Affordable/Workforce Housing Study
Chapter Six

Chapter Six:

Findings and Recommendations

ESTABLISH A HOUSING AND COMMUNITY LAND TRUST FUND

Finding: California jurisdictions that are producing workforce and affordable housing adequate to their needs devote other resources and revenues to that production besides 20% set aside funds. They, in turn, attract numerous grants, subsidies and loans from a variety of outside sources. Some of the most successful jurisdictions in producing workforce and affordable housing have done so through the creation of housing trust funds to (1) dedicate specific resources to increased housing production; (2) capture subsidies, grants and below market loans available to such non-profits; (3) leverage funds 5-10 times the contributions of participating jurisdiction(s).

Finding: To keep new housing units affordable in the long-term, some jurisdictions have created community land trusts, separate nonprofit corporations that retain ownership of the land on which for-sale affordable housing (and sometimes rental housing) is built, therefore keeping the dwelling appreciation from pricing future owners (or renters) out of affordable units.

Recommendation 1: Create a Housing and Community Land Trust Fund--a hybrid nonprofit corporation based on successful trust fund models and the unusual needs of the FORA jurisdictions--to produce affordable and workforce housing on Fort Ord and elsewhere in FORA jurisdictions. Jurisdictions and local groups and corporations willing to contribute to its success will dedicate a revenue stream, land, services, and/or personnel and constitute its core membership. The first three (or more) years of operation could be focused on production of mixed income housing at Fort Ord; thereafter, the fund's services could be expanded to include all of the Monterey Peninsula (or the entire County).

A formula for local funding of the Housing and Community Land Trust can be devised among the jurisdictions to take into account historical inequities, and allow jurisdictions with land at Fort Ord to dedicate land to the Fund for affordable housing instead of a revenue stream.

Recommendation 2: The Housing and Community Land Trust will need a variety of funding mechanisms and seed capital. The Clark Group recommends that FORA jurisdictions act to create a tax increment pool as one of the most significant funding mechanisms.

Finding: FORA and its jurisdictions are blessed with several experienced nonprofit developers and experts in building and managing affordable housing who are available to assist FORA in developing affordable/workforce housing at Fort Ord. FORA can use its expertise and capability to greater advantage than it has historically.

Recommendation 3: Invite local and regional nonprofit developers to help design the Housing and Community Land Trust Fund. Invite them to help FORA design financial packages, down payment assistance programs, employer assisted housing programs, homeowner information/education programs, and modeling a nonprofit and for-profit developer partnership to produce mixed income housing. They can also be tapped to provide administration and management of dedicated affordable units, i.e. qualifying potential tenants and administering resale restriction agreements.

• Local nonprofit developers include: CHISPA, Mid-Peninsula Housing Coalition, South County Housing and the Housing Authority of Monterey County.
  
  
• Mid-Peninsula is the developer of Moonridge in Half Moon Bay, City Center Plaza in Redwood City and Open Doors in Los Gatos, all winners of the American Building Association's awards and other design and LIHTC Best in the Nation awards.
  
  
• Regional nonprofit developers include nationally acclaimed BRIDGE, Inc., creator of award-winning mixed-income developments and Ecumenical Association for Housing, who has been instrumental in building workforce and affordable housing in the San Rafael and San Jose areas.
  
  
• The Housing Authority of Monterey's staff represents decades of experience in the County and elsewhere in the country in affordable housing development and brings a nonprofit development perspective to FORA deliberations which is important to hear out, even when its conclusions do not match that of for-profit developers.
  
  
• CHISPA/MOCHA has developed and can provide a top-notch homebuyer education and counseling program that FORA (through the Housing Trust Fund) can incorporate into its own workforce housing, employer assisted housing or other homeownership programs and services at Fort Ord.

Finding: The FORA Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) allocates over $76 million dollars to contingency costs, including $30.78 million dollars for "potential sound walls for major streets" and "street landscaping"; $14.40 million for "caretaker cost contingency"; and $30 million for a contingency reserve. The plan also projects net revenue of $13.57 million. These contingencies and revenues total $89,719,569. That figure is the FORA developer fee equivalent of 2,564 units of residential housing.

Recommendation 4: Instead of devoting the entire $89 million to contingencies and net reserves, FORA could allocate some funds to forgive, discount or defer developer fees on affordable and workforce housing units. This would require an amendment of the Rate and Method of Apportionment of Special Taxes for the Community Facilities District (CFD), an affirmative vote of two-thirds of the current landowners.

ENHANCE FORA'S INTERNAL CAPACITY TO ADDRESS HOUSING NEEDS

Finding: No staff with expertise in Housing Trust Funds or other affordable housing subsidization methods are engaged by FORA or the jurisdictions in developing and implementing a FORA workforce housing strategic plan. FORA's Affordable Housing Task Force has been given no measurable goals or deliverables, and has not made the task force or any other group responsible for delivering an affordable and workforce housing action plan.

Recommendation 5: Get free professional expertise from the Center for Community Change to develop a Housing and Community Land Trust Fund.

The Center for Community Change's Housing Trust Fund Project--the only national source of technical assistance on housing trust funds--works with organizations interested in creating a housing trust fund, through every necessary stage, including:

• Development of a housing trust fund proposal
• Campaign to establish a fund
• Efforts to implement the fund

This assistance has saved local groups enormous amounts of time and expense and helped them develop funds that can benefit from the lessons learned by earlier trust fund campaigns. For more information, contact Mary Brooks, Housing Trust Fund Project, Frazier Park, CA, (661)245-0318.

Recommendation 6: Hire a housing coordinator (or acquire a loaned housing executive from one of the jurisdictions' housing or redevelopment authorities) to work for 6-8 months with CCC to (a) to coordinate solicitation of funds necessary to found the trust fund; (b) organize a workshop (d) file for 501(c)(3) status for the Housing and Community Land Trust Fund.

Recommendation 7: Conduct an independent workshop for Board, staff and interested publics, inviting top nonprofit and for-profit affordable and workforce housing developers, lenders, underwriters and advocates (e.g. Enterprise Foundation, Center for Community Change, BRIDGE, LISC, Santa Clara Housing Trust Fund, Fannie Mae, Bank of America, FHLBSF as well as local housing officials) to help construct an action plan and timetable for overcoming barriers to affordable and workforce housing production at Fort Ord, including the establishment of a Housing and Community Land Trust fund.

These actions are recommended to be undertaken concurrently in order to move beyond discussion to action as quickly as feasible.

ATTRACT NEW FUNDING AND APPLY EXISTING AND FUTURE FUNDS

Finding: Nearly half ($145 million) of the Base Reuse Capital Improvement Plan revenues/costs are dedicated to transportation infrastructure.

Recommendation 8: Continue to seek transportation funding for FORA-related projects within federal highway appropriations and within the next round of highway funding, currently dubbed "Next-TEA." Devote any funds awarded to these projects and no longer needed to underwrite transportation infrastructure on or off Fort Ord to forgive developer fees on affordable or workforce housing. Alternatively, place the funds in a Housing and Community Land Trust Fund to support a variety of affordable and workforce housing subsidies and services.

Finding: There are a number of free services which would increase FORA's understanding of affordable and workforce housing finance. Fannie Mae, for example, has a variety of special mortgage products designed to increase affordable and workforce housing. Federal Home Loan Bank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and other financial institutions also have special programs and products which will boost the effectiveness of a Housing and Community Land Trust Fund. FOR A, through its recently received credit enhancement grant, can initiate these steps in a logical follow-up to its previous work.

Recommendation 9: As current escrow funds from the previous grant become available, they should be reprogrammed for work with Fannie Mae, especially the Local Partnership Office, and other financial institutions (listed in the Resources section) to create partnerships between local or regional lenders and FORA to increase subsidies and decrease financial constraints to expanding affordable homeownership on Fort Ord.

Finding: The former Fort Ord made the Superfund list in 1990. Cleanup will include extracting and treating contaminated groundwater and capping the landfills to limit future infiltration and minimize additional leaching. Forty-one sites have been identified as potentially hazardous sites.

Recommendation 10: Working in coordination with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the State of California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), invite self-insured brownfield redevelopment companies with nationally recognized decontamination expertise to re-evaluate properties currently believed irremediable for housing and retail development at Fort Ord. In addition (not in lieu of) increasing production of workforce housing on clean property, work with the EPA, DTSC and the Army to transfer land that can be privately remediated by such companies, selling contaminated land at an appropriate discount, with stipulations for production of mixed income housing.

Finding: FORA has a grant to research innovative environmental remediation measures and with FORA's support, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Construction Engineering Research Lab (CERL), CSUMB and others are engaged in developing technologies and finding processes to reduce the costs of FORA building deconstruction and to prevent long-term environmental impacts from demolition. The potential exists at Fort Ord—and many other active and retired DOD facilities--for creating a public/private deconstruction program more cost-efficient than demolition, a program that could become a national model and provide an income center, local jobs and training programs. FORA has not factored in the full cost of disposing of these materials (such as landfill and opportunity costs)

There also exists the potential that millions of dollars can be saved through building deconstruction by companies and/or nonprofits. The materials that are salvaged can be reused or sold, the donated labor becoming "sweat-equity," credited towards home ownership and relieving jurisdictions of some of the financial burden of building removal. Some of the lumber in old Army installations is more valuable than new lumber at building supply stores. To take advantage of this situation, Habitat for Humanity has developed a program called "ReStore," where deconstructed materials are brought for reuse. Deconstruction also offers a better long term solution for the environment.

Recommendation 11: Develop and implement a policy to support federal and local pilot programs in deconstruction and recycling. Raise the goal for recycling in building removal activities to 50 percent. Support the creation of a building materials resale store on the Former Ft Ord.

Finding: The state's recent passage of Proposition 46 offers FORA the opportunity to solicit funds from the new Local Housing Trust Funds program and other new programs.

Recommendation 12: Take full advantage of the provisions of Proposition 46—The Housing and Emergency Shelter Trust Fund Act of 2002. Programs of note:

• Multifamily Housing development, $800 million annually, Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) January, 2003, non-profit and for-profit developers and public agencies eligible for new construction, rehab and preservation of rental housing for low income households.
  
  
• Local Housing Trust Funds, $25 million in grant funds, NOFA 07/03, non-profits and public agencies are eligible applicants. If a public agency is the applicant, grant is conditional on housing element approval.

The state has a significant home purchase assistance pilot program to assist first-time homebuyers in high cost areas in California. The Monterey Peninsula area was the highest housing cost area in the state in 2002 but it is not included in High Cost Area Home Purchase Assistance Pilot Program (HiCAP). Currently eligible counties in the program are: San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa and Sonoma.

Recommendation 12: Advocate state government inclusion of Monterey County in any extension of the HiCAP pilot program.

Finding: The housing crisis in Monterey County is a regional problem requiring a regional solution. The jurisdictions that currently have the most very low and low income housing and do not need to create more to achieve a jobs/housing balance (Marina, Seaside) are the cities that will be responsible, along with the County, for creating most of the housing on Fort Ord. If Marina and Seaside are expected to create more affordable housing (moderate, low and very low income) at Fort Ord, all FORA jurisdictions who need affordable housing should share in the costs as well as the benefits of producing that housing on Fort Ord.

Recommendation 13: Following Fair Housing Act guidelines, (1) expand and instigate Employer Assisted Housing programs for teachers, university employees, and city and county public safety employees (in all FORA jurisdictions) through the Housing and Community Land Trust Fund. (2) Use the availability of employer-assisted workforce housing programs in recruitment of business and industry to Fort Ord. (3) Use recruitment in Employer Assisted Housing programs as the backbone of the first workforce housing development on the former Fort Ord. Housing Trust Fund Employer Assisted programs could be used by the jurisdictions to offer 1) preference in Fort Ord affordable housing or 2) housing subsidies inside their jurisdictions.

INITIATE REGULATORY CHANGES

Finding: Monterey County, in its East Garrison option announcement, gives its developer the flexibility to reduce developer fees on affordable units (increasing fees for above-market units as a cross subsidy). This is the most straightforward way to increase affordable housing in developments at Fort Ord given current redevelopment cost-recapture policies.

Recommendation 15: FORA's planned mixed use projects that include mixed income housing should develop a flexible development fee structure based on the goals and strategies for the redevelopment of Fort Ord.

ENLIST LEGISLATORS TO ACHIEVE LONG-TERM GOALS

Finding: Some of the regulatory hurdles that FORA faces can be overcome by enabling legislation. Workforce housing challenges at Fort Ord are understood by most legislators, and they are willing to help either by seeking funding or relaxing barriers.

Recommendation 16: FORA should develop a long term legislative strategy and work closely with the California legislature and its Congressional delegation, two of whom sit on committees that directly affect appropriations and the reuse of military installations.

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03.27.03