Special Board of Aldermen 10-27-2020 Page 15
Alderman Lopez
Thank you for your comments. | did notice you also made reference to the racial and economic disparity as
well which | think is going to be important for us to consider.
Mr. Halvorsen
Yes.
President Wilshire
All set, Alderman Lopez?
Alderman Lopez
Yep.
President Wilshire
Alderman O’Brien?
Alderman O’Brien
Thank you, Madam President. This is a question to Mr. Halvorsen, thank you, excellent presentation. But
in your studies in going around to different other type of communities, | saw that you had listed some of our
older structures that were built around 1930, | think several pre-date that as well. And some of them have
maybe perhaps not been gently lived in or lovingly taken care of. So to that vein and looking at the Master
Plan in mind, does your company have a rule of thumb number in looking at some of these properties when
the point of investing into that and then looking to replace, some are coming up or some alternative
program to come up with more community type of stye on the same footprint and to get into affordable
housing.
Mr. Halvorsen
Yeah great question. So in the full report, | didn’t have time to talk about it tonight, but the City staff had
asked us to take a look at all of the residential units around the City. | think we focused mostly on one, two,
and three unit structures and looked at the age of each of the housing structures and try to figure out just
kind of rule of thumb what the potential rehabilitation needs might be citywide for older structures. And our
cut off for that was anything built prior to 1979. The reason we use that is that’s about a 40-year life span
and typically you are building structures for like 40 or 50 years here in the United States unlike many other
countries around the world. We build these structures and maintain them for 150 years in some cases
which in some respects is great to preserve the architecture and history. And in other respects its kind of a
rehabilitation nightmare when you buy it, you’ve got to put a bunch of money into it.
But anyway we use 1979 as a cut off for that both for the sort of lifespan of the structure, but maybe more
importantly that aligns with when lead paint regulations came out, sort of after 1979. So from a rehab
standpoint and | am sure Carrie can speak to this as well, the City has a really robust lead paint
remediation program. Many cities around the country that have CDBG Funds do so we use that as our cut
off for the rehab analysis.
