Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

James Featherby voiceThey were encouraged to hear the updates, as we talked about doing, was emphasizing equity throughout the plan in a better way, the additional expansions in the areas of environmental sustainability were well supported including current initiatives that we're working on now such as urban agriculture and so forth all well thought of so just want to thank you all congratulations thank you mr. napty okay we will recess our regular meeting and go into a work session we have one work session this evening the housing and strategic plan work session we'll discuss and we welcome Ms. Abashian and your cadre.

Leslie AbashianstaffAnother thing that I do is I think about housing. I do. I think about housing a lot. The last year and a half, the unhoused population and some of the concerns of the community and those of staff, we had a homelessness task force and I was one of the staff members for that based on that I don't know if you haven't seen it we did a report and it had 38 recommendations ten of them are prioritized that we're starting to work on and one of the things we're doing is we're looking at affordable housing and homelessness strategic plan so tonight I have Tom Thomas P Miller at associates are going to talk to you a little bit about the affordable housing piece of it because i think it's really important obviously to have you as a planning commission as a part of these conversations

not just tonight when they're telling you a little bit about what we're trying to do with the strategic plan but as we work on the strategic plan um because it is a part of you know our community and and what we need to move forward and i know you guys do a lot of work around planning and making sure the right things happen in our community for all our residents so i really appreciate it and I'm going to turn you over to the TPMA thank you good

Melanie Thompsonevening my name is Melanie Thompson and I am a senior consultant for TP TM TPMA and I have my colleagues with me this evening to give you an overview of the affordable housing and homelessness strategic plan I have Miguel Garcia and Ashley Sharp TPMA is a national consulting firm that provides both solutions to empower communities delivering transparent insight to complete the work force education and economic development ecosystem we had of working with the city of Fairfax with their housing plan in 2023. This plan will include the staff, myself acting as the project lead. Aaron Finley will act as the project advisor. Miguel Garcia will be the project support. Ashley Sharpley will be the engagement specialist and Erin Brown she will be

the research specialist just to provide an overview of the project in 2023 the information included the rising housing costs and the unhoused population that information will be considered as we move forward with the strategic plan and in 2023 the homeless task force did an amazing job with making recommendations that will be considered also as we move forward the scope of work is very important because this strategic plan will be different it will analyze affordable housing the affordable housing market and the homeless situation we will engage community stakeholders such as city officials advisory boards and commissioners city and county agencies and service providers non-profit organization businesses and community groups

Leslie AbashianstaffSo I think that in some ways, us being in the area we are, there's a lot more resources. The farther you go out, the less resources. And I think Fairfax County, since we work so closely with them, they're fairly progressive on some of the ways they're using even some of the properties they own where they're doing some co-locations and they're building the affordable housing units. have enough and i think that that's one of the things that we're going to be really looking at with the strategic plan is who's not living here because they can't afford the housing i mean is it your son is it your grandmother you know is it your your mother who retired and can't afford to you know to live here so those will be some of the things we're looking at um and we're