Erin Karpewicz on Housing and Community Development For All

0:00Welcome back to Pippin and Friends Podcast. I'm here with my friend Aaron Carpowitz, who is the executive director of the Anner Rundle Community Development Services. It's actually a Rundle Community Development Services. Isn't that weird? A-C-D-S. Hello A-C-D-S, Aaron. Hi, Mr. Pittman. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. It's great to have you here because what you do is so important. It's so important to me. It's, I think, part of the reasons that I got engaged in political activity at all is housing. And the need to have housing that folks in our workforce can afford, folks at every income level, I really think that everybody should ever roof over their head. Do you think everybody should ever roof over their head? I do, I do. Yes. And there's a continuum of housing needs for people who might be experiencing homelessness to people who might want to buy their first home.

1:04And you're responsible for all of it. Okay. So, why don't you first? We're going to get into a bunch of stuff, guys. We're going to talk about some community centers that these guys have done. We're going to talk about some things at Crownsville. We're going to talk about some of the tools that get used to deal with the fact that the market is not really producing housing that is affordable at a income level. So, you know, government and subsidies and things have to step in and it gets really, really complicated. So we need smart people. So, first just tell us, Aaron, what ACDS is sort of scope of work is in purpose? Sure. We are, we're actually a little bit unusual in that we are a private nonprofit organization, but we were created by the county back in 1993. So, we've been in operation for over 30 years now. And we were privatized and were the county's housing and community development agency. And so, that's really the core of our work. We still continue to create affordable housing opportunities as well as community development opportunities. And I'll say that's a little bit different than most jurisdictions who have. We have the housing commission that does public housing with federally supported, but most have a housing agency.

2:10And in Anne Rundle, a number of things were spun off as kind of nonprofits that have their own board, but they're also part of government, so their government chartered and they're funded through the county's budget as well. But being an independent, somewhat independent gives you flexibility that county agencies don't have, is that right? That's right. We can, we can be a little bit entrepreneurial in that we can go out and purchase properties without having to go through the long process that sometimes you have to go through as a county. We don't, we have a procurement process because we work with a lot of government funds, but it's not the rigid county procurement process. We also are able to go and do our own development. And so, that's really exciting. We have an independent board of directors, and so they can advise us and bring their expertise to the table to advise us on when we're doing our lending and other projects that we take on. And they actually hired you. I remember, I remember when your predecessor was retiring, and, and you were the deputy, and most people thought that you should be in the job, and it had been up to me, I would have just said, yeah, let's just do it.

3:17They, they were much more careful about it and, and did a national search and found that you were the best candidate in the country. That's right. And I'm so glad they did in retrospect because I feel like it gave me a lot of legitimacy. And it was a great process to get to know the board members and understand kind of what their strategic vision was as well, and, and, and how I could tie that then into your administration and what your priorities are. So, so maybe we can cover some of this by talking about projects, the scope of what you do rather than try to describe it all. And I know when we talked before this, you said that one of the things that you think is really important and maybe another benefit of being a little bit independent of government is that you do community engagement at a level that is pretty intense and deep, don't you? Yes, I think we do. We have, you know, in addition to the housing development work that we do in the capital development, we also have a network of over 180 sub recipient organizations.

4:17So, we are tied in with the grassroots organizations that are doing the work in the community. So, we do have that network to draw on when we really want to connect with folks. But we also have a long history of when we develop big capital projects. My predecessor, who you mentioned Kathy Koch, she was really, you know, a legend in Toronto County. She was a legend in Toronto County and she led with ACDS working with the community to revitalize the Wiley H. Bates under the Janet Owens administration. And so, that was a really great learning experience for me because she really worked with the Bates Alumni Association and that constituency and a lot of people in the community. And so, we carried that on as we worked through the Severn Center development. I got to say the Bates is something that I hear about a lot. I go to meetings there often at the Legacy Center and then there's there's folks who live there as a senior center, but it's also housing for a lot of people. And Carl Snowden, who's the convener of the Caucus of African-American leaders that meets there, often tells groups, audiences about when he worked for Janet Owens that that was one of the things that she did that they were all the most proud of.

5:25Is turning that old school into something really the service of the community. Yeah, and it's amazing to see the Caucus have their meetings there and it's the center of civic life for a lot of people in African-American community just as it was back during the days when the school was alive and well. They had a lot of, it wasn't just a school, it was a center of African-American life. It was the high school for Anoronal County African-American students, right? It was the only high school in the county, during segregation. Yeah, I went to a showing of a film about the history of it that was there at Legacy Center, I remember bringing my kids. Was it bringing back Bates? Yes, that's on our website, if any listeners would like to see that. It was an amazing school, an amazing alumni that lived and worked on the county and had amazing careers because it was a really great school. So I know you were about to jump into another community center, the Severin Center. Yes, the Severin Center, it's just a signature project.

6:27I know for your administration and for our organization, sadly Mrs. G. Glendigathers, who is really an advocate for that center for over 30 years in the western part of the county. An area with high needs, a lot of young children, higher poverty rates than the county as a whole. Didn't have a lot of services and they advocated for many, many years, heard many others, really. So it's adjacent to Mead Village, which is public housing and still Meadows. Still Meadows, Pioneer Drive, close to Spring Meadows. Which are all housing communities that have affordability built in and near Fort Mead, of course. Yeah, and I'm going to say that I first heard about it. Well, you were there. You were there, Ms. G's funeral just a couple of weeks ago. And I was there and I was asked to speak and I talked about how it came to be. I also talked about that during a budget town hall to inspire people to never give up and advocating for what they're for.

7:28Ms. G advocated for a community center in that community for over 30 years. And there was a group that had, that she had organized that was advocating and kept it going. And she had been promised by so many county leaders in the past that something was going to happen. And I remember meeting her and her looking, looking me in the eye, looking right through me. Into my soul to see, you know, am I going to, am I just another who is going to, you know, talk a good game and not do it. And so, but I remember Kathy Koch, your, your predecessor said, we can't build a community center if we don't have a plan for what's going to be in it and who's going to actually run it. We don't do community centers in Anne Rundle County. The previous administration has said we don't had done a study and decided that now we have schools, libraries and other institutions. We don't need community centers. And, and so what you all came up with at ACDS was to combine a boys and girls club as an anchor, kind of like a mall with anchors and a senior center. And then a space in the middle of the basketball court and, and access for the community.

8:31And, man, oh, man, has it been exciting to watch and the way that you put it together. So, do you want to talk about that? Well, yeah, and just, I think kind of you, you touched on it. There was distrust not only from Miss G, but members of the community has they'd been advocating for this for 30 years. And then you came along and said, yeah, let's do this thing. But there was still a distrust because they had been let down so many times before. And so we wanted to bring the community along to show them that this isn't something we're doing to you. It's something we're doing with you. And so we had community representatives on our design committee. We made sure that we went out and did a lot of engagement in the community, met people where they were at community festivals, at the, at the peacewalk that happened every year. We hired, with community input, an artist to do a public art project and got a lot of feedback. And she went in and took pictures of people at these different events. And then actually their faces from the community ended up on the mural.

9:33We had another community art project where art with a heart came in. And they had people press clay, thumb prints, and they fired those in a kiln and then put them on a mural that was outside. Because my thumb print is there. That's right. Our thumb print lives on at the severent center. So I think that was just, that was something that we kind of drove with community input from the stakeholder group. And I think that's a value ad that we, as ACDS, as an independent organization, a community based organization can really bring to our development process. And it was like an amazing building and it looks great. And we have great, you know, the department of aging and disabilities and rec and parks and boys and girls club. They've done a great job implementing the programming. And just, I'm so happy that Mrs. G had a chance to enjoy it. She would go there every Wednesday for lunch and enjoy that center. Yeah, yeah. There's pool tables. There's, there's, the government was there for the, for the ribbon cutting. I remember it her funeral that there were pictures of her and the governor together.

10:33In front of that mural with her on it. Yeah. And you have the gathering room. Glend to Gathers. The gathering room is there as a meeting space. So cool. And part of what really inspired me about that is that in addition to the center, we were doing a lot of work at Meet Village, adjacent to it. And really looking at and revitalizing the whole community. And I would love to look at things like graduation rates. And you know, the lives of the kids who are growing up there now compared to 10 years ago and in the past and in the future to see whether we're really making a difference. And I'm pretty convinced we are. So you do the housing piece as well, which is in terms of community development. That's, that's key. So what kind of, what kind of programs and tools? What do you create? Sure. So as I said, we, we look at the continuum. So we have, we run the counties planning efforts around ending and preventing homelessness. And so that's one aspect. We have a lot of partners over 80 partners, including a lot of our sister county agencies.

11:36And so we have a lot of subrecipient grants that are going out to organizations like the Lighthouse or Sarah's House, a Rundle House of Hope, who are serving the homeless. And then what we also do is we act as a lender. And so we provide low interest loans to affordable housing developers. And thanks to your administration and support from the county council. The housing trust fund that was enacted in 2023 has been a great resource for that. And, you know, we went from, you know, in 28 before 2018, we didn't have any county resources that were going towards building affordable units. And now... There was some federal money and some state... That's right. We had federal... I remember looking at the budget saying, where's housing? There was no money. We're not putting anything in. Yeah. So you came along and started putting in a little bit of general funding in, which was great. That was more than we'd ever have before. I think the very first thing was for some rental assistance. That's right. For a right, yeah. Yeah.

12:36And rental development. So we able to provide those loans. Because if we provide loans to developers, what it does is it underwrites their ability to put together the capital stack for the financing, they don't have to go out and get as much private loans. And so their cash flow is, you know, their cash flow isn't as impacted. So they can take a lower amount of rent. We end up putting deed restrictions on the units. And they can rent those at affordable rates to people. Usually our portfolio includes units that are serving people at 60% of area median income. So just to give you an example of what that means, 60% of area median income for this Baltimore region, which we're part of, adjusted for household size for a household of four. That's a family making 70, about $78,000 a year. For a family of four. Teacher starting salary is 60,000. So, yeah.

13:36If it was maybe a single teacher with, you know, a single income teacher with three students. But we also see a lot of people who are, you know, perhaps health aids or work in the service industry or, you know, maybe a school bus driver. And then what we try to do is we make those loans, especially to developments that are doing even deeper income targeting. So people who are making 30% of area median income or 50% of area median income. And then that helps us grow our supply of housing that is going to be affordable to those groups. And so, yeah, we've been able to really increase our ability to do that. When the housing trust came online, you know, our resources exploded. I was frankly worried that we weren't going to have enough projects. But now we have them really, like, they're reading down our doors. Yeah, I mean, it was, I remember when I came in, I said there were some specific things we wanted to do. One was to create a housing trust fund with a dedicated revenue source. And another was to have a moderately priced dwelling unit program where a percentage of new units for any development would have to be affordable at certain rates.

14:42And we've finally got that. That we failed on our first attempt to get four votes and then we got it the second time around. And the housing trust fund, though, was it was a little bit hard because we said that we were going to raise the real estate transfer tax when properties sold on properties the sell for over a million bucks. So not everybody's house, but the high, the expensive ones as well as some of the properties that multi, I think we exempted affordable multifamily when it would have sells. There's a lot of opposition from the real estate community, the realtors, and it passed. It was an increase that really put us up to the level of our neighbors. So it wasn't a huge increase. And that gets us now about 10 million a year. We started out about seven and a half million. And you were able to tell us how some of that money has gotten used. I think you and the advocates that really pushed for it, the intent of the funding was to really fund these capital projects. One time, capital expenditures to be able to underwrite the costs and produce more units, whether it be affordable rental units or home ownership units.

15:51Rental units are a little bit easier to develop because you've got some resources at the state and federal level that come in and leverage that funding. Homeownerships a little bit harder, but we are making progress on that front as well. So the big bucket is for affordable rental housing. That's the majority of where those funds are getting spent to, again, providing low interest loans. And the great thing about these loans is they are loans, typically. So they come back and through a revolving program and come fund. And so we can use that funding later on to be able to promote and fund other projects rather. So I remember hearing the pipeline for stuff that was being built that would be affordable was what quadruple did about. And then this last year, you said how many how many close in the last year project? Yeah, so we had eight projects actually completed last year. So construction completed and that was over 790 units. That includes some that were preserved, but a lot over 400 units, 454 units were new units.

16:56And so that was really exciting because, you know, I remember prior to 2018, every five years, our accomplishment was around 300 units. So this was just in one year. And now we have a pipeline of over 1,990 units that are waiting for loans. So they're requesting over $34 million in lending from the people. And you mentioned there's an average affordability on those of about 60%. Yes, they're, again, leveraged with the state resources. So they have to serve households at 60% AMI and below. But there's a little wiggle room because you could maybe serve people at 80% as long as then you're serving people at the lower income levels. Yeah, so that's a big increase. I think you told me 34 different projects. But they might not all get the funding from the state to be able to proceed. And hopefully they'll get the fun. I mean, frankly, we're kind of tapped out on our funding now, even looking at next year's allocation. But we'll have some of them, the development process takes some time.

17:56And so we will, you know, we'll be able to keep stacking the capital to fund that in future years. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's, to me, it's sort of, it's frustrating that there has to be such deep subsidies to build the stuff that's actually affordable. But then when you look back in history, like after World War II and, you know, New Deal and all the housing that was constructed for working people, there's a lot of subsidies there, too. There were? You know, you said to make a decision to do it. Yes. And my God, the cost of housing, so many people said they couldn't afford to buy the house they live in. Because the prices have gone up so much. Well, yeah, can I tell, let me just tell you, speaking of buying houses. So we also, on the home ownership side, we have a mortgage assistance program. So we provide up to $50,000 again. It's a loan. It's considered a loan because we put a lien on the property. But it's no payment, no 0% interest, no payment, it's deferred until you sell the house.

18:57And so that helps first time home buyers who may not have that down payment and closing costs. Because it's expensive to buy houses in Maryland and in or under a county. So it helps give them a leg up to be able to do that. And that's where people earning incomes up to 100% of area median income. So a little bit higher than the renters that we serve. And, you know, frankly, that's a hard program to sell right now because they still, even with that, it's still hard to find affordable units. But I think with the moderately priced dwelling unit program that you mentioned, as those units start to come online, we're going to really see demand for that program go up. Yes, 10% of the home ownership builds with subdivisions of more than, is it 15 or is it 20? More than 19. 19, right? Houses have to be affordable at basically median income, right? Yes, they have to serve people at 100% of meat. Okay, okay. And I remember going to want to you do these fairs for homeowners where they come in.

19:57And there's realtors there and their services there and their programs there. And just feeling a little bit sad that so many people would show up because so many people have this dream of buying home. And that so many people get sort of get turned away. It's like, well, there's nothing in here. You know, you sit down with the housing counselor or whoever it is. And you find out what, you know, your income and 30% of what is it? Principal interest taxes and insurance. Yes, PITI. Yeah, PITI. And to qualify, you know, you have to have an income of X amount. And it's rough. It's rough out there. It is. And I'm glad you mentioned that because we're actually having our next home ownership fair on April 11th. You got it. So at the Severance Center, so folks can come out and see that. But yes, we will have some information about the moderately priced dwelling unit program. So folks understand how they can start to think about getting on it. We don't have the waiting list open yet. But they can start to think about that. And you know, it used to be, I was told in this county that affordable housing is very unpopular.

21:02And that wherever you put it, people will fight it. And what, there seemed to be a shift. And I'd like to say that the work we did had something to do with the shift. Where, yeah, there's still people who they don't like traffic. They don't like overcrowded schools. People don't really want growth in terms of having more people in the area where they've lived, where they've invested in their future. And I kind of get that. I mean, I live out in the country and I wouldn't want to live there if there were a big housing development right there because of the traffic and all that. You know, it couldn't farm. I totally understand that. But it seems that the shift was that a recognition that we have a crisis, an economic crisis, caused by lack of housing for people who work in our businesses, people who work in our hospitals, people who work in our government. And that you can't really, you can't really thrive economically if you don't have housing affordable for those folks. And so now it's, I'm so gratified by what you do because you don't just increase the supply.

22:06Some people say, well, have you increased the supply that it's going to solve the affordability problem? Well, eventually maybe in 30 years or so when the prices come down on the new stuff that gets built, but if everything that gets built, you have to make $150,000 to afford it. And you're looking for housing for people who make 60 or 70,000, then you're not actually building what people, what those folks need. You're building something that a very highly mobile group of people can buy that can move anywhere and they have a lot of housing choice. So I was really frustrated personally that when we created density on River Road, that it was so damn expensive that most people can't afford it. And I would be interesting to see whether they, whether they fill up or have asked their filling up or who's moving in. But, but now I feel like having affordability makes it more popular as opposed to less popular. That is someone who's been in this business for over 20 years. It is mind blowing to me because we used to have to kind of work under the radar and not make a big deal about our projects.

23:07And now almost every elected official and community leader wants to know what we are doing on affordable housing. So it makes my job a lot busier than it ever used to be. But I'm happy about that. And I'm happy that people want to see us creating these opportunities for their kids who are graduating or their older parents who need to find something that's affordable because they're on fixed incomes. Or just as importantly, you know, maybe the paraprofessional that works at their kids school so that we can have economically diverse and thriving communities. And it's just really smart from a fair housing standpoint too. And that's something that's always been really important to me is making sure we create opportunities not just in the areas where affordable housing is already concentrated but throughout our communities. So we can talk about the different parts of the county where some of this is happening and how it fits in with Plan 2040 and the region plans that people said where, you know, these are the growth areas and things. But one area that one project I want to make sure we talk about, which is at Crownsville Hospital Memorial Park.

24:13We now call it the Meyer Building. And we've talked about how there were people who lived at Crownsville when it was a hospital. There were children who lived at Crownsville who had been separated from parents. There were parents at Crownsville who had been separated from children too who weren't at Crownsville. You were putting together a plan at Crownsville for one of those buildings, the Meyer Building, where families can actually live with supportive services. So tell us about that. Sure. Yes. We're really honored to be asked by you and the county to look at the feasibility of creating affordable housing units there. And we're partnering with the housing commission that has a lot of experience managing and operating affordable communities. And, you know, you can look at the needs throughout the county and in that area, we have over 13,000 people on the waiting list for housing communities and the housing commissions purview. We also know that there is- Which basically means you're eligible for subsidized housing and you could wait many, many, many years to get it, right?

25:17Yeah. And I don't, there have been times that the waiting lists there have gotten so large they've closed them. Yeah, because it's just just heartening. Yeah. I mean, it's just heartening anyway. So if you look at the waiting list data from the housing commission, the majority of the needs are people with families. And so we think that's important. We also know that there's a need for permanent supportive housing for people who are experiencing homelessness. That can include both veterans and other types of households. And I know that that was something that the Crownsville do the master planning process. That was a need identified to do something for people experiencing homelessness, who might have those special housing needs. So yeah, we've been in talks with Maryland DHCD. We've, you know, we've done some studies- Housing community development- Yes, sorry, Maryland Housing Department of Housing and Community Development. And we think that this could make a really strong, affordable rental community that also has some units to do. It also has some units designated as permanent supportive housing.

26:19So we could work with our continuum of care to get people coming off their waiting list. We know that, you know, some of the existing tenants on the property, for example, Christmas House or Hope House, they have clients often transitioning out of their programming that need housing. Yeah. So they could come through the waiting list that the COC- Yeah, they have set up a fantastic to have, you know, some housing with supportive services there. And for people who don't know, we're talking about a building. I think you've said you're hoping to get 60 units into it, some of which would be three bedroom even. It's a one-story building, but it has a lot of these little courtyard, it's sort of in a grid pattern. And you look up towards the big Crownsville buildings from there. There's going to be an amphitheater between the two once we get our plan done. Right across the other way is a Campanella building that was used for indoor recreation. And we're hoping to salvage that and have indoor recreation there. And then just behind that is going to be a track with ball fields for active recreation.

27:25And then there's going to be a path just at your door, path of reverence, going back to the cemetery, a winding path with lots of beautiful installations and things. And then there are going to be all these trails across the 500 acre property. It's going to be an amazing place to live. Yes, I think the future residents are going to really be spoiled with the trails and access to recreation, as well as any type of resident amenities that we build on the site. And that's really important to create a healing environment. There were, you know, some terrible things that happened on the Crownsville site. And so this is an opportunity to create something good, moving forward for future residents and generations. And I think, you know, looking at some of the work that some of the folks who worked there, especially after the staff was integrated and looking at, you know, they tried to bring art and color to the walls because they said it looked like a prison. And so I look at this as us kind of continuing that work, that important work,

28:29to kind of bring color and life and really build on that, to create a wonderful design experience. And I, you know, if we move forward with this, it's something that we would want to engage some stakeholders in helping to have some input to that. We will move forward with this. Yes, we will. Okay. So, Mark, from Congresswoman Elfreath and our senators from Congress for, was that four million for Meyer? Or is it three? Three point one million for one. Okay. And that four million in Governor Moore's budget this year, which we hope by the time it gets through the whole process, it's still there, that four million. Like a lot of things that happen at Crownsville, it's going to be very fundable, I think. There are going to be foundations and donors and things that are really attracted to Crownsville and restoring it. And so, the first building that we did is the non-profit center. We were able to get that building before the state transferred all of Crownsville to the county. So, we were able to get an early start on that. And that is an incubator for a lot of the great stuff. But this will be the, you know, at the rate we're going, it might be the next building that we're able to actually restore.

29:36And I'm just so glad that that building is going to have people in it. And those people will be directly benefited and will benefit from the healing powers of Crownsville. And then we'll have all the bigger buildings in the history being told of what happened there in a hopefully a museum. And lots of other activities going on there. Yeah, I'm really excited about, you know, the oral history, work that Janice Hayes-Williams in Nellland or Marshall are doing. And that's really kind of illustrated for me and brought to life some of the history there that I think we can build on, is where, you know, maybe creating where the old courtyard that are now overgrown with vines, we can create a meditation garden or community gardens in the back for the residents. So it's very exciting. Well, I want to say a huge thank you for being the organization that you are playing the role that you play. You've grown a lot since I've been in office. We had federal COVID money. We asked you to oversee a lot of grant programs, some of which you didn't use to over you do.

30:36The casino money, the LDC grants, you review the proposals and you manage that process. You do the community support grants that people think I make the decisions, but I don't y'all do. And those are the local nonprofits. And you do the cannabis. What's that? The Community Reinvestment Repair Fund. Yeah. It's a new grant program that the state created. And you're all nimble, flexible, and really impactful. I don't know how we would be delivering these services without what you do. Thank you. And I have an amazing team. And those funding sources also have great commissions that guide the work that we do. So that's amazing. And even the community support grant, that has a lot of our fellow and sister agencies from your health and human services cabinets. So they serve on that with us. These resources are high in demand. I think we got over 125 applications for community support funds. So the need is great among the nonprofits.

31:38And it's wonderful to be able to partner with those nonprofits that are on the ground, because they're doing the work that government can't do it all by itself. And I think you recognize that when you first came into office, and especially after COVID, and you decided to permanently fund that community support grant. So that's really important. And yeah, we're loving partnering with the nonprofit center now as they do the capacity, and we do the grant management. And we pride ourselves on being good stewards of government funding, but also making sure that we're helping find some creative solutions with our partners. Yeah, and I just have to say about the nonprofit sector that there are those. It's interesting that there's a movement towards privatization of government by having the private sector come in and get contracts to do what the government was doing, which wasn't popular with labor unions that had contracts, and it wasn't always efficient. It seemed like it would be efficient, but in fact, sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't work.

32:40Well, nonprofits are also the private sector. They're just not in it for profit. They're in it for a cause. And it's been extraordinary to me to watch. There's a newspaper that's been going after nonprofits. Like, oh, how corrupt it is for to have nonprofits engaged with the government. Like somehow it's some weird political payoff or something. I mean, come on, folks, if we want efficiency in government, the nonprofit center is about as good as it gets. So, I mean, the nonprofit, nonprofit organizations. I hope that that continues to grow in our county long after I'm here, and that our nonprofit sector continues to deliver with you. Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, we're happy to be there and bring accountability by checking in and requiring reporting and all that. Yeah, you do. I know. You probably hear complaints. The nonprofit's complaining about it. That's it. Yeah, but you gotta have accountability. Yeah, you have to. And so, in order for us to be able to continue this work, we have a high degree of accountability to the taxpayers. Well, you get the last word.

33:40Oh, okay. But it's been wonderful having you here. We can go on for hours talking about this stuff. Well, thank you. Yes, it's been a pleasure. And it's been a pleasure working with you and really appreciate the support. Yes. So, thank you. So, anyway, you are listening to the Pittman & Friends podcast. If you like what you hear, please press the subscribe button. Share with a friend and join us for the next episode.