COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AND HOUSING ADMINISTRATION
The mission of the Division of Community Development
and Housing Administration is to guide and lead the preservation and growth of
the community in accordance with an established sustainable vision. The division is assisted by and supports the
activities of the City’s Advisory Planning Commission, Housing Authority, Port
Authority, and the citizens through the public hearing and forum process.
This Division is responsible for city planning, community development activities, and also provides management and staff services to the Housing and Redevelopment Authority. The staff supports the City, interested developers and citizens by providing professional planning assistance, counseling, site plan development and review, interagency and interdepartmental coordination, subdivision and administrative plat development, zoning interpretation, development alternatives, financial loan and grant counseling and applications, and housing rehabilitation.
The staff manages loan programs and grant funds
provided through: the Minnesota Department of Trade and Economic Development,
the City’s Economic Development Revolving Fund, Minnesota Housing Finance
Agency, and the Southeast Minnesota Initiative Fund.
Assistance is provided to the City Manager’s office and the Planning Commission in the collection of data and the preparation of plans, strategies, and recommends policies to take advantage of future opportunity, manage change, and in implementation processes to generally improve the community.
The Division continued to assist residential
property owners with housing rehabilitation through the Minnesota Housing
Finance Agency (MHFA). These programs
include deferred loans for rehabilitation, accessibility loans, emergency
repairs, and multiple family rehabilitation loans. The City receives administrative funds from MHFA. The division also obtained first time
home-buyer funding through MHFA and provided $510,496.00 through local banks
for home purchases.
Management of the Housing Authority is through
contractual agreement and the City is reimbursed based on the time commitments
included herein. HRA projects include
129 units of elderly housing, 50 units of family housing and 155 Section 8
rental assistance vouchers. The 179
Public Housing units are HRA owned and require management and maintenance. The Section 8 program is administered by the
HRA for HUD on a fee basis.
This year new private commercial and industrial development in the city exceeded 207,000 square feet of space. The largest single building was the new Home Depot with about 100,000 square feet. The City Planner assisted 46 representatives from the development community resulting in 18 projects. Community based projects included housing and economic development activity, special committees, and special planning studies including Capital Improvement Program, revisions to the Consolidated Plan, and loan and grant activity. Development plans were completed and implemented for the I-35 / East Main Street area resulting in the construction of Home Depot, Blake Ave. and Consul Street
The City Planner also continued to Chair the Freeborn County Family Services Collaborative and serves on the Chamber of Commerce Housing Committee, the State Job Services Advisory Committee, the First Impressions Committee, and was elected to the Board of Directors of the State Chapter of the American Planning Association.
The Planner and Manager’s Administrative Assistant had meetings early in the year with Farmland Foods to work with State agencies on the clean up of abandoned areas of the site. The major fire in July changed this process and work was started on contamination investigation and cleanup of the site and buildings. Grants were applied for through the State Department of Trade and Economic Development, the U. S. Economic Development Administration, and U. S. Environmental Protection Agency to obtain funds to assist with this work.
The City Manager’s Administrative Assistant assists
the Division with special projects as well as the Manager’s office, the Port
Authority, and the HRA. Over the last
year there was success in pursuing funds for the Albert Lea Business Development
Center (business incubator). The
Business Development Center received a $15,000.00 grant from the Southern
Minnesota Initiative Fund to use for marketing and consultant’s fees. By working with USDA Rural Development and
Freeborn-Mower Cooperative, the project was able to procure a $240,000.00 zero
percent interest loan to partially cover remodeling and construction costs for
the Business Development Center (BDC).
The remodeling for the BDC building began in the late fall of 2001.
Other assistance included the development of a rent-reasonableness database for the HRA using Microsoft Access. Additionally, a short private housing analysis was developed that briefly examined the number of new homes built and demolished in the last 20 years and the current housing market in general.
The Pickerel Park rental townhouse project was
completed during the year except for the final public hearing and reporting
that will be done in 2002. During
construction, the staff monitored the Davis-Bacon elements of the project and
construction for consistency with the Conditional Use Permit.
The Division also utilized a summer intern in
Landscape Architecture and plans were prepared for public areas that can be
placed into the Capital Improvement Program.
The intern worked with representatives of the First Impressions
Committee as well as the staff to identify and prepare plans for area
beautification.
The City Planner assisted the Planning Commission
with the following activities and reviews:
The
staff administered the following economic development loans:
ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT LOANS
City Revolving Loan Funds
(State/Federal grants)
New Loans:
Carlsen Companies $
96,950.00
Pickerel Park $ 5,000.00
Ongoing Administration: Loan
Balance 11/30/01
Rink Systems $ 64,841.79
Lou-Rich, Inc $ 57,215.66
Safe Air Repair, Inc. $ 63,971.30
Safe Air Repair, Inc.(#2) $ 41,307.19
NorthAire Fabrication $ 48,759.77
ABA Properties $ 95,556.80
Alliance Benefit $109,209.39
Scott Knutson $ 48,355.53
HOUSING REHABILITATION
The MHFA Deferred Loan Program has been restructured
and is now called the Rehabilitation Loan Program providing forgivable loans to
very low-income homeowners to make essential repairs. The Rehabilitation Loan Program also includes the Accessibility
Loan Program. The funding phase went into effect on 10/15/99. Freeborn County was allocated $150,366, for
six months, which is divided between the City of Albert Lea and Freeborn
County. SEMCAC out of Rushford, MN administers the program for Freeborn
County. The second six months of the
program, MHFA will collapse any remaining county allocations into two funding
pools, one for the 11 county Metro area and one for Greater MN. If there are any funds remaining after the
second six-month period, MHFA will collapse all remaining funds into one
statewide pool.
With the restructuring of the Rehabilitation Loan
Program, the City of Albert Lea had $75,183 for rehabilitation during the first
six months. All administration fees
will also be part of this allocation.
This allocation provided funding for approximately four projects at
$15,000 each plus administration fees and one remaining project for approximately
$8,000 plus administration fees.
One
rehabilitation loan from the 1999 funds was started in January 2001 and was a
complete basement replacement. This
project depleted all of the 1999 funds.
New funds became available in August 2001 and no projects were started
from this funding. The new funding
commitment for Albert Lea is $57,600.00.
MHFA did additional program restructuring during 2001 and the new
program no longer includes a forgivable loan.
All loans must be paid in full at the sale of the property or at the end
of 30 years whichever comes first. This
program is not very workable because the rehabilitation costs often exceed the
market value of the property, especially since most fix up is short term. Once loans are repaid, the residual value of
the property is very low and families do not want to commit to the loan.
The loan completed in 2001 was as follows:
Rehabilitation
Loan $15,000.00
Revolving
Loan $11,676.00
Admin.
Rehab Loan $
1,400.00
Admin.
Revolving Loan $
1,400.00
There is no
longer a revolving loan program. These
loans are handled through traditional lenders.
HOUSING AND REDEVELOPMENT
AUTHORITY
Some staff restructuring
occurred in the Housing Authority in January.
No positions were added, but two new classifications were created and a
resignation was refilled resulting in a staff change to two Housing Technicians
and a Maintenance Lead Person. One
housing technician is assigned to Section 8 Occupancy and one is assigned to
Public Housing occupancy, maintenance and turn-a-round coordination, annual
public housing inspection, housing computer program management, Section 8
budgeting, housing rehabilitation, and business loan preparation.
The
management of the Housing Authority continues to require a greater staff commitment
because of the aging of the properties and greater reporting requirements of
HUD. In the last few years HUD has been
going through a reinvention process that requires all reporting and HUD/City
communication to be done via the Internet.
HUD monitoring that was previously done by staff from the Minneapolis
office is now done electronically and does not leave opportunity for
communication on issues. These
E-Communication programs have not been completely functional as HUD and its
consultants are developing the programs as they go along. This ongoing process of changing HRA
procedures and policies has been more time consuming than the allocation of
time in the City/HRA contract and there is no indication that greater
efficiencies will be experienced in the near future.
The
HRA maintains 179 public housing units.
Units have required significant capital maintenance due to the age of
the structures. They were constructed
in 1972 at marginal levels of quality.
Capital improvements include new windows, doors, siding, furnaces,
tuck-pointing, decks to replace concrete steps, replacement of bathrooms,
kitchen counters, refinish cabinets, and replace tile flooring.
The
Section 8 Rental Assistance Program has been through a period of transition
with all certificates being converted to vouchers. The Section 8 program is budgeted separately from the public
housing program. Section 8 has
experienced under-utilization for several years. One Housing Technician is now assigned to occupancy for this
program.
The following
staff time was allocated to the HRA:
City
Manager/Executive Director 2.5%
Community
Development Director 5%
City
Planner 30%
Community
Development Clerk 30%
Housing
Technician 100%
Housing
Technician 100%
Housing
Assistance Clerk 100%
Maintenance
Lead Person 100%
Maintenance
Person 100%
Maintenance
Person 100%
High-rise
Maintenance Person 100%
FTE
Positions 7.675
Total salaries and wages paid to the City under the
service contract were $181,090.11 and total benefits reimbursed were
$72,500.17.
The HRA now prepares an annual Agency Plan that
includes a five-year capital improvement program. The Capital Fund allocation received for 2001 from HUD was
$287,516.00. This funding will be
applied to 2002 work. Capital funding
for 2000 was $281,817.00 and $247,853.00 was utilized.
The staff completed 24 - unit turnovers out of 41
(or 22.9% of the units) vacated during the year. There was a 9‑unit
carryover from 2000 resulting in 33 remaining vacancies. The staff considers this to be an excessive
turnover. There were 2.75 maintenance
staff allocated to turnover and general repair completing 8.72 units per
persons plus other maintenance activity.
The average days preparation for a turn-a-round were 29.67 and the
average lease up days were 52.7. This
year there was significant maintenance required as a result of items identified
during the annual inspection of the units.
At one time turnover was a matter of cleaning and painting. It now includes major repair including
replacing floors, bathrooms, counter tops, plumbing, lighting, and structural
replacement. Two units were completely
refurbished with windows, siding, decks, and concrete work.
The SEMCAC dining program continued at Shady Oaks
with about 30 people attending on an average daily basis.
Shady Oaks
Year
End Vacancies 22
Move
Ins 16
Move Outs 24
Units
Readied for Occupancy 16
Scattered
Sites
Year
End Vacancies 11
Move
Ins 4
Move
Outs 17
Units
Readied for Occupancy 8
Shady
Oaks 16
Family 47
Total Applicants 210
Vouchers Issued 37
Entered
Program 17
Left Program 36
Transferred Units 8
Ported Out 1
Ported In 4
Utilization at beginning of year 100
Utilization at end of year 85
Waiting List* 84
* The
waiting list includes 64 applicants who have not been verified and 20 people
who have received vouchers but have not found or leased housing. Several applicants do not respond when
contacted by letter or telephone to make verification appointments. Some applicants state that they are no
longer interested or have moved away when their name comes up for
verification. This last year four
applicants were denied housing due to drug or violence issues reported through
criminal history verifications. The
drop out rate on total applicants is about 3:1 and there is a continuing need
to advertise the program even though voucher recipients have difficulty finding
housing that matches program requirements.
Part of the changes made by HUD during 2001 was the continuing change from the certificate program to the voucher program. This resulted in significant changes being required to the HRA Section 8 operating policies. The Section 8 program has been problematic with unused certificates and vouchers. At the years end there were 70 unutilized vouchers. The HRA only receives an administrative fee for utilized vouchers.