Brighton council approves amendment removing two properties from affordable-housing fee-waiver agreement

Brighton City Council voted 8-0 June 3 to approve an amendment that removes two Brighton Housing Authority properties from a 2017 fee-reduction agreement while keeping affordability requirements on units at Jessup Street.

The change updates a prior agreement that provided fee reductions for 16 affordable units across three properties and adjusts reporting and income-limit measures after project scope and financing changed.

City staff told council that asbestos abatement and other scope changes made it financially infeasible to add the originally planned number of units at the North Fifth Avenue and South Eighteenth Avenue properties. Sean Wyman, the city’s affordable housing coordinator, said the 2017 agreement "provided fee reductions for the construction of 16 new units across the 3 properties" and that six units were added on Jessup Street as planned but the other properties saw three rather than 10 units added. Wyman told council that the Brighton Housing Authority asked to remove the 13 Fifth and Eighteenth Avenue units from the agreement and to report annually on the Jessup units by listing rents, family sizes, bedroom counts and income limits instead of using the CHFA form referenced in the original agreement.

Bristol, executive director of the Brighton Housing Authority, said the properties remain subject to multiple affordability restrictions. "HUD has always had a covenant on that property restriction restricting the affordability requirements," Bristol said, adding that state grants and loans also include covenants. "So there is a layer of 4 separate restrictions on the property to ensure its affordability."

Staff said no impact-fee reductions had been taken for the three units that were added at Fifth and Eighteenth and that those units participate in HUD’s Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program, which preserves them as affordable housing. Council members asked whether removing the two properties from the city agreement would allow the authority to sell the properties or convert them to market rate; staff and Bristol said the federal, state and county covenants and the Housing Authority’s mission limit those outcomes.

Wyman also told council that the units had originally been restricted to 50% area median income (AMI) in the 2017 agreement, but operating-cost increases had pushed some units above 50% AMI. He said the average AMI across the portfolio is about 59 percent. Staff recommended adopting the CHFA income-limit table as the city standard for income levels and annual unit-level reporting by list. The council approved the staff recommendation and the proposed resolution to amend the agreement.

Councilmember Snyder moved to approve the amendment (ID 13425); Councilmember Fiddler seconded. The roll-call vote was 8-0 in favor.

The city and the Housing Authority framed the amendment as preserving affordable units already protected under HUD and other covenants while removing an administrative fee-waiver obligation tied to a larger construction scenario that did not occur. Staff noted the change will keep the Jessup Street units under the original agreement’s reporting requirements, but will use a different reporting form and the CHFA income table going forward.