Manatee County’s affordable housing board on hiatus until June

Tasked with reviewing Manatee County’s codes for any barriers to developing affordable housing, Manatee County’s Affordable Housing Advisory Committee has identified four priorities for affordable housing incentives.

“I think they are taking what is already been developed and enhancing them to broaden the opportunity for affordable housing to happen in our community,” said Diana Shoemaker, who is the committee’s chairwoman as well as executive director of Manatee County Habitat for Humanity. “The committee has been really actively engaged in some creative thinking about the issue of affordable housing and need in our community. I am really pleased with the input of committee members to improve affordable housing options in our community.”

The four priorities for affordable housing incentives identified by the committee are: “multi-family housing around employment centers and tax incentives; fee pay-in/buy-in for non-affordable development; impact fee incentives for multi-family to be the same or similar to at least the residential incentives; and the fourth item being that we have a housing expeditor staff person,” according to the motion approved by the committee.

As a way to give county staff time to work on the priorities, the advisory committee will be on hiatus until June for staff “to develop a working document regarding these priorities so that they may be brought back before the AHAC with proposed language, how it will work within the Land Development Code and what elements will need to be addressed for implementation,” according to an email sent from Denise Thomas, the county’s housing and community development manager, to committee members.

“It’s to allow us to work on those areas to be able to come back before affordable housing committee to present a working paper on those areas,” Thomas said.

On June 9, five of the committee members’ terms will be expiring so the members will have to reapply for the seats, according to Thomas.

“Members currently filling these seats will be notified upon advertisement of the seats, should they desire to be considered for reappointment to the AHAC by the Board of County Commissioners,” she said.

This story was originally published March 23, 2017 at 4:26 PM with the headline "Manatee County’s affordable housing board on hiatus until June."