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Orozco, Norma From: Fair Housing Council of Orange County < Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2018 2:55 PM To: eComment Subject: Public Comment - City Council Meeting 5-15-18 - Agenda Item 75A Attachments: Public Hearing Comment.docx The following comment is submitted both in the body of this e-mail and via an attached Word document. Written Comment — Santa Ana City Council Meeting 5/15/2018 Agenda Item 75A - PUBLIC HEARING: APPROVE THE FISCAL YEAR 2018-2019 COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT BLOCK GRANT (CDBG) PROGRAM We first wish to point out an error on page 75A-9 of the staff report which shows for "Administration & Planning — Fair Housing" that the FY 18-19 request by Orange County Fair Housing Council, Inc. (dba Fair Housing Council of Orange County) was $64,141. Fair Housing Council of Orange County (FHCOC), in its online application for funding, requested $66,000, not $64,141, which is the current FY 17-18 level of funding. We requested that amount as we believe it is the appropriate level of funding to provide effective fair housing and landlord -tenant counseling services to the City of Santa. We wish to remind the city council that the provision of fair housing services is what allows the City of Santa Ana to certify that it is taking actions to affirmatively further fair housing, an obligation that attaches to the receipt of U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) funds. We wish to note that at the time of the recommendation for funding for fair housing services was made by the Community Redevelopment and Housing Commission (the Commission) on March 28, 2018 they were still working on the projection that the level of CDBG for FY 18 would be the same as that received for FY 2017, and perhaps even with concern that it might be possible there could in fact be a decrease in funding for FY 18. This assumption was used despite the fact that Congress, a week earlier on March 22, 2018, had passed an omnibus spending bill for FY 2018 that increased overall funding for the CDBG program from $3.0 billion to $3.3 billion, an increase of about 10%. While this knowledge in no way allowed for certainty in the amount of an increase to Santa Ana, it would have certainly been a reasonable assumption that rather than funding remaining flat or decreasing it would in fact increase. On or about May 2, 2018 HUD did in fact announce a 10.8% increase in Santa Ana's CDBG allocation, from $5,284,239 to $5,816,959. Despite the likely increase in CDBG funding, not only did the Commission not approve our requested funds, they did not approve even leaving our funding at its current level of $64,141, but instead recommended a cut of 3.0% to $62,241. We note that in light of the increase in FY 2018 funding, the amounts shown for recommended funding under the public service component, at page 75A-2 of the current staff report (dated May 15'h), show increases for the 17 funded programs of between 5.78% and 23.28°/x, while the funding for FHCOC's has not been adjusted upwards. While our online application, in answer to a required question for which no added explanation was possible, did state that the minimum funding we would accept in order to conduct fair housing services and landlord -tenant counseling for the City of Santa Ana would be $60,000, that answer should not in any way be used to infer that such a lower level of funding would allow for a complete and effective program anticipated with the receipt of the $66,000 requested. To put funding for these services in context, between FY 14 and the currently recommended funding for FY 18, there has been an inflation adjusted decrease in funding for our program of about 12% ($67,517 FY 14, adjusted to $70,720 FY 18 dollars). All the while the estimated population for Santa Ana has