Addressing Melbourne's Affordable Housing Crisis: A Conversation with Keith Donald

Join us on an enlightening journey addressing the dire need for affordable housing, as we converse with our distinguished guest, Keith Donald. As a key partner with the city of Melbourne and an influential member of the private foundation, Steady Town, Keith brings valuable insights to the table. With a wealth of knowledge and personal experience, he paints a compelling picture of the struggle for safe, decent, and affordable housing impacting low-income populations and the working class. Keith also discusses the recent success story of Heritage Park, a $13 million building offering 108 units of affordable housing for the next 50 years. 

Get ready to immerse in a deep conversation about the essence of a diverse community. Discover how it not only offers housing but also extends a helping hand to those enduring challenging times. We also highlight the significant role played by the Live Local Act in funding affordable housing projects, along with the crucial support provided by Daily Bread for those in need. Plus, we applaud the green initiatives by Heritage Park that fetched it the 'Keep Our Beautiful' award. 

In the final segment of our chat, we engage in an intriguing discussion with  Keith Donald about an upcoming affordable housing project in Melbourne. Listen as he discloses plans to unite different sources of local funding to establish 120 housing units. Our conversation concludes with Jesse, a passionate advocate for community aesthetics, emphasizing the urgent need for safe and beautiful spaces in the city. We also touch upon the necessity for affordable housing units of varying sizes and explore the challenges and opportunities that the future project holds. So tune in, and get an all-rounded understanding of Melbourne's affordable housing situation and the progressive steps being taken to ameliorate it.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

tonight would be a good night. We have a great guest in the studio tonight with Keith Donald, and we're gonna talk a little bit about last night's council meeting, the big move by the city of Melbourne for a portable housing, and we'll talk about the issues. One of the number one issues on people's mind is affordable housing, attainable housing, workforce housing there's multiple names, but the reality it's a roof over your head. So that's that. And we're in a, I would say, nationwide crisis for housing, especially Florida, in our area, where it's booming and people are coming here and the cost is up and so many people don't understand the way the housing works. And when it comes to affordable housing, we all remember affordable housing and like the projects or New Jack City back years ago, you know, and so it's a little different now. And so one of the things with Mayor I do is I try to surround myself with the people that really know the system and housing and finance and so on. So one of those people is Keith Donald and I'd like to introduce him. Hello, keith.

Speaker 3: 1:15

Thank you, mayor. It's good to be here. I appreciate the opportunity to be here to talk about housing, talk about city, town and the work that we do to try to advance housing in the city of Melbourne and you're a partner with the city and you've been a partner for quite a few years now With the city and with the nonprofit sector here in Melbourne. So I've started my sort of second career.

Speaker 1: 1:37

Okay.

Speaker 3: 1:38

My backgrounds in software engineering, software development, but back in 2013, I really started getting involved in nonprofit work.

Speaker 1: 1:46

Well, you know it's scary because your initial background is in IT would it be?

Speaker 3: 1:52

It is Software.

Speaker 1: 1:53

And we're having a software issue right now on Facebook. That's right. You can't fix that. Maybe Nice.

Speaker 3: 2:00

Not with all these new cloud technologies.

Speaker 1: 2:02

I understand the idea. You know you come and we have issues you know.

Speaker 3: 2:05

Yeah, we don't have the control of it.

Speaker 2: 2:06

We don't have the control of it.

Speaker 1: 2:08

It's a runaway. But so tell me a little bit about Steady Town and what it does, and tell me about that.

Speaker 3: 2:15

It's my family's private foundation me and my wife Kerry.

Speaker 1: 2:18

Okay.

Speaker 3: 2:18

So we started it in 2013 to work on issues that we felt were very important in our local community here in Melbourne. We've lived in Brevard over 20 years. This is our home, where we're raising our family, and we wanted to work on. First, we wanted to get involved in the community, and that's how I got introduced to great nonprofits like the South Brevard Sharing Center, like the Daily Bread, to really understand what issues we're facing just every day residents and citizens and one of those issues that we learned very early on in our work was the lack of safe and decent, affordable housing.

Speaker 1: 2:56

Right.

Speaker 3: 2:57

And how that made life harder for working folks and folks from our low income population, and how that's become more acute over the last couple of years.

Speaker 1: 3:05

Oh yeah, now you need quite a bit of money just to afford an apartment, that's right.

Speaker 3: 3:10

So you know, early on I did a lot of volunteering with the South Brevard Sharing Center, hearing those stories, Hearing stories about seniors being priced out of their homes because maybe an apartment was built and it was affordable for a while but then it was sold and it was converted and the rents were increased and that makes life tougher for folks.

Speaker 3: 3:29

So we really saw a need to work in partnership with the city and with the nonprofit sector to build more affordable housing that would be dedicated for folks that were lower income and dedicated for the long term. And that's how I got involved in a project like Heritage Park, trying to make something like that happen, which so that's an affordable development that was financed in 2018, that came online in 2021 and it created 108 units of affordable housing that are dedicated for 50 years. So we know it's going to be there. It's being managed by a nonprofit. It's mission based. I see a lot of value in projects like that because we know that housing is going to be there. It's going to be available to working folks that just need a safe and decent and affordable place to live.

Speaker 1: 4:14

You know what I find interesting about Heritage Park? And if you, if Jesse, if you put up the picture, um did something here in Melbourne, it's absolutely gorgeous If you were to look at this and it doesn't, it doesn't look like it's not your typical affordable housing, I mean, if you were to look at that, I mean you could that, that could be, you know, that could be, you know luxury apartments. I mean, if you look at it, it's a beautiful place and that then Melbourne and that was just like you said just went online.

Speaker 3: 4:40

Yep, it's 108 units, that's a $13 million building and it's a diverse community. So you have folks living there, you know, earning $20, $25 an hour, working in manufacturing, working maybe as a small business owner, and you've got folks that are on fixed incomes, that are extremely low income, that now have a safe place to live, that may have been at risk of homelessness at some point, and that's what we really, when we got into understanding what makes a vibrant community being able to build units that offer a mix to be able to serve, because the need is great, whether you're making $11 an hour and you need a place to live or you're making even $20 an hour, right, you know rents have gone up 30% in the last two years.

Speaker 3: 5:33

Average rent for two bedrooms around $1,700. That's hard to swing that. So at Heritage, you know the rents are priced at those different income levels. So you know, if you're making around $20 an hour, you might be paying $1,000 a month for rent. You know, if you're in a range from $11 to $15 an hour, you might be paying $750 a month and if you're extremely low income it might be lower than that. But it's affordable based on your income and there's a mix of units priced at the four different income levels.

Speaker 1: 6:01

You know, I think what we learned now especially as me, as mayor what I learned now is that you know anything like this could happen in regard to rents and you know the escalation. But having places like this online increases the volume out there and increases the volume supply and demand. That helps bring those rents back down. I mean, and so when you put this online, how long did it take to fill it?

Speaker 3: 6:30

So it took. So we started work on Heritage Park with all the partners in 2017. So it took three or four years to get it financed and built, and then it we started the process of lease up in May of 2021 and it opened in September of 2021.

Speaker 3: 6:51

From the day that we opened applications and we ran the kind of operation center out of Joe Davis center, right next door, right across the street from the building, the application list filled up in two weeks the demand was already there and we were recruiting residents locally. So this, this wasn't advertised on some big, you know, national circuit or even regional circuit. This is the purpose of affordable housing is to serve the community.

Speaker 3: 7:18

And the demand that's, they're already there for it because there's a unit shortage. Most of the units that are coming online are catering to our median income.

Speaker 1: 7:26

In.

Speaker 3: 7:26

Brevard County. That's over $80,000 a year right now. So for those that are making less, affordable housing is dedicated for them, and these are folks that live here that you know, just looking for affordable place to be, to live.

Speaker 1: 7:42

So my question for you would be this how do you, how do we as a community or society, get away from the stigma of quote affordable housing, because anytime you know that you say affordable housing, you got negative terms. I mean, it's negative, negative. How do we get away from that, can we?

Speaker 3: 8:04

No, I think it's always good to tour a development and to see the community. Yeah, and I was really pleased to hear you you know you stopped by Heritage and made a point to do that speak to residents, really see what the community's like. Yeah, these are regular decent folks.

Speaker 3: 8:25

Oh yeah, they're regular people Just like you are, that are long time Brevard County and Melbourne residents that take pride in their community, that are working folks. And you know everybody goes through hard times from time to time and you know, for that you've got you know you've got great agencies that provide good support to help folks work through problems with the help of their friends and family. You know when tough times do come, but you know. But again, I think it's important when you build community to build diversity to serve. You know a range of folks from all kinds of different backgrounds so I can tell you there's folks working in manufacturing and landscaping and healthcare, in public service, living at Heritage Park, their seniors, their retirees, that serve as role models for young adult families and single moms. It's a diverse community and I think that's part of it is building that diversity in and the design. And also, just you know, when you have the opportunity to visit a development that's doing it well and is well run, do so.

Speaker 1: 9:32

Yeah, and one of the things that was brought up last night. I was pretty impressed, but that you know, heritage Park recently won the Keep, of Our Beautiful award. Yes it did.

Speaker 3: 9:46

So one of my passions. So with Steadytown we learned I came to the conclusion, you know a couple of issues are very important to Carrie and I that we want to work on that give us meaning for this kind of second phase of our careers. One is affordable housing, the other is environment and water. And so Heritage is a unique project because it's on 15 acres of land. So when we worked with our partners on the design, we wanted to preserve as much of that green space as possible and we want to incorporate features like a large rain garden and the design of the stormwater, engineering a fully native landscape.

Speaker 3: 10:23

It's beautiful because, that went into the planning and that was something that we were passionate about making an investment in and, you know, I think that adds to the community folks. It definitely makes the community cooler during the summer because there's less pavement and more green space. But certainly you know it's therapy for me nature and appreciating, you know, the just natural beauty of Florida and incorporating that into the design of some of these developments. We tried to do that at Heritage.

Speaker 1: 10:58

Well, I will say I've seen the evolution over the last couple years of what you've accomplished and you know, last night was kind of a testament of really you and what you know your team has done for the affordable housing. Initially, you know, as you know, we, you know I tried, you know, about two years ago. You know we got some of the CARES Act money and one of the things I believe was that you know we needed a comprehensive facility, regional wide, you know, to address some of the, you know, homelessness, mental health issues, et cetera. I still believe we need it, but something like that needs it's not cheap. You need the funding from multiple cities. You need it from state partners, county partners. There's no way a city, any single entity, is going to burden that. You can't. You can't financially wish you could but you can't. And what we'd noticed, even over the last two years, that housing has really went from kind of being near the number one, if not number one, to like off the chart.

Speaker 2: 12:07

That's right.

Speaker 1: 12:08

There's nothing. I mean you can't, you know right now. You know, if you were to say what's more important, housing or the lagoon, people will say lagoon. And you'll people yell housing, housing, housing. And so really this has evolved to the point where we had money sitting there. What last night our council chose was to put $4 million of Care Resac money toward affordable housing. We awarded a couple of the $500,000 grants that South Boulevard well you have a tap for humanity was one of them, but the other one for a similar project to this.

Speaker 1: 12:49

Now there's something that just came down the state pipeline and you're familiar with it. It's called the Live Local Act and what the state has done and I'll pull it up here because it's pretty extensive but put a substantial amount of money I think at $1.5 billion over 10 years toward affordable housing and those initiatives. But it requires cities to do certain things and make land that we don't use available for affordable housing and kind of post it on a website. The list is pretty. You know long. You can bypass zoning. If you were gonna do an affordable housing project, you really were. Cities could dictate, you know. Well, you gotta do all that has been taking out and it's kind of a mean to make it more attractive, to build affordable housing. I serve on the Melbourne Affordable Housing Committee and one thing that we just did was change a lot of those code requirements. And when we got it all done it's funny Live Local kind of preempted and said look, we're doing all this, which I'm thankful for. You know, anytime the state is gonna kind of pony up and put some money into something and make it easier for us to do this. So the Live Local Act.

Speaker 1: 14:08

Now, about 10 years ago, there was a big issue with the Daily Bread moving. It wasn't the time, wasn't the place and it caused a lot of friction. And you know, one thing I'm not here to do is to bash Daily Bread. They've done some amazing things. Matter of fact, they've been a partner with the city and you've worked with them. But they've really understood lately the need for the housing. Housing has become really to the point that you can treat symptoms all day long, but as it becomes harder to obtain the housing, or you can say to someone get a job, clean up, become a productive member of society. Oh and, by the way, you need $2,000 a month instead of $700 where it was what 2015.

Speaker 3: 14:57

That's right.

Speaker 1: 14:59

So they've understood a lot of this and really it came to fruition that Jeff News had said. Look, we really got great partners in you and the Bavard Homeless Coalition and working. We really want to focus on kind of affordable housing and I will tell you this the number one project that came up was Heritage Park. Look how successful this has become that you talk about it throwing 108 unit on and it fills up, and when I go there it's clean, it's award winner and that's almost a model that you go. Maybe we need to be doing this a little bit more.

Speaker 3: 15:42

And Jeff talking to his clients. I mean, that's what they want, these clients that are engaged, that are participating in services. What they want more than anything, it's just a decent place to live get their lives back on track, and it's hard to deal with your issues when you have no stable place to be. And I know they've done placements at Heritage. They've been very successful.

Speaker 1: 16:04

Yeah, I remember going by there and there was an older black gentleman that got off, was getting off work and it was dark and he was the nicest guy, he's probably in the 60s and he's like, yeah, I need to get, I'm gonna walk. And he was gonna walk from there to he was staying at a hotel on Airport Boulevard and he was like three miles. He was like 730 at night. I'm like, hey, man, let me give you a ride. And he's like, really, I'm like, yeah, get in. So I get in. And I'm talking to him and he has no idea I'm the mayor. I mean, I don't say I'm the mayor, but he gets in and gives him a ride. And the guy, oh, I had a great day at work, it feels good, I'm gonna go home and take a shower and such.

Speaker 1: 16:41

And so a lot of people don't see that there's people just wanting to go home. They wanna get off, they wanna go to work, they want to get off work, they want to go home taking a shower, watch some TV, and then you know, and just be a productive member of society. So you know, that kind of Clicked to me and said, look, you know what? Some the hotel's not cheap. The model of putting people in hotels doesn't? It's temporary.

Speaker 3: 17:07

That's right and rent assistance going to a Two bedroom apartment. That's not very nice, that's old, that maybe has been sold and is not very well managed. Yeah, and a great investment for profit. That's right.

Speaker 1: 17:19

Clearly for profit heritage.

Speaker 3: 17:21

It's new, it's nice, it's well maintained, is nonprofit, it's dedicated, it's going to be there. That's a better investment in my view.

Speaker 2: 17:28

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:29

It's a better value for the city and, of course, we leverage state funds to be able to construct it right, you know and the we have property on Sarnau Road, it, and we discussed the disposition of land for for a similar project to heritage and and that that is something that I believe will happen in next meeting. And here's what I would tell people, because some people are going to be like why are you putting affordable housing there? We're not putting anything there because the reality, the property next to it, that that that is being used as well. They only need to go to the city now to live local. And I would tell people it gives a city not only will we donate land we're not going to use, but it gives a city the ability to maybe put some Conditions on the property we're giving out. That ensures the citizens and it gives them this, this, a reassurance that, look, you're not having a daily bread or you don't have the back. You know, because everybody sees the negative and the negatives real.

Speaker 1: 18:29

I'm just gonna be friend I talked to, but you know that's an outdated model to the point where they understand that 33 years is hard to do something. Yeah, hard to even hold a job for their same job for 33 years. Things change. If I was asked anybody that's been in software, computers, police work. Has your industry changed in 33 years?

Speaker 3: 18:50

Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 18:51

I mean club the cloud, ai, yeah much and it's changed so that the thought process now is, you know, focusing on the affordable housing aspect, having the right organizations like yourself to manage them, the nonprofits to run it. I'm a firm believer that government doesn't do things well. The nonprofits will leverage, you know, dollars. The return on investment is much higher with the volunteers, you know you. For example, you know the downtown, melbourne, main Street, I mean they have probably around 250 volunteers throughout the year. What would that cost the city? You know. How many volunteers do you deal with? You know quite a few.

Speaker 3: 19:34

Yeah, I mean that's a strength of daily bread for 30 years. History is yeah.

Speaker 1: 19:39

No, and you know they've done a lot of great things and I see now that you know, and they are closing. I think the fact they close when they close and they sell their property and they really focus on what they're new you know what the future brings, the affordable housing, the fat, you know and and really Focusing on the biggest need in the community right now. So you know, I there, there are some always naysayers, there's naysayers on everything, but the reality is is, and I would tell people, with the live local act, they can construct that Without, without even the city. They don't even have to go through the city, they don't have to go through zoning or not, like they can build it. Matter of fact, your project would be easier to build now under the live local act, with greater incentives, with great Thank you.

Speaker 3: 20:25

greater incentives like a property tax exemption, yeah, yeah, yeah, which would help.

Speaker 1: 20:29

Yeah, so so that that being you know, seeing that you know that, will that solve our problem? It definitely will help.

Speaker 3: 20:39

Yeah, I think we take it one project at a time. Every unit that we can add, that's dedicated affordable housing for our Community, helps. Yeah, it helps with preventing homelessness. It helps with Providing housing for people to get to work, which is important for economic development. Right, I mean, every unit helps. So Whenever we sit down to do a project, we want to get as many units as we can. So at heritage we were able to take it from.

Speaker 3: 21:05

It was planned for 80 units and usually we turned it into 108, right At this project that we have the opportunity now to work on. We're going for 120 units right Nice, and that'll make a big impact and the demand is already there.

Speaker 1: 21:19

Melbourne residents are ready today to move in and that's going to be a good thing for our city and look, I'm gonna, I'm gonna say this out loud We've approved quite a you know quite a bit of premium apartments for our engineers moving in. You know that they're coming to work at the airport and who may not blink at $2,000 a month for one bedroom, and I mean that market is there. But if that market is there, the market is there also for attainable housing and workforce housing.

Speaker 3: 21:48

Yeah, Most of the units that are being built are catering to people making more than $80,000 a year. Yeah, but not everybody's at that level. You know households making $60,000, $50,000, $40,000, $20,000 a year, $11 an hour. They need housing too.

Speaker 1: 22:02

Well, even if they're making, let's say, $60,000 a year, that doesn't go as far as far now than it did two years ago.

Speaker 3: 22:08

It doesn't. So the more housing we build, I mean that will reduce inflation. That will reduce inflation in and of itself, which will help with rents across the board.

Speaker 1: 22:19

You know, and like I stated last night, you know, if you look at that area, you know you have multiple apartments or condos, nearly you know, to the east, to the south, being built to the north. So it's really it serves a public purpose for that and really I, you know, I'll tell anybody look at Heritage Park and tell me that you wouldn't live there. Yep.

Speaker 3: 22:49

I would yeah, and if you look at the history of Melbourne's affordable housing project, um Heritage happened in 2021.

Speaker 1: 22:56

That's when it opened.

Speaker 3: 22:57

Before that it was Parkway Place in District 5, which was 2009, wickham Club 2007. We haven't had a lot of projects to your point. I looked at the building permits for last year. Across Brevard County there were about a thousand multifamily units built. 90 of them were affordable.

Speaker 1: 23:17

Wow, less than 10 percent.

Speaker 3: 23:19

Less than 10 percent. So you know these, these projects aren't happening a lot but when they do happen it adds a lot of value for our community and it does serve a public purpose. It's serving the need where the market's not building these units. It helps when government steps in to provide the financing to help get these units built and dedicated. So we know housing is going to be there for lower incomes that are just working folks that are part important part of our economy as well.

Speaker 1: 23:43

Yeah, so um tell, tell it so for some of our listeners that may not understand. So how do the uh uh, like the Brevard homeless coalition, play a part in this?

Speaker 3: 23:55

Good question. So, uh, the BHC is our main administrative body for funding related to homeless services, which can include funding for affordable housing, because building affordable housing prevents homelessness. So it's another way to access federal and state dollars for affordable housing. So they're an important partner Um, all of the entitlement communities here in Brevard County, which includes Brevard County, titusville, cocoa, melbourne, palm Bay, receive dollars as well. Correct, um, and those are other opportunities that uh for making investments in projects like this to get units built and online.

Speaker 3: 24:34

Um. And then you have state dollars through the state's housing trust fund that are really important and the low income housing tax credit program. Those are other major sources of funding for affordable housing and it's the more we work together to build capacity to be able to bring dollars together from different sources to get quality developments built Um the the more units we'll build. And then, if we've got, if we know what we're doing for operations, the projects will be sustainable, they'll be well maintained and well managed and folks will love living there Right, like what's happening at Heritage. It's financially sustainable, it's successful Um, it's making a difference in people's lives. It's serving important community need. The market's not going to do it by itself. Um, you know markets doing its thing, but it's important to that we're also building affordable units at the same time.

Speaker 1: 25:23

Yeah, and, and we're definitely doing that. And what I like about it too is if you look at the project without telling anybody, if I could probably go around and ask people, where is that project in Vieira? And I'm wondering, people probably would not know that project does not in Vieira. It could pass in Vieira. Oh yeah, it could pass. Yeah, what do you?

Speaker 3: 25:46

think the color scheme is similar to it.

Speaker 1: 25:48

Well, it almost looks like next to the avenues.

Speaker 3: 25:51

I think about what it is. Yeah, there's a development on the avenues. It's very similar.

Speaker 1: 25:55

Yeah, what do you think about the new color scheme of the project in Vieira? And ask them to see what they'd say about that? Yeah, that'd be very interesting and kind of you know how they do that on, like, uh, the social media.

Speaker 3: 26:05

Yeah, I think that's an important principle in affordable development. We want to build developments that are beautiful, that we live in ourselves. People deserve dignity in the housing that's available to them, and that's a big part of the heritage vision and the way it's operated today.

Speaker 1: 26:19

Well, and I'll tell you also, the people that live there, um, they appreciate their home more. When you have that, you have people collectively wanting to, you know, to ensure that it's clean, that their neighbors are doing the right thing and that's right, and so you know it's similar to the broken window theory and law enforcement.

Speaker 1: 26:38

If you, if you let something go, it's going to get worse so you know you have the proper management to the point where look, you know you're. You're going to live here. You're welcome here. You know the place is going to be kept up because we have a waiting list of not more than welcome to move out, but we want you to stay Right. You know that. That's how it's gotta be so ad heritage.

Speaker 3: 26:56

There's a neighbor, there's a resident counsel advisory council that has basically leadership responsibility in helping run the development in partnership with the operator and the developer, and I think that's an important principle. It really instills within the community hey, this is our home, we're looking after it for each other. There's a neighborhood neighborhood watch effort associated with that as well.

Speaker 1: 27:18

it's just part of just ensuring a safe and and Secure community that people take pride in yeah, and and I'll tell you again one thing that I've been very successful at, I mean, there's always naysayers on on on things like this. But I will tell you this when, when you run a city, you know you represent everyone in the city and there's people that you know that may not, you know, have much of a voice but they're just as important, and when I've kind of learned even on the homeless, you hear some people well, they're homeless, they want to be homeless. That may be true with that person. There's some people that want to live off the grid, or some people that moved to Greg, they want to have property, but there's also the mom and the and the kid that is probably a half a paycheck away from being homeless themselves.

Speaker 3: 28:06

That's right and, and I've found most people are good people and people and want to be better they're. And when they're home, when, when facing something like homelessness, you're seeing somebody going through one of the toughest experiences of their lives, the best thing you can do is help them overcome that, you know, and that that takes support. It takes meeting people where they're at, and I found that Treating folks with dignity and I think that's an important you see that value in our nonprofit it's here, like like daily bread, like the sharing center. Folks are treated with dignity, despite going through some tough circumstances and and most people are going to get through it and be better on the other side of it- you know and and what I'm glad to have you on today, because one thing I noticed that you don't do well is toot your own horn and you don't.

Speaker 1: 29:00

It's like you're working so hard in the background and you're always given everybody the credit and you know your partners and stuff, but you, you and your team, do a substantial amount for the you know, for the development of the affordable housing and, and really I Will tell you, even all the other fellow you, my fellow council members, when you come up, we know you, you have the experience, you are kind of one of our go-to people. I appreciate. You know and and you know that that's definitely when, when you're, when you're conducting a council meeting, even if you're just on the dais of the council member, when certain people walk in the room, you know either they there to speak or they lost. Do they have a complaint? Are they looking for? You know to offer an agenda item, whether it's engineering, you know. Then you have some people that you go.

Speaker 1: 29:57

You know what that person there, that they understand affordable housing, they understand engineering, they understand water and they're here for something important. That's right and and that's why you go through the agenda item. And you know, last night I called you up and we're talking about where I think is. You know that the, the cares act money four million I think that's pretty substantial toward affordable housing. I really think that that's huge.

Speaker 3: 30:20

I do, I do as well, and I think the Brevard neighborhood development coalition, or neighbor up Habitat for humanity. Those are two great organizations, important organizations, macedonia Community Development Corporation. So I mean this is really in making investments in our nonprofits to build more housing, which is a great investment for the city to make yeah, and and that's something that cares act money was.

Speaker 1: 30:44

We didn't ask for it. They put it in our account for the city and you know we had the option to, you know, utilize it how we feel the best. And you know, right now I'm just lucky to say you know this is something that you know my fellow council members, I asked them to put that toward affordable housing and they they've kind of blessed it to, to support that and I appreciate what they did. You know and you know so. But so what else do anything else? No?

Speaker 1: 31:12

I think so, so you're excited about the new project.

Speaker 3: 31:16

I'm very excited. I think this is a unique opportunity To bring together several sources of local dollars from the American Rescue Plan and private funding as well to create 120 units of new beautiful housing. That's going to be good for the community. That's going to be a source of stability for our residents that are working folks. That's going to help with our economic development. It's going to ensure a balanced approach, development Every unit helps. It's going to help with our homelessness problem and it's it's going to be a beautiful Community and building to tour. That'll be an asset for many years to come. So I'm very excited to be involved in it. I'm looking forward to getting going on the next phases of it. Yeah, and that that's really about. You know We've got pre-development to get through once a you know if we Take in the next steps underwriting, getting into construction. You know people have asked about time frame. You know I I think it's it's it's possible to get something done and break ground next year.

Speaker 1: 32:22

Early next year. Right, We'll see.

Speaker 3: 32:25

But, but it. The urgency is there, right, and it does take time to build, but figuring out the financing is one of the hardest pieces, but actually now yeah, that's what the interest rates.

Speaker 1: 32:35

And oh yeah, yeah, ask any builder, any roller, anybody. They'll tell you this is a tough time right now to build but we know we need the units yesterday.

Speaker 3: 32:44

Yeah, we do so we try to approach it with a sense of urgency, with then, you know that's just and I do take that seriously. I have an engineering background. I think where that's that's my, where I approach comes from is just focusing on, you know, trying to solve problems. This is at a great opportunity to do something that'll make a good, a major, lasting impact for the city, and I'm Privileged and proud to be a part of it.

Speaker 1: 33:05

And and the only thing that I asked for that you can kind of keep an eye out for me is you know, I want the same sense of feeling of, you know, the, the greenage, the. You know I want people to go there and go. Man, this is nice, this is. You know, this is, this is. I want to like heritage part, and you know that you can. You'll promise me that right.

Speaker 3: 33:26

I will promise Is a passion of yeah and I know, I know it yeah you don't have to worry about that.

Speaker 1: 33:31

So we, we can get that done and you know that that. You know that that's all, that's gold. So we can, we can do something great. So you know I appreciate you coming on tonight. You know, at the last minute. You know normally we do our podcast. We try on Thursday nights Thursday's a good night. You know everybody's ready for Friday. But you know, going over the league of cities and having all this done with the, you know the, the, the meeting last night, you know I appreciate you just saying, hey, I can show up whatever I can do to support the. You know the portable workforce housing in the area. So I really appreciate you coming on because you're taking your time out of. You know your busy schedule.

Speaker 3: 34:10

Thanks for having me, mayor's been a pleasure.

Speaker 1: 34:12

And what about you, jesse?

Speaker 2: 34:14

You've been, you've been over there asleep. No, no, I've been paying attention. I'm just, I'm excited. 120 affordable units is a Great addition to you know what we need.

Speaker 1: 34:24

Yeah, one, two and three bedrooms right?

Speaker 2: 34:26

Yeah, one so bigger families, individuals, you know I mean, yeah people, people need different sizes for what they need. You know the retiree, the, you know that widow or widow were, you know. You know they're gonna need something different than a single mom with two kids. Yeah yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1: 34:44

All right. Well, thank you everyone for joining us tonight on a special edition of the Melbourne mayor podcast with Jesse Hall from Spacecoast podcast. A little bit of Technical issues, but that's okay, you got him worked out. We're on YouTube. You know, in Keith key in Keith, looked at your background, you see Alabama, something, alabama. You know Alabama fan and alumni. Okay, all right. I'm the bravado have you guys ever won a football championship? I just wondered, you know?

Speaker 3: 35:15

We weren't any good when I was in school. Okay, it came later. Yeah, it's like every other year.

Speaker 1: 35:19

Right, yeah, so all right. Well, thank you very much everyone. You have a good night and be safe. And you know what? Stay out of the heat, right, stay in the kitchen. Stay out of the heat. You.