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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2025-08-19 TranscriptionIowa City City Council Work Session of August 19, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [00:00:20] Alright, it is August 19, 2025. It is around 420, and this is the City of Iowa City work session. We apologize in advance. We've waited about 20 minutes for some technical issues to be worked out, but they are still trying to figure that out for anyone that is hoping to join us virtually, you will be able to visit the city website to see this session posted. We're going to go ahead with our agenda, starting with the number one, clarification of agenda items. Yes. Alright. We'll go on to item number two. Information packet discussions, August 7. [00:01:16] Yeah, I'd like to talk about the tentative meeting schedule. Currently, we end our planned sessions on December 9, which I think is pretty typical. And then we have nothing listed for January. I was just doing some planning ahead and had it back and forth with the city attorney. And I learned that we can't actually have our organizational meeting on January 6 right before the meeting because it doesn't meet our city rules, so we need to schedule something before that. So, um, is 8:00 AM that same day possible, but just has to be before noon, is that correct? [00:01:51] Right. Under city code, that organizational meeting can take place no later than noon on the six. [00:02:00] So I figured everyone would probably want to get that scheduled and either do it on this It could happen on the second anytime after the second or the second or up to the sixth at noon. Uh, that's right. And I'm fine with just doing it on the sixth at 8:00 AM. But figure for work schedules, people would want to know. [00:02:20] I'll still be on break, so it won't matter to me. [00:02:22] Can plan ahead for that. [00:02:24] Sure. [00:02:24] So I think in Tuesday, January 6 at 8:00 AM. Organizational meeting? All right. Thank you. Anything else from that work session? [00:02:51] Do you want me to put a tentative schedule together for next year? [00:02:54] Page 1 Iowa City City Council Work Session of August 19, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. Yes. [00:02:55] And put it in the packet for the September meeting? [00:02:57] Yes, please and thank you. We normally do it right around September, October. We will move on to August 14 information packet. [00:03:15] 1 had one thing when it came to the future or pending City Council work session topics. I was just curious about a process on how we decide which ones are generally talked about first, how that all plays out. If anybody has an answer. [00:03:41] City Council can direct the schedule, and sometimes that's done at this table. Otherwise, I typically would work through that with the mayor and mayor pro tem in a weekly prep meeting for the Council agenda, but a majority of you can direct the scheduling of the work session topics. [00:04:06] Actually, Jeff, just for clarification, it's so for city Council to get onto the sorry, for an agenda item to get onto the working session with city Council rather than mayor, it's four, is that correct? You said a majority. [00:04:24] Three. [00:04:25] Yeah, I was just double checking. [00:04:28] Sorry? [00:04:28] Oh, sorry, I thought someone was speaking. [00:04:30] Of course, as you're aware, what normally is required to get an item on the agenda is either. This is according to the council's rules. The mayor, at least three council members, the city manager, the city attorney, or the city clerk, may put something on the agenda. It doesn't specify in those rules whether we're talking about a formal meeting, which is normally what we're thinking about or a work session, but I would read that as applying equally to both a work session agenda or a formal meeting agenda. Page 2 Iowa City City Council Work Session of August 19, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [00:05:03] Thank you for the clarification. I didn't know if it was three or four. I couldn't remember. [00:05:12] Any other item? Alright, we're going to move on to item number three, University of Iowa Student Government Updates. City, the city is filling up, and so students are back. Welcome back, and we'll hear from USG pretty soon. Item number four is overview of Iowa City Human Rights Ordinance. I'm gonna bring up Stephanie Bowers, our HR coordinator. Welcome. [00:05:41] Thank you. Let's see. Okay, so thank you for the invitation to speak today. So as the title reads, I'm going to talk about the Human Rights ordinance, often referred to as Title two of the city code. And I thought I would start with a very brief history of the Human Rights Commission, just to show its longevity and also its importance in 2025. So the Human Rights Commission was established by the city Council in August of 1963, and there were seven members appointed at that time. And the city Council chose to create a Human Rights Commission to deal with the problems of the relationships of the various races, colors, creeds, and nationalities living within the community with the purpose of eliminating prejudice and tolerance, bigotry and discrimination. And so at its first meeting in September of that year, the Human Rights Commission decided to take on housing discrimination as its first project. So for the next year, the commission did outreach with realtors, with landlords, did surveys and interviews with community members with an emphasis on people of color to get their experiences in the renting or buying of homes here in Iowa City. And so a year later, the city would be the second city in Iowa to actually have a fair housing ordinance on the books. Des Moines was first creating theirs in June of 1964, so they just beat us by a few months. But one thing that's just kind of a neat historical note is Iowa City was before the state of Iowa and having a fair housing ordinance. The state of Iowa didn't have theirs until 1967, and then the Federal Fair Housing Act wasn't signed into law until April of 1968. So And Iowa City was not the only city in Iowa that was creating commissions at this time. Iowa City, along with Cedar Rapids, Dubuque and Sioux City all established commissions in 1963. And then DeMoines had been the leader, starting one back as well as 1955, and then Davenport started theirs in 1962. So why are local Human Rights Commissions important? Commissions offer stronger protections, so they allow communities the choice to go beyond the minimum set by the state or federal government. We also have a faster response. So if somebody files a complaint with our office, our agency can usually resolve that complaint in a quicker time frame than a state or federal agency. Local commissions offer excuse me, also offer tailored solutions so they can give communities a way to address their own unique concerns. Then also local commissions can reflect the values and needs of a local population. So today, the Human Rights Commission has expanded 7-9 members, and the commissioners primary responsibility is to do outreach and education on human rights. They also have the authority under the Human Rights ordinance to make recommendations to the city Council for any further legislation that they feel is needed as it relates to discrimination. Commission also consists of two staff, so myself and a human rights investigator. We help with organizing the commission's events and activities. And then we also have the day to day responsibility of enforcing the ordinance and investigating complaints of discrimination. And Page 3 Iowa City City Council Work Session of August 19, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. we also do outreach and education to the community. So the coverage areas have expanded since 1963. So the areas are not onlyjust housing now and housing would cover buying, renting or leasing of property, but we also have credit that includes financial services like loans, life, health and accident insurance, education, which covers academic classes, extracurricular activities, research programs, and occupational or training programs. Um, fourth area is employment, which would include hiring promotions and pay. And then the last area we have coverage in is public accommodations, which cover businesses or public services that are open to the public, such as restaurants, malls, parks, hotels, or hospitals. And we currently have 15 protected characteristics under the Human Rights ordinance, and protected characteristics are personal traits that the law protects so that everyone can be treated fairly and equally. And three of the 15 are just available in the area of housing. And so for housing, we have the additional protection of familiar status, which is whether or not a person has a child or children under the age of 18 residing in the home. Also we have presence or absence of dependence, and so that's looking at whether individuals have dependent or not. And then the age of the dependent doesn't matter like it would with familiar status. And then finally, in housing, one of the unique characteristics we have a public assistance source of income, which provides protection for people receiving income from federal state or local public assistance programs, but currently that would exclude rental subsidies. So in all five areas, so credit, education, employment, public accommodation and housing, we have ages, a protected characteristic, color, creed, disability, gender identity, marital status, national origin, race, religion, retaliation, which is protection from somebody who either reports discrimination or somebody who participates in investigation involving discrimination, and then we have sex and sexual orientation. And the next slide is just a visual representation of that something that we put in our brochures. So who can file a complaint and what are the requirements?So any person claiming to be aggrieved by a discriminatory or unfair practice may file a complaint, they have to file within 300 days of the discriminatory incident, and the incident must have occurred within Iowa City. And then all the complaints must be signed and dated. And complaints, whether or not we have jurisdiction or not, are confidential. So once we have a verified complaint, we send notice along with a copy of the complaint to the complainant. We also send notice to the respondent, along with a copy of the complaint. The respondent also gets a set of questions that are going to be unique based on the allegations in the complaint. They also would be required to provide any relevant documents as a part of that request, too. Then per the ordinance, we have 20 days to serve notice and credit education, employment, and public accommodations. Respondent has 30 days to answer. And in the area of housing, we have seven days to serve notice, and the respondent has 15 days to answer. And so once we get a response back, we make a decision as to whether or not we feel we need more information or we feel that we have enough information that we can make a determination at this time. And so if we feel based upon the response that there's not a reasonable probability of a probable cause finding, then we would normally administratively close that complaint. And if we administratively close a complaint, we send notice to both parties, and we also provide a legal analysis for why we are closing the complaint, and the complainant has ten days from receipt to appeal our decision. So an example of an administrative closure in this scenario, Alex, 20-years-old student here, who files a complaint who says that the landlord didn't renew their lease because of their age. And so if we get a response back from the landlord with documents that provide evidence that show that Alex was late in their payment had an unauthorized animal, had several noise complaints, and that people either Alex's age or similar in age to Page 4 Iowa City City Council Work Session of August 19, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. Alex did have their leases renewed, that would probably be a complaint that we would administratively close because the decision of the landlord is based on the behavior of the tenant and not based upon Alex's age. [00:14:53] And let's see. So if we don't administratively close a complaint, uh, once we get a response back, we do a further investigation, which would involve interviewing both parties, including witnesses and probably doing another request for information and documents, um, to get all the things that we need to come to a decision. And what we're trying to decide is, um, looking at all the information, whether there is a likelihood of a probable cause finding. And so probable cause exists when there are reasonable grounds to believe that discrimination occurred or put more simply if evidence would lead a reasonable person to think that discrimination happened. So a different example, but same scenario. So this is Erin 20-year- old college student files a complaint with the office saying that the landlord didn't renew their lease because of age. If, as a result of the investigation, we find that Erin kept the unit in good condition, had no lease violations. When we do an interview, maybe a co worker of the landlord tells us that the landlord had made statements about getting rid of young tenants. And then, based upon the renewals of that particular landlord, we see that they didn't renew, um any person, Erin's age or around that ages lease, but they did renew folks older than them for leases for the following year. So in that case, that would be something that we would PC or probable cause, because there it does appear that the decision of the landlord was based strictly on age and not on the behavior of the tenant. So that's kind of the difference between administrative closure and a probable cause in terms of what we're looking for. And so if we do get a probable cause, it's my job to work with both parties to try to resolve the- the situation. And usually that's going to involve the list of four things you see here. So remedial action where we're trying to correct the harm. We're also going to try to do some corrective action to ensure that that particular landlord, employer, insurance agent, just depending on what the area is stays compliant even after this finding. And then punitive action or monetary compensation. So it just kind of matters on what the- the probable cause finding was, the duration, the respondent's actions in it? Was it something where they just weren't aware that that was a law or was it, you know, something that they were intentionally doing to discriminate against a person? And so if conciliation fails, if I'm unable to resolve the issue between the two parties, what happens is the case is then taken downstairs to the city attorney's office, where the city attorney makes a determination as to whether or not a complaint is litigation worthy. And they make their recommendation to two members of the Human Rights Commission. So if the city attorney finds that a case is not litigation worthy, and the commission agrees, we close the case. If the city attorney finds that the complaint is not litigation worthy, but the commissioners disagree, then it's my responsibility to proceed with the complain or case to a public hearing. And a public hearing is pretty much what it sounds like. It functions like a trial. It's heard by an administrative law judge, and at that point, the complaint is no longer confidential. And one of the things about being a commissioner that's kind of neat is they do have a quasi judicial function. So at the conclusion of a public hearing and the administrative law judge is giving their proposed decision, the Human Rights Commission can either, um agree with that decision, they can modify it, or they can change it altogether and impose something that they think is just under the situation. So- and we do have a complaint referral process. So if somebody files against the city of Iowa City to avoid the Page 5 Iowa City City Council Work Session of August 19, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. appearance of impropriety, we do send those to what used to be known as the Iowa Civil Rights Commission. Now they're off the Iowa Office of Civil Rights. If we can, we try to have another commission investigate them for. It's kind of a trade off. When they get one against their city, we investigate it and vice versa. And sometimes those two options are not available to us. So then we do have to hire outside private attorneys to investigate those complaints. And also, if we get a complaint against the University of Iowa, our jurisdiction does not allow us to have any oversight over state educational divisions, and so those are automatically transferred to the Iowa Office of Civil Rights. And this just gives, I guess, information on the number of complaints that we get in a year, so we get anywhere 40-55, excuse me, 40-55 in a year. Most of the complaints tend to be in employment, public accommodation or housing. We don't see a lot of credit or education complaints filed. And this is 2001- 2024. And so, um, housing has pretty much stayed pretty consistent with employment and public accommodation. So each year, and this shows the protected characteristics. So when a person files a complaint when they che- when they check why they feel they've been discriminated against, this would be the statistics on that. The numbers look kind of out of whack compared to the number of complaints that we get, but that is because more likely than not, a person checks more than one reason for the discrimination. So rarely do we just get a complaint that has one characteristic checks. So that's, um, why you, um, see so many characteristics checked as opposed to the number of complaints received. [00:21:15] May I ask a quick question about that. Is this complaints that they are Iowa City residents in Iowa City is the jurisdiction or are these all complaints that you received, and some might be delegated out? [00:21:29] Sure. So these are all complaints. [00:21:30] Okay. [00:21:31] So yeah. And actually, I think the next. So the next this is something we do every year, so we always map where the complainants reside and then where the discriminatory conduct is alleged to have occurred. So as you can see, we do get complaints that are outside of Iowa City, which you can kind of see on this. But this is an opportunity for the office in the commission to try to intentionally do outreach in neighborhoods in parts of the community where we tend to see a higher number of people filing. Or we tend to see a higher number of folks alleged to have discriminated against. So it's just a nice way for us to kind of focus in our efforts when we're doing our outreach and education. And then the, um- [00:22:20] You said the complaint outside Iowa City. Is that against Iowa City Police also? [00:22:28] I'm not sure I understand the quote. Page 6 Iowa City City Council Work Session of August 19, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [00:22:29] You said we receive- we receive complaints outside Iowa City. Did I get that, right? You said you- we - receive c- [00:22:36] Yeah, we get complaints for other areas. I mean, we get complaints people when they- people here Iowa City Human Rights Commission, we get complaints from all over Iowa, but generally, their complaints if we get complaints, there are places in Johnson County. But we don't have jurisdiction over those, so those get sent to the Iowa civil rights office. [00:22:58] Yes, that's what I want to know. Okay. [00:22:59] Yeah, thanks. [00:23:00] Then I have one more question, too. Um, regarding complaints that have to do with employment, um, do you h this is not something I actually was aware of. If you work for a company that has an HR department, is HRC still available to those folks if they have issues? [00:23:19] Yes. [00:23:19] So working for a company that has their own HR,. [00:23:23] Internal pr- yeah our process would be totally separate. [00:23:27] Right. So someone could. Very good. Thank you. [00:23:32] Yeah. And then just the last slide I have is just, I guess, examples of things that the office and the commission do in terms of our outreach and education. And I don't intend to read each one to you, but just gives you a broad overview of some of the ways we try to engage with the community, so they're aware of our services, of their rights, and just educational opportunities that we offer. [00:23:59] So that the lag. Right? Page 7 Iowa City City Council Work Session of August 19, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [00:24:05] Any comments? And thank you for the presentation. It was very nice to go through and hear what our HRC currently does, and also to hear that history of where we were really in advance of even the state and the federal law. So thank you for that. [00:24:25] Okay, thanks. [00:24:26] Thank you. [00:24:27] Thank you. [00:24:31] All right, we're going to move on to item number 5. And this is to discuss land acquisition and banking for affordable housing development, affordable housing. And we'll bring up Tracy Hisho. Welcome. [00:24:46] Hello. Thank you, Mayor. Thanks. Just want to bring attention to the three documents that were in your information packet. It was the Landbank guidelines, which is basically our site selection criteria, our affordable housing funding overview, which was a recap of the presentation I gave back in October regarding our revenue streams and how we were spending our affordable housing dollars. And then there was a memo on the Affordable Housing fund and demand, which basically covered the balances available. So back in fiscal year 2017, we started the Affordable Housing Fund, 25% of that available was available or dedicated to land banking. The purpose of land banking is to acquire a vacant lot and hold that until a time we can develop it for affordable housing, whether it's a city developing it or one of our community partner, develop it for affordable housing. We purchased one lot back in fiscal year 2018. That lot is going to be sold this week. It was on the last agenda. As I went over the process of acquiring that, it took about 10 years. We purchased it. We went through a couple projects we looked at. They didn't proceed. Then the VIP was successful in getting a home RP award from the state. So that project is proceeding. In fiscal year 20, we changed it from land banking, primarilyjust land banking to what we call opportunity fund. And there's a couple reasons behind that. It was- one was it was difficult to find willing sellers and available land, and it was just taking a lot longer than we anticipated. And new construction always has a high subsidy per unit because you have to you have to parcel the land, and then you have to find all the funding available so that you can reduce debt in your mortgage so that you can offer the property at a lower rent while you're still viable, you still have money available to rehab and, um, basically keep the property in perpetuity. We converted to the operative fund also for flexibility so that we could address opportunities as they rose, and you could still use the money for- to buy a vacant lot. It's just that we expanded it. And some of those uses since we created the Opportunity Fund, we use those funds for to help with the construction of the Ronald Street Lot by the Housing Page 8 Iowa City City Council Work Session of August 19, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. Fellowship. We used it for winter shelter before we started putting it into the annual allocation for the Affordable Housing fund. We've used it for rate on mitigation expenses by the Housing Fellowship when that ordinance was changed or created. We've used it for force view displacement for non ARPA eligible households, and we've used it for increased security deposit and eviction prevention services after COVID. So we've expanded the use of those opportunity funds quite a bit, like I said, as the opportunities arise. Our current balance of the opportunity fund sits at about 465,000. We acquired two of the North Summit lots. I just want to put in perspective, we have 465,000 available. But to buy those two lots on North Summit Street that we use for ARPA funds, that costs 750,000. And we anticipate that we'll build up to 28-36 units or about 25,000 per unit just in sole land costs. And we use the site selection. When we bought the lots in North Summit, we used that site selection criteria that we developed in 2017. And when we bought it, we took you through the criteria and the reason why we chose those lots. Then when I presented back in October, we also did slides and we went through our current funding sources, and we broke those down into four major groups. So it was our annual allocations and entitlements, our special allocations, our project generated revenues and reserves. So currently, based on those four funding criteria or categories, we have 38 million dedicated to affordable housing. This 38 million, we're administering approximately 27 million right now. So the staff is working on that 27 million. It's programmed, and we're implementing it. The great majority of these are federal funds, which comes with all the federal stipulations. So our staff is dedicated to those projects and administering those as required. Of the uncommitted funds, we have 6 million that must be used in Riverfront crossings, and we're currently evaluating financial support to a proposed LI Tech project, sorry, low income housing tax credit project. We have 4 million that must be used for public housing and city owned affordable housing. Basically, they are our public housing reserves. And as we're going through a public housing repositioning that I'm going to talk about a slight little bit later, these funds might be subject to further restrictions. So basically, those are in our housing authority and our public housing account. We have, like I mentioned, the 465,000 in opportunity funds [00:29:29] and 400,000 approximately in [00:29:31] our Foster Road Tax Increment financing account. In addition to the 38 million that we have, we are currently working on agreement with the county to administer 15 VASH project based vouchers, basically for veterans experiencing homelessness on Hollywood Court or Hollywood Drive street Hollywood. [00:29:51] And then we are also looking to acquire 2-3 units in North Liberty using- we're working with a Housing Trust Fund with North Liberty ARPA dollars. If you mind, the housing authority doesn't- it's not just Johnson County, sorry, not just Iowa City. It's Johnson County, Iowa County, parts of Washington County. So we're using a portion of North Liberty ARPA funds to acquire those units, and then they'll be placed in our portfolio, and we'll manage those as affordable housing. That's going to come back to you soon as we identify that property, it'll come back to you for approval. And we have about close to 500 Page 9 Iowa City City Council Work Session of August 19, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. vouchers in Corville, North Liberty right now. We're working on the reposition of public housing to a Section 8 platform because our public housing program is probably not viable long term. We continue to lose money just due to federal appropriations and how we get money for our public housing program. So we're working with Quadel and at our next meeting, we'll probably be going through that public housing repositioning, what HUD allowed repositioning options we have for that continued viability. We're also working with Baker Tilly to position our housing authority into a development arm. So in November, we'll be giving a presentation. What we're learning from Baker Tilly housing authorities of our size typically don't develop affordable housing. That being said, some do, and we're learning- have case studies and learning how best to do that and what organizational structure we need in order to position us in order to do that. In addition to administering our affordable housing funds, development services continues to work on code related barriers to encourage more diversity of housing, more compact development, and encourage the supply of housing, basically all housing. So, in addition to the text amendments, if you remember, that we passed in November of 2023 that focused on supporting housing, diversity, and density, the parking study, it's going to be coming to you later tonight as an agenda item. We're working on that, and that was a component of the pro -housing grant because parking tells us how many parking spaces we must accommodate on our building lot to create a dwelling unit. Parking is a zoning tool much like density and setbacks to elicit a preferred type of development. So too much parking can act as a restriction on residential development. So this parking study will help us look at what is a good ratio that meet our needs, but encourages residential development as well. Staff is working on the comprehensive plan update, and then following the comprehensive update will come the zoning code update. And as time permits and we have the staff capacity, we're looking at our regulations and how we make our zoning processes more streamlined, less time intensive, and shift when possible and appropriate. More lengthy public process to administrative level approvals to encourage private market development. And with that, I'll answer any questions you have. [00:32:33] Why do you- Greg? [00:32:35] 1 was just gonna ask about the context of the 2016, 2017 land banking. Like, why- why was that envisioned and what was the goal? And was there some sort of event that happened that said, Hey, we should really be in the business of land banking?Um, I don't know if anybody has that sort of knowledge looking back that far, but. [00:32:54] Yeah, we had it in our 2015. We had affordable housing plan that we were looking at different ways. And land banking is just one tool that you can use. And so we were hoping that we could buy land so that as affordable housing opportunities came up, we could either convey it, sell or we develop it ourselves. So that was- that was- it was it was 25%- [00:33:15] Page 10 Iowa City City Council Work Session of August 19, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. More theoretical. It wasn't like we missed a serious projects, opportunities, and we didn't want to get caught making the same mistake. [00:33:23] No. [00:33:23] It was theoretical. [00:33:24] Yeah, at that time, we weren't getting regular light tech applications, too. So initially, when we bought the first property that we're- we're selling to DVIP, our thought was that it may help us leverage more light tech awards for our community. So we actually were- were going to try to do a scattered site light tech instead of just one building. That is a light tech award. We would have several throughout the community on a scattered site basis. And while we had good success buying, um, the one over by Frauenholtz-Miller Park, [NOISE] we really did not have success finding other lots that we could purchase. We made several inquiries, but there was never a willing seller that could kind of meet our criteria. [00:34:12] O kay. [00:34:15] When you say, uh, our criteria, was it like offers that we were making or was it, um, other stipulations? [00:34:26] The land banking criteria that you have in there, so we would narrow our search. We weren't putting offers or making inquiries on just any property. We really wanted it to fit those land banking criteria. Um, and we also really were trying to look at a certain size. So much like I think we had six town homes planned for the- the site that DVIP is now going to run with, we were looking for similar size town home sites or small multifamily sites. And, um, we didn't- I don't know that we made any formal offers. I know I personally made a lot of calls to developers. Typically, what we were doing as new developments were being approved by the Council, we were having conversations to say, would you like to sell any of these lots to the city directly? And the ones that fit the criteria, the answer was no to that. [00:35:16] 1 see. [00:35:17] We weren't seeing a lot of interest in light tech developers doing scattered site at the time. You'll see most scattered site or sorry, light tech developers doing one site. Rarely two, but having six units here, Page 11 Iowa City City Council Work Session of August 19, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. five units here, 10 units, that- that didn't seem to be an attractive model for most light tech developers at the time. [00:35:34] Mmh. [00:35:34] Has that shifted with time? [00:35:36] No. [LAUGHTER] Ah, you might get a smaller. Like, the Housing fellowship has done scattered site before, but that's the only one I've seen. Uh, most of our- most of our light tech developers are out of state. They're looking at one site, and they're looking at 30, 40, 50 units on one site. So that has not changed. [00:35:58] 1 was trying to ask you, what did you said about Hollywood? I missed that. [00:36:03] On Hollywood, we have there's a 15 unit apartment building. And the county- County issued a RFP for development up there. We've responded. We worked with the county, working with agreement that they will at one point convey that property to us. We will manage it for 15 units for project based VASH, basically veterans that are experiencing homelessness. Referrals come from the VA. Uh, and once that agreement gets finalized, that agreement comes to the Council to review. [00:36:32] But that's gonna be only for veteran who experiences is in this. [00:36:35] Yeah. It'll be a VASH project based project. [00:36:39] Okay. [00:36:39] And what I heard [NOISE] about that was utilizing the VASH, uh, those vouchers, was kind of the only feasible way to make that development, uh, work in, uh, with the RFP, is that right? [00:36:58] It was the most viable option for us. [00:37:00] Page 12 Iowa City City Council Work Session of August 19, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. Okay. [00:37:00] 1 mean, the county didn't want just the city. They- they were entertaining. They were hoping that other providers would submit, but we were the only ones that- for the RFP that submitted. And what was viable for us, because we- with project based vouchers for a certain size, three or four units, you have to provide supportive services. We are not in a position to provide supportive services or to pay for supportive services. But if we use the project base through VASH, the veterans, the VA center, they refer and they provide the supportive services at their own expense. So it seemed to be a partnership that worked. [00:37:31] Yeah. [00:37:32] And via- it was financially viable for us to continue. [00:37:34] Mm hmm. [NOISE] [00:37:36] And now, do you have any idea about how many veteran homeless we have? [00:37:44] 1 know we- we're very comfortable knowing that we're gonna fill up with 15, but I don't I can't- Rachel probably would know that. I can't- I can't tell you off the top of my head. [00:37:54] That's fine. [00:37:54] But we're comfortable that we will have enough VASH. That is the one category that we have the hardest to place is our VASH vouchers. [00:38:02] And those- those people, it doesn't matter if they live in Iowa City or somewhere else? [00:38:06] Well, they're coming through the Iowa City VA, but no. Not necessarily, but most people will be from our area. I can't guarantee that all, but since the referral sources the Iowa City VA, a lot of the- lot of the people will be in our community already. Page 13 Iowa City City Council Work Session of August 19, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [00:38:20] And this is, like, since it's a voucher base is Johnson County, kind of, like, because- [00:38:25] It's in our territory. So yes,. [00:38:27] In our territory. [00:38:29] So Johnson, Iowa, to Washington County. [00:38:32] Yes- yes. [00:38:32] Yeah. [00:38:34] Thank you. [00:38:34] Yeah, sure. In kind of anticipation of I think what we'll see in the Baker Tilly report that you said I think is coming in November, will it be- I'm looking at Exhibit A of the land banking guidelines, which tells us kind of how you make decisions. Is that the kind of information that Baker Tilly will kind of tell back to us? Like, this is the decision making process you should go through and saying yay or nay on a development? [OVERLAPPING] [00:39:00] Baker Tilly will feed off a Crowdell's recommendations. [00:39:02] So what you're going to hear from Crowdell, so this will be explained in [OVERLAPPING] [00:39:06] Okay. [00:39:07] But we're looking at a RAID Section 18 disposition method of going from a public housing platform to a Section 8 platform. That requires us to divest our public housing into a nonprofit that's affiliated with us. So we would control the nonprofit. The housing authority would manage all those housing units. So Baker Tilly's task is much larger. It's talking about the organizational structure we need to continue. It's Page 14 Iowa City City Council Work Session of August 19, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. also about staffing models. So if we start developing projects, because right now we have 86 public housing units, but we also have 24 that aren't any type of federal program. As we develop those city affordable- city assisted or city owned affordable housing, we need a staffing model to basically say, as we- as every 50 unit we acquire, what staff do we need to go with it? What org- what organizational structure we need, where the division sits? Even is it- is it independent? They might recommend that the housing authority become an independent agency that stands alone because we're unique. Iowa City is the decision maker for the housing authority, but yet you're the decision maker for all of Johnson County, Iowa County, parts of Washington County, which is- it's- it's- it's been done. It's just unique for a lot of housing authorities in Iowa. So anyway, so they'll talk about our organizational structures. They'll talk about staffing models, and we're working with them to go through a revised value statement, mission statement, and our strategic goals in the housing authority. And we- it might go through a rebranding because we have a hard time even with the name Iowa City Housing Authority, we get applications from across the state because they hear Iowa, and they apply to us. And then when they come up to the top of the waiting lists they're like, I want to be in Des Moines and I want to be in Dampoort and I'm like, you apply to Iowa City. So that's our jurisdiction. And so people get confused. So they're going to look at a very high level overview about how we need to be organized, if we're going to go through branding, how we're gonna prito- prioritize our strategic goals, and all that will come into one document and be presented hopefully in November. [00:41:02] Okay. So it's really- it's not the strategy of the development, but the organizational strategy. [00:41:08] Yeah. [00:41:08] Okay. [00:41:08] That being said, we've also hired them to be our development manager to see us through the first pilot project on North Summit Street. So they'll be helping us with the concept with pricing with going out for an architect, forbidding it, and then finding the financial because the pro housing money for those Summit Street in the pro housing grant, we just said we had to have 18 units, but we see the opportunity that we could have maybe up to 36. Well, if we go up to 36, we don't have enough money. So now we have to worry about how do we find enough money? And so Baker Tilly will help us close that gap so that we can still- I wasn't gonna reach it, but as the housing authority, they're enterprise fund. They don't rely on general fund. So everything we do in the housing authority of the enterprise fund, we have to make sure it's financially viable because we don't live off or we don't get injections of general fund money. So we have to make sure through the programs, the rent revenue, HUD assistance that we are self sustaining and that we can take on these projects. So Baker Tilly will help us with the organizational structure and they also take- take us through being a development manager for our first project. Page 15 Iowa City City Council Work Session of August 19, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [00:42:08] Okay. Well, back to the Exhibit A thing. I appreciate having that we've had a couple of conversations about how the city makes decisions on purchasing land, and I think as a counselor, it's helpful for me to kind of understand if I see something, you know? Is this exciting or maybe not fit for us? But also, it's helpful to appoint constituents to say, Hey, this is why we're maybe not taking this on. Here's our criteria, and it might not meet those. So this- this document's helpful. I hope there's an iteration of it, and now that we're not line banking, I guess, so. [00:42:39] And the like with site selection, we also have to think of staff. Like do we have the staff- staff capacity to take on more projects? Baker Tilly will help us with- I would say, right now, no, our plate is full right now, but they'll help us get to the position of when we have to hire somebody when we can financially- it's feasible for us to hire more people and what positions we need to hire in order to do what we want to do. [NOISE]. [00:43:00] Thank you. [00:43:00] And that all comes back for you guys to look and provide direction and to- and to approve, to tweak. Um, yeah [00:43:08] Kind of piggybacking off of Councilor Moe's comments, too. I was going through the- oh, by the way, thank you so much for this. I know affordable housing is a very important thing for a lot of people in this community. And so if anybody just happens to be watching this work session, I'm sure there's tons of people riveted to their computer screens. But if they go back and look at it, the IP that we're talking about, the information packet is public information. A lot of really, really important good information in this. Thank you for putting that together for us. Um, one in the criteria here, I don't specifically see and probably because it's a moving target, but I would assume, too, that, like, cost per square foot of a land banking option would be there's probably some sort of a consideration that's very central to this process that probably- I don't see it, like, specifically included in here unless I missed it. But I'm just assuming that that's [OVERLAPPING] [00:43:58] 1 think what you're- we will look at that in pre development costs can we water? Can we sewer? Because we're just buying vacant land, but the costs go up exponentially if it's outside our growth area, if we can't water, sewer easily or help. [BACKGROUND] Basically our proximity. So we would look at, like, the potential costs. [00:44:18] Page 16 Iowa City City Council Work Session of August 19, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. Sure, just kind of like the financial part of it, too. There's a piece that's not listed here, but it is incredibly important part of this process. [00:44:25] Ye p. [00:44:26] Yeah, I've kind of said before we could- we could go through this criteria and find the perfect property that meets all of what we're looking for. But if they're asking 10 times more than market value, we're probably going to walk away from it. So at the end of the day, the price- the price does matter. [00:44:44] We do the same thing for home or CDBG when our nonprofits are looking at vacant land or something. It has to praise to value. We can't pay over the praise or assess value. [00:44:53] Sure. [00:44:55] 1 have a general question, but it looks like you wanted to. [00:44:58] Are you sure? Okay. Um, as an affordable housing tool, is there data about how effective land banking is? I know Geoff mentioned that, you know, since we implemented it, tried it, we haven't been all that successful. I just wondered if there's, like, if there are broader studies that kind of say, as a tool, I mean, I know there is no silver bullet. There is a multitude of tools. How effective is this one? Is there data on that? [00:45:27] Yeah, I think the data said, it depends on. If you remember Invest Health, um, here's what's called County Health Rankings. And if you go on that site, and if you go at affordable housing, it'll give, like, the tools of affordable housing, and then it'll give basically case studies, and then it'll talk about its relative effectiveness. And I think land banking is one of those things that'll say, like, it can help. [LAUGHTER] I mean, it's how successful you can acquire land and how successful you have other resources available to commit to that land. So, um, it's a strategy. I wouldn't put all the marbles in one basket. One, two. [00:45:59] Yeah. [00:45:59] 1 think it's the right saying, right? Page 17 Iowa City City Council Work Session of August 19, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. [00:46:00] Yeah. [00:46:01] You know, just the market- the housing market can play a big role. If you're a community that struggles with a lot of vacant property and maybe property owners that aren't motivated to sell, having the city intervene and really go after and try to secure those properties and turn them around pretty quickly can be an effective strategy. Um, what we've found here is that the property tends to turn pretty quick on its own. The market's pretty robust, which I think we underestimated back in 2015, 2016, when we set forth on that strategy, um, it's harder to get the property, and, uh, we were slower to move on it. And what I recall about those conversations as we were entering into 2020, the Council wanted to act with a little bit more urgency, and so we were starting to pivot away from land banking and doing more things like security deposits, uh, that could provide more immediate relief in the community. [00:47:01] And what, uh, something that, you know, a huge component is land banking mixed with other resources within the city is if you just do land banking alone, but you don't have the capacity to do anything with the land, uh, and no plan to, then yeah, there's no- I can just be a thing that could help. Um, but, you know, I look at communities that are doing- have, like, robust social housing and public housing, uh, and they buy land 15 years ahead of time. Um, they do these like ten to 15 year community plans of affordable housing, then they buy land for what they project to and we're not on the level to be able to do that yet. But, um, it's a long term thing, and we are currently trying to get to a point where we can have more of a say and more of a role in the city directly, uh, playing a part in, um, you know, housing. So I guess that's where my, um, interest comes in when it comes to land acquisition and just the site control and with the goal in mind of the city playing a larger role and directly affecting the market in that way to help, uh, stabilize over time prices, increase the percentage of, like, non -market housing, and buying the land ahead of time can help. What I see reports from other planners, is it helps prevent barriers in the future that create hiccups in the process. Um, that's what I read. [LAUGHTER]. [00:48:44] 1 have a really big question for you, Tracy. Every time you present, I'm always reminded how many different things your department handles. And I think the way that Oliver just articulated the goal of more non -market housing, right? Like, I do think that is a goal, at least for this Council in terms of a strategy for, um, hoping to, you know, if not, lower housing prices, stabilize housing prices for folks. And on the one hand, we have, um, the goals of kind of supply side, um, maybe not incentives, but, you know, trying to streamline the zoning process, um, looking at parking because too much parking might disincentivize certain types of development, um, increasing compactness and those kinds of things that to me, feel very much oriented towards the private sector development. And- and it's the further we get into, um, like, developing our own housing development arm and talking about the transition with the reclassification for the vouchers and those things. I'm just wondering, like, how do- how do we reconcile some of those inherent tensions between what the city is trying to do in its own acquisition Page 18 Iowa City City Council Work Session of August 19, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. development, that kind of thing, and at the same time, wanting developers to understand that we're here to make, you know, their processes less expensive and easier, as well. [00:50:13] Well. [LAUGHTER] I realize in my mind, we try to encourage the private sector to do what they do. We try to get the supply of housing. We try to get them to do a diversity of housing. Knowing that affordable housing subsidized housing. If you want to get lower rent levels, you're the city, local, federal, state, local, whatever, has to be a partner in that. And so, um, we'll always have a finite amount of money that we can invest. And even if we invested, I can't remember if I did the numbers. If all the money like the 4 million that only produce cause right now to produce a new unit that's 200 to $300,000 per unit, it only gets- it's very limited. So we're trying to leverage our money with federal resources with Tech money. So the money that we have available can expand five, six, seven times the amount that we have available now if we partner with our other, um, state and federal resources. Um, but I think it's a partnership, ideally, that we want to get our zoning code to the point where we're supporting market rate development of all housing, but then reserving our funds to make the most impact for the public assisted housing. Does that make sense? Geoff Fruin. [00:51:22] 1 would just maybe double down on that. We need housing of all types of all sizes, of all price range, and the city alone won't be able to do that. And we've seen the private sector alone isn't effectively doing that. So we've got to push on both sides, and even then it's going to be a struggle to hit some of those targets that we've talked about in the comp plan presentations. [00:51:48] 1 think it was you, Councilor Bowers at our last economic development committee meeting that specifically said it's time for us to work even harder at getting private developers to say, please come build homes here, by the way, if you could build 300, $200,000 homes a year, that would be amazing and also a whole lot of other things. But, um, I think that's something that the Economic Development Committee were all embraced that, and I know the whole Council should, too. I don't know what the next steps are on that other than just saying it publicly. Like, we want people to build homes here. [00:52:17] But if we want to bring like we to build home here, we need really to modify our parking requirement. We need to modify many thing that is really in, you know, it will be- the city is not make it easy for them to do. There is many thing that we can waive some requirement or maybe you said we have item on the agenda today to talk about the parking. I hope we can really talk about that and see, you know, right now, the requirement is really huge, um, for somebody like if they have- what my understanding is, correct me if I'm wrong. Even if somebody have built a house, the requirement- if it is four bedroom, it have to be three parking. If it's five bedroom, it'd have to be four parking. And this requirement is really a lot for even a single house. And that's why people are not doing that because instead of, like, spending more area for parking, that's why we don't have, like, big houses for family and three bedroom, people want to minimize, you know, the bedrooms that they have. And I think I guess we need to, uh, look at Page 19 Iowa City City Council Work Session of August 19, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. our code and try to make it easy for developer to come and do housing. And one of them is a parking requirement. And maybe any other thing, I really don't know, but maybe as I say, that's what I believe. And also, like, today, you said a lot of things that we've been doing. Like you said that it has paying for as small as the deposit or rent assistance or like, building houses or land banking. But I think what I believe the problem is, we don't have a goal for affordable housing. I've been like, really, like, asking that. We need a number. We need to have a goal for the city to do affordable, I'd say, like, by 2035, we need to have this X number of affordable housing in the city. And, we- you know, we work toward that because right now we did a lot of things here and there, and, you know, that's why we don't see real affordable housing has been increased, or we still did not see the market price reduced or, like, I don't know, but we need to think, like, really big picture of the city goal of how many affordable housing we need by certain years. [00:54:43] 1 was just going to make mention about all the different tools that we have in our toolbox. Um, always nice to see to take a step back and actually look at what we are doing because there is a lot here. Um, the other thing I wanted to maybe have you mention because we've talked about some of the things that we have the Pro housing, you know, grant that we're working through right now. We know that the shelter house is going to be presenting us with a report at some point. Um, and also we have our- we're converting our vouchers and all that stuff. And we have our our Bloomberg Howard fellow, Nora, who actually wrote a report I think for Harvard, about the national, um, affordable housing. So she was one of the authors of that report that did some research there. So maybe if you can talk a little bit about, um, what our fellow is doing, um, and maybe that's Geoff just to remind the Council. [00:55:53] We're really excited to welcome Nora Cahill to our team. She just started in the city manager's office in July and is getting to know the Iowa City community and getting to know some of our nonprofit partners as well as just the internal staff here. But Nora is primarily going to be working on housing policy, um, and a lot of her work is going to be focused on our unhoused population. And so, um, helping us internally become a little bit more, uh, efficient and structured and how we're working through, uh, issues surrounding homelessness, how we're communicating with our nonprofit partners that are working directly with those populations and really just looking to enhance the whole community network. So a lot of that's going to be learning in the first few months, and then she's going to be helping us get organized, get structured, identify help us identify the most appropriate strategies, along with all of our community partners. So she'll be working, uh, very closely with that. She's already spent a considerable time with the shelter house staff and is getting plugged into their community planning process that we have been supportive of and that we're partnering with them on. So that's really going to kick off this fall, and Nora will be our lead for that particular petition, um, project. Um, and then she's going to be working on a little odds and ends around the housing area as well. So, for example, right now, she's researching some tax abatement programs that other communities use, um, for housing to spur housing investment. And, uh, that's something that, uh, we've been wanting to look more intently at for a while. Right now, we have a tax abatement program that's kind of sitting there on the sideline waiting for someone to say, yes, I'd like to take advantage of this program, and then it takes us several Page 20 Iowa City City Council Work Session of August 19, 2025 (audio and video recordings can be found at https:,[/citychannel4.com/city-council.html) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription through Verbit: AI -Based Transcription & Captioning Services. For greater detail please refer to the meeting recordings. months to really spin that up. We're going to try to be a little bit more proactive and present you with a potential abatement program in the next year or so that hopefully is more ready to go and can be marketed as an opportunity that can get more affordable units constructed from the private sector. So we're excited to have her on her team, and she does- brings with her a lot of great housing experience, a lot of ideas, uh, and is going to be a phenomenal resource for us. [00:58:17] Great. Thanks. That's it. Any other questions? No? All right. We'll move on to Item Number 6, which is Council updates on assign boards, commissions, and committees. Hearing none. We are adjourned. And about a quarter till I believe we went back, we were online. So to anyone that was watching, sorry, we had technical difficulties, and about a 4:45, we were able to finalize those, but this will be recorded for you to go to the beginning of the Council meeting to look at the topics we discussed. We're adjourned from the work session. We'll be back at 6:00 P.M for our formal meeting. [MUSIC] Page 21