Of course, I'll get that started and then you'll hear the vocal prompt. Great. Thank you. And welcome to the January third, Dr. Cog Boardwork Session. I'm Wind Shaw, vice chair of Dr. Cog and the chair of today's board work session. Happy New Year to everyone. It is 4 PM. And our meeting is now in order. I would first like to welcome new members to the Dr. Cog Board, Terence Kelly. From the city of Sheridan. And we have 3 new alternates justin Martinez, City of Thornton. Terra biter flor, city of Sheridan and I'm not sure if I pronounce that correctly. And Aaron Rodriguez city of Longmont. So welcome to everyone. The first business in order is to open the period for public comment.
Melinda, do you see any hands raised for public comment? Thank you. Madam Chair. We can give it just a moment. And it looks like at this time I do not see any hands phrase for public comment. Thank you so much. With no one here for public comment, we will close the period for public comment. Our next business in order is the summary of the board. Work session from November first. Other questions or changes? Seeing no hands raised the summary will be accepted as distributed the next business in order is a discussion on the regional housing needs assessment.
I will recognize Sheila Lynch, the division director for regional planning and development to introduce the presentation team. Sheila? Great, thank you so much, Chair Shaw and happy New Year to all of you. Also hello to our new board members and to our colleagues and members of the public who may be listening in. Thank you for allowing us to take some time today to provide the first update from the regional housing needs assessment. As many of you know, we embarked on the regional housing needs assessment in late September. And this is our first update for you. The Dr. Cog Board. We want to be sure to keep you all informed as we walk through this process that we intend to go.
This process will take us through this process that we intend to go. This process will take us through to June, 24. I can't believe we're already here. This process will take us through to June, 2024. I know it's hard to believe. I keep saying, 2024. I can't believe we're already here. And our goal for this evening is to review a bit about our engagement approach for the regional housing needs assessment to share the methodology and preliminary analysis around housing need.
To give you an idea of what's gonna come next, what we have coming in the coming months. And lastly, and most importantly, we want to provide an opportunity for you to ask questions and to discuss some of our early deliverables or early findings of this assessment. So it is my pleasure to introduce our consultant team who are assisting Dr. Cog in this effort. Echo Northwest is our lead consultant and Tyler Bump and Leanne Ryan are here from DECO Northwest. And, can you, Planning Collaborative, David Driscoll is here from that. Consulting firm as well. So thank you all for joining us. And we look forward to hearing all that you have to share. I think I'm passing it on to David. This point. I think actually Tyler is gonna give us a quick kick off. Yeah. Okay. Right. I'll give a quick intro before Leanne shares the slides.
Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Tyler Bump. I'm a partner project director at ECO Northwest and feel very fortunate to work. With the Dr. Cog team and the sort of stakeholder community across the Dr. Kogg region on this really important work. Whether we consulted on this work, as Sheila mentioned, David from Community Planning Collaborative, and we also have MIT who is supporting on engagement and helping us with some graphics on the work as well as part of our team. My colleague Leann is a project manager. She's gonna be sharing the screen capturing some of the questions in the chat to make sure that we capture those for the conversation today.
And we're excited to share the, our work to date with you and our progress and for the conversation. So David, I'll kick it back over to you. Okay, yeah, and let's get the slides rolling. So we're going to go through about a 45 min presentation. I'm going to be facilitating during the presentation part, then we're going to be handing it back to Chair Shaw to facilitate the group conversation around this. We're excited to be here and I'll share the information and hear your questions and thoughts and feedback. And go to the agenda slide, Leanne. Which got a number of things we want to talk through. I'm not seeing this slide. There we go. We're going to start off with a brief presentation from Sheila. It's going to talk a little bit about Dr. Cole's, Dr. Cogs work in this space and sort of thinking about housing and also some of the lessons they've learned talking to other councils of government around the country that have been doing this kind of work. I'm going to give a quick update on the engagement that's been going on in conjunction with the analysis.
And then the bulk of the session today is hearing from Tyler. The summary of the approach to the assessment, the methodology that's been used, and most importantly, the preliminary results. And some discussion around the role of subregions and thinking about potential local goals related to housing. So that's where we're gonna be going. We're gonna pause a couple of times during the course of the presentation to hear any clarifying during the course of the presentation to hear any clarifying questions you have. I think you're pretty comfortable in this space now to hear any clarifying questions you have. I think you're pretty comfortable in this space now to use your virtual raising of hands or you can also use the chat if there's a question that comes to mind as a slides up and we can then respond to those. If we can't get to all the questions, we'll follow up with responses.
But again, those of you folks on clarifying questions and then afterwards we're looking forward to the discussion and hearing your thoughts. And I think that's all for me. I'm gonna pass it to Sheila to get us started with the content. Great. Thank you so much, David. So, we thought it might be helpful to just share a little bit of background. And how Dr. Cog got to this point of launching a regional housing needs assessment. Some of this information I know I've shared at the board before, but because there's several new board members, we thought this might be helpful to just ground us in some of these board members we thought this might be helpful to just ground us in some of this might be helpful to just ground us in some of this information again.
So I don't need to go over the purpose and roles of Dr. Cog with all of you. But I wanted to point out that this regional housing needs assessment work is very much rooted in the approach that. Takes with all of our work in transportation. And mobility, in aging and in disability resources and also in our role around growth and development in that. Dr. Cug really sees ourselves as convener across the region and we will use that role in this process to bring people together to have conversations around how do we address the housing needs across our region. We always take a collaborative model to our approach, meaning that we know that no one entity can solve this housing challenge on their own and so we're always looking at what is this collaboration look like in order to really reach some results.
And we often see ourselves as great problem solvers in that we we are often taking on and tackling some big issues across the region and always come to the table on a solution oriented approach. So that is the approach we're taking with our regional housing needs assessment. As well. So the critical regional planning component of ensuring that there are diverse housing options that meet the needs of all residents is embedded in our regional plan. Which is called Metro Vision. The last update of metro vision which was adopted unanimously by the Dr. Coggs board in 2,019 the incorporation of housing objectives was a very intentional piece to that.
At the time, the role and the methods for how we might collaborate around housing discussions may not have been clear, but it was clear. That the importance of integrating housing into the work that we do at the regional level. Is very important. So the model that we use for metro vision implementation, we often say it reflects a collective impact. In that we recognize that the actions and the efforts that are taken at the local, even neighborhood level are critical for moving the needle on the plans desired outcomes. When appropriate, regionally coordinated and aligned efforts will also move us closer to the vision. That we have articulated in our regional plan. Metro vision. So we know that local work is well underway.
That we know that many of our member governments are already busy doing housing assessments and plans. The innovative affordable housing strategy program that came out of house bill, 2112 71 has provided really well needed funding to do this assessment work. I'm excited to share that 41 of the communities across the region have submit or submitted their commitment filing for proposition 1 2 3 program back in November. So there's a lot of commitment to leveraging that resources as well at the local level. And And we've also seen many communities embrace different policy efforts at the local level to address housing. I believe the count on how many communities are have considered inclusionary housing ordinances, which is just one of many local policy strategies. I think last that we counted, I think it was about 7 communities across the region. So this map shows we created this map back in May to try to get an a sense of how many communities just in the last 2 years have taken on some sort of assessment or housing plan.
And so this shows those communities. This this map. Is from May of 2023 and we know there are communities that have started. Since then so we apologize if you don't see your community on the map, but more just to emphasize we know there is really great recent housing assessment and planning. So another part of why we're here is due to a reassessment at the federal level. The bipartisan infrastructure bill of 2,021 in addition to unlocking tremendous funding for transportation climate and broadband it updated and launched a new dimension of transportation planning by incorporating housing into the planning factors that metropolitan planning organizations must consider as they conduct their regional transportation planning efforts. With that said, at Dr. We've been considering housing for quite some time. We are not, we are not conducting our transportation planning. Work in isolation. We are often integrating different topics related to to our that are important to our region but this this effort actually opened up an opportunity to actually leverage transportation planning funding to incorporate or consider housing.
In that effort. So when the board, when Dr. Cook board first said that, we should be considering housing and perhaps considering an assessment, we actually Did some work. Staff did some work to talk to other regions across across the country. Most of the conversations we had, these stakeholder conversations, were with peer organization. So organizations like Dr. Cog and other regions, some of them were with organizations that may be more at the county level.
But these were areas that that along the way people identified had taken on some sort of housing work. Housing assessment or housing planning work. And so we had conversations. With them to understand how they approached it, what what were some of the challenges? What should we be considering as we launch our work? They shared a lot of rich information, but just to summarize some of the key takeaways, one of the things we heard is that the unique context context and circumstances of the Denver region are really important and we need to while we learn from other regions we need to keep that in mind as we move forward in this work. We're being very intentional about taking time to understand the problem before we launch into solutions. I know it's kind of launching as we go because there's so much discussion underway but trying to be strategic about how we address this because we know that it'll be hard to prioritize resources if we don't. And also hard to measure our progress if we're if we don't take some time to understand the problem first.
There's a lot of housing assessment as I mentioned underway at the local level. The regional context is important as well to understand how how at the regional level how is housing need really generated where does that come from and because we know that it doesn't stop at any particular border. But what we do know is coordination across the local and the. Efforts is really key. And Dr. Cogg, we know the importance of partnerships. And that's why with this work, we have already engaged many, many organizations, our member governments, and also our advisory group represents many different organizations that we know are going to be key collaborators as we move forward. And our intentions intention is not to simply study the problem that we fully intend to keep moving to help facilitate those conversations to lead us into implement implementation. So I just wanted to stress that we are currently in the regional housing needs assessment period and we anticipate this going until about June of 2,024.
Our intention then is to launch into a more strategy development to to really create those solutions. What are we going to work on together to address these housing challenges? And we anticipate that work starting this this summer in 2024. We have been very intentional to make sure that we continue to engage our member governments throughout the process and our partners that are critical to moving this work forward. And we're mindful that while good assessment and planning takes time. There are timelines already underway to have these discussions at different levels, namely at the state legislation, at the state legislators are already taking on this this topic and so we want to make sure that whatever information and data we're pulling from this process.
We're making sure that's available and ready to in order to inform those conversations as well. One of the things that we were very intentional about as we selected a consultant team is to understand the experience that they've had in leading different groups and regions through this process. And so we know that there are a lot of lessons to be learned from other parts of the country.
Both things that we should maybe replicate and things that maybe we should steer away from. And so David and Tyler are gonna help us learn more about that as well this evening. Alright, David, I'll jump in and start to talk about first about the pewter sound regional council vision, 2,015, some of their housing planning they've been doing for a long time. The Puget Sound Regional Council is the Seattle region, regional government, very similar in function to Dr. Kog. Similar to Dr. Cogg, they've been doing transportation planning while integrating housing for a long time and really thinking about housing targets over the last 10 to 15 years related to transportation and transit investments across the region similar to the way the Dr.
Koch has as well with the population forecast and thinking about transportation planning. About 4 years ago, PSRC started a process, with their own regional housing strategy. That was published in 2,021. And the regional housing needs assessment is part of that. The reason that I think it's really interesting is because there were also state-level conversations that the legislature happening during that development of that process around. Setting legislation for local jurisdictions to determine housing need as part of their long range planning and growth management act requirements in the state of Washington. So PSRC and a similar way of Dr. Kogg was a little bit ahead of the, the curve in helping to inform those state-level conversations and be a supportive resource to jurisdictions across the region and understanding their needs in relation to the ongoing conversations of of the legislature in that year.
Washington legislature adopted House Bill 1220 in 2022. Which requires jurisdictions in Washington to do a housing needs assessment. And identify what those housing needs are by income category and plan for land capacity within their housing elements of their comprehensive plans. Which is one of the first sort of big statewide growth management updates. On housing for a long time in Washington. And so this work that PSRC was doing at a regional level and supporting the local jurisdictions was really helpful.
And having those jurisdictions have that, the state also in a similar way to the state of Colorado providing IHOP grant funding for some of these needs assessments, for some of these needs assessments, provided funding to local jurisdictions. To do their work, housing needs assessment and housing action plants at the same time. So there's a lot of similarities in between what the Denver region is going through and going through. Policy, state level policy conversations and figuring out the regional role and local roles and how to support jurisdictions. And member governments throughout the region. The other, regional housing plan that we've been working on recently, this, we finished this up, 2023.
For the compass regional government in Boise, Idaho. So this is Ada County and Canyon County in Idaho. This was the first time that they're regional government as an NPO that predominantly does transportation planning really started to think about housing. And some of the key sort of lessons learned from this work is that both the jurisdictions in the regional government saw a lot of benefit in having a convened conversation at the region about housing and sort of coming to a consensus. Across the region that housing affordability is a challenge. In the Boise region in the Compass region.
And then creating the opportunity in the space with Compass as that sort of convener of an organization and reaffirming that convener role for Compass to be able to facilitate those conversations with the region. Regional governments. The other piece that was really interesting is that we developed a web based tool, that identifies a lot of the trends, housing needs, all the data points that all of the jurisdictions within the Compass region would need to do their own local housing needs assessment, have common data sources come at it with the same information so that they're all working from the same place and that was an extremely extremely valuable tool for them to have that consistency and data the same years of the data the same forecast year to know that they're working with the same information and making policy decisions that are sensitive to the context, the political context, the policy context, the cultural physical conditions that are sensitive that are specific to those communities with having that.
For resources, for tools to help facilitate that for those local government schools so that there's availability of tools for those jurisdictions that they can choose that meet the context of their own communities. They're brand new to it. They're just starting to go through it, but it was a really, really helpful process in, in Boise as well. We've done this work as Sheila mentioned, we do this work all over the place. We're doing a lot of it in Montana now in response to Montana State legislation. We've done across the Southwest and P.Ma County and southern Nevada. And some of the methods that I'll show you later on today when we get to the methodology are really best practice, emerging best practice about how to think about housing needs at a regional level and sort of coordinated regional.
Housing, housing planning, working with jurisdictions that are very different across regions as well. So David, I'll pass it over you to talk about plan Bay Area and ABAG a little bit. Yeah, so, first I just wanna say I spent 8 years in Boulder as planning and sustainability director. So, familiarity with the Denver region, but for the last, I don't know, 4 years. I've been, working on a number of different planning initiatives, housing initiatives. And a lot of that has been focused on the Bay Area. Plan Bay Area, 2050 is the equivalent of Dr. Coggs Metro vision. I'm not going to talk about the housing planning part so much. You may be familiar that the state, legislature in California has been a little aggressive in passing a lot of legislation. And what we do a lot of work with the Association of Bay Area governments, which is the Council of Governments for the San Francisco area, is support local staff in understanding and applying that state law.
So we do a ton of technical assistance and I think A. Bag has really been a model for delivering that technical assistance. Understand they have a hundred 9 member jurisdictions, everyone from San Jose, which is a city of over a million people. To small communities of 6,000 people. That have one planning staff and they're all charged with implementing the same state laws. So one thing they've been done a lot of is doing webinars and creating tools to help. Translates really complicated state law into things that local government staff need to actually implement it. So model ordinances. Checklist, things like that. Had the pleasure of working with Tyler and folks from Opticos delivering a working group on folks on middle housing. So how do you think about missing middle housing and delivering in your community, understanding the complexity of sort of the market across that larger an area.
And also they've helped set up planning collaboratives at each of the counties. There's 9 counties. In the Bay Area. They just recently approved new funding that's slowing from the state. Do the Council of Governments $500,000 is going to Santa Para County alone. That's for 2 years of technical assistance. Brings all the planning and housing staff from 16 jurisdictions together on a monthly basis to solve shared problems to. Understand the new state laws to undertake joint projects together and $500,000 is a good chunk of change but when you divided by 16 jurisdictions over 2 years you're talking like $15,000 per jurisdiction. And if you tier it based on community size from Monica, which is 6,000 to San Jose, which is a million. It's actually not a huge investment that delivers a huge amount of benefit for the local government staff. So I know that's down the road in terms of Dr. Cog conversations, but I do think it's something to really think about sort of how do you support.
Staff who are out of in between a lot of contention around development issues at the local level. And state laws that are coming down that they're charged with implementing. So. I'm gonna move on. We had if we go to the next slide. I'm gonna be quick quick update on the engagement that's been going on and then we'll take a quick pause to hear any clarifying questions. So Sheila mentioned there's been an advisor group. It's about 40 members. You can see there are sort of the kinds of folks who are on that group from local government staff to affordable housing developers and others. We've had 2 meetings so far. Sharing with them why we're doing this. Yeah, sharing with them some of the preliminary results, which you're gonna see right after this. And just one underscore this is a group that is advisory. It's a kind of a sounding board for the staff and consultant team. They're not making decisions or even formal recommendations, but it's been a valuable group for us to have discussions with.
The one thing I just want to talk briefly at the first meeting we we ask them for what's their definition of success for this. And there's a summary that has all their comments, but some things that stood out is one, they wanna make sure this is not just a study that it actually leads to action. 2, they want to make sure there's not a one size fits all approach in terms of any strategy that comes out of it, understanding. The complexity and difference across the region and what different communities need and having sort of a flexible toolkit. And then also they talked about, you know, considering the intersection of housing with other issues, other community priorities related to transportation, related to climate related to community resilience and other issues. So. It was a really good, interesting conversation for us to hear sort of how they're thinking about this one piece within a larger context of community planning.
Go to the next slide. There's also been a couple of focus groups. That MIT helps to, put together, facilitate. So one was focused specifically around members of local government staff. So from planning and housing, land use. And the other group was, folks involved in climate sustainability groups. Also including local government folks, but also folks who are working at the regional level on climate issues. The conversations varied a little bit, but they all talked a little bit about Dr. What they see is Dr. Kogg's role in this as well as what they see some of the barriers and opportunities. If we go to the next slide, you'll see some bullet points. I'm not going to talk through all of these.
But I will just maybe hide that a couple of things related to Dr. Cogg's role since you're the board. They talked about, you know, wanting to make sure this was about guiding folks, not dictating to folks, what sort of opportunities there are. Sharing documenting and sharing best practices. Dean, doing that convening role and facilitation role to look for opportunities for coordination and collaboration, but not anything that would be top down. And then in terms of the climate and housing folks, you know, definitely a lot of conversation around the intersection of warehousing goes and what that means in terms of transportation. So how do we support transit in terms of new housing development? And how do we think about our long term community resilience in terms of where new housing goes. And I think that's the summary of engagement.
I'm sorry, I'm just trying to keep us on time. I'm gonna pause quickly to see if there are any clarifying questions on time. Gonna pause quickly to see if there are any clarifying questions. If there are, please feel free to. Raise your virtual and or to put it in the chat. I think everyone knows if you click on the reactions button at the bottom of the screen. That's not where it is. Oh, maybe I think that's where you raise your hand. It's not showing on my screen. Anyway, use the chat if you can't figure out how to raise your hand or unmute and just speak up. It is under reactions if you click on reactions, there is a raised hand bar at the bottom.
Okay, it's not showing up on mine, but might be because I'm a panelist. I don't know Okay. Not the arrow, but the button itself. If that helps. Yeah. There you go. Okay, well I'm learning myself. Excellent. Okay, Judy. Hi, good evening. I just was just curious. I saw in this that, we are breaking this out as far as assessing the needs by income category? Are we also doing that in evaluating the senior element within those categories because of the sometimes transportation and location needs, like in relation to medical care and things like that are more necessary if that's the target group that we're going after and helping. Hello. That's a yeah, that's a good question. Thanks, Judy. I yes we are so we're contextualizing the housing across the trends that we're seeing by age groups and age cohorts. So because we're able to have really, really great data from Dr.
Cog, data analytic staff using the smaller forecast. We are able to look at forecast housing need by age category. One of the things that we showed in one of our previous slides to the advisory group, was the sort of generation, will be coming seniors through this 2050 period and and even increasing need of housing needs for older adults through 2,050 because of the generational changes. So it is something that we're contextualizing and accounting for in the housing needs. As we're doing it. So we are looking at income. We're not. Cross-sectioning, you know, below 60% AMI by income, but we are contextualizing that need across changing demographics, including age. Okay, so sort of thinking about the types of housing like typically as people, you know, no longer have large families in their homes, they can use or they want to live in smaller, square footage, that kind of thing is that we're talking about.
Yeah, once we get so we have a next phase we'll talk about a little bit later in the presentation. Of barriers and opportunities, which start to identify some of those issues and what might those strategies be that jurisdictions in the region could think about to meet those needs across. Different age categories or different income categories. So we will be getting there. I will say that some of the focus groups specifically on the climate and sustainability group.
We talked a lot about the need for, older adults to age in their communities and housing, needs that reflect that as well. Okay. We're also doing the work in Lewisville with, Rob and, something that's come up all really a lot something that's come up all really a lot very very frequently in our work in Yeah, I was just gonna say I think it's I think it's kind of across the region in Colorado. It seems very popular. Like the town you live in. That you've lived for the last 30 years. You'd like to be able to live the next 30, but maybe you're ready to have your house move on to another young family to move into. But there's no way for you to go. That's what we're finding. So yeah, that's and I think that I teared that in laugh yet.
I hear that in superior, you know, I think boulders, you know, experiencing some similar problems. So I think that it's probably all across Colorado and a good thing for us to be looking at it. I know here we're having a hard time figuring out how do we do that, how do we focus on that population because it's tends to also be people who don't have as much income at that point coming in. So we need to worry about making it a little bit more affordable for some of those people as well. Thank you. Great. And again, clarifying questions, please.
Yeah. Thank you. I saw a couple of Yeah. I saw a couple of their hands go up and then maybe went down. So. Yeah. Nice to see you. Hi, you're so mine. David, nice to see you again. And I took mine down because my questions, I think I'm gonna save them for later. Okay. They're they're more about your approach and methodology. So it'll it'll go up again later. Okay. Okay, great. Then let's move on to that. Present part of the presentation. Brooch methodology. Take it away, Tyler. Okay, now we get into the fun part. I'm talking about the methodology of regional housing needs assessments. One of the things that we wanted to start off here was talking about the differences between this regional housing needs assessment and some of the work that's been done at the local level that we've talked about. I know there was a mention in the chat to make sure that y'all are highlighting the work that you're doing at the local level so that folks see all that great work that's being done.
So we sort of broken out how we're seeing the differences in similarities in some of this work. So local housing needs assessment. Again, a lot of these needs assessments that have been done as part of the IHOP grant funding. These are really sort of, for the most part, point in time looks about what are the trends that are impacting the housing market today or the point in time in which that needs assessment that's been done. The time horizon varies in terms of how those needs assessments are forecasting that need into the future.
So it is kind of a snapshot in time for most of those local housing needs that we've looked at. But it is a little bit, it's, really diverse. Some counties or some partnerships that counties are doing their own needs assessment. Some local jurisdictions are doing a lot of jurisdictions are working together. We're working with Lewisville and Superior to make sure that they're thinking about.
Marshall fire recovery in the same ways across the jurisdictions in Boulder County. So there's lots of different ways that communities are doing this. Consolidated plans. So these consolidated plans are. Really focused on more detailed demographic breakdowns for federal grant applications for HUD block grants. So CDBG funding, other block grant funding, these consolidated plans are a requirement to access that funding. It's really a 3 to 5 year planning process or consolidated plan to think about those housing needs. Specific to those federal grants block grants for affordable housing. On this regional housing is assessment. The thing that you'll see reinforce over the next few slides is that what we're looking at is that current need that point in time.
And that accounts for what we call historic under production. So that is really important to us to get a really healthy understanding of what future need is because we don't want to start from a place of not accounting for the housing that's not there today that's needed. And so making sure that we're accounting for that under production as we also think about future need and forecast need over time. But then also thinking about, housing needs for the homeless as well. And how does that fit into overall housing needs, especially at that lower income category as well.
The future need accounts for population growth and demographic change, some of the things that we were just talking about for trends in household incomes, trends in the sort of aging profile across different communities, and really the distribution of these needed units across those incomes. The time horizon that I'll show you that we're looking at through 2050 so a 28 year forecast really that's aligned with long term sort of planning timelines, those long range planning horizons. And the goal here is really to understand the regional and sub regional what I'll talk about in a minute needs to advance coordinated planning and policy. We do have some questions around sub-regional versus thinking about. Local housing targets and what would be most useful for you all in the conversations that you're happening with the local level or conversations that you're having with the state legislatures as well during this legislative process.
Next slide, please. So some of the guiding principles we came across, we, we defined these quick guiding principles with Dr. Kogg's staff and refined with the advisory group. But these getting principles were to proactively determine housing targets for the region. Consider sub regional markets and local conditions. So the sub regional markets are really, really important across the Denver region. You know, I mentioned Lewisville and Superior a moment ago, but we can't really look at housing demand in Lewisville without thinking about what the implications of jobs and commute patterns are from folks across the region, especially coming from Westminster coming from Brookfield and coming from those adjacent jurisdictions and how that jobs housing balance and commute pattern affects housing demand and housing availability in community. Be transparent around data sources, limitations, and methodological choices. Again, we want to be extreme, use the best data that's available, the most current data that's available. Sometimes we'll do that at regional level or sub regional level because some of the quality of the data.
Sometimes goes down at a more granular level. So making sure we're using the best data that we use. And then align the work that we're doing with the Metro vision planning areas and goals. So incorporating that regional policy framework into the way that we're thinking about regional housing needs. So steps in defining the does housing need again. I'm going to sort of drill this in. We've got 3 components of housing need calculating the current need, which is also we call under production. Understanding the current need for homelessness and so One data point that we use here, which is, not always the best, but is the best data that's available is the point in time data, almost account point in time data we are working with MDHI to get more accurate data that reflects services needed and how that is searched for by folks that's a little bit more current with that throughout the region. So we're working with MDH. I have to get a little bit more quality data on that homeless need and then future need. What is the population forecast and how do we think that population forecast is going to play out, spatially across the region.
Income targets. So we're taking that overall housing need and getting it down to income levels. How much income do you need at different AMI or MFI levels? So for reference here when we talk about AMI, it's area, median income. There's actually 2 AMIs between the Denver region and the Boulder region as far as HUD is concerned. 100% area media and income for a family of 4 in the Denver region and 2023 was a hundred $24,000 100% area median income in Boulder in 2023 for a 4 person household was a hundred $33,000. And so when we talk about, 60% AMI, 80% AMI, it's really that share of a hundred percent AMI depending on household size. For subregions, determine subregional geographies, which we'll go through a little bit about some of the metrics and analysis that we did to define those subregions.
And then distribute that total regional need to sub regions by unit type and income target. So how are household income needs aligned with. Housing types, how are those housing types related to some of the strategies and the conversations that will have be happening later in this process? Next slide, please. Again, I don't wanna. Spent too much time on this, but just a visual representation of the current need thinking through under production and units to address homelessness and the future need, which is that forecasted projected need over that 28 year planning horizon. Next slide, please. So all of that's to get us to this what we've been calling the big number, which is the regional need through 2050 to address current future needs across the income spectrum.
The Denver region needs to build 511,000 units by 2050. This is a big number across the region. But when we look at it on an annual basis, it is not very far away from regional housing production that's happened over the last 8 years. So it is doable. It is consistent with some of the trends that have been happening across the region. The thing that you'll see in a moment is that the needs by income category, however, though, are really different. And they're moderate and lower income households need that are needing housing over this, 28 year planning period. Next slide, please. So when we do this distribution of housing need in the orange portions of the bar, this is the current housing across the route by each of these income categories. And then the white is that need through 2,050. So this is the distribution of the 511,000 units across these in a category 0 to 60 60 to 80 80 to a hundred percent and 100% above being more of the market rate housing. But there's housing needed across all income categories in the spectrum over this 20 year period, but a really large amount in the 0 to 60% AMI category and really about 2627,000 units in that lower income AMI category for housing for the homeless.
So that's a really, really, really important part and hard to reach part from a policy and investment standpoint for affordable housing specific for housing for the homeless. Next slide, please. So because this 28 year forecast is really long, we wanted to step back and think about what a 10 year forecast makes sense. What a ten-year target makes sense. And some of the reasons that we think it would make sense is because a near-term target can help the region start to get on track to meet that 2,050 need. It seems a little bit more achievable when you look at a 10 year target versus a 28 year target. It also reduces the uncertainty of long term forecast, right? So we're forecasting with the best information that we have available. So we're forecasting with the best information that we have available.
There's a lot of uncertainty that we have available. There's a lot of uncertainty in what will happen in 28 years as a lot of uncertainty in what will happen in 28 years as we all know over the last 5 to 6 years, things can change very quickly. It helps align policy and strategy with current market conditions without thinking too far into the future of where those market conditions might be. And currently it allows us to think about currently being prioritized over a shorter time horizon. So how do you think about that under production and really howing for the homelessness as the most immediate need into meeting that long-term goal in this ten-year target.
Next slide, please. So when we do that, the 10 year target comes down to about 216,000, units, which is that 10 year share of the 28 year forecast. This includes all under production and units to address homelessness sort of upfront in that 10 years and then also 10 years of that future growth accounted for as well. Next slide, please. And so the distribution changes a little bit when we start to do that and say if we're looking at a tenure target and really focusing on meeting what is the current need that under production and housing for the homelessness. We still have need across all these income categories. But again, you see this large need that's still happening and that's 0 to 60% AMI with the same amount of housing units that are needed for the homeless. Next slide, please. And then we sort of further break that out and the 0 to 30% AMI category, we break out a little bit more just to understand what types of housing and in many cases what types of services need to go along with that housing for folks to be successful in housing and 0 to 30% in my category.
But a large share of that 0 to 30% in that green you can see is that housing for the homeless that's needed needed and that's your to 30% in my category in the blue bars across all these income categories is that under production number that that current need and then in the yellow is the unmet future need. So the forecast need of. Growth, which is population growth and household formation happening over the next 10 years.
David, I think we're gonna pause. Like as quickly as like, we get discovered. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of information. Any quick clarifying questions? I'm tend to just keep, going through so we can be on time, but if there are some quick questions, I see a couple of hands. Let's try to do those quickly. Claire, do you want to go first? You said you're gonna ask? Yeah. Oh, thank you. Yeah, yeah, I'm happy. Yeah, I think Kevin beat me to the raise hand feature, but. Well, you did it even before the presentation, so. Yeah. Yeah, right, right. I pre raised my hand. So just a couple of the questions I wanted to understand how deeply you're gonna drill into you and I'll just ask.
Them they're like 3 of them. So just for efficiency. One is I think you, alluded to sub regions and I'm wondering as you as you consider like population growth, you know, I assume you're also really going to be looking at job growth. And then, and what assumptions do you build in around whether every community will be providing sufficient housing. For every job holder. In that community, as David knows very well from his work in Voulder, a city of has a huge jobs to housing imbalance. And so that's been solved by putting the housing burden on adjacent communities on the other hand many people would say that's great because, on the other hand, many people would say, that's great because actually we're a 2 income. On the other hand, many people would say, that's great because actually we're a to income family and we live equal distance between the 2 jobs. So I'm just wondering how you factor that sort of thing in as people.
You know, work with the distribution of jobs. So that's one question. Another question is around, not just units, numbers of units. But unit size, like, are you looking at, the need for family housing, like 2, 3 bedroom homes versus, you know, smaller homes, like what, what our family composition is, the demographers are telling us that we're having smaller families and many people are opting not to have families at all. Okay. On the other hand, if we just build to that market. Families will be left out. In terms of having their needs addressed and then the third I think question I would love to hear you talk about is How do you look at the distribution, of, home ownership versus Red Hull? And, you know, I suppose ideally everybody would love to own a home, but everybody can't.
Big you know economically but but i guess i just that's another question of what is what's the goal are we trying to build? Enough product with a range of prices so that everybody that does want to own a home can. Or are we seeing in today's economy with housing prices is just not realistic and we're just looking at units so that everybody actually has a roof.
Over their head. So those are the 3 things that I've been noodling on. Hmm. Okay. Okay, so Tyler 3 things job assumptions at the sub regional level How are you factoring in unit size of it all? And how are you factoring in 10 year home ownership versus rental? Yes, all great questions and I could spend hours talking about those. We'll try not. I know you could. So for the sub regions, we'll go through that in a little bit here. In the next section, and you can see some of the the inputs that we're using to the sub regional model.
That do include, job growth. Both current jobs and future jobs that are forecast across different communities across different areas. That's one of the reasons that we're using the subregion sort of as this in between layer because it allows us to understand that jobs housing balance and commute patterns and that relationship in a way that's really, really hopeful for this analysis. So we are accounting for it and we are accounting for it differently for current jobs versus future jobs. On the housing by size thing, you know, we will get to housing needs by type as part of what we're doing here and that really starts to then bridge the gap into the strategies a little bit because a lot of that really is policy conversations and policy decisions at the local level about how do you want to meet those needs and what are the local conditions in what you want to advance some of those policies. So we will start to have those discussions to lead into the strategy conversation.
On the distribution of ownership and rental, we also will be talking about that in the in the final report. One of the sort of main. sort of considerations there is the income level. So we know that it's really, really challenging to qualify for a mortgage if you're below 80% AMI to hit the loan to income ratio required for a, even with a traditional mortgage at 20%. And so there is some component of that household income that allows us to think about 10 year. In ways that are helpful for forecasting. There's also strategies that we can think about that are sometimes challenging, but to lower the barrier for home ownership for more moderate income households and moderate income families as well.
So I don't want to sort of limit it to 80% and above because there's other strategies that that can be advanced to help support more moderate income home ownership. A lot of it sort of depends on what the regional goals are and in many cases the local goals around. Home ownership and housing type that's related to programmatic funding in many cases. And certainly the regulatory environment and land use decisions to be able to support those sorts of things. So again, a lot of that is gonna I think happen in the strategies conversation as well.
But we'll have more information in the next section about the sub-regions in the assumptions into the sub-region analysis that we're using. Okay, Kevin. Thank you. And I see that directors Dr. I know to resell already acknowledges, but I just wanted to acknowledge that Director Levy asked her questions 2 and 3 were exactly the questions I wanted to ask. So I'm looking forward to seeing whether you can. Actually sprinkle or dig down into each of those AMI levels and talk about. What are the housing types, housing sizes and types? Needed in each of those categories. I get very tired on the Denver City Council. Of approving or and even funding, adding funding to projects that are studio in one bedroom. Apartments. And so, Thank you, Claire. You ask my questions. Perfect. Deborah. Oh yeah, I can you hear me okay? I had my speakers messed up last time. Okay, thanks. Yeah. I'm kind of concerned with the same questions that were asked, but also to add to those. What we want as a transportation a organization is to reduce vehicle usage. And how do we get people to live where they work? And that comes up most clearly in places where you have first responders.
And other folks who serve our kids and the like. And make less than others. And I don't see in the discussion of the AMI numbers being Denver and Boulder any considerations for. The Metro. And we have children and teachers and first responders that want to work here too. And so what concerns me as an organization as we go into this process is are we looking at engagement in all regions so that If our policy is going to be to promote housing policy. To make things affordable for young people who are beginning their careers and beginning their families and serving our children and communities. Are we so doing that with the mind of the places where they're going to work so that we can reduce their long commutes.
Example, if we have a first responder who has to travel from East Aurora or North Carolina to come serve our children in South Metro. Or homes in South Metro that's not reducing vehicle miles travel that's not reducing greenhouse gases So I'd appreciate understanding as you move into the next section and considering the last section, how we're engaging South Metro equally. Because there's often a perception that because we don't have homeless, we don't have a problem as much. But we do have people who have needs as demonstrated on your charts. Particularly with the unmet needs and the gaps in the underproduction that you anticipate on slides 28. And 29 at least in the prep. So that's my big concern. Okay, thanks. I think Tyler, maybe you could speak to that issue as you go through the next part of the presentation. And then Mayor Stark, I want Sarker, I want to ask maybe we can hold your question till the end. I'll queue you up to be first like I did Claire.
So, we can keep moving through the presentation. And then also Tyler, we'll ask you to speak to the question that was in the chat for Nicole and Boulder, but let's go on to the next part of the presentation and come back to this. Okay, thanks. Alright, thanks David. And great questions. Thank you for the questions. So jumping into talk about the sub regions, the role of the sub regions and I mentioned a little bit about the sort of data quality and our ability to look at job housing locations and commute sheds and commute patterns in in determining housing need in matching that housing need relative to where job growth is happening because really it is employment growth that is the driver of in-migration and household formation outside of natural births that are happening for population.
So the job growth piece is really important from a policy perspective matching up housing needs by job growth and reducing the VMT that's consistent with Metro vision is also part of the sort of policy framework that we're baking into thinking about the sub regions. From an analytical standpoint, the quality and consistency of the data at some of these sub regions, we're using geographies that are called Pumas. They're it's it's pumped called Pum Data Census Data that we're able to cross tabulate a lot of things in a lot more detailed way that are statistically significant that we just can't do at a local level. So it's one of the reasons that we really like using these sub regional geographies. And we're able to replicate that across the subregions and then think about even how to do that at the local level. And use the same regional framework.
To sort of think about targets at the local level. From an equity equity perspective, information is specificity. Okay. It's just not, again, not available at the local level. One aspect that we're going to be bringing into this is thinking about racial equity and historically disparate impacts on communities of color specifically related to housing costs. And so being able to look at cost burdening by race and ethnicity is data that we can look at at the sub regional level, but is really a lot more challenging to do at the local level, giving some of the data quality issues. So it's a way for us to think about equity and integrate equity into our analysis as well. Ability to operationalize regional goals. You'll see in here that we do have current and future transit and transportation investments in the region that are accounted for in the way that we're thinking about this. Subregional targets. To bring that policy and that transportation, housing job, a mix into the, analysis that we're doing. And then tailored approaches to areas with different conditions and the strategy piece. And when you see the sub-regions, I do think it's really helpful because you all as elected officials within your local jurisdictions are, you know, working within your local jurisdictions.
But you have neighbors and you and your neighbors are part of the same sub regional housing market and a decision that, you know, our Vata makes does impact what happens in gold and does impact what happens in Westminster. And so thinking about the relationship between those jurisdictions and the strategy is really helpful at the regional level. Next slide, please. So these are the sub regional geographies that we come up that we've come up with and we've gone through a lot of iterations with Dr.
Kogg technical staff. And the advisory group to help inform how we got to this place. But 2 of the biggest things that we're trying to maintain here is contiguous geographies, knowing that it's important from a policy perspective to be able to see the relationships between neighboring jurisdictions in subregions and then linking the census data and commute patterns again to account for this. Sometimes efficiency in job and housing location and sometimes inefficiency in job housing location, which is requiring additional travel across the region. To access jobs or to follow fire for housing that's affordable to those household income earners with those wages.
So it does allow us to do that, that sort of commute pattern based on jobs, wages and housing affordability as well. Next slide, please. And then to get to some of the questions that came up in, in the last section, we're looking at a number of attributes to calculate this at regional share. So we've developed a model to distribute the total regional need between the sub rate regions. Based on the criteria here that capture current conditions, future trends, and some of the regional planning priorities and policies. So, you know, we're looking at current population and future population. Where's current population? Where are we likely to see future population? Where are we likely to see future population? On the sustainability side, looking at current transit, looking at future transit, looking at the regional center designations within Metro vision, commute duration, all of this information to help inform how we're thinking about housing these relative to job locations.
On the housing side, the amount of affordable units within different jurisdictions or different subregions across across the Denver region. That this tenure piece owner versus rental housing where do we have more rental housing that's affordable where do we have more ownership housing that's affordable and then vacancy rates. So vacancy rates are really important because that is really a for us a function of demand and supply. If we're seeing higher vacancy rates, then there's something happening where there's production that's happening to meet that demand if we're seeing extremely low vacancy rates, it means that we're probably not seeing production that's meeting that demand that exists within that subregion. So vacancy rates are also really important. And then on the employment side, this current jobs and future jobs piece. Again, because Dr. K, Dr. Gogg has really great data through the small area forecast. Not all regions have the quality of data that Dr.
Kogg has or the technical expertise at the staff level. We are able to have really good data to be able to understand where it's most likely that those jobs will occur. Of course, you know, longer term, there is this question around economic growth and job growth related to housing affordability in the Denver region, which is a big question. And I think it's really important to think about housing production and affordability across all these income levels.
With the goal of job creation and long-term job growth and prosperity across the region as well. The other sort of thing that we have that we're looking at is sort of equity, component across all of the analysis that we're doing, but thinking about the historic impact of exclusionary policies and disparate incomes. Some of this is housing policy. Some of this is federal lending standards. A lot of this are just sort of institutional practices that are baked into policies in the way that the housing market functions, but understanding how those historic policies have created conditions that desperately impact specifically communities of color. Next slide, please. And David, we're gonna go into the next section real quick, which is opportunities and barriers. So this is our next phase of our work that we're looking into to really tee up the strategies conversation.
So some of the factors that we're looking at affecting housing production, you know, policies, practices, and conditions. They really affect how much and what kinds of housing gets built within the region both positively and negatively. And we looked at a lot of development trends across the jurisdictions. The governments in the region, and a lot have seen a lot of housing production and some haven't seen as much Halloween production. So those policies and practices and market conditions really impact what happens at the sub-region level and the local level. Things like land use designation, zoning, development procedures and processes, taxation developments, all these other components that you all are very familiar with. In your day-to-day lives as councilmembers and decision makers.
Continued engagement with regional stakeholders to help identify and prioritize key barriers. We're going to have continued conversations with. Folks through focus groups and stakeholder interviews and our advisory groups. We're having constant communication. Our advisory group is super, super great, really great representation from various aspects of the housing industry and the housing community across the region. Really, really great to have them participate in this as well. And then consider the role the systemic barriers and opportunities play in the context of how they needs identified in the regional housing youth assessment.
Next slide, please, David. And so one of the things that we want to sort of tee up is this question of our local goals and effective planning tools. So we will be sharing with the advisory group and ultimately with you all our subregional targets running through this model that I just went through, taking the 511,000, the 216,000 number and figuring out that distribution at the sub-regional level.
Would it be helpful in having these goals at the local level so that you can think about what your housing needs are and have that consistency across jurisdictions in coordination with Dr. Kaug who's helping to convene these conversations. We have found and I think the compass example is a really good one. That they are helpful in identifying more specific regional barriers and opportunities and understand the degree to which housing challenges vary across local jurisdictions. You know, all of the communities across the Denver region are very, very different, very diverse. And the strategies to address your housing needs are going to be very different. So making sure that you have the most available information to help inform those decisions as part of the strategy is something that we want to be able to support you with.
And I know that Dr. Kog is really, really focused in on providing service to member governments as part of this work. It's a good way of aligning local goals and strategies, but that regional and sub-regional market dynamics as well. More effectively implement the regional strategy that is context sensitive. And then also helping to recognize the shared roles in addressing regional housing needs and how strategies can be deployed in ways that reflect the uniqueness of the communities across the region. So David with that. And then the Okay. Yeah. So, just quickly after today, Tyler and his team are not sleeping for the next 2 weeks. Because they need to finish this work to present it to the advisory group. And exactly I think 2 weeks from today. And yeah, there's as you can see there's a lot to cover. Ty, I'm just gonna ask a couple of questions from the chat and then I wanna hand it back to the chair. Quickly does the methodology account for immigration? The question was in the chat related to documented and undocumented immigration. It does in the way. So we've, you know, the Dr.
K technical team has aligned their forecast technical team has aligned their forecast with the state demographer and they do account for immigration with the state demographer and they do account for immigration, the state demographer, and they do account for immigration, looking backwards at trends and forecasting that as well. So it does account for immigration, looking backwards at trends and forecasting that as well. So it does account for immigration, you know, natural household growth from employment growth and then population, you know, that natural increase in population from. Birth over deaths and as the population changes over time that may shift as well through through that natural natural population impacting overall population growth. That does it. Dr. And the next one, which there was a second for, is how the account for the availability of land for housing, understanding some. Some communities all need development is redevelopment. It's in fill and other communities have green fields, so it's easier to build less expensive to build.
How does the model account for that? In very complex ways between how Dr. Kogg staff looks at it through the small area forecast and land capacity through that small area forecast and through our sort of priorities in the sub regional goals that we went through that sort of circle diagram. If there's a housing need and there's no land capacity that doesn't mean that you don't have a housing need. You know, there are policy decisions that can be made to help support and meet that need. And those are policy decisions that can be made to help support and meet that need. And those are policy decisions. So we're helping hoping to get there just because there's not vacant land capacity doesn't mean that there's not housing need and going from that housing need to strategies will be that sort of again that next phase of this work. Great. Thank you. Thank you everybody for your patience or a bit over time. I'm gonna pass it back to the chair shot and I just call out that I did not get back to Mayor Starker who had this Sandra earlier, but you can decide what you want to do with that.
That's Absolutely. No, I think that's great. Director Starker, if you would like to start out. Thank you very much and an interesting presentation. You spoke to my question, which was really how would how might we equate address the cost of development. You know land labor material fees financing the time it takes to develop a project and get it onto the market. Also in connection with that, looking at different types of housing to develop, you know, modular housing, but but different housing types that you could develop.
And then third, I put in a plug for a developing and continuing team to develop a skilled labor force that's for our construction needs because that will affect the cost of construction and the timing that we can deliver it so A nice presentation. Thank you. Very good. You know, it's, it is also interesting, I think, in this presentation that there are so many variables. A lot that Dr. Cog takes into account and and the state demographer but you have a lot of balls in the air trying to juggle. You know where the where the commutes going to go and and how do we serve the need around those points. So I, I too appreciated the presentation. So if they're discussion points, in addition to what we've had, please raise your virtual hands. Director Movie, thank you. I have one additional point that I put in the chat and it I wonder as you talk about different housing types and as we're raised by other directors. Do we think about and is it part of the consideration the impact of construction defect litigation which has really reduced the ability of builders to do condominiums which are used to be very affordable.
And whether or not that, affordability to build is Mayor Starker mentioned is a factor in how legislation can impact that if we made the cost of construction. And the cost of litigation less. Yeah, the in most. I can't think about a regional housing strategy or statewide housing strategy that we've done that hasn't identified. Construction defect litigation. As an opportunity to increase production, especially for home ownership. And more moderate and come home ownership, especially as you think about.
Other housing types that are ownership that are large lot detached single dwelling development. So it is almost always part of the sort of toolkit of options that are available and identified as part of these projects. And it's an important one too. In Washington, we worked with the state of Washington to help. Change legislation at the state around construction defect litigation that's starting to play out in the insurance rates and we are starting to see some developers that are seeing reduced costs because of that.
It's going to take a little bit longer for that to fully play out. But the insurers are have adjusted how they think about the risk profile for kind of development in a ways that. It's happening a little bit faster than we thought it would to be honest. Which is great. Great. Director O. Sorry, I have a question. As we move forward, I understand that this is not fully baked our, assessment or in our study and we've got some work to do to still kind of Take it through the rest of the finish line. Nevertheless, I'm very concerned about the upcoming legislative session. We have found that sometimes legislators. The first of all, they don't get elected by doing nothing. And they have different perspectives of how local governments are either not doing enough or not doing it correctly. And so what I'm concerned about is, are there some things that we can do as a collective in Dr. Cog to ask people to say hold off on certain types of legislation until we get things done on this effort and maybe even show them the kind of work that we're doing the analysis that we're doing.
And so I guess if you want to specify the questions that I'm trying to ask it, number one, what can our message be to legislators to say hold off instead of trying to. Put together a bunch of legislation that might be solved with our effort here. And then also what are some of the things that could really screw us up if they start mucking with it, over the next couple of months. That could interfere or limit our options and being able to use the this analysis to move the ball down the field.
A very good point. Especially to the pitfalls. Tyler, maybe you have some ideas on things that. The state could do that would totally derail us. From trying to get to the right place. You know, I'm hesitant to speak about the politics of the state legislature specifically in Colorado. What I can't talk about is I think how I've seen this play out in other states with regions and communities have been doing this work. And I do think it's really helpful to continue to move forward and to try to get this as far along as possible so that you are showing that progress and trying to understand and meet that need, you know, moving into the barriers and opportunities, having that conversation, figuring out what a toolkit of strategies are and what some of those strategies might be most appropriate in your community. And this whole process I do think is, is really helpful as part of that. I think one of the questions that we want to ask too as part of this is what out of this process would be hopeful for you to have those conversations with the legislators or to understand.
At your local level, what is. The most helpful information for you to have those conversations too. And I know Director Rex probably has some comments here as well, but I think, you know, we, want to be helpful for you to be able to have those conversations and I know that's what we'd love to hear from you as part of this too. Claire, I know you got your help. Let me just finish one thing. Let me clarify if I might. Thank you, Claire. I guess what I'm also asked for is not what Should we ask the legislator, to not do, help us in the final report, specifically I identify what we can ask the legislature to do. Because they're not going to sit back and do nothing. They need to take credit for moving the ball down the field on some of these issues of efficiency, which I equate to some of the environmental things, you know, urban sprawl, the efficiency, density, this all comes together.
And so I guess. I'm gonna ask that the report specifically lay out some sort of strategy because whether you wanna weigh in or not on the legislative stuff it defines the boundaries of our success and options and opportunities and so if we can get some support from this report to says ask the legislature to do this ask them not to do this. That helps us because if we have another report. That we can't use to further our strategy at the legislature, then it's not going to do anything. And we're going to be back to what we've been doing for the last few years playing defense on legislative ideas. And I will say that the best way to be and overcome crappy ideas is to come up with better ones. And especially because the legislature justifiably is saying the status quo won't work. So we need as local governments to stop saying that idea sucks. We need to say here's a better one and if we can use this report to do that, then we have things to ask the legislature for support on and positive redirection might be our new method of getting things done the right way at local governments because sitting back and reacting is killing us And direct directs.
If you don't mind, Director Levy. Well, Director Rex, did you have something you wanted to say in response to I think something, that Tyler was saying a little bit ago, I can hold my question. I did. I did director Levy, if I may, if Tyler's looking to call a friend, I'd pick up the phone. I am and I appreciate everything that they're vector Autoressi said and we've had several conversations about this right and I think you know my message to the legislature with regards to you know what we're doing this regional housing assessment right now is that you know they've already expressed the importance of doing planning and assessments right I mean you know one of the areas of emphasis there's the strategic growth, emphasis area, which is all about planning and assessments, right? Then they talk about the TLC stuff, which I'm happy to give an update the folks if we have time, and then the ADU section, right? So with the, you know, philosophically, some of the issues that I'm trying to.
Just through my own head trying to figure out what the TOC bill is that it's transactional, right? It's it's a it's a mitigation strategy without fully understanding the context of the problem that we have in the region, which I think is why the assessment portion of this is so, so important. Now I understand, you know, the politics associated with this and and trying to get stuff moving. But, you know, I think if we can get to a point with this assessment, which the next stage of this is looking at the opportunities and barriers that and barriers that exist. That the legislature can really help local governments in addressing, right? I mean, that is the conversation which I'm interested in having with the legislature. You know, listen, The timing is not perfect on this.
I think, you know, with, you know, that in a month or so, we'll have a better understanding of some of those opportunities and barriers and we can, you know, we'll fully engage the legislature as we go forward in this and get new information. But again, yeah, time is not perfect, but director of the is perfectly right. It's you know, it's about we gotta provide options.
For, you know, unless we provide some, better alternatives, then, you know, that's what the answer is gonna be from them. It's like, well, you know, if you don't have any other option and an alternative solution then. Yeah. You know, we can't really have a conversation. So I get that and it's, it keeps me up at night for sure. Yeah. Thank you. And Director Levy, thank you for your patience.
You have the floor. Oh, of course. No, I think what, Director Rex said was very important and and, and, the, the, as well, because I have a different comment on your question that I wanted to ask, but, I've been sitting in on the, question that I wanted to ask, but, I've been sitting in on the, on the TOC stakeholder meetings along with director Rex and and it it it doesn't encourage a regional approach. So, it's, you know, every jurisdiction, you know, that makes these criteria has to do these things. And that may not be the best approach to solving the need. So, but the, I guess another question observation sort of along in the similar vein too. To some of my earlier questions. About how we're analyzing the need. You know, we always, and it goes to the, Spatial separation of jobs and housing often where the more people drive to qualify as as we used to say.
Then there are transportation costs go up. So when we look at affordability, are you factoring in, you know, that maybe, maybe you're able to keep your housing costs under 30% of your income. Although I don't know anybody that's able to do that anymore. But then your transportation costs are so much that that's consuming, you know, 50 or 60%. Jobs and transportation. So how do you look at that? As you look at what we need to do to address these barriers.
And, I, you know, I, think that there is potential in this TOC legislation. Or maybe in the strategic priorities legislation if we can be patient and come in a problem solving mode to you know to really try to bring down those housing costs by bringing down transportation costs by location efficiency. So I guess I just wonder how you all, Tyler, David, Sheila, how you would look at those issues. Thank you. Within the, I'll answer it from the analysis itself. I think as a starting place, And I'm referencing or technical documentation to be able to answer that right now. We are waiting transit access pretty heavily in the way that we're thinking about that sub regional targets. And I think it's really important because, you know, number one, there's the climate and the transit access piece in the affordability related to transit. But number 2, the region's made significant investments in transit.
And being able to leverage that investment in transit is an important sort of future. Future proofing need to be able to leverage that for housing growth in the region. So we are accounting for that and waiting areas with transit access and transit station areas. And also doing that with the future population too so with the planned regional transit investments making sure that we're accounting for that and waiting that with the sub regional targets as well so on that jobs housing side we are looking at.
You know, employment, we're looking at population, we're waiting transportation both current and future. And we are also looking at affordability and it's a sort of negative weight on affordability where if you don't have a lot of affordable housing and you have high housing costs but you have lots of job opportunity, you probably should think about some affordable housing or affordable housing across a spectrum of income categories. And so there is all of those. Components that we went through in that circle diagram are integrated into having that policy reflected in the analysis that we're doing. As we've gone through multiple iterations internally with the Dr. Cog team with Sheila and the data analytics team and Chris. They're looking really good, I will say. And as we work towards refining these moving into our next advisory group meeting in 2 weeks, they're making a lot of sense as we review them and continue to refine them too.
So I hope that we get to a place where you can see that sort of vision and those policy priorities. In the sub regional targets or sub regional goals that we'll be identifying because we feel pretty good about the direction that it's going right now. I wish I could share more with you but we feel pretty good about the direction that it's going right now. I wish I could share more with you but we've still got work to do before that advice recruit meeting in a couple of weeks. Great. And that's positive if you're indicating you're seeing solutions. And you're on mute on. Thank you. Thank you, William. Appreciate it. I'm gonna further director Otto, Otterisio's, you know, thought process.
Strategies are great. What strategies come, come direct thoughts and, with that come potential, not mandates, but suggestions. Those suggestions might be, might come with costs. And, I'm, I'm real interested since we're, asking the moon of you guys. If, the strategy is identified or uncovered, I would be interested in what the, what the potential cost would be to, to get to that logical strategic. A conclusion or to move the needle.
You know, I, I want if, if there, if there's, funding out there that's already in place. Great, but you know, part of part of this that we have in this political elected life is we just we try to find some existing and maybe potentially redirect or reuse And I think there's an unintended consequence there. So, you know, I'd be interested in if there is a strategy, there's usually a cost with that. Where is the genesis of of that funding coming from and if if there's no funding out there? For that.
What, do we have to do to kind of get there? Because I think that's the big. The big issue is, we can identify strategies, but there's gonna be a significant, cost to moving the needle on this and I just want to make sure that we have. Something in hand to say this isn't going to be. An easy fee. This is going to be very, very challenging. And here's what we believe the cost would be. Where's this money coming from? And, and how do we partner with the state or with federal or I or other people to to get this because I think that creates a crystalization of what we're up against. And, I think that's important. Thank you. Thank you. And you know, that's a very good point that depending on how much housing that we feel should be.
Made affordable rather than market rate where market rate won't satisfy the need, how much more state funding or federal funding do we need to to bring that to fruition? I mean if not all projects can be approved. Because of lack of funding, how does this even happen? So I think that's definitely a consideration and interesting. I know we're coming close to our time to adjourn, but if there are any questions. Okay. This would be the last one. Executive Director Rex, do you want to go first and then Director Condo? Madam Chair, I'll defer to Director Condo first. I just, I just, if there was time at the end of one provide a quick update on the transit oriented community bill. Thank you. See. Director Kondo. Yeah, I just wanted to make a statement. I suppose and You know, that is the issue of the lack of housing stock available. When you go back and you look at the mortgage crisis in 2,008 you know, a lot of builders stop building houses. And all those people that did that who were in the trades, whether they're plumbers, electricians, carpenters.
They all found other jobs. And now we're trying to play catch up. I think we're more than a million units of housing. In the hole or behind. And so part of this problem. You know, it's kinda like a system of systems, if you will. Part of the problem is how how do you get more people who have the skills and the trade? To be able to build these units that we think we need. And so I would ask this group to also think about that too. I mean, there's there's policy issues around that.
Trying to build some incentives so that you can get people. The labor force to be able to build these additional houses. Absolutely. And, and thinking that the housing crisis is national that if we're looking at our subregions, you know, maybe, Colorado and Wyoming and Utah and you know some of the neighboring states should be looked at so as subregions as well. So I, I don't know if that's as practical a solution because they're so far apart, but either in development of the workforce or delivery of product. Executive director x. Thank you, Madam Chairman, very much. And, and unless there's any other questions, I, I have got a couple of texts that provide a quick update on, primarily the transit oriented communities bill because that's the one for the most heat right now where we've been engaged and I want to say right from the outset that we're so appreciative of the outreach from the governor's office as well as the sponsors of this bill.
We've been meeting regular to have conversations about this looking at the various aspects of the bill and I think they've been very responsive to some of the comments that we've had. You know, for those that remember the governor's staff came and gave a presentation to you all at the November, I believe it was November board work session about the the transit oriented communities bill as well as the adu bill and the strategic growth bill. But I'm gonna focus primarily on the TOC bill that, cause that seems to be the one that's furthest along.
But basically the bill itself, if you recall, is really would affect those communities that, that are considered to be transit oriented communities and that basically are those communities within the 5 NPOs across the state. Of course, Dr. Gog being one. That is you know over 1,000 in population but ultimately it they have within their jurisdiction or a transit station or your boundary touches a half a mile radius around that station or a quarter mile radius around. A bus rapid transit corridor or that you have bus service in your community of 15 min or less. Frequency of of of a route.
Those, if you do have one of those, then you fall within this step definition of a transit oriented community. And if you do fall in that. That definition, then you are responsible for. attaining what they call a housing opportunity goal. And we don't have time for me to get into exactly what that means right now but basically it's based on densities goal. And we don't have time for me to get into exactly what that means right now, but basically it's based on, we don't have time for me to get into exactly what that means right now, but basically it's based on, for at the obviously it's a housing go the conversation that we had at the last meeting we saw we revolved around accountability so if you're unable if a community is unable to meet the housing opportunity goal what happens, right? So there are, incentives that are, born in this draft piece of legislation that there's an infrastructure fund that's established for communities to help with infrastructure costs to ultimately get some housing units built within your K communities. That the last meeting they talked specifically about the accountability or the kind of the stick part of this and what is being suggested at least now.
Is that if you're unable to meet your housing opportunity go, then, highway users trust fund monies that the community receives would be restricted and diverted to fund in part this infrastructure grant fund. So as you can imagine, we have some concerns with that. And it wasn't only us, obviously CML, CCI, other, your, your community associations also expressed some concerns and you know we're trying to get a better handle we're gonna be reaching out to your staffs just to get a better understanding of how they utilize the Highway Trust Fund money. I think anecdotally, we believe that they they use that money primarily for maintenance and safety projects within your communities.
So we would just want to get a better handle on exactly what that looks like and and, and how this piece of legislation might affect. Your local community. So I just wanted to share that with you all. We'll have a more robust conversation about this at the January seventeenth meeting. Be sure of that. But, with the legislature starting back on January tenth, as you know, so anyway, Madam Chair, I'm gonna. You back another minute. You can close her down. Thank you. Oh, Thank you so much and before we close I was remiss and not welcoming, our new member from Commerce City. Mayor Steve Douglas, so, welcome Steve. Are there other matters for members? Hearing none, our next board work session is scheduled for February seventh. And our next board meeting is in person on January thirteenth. I look forward to seeing all of you there. It is 529 and we are adjourned. Thank you for today's dayThank youThank you.