City Manager Rochelle Small-Toney told the City Council she plans to recommend allocating $3 million of about $11.5 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to help launch the City of Rocky Mount’s proposed affordable housing strategic plan.
“And I think it’s important to do that because our needs are very real and they’re very great,” Small-Toney told the council during the May 10 council work session.
Small-Toney and her team on April 8 presented a draft of the proposed plan at the City of Rocky Mount’s 2021 annual retreat, which was held at the Omni Grove Park Inn in Asheville. The next step called for Small-Toney and her team to provide a follow-up with more information about the recommendations in the proposed plan.
Part of the proposed plan would include calling for voters to approve a general obligation bond that would focus on affordable housing and infrastructure but also include bundling in funding for additional items such as parks and recreation.
During the May 10 council work session, Small-Toney told the council members the proposed bond issue will involve a lengthy process.
She told council members she would suggest to them, “We’ve waited far too long now to put significant funding towards improving the housing stock of the city.”
Small-Toney said that while she and her team are awaiting guidance from the U.S. Treasury Department, she and her team feel those funds will qualify for what they intend to do in this instance.
The American Rescue Plan Act was successfully advocated by the Biden White House to provide roughly $1.9 trillion in additional relief to deal with the continued effect of the coronavirus pandemic on the economy.
Small-Toney told the council the city will be the recipient of $11.5 million as a result of the act. The downside is that Small-Toney and her team previously had heard the number would be somewhere in the range of $13.7 million.
Small-Toney said that of the $3 million for the proposed affordable housing strategic plan, she would suggest reserving $1 million of that amount for a community land trust that would be part of the plan. Generally, a community land trust is a nonprofit organization that owns and manages land homes are built on, with an individual allowed to purchase a home on one of those properties.
City Policy Analyst Jayson Dawkins told the council during the May 10 work session that the community land trust would cost about $261,000 the first year and would be followed by costs of roughly $1 million over a three-year period.
Dawkins said that an executive director would be hired and that there also would be rehabilitations to and acquisitions of properties.
Dawkins said the American Rescue Plan Act would provide the seed funding for the community land trust and that the city would next provide about 50 percent support for the cost of operations, with the rest of the support to come from donations from the community.
Small-Toney and her team already have called for a long list of further recommendations as part of the proposed strategic plan. They include creating a housing trust fund, an acquisition fund and a preservation fund.
Dawkins also told the council the housing trust fund would cost about $101,000 the first year and would be followed by costs of roughly $417,000 over a three-year period.
A housing trust fund would provide money as a source for investment in targeted residential development, specifically focusing on expanding the supply of affordable housing.
Dawkins told the council the acquisition fund and the preservation fund would each cost roughly $116,000 the first year and would each be followed by costs of about $503,000 over a three-year period.
An acquisition fund is designed to provide the financial capacity to acquire public or private areas for affordable housing development. A preservation fund would be focused on keeping in place the affordability of presently income-restricted and naturally occurring affordable housing in order to maintain and improve the already established housing supply.
During the May 10 work session, City Finance Director Amy Staton told the council the bond issue process would cost about $525,000, which would include paying for legal counsel, financial advice, underwriting and visiting the bond rating agencies.
Staton also said roughly $75,000 would need to be spent on a public engagement component in advance of the referendum on the bond issue.
The proposed plan’s recommendations include implementing tax and lien foreclosures to deal with vacant houses and implementing a receivership program, also to deal with vacant houses.
The proposed plan’s recommendations also include revising minimum parking requirements in residential and mixed-use developments.
Small-Toney and her team also want to have a program in place to award grants to provide incentives for building re-usage or new construction to develop residential units downtown.
During the May 10 work session, City Planning Administrator JoSeth Bocook also said a new recommendation for the proposed plan calls for revising and adding definitions of dwellings to the municipal code presently regulating how land can be developed. Bocook said definitions to be added would be cottage developments, live-work dwelling units, single-family attached dwellings, single-family detached dwellings, two-to-four family dwellings and upper-story dwellings.
Bocook also said there would be efforts to amend the zoning requirement to allow for residential housing in commercial districts with specific conditions.
Small-Toney also made clear she believes a study needs to be commissioned to revise and update plans for neighborhoods as specified in past studies by the City of Rocky Mount. Small-Toney noted the most recent study occurred in 2014 and is based on 2010 federal Census data.
Small-Toney also told the council members if the bond issue is approved, then they would certainly want the most up-to-date information about the condition of houses in Rocky Mount.
Small-Toney also pointed out that past research showed there were neighborhoods in need of significant attention, including Happy Hill, Hillsdale, Holly Street, Little Raleigh, South Rocky Mount, Southeast Rocky Mount, the Around the Y and Villa Place. She emphasized that she believes those specific neighborhoods need to be evaluated as part of the recommended future study.
Councilman Reuben Blackwell made clear he believes each of the strategies merits some additional discussion so the council can understand the subtleties of them.
“I’m also a little concerned about — the easiest thing to move forward on is foreclosures,” Blackwell said. “And that’s also the most dangerous thing to move on without having a plan about what we foreclose on — not just why, but what you do with it.
“I’m concerned about there’s no lack of people who will line up willing to purchase properties at little and no amount of money,” Blackwell said. “But if we don’t have plans for keeping people accountable to build out the city in the way that we have, we could still see that being a heat-up for gentrification and negative equity for the City of Rocky Mount.”
Small-Toney made clear that she has people working on further details of parts of the proposed plan and that those further details will be brought forward in phases.
Small-Toney also made clear that, as an example, if the council agrees, then the process can be started in getting the Planning Board to advise and make recommendations about zoning strategies in the proposed plan.
“I think it’s just important to not over-study this but to start taking steps in directions so that the community, overall, understands that this is council’s first priority and that we’re moving in a direction to bring about affordable, decent quality housing in our city,” Small-Toney said.
(Rocky Mount Telegram)
