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4 Housing Policy Issues: One of the key goals in the Rose ville HRA Housing Plan is to: a. “Preserve existing housing and develop new housing in partnership with federal, state and regional agencies and non-prof it community groups and businesses.” The RHRA Housing Plan and Policies are incorporated and adopted into the City’s Comprehensive Plan. The RHRA has spent several years studying the h ousing conditions and specifically the condition and possible deterioration of older multi family housing co mplexes. As part of the 2003 Multi-family housing study it was concluded that a ll types of Multifamily Housing are important to the community and need to be preserved with a full spectrum of multifamily maintenance programs to increase the value, quality and livability of the multifamily housing stock. The study indicated that the multifamily housing stock is aging and reinvestme nt is critical. Critical improvements will become necessary such as windows, roof, heatin g and air handling systems, energy conservation and electrical services and accessibility. The study addressed why is it good public po licy to assist in improving multi-family housing stock. There are approximately 9,000 Roseville residents who live in some type of multifamily housing. These residents are an import ant strand of the community fabric. Helping to ensure that they live in qua lity, stable housing reduces social problems that impact neighbors and increase the demands on life-safety, school and so cial services. In add ition, it is critical to maintain this aging (and yet affordable) housing st ock to ensure that prope rty values keep current with the surrounding communities and inflationary indexes. Once the value of housing begins to decline the impact on the community will in crease services, complaints and crime Section 4.7 of the housing plan specifically refers to the creation of HIA as a tool to achieve the City’s housing goals: “Evaluate the establishment of Hous ing Improvement Districts to address ownership multi-family improvements – (Town home and Condo). Work with the town homes and condominiums in Roseville that were built in the 1970’s and are ag ing.” With over 1,700 ownership multifamily housing units, many of which were constructed over 30 years ago, these are one of the most affordable housing types in the community. The findings of the Roseville HRA’s multi-family study also indicated that those older units include a majority of people over the age of 55. Many of these town home/condo associations have not set aside adequate home owners associati on dues to cover the escalating construction costs over the years. Therefore, the funding of large associa tion improvements are either delayed or increases the monthly payment to a level that many seniors or lower income individuals can not afford. The MN State Legislature created the HIA legisla tive authority for the purposes of assisting older complexes to finance major improvements so that there would be less of a financial burden on the residents. When these older complexes were construc ted, they were not required to collect adequate reserves for future capital improvements. Nor did they anticipate properly the n eed to collect additional funds for larger project improvements. Newer to wn home complexes have learned from the past and organizing legal documents require that a certain percen tage of reserves be held in anticipation of large capital improvements. Older complexes are still trying to catch up. Part of the process for a HIA requires that a financial plan be completed by the association so that future fund balances will be available for large capital projects. In the case of Westwood Village I, they have indicated that the single-board, cedar siding was a big selling point for the original builder and owners were told when a board goes bad they could just pop it off and replace it. Since 1969, previ ous owners believed that literally and never budgeted for full siding replacement.