designate on the map, I would like to describe the process that we went through in arriving at the site selection. First of all, a few references on the map; you'll notice that a number of the census tracts in the City have been shaded in in a dark red. With the exception of census tract 124, this indicated that ~he census tract is impacted. ~n the staff's opinion both the City and the Redevelopment and Housing Authority these census tracts are not eligible for subsidized housing at this time. Census tract 124, as footnoted, is eligible for substantial recap at this time. This leads us with our first reduction of area as far as selecting a site is concerned since all the census tracts in red have to be eliminated in consideration. There were three principle site selection criteria used: First, comprehensive compatibility; Second, site availability and under this criteria there are two differen- tiations. The £irst was that a site would not have a previously granted development, which severa~ sites in the City did. Second, because of the time element of this, we could not pursue a site in which the ownership had announced that it was not available for sale. The third principle criteria was the Site in Neighborhood Standards used by the City and Department of Housing and Urban Development for the analysis of various locations where Section 8 subsidized housing should be located. Under Site in Neighborhood Standards and let me d~scribe our process concerning that as you well know the Comprehensive Plan, which was adopted by Council just a few shor~ months ago, marks certain parcels within the City for zone changes. As I indicated previously, those parcels were not considered as far as our selection of the criteria. There were two additional sites that fell under our lengthy complaints: a site in Churchland on River Shore Road, which the owner indicates was not available for the City; and a site on Nottingham, which had a heed restriction on it, which prevented housing from going on that property. Under our Site in Neighborhood Standards, our first criteria is the socio-economic contribution of the site. As we indicated, we must eliminate all impacted census tracts, so that would be discarded. Our second ~ajor consideration on this particular thin~ was school zone balancing and capacity.