ZBA Hearing - December 11, 2024

is saturated with PHA housing, and that has resulted in a natural depression of the market

rates for rents in this local area. So all of our rents will be considered affordable from the

moderate income area, but the community made very clear that they wanted at least one unit to be

affordable on the low income side. And so we went and agreed to that. So we'll just look at the

photos briefly. So as I said, this is what it used to look like from the front facade off of

ridge. This area used to be this pasture area, but there's a large multifamily big development

happening that I believe could be almost 80 or 100 units happening right next door.

This is across the street of our property. Again, it's mostly open space because of

so many of the properties have been demolished. This is the rear of the property. This is what

the blighted garage used to look like this is a new constructed building next door to our property

uh this is our rendering of what uh the property will look like from the from the

from ridge street facing the property uh this building uh is remaining we we we do not we do

not own that part um and then this is the rear uh the new rear of our property which used to have

blighted garage now has a very attractive uh brick and then uh and then a gray facade above

and this is the new construction next door to us um this is the side so over here is ridge back

here is beechwood and um this is no longer going to be like i said pasture uh and open space um

this will this is where but right here we wanted to show you where the receptacles will be for

for trash and recycling uh so now i'm going to go to um our rco support

uh our um coordinating rco is brewery town um sharswood and uh there was um unanimous support

from the community uh with without with there were some abstentions but everyone who voted

There were no votes against this project. In their letter, they appreciated that the developer is going to cap the rent of one unit at 30% of a tenant's income for the first five years.

They asked us for 10 years to use the 10-year tax abatement, but we explained to them in our presentation that the 10-year tax abatement is now really a five-year tax abatement because every year it steps down by a 10% point.

So we are using the savings from the 10-year tax abatement, but it really only amounts to five full years of being able to provide that affordable housing.

In addition, the community asked us to, well, let me just say the unit sizes, and I'll show you the plans in a moment.

The units are quite modest in terms of size.

um the the rent limits for um affordable uh for moderate income um housing according to the city's

um uh charts it would be one bedroom would be 1292 bedroom is 1548 um the rents that we are

anticipating are both below the the moderate income affordable rates um so that these are

are market rates and they're below the moderate income affordable rates. But as the community

pointed out to us, the moderate scale doesn't really jive with the level of poverty inside

Philadelphia. So we've gone below that for the single one. We also have a trash management plan

that we put together, we're going to have commercial trash pickup and recycling.

And we're going to provide information during the construction phase to all of the near

neighbors and, as I said, the single unit that's going to be affordable.

We did a whole presentation to the RCOs and the neighbors about the mixed income levels

and how to look at affordability and what was possible.

We also then created a community benefits agreement between Kikmak and Brewery Town Sharswood that...

between Kickmac and Brewery Town Starswood that primarily addresses the one affordable rental unit for the five years on the low-income aspect.

And we're using the language here that is used typically for city-created affordable rental unit properties.

This is not we we looked into getting some support from the housing trust fund.

We were told that wasn't possible for a private project.

So we're doing the best we can with the resources that we have.

We're also going to have we're going to record an affordability covenant with the Department of Records for this address so that it is it is completely accountable in terms of this this one set aside.

And BSCCA or its designee will have the right to conduct audits, like the city has the right to conduct audits for affordable units that are done through the land bank or the redevelopment authority.

We also are going to use best efforts to hire local folks during the construction phase.

And we're going to, like I said, have a local waste management company for the trash disposal and recycling.

blame. So now let's go to the plans. All right. So got to go this much smaller. Okay. So here's

our site plan. This is the rear beach wood. This is that side yard that we saw where the trash

reciprocals are going to be. This is the front onto ridge, so it's quite narrow at the front

and the rear and quite long on the sides. This is our rear elevation and our front elevation.

and these are these are additional views of the rear and the front elevations

the ground floor is going to be the commercial space we haven't determined which business so

it's it's going to be um momentarily vacant um and then um the the next floor up um the next

the two floors um uh above the commercial are basically have the identical uh floor plans which

is um two bedroom uh a two bedroom unit a um a one bedroom unit and then uh a two bedroom

unit. So the two-bedroom units are on each end, and the one-bedroom unit is in the middle.

And that's the same for the top floor. Two bedrooms, one bedroom, and then two bedrooms.

We also, in our packet, have our... Oh, sorry, we have the zoning posters.

um this these show the today's date for the hearing whoops

there we go you can see it's today and uh then we have the the the deed uh the uh application

for appeal the the project information form and our proof of mailing uh this is our we we did two

rounds of of community meetings so we mailed the first one with the proof of mailing and then we did

a we handed out a um a flyer door-to-door uh

there it is, to all the neighbors and to the businesses.

And we, it keeps popping up.

And these are all the addresses that we mail to and our proof of mailing.

At this time, I wanted to call on my client, I'm George Camo, to adopt my testimony.

and could you please state your name is spelled for the stenographer uh george come out g-e-o-r-g-e-k-a-m-a-u

you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth

yes i do please proceed counsel uh mr come out you um you heard my testimony

Please proceed, counsel.

Mr. Kamau, you heard my testimony this afternoon.

Do you agree with it and do you adopt it as your own?

Yes.

Is there anything more that you wanted to add to the board at this point?

No.

Questions from the board.

Can I see the floor plans again?

Sure.

And can we make them a little bit bigger?

Let's see.

Also, while you're showing them, can you point out which is the unit that you were, that your client was intending to designate as affordable?

Yes.

Yes.

Sorry, let me.

I seem to have lost all my.

Okay, there it is.

Um, all right, so, plans 28.

um miss gaston did you want to see the actual floor plans the apartment floor plans yes the

floor plans thank you all right this is the commercial and then there is the floor plan

so this is the two-bedroom unit

that's designated as unit a and then unit b is a one-bedroom unit how many square feet

are we talking about here?

Unit A is 600 square feet.

Unit B is 385 square feet.

And Unit C is 582 square feet.

The floor above that's the same exact numbers?

Yes.

Okay.

And which unit is currently designated?

We have not designated a particular unit, but we anticipate it's going to be one of the two one-bedroom units.

So it'll either be unit D2 or, they're both listed as, so it's either going to be unit B or unit E.

Other questions from the board?

I have a question. Is there a delineation from the commercial trash and the residential trash?

Like what they have the storage, because if it's a commercial, maybe they perhaps they will have a dumpster, whereas apartment units may have trash cans.

So could you show that area? And what's the delineation from the commercial use on the first floor to the residential use on the upper floors?

um sure so the

this area and how would the residential units get access to the to have access to the trash

they all have access to the trash through um through a gate here um at the rear of the property

uh the the um the area for the for the um for the commercial um actually i'm going to ask for

my client to to clarify that because i i haven't had that question before

um mr camo can you come back um can you raise your hand again

George, Camille, please unmute yourself

Sure

The residents can access the trash through a door

If Steve, you could go down to the next page

I could show that

Yeah, right on that page right there

This is the commercial area

Right, right. So Doe 1, I don't know if you can see Doe 1 on that hallway. This is the intent.

Door one, I don't know if you can see door one on that hallway.

This is the intent is to be able to bring the trash out through the back because the community required asked that if we could put the trash in the back.

So the idea is to put the trash in the back.

As you can see from the picture that we have, we put the trash in the back.

So the commercial and the residential will be able to use the trash in the back.

And the community does not want us to use public, the city trash.

They want us to get commercial trash.

And so that is what we told the community we would do.

I have a few other questions.

One, is there a residential lobby?

And like, where is like mail storage, package drop off?

Is there a location for any of that?

Yes, so that will be by the entrance.

We haven't figured out how we'll put it on there, but, you know, everybody has to get mail, but it will be somewhere in the front.

In the front area here.

That front area.

Yes.

Somewhere around this door at the edge of the property that leads to the stairs is the thought?

It won't be back there because there should be a door for security to make sure nobody can just walk in.

So somewhere in between there will be a door.

Okay, and then, can you explain why you chose to do six units instead of the four that are by right? One, I just want to point out, like, the units are a little small, especially the public, like, the living area and the public space areas. And so it does feel like it was a little bit squeezed into the building. And I'm just curious as to.

so like like steve said uh in in the community this community is largely owned by pha pha office

is right across the street so they go ahead oh i was gonna say yeah uh that that part i was aware

that was just trying to figure out why you were putting six units in this specific building so

So because PHA owns everything around that neighborhood, they have pushed down rent.

So you cannot charge $1,800 to live in that neighborhood because everybody else is paying $1,400 or $1,500.

So what that has done is has made it just a little harder to be able to make money out of having this building.

So to be able to build this building, so we would like to squeeze in an additional two buildings in there so maybe we could be able to make it financially possible and also to be able to give more space or more apartments to the community at a reasonable cost.

close at the temple they do have the three thousand dollar apartments but they're a little

bigger well putting a three thousand apartment in this part of the city will will basically

reduce the amount of people that can afford that kind of money so having you know having more space

and dividing the cost sounded like a good idea okay and then i know you said the community wanted

to see you to be affordable and you seem to be interested in sort of offering an affordable rent

to the neighborhood are you are you familiar with the concept of fair market rent uh yes okay um and

i'm just wondering like one the fair market rent for this area is 1200 which is set by hud which

is what governs the pha rents that you were sort of uh acknowledging um and did you consider any

other affordability program like did you section 8 like there's multiple other subsidy programs

that are available make units uh you know permanently or long-term affordable and did

you consider any of those uh yes we considered a lot of them uh section 8 um we use section

8 already so we don't have a problem with it we also try to talk to um um a few offices in

the city that could give us funding but most of them said they wouldn't do it for private so we

were looking for other options to reduce the cost of rent um whatever we could get but we are open

to taking pha vouchers and to do that the unit um as the community agreed uh to uh the 30 percent

okay but like currently there's no plans right now to try to get either vouchers on this building

or to advertise this as Section 8?

We haven't got to that point, but we are open to Section 8.

I do Section 8, and I'm open to Section 8.

And then, have you ever done marketing to tenants that live at 30% of AMI or below?

And then have you ever done marketing to tenants that live at their...

So, and or property managed?

So, at this point, no, but this is what we are putting on, this is what we're putting on the deed that we will do that going forward.

So the plan is to do a deed restriction through a separate agreement, obviously, is zoning. We can't provide that. But that is the agreement you've worked out with the RCO.

Yeah, we worked that out for a five-year period. We then went to the council member's office to see if we could extend it beyond the five years, but there didn't seem to be any way at this moment for a private project to be able to receive funding from the Housing Trust Fund or from other public sources.

So we're doing the best we can with what's available to us.

And did you consider the affordable housing density bonus?

Yeah, it's not available in this area.

Council President Clark put in an overlay some years ago and took away that option.

Okay.

Could you tell me again how much space is in the commercial?

Yes.

It's close to 1,700 square foot.

And your hardship is that you want to have this much density in this space because you want to provide affordability?

Yeah, our hardship is that the extra two units provide enough revenue to make the project work from an economic perspective and that we're basically preserving naturally occurring affordability for all of the six units because PHA suppresses the market rates.

But because of that, we need we need all six units because we can't we can't make a higher market rate for for a smaller for a smaller number of larger units that that wouldn't that wouldn't be sustainable economically for this particular location.

So we wanted to create an economically sustainable project that adds the extra units.

All around here, and I didn't have some of the photos, but when we went around with the leaflet to all the residents around there, there are massive projects happening with quite a bit of, like I said, 80, it looked like 80, 100 units that are going up.

We wanted to stay within the dimensions of the height and all of that, and in complying with all of that, we needed the extra two units.

And then we made one low-income affordable as long as we could, and we felt that that was doing the best we could for the community, and the community was very appreciative.

Yeah, and I hear that, but I guess my concern is that so much activity, because there is a commercial space that's going to be active on that first floor.

Do you have any idea of, are you shopping it around for types of businesses that could be on that first floor?

Because depending on that, that could possibly be a high traffic business as well.

Yes, that is so. Everything on that, on, on bridge is supposed to be a business, but at the time, that side of town is not very active.

So we're not sure what kind of business we can attract to come to that side of town.

And from the pictures you've seen, most of that place is vacant.

So we're not sure who we could be able to get up there.

Thank you.

Questions from our attorney, Hillary Emerson.

Not at this time, Mr. Chair.

Questions or comments from the virtual audience?

I see no hands at this time, Chair.