Public Hearing to Consider Adoption of the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Fiscal Year (FY) 2015-20 Five-Year Strategic Plan and the FY 2015-16 Action Plan, and Authorize the City Manager to Negotiate and Execute Related Documents, Agreements, and Modifications.  (Housing 235 and 236)
Item six Public Hearing to consider adoption of the Community Development BLOCK Grant Fiscal Year 2015 through 2025 year strategic plan in the Fiscal Year 20 1516 Action Plan and authorize the city manager to negotiate and execute related documents, agreements and modifications. I'll go ahead and get started. My name is Claudia Young. I'm the Housing and Community Development Program Manager for the Housing Authority, and we administer the CDBG and home funds for the city. It's like. So every year we receive an annual grant funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. We receive CDBG and home funds. The CDBG funds are specifically meant to target low income populations 80% and below. The purpose is to develop viable communities through the provision of decent housing, economic development and a suitable living environment. The City is a member of the Alameda County Home Consortium, which is required by HUD to undertake a five year consolidated plan. As a part of this process, the city is required to complete a strategic plan every five years to identify priority needs and develop broad policy objectives for the use of CDBG and home funds. This is included in your packet as Exhibit one. The Broad County Home Consortium policy objectives are identified include preserving and increasing affordable housing and supportive services, reducing housing discrimination, preventing and addressing homelessness and addressing non housing community development needs. In addition to the priorities identified by the Home Consortium, jurisdictions are required to annually evaluate local priority needs. This is a process. This process was completed in January 20th, 2015, when the Council held a public hearing and approved the priority needs, which were included in our notice of funding availability. The city's priority needs include affordable housing, homelessness, public services, economic development and public facilities and infrastructure. In addition, the Social Services and Human Relations Board refined the priority needs for the public services category. This is included in your pocket as Exhibit three. And they chose to specifically refine it to preserving Almeida's safety net services. In the consolidated process with the strategic plan, the city also develops an annual action plan that identifies specific objectives and proposed use of CDBG funds on the annual basis. This year, for year 1516, our entitlement grant is 1,000,039 953 and this is a reduction of 3.1% from the previous year. And we have an estimated program income from the current year of 150,000. The public services funding this year is a 15% cap, which totals out to 170,493. We had seven sub recipients recommended for funding. And I noticed that I left out echo housing. But Alameda Food Bank Building Features Family Violence Law, Legal Assistance for Syrians Eden 211 and then in other continuing community development projects, we have the Affordable Housing North Housing Clearance activities, which is investigative work specifically for the 90 unit homeless accommodation only, economic development for Alameda Point Collaborative for their community based development organization, residential rehabilitation programs and our continued support for the former Continuum of Care. Everyone Home Plan. So today I'm seeking council's approval to submit the five year strategic plan for years 15 through 20 and the annual action plan for fiscal year 1516. I'm seeking approval to submit and also to adopt the budgets for both CDBG and Home for 1516. This concludes my presentation and I'm available if you have any questions. Irvine questions it. Do. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Yang. I have just a couple questions. So on your staff report, page three is a table that lists. A number of organizations activities, the category they fall into in the recommended funding, and the one recipient organization that that constitutes economic development is our mid-point collaborative community based development corporation or C BDO receiving $100,000. Can you tell me first of all, what is the Albina collaborative community based Development Corporation? What what do they do? And where does this $100, $100,000 go in a year? So they do job training. And actually, the executive director, Doug Biggs, is here and and he's speaking later. So he can work on that. Okay. And he's planning to speak later. Did you say he's one of the speakers? Okay. Okay. We'll wait for him. And then on their apologies, they have an iPad. This just quits on me every time I try to look something up. So. It's exercising my limited patience. Okay. So the exhibit I wanted to look at is the exhibit three, the letter from the Social Services Human Relations Board. And on page two of that letter, it is noted that the prior to Shrubs March 26, 2015, meeting city staff informed us that they would like to designate the remaining CDBG public service funds $6,753 for rent conciliation services rather than allocated to existing projects. And I had noted earlier that there were I mean, as there are every year, more requests for funding than dollars available. So can you help us understand what how this works? So actually, every single public service application that came in received their full asking for this year. Okay. And we did have 6753 left. And so right now, we've set it aside for a reconciliation program, if needed. If we decide later down the road that we don't need it, then we're going to go ahead and reprogram those funds back to the public services. And I believe Shrub has made the recommendation to split it across the board. So I must be confused at the paragraph at the bottom of page, one said the board evaluated and scored four applications whose requests total 1000 now excuse me, $145,893. 6000 oh 6000 less. Okay, that's not what I'm used to hearing. So. Okay, so you took that that overage and applied it to the reconciliation if council decides to do that in another item. Correct. And we can always reprogram it back. You can reprogram if needed, if more funds come available. If we decide not to use it for reconciliation services, then I'll be back in or about September so we can reprogram it back to public services or anything else. We decide. Okay. I appreciate that. Thank you. Any other clarifying questions? I have a question on the staff report on page three where it has that chart. Is that a summary of. It's a summary of exhibit actions. Okay. So and that was not included in the presentation with the dollar amounts. So is it possible to share that on the screen so that the so that the public can see what we're actually referring to? The breakdown. Exhibit four. And then I can call the speakers. I think it's important to share with the public why we're. But we're actually. Referring to. So I'm going to go ahead and call the speakers while she's working on that. The first speaker will be James for perjury, and then Patricia, the DA, and then Aaron Scott. And the last speaker will be Doug Biggs. Thank you. Good evening, Madam Chair. In council members, my name is James Trujillo. I'm the new executive director at Legal Assistance for Seniors, one of the agencies you're discussing. Although I'm the new executive director, I've been a staff. Attorney at Legal Assistance for Seniors for. The past five years, and I'm excited to start a new role working in a different capacity with the agents, with the agency. And second, I want to take a moment to thank you for your previous funding and for continuing to consider funding us. This is absolutely critical funding and allowing us to provide the services that we do provide to the seniors in the city of Alameda. A brief overview is we provide direct legal representation for free to seniors in several areas of law. We provide community education to seniors through the mass senior center. And we also house the Health Insurance, Counseling and Advocacy Program for Alameda County. And so you heard Mastec discuss four times a month that there is counseling involved for health insurance and that actually is run through legal assistance for seniors. That's one of our programs, although it's not really included in this grant. I don't want to take up too much of your time. I just want to introduce myself and really express my appreciation for the council and for the work that you do and for considering further funding to help us do the work that we do. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Patricia Beder, and I'm here representing building futures with women and children. I am the development and communications director there and including included in our proposal, which you're considering, is some funding for our Midway Shelter, some funding for us as leaders of the City of Alameda Domestic Violence Task Force, and a little funding for homelessness prevention. Housing assistance. Moneys. Like the speaker before me. I want to thank you for your past support for our work and for your consideration tonight. Because when I'm with the support and when with your consideration in the will, when that kind of thing happens, that mother sheltered at Midway and served in a safe environment and provided with an array of services, can leave midway with a key in her hand. And you know the key, that annoying thing to us, that you keep losing them and you don't know where they are and you get extras of them, so you will always know where they are. That key is something very precious to to a woman who leaves a homeless shelter with housing. That's our biggest priority at Midway. And you probably you may know that Midway leaves leads Alameda County in shelter residents exits to permanent housing. When funding like this is available, that family that needs help with back rent and utilities in order to avoid becoming homeless and entering the shelter system can count upon that little bit of help they need to get back on track. And then finally, the victim, Alameda based victim of intimate partner violence can know what services are available right here to her or him so that the safety planning can take place in the, you know, exiting that violent relationship can take place in a safe way. Thank you again for your consideration and it's good to see you. Yeah. Good evening. My name is Aaron Scott. I'm the executive director of the Family Violence Law Center. And I want to thank the council and also the Human Relations Board and city staff for all of their hard work sorting through the applications and making recommendations. And thank you for your continued support of our work. The grant that you give us supports direct legal services to domestic violence victims who live in Alameda. We provide assistance with restraining orders and related family law orders. And restraining orders have been studied and shown to be one of the most effective tools in breaking the cycle of violence. Since domestic violence is one of the leading causes of homelessness for women. It. Also helps them remain in safe and stable homes. So we thank the council again. And also just want to underscore that it's a relatively small grant for us. It pays just for the legal services, but it keeps us anchored here in the city where a countywide agency we're active in. The Domestic Violence Task Force were actually written into the Alameda Police Department's protocol. They call us whenever there's a domestic violence incident. And without without this funding, it would be difficult for us to remain so firmly anchored in the city. So thank you. Thank you. Good evening, Madam Mayor. Members of the City Council. I'll wear two hats tonight, so I'll start off as executive director of the Alameda Point Collaborative and answer Councilmember Ashcraft question about the community based development organization. Funding CBD oil at it is CBD oil community based development organization. Not Corporation is a specific designation by CDBG for organizations that comply with very strict guidelines around doing community development. And you have to have a board that represents the the community you're serving, which our board does, and the funding allows you to do economic development program. So we've used it to build out some of our social enterprise programs, which then employ residents in both permanent and part time and and training capacity. So the ultimate goal of it is to train and prepare low income residents of the area for employment, permanent employment. And we target 40 people, 40 residents a year. That's our goal. And over the last five years, we've done some amazing things with that, getting people into workforce, developing social enterprises that employ people out of the base. This is also, as you may be familiar with CDBG funding. There's so there's different pools of funding. There's public service, there's rehabilitation, there's blight and whatnot. Public service has a cap on the amount of money you can spend. You cannot exceed that cap. So we're always rubbing up against the ceiling. CBD oil funds, which are only allowed for designated seed CBD oil organizations, are not included in that cap. So in actuality, you get to do much more services because you're doing it on a community based development organization funding. I hope that makes some sense. It allows us to do a lot more services for the community without negatively impacting wonderful organizations like the Food Bank Building for futures for women and children that also need to provide public services. Well, now switch hats. Good evening. My name is Doug Biggs. I'm the president of the Social Service Human Relations Board. And I do want to clarify before I start those remarks that the Social Service Human Relations Board only reviews public service dollars, does not review CBO dollars at all. So this year, we played a little bit of a different role in in the process, both developing the RFP and actually doing the scoring. In the past, the housing authority would do the scoring and we would look at their recommendations. So this time we kind of reversed roles. Scoring Matrix was developed in a dance that all members of Shrub participated in the scoring. We did receive four applications and all four were deemed to be highly competitive, highly worthy, really met all the goals and the needs that SSA Tabi was looking to fulfill. So all four programs were. Recommended for funding. As Claudio mentioned, the total amount requested was less than what was available. I think for us the takeaway from this is really it's a sad one. People have given up. People have given up on CDBG over the last decade. We have been the federal government has reduced the money so much that so much of what we used to fund is now out of the picture. We're down to the bare, bare, bare necessities. And organizations have just given up looking to CDBG as a way to support them. And that's a sad state of affairs to be in. We did look at allocating the remaining funds, but as was mentioned, staff asked that it be set aside for conciliation services. That is clearly within the realm of authority and is appropriate to do. We do want to though track those funds in the concept of public services and have them come back to us and report on how those funds were actually spent, what kind of services came out of that, because we know that next year will be looking at this again. So in in conclusion, we strongly support the staff recommendations and ask that you approve the allocations as recommended. Thank you. Thank you. He was our last speaker. For comments and emotions. So I will move adoption of the Community Development BLOCK Grant for fiscal year 2015 to 2025. Your strategic plan and the fiscal year 2015 2016 Action Plan and authorize city manager to negotiate and execute related documents, agreements and modifications. I could. Any Council comments? Member Song. Yes, I think I certainly support the what's in front of us tonight. The key thing to remember, though, is the speakers who are here represent roughly 15% of the dollars that we are deliberating over. And so when you look at the details of what we're funding, the remaining 85%, I think it underscores, if nothing else, our abiding partnership with the Alameda Housing Authority, which needs to be strengthened. And for the reason that in the report there's a reference to there was some time ago 1700 households desiring to to get 90 units that were available at the Breakers. I mean, that certainly suggests a crying need for affordable housing. But also to suggest for our continuing partnership with the Alameda Housing Authority, which is which is what this is all about. So I support this. You know the comments call the question although some favor. I motion houses unanimously. Thank you. Six Ih introduction of ordinance amending the Alameda Municipal Code by adding article. Well to Chapter six concerning the rent, the review of rent increases and adding Section two Dash 23 to Article two concerning the creation of a rent review advisory committee and recommendation to provide direction to the city manager regarding a study to analyze the impacts of rising rents on Alameda Resident. And a revised ordinance was passed out of the RDS tonight with a correction to the numbering. Just so everybody knows, the grocery workers in this one. Ended up having the same numbers, three number. Has it been corrected on line? Yes. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Debbie Potter, the city's community development director. I have a brief staff report for you. On January 20th, the city council directed staff to prepare an ordinance to strengthen the city's rent review process. Based on five discussion points on which consensus was reached through a community engagement process led by Mr. Jeff Canberra. Council directed staff to incorporate the six discussion point. If consensus was achieved because no consensus was reached on the sixth point, which was whether or not there should be a threshold amount of the rent increase before you could access the rack process. Staff has prepared two ordinances which we have called in the staff report Ordinance A, an Ordinance B for council consideration. Both ordinances provide similar language on the five points where there was agreement. And I'll just run quickly through the those points on which there there was consensus and and which are reflected in the ordinances. The first is that tenants must be notified of the availability of the city's rent review process and how to access that process when they receive a notice of rent increase in Ordinance A. Every tenant receiving a rent increase will get this ordinance if there is no threshold as there is no threshold rent increase required in ordinance B, only tenants whose rent increase is at the threshold or higher would receive a notice regarding the rent dispute resolution process. If a property fit. If a property owner fails to notify the tenant of the rent review process, the proposed rent increase is null and void until the property owner properly notifies the tenant of the process.