The Mayor's Mixtape
Mayor Heather Graham's weekly brief of current events related to the City of Pueblo.
The Mayor's Mixtape
The Mayor's Mixtape-Episode 39
On Episode 39, Mayor Graham hosts Director of Housing and Citizen Services Melissa Cook. Mayor Graham and Melissa talk about the Convergys site demolition and future plans for the site. Additionally, Melissa explains the term "affordable housing" and who qualifies for that or what does it really mean? Plus she gives insight for the timeline ahead at the development site.
Don't forget to like, subscribe and share the Mayor's Mixtape with your friends, family and neighbors. Send in your questions or topic suggestions to mayor@pueblo.us.
Okay, welcome to the 39th episode of the Mayor's Mixtape. I'm Haley Sue Robinson, Director of Public Affairs for the City of Pueblo.
Mayor, Heather Graham:I'm City of Pueblo, Mayor Heather Graham.
Melissa Cook:And I am Melissa Cook, Director of the Housing and Citizen Services Department for the City of Pueblo.
Haley Sue Robinson:Awesome to have a guest on the podcast this morning. I do want to remind everyone that you can find this podcast on Apple, YouTube, Spotify, BuzzSprout, wherever you get your podcasts. You can also watch it on local channel 17. And if you have questions or topic suggestions, you can email us, mayor @pueblo.us. Melissa, we're really excited to have you on the podcast this week. Thanks for being here. Yeah. We've done a lot of conversation around the Converges site and wanted to have you join in on the on the conversation. Mayor, we had some exciting Thanksgiving news last week with the Converges site. It's down. It is down. And it actually had a timeline that it wasn't supposed to be down or it it was supposed to be down by December 15th, but it was even before December 1st. Yeah. So that was like a nice surprise. Um but uh Melissa, let's let's talk a little bit um about you've been part of this process. Um can we talk a little bit about the future plans for the site?
Melissa Cook:Sure. So there's actually two different distinct plans for the site. Uh the first one is of course the Circle K for folks who have been following um this through City Council. That Circle K site will take approximately the first one-third of that city block. And then in the back, there is going to be a housing development that will take place in the back, approximate two, approximately two-thirds of the site. So we're really excited about that. Uh what we are releasing it in the coming weeks, likely on January 1st, is going to be a request for applications, an RFA, and that will be to solicit a developer for that site and one other site to build affordable housing. So we're really excited about that. Uh the other site that we we are discussing is the 1300 block of East Fifth, that is approximately 1.25 acres that could also house an affordable housing development. It's the previous site of the uh Pueblo Community Health Center.
Mayor, Heather Graham:East Fifth? Fourth? It's it it's both between fourth and fifth? Yeah.
Melissa Cook:The technical address is actually.
Mayor, Heather Graham:What are you talking about?
Haley Sue Robinson:Got it. Which location are we talking about?
Mayor, Heather Graham:Yeah, it's like hello, there's another one.
Haley Sue Robinson:So then um, will the RFA be for both sites or are they separate?
Melissa Cook:It will be one RFA, and we will entertain a developer for one site, for both sites. You know, we're looking for a lot of things in a developer. We really want somebody who can get this done quickly. Um, we want somebody who has experience. We want somebody who really knows how to put together a capital stack for affordable housing. So we're we're looking at all of those things. Um, one thing that we have noticed in talking with different developers around the state, there's a lot of interest in developers for affordable housing. Um, well, all housing, affordable housing and market rate housing to come to Pueblo. But all developers have a magic number that they have to meet in order to make it pencil, essentially. So once they develop the property, then they then have to manage the property. And the rule of thumb is you have about one manager, one maintenance person per 100. So if you're only building a site that's 50 units, maybe you can't actually break into the Pueblo market without having two sites. So this actually provides a unique opportunity. We also have developers, um there's three developers specifically in Pueblo that own one current site, but they're not able to break in because they don't have that second site. And so there's a lot of different opportunity here. We're not um, you know, making any decisions yet. We're gonna put this out there. It's going to be out there in January and it'll likely be out there for 90 days, and we're gonna see who responds. And and you know, we're gonna go with the one who can make this happen the quickest.
Haley Sue Robinson:That's exciting. So um you you mentioned affordable housing. I can we talk about what does the term affordable housing mean?
Melissa Cook:Yeah. So this is an interesting one. Okay, and there's no solid answer. Um, affordable housing is referred to as several different things. People call it low-income housing, attainable housing, workforce housing. There's a lot of different things or ways to refer to it. So, in order to really explain what affordable housing is today, I think it actually is better to go all the way back to the beginning and know what affordable housing was to start with. So 1937, FDR is the president. I said we were going back to the beginning.
Mayor, Heather Graham:Oh, yeah.
Melissa Cook:Uh FDR is the president, and it is after the Great Depression, and you have the New Deal to help recover from the depression. In that was the 1937 Housing Act. And in that housing act, it created public housing. Public housing is where the federal government built, maintain, manage, and provided an ongoing subsidy throughout the duration, the lifespan of the building. Um, so our public housing was actually Section 9 housing. I think a lot of people are familiar with Section 8 housing. That's just section eight of the same housing act. This is section nine housing. So here in Pueblo, that's the Sangrado Cristo apartments over on Prairie. They're the oldest standing public housing units in the state. Well, in the 80s, the federal government realized this doesn't make any sense. It costs way too much. We have to manage these, we have to do the capital improvements in these units. So, how can we better fix this to create units but not have this ongoing long-term expense? And that's when the low-income housing tax credit came into place, or what is called in our world, LITEC. And that is a public-private partnership that allows the federal government to give subsidies to build, they're one-time subsidies upfront to build affordable housing. And instead of having that long-term subsidy where the federal government pays your rent ongoing, um, they just cap the rents. And so all that affordable housing is in today's world, um, for almost all affordable housing projects that are built, and definitely the ones that we're talking about here, is it's almost like rent control. Um, they help build it upfront, and then they just simply say you can't charge more than a certain amount in rent. And HUD changes that. They dictate that every year based on area median incomes of residents in the community. So that's all that it is. It just is simply rent control, there's no subsidies. You know, if you you have to have an income to qualify to actually live in these communities. Uh, I actually had written down what some of these are. I think there's a lot of misconceptions about what the actual rental amounts are. So right now, um in these affordable units, a two-bedroom apartment, uh, this includes utilities, but is the max that you can charge is $1,377 a month. So this is not tailoring to people who don't have an income. These these are truly workforce housing. You have to have you know incomes um substantial enough to support that rent.
Mayor, Heather Graham:Yeah, I mean that's like you could own a house for that. Yeah, that's a mortgage payment.
Melissa Cook:But the good news is in the future, the landlord can't uh, you know, charge a a crazy amount or an exorbitant amount of rent if the market does go up. And so that's where you have this long-term uh uh affordability built into the property.
Haley Sue Robinson:So so you essentially still have that uh rent cap regardless of um what the market does.
Melissa Cook:Yeah. Yeah, and with this RFP, we can dictate how long that rent cap is. Okay. Um most of the funding sources that the developers will use will have that dictated through their funding source, and it's generally 40 years, is is that affordability period. At the end of 40 years, um most developers will choose to re-syndicate, which is get a little bit of money to do the necessary rehabilitation and then re-enter into another 40-year agreement.
Haley Sue Robinson:So when we're talking about the long-term process, it's not like 10 years or 20 years. You're you're talking 40 years. So I I could live in a in a location and have that um I I guess like comfort of knowing that I I'll be able to afford this for the for the long term. Sometimes when we think about long term, it's like five or ten years or twenty years. Um so this really gives folks peace of mind. Correct. Okay, and so another thing that comes up with affordable housing is who who lives in affordable housing? Like who are the folks because you mentioned folks have to have an income. So like who are the types of folks or what type of job would I have for affordable housing?
Melissa Cook:Yeah, so um for with these affordable housing developments, we anticipate that the average income will be right at $52,000 a year. We can easily actually estimate that. I know that the the listeners may say, how could you possibly know that? And it's actually pretty easy because in order to make these developments pencil up front, you have to have an average income amount. And that average income amount is generally right below the maximum that is allowable per the funding source. So the funding sources are going to be at an average of 60% AMI. Um, so we know that it's gonna be right there. The uh Compass Point Apartments, which is just breaking ground over on Pueblo's east side, um, that had an average affordability of 59.66%. So if you extrapolate those numbers to average household size and area median income, that as I mentioned, that's $52,000, $52020 to be specific on average. And so, you know, in Pueblo, I actually pulled the stats of what are our own residents, what our citizens are. And so, you know, for instance, there are um 6,350 uh sales and related occupations that make $47,000 a month. Um, there are 420 bookkeeping and auditing clerks that make under that amount at an average of $49,370 a month. Um, you know, there's there's a lot, there's 7,000, over 7,000 office and administrative support assistants that make on approximately $47,000 a month. So these are our neighbors. These are all of our, you know, our brothers and our sisters and our family. There's just they're just Puebloins.
Haley Sue Robinson:And they're just they're also like everyday jobs that we know a lot of folks have. Um we might have them here in the city. Um to your point, they're our friends, our neighbors, um, our family who have these jobs. So I think sometimes folks say, oh, this is for other people. Um rather than looking at this could be for us, or um this could be for someone I know. And I think it it's helpful to know who are the folks that can afford this, what type of job do they have, and also noting these folks do have jobs. Uh I think that's another thing that uh folks get really confused or maybe just misconstrue the facts on what what is affordable housing and and how does that work. So thanks for clarifying that.
Mayor, Heather Graham:It's really not affordable, it's just housing. Yeah, in Pueblo. It's a good way to put it, it's just additional housing. I mean, that's that you know, those those dollar amounts are minimum federal wage, um, forty hour a week employees. That's they could afford uh um this attainable housing, and that's that's at the federal minimum wage amount.
Haley Sue Robinson:So it's can can everybody can you also talk about so you mentioned affordable workforce attainable housing. Is there a difference in each of those terms or are they are they interchangeable?
Melissa Cook:They're interchangeable, really. Uh there actually isn't a real definition that exists for any of them because it's really dictated by the funding source that creates the housing. And that is why I think there's so much confusion surrounding this. I part of me wishes the affordable housing industry would come together and make real definitions that everybody everybody used because I think that it would help, you know, eliminate some of the stigma uh if people really just knew that the income for this is fifty-two thousand dollars a year, and then you realize, you know, that there's that's that's most of Pueblo.
Haley Sue Robinson:So we've talked about the RFA process. Then what does the construction process look like? What's the timeline for when we can actually see this happen?
Melissa Cook:So development takes time. It does take time. I want to make sure that uh folks understand that we're not going to see units built there by the end of 2027. Um, what we would anticipate is we would put this out. There's about six months of due diligence that the developer would have to do, you know, architectural rendering, environmental consulting work, um, engineering, uh, creating the site plan, going through all of the entitlement processes, through our planning department, all of that. And then they would be able to apply for low-income housing tax credits. Um, the debt there's only once a year that you can apply for low-income housing tax letter tax credits. You have to have your letter of intent to the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority by December 1st. So it just passed for the 2026 round, and then they uh have applications due on February 1st. We would hope that we would have an applicant in the February 1st, 2027 round. It is very competitive. This is the most competitive type of tax credits. There's, I think last year there were about 40, and I think nine or 10 got awarded. And so you're not guaranteed to be awarded. Um, and so you know, we would have somebody apply there, and if they didn't, we would expect that they apply in the the next round, the next year. But also something else that we're going to be looking at in these applications is we want a developer that's nimble, that if they don't get that, that they're able to explore other financing options like private activity bonds or other things that the city might be able to support them on. So we're not just saying that low-income housing tax credits, while it's the best, it's not the only way to get this done. So we we do want to make sure that they're nimble and able to look at those others. So we we think that likely in about three years we could see um affordable housing. That would be our goal, would be three years.
Haley Sue Robinson:I think uh a timeline for expectation is important to outline to folks. Can you talk a little bit about the timeline? You mentioned the compass point apartments that we're gonna see on the east side. What what has that process looked like so far?
Melissa Cook:Yeah, so here's a great example of a real timeline. They applied for their first round of funding in 2021 and they were awarded in early 2024. Um, and they just broke ground. And so, you know, here we are in December of 2025. So from the initial application or initially working on it through breaking ground, that one was four years. So when I say three years would be our goal, it may not happen realistically. But as long as we're making progress, then then we want to make sure that we're we're tapping into every funding source possible. Um, yeah, the Compass Point Apartments, that one is a little bit of a different animal because it's a lot bigger. It's 198 units, I believe, almost 200 units. Um, and that one was using private activity bonds and a lot of low-income housing tax credits to make it work. And so I think that they were awarded $38 million in low-income housing tax credits. Wow. Um so quite a bit. It's a a very large award. The normal 9% awards are about $12 to $14 million. So yeah, four years.
Haley Sue Robinson:I think uh outlining to folks what the timeline looks like and then to your point, um coming up with solutions if if that's not i if they're not awarded the grant and having those expectations of being nimble um or having other ways of being successful, those are those are important things too. Uh mayor, I know it's been important to you. How do we work with developers or how do we make the process um smoother? And so uh hopefully this is one of those projects that we can kind of put those things to the test. But I would say from the beginning, uh at least seeing how quickly the the building has come down, we've already seen some success happen pretty quickly, which is exciting.
Mayor, Heather Graham:Yeah, moving quicker than the speed of government. Oh shot. I see you know, I see that like see that on Facebook that it had come down, and so I even made a special trip out the night before Thanksgiving in the dark to go and see it for myself that it was already down. So that's super exciting. Um we don't typically see things happen that quickly. So right it's good for the Bessemer area.
Haley Sue Robinson:I think another thing that's important to note too is while we might not see housing go up right away, um, so we'll see the the Circle K site um go up sooner than that three year timeline. But the other piece, uh mayor, a a big reason why you were such a proponent of this was just the fact that it was a nuisance. Um and seeing that like the calls for service with police or fire will go down. And so seeing those as success points, even in the midst of being I guess bored by the process or maybe losing interest um during the process is important. Um for folks to realize, hey, we we don't have nearly the activity that we had in this area, and it wasn't good activity. Right.
Mayor, Heather Graham:Yeah, that's gonna be one of our big focus points for 2026 is um that Bessmer area. So you're gonna be seeing Bessmer Park fence that should be completed in February, uh maybe early March, depending on when the material gets here. Um and then we're making our way uh down Union Avenue so listeners can stay tuned for another big exciting Northern Avenue. Northern what did I say? You said Union. Union Northern Avenue, yes. Um so the listeners can stay tuned for another exciting announcement. Um City Council will be seeing on their agenda uh on the 22nd. So um this is gonna be our focus for 2026 and looking forward to it.
Haley Sue Robinson:So more good news uh coming in the best area even before the end of the year. Even before the end of the year. Awesome. Great. Um, Melissa, is there other information that you think the listener should know or would be helpful for them to understand about this process or just about housing in general?
Melissa Cook:Yeah, I just, you know, we hear the term NIMBY, not in my backyard. And I really just hope that people rethink the way that they think about affordable housing. I think that that's really the message that I'm trying to get out is, you know, these are our all of our neighbors. And so, you know, knowing that that average income, $52,000, that's that's so many of our our Pueblo residents. So hopefully we can eliminate some of that stigma and and support affordable housing. You know, one thing that is interesting is I actually looked, so I already explained how we know that the um average income will be about $52,000. I actually pulled the census um tract for the area directly surrounding the Converge site, and that census tract has an average income of $40,455. Now, this is 2023 data because that was the last one that was updated, so it's gonna be a little bit more than that. But you know, with that information, really this will likely have an average income that's slightly higher.
Mayor, Heather Graham:It's gonna increase about yeah. Wow. And so, you know, $12,000 difference.
Melissa Cook:Yeah, 22% difference. Wow.
Haley Sue Robinson:So yeah, that's pretty significant. Okay. I think I think that's important as well. Uh I know NIMBYism is difficult for folks to to kind of get over their preconceived notions, but when we put it into these really tangible um job descriptions and and helping folks understand how does it fit right here in Pueblo? Not even just in Colorado or on the the national scale, how does it fit right here in our community? It helps us understand a a lot more. Okay. Any other things we need to cover regarding the Converges site or uh future development? Not yet.
Mayor, Heather Graham:Not yet. We're not giving all of our stuff away. We can't give all the secrets yet? Okay.
Haley Sue Robinson:Well, um, we'll be looking for the RFA in January. Um I'm sure we'll make an announcement here on the podcast. Um we'll also be updating folks on our social media as well. Um, but look looking forward to that. Uh this is a really exciting project, something that I know you and your team have worked um really hard on, and there's been a lot of partners involved in this process. So we're very excited and happy to see that Converges is no longer standing. That's that's one thing that is just like absolutely eye-opening to see. So um a couple of upcoming events. Uh just to note, we did have a public meeting scheduled for this evening, uh, Wednesday, December 3rd, but we are going to postpone it for the West Side Connector Project. We'll have more information about when that will be uh postponed too. We just made the decision this morning because of the snow. Um, but mayor, we have a public meeting coming up with the Southern Colorado Building Department, formerly regional building. That'll be on Tuesday, uh December 9th, here at Memorial Hall. What can we expect at that meeting?
Mayor, Heather Graham:Just uh updates. Uh so we have successfully obtained a partner. So for development inside of the city, permits, um, construction, residential construction, um, things should stay the way that they are if you're trying to build or or do any types of renovations. And so myself and uh Mark Herrero will be presenting to the community, and we invite contractors, community members to come in and ask questions so they know what those next steps are gonna look like for inside City Limits.
Haley Sue Robinson:Great. That's exciting. Okay. Um, well, thanks for a great episode. Thanks for coming on with us today, Melissa. We really appreciate it.
Melissa Cook:Yeah, thanks for having me.
Haley Sue Robinson:I'd like to invite the listener to um like, subscribe, and share the podcast. Apple, Spotify, YouTube, BuzzSprout, wherever you get your podcasts, you can also watch it on local channel 17. And don't forget, you can email us topic suggestions or questions at mayor@pueblo.us. And we'll see you next week.