- October 13, 2024
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The Affordable Housing Advisory Committee has presented their annual recommendation report for city council's review.
The Palm Coast City City heard the report and their incentive recommendations at Tuesday, Jan. 10's workshop meeting. The recommendations listed, if approved, would allow members on AHAC to further investigate and explore affordable housing development possibilities.
The committee is required by state statutes to annually review and recommend incentive strategies to promote affordable housing, Flagler County's Health and Human Services Director Joseph Hegedus said. Hegedus alongside Housing Program Manager Devrie Paradowski and Jose Papa, senior planner for the city, presented the recommendations to the council.
The committee is required to review ten incentives from the state, Hegedus said; while AHAC is required to submit some incentive strategies, those ten listed incentives are not required to be among them.
“It is really meant to provide a menu of ideas for communities to consider,” Hegedus said.
The incentives presented on Tuesday are part of an annual update to incentives in the Local Housing Assistance Plan, which is a joint housing program under both the city and county. LHAP is a subsection the county's State Housing Initiative Partnership program.
The committee had three recommendations for the council to consider. First, to develop an ordinance for planned affordable housing developments. Flagler County has already adopted one such ordinance, Papa said, which defines and outlines the requirements developers have to meet to be considered an affordable housing development.
The second recommendation would be to publish an inventory of surplus lands owned by the city that are suitable for housing development on the city's website. The goal, Papa said as an example, would be to allow nonprofits like Habitat for Humanity to see what land might be suitable for building a single-family home.
Flagler County has it's own published list of surplus land suitable for housing on its website.
Finally, the committee recommended creating an affordable housing trust fund to help fund affordable housing development incentives. Papa said the broadness of that trust fund would allow the funding to be used for multiple different affordable housing development programs.
“These are recommendations, these are not going to establish policies," Papa said. "It allows us to move forward and investigate [the possibilities].”
Councilwoman Cathy Heighter — who has recently assumed a position on AHAC — and Councilman Ed Danko were both skeptical about the recommendation to list surplus land.
Danko said that he was somewhat confused by recommendation; he said if the city had a surplus in city-owned lands, they should be selling it to the highest bidder to gain extra revenue for the city's budget.
“I’m not in favor of just giving away property, if that’s what this means," Danko said. "And I’m not quite sure what this really means.”
Heighter, meanwhile, had questions about if the surplus land would be sold to the highest bidder or handed out to nonprofits.
Hegedus said the state statutes don't dictate what has to be done with a property, and instead focus on identifying opportunities.
“My understanding of the statute is that it mainly requires identifying, it doesn’t actually dictate sale or development," Hegedus said. "It doesn’t require that it be sold to a nonprofit or a developer.”
Papa reminded the council that these recommendations are a required part of their annual report, to be submitted by the state. They remain recommendations, not policy, and give AHAC room to investigate.
“There is potential to investigate, moving forward, especially as we move to update our comprehensive plan,” Papa said.
Palm Coast Mayor David Alfin commended the presenters and AHAC on their growth since he was last on the committee as chair. It puts the council members in a better place to ask informed questions, Alfin said.
"Certainly," Alfin said, "the county is taking note of these ad-hoc recommendations — and the city will as well.”
