Flagstaff Housing Commission Backs Comprehensive RAD Initiative to Preserve and Expand Public Housing Over Decade-Long Timeline

I think you're muted, Adriana. You're muted. It's been a minute since I've done that. All right. Kevin Bond will be absent today. Tyler Denham. Here. Here. Kevin Dobie. Karen Flores. Sandy Flores. Jackie Kellogg. Devonna McLaughlin. Here. Sarah Meyer. Here. Sarah Miles. Corey Roney. Here. Jen Vargas. Here. And Haley Zoroya. Here. All right, that's seven. We've got quorum. Would anyone like to volunteer to read the land acknowledgement?

Chair, that's going to be Commissioner Karen Flores that will be reading it as soon as I have it up on the screen. You don't need to put it up. I grabbed it. You've got it. I love that preparedness. All right. The Housing Commission humbly acknowledges the ancestral homelands on this Arizona's indigenous nations and original stewards. These lands, still inhabited by native-I can't even talk-native descendants, border mountains sacred to indigenous peoples.

We honor them, their legacies, their traditions, and their continued contributions. We celebrate their past, present, and future generations who will forever know this place as home. Thank you for that, Commissioner Flores. At this time, we have a moment for public comments. Any member of the public may address the Commission on any subject within their jurisdiction that is not scheduled before the Commission on this day.

Due to open meeting laws, the Commission cannot discuss or act on items presented during this portion of the agenda. To address the commission on an item that is on the agenda, please wait for the chair, in this case vice chair, to call for public comment at the time the item is heard. Adriana, do we have anyone from the public that has submitted comment beforehand or is on the meeting? Adriana Croninan- I see one potential person from the public and I don't have any via email at this time.

Gotcha. If you are that person and you want to give public comment, you can go ahead and unmute or raise your hand. And I'll give a moment. All right. I think we're good to move on to item five, approval of the minutes. So these are for the August 13th Housing Commission meeting minutes. Do I have any discussion before a motion? If no discussion, does anyone have a motion to make? This is Commissioner Zeroyal. Motion to approve the minutes from August 13th.

Commissioner Runge, I will second that motion. All right, we have a motion from Commissioner Zoroya and a second from Commissioner Roongi to approve the August 13, 2026 meeting minutes. Any discussion before we hold vote? If not, all in favor, aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, that motion passes unanimously. Next up is item six, Housing Commission updates. And Adriana, there's a lot to talk through here. I'll hand it over to you.

Thank you Vice Chair Dunham I have a message from the City Clerk Office and I will just read it to you all I don have much more information besides this just for the record So it says at the direction of council the city clerk office was asked to evaluate the boards and commissions program and make recommendations to council regarding ways the program can improve effectiveness efficiency and service to the community A discussion with council and a presentation of recommendations will occur at the November 17, 2026 council meeting.

Materials outlining the proposed recommendations will be available in the council agenda packet the week prior to the November 17, 2026 council meeting. We encourage commissioners to attend the meeting in person or watch it live for additional information and Specifics regarding the recommendations. Recommendations may or may not be accepted by council and we welcome any and all public comment. Thank you.

So with this change coming up, staff are waiting to make appointments and reappointments of now six seats to the commission. Once we get to that November 17 meeting, hopefully we will have enough direction to get that item back on the council working calendar. I know that the five of you that are expiring, most of you have reapplied. Thank you for doing that. And we'll get that item back on the agenda. So because of all the changes coming up, we have the option to, well, let me back it up.

Our chair and vice chair seats expire this month. With that and the fact that Mr. Moses Malazo has been appointed to city council as our new council member, we have a chair seat vacant. What we can do is either appoint a new chair or vice chair today during this meeting or we can wait until the new appointments and reappointments have been made at an upcoming meeting.

So right now what I'm looking for is general direction from the commission to see if you would like to hold off until those appointments and reappointments have been made Or if you would like to make an appointment or elect a new chair or vice chair today. I see that Commissioner Zeroya has her hand up. Go ahead and speak. I was just going to say that I would hate to do it today and then have to do it again, just in case anything went awry.

So that's just kind of my take on it, just in case for some odd reason somebody didn't get reappointed and had been voted into a chair or vice chair position. But open to doing whatever. That's it. I would second Commissioner Zaroya's thoughts, and if it's helpful context, I'm happy to chair the meetings as the vice chair until those seats are filled by council. This is Commissioner Vargas, and I would also third that. Just to make it more fluid. Commissioner Runge, go ahead and speak.

Yes, I think I'm of a similar thought process. I think it makes sense to wait until the council has appointed the members. And I do also think it makes sense if you're able and willing to continue to chair these meetings until a decision is made. Sounds like we've got a clear majority direction, Adriana. Is that the context that you needed? I believe so. Unless there's anybody that opposes to that, that would have been staff's recommendation to wait.

And then Vice Chair Tyler Denham has I've been chairing these meetings for a long time, so it makes sense to wait. So the direction that I'm hearing is to hold off for now and hold an election. So with that, I just want to put that out there that with elections coming up, if you have reapplied or if you're on the commission and your term is not expiring, please think about throwing your name in the hat for chair or vice chair.

Tyler you are eligible to serve as chair or vice chair again Totally up to you And of course anybody that hasn served including Davana and Sandy are also eligible to serve as vice chair or chair And with that, I'm going to hand the floor over to Sarah Dar, our housing division director, because as I mentioned earlier, Mr. Moses Malazzo has now been appointed as a city council member. Sarah. Thank you, Adriana, and we'll take a moment out of our day to thank Moses for his service.

I'm sure that I speak on behalf of everyone that's worked or served with you on the commission, also the Flagstaff Housing Authority Board as well as housing staff. I, we would like to thank you for serving in such a unique position of membership on both the Housing Authority Board as well as the Commission, creating a linkage between the two entities and their common mission.

This is the only Commission position in the City of Flagstaff that allows membership on two boards or commissions, and it is required twice the meeting time, twice the review of documents, And a critical thought process to relate very different policies and programs, a charge you met with grace, and easy laughter when appropriate. I think we're going to particularly miss your laughter.

We will also miss your purposeful consideration of items and materials, your questions that often challenge the thought process in a good way, and your unending commitment of time and gratitude to housing efforts and staff. Congratulations on your appointment. We're very excited to continue to work with you in a different role and continuing to further our housing efforts. I now, I guess I have to call you Councilmember Malazo instead of my friend Moses, depending on the setting. So thank you.

The gratitude is deep. Adriana and I were chatting earlier about your length of service. You've been on the housing commission since the beginning, which we're at seven years, and a housing authority board member before that. So I think we're close to 10 years of service in housing capacity to the city of Flagstaff, our housing efforts and programs, and we are so thankful for your time you've committed to us. Thank you so much. I know you wanted to say something.

I don't know if the chair will allow you to speak, though. I'll consider it. All right. Yes, yes. Commissioner, Councilmember Malazo, I'm going to have to get used to that, too. No doubt in my mind that you'll do great in this new role of yours, and now you have the floor if there's anything you want to say. Thank you, Vice Chair, Acting Chair Denham, and thank you, Sarah Dar. I have loved my time on both of these boards and commissions. Working with housing staff has been absolutely fantastic.

Working with all of the community members who love housing and policy about housing has been incredible. And you're not going to get rid of me. Even if I only last two years on council, I'm coming back to the commissions and boards if they'll have me. And if not, I will just be a thorn in people's sides asking what's going on with affordable housing any chance I get. Like we discussed earlier, you can't kick me out if it's an open meeting so I can attend even if I'm not on either.

So I look forward to continuing to work with you at least another 10 years, maybe 20, 30, we'll see. Hopefully we'll have worked ourselves out of a job by then, but we'll see. But thank you all so very much. I really have had a wonderful time here, so yeah. Lovely. And lots of great messages in the chat for you to look over from the other commissioners. With that, should we go ahead and move on to agenda item seven, the presentation on the RAD program?

We can do that Chair Give me just a moment to add my screens on other things for the previous item So give me just a minute to hit present And then share I lost Teams I love that I close people I close All right This item is going to cover some history that you already know or have heard previously. Thank you for allowing me to continue to provide that history as occasionally our audience or folks watching in the future don't have the same background that you do. Can you see my screen? Not yet.

Okay, it didn't do it. I told it to share. I have been having some connection troubles with the weather, so if you lose me, that's fine. Nada, I don't have a red outline around it. All right, let me try a different version. Thank you for your patience. We're going to share this window. It's going to look like you guys for a second, but it won't be long, so don't freak out. Well, I guess I'm the only one on camera. Let's see if it does it. I didn't do it. All right, let me go a different way.

Apologies, folks. I usually have this set up. And now you can see this screen. That's awesome. Which is not what we needed. Sarah, let me know if you need me to pull it up. Okay, I'm going to try one more time. Because when I do present it, it messes with the screens. So we're going to share. This one. Fisher, if this doesn't work, it's on you. Not, it's on you. Pull it up. Or do you have it up and you can share the final one? I'm in the file. I just have to pull it up. Okay.

I do not know why it's not working. Sometimes I think that I'm keeping up with technology and other times I'm like, they moved the button. All right, I'm going to leave it to you. I'm not getting there. Apologies. PRACY CORDES- Totally fine. Give me one second. PRACY CORDES- Thank you for your patience, folks.

I know staff is secretly enjoying this because I'm always on them with, like, let's be prepared and not waste people's time, and they're all secretly sitting there giggling because it's me that did not have things appropriately set up to be able to share quickly. So staff, enjoy the moment. I get to be human, too. Look at that. Fisher's amazing. I have nice things to say about her later, too. So, all right, let's hit it. Thank you, folks. I appreciate it. I am pulling up my notes.

Next slide, please. So we're going to cover, it looks like a lot, but it's not, I promise you. We're going to hit again what is RAD and why do it, what's happened to date with some updated information for you on what we've been able to accomplish behind the scenes so far. There's a resolution going to city council.

We'll talk about what that resolution does, what the intended redevelopment efforts are envisioned to be at this point in time, how things get built, what the implementation authority is within that resolution, and then next steps. Next slide, please. So this slide is from the resident engagement presentation. I'll talk about those meetings that we had later. Again, folks are going to be tired of hearing it, but it's super important.

This is what we started with with residents, is you are not losing your housing. You do not need to move or make plans to move right now, and there are multiple opportunities for you to be involved in the process.

It's not only boards and commissions, the Housing Authority Board and the Commission, and other folks with interest in housing in the community that are critical to envisioning and planning this Redevelopment effort, but more importantly, the residents that live within our developments, for them to have a hand in what those developments look like, what they feel like as the folks that live within them and are representative of those that will live in the future. Next slide, please.

What is this RAD effort? You know how I feel about the acronym. It is my least favorite acronym on the planet. It says nothing about what it does. But we are applying or asking for permission to apply to work with HUD to preserve affordable housing long term in our public housing developments. HUD calls it the Rental Assistance Demonstration or RAD. I'm going to call it this effort or the RAD effort. You'll notice that we're being very intentional about not using the word project.

We're not talking about the Red Brad project or redevelopment project. That's for a pretty critical reason. That is the negative connotation that comes with using the word project in linkages with public housing, where folks think about the projects or what it looked like in New York or Chicago. That's not what our public housing is. That's not what it ever has been.

So we're going to And to be as intentional as we can in talking about this effort, it will eventually have a name different than RAD or the RAD effort. And that's why it may seem sometimes a little awkward to talk about it as a RAD effort, but it's really important to help, especially the members of the community who don't know or understand what public housing is or how it works or the people that it serves within our community, to stay away from the word the projects.

So public housing funding will become a long-term rental assistance contract under a different program. That program is the Section 8 program. Don't change yet, but there's more information coming up on that. It is not vouchers. This effort can fund repairs, improvements, or rebuilding from minor repairs to full development. And of course, we've been talking about some major redevelopment of our units, especially due to the load density of the area. As well as the age of the units.

Federal funding just keeps decreasing in the areas of capital improvements and has been significantly underfunded for decades. Next slide, please. Why do it? Well, federal funding keeps raking and our local housing needs keep growing. We're in a declared housing emergency. And this project supports the city's 10-year housing plan by both protecting and expanding long-term affordable housing. We've talked about why doing it.

We've talked about the fact that our public housing, while not failing, is also not in the greatest condition that it could be due to the extremely limited capital funding we've received over the years. We have to very carefully plan those out. The other reason to do it is it's going to give us a projectable funding strain moving forward. Right now, we get money on an annual basis. We never know what we're getting.

Sometimes we're five, six, seven months into the fiscal year before we actually know what Congress has funded for this program and for capital needs, and that makes it exceedingly difficult to plan. Let me just reemphasize again, exceedingly difficult to plan, especially long term.

The piece that we'll be moving into will be under a contract with an escalation factor that will allow us to know what our funding is every year moving forward from the federal side, which will allow us to plan long term for things like capital improvements. It's not any more money, but it takes what is right now two separate funding sources and combines them into one, which gives us greater flexibility. Next slide, please. So public housing becomes a long-term rental assistance contract.

Those are the words you're going to hear over and over. Here's why we're not continuing to say over and over under the Section 8 program. So funding shifts from public housing operating funding capital to a long-term Section 8 assistance contract. That contract makes it easier for us to utilize the money to repair and improve the property. This is not the Section 8 voucher program. There are multiple programs under Section 8.

Section 8 is the section, it's Section 8 of a certain federal code, that's why it's called Section 8.

It like calling LIHTC section 42 It in section 42 of the IRS code These are not creative names But it really important for folks to know this is not the voucher program It means we will have a section 8 contract for the units instead of a public housing contract So it is not converting the assistance attached to units into assistance attached to households We will still have our section 8 program And that will continue to attach your vouchers to households to obtain housing in the community What is converting public housing to a Section 8 contract will be subsidy attached to units instead of households I hope that makes sense, but we're not going to say the words Section 8 contract moving forward very often because it causes confusion.

I've had confusion even from surrounding communities as they look at what we're doing about you're really giving up assets for vouchers and no, it's a different section of the piece. So if you hear folks talk about it's changing it to vouchers, please help us spread the word and educate folks that that's not what it's doing and it's preserving both the land and the units or the redevelopment of the units. Next slide, please.

So our goals, this is straight from the resident presentation as well, and I thought it was important to hit it here, is to keep the properties affordable long term. Very, very important to protect current residents and their rights and minimize the impact on them as well. Improve the property and address building needs. Maintain public or nonprofit ownership or control. And to increase the number of units. Next slide, please. Key resident protections. The rent remains affordable.

It still remains an income-based rent. 30% of adjusted income goes towards rent. That's the same moving forward. No rescreening because of this effort. Residents have the right to remain in the development after any rehab or redevelopment to return if temporary relocation is needed.

They have the right to organize and participate as an organized unit in the process, and they have full right to grievance and hearing procedures, which they have now, but it's reiterated underneath this redevelopment process. They also have the option to request a tenant-based voucher after the required waiting period. And as I explained during the public meetings, the required waiting period is interesting because as I dug into it, it says one or two years depending on these factors.

And then there was a summary from HUD that said, this is an area that lacks clarity. It's like, oh, great. Thank you. So my pledge to our residents was this is years and years and years away. And by the time we get there, we will know more about exactly what the waiting period is. But in essence, it's established so that folks try out the development before requesting a tenant-based voucher to move into the community.

The other thing that is not on here but I wanted to mention is that the rent, while it remains affordable, it remains a 30 percent calculation. We have under 10 households that are on what's called flat rent, and those are the only households that might maybe see a rent increase because flat rent is not based on income. And there is a phase in period of over 24 months for any rent increases to be phased into place for those households. Again, we have under 10.

I think it's six or seven right now out of the 265. So there's very few households, and we would meet with them separately and keep them educated if they were to be impacted in that way. Next slide, please. So what's happened to date? Discussion and planning, this should shock no one, for several years. We've hired the RAD consultant, which we have run through pretty quickly.

With their work, they have conducted our portfolio analysis, the capital needs assessment, and a bunch of required background work in order to pull the balloons together into a bouquet to be able to apply for this. They also drafted the RFP to procure a development partner for this. We've also worked with an architect who's done site analysis on both sites, but with the primary focus being on SILER as that's the first target.

And there are preliminary bolded, italicized, underlined drawings that we have not published.

Our intention for use for those are community planning charrettes so that people have something to respond to when we talking about what the developments could look like so that people can say I don like this here We should move it over there It not a secret plan on our behalf and certainly our development partner will be responsible for completing the actual plans for it but those are our preliminary drawings in order to further resident engagement Next slide please All right.

We had resident engagement meetings on October 14th at Cogdill at noon and the AquaPlex at 530. On the graphics on the slide are the flyer utilized for the meeting, as well as it's not very clear, but I wanted to point it out.

Adriana, Aiden, thank you for making sure that we had pop-up on the city's homepage so that if you went to the city page that day and you were looking for the meetings, this pop-up box popped up giving you links to the materials and the meetings so that folks didn't have to hunt around for it. They very creatively added a QR code to the flyer so that folks could attend the meeting virtually or in person if they were to choose to do so.

We handed out – no, we sent via mail required notices from HUD. It's an entire packet. As you can imagine, it's federal paperwork. But staff worked diligently. I'm going to thank Adriana and Aiden a lot because they really worked hard on this. Some plain English toppers for the packet so folks weren't left facing federal speak, but rather here's what's in here. Please feel free to continue reading, but here's summaries.

It's hard to see on the flyer, but we point out in bold no current resident will lose their housing because of this project. This is before we came up with the effort word. You'll see our materials evolve as we do that. At the meetings, we had a Cogdill. We had 10 in-person, four online, and six staff. And we had some very involved audience members who asked a ton of questions, which is great. Meeting two was at the Aquaplex.

In the evening at 530, we had six in-person, two online, and five staff. While it feels like staff in some cases almost have numbers the number of people in attendance, that allowed us to meet people where they were and have one-on-one conversations, especially with some folks that were not as comfortable asking questions in front of a group and allowed us to spend some time with them either reassuring or answering general questions.

We got a bunch of questions if you hear it, because apparently it's been a rumor on the streets for like a decade that NAU is interested in buying Brandon homes for $90 million. I hadn't heard that one before, but it came up in both meetings. By the way, that is not true. We've not talked to NAU. I don't think NAU has any intention of buying it. And that one is absolutely pure rumor. We encouraged folks to bring rumors to our attention so that we could get accurate information out there.

Nothing's too silly to bring up and ask so that we can make sure that accurate information is getting out there. We have some other stakeholders on the properties that we're meeting with. We've already met with NACOG, who has Head Start facilities. Boys and Girls Club, we've chatted with their board chair and executive director in the past, but we're meeting with members of the board. members of their board and executive director today.

Their executive director was also present at the resident meeting at Cogdill. And in Tinkertopia, Dr. Alice and I have chatted repeatedly and were scheduled to meet with interested parties from their board in the coming weeks. Housing Authority Board voted to forward RAD resolution to city council with a recommendation for approval. Next slide, please. All right.

What the council resolution does is recommends that city council authorizes staff to apply for this program and acknowledges that RAD converts public housing assistance into a long-term Section 8 rental assistance contract and recommends that Flagstaff Housing Authority serve as developer or co-developer in the resulting redevelopment. And next slide, please. Redevelopment efforts covers all of our properties, Siler, Brandon, and Scattered Public Housing sites.

We're planning for a mix of housing types, including family and senior housing, but also different housing types.

We're not envisioning rows and rows of apartment buildings from front to back but rather a mix of housing types perhaps some townhouse style some cottage style all incorporating effective land use and also the creation of community We say family and senior housing Family includes households of one And we call them out specifically because there are often separate funding sources for those populations but it really would include anyone in our community that eligible using the words family and While it sounds exclusionary, in the HUD world it actually isn't.

It aims to significantly increase the number of affordable homes available at both sites. Next slide, please. How does it get built? A new nonprofit corporation is recommended to be formed to help with various elements of the development. So next slide. Hold on. Financing will combine tax credits, grants, loans, and city general obligation funding from Prop 442, not city general funds, at this point in time anyway. It's not planned that way.

And a qualified development partner will be helped, will be helped. No, they will help us. Who will be selected to help design, finance, and build the projects. I think you'll like the heading of the next slide. The next slide says, hang on now, a new nonprofit? What are you talking about? So, at the request of the city, it would be under the umbrella of the city, and let me tell you why. There would be no new staff.

There would be no funding, new funding to start with, which could be determined long term, depending on how cash flow goes. So this is the language in the resolution is form a new nonprofit corporation with the housing division director of the Flagstaff Housing Authority working with legal counsel and incorporation governance documents and submission as directed by the city manager or their designee. So why in the world would we do this?

It sounds like a scary move in a community where we have very significant coverage in the nonprofit world of housing. So this would satisfy HUD's control requirements. It'll help us structure the LIHTC properties correctly and will keep project risk and guarantee funds separate from the rest of the housing authority in the city. It's a legal tool. It is not intended to be a competitive nonprofit in the community. It will be a legal tool for us.

A housing authority generally can't contract with itself. So when a property converts and gets project-based vouchers, the PHA can't be both the owner signing the housing assistance payment contract and the party administering it. So an owner entity is needed to hold the property so that project-based assistance can be assigned to the property.

So if any of the section moves through Section 18, which is demolition or disposition, where we would move the subsidy from one location to another, HUS rules require that the public housing asset transfer to a separate entity recognized under state law.

So the more I dug into this and the more I looked at why it's recommended as a best practice, why so many communities have done it, even especially here in Arizona, a bigger driver is often financing as LIHTC deals have to be held by a single asset ownership entity structured with a general partner who will run the project and a limited partner who supplies the tax credit equity.

A PHA or its affiliate typically fills that general partner role and HUD requires the PHA to retain control of the converted property, generally done by controlling at least 51% of the ownership interest.

An affiliate nonprofit gives us a clean vehicle to hold that controlling interest without exposing the whole housing authority or city to a single project's liability, since LIHTC lenders and investors generally want the risk isolated on the So as we would form a single ownership asset under the nonprofit umbrella insulates and protects. The other reason is that with tax credits, they often want guarantee funding. Those can't be backed with federal money.

They have to be backed with non-federal money. So that means capital funding from the housing—no, I'm sorry, let me back up. And FHA funds are mostly federally restricted. A nonprofit affiliate, I'm thinking longer term, can hold a developer fee or other non-federal resources that make those guarantees possible. So on the second go around, if there we are as fortunate enough to have a developer fee, So there are numerous reasons to do it.

I know that it can sound perhaps a little like, hang on now, a new nonprofit. But that's the intent and reasoning behind why we are looking at moving in that direction. That's the direction I've received from the city manager to work in this direction. We have not yet discussed this with city council members. We have a separate attorney that has handled all the red transactions in the state, and she is the one who is assisting with the drafting of documents and research.

We wouldn't be the only ones in the state, especially not in the country, but Tempe, Maricopa County, Yuma, Tucson, Pima County, Phoenix have all utilized a bottle that is They have all utilized a model that utilizes a nonprofit. Thank you for the word utilize of the day. They have formed it in one of two different ways, and we're not at that point. We need to receive the full direction of council before we go down that rabbit hole any further. Next slide, please.

The resolution covers implementation authority, directs the city manager, the designee to take the actions necessary to apply and receive the funding, and of course the FHA board and city council would be kept informed as the project progresses. Next slide, please. I tossed in the federal status of program. There are various news headlines about different federal programs coming and going under the current administration.

And I wanted to take a moment and point out that the 21st Century Road to Housing Act enacted this past July makes the RAD program permanent because it's a rental assistance demonstration program. For more than a decade, it's been labeled as a demonstration program. And the Road to Housing Act made it permanent, so it removed its sunset provision, which gives even more long-term stability for public housing repositioning.

It expands the nationwide conversion limit to 555,000 units, which they're not close to. And this is a fun part, thank heavens, affordability mandate requires that converted public housing authority properties be strictly used for affordable housing rather than commercial for-profit or athletic facilities. I think folks have learned as the program goes along, changes that need to be made, and it looks like some extra protections have been added. Next slide, please. Next steps.

Council consideration of resolution is November 17th. The presentation, the work session presentation to them-I deleted the wrong slide in preparing this, apologies. The work session presentation is on Tuesday, the 27th. The council consideration of the resolution is scheduled for November 17th. We would then submit the application to HUD. And then I had a snarky line underneath this. It said, and then wait. I'm not sure how long it's going to take to get a response. I'm not in charge of HUD.

But we have met some folks that actually serve in Chicago in the office that receives our applications or any application when it's submitted for this purpose. We've met them through another effort, and they have issued some or provided us with some pretty helpful guidance to make sure we're doing things correctly. And then we will be publishing a co-developer RFP. We are anticipating that that will be done by the end of the month.

As far as housing is concerned, it is ready to go and is in the hands of procurement. I believe legal has signed off on it. It's in the hands of procurement to put the final procurement touches on it and get it published. But as far as our staff is concerned, it's out of our hands. We'll keep folks updated on when that is published. And next slide, please. So this is directly from the resident engagement presentation as well.

There is lots of work to be done before any changes to buildings or land are made. And it will likely look like nothing is happening for at least a year.

And why I wanted to put this in here is for the residents for anybody that we present to or the community at large to understand that while we been talking about it and it looks like we just continuing to talk about it is that there is a lot to happen behind the scenes before dirt is ever turned And also before we move to the next phase of planning that will have greater resident and community involvement in what the developments could look like as we go forward Excuse me So if people are like yeah they keep talking about it but nothing happening Things are happening Things are happening It's just not entirely visible to the public.

And for that reason, we have created a rad corner in the newsletter. We publish a newsletter that goes out to every public housing household.

We have once a month, Aiden, thank you, Aiden, on housing staff, has taken ownership of this rad corner to even if there's not much to put in there, like proposals were received and are being scored, that there's, of an ongoing monthly update for the residents so that they know where to look for updates, as well as a place for us to get people used to looking for any future opportunities for them to come and share ideas, excuse me, and feedback on what they'd like their neighborhoods to look and feel like.

And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions after I take a drink. Oh, first and last things to know. I almost missed it. Again, from the resident presentation, it's the same slide as the beginning, but ending on those thoughts so that they are consistent in people's heads. What I said at the resident meetings is I don't want anyone laying awake at night or having a sour tummy over being worried about losing their housing. You're not losing your housing.

And you do not need to move or make plans to move right now. And there's lots of opportunities for involvement. We really want people to not be Worried about this as it moves forward. The other thing we're being intentional about is to not use the words our plans, because they're not our plans yet. They are things housing staff have worked on. And when we say our, we mean our residents and we mean the community.

And so at some point we might transition to our plans, but right now there are preliminary ideas and places to start. We envision Seiler Homes being the first effort for a number of reasons. That's the staff recommendation, but what it looks like, how things move forward from there, they're not yet our plans. It is the plan. So again, another intentional piece looking to include community as we move through this. I'm going to take another drink of water while I ask if there are any questions.

As a reminder, this is an informational item, so no motions to be made or whatnot, but plenty of time for questions.

Chair, if I may, I'm realizing the other thing that I forgot to mention was that the meetings that we had, the resident engagement meetings, were – I did mention we had folks online, so they were hybrid, but they were also recorded so that interested parties could go back and watch, especially residents, that were unable to attend or didn't realize what they were missing out on when they chose not to come. So those are recorded for future review. Gotcha.

And I'm curious, what were the main questions from those? Did any stick out? Well, the rumor about NAU purchasing the property stuck out. That one came up a couple times. I can tell you what the questions are because we are required to record the questions and the answers and submit them as part of our application packet. So thank you to Aidan for going over those. Why was this meeting not mandatory?

We haven't made meetings mandatory in my tenure here at the Housing Authority, which is well over 10 years at this point. How long until we start to see things change? What will temporary relocation look like? Would it be in hotels?

We were able to talk about the thought process of developing the vacant property next to Seiler first so that we had Places that is not hotels for folks to go into When you call the number on the packet do you get a real person or AI We had that one twice Will someone real or AI be answering our questions You get a real person or have the opportunity to leave a message and a real person will call you back I heard that NAU wants to buy the property I heard a rumor you be renting to students Is that true Your typical students no but we do rent to students who are financially independent of their parents but not your typical Aiden thank you for asking I'm writing my answers down, but not your typical 22-year-old NAU student, as they're not eligible for affordable housing assistance or any program we have.

How do we plan on doubling units in the space? I saw the city plans to add 1,000 units in the next 10 years. How will you do that? I heard a rumor that there would be an option to rent your rent to own your home under RAD. That is not an option under this program. Is the head office located in DC or does every city have one? What about Clark Homes? As a reminder, Clark Homes is not part of public housing.

It's owned by the Flagstaff Housing Corporation and is under a different program, again, creatively named by HUD. It's called the HUD Multifamily Program. And so we don't own it, but we do operate it. We fee manage the property. So what about temporary repair? Should we still put in work orders? Yes. We went over that one twice of please still continue to put in work orders. We are way, way from this. That's generally the flavor of the questions. What about HUD funding?

Why Styler before Brannon? Those types of things. So while we didn't have a lot of people, they were very engaged. Gotcha. Well, we'll have to keep an eye out for some of those same misconceptions out in the public. Thank you. We'd really appreciate that. Yeah, and I'm not seeing any other hands up or cues in the chat. So I think we can move on to agenda item 8.1, update from the Housing Authority Liaison. Oh. I believe that's you, Ms. Mal.

That's probably me at this point, since that was Moses, and I believe that he has departed. So Housing Authority Liaison for a bit will be me. The Housing Authority Board received a very, very similar presentation that you just did and voted to move resolution recommending approval of submitting an application and the granting of the permissions to city council to be considered. And that was our main board topic at our last board meeting. Appreciate that update.

Any follow-up questions on that before we move to update from housing commissioners? Not seeing any hands raised. So for this section, any housing commissioners that have an update If they want to give to the commission, just raise your hand or put a C in the chat. Commissioner McLaughlin, go ahead. Yeah, hi. Thank you so much. I have a couple of updates I want to share. The first is that Housing Solutions is working, again, on our annual rental attainability report.

We have finished calls to a lot. I didn't do the calls, but it's a ton of local multifamily property management companies to get information on number of units, current rental rates, vacancy rates, costs to move in for application fees, etc. We'll have that report published, I think, in the next three weeks, and I'll make sure to send that to staff to distribute to y'all in case you're interested in the update.

We've been doing this for 10 years now, so exciting to get this information out to the community as we do this time every year. I also wanted to share with you an update on a change that's happened recently with federal funding.

So one of HUD long grants goes to support HUD housing counseling agencies That grant I think has been available for nearly all of my time here at Housing Solutions so at least or about two decades if not longer This year that funding was delayed by HUD in getting out So the federal fiscal year that started October 1st 2025 not just a few weeks ago but a year and a few weeks ago they had issued that notice of funding opportunity in May of 2026 And agencies responded, and they were supposed to announce awards in August.

That got delayed to September. And then about four or five days before the end of the federal fiscal year, those funds were rescinded by the current administration and not awarded. So there's been a lawsuit that's been filed by 10 housing counseling agencies across the country to try and get that money re-established.

There is an injunction that was ordered by the courts to keep the money from going back to Treasury, but there is no understanding at this time when a final resolution might be had, if an appeal will be made, and if those funds will ever be available.

So I say that out loud as selfishly it impacts housing solutions as a HUD-approved housing counseling agency that's historically received those funds, but it's another-or it's federal funds that are no longer coming to our community to do housing work. So just wanted to let you know, on average, we receive about $35,000 a year through that grant, and it's also impacting agencies statewide and nationally.

So just wanted to give you that update in case you are paying attention to it and wondered what was happening or you weren't aware that those funds got swept in the most recent administration's pullback of a bunch of money at the end of the federal fiscal year. So thank you. Yeah, thank you for that update. Do any other commissioners have an update for the group? Not seeing me raised hands or sees in the chat. So final update is from housing staff. Housing staff, do you have any updates for us?

Yeah, go ahead. I think Jennifer and then Marissa. Go ahead, Jennifer, then Marissa. Did I see the order correctly? You did say the order directly, Chair. Jen, we can't hear you, but it doesn't show that you're muted. I'm still not hearing any audio from either Jen or Marissa. Is anyone else? Mr. Ruggi, I'm not hearing anything either. I haven't tried to speak yet, but I was trying to give Jen the opportunity.

It looks like Jen is going to drop and then come back in to hopefully fix an issue with the audio. So just hold on for a second. Marisa, why don't you go ahead and go, and I'll give Jen's update after you're done. Okay. Sounds great. Yeah. I just wanted to note, staff has completed the review of the last ARPA Local Recovery Funds funding requests. That completes $2.6 million in funding, and we just wanted to give a huge thank you to all of our nonprofit partners who worked with us on that.

So, yeah. Thanks, Marissa. So the update that Jen wanted to give to the Commission, and this is Justina, by the way, everyone, hi, was to let you all know that staff is working with legal to finalize the loan documents for our last Adaptive Reuse Bond Program loan. That loan is going to Urban Lofts. It's going to be for $640,000, and that will use up the last of the $3 million that was allocated for that bond program. Council will see that on November 17th. Thank you. Aidan, go ahead.

Thank you, Chair. Hi, Commissioners. I just wanted to give a quick update on some activities we're doing for Housing America Month. Right now, there's There's a display at the downtown library called My Village. It was created with artwork from the kids at Tinkertopia, at Siler Homes, attendees of the housing resource fairs back in April, and some city staff and their kids as well.

So everyone was basically contributing to a vision of what a neighborhood could look like when everyone has a place to call home. You'll see all kinds of community amenities, different types of homes, and other features that help make a community great. And it'll be up through October 30th, so you've got another week or so to check it out. I also wanted to invite you all to our upcoming event called Keys to Home Ownership.

It's a resource fair that's happening on Thursday, November 5th from 4 to 6 p.m. at the downtown library as well. The event is focused on helping people explore the path from renting to home ownership and just generally moving up the housing continuum. Attendees will have the opportunity to connect with local housing resources, organizations, and explore local programs. Yeah, so we'll send out a flyer to you guys after the meeting so you guys can all help spread the word as well.

But beyond that, we've done a proclamation and we are posting all throughout this month and next month as well. So stay tuned on what we're doing on our social media pages. Thank you. Yeah, I look forward to seeing that material. And I'll do a final check. Any more updates from housing staff before I adjourn the meeting?

Yes please I have a quick one Yeah go ahead Thank you I like to take a moment and introduce a new staff member Scout Miller has joined us and I believe is going to pop on camera Scout is the new Housing Authority director She is Justina equivalent on the Housing Authority side She comes to us from I going to say Residence Life at NAU and I know that not what it called anymore but I can wait to see any questions I can't remember what it's called. Campus communities? Is that what it is?

Campus living. Campus living. Okay. I had one of them, right? Campus living in AU with about 10 years of housing experience. And while her experience has been with college students and their parents, it's so very applicable in what we do at the Housing Authority. She's hit the ground sprinting, and we're super glad to have her. So, yeah, there goes my brain. Thank you for joining us, Scout, and Commissioner, thank you for letting me introduce you to a new staff member.

Look forward to collaborating together in the future, Scout. All right, with that, I adjourned the meeting at 2.05 PM Mountain Standard Time. Thank you, everyone, for joining and have a good rest of your day. Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, y'all. Bye. Thank you, Tyler. I appreciate you.