 At this point I'm not anticipating that the town manager will join us. Right, so we have five though. Yes, we have a quorum so we can proceed and again I think Will will probably be along in a few minutes when he gets his child to bed. Always a fun test with a little one. Okay, so we have an agenda. I assume everybody's seen it. I don't have any announcements. Often I do but tonight I don't. Does anybody else have any announcements? Okay, we also don't have any minutes to review so that goes by the boards. Our main agenda item is talking about financing the housing trust. And I think although I didn't resend this that Nate has sent me a file of information about housing trust accounts a couple of months ago that I sent out but I didn't resend it. I think there are a few things I'll try to do as background before we launch into a discussion. I'll look at my notes. Yeah, I think basically we need to talk about what we need funding for which is not going to look too different from what we've used funding for in the past. What are currently available funding is by source and there's uncertainty around that and what are options for adding sources or increasing amounts. So that's my list of questions we should try to answer as a group. And let me begin with a summary of our types of expenditures in the past. And for the most part I can't put a number on these and I'm not sure it's critical to do so. And Nate just put his town finance spreadsheet up. But let me talk about the categories of things that we spend money on. First thing is the purchase of Belcher Town Road. Theoretically we spent, I believe it is $600,000 of CPA funds that were actually bonded. So that money is not spent. Well, actually at this point it probably is spent, right? Because we've given the money over to the seller, I believe, Nate. And so it's spent. Okay, so that's $600,000 that we spent and that was authorized or recommended by the Community Preservation Act Committee and authorized by the town council. Later than I understand this. I'm sorry, what? I'm sorry, I should shut up. I'm looking at this and I don't understand what I'm looking at and this is probably not the time to understand it but at some point I'd like to. Let's come back to it because I think it's easier if I talk about the general categories of expenditures. Then we have a series of contracts either current or past. For example, we have a contract for emergency rental assistance, which we'll talk about a little bit later and that contract is largely expended. We had originally allocated $250,000 for that. I know that we haven't spent that and whether we spend even a significant part depends on what happens with the latest version of the federal allocation from CARES to the state and how much of that the state gives to Amherst and how much Amherst allocates to the Emergency Rental Assistance Act. But we could end up, I suppose, not spending any money on this. Is that right, Nate? No, we'll, my videos, where's my video? The CARES money stopped I think as of like January, maybe sometime in January. So everything we're spending since then is coming out of the trust account. I'm not sure that the, I agreed John that it may be that the CARES, the second round of money will help cover this expense. I'm just, I'm not sure of that yet either. Yeah, but even since January, a relatively small amount of money compared to what we spent in the last six months of the calendar year. I'd only be like 30 or 40,000. Yeah, right. So essentially that's Community Preservation Act money. But that is an example of something we've done in the past. Then we also spend, have spent money for the past several years on what I would call technical consulting. And that really represents the contract that we have with Rita Farrell, who is not here tonight, who I think all of you know has done a variety of different tasks for us, which are critical to moving us along. And we don't have exactly a contract for a fixed amount with Rita. It's flexible. She charges by the hour. And I think over the past three years or more, maybe four years, we are spending about $10,000 a year on average for Rita for technical consulting. Does that sound about right, Nate? Yeah, I think Rita is under a contract and then sometimes we might hire someone to do some other site work. Yeah, I was going to add that as other kinds of contracts. Yeah, so yeah, I'd say about kind of $12,000. Yeah. And actually, we have a special line item from Community Preservation Act just for Rita's services, because that's requested separately from other kinds of expenditures. A second expenditure for consulting we have had is for John Page. And John's done some research as well as obviously assisting us with minutes and other things. And I think we've been spending at roughly a rate of about $100, $120, $130 a month. And that also varies month by month, depending on what John's doing for us at that point in time. Most of the research actually goes back over a year for work that we did on planning for housing trust or affordable housing policy for the town. Then, as Nate mentioned, we spend or have various contracts for property evaluation. For example, for assessing the wetlands, for doing a land survey, for architectural or engineering services, a lot of that was historically at East Street. And also, we had a wetlands consultant for Belcher Town Road. So those are again examples of things that come up as we need them. And we do have Community Preservation Act funds kind of in our bank account that we use to contract for those services. Coming up, there is a plan to replace a conduit along East Street. And we've authorized payment for materials for that, that Town Department of Public Works will actually provide the labor for that. So again, that will also come out of CPA funding. And then I think that's it for the kinds of expenditures that we've had in the past. I anticipate that those the same kinds of expenditures we'll have in the future. Although predicting exactly when and where is a little bit more difficult. I mean, I assume we'll continue to consult with Rita. We have a multi-year contract now. John, as everyone knows, has resigned, unfortunately. And even though I offered him $1,000 an hour, he couldn't be persuaded to continue. Okay, so any questions about the nature of those? I think I'll just say quickly, the spreadsheet is showing that the way we, you know, the trust fund is a separate account with the town that the accounting department manages. And there's the upper line of the available balance of like $37,000. That's funds that are, you know, that are not from CPA necessarily. They're, you know, gifts or donations. And so then the next one you can see CPA. So most of the accounts are CPA related. And, you know, they're voted for a specific purpose. And then they have, you know, restrictions in terms of, you know, income limits and other things that have to be used with those. So, you know, most trusts are funded a majority through CPA. But for instance, at Belcher Town Road, since CPA funds were used, the income limit is 100% of area median income. So we couldn't actually have any market rate units on that property because CPA money was used for that purchase. So there are some, some reasons why you may or may not want to use CPA funds for certain things. But it'd be really hard to develop a bank account with a few hundred thousand dollars of non-CPA funds. Yeah, let me just mention the one line that Nate pointed out first. I believe, although I could be wrong, that that's all money received from the Interfaith Housing Corporation. If people aren't familiar with that, the Interfaith Housing Corporation was something that was started more than a decade ago. A group of churches, synagogue, I guess, in town pooled money, and they helped to pay for the development of affordable housing in town. It was a time limited, and at the end of the day, the development was sold, and the Interfaith Housing Corporation received money, among others, from the sale. I think they got somewhere or had somewhere in the nature of two to three hundred thousand dollars. I don't know exactly. Most of it was spent on supporting Craig's Doors for a period of time. But some of it has gone to Valley Community Development, and other funds have come to us. These are pretty much unrestricted, which is important because it's really the only source we have that's unrestricted. As Nate mentioned, CPA money is restricted. I think that summarizes what we have. There is at least one other source of money that we should be getting, although I don't know how soon. We are entitled to a third of the money that the town receives for the short-term rental assistance program. If people aren't familiar with that, short-term rental assistance stands for Airbnb. There are various people in town who have Airbnb's that are registered with the state. The town elected to take a portion of the fees that are levied by the state for people who have those short-term rental assistance programs. Whatever it is that the town gets, we're entitled to, I believe, one third of it. As it is, nothing has happened to the best of my knowledge during the pandemic, so we're not going to see any money right away. But as things start to come back, it might generate a few thousand dollars a year. Is that roughly correct, Nate? Yeah, I was just looking. It's 35%, and I just have to look at it. At one point, it said 35% for affordable housing and local infrastructure. I don't know if that's 35% for each or 35% for both. Then it becomes a local decision as to split it up between infrastructure and housing. I thought it was a little housing. I guess that's my mistake. Yeah, I'd have to, again, the short-term rental. It should be part of the general bylaws now. I was just trying to look quickly. They voted in 2019, and it's an additional tax on the short-term rental. It could also be, I don't know if I'd have to look, but some communities were saying, would it apply to lodging houses and boarding houses and other things, or does it not? I have to look a little bit more, John, at exactly how that would apply to the trust. I really don't need to do this now, because maybe only me who cares, but all those lines of numbers across there, it looks like you start with $34,000, spend half of it left, spend more than you have and end up with more than you started with. I don't understand it. I don't have to now, but I'd like to sometimes. Accounting does magic with numbers. I will say that they did move money around. They clarified accounts. Sometimes these transfers in and adjustments, they are hard to follow. I think the important number is really that the balance is about $34,000 now, but there's about $34,000 in the unrestricted account. 34 or 37, which end of the thing is the one that's actually what we sort of have? Since this report was generated on May 7th, we spent money out of this account. The 37 would be correct. If we look at that column, then going down as well. Further down, we have $40,000, $20,000. If we have money left, is there ever a point at which you didn't spend it so you have to give it back or anything like that? No. The trust is explicit. The municipal housing trust is, I shouldn't say no like that, but the CPA legislation allows the trust to basically bank CPA money. It has to still be for a purpose. The trust is only for affordable housing, so it already meets CPA, but a housing trust is essentially allowed to bank CPA money. If a nonprofit asked for CPA money and were awarded it, the CPA committee might say, okay, after three years, are you done? If not, you have to give back some balance or if the product finishes under budget. They could probably ask that of the trust, but legally, the trust is we can keep all the CPA money that is voted to us to the trust. We still might have to, every year, the CPA committee wants an update on how has the money been spent, so they still can ask for that, but they can't ask for a back or they could, but we wouldn't have to necessarily give it back to them. Thank you. Nate, do you know if the money we most recently got from the Interfaith Housing Corporation is included here? I could look at the details, but I think it came in just around the date of this report, so that's why I was wondering. Yeah, I'm not sure. I think it did because I think the balance now, after spending some more money out of the top line is around $35,000, $34,000, so I think I think that is the current, you know, includes Interfaith money. Okay, then a related question is where else can we find money? As far as I know, there's no other source of income that we haven't talked about beyond the CPA accounts, the Interfaith Housing Corporation, and the short-term rental funds. Yeah, I mean, there's donations. Yeah, I mean, I think CPA is good. There's donations. The town could allocate money directly. You know, there's probably some grant funding the trust could have, could acquire, but that's really, you know, for a project or a specific purpose. You know, the trust has the power to sell or lease property, so, you know, some trust might actually broker a deal and then take in money through the sale of property or, you know, there's probably some creative ways there, but the trust is a municipal entity, so to sell or certain things, the trust has to go through procurement process. It's not as if, you know, the trust could just sell a property and take the money as a, you know, like a private landowner. There's a public procurement process there, so, yeah, I mean, I think when the trust was formed and then we had Jen Goldson, the consultant, look at the strategic plan. I mean, I think, you know, I think, like, most trusts are funded almost solely by CPA, right? It was something like, I feel like most trusts, like, 90% of their funding is from Community Preservation Act. It's not very limited from other sources. Yeah, that's certainly my understanding. And then Erica shared a link in the chat about the short-term rental fee, so that's... Okay, I didn't look at that. Well, Nate was correct. It's 35% to the affordable housing or infrastructure. Okay, so we're gonna have to fight tooth and nail to get our piece of that. Good to know. Okay, another significant source of funds that the town has used to support affordable housing is the Community Development Block Grant. To the best of my knowledge, the trust has never really formally considered the use of those funds, except where we know, for example, family outreach of Amherst have applied for those funds to support families in need of assistance. So we have written letters of support for that kind of work or the work done by Amherst Community Connections where they've applied for CDBG funds, but we ourselves have never kind of entered the fray with respect to how that's money gets spent. And in addition to the services part of Community Development Block Grant funds, there is also a kind of infrastructure or a capital part of it. And for example, the town gave, again, without our intervention, Valley Community Development Funding originally that they used to search for what became 132 North Hampton Road. So they received the CDBG grant to help to finance the costs of that search. Anything else people should know about? Community Development Block Grant decide the fact that there's a hearing coming up next week, Nate? No, I mean, I think for the housing trust, it's pretty rigorous in terms of how to use it. And so I think, you know, for housing, you know, most developers don't use it for, you can divide it up between pre-development, you know, like design and other things, and then break it up through construction. But if you use it for construction, 51% of the units have to be affordable at 80% or less. And so most developers don't use CDBG funds because it's just, it's too restrictive with that 51%. You know, it's just, it's too high a proportion of affordable units in most developments. I think the trust can, you know, always, and I think John Ray advocacy and supporting programs or activities is probably a good role for the trust, not actually trying to get block grant funds and administer them just because they're, you know, we probably have to have a separate consultant to do it. I was just looking quickly online and I remember that there is a payment in Lua of an inclusionary zoning, the town's inclusionary zoning. So, and it was a proposal to increase that payment. And it hasn't happened yet. It's pretty high. You know, you want this payment to be about what it is to develop a unit, you know, the total development costs. And so the proposal is that if a developer has half the units on site, they could then have half the units they could propose to put them off site or make this payment in Lua. And it's about $320,000 per unit. So, you know, it could be that in the future, a developer, you know, makes this payment in Luffy, and a trust gets a chunk of money. You know, the mass housing partnership has a few other ideas. I forgot that, right? There's one there was this is pretty new, but cell phone tower lease payments. Some communities have been kind of like this short term rental fee. They've been negotiating with localities to have a some portion of the cell phone tower lease payments if it's on municipal land. You know, they say developer negotiated fees. So again, I think that's not it's similar to inclusionary zoning, but you know, some communities might have like impact fees for certain developments that could then go to the housing trust. Tax title sales is another one where you can get a proceeds proceeds from tax title, which the town I don't think does too often. I think that's it. I mean, I think there's a tax override, which again would have to be probably for a specific purpose. And then the town could or the trust could always request, you know, general fund, you know, like capital money from the town, which I don't want to say is unlikely. But if we did, for instance, with communities without CPA funding, they might actually then make a request and put it in, you know, the actual annual budget process and say, you know, we would like to get money from directly from the town. And so that's always a possibility. So, you know, there's a few other sources that is interesting, though, that, you know, Community Preservation Act is by far the biggest, you know, funding source. Yeah, of the things that you mentioned, I had forgotten. But you mentioned the real estate transfer fee, I think. That's something that's pending now in the legislature, I believe. So if, if that were to pass, that would mean that the town could adopt, because I think the legislation would require the towns to adopt the transfer of fee and then to have that fee go to the housing trust. So that would be another potential source of revenue that actually has a chance of passage. Yeah, and I think it's important about some of these other sources, even if they don't seem like they're a lot of money, the CPA money, you know, has to be for you know, preserving, acquiring, it says supporting affordable housing. And so sometimes the Community Preservation Act funds, the Department of, the Mass Department of Revenue provides guidance on that. And sometimes the Department of Revenue can narrowly interpret what those terms mean. And so for instance, having a survey or go out to a property and do feasibility work, sometimes the town accounts will say the Department of Revenue doesn't think that meets any of those categories for housing, and it doesn't lead directly to housing. So you know, if we want to, if this trust would like to go study a property sometimes, it might be that we have to use those unencumbered or those unrestricted funds because the town might say, oh, well, having someone go look at wetlands on a property really isn't, if it's not going to lead to a project, then that's not CPA eligible. And so you know, I think that, so then those other sources could become really important for some of these pre-development costs, you know, these smaller little consultant work. And so you know, I think, you know, Amherst gets audited and so the auditors look for things. And so, you know, some communities might, you could go online and do a search and you could say, oh, well, all these other communities use CPA funds to do all these things, which I say to them anyways, and they'll say, oh, well, but our auditors will tell us not to. And so it's the level of scrutiny that each community gets and the interpretation of the CPA language. And you know, so I think if there's other ways to build up, you know, some type of funding that isn't CPA, it could be really useful. Okay, that I just want to come back to something which I hope everybody understands. And that is the main reason for us to develop these other sources of funding is not because it's likely that we're ever going to pay for an entire project with whatever revenues come into us. It really in general means it's money that helps us get started on a project or money that we can use as a match for funds that comes from the Department of Housing and Community Development, Mass Housing Finance, or some other state agency or quasi-governmental agency that looks for a local match when they're putting in the lion's share of funds. And I hesitate, but I don't think we want to go into what you need to do in order to access other kinds of funds because there are dozens. I don't think I'm exaggerating of affordable housing funding streams between the state and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which we largely expect the developers to be knowledgeable about and to understand how best to seek those funds. So basically what we're doing is trying to pay for certain pre-development costs or have a match available for those other mostly state, but some federal funding sources that really make up the lion's share of the cost of developing a property. So I think that's the lesson for today. And then the question becomes, well, how can we expand the funds that we have access to? Typically we make a request to the Community Preservation Act Committee every year. For the last few years, I've generally been asking for four or $500,000 in funds. For the last couple of years, I think they've given us at least $200,000 a year for housing development and a bit more, as I mentioned earlier, for consulting services. So that's kind of where we stand. I guess we could also ask the question of, well, how much money do we need? And it's only so fast we can ramp up projects, because as you all know by this point, it takes a lot of time and effort to get a project going, not only for people on the trust, but for Nate and other people in town hall, not to mention the substantial work that developers put into it. So I guess from my point of view, we're not too badly off right now, assuming we can continue to receive Community Preservation Act funding. And that committee has been pretty open to requests, as they say, for the last few years. That's not to say they wouldn't be happy if we had other doors we were successfully knocking on. I know Sarah Marshall, who's the chair, has mentioned that a couple of times. So there definitely is value in seeking other funding. But I'm not going to suggest a bake sale. Carol? I'm wondering from now on what you said and how much of the money that we have seems to be earmarked for things. How did we have $250,000 to do an emergency rental assistance program? Where did that come from? Because we started out thinking we were actually going to pay for it right before there was the carers thing. How were we going to do that? That was CPA money. So the trust, you know, for the last few years, the trust, like I said, can bank CPA money without a specific purpose or project. So the trust had asked for money just to capitalize the trust, right? It had asked for CPA money just to go into the general trust account. It wasn't for, you know, a specific development. It was basically for affordable housing. And so the emergency rental is considered support for affordable housing. So it meets the CPA criteria. So it could be used with net respect. Okay. But so then that didn't show up on that little chart of things you showed us did it? It did. There was an encumbrance for it all. But then because CARES money, I've been spending some paying for some of it, you know, it was hard to track. So I think, okay, that's okay. Okay. Thank you. I will also say, because there could have been questions raised about our authority to do this, I was in contact with Nate Buddington, who was the chair prior to Sarah Marshall. And I had suggested that we have a joint meeting with CPA to talk about the emergency rental assistance program. And Nate was interested, Nate Buddington I'm talking about. But at the time, the town was restricting the number of new committees that go up on zoom. And so it was not possible for him to set up a meeting. So Nate was in favor of it. And as long as he was happy with it, I was happy with it. And so we, you know, felt comfortable with the interpretation that Nate Maloy just gave us. But we didn't just go ahead and do it. We actually, or I did try to seek the blessing of the Community Preservation Act committee. Thank you. So John, I'm feeling very ignorant at this point, because I think I was one of the people who thought it would be really important to have sustainable funding and secure funding. But I thought the spectrum of our ability to support affordable housing was from rentals to subsidizing mortgages to doing many more things than doing a big project like, you know, Belcher Town and East Street Road. Well, theoretically, we can do any of those things, Erica. You know, to give an example, talking about subsidizing rentals, the Community Preservation Act committee has funded, funded rental subsidy program, not just the emergency rental assistance that we came to them with, or that we use their funds for, but also funds that Wayling and particularly for Amherst Community Connections has requested. So there's nothing to stop us from designing or developing a program for rental assistance and saying to the Community Preservation Act committee, we think funds should be allocated to support this or for using funds that we already have. You know, the only question is, how many times can we go to the well, whether it's money that we already have in our accounts or additional funding that we're going to ask for? So from that point of view, we would probably ideally need a fiscal plan. So let's say we wanted to spend $100,000 a year on rental assistance. We thought that it was important to have a permanent rental assistance program in Amherst. It's not unusual for programs like this to list to exist. And you could think of them as a local, mobile rental voucher program. And it's something that could be subcontracted or contracted to the Amherst Housing Authority. And as they accepted people into the program, they could also put them on the wedding list for the regular state or federal mobile voucher program. And then as they got into that program, it would free up funds in the local voucher program for another household. So yeah, those are things that we can do, Erica. We need a plan. And then we need to say, okay, where can we go to get funding for it? And can we rely on Community Preservation Act funds, which we can. I said it's just a question of how many times you go to the well. Or can we find other sources of funds that we can use for that purpose? Like short-term rental funds if they come in. Or we couldn't use probably the inclusionary zoning funds for that purpose. We'd probably be limited to housing development for that. As far as real estate transfer fees, again, I don't know what limitations there would be on that, but there may be some. So essentially, we have to decide what we want to do programmatically. Mostly we've been focused on rental assistance, although we have at least sent letters of support to CPA, as I said, for other rental assistance programs or for, for example, Valley Community Developments home ownership, low-income home ownership program. So it's really a question of what do we want to push? What, from a programmatic point of view, we want to make a priority? I think, Erica, you had a good, I think, you know, John's answer to, and it reminded me that, you know, in Amherst and in the area, we have a lot of programs. There's a lot of agencies that do things. So, you know, is it really the trust role to do a first-time homebuyer program if Valley is successful? So do we support or facilitate agencies that are already doing certain programs and can we coordinate better between agencies? So I can see that the trust role in some of these instances may not be to administer and spend money on its own program, but maybe to, we could work with and develop a program, refine it with another agency or help with outreach or maybe some funding. But, you know, I think like Amherst Community Land Trust and Valley CDC are doing a first-time homebuyer program. You know, in Amherst Community Land Trust, when they receive CPA funding, they realize that the homebuyer program actually is pretty complicated. So then they use, they had Valley help administer it. So, you know, in our area, Valley is kind of the expert in that. And so, you know, the trust could help fund it. We could help, you know, support somehow. So I think, hearing John speaking made me think, yeah, I think there's, we have our list of priorities and our strategic plan, and then there's a question of, you know, are some of those items being taken care of by other agencies and how do we develop partnerships or could work with them, you know, or on many each other because, yeah, the trust has a lot of, legally, the trust has a lot of ability to do a number of things, you know, in the bylaw, you know, we basically adopted every power available and authority available to the trust, you know, in terms of, you know, hiring a consultant, entering into contracts, you know, leasing, holding property or title and, you know, some communities may adopt a narrower authority for the trust. The trust can only do like three things. Essentially, we said like, you know, 14 things that the trust can do. So, but I agree with John that we have to kind of set priorities and focus and then see, I think, you know, we do have limited resources, unfortunately, but how can we, you know, how can we bolster those, you know, or augment those with someone else? Yeah, I mean, I agree with Nate. I don't think by and large we want to administer programs. We want to do what we did with emergency rental assistance, which is to find another entity that is capable of doing that kind of administration and contract with them to do it. You know, I wouldn't want to invent a new home ownership program. As Nate said, we have Valley has a program, Amherst Community Land Trust has a program. And while people don't always think of it this way, Pioneer Valley Habitat for Humanity also has a home ownership program. So we've got three home ownership programs already operating in Amherst. The only problem is they don't develop many home ownership opportunities in any year. So if we think that should be a high priority, then we can say, okay, we need to find a way of supporting them. So they do more than one or two or three average new home ownership opportunities a year. And then we become part of the advocacy group, essentially asking CPA or other sources to fund those. Because they know what they're doing, but in large, they just don't have enough money to provide more home ownership opportunities. And I think that can be said about anything else that we do. We don't want to be an administrator program. We want to set them up. We want to expand opportunities for affordable housing. But at the end of the day, we don't actually want to be directly responsible for them. So does that answer your question, Erica? Yeah, actually, I'm in agreement with exactly what you said. But I think, you know, my concern is that since it takes such a long time to create affordable units, are there places where we can utilize our money to support those organizations all the way from homelessness, all the way to get people into affordable units? That was, I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. That was sort of one of my point. Yeah. I mean, there are ways. And, you know, with Nate and I have emphasized, as with anything else, we have to make choices and say, okay, this is what we'd like to see. And because you're right, the development of affordable rentals takes a long time. On the other hand, Tom Kagan would kill me if I said that we should spend a lot of our money on other things, because the leverage that we get from rental projects is considerable and greater than almost anything else. Because the cost per unit, once we get a rental development going is much less than it is for other kinds of projects. But we need to have a balance. We need to do a bit of everything. That's what the town needs and what we should be focusing on. And it's one of my great disappointments with town council's attempts to develop a comprehensive housing plan. They don't seem to get it. Okay. So then where do we go from here? Which is to say, what would we like to see happen and how are we going to organize ourselves to make those things happen? I mean, I guess I'd be interested to see the impact of the moratorium lifting and to see what that's going to do in terms of evictions and people needing emergency rental assistance. And if that's an area in the short term that we might think about focusing on to keep people in whatever affordable housing they might have already or to keep them from entering the cycle and having an eviction on their record, which will make it ultimately much more difficult to find housing again. So that would be, I guess, something to keep an eye on. Yeah, I absolutely agree, Allegra. Everything I read on kind of national reports suggests that the effects of the end of eviction moratorium have yet to be felt for many households. There are lots of households that are standing in need of that kind of support, whether they know it or not. On the other hand, I did ask for a report and I'll just offer this to you since it's, yeah, it's the next agenda item anyway. I got an update on our emergency rental assistance program from Chana Tetra of Parner Valley Community Assistance, or I guess it's Community Assistance Parner Valley. Anyway, in the last month, Chana reported that they had five new applications. One person was from Taunton, so they referred that person or household to a program near them. Two are still incomplete, and unfortunately, staff have not been able to contact those applicants. Two others are in process. Overall, there are three applications in process, the two new ones I just mentioned and one from a previous month. Also, two applications have been approved since Chana's last report for a total spending of a little over $2,300, just for those two applications. So at this point, they have only three applications, pending or nearing completion. And as I say, they're looking at very few applications a month. I think I reported at our last meeting that the evidence, excuse me, is that Wayfinders has suddenly perked up with respect to its Amherst application and its awards. And people may recall that because it's part of the state's RAF program, it's a much more generous program. So I believe it's since March or maybe even a little bit earlier, they've started to spend much more money, generally, but in Amherst particularly. So it may be that people are going to them and not coming to us, as I said, possibly because it's a more generous program. Maybe at this point, people are hearing about that and are hearing less from us. I really don't know. But at this point, there's no reason for me to think that we should be keeping our program open. We can consider reopening it. And to do that, we'd have to write a new contract with Community Action Pioneer Valley or with somebody else because they've expended all of the administrative funds that we gave them in their immediate contract. And we're still waiting, as I mentioned, for a few other applications to be approved. At this point, a question Nate raised with me. If they were approved after June 30th when the program formally ends, do we still want to apply trust funds to pay for them? Assuming that no other funds are available. And I'm going to think that your answer would be yes. Yeah, so Community Action, there's probably a handful of applicants, for instance, that are still applying because the program's open and they're not, they may not be eligible for retro payments. They're not behind in rent. So they would be eligible moving forward, which may be months, July, August, September. But essentially, Community Action's contract is done. So they can verify that the applicant's eligible and that those are the future months. And then the town, we can just process payments. But we would just, I'd want guidance from the trust on if we want to do that. Because some programs, they just end June 30th. So if you apply now and you don't have any rental rears, you might be eligible, but you actually don't get any assistance because the program's done this month. And so we hadn't really talked about that ending transition, how we want the program to end, is it? And like I said, it's not many tenants, but there are a few that. Yeah, we're talking about a small number of people who are either now in the pipeline or might enter the pipeline between now and the end of the month. It can't be very many. So I think we should go to approve any awards that Community Action Pioneer Valley makes, even if they involve months past June 30th. So I will move that we do that. Is there a second to the motion? A second. Okay. I just ask a question. Yes. Are there any, are there, that means that there would be three months, or is it six months? I can't remember. How many months could it stretch out after that? Three, right? Yeah, three months. And then they could, you know, they'd have to essentially apply for a second time. So. But you can't apply for a second time because it's closed. So there's three months. And presumably the town would have to be willing to make the payments because Community Action wouldn't. Is that true? And so just if that is true, seems like we have to know that town's willing. I don't know. We make the payments anyway. So what happens now is Community Action will send us a monthly bill. But then, you know, if they're like, you know, a half a dozen applicants, I would just have them forward me the information at the end of the month and I would just take care of it, you know, going forward. Great. I don't, I, for it anyway, but I just wanted to know a couple of things. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we, the way it works is because it's really interesting. When this program was set up, we have to make a payment directly to the landlord, not the tenant. And the town has to make the payment because if we gave the money to Community Action, it'd be a different type of contract and procurement. So we set it up so that, you know, we're, the Community Action helps administer and verifies eligibility and then the town really works, you know, secures the contract with the landlord and makes the payment the landlord. Okay. So that's not that different anyway. Okay. Great. Great. Okay. So is there any further discussion or questions? Okay. Then I will ask you to say yay or nay to vote to pay for any pending applications that are approved by the end of June. Let's see. I'll begin with Erica. Yes. Carol. Yes. Rob. Yes. Will. Yes. Allegra. Yes. And I'm a yes. So that's six to zero. That is settled. So I have a different type of question. So this is exactly sort of the question I had around the funding. So if Wayfinder is spending money on residents that are from Amherst and we have money left over, can we give money to Wayfinders to spend money on residents from Amherst? No. We would have to contract with them in order to have a way of paying for them. But as it stands now, I mean, again, I don't think that the raft funds are inexhaustible. But at the moment, I have not heard that the state is going to run out of funding for raft. The state continues to receive new money from the federal government, which is its allocating to raft. I'm pretty sure that's part of what the governor did in his budget, which I guess is still pending before the legislature. Yeah. I think the difficulty there too would be, you know, I don't know if we could though, donate funds or somehow do that to an organization. Can they then earmark the money just for Amherst residents? I feel like it could become a complicated process. But yeah, I think we just need to keep an eye on it and talk to people in the local community who are advocates and ask them if they see people running into trouble. Mostly, I think my own experience, I would rely on Lori Reissman and Francine Rodriguez at Family Outreach of Amherst. And then there's a couple of other people who I've been in contact with as well, whom I could ask, who serve informally as advocates for people in a couple of the housing developments. Yeah, yeah, I think Allegra's a good, it was a good point. Yeah, I mean, I have been emailing with Jana from Community Action and even the applicants that are applying now, many aren't behind on rent. And so, you know, it might just, it might actually take like a year for everything to catch up, right? Like it's unfortunate, you know, people might be exhausting their savings and then not thinking they're eligible for a program. And so I just feel like even though we've tried to get the word out, it's interesting. You know, I just received a phone call from, you know, from two households and they're saying, yeah, I'm not behind on any payments, but we're spending down our savings. I'm saying, well, here's a number of programs called Reach Out to People. You could be eligible, but they don't think they are because they have money and they feel like, oh, they're probably households that need it more. And it's like, wow, really generous of you. But you hate to think that they're going to spend every last penny they have now. And then, you know, in a year, they're going to be, that's when they're really going to have the trouble, right? They're not going to have any trouble. You know, they've even said, oh, you know, we can make it for the next six months to spend after the six months or next year is when we're going to feel it. So I feel like, I think if people are, if people are able to get by now, I do, I think that in a year from now, you know, or next spring, we may have to reassess how we spend money on certain programs or what's a priority. I talked to one woman, this is now a few months ago, who is a renter and amourist and has a school-aged daughter and they live together. She said that she had borrowed money to have it available in the event that she ran short of funds to pay for rent because nothing would be worse to her than becoming homeless and being a force to move who knows where with her daughter and disrupting their lives. So people are doing things to try to protect themselves as best they can. You know, when you would say, well, gee, they should really be coming to us or coming to Wayfinders for assistance, but there's no way we can force them or I guess do more than we already have to encourage people to do what they need to do. Okay, let me go back to financing. Okay, we've now talked about financing and come to the point which I said earlier is what is it we want to finance and how much of a budget should we create to support that? You know, do we want to see $100,000 a year or more in Community Preservation Act funds go to support home ownership programs? Would we like to see $100,000 a year go to a regular local rental assistance or mobile voucher program or potentially more money? How much do we think should be spent on development of regular rental programs like the one we're doing with Belcher Town Road and East Street School or others that might come up from a developer who finds a way to do development in Amherst? You know, what do we want to do? And within a month or two, it's going to be time for us to go when everybody else goes to the Community Preservation Act committee and make a pitch for how much money we think should be spent and on what kinds of programs. And again, I've done that every year for the last few years. I've generally stuck to our own rental development. And just again with your blessing, provided support to the other kinds of programs. But maybe we should be pushing for more CPA funds to go in annually into home ownership or into something else. I don't know really, but the one thing that I like about trying to encourage development is there's only so many places to develop anything. And if we don't encourage that they be affordable developments, then they won't be, and the place will be gone for them for any kind of development to be. And so there's some something about that pushes me in that direction and not that any of the other things aren't important. And if I thought there a way for that to be not only rental development, but also some brilliantly thought up home ownership, build low income condos and have people get a start at being homeowners. That would be great. I don't know what that program is, but the thing about some amount of development is just that Amherst is a finite piece of property. So I said that already. I'll stop now. Well, I agree, Carol. And I do have a thought about what we could do to do a home ownership development, which I mentioned, then which I'll come back to a little later in our agenda. But yeah, I think that would be a good thing to do. And then it'll be costly. So somewhere someone will have to come up with the money. But I believe that with some local match, it's possible to get that funded by mass housing finance. Unfortunately, we don't have Francis on the call tonight to back me up. But that's my understanding. And there's a lot of discussion around town about the idea of promoting more home ownership. And so I think that is something that we could potentially do. I mean, we have our priorities in our strategic plan. And Eric is shaking her head. Yes, because she's the person who's most immediately familiar with those. And they do include things like we've been discussing. But then the question becomes, okay, in the next month or two, we need to make a proposal to the Community Preservation Act Committee. What do we want to put in it? Well, since I'm the one who raised about other affordable housing and homeless support and just listening into the conversation, I think, you know, what's important is, where can we make the highest impact? And from listening to you, it seems that by supporting other organizations that are doing the things that they do best, which is, you know, focusing on homelessness, focusing on rental subsidies, focusing on subsidizing mortgages. And it seems that we have the biggest impact on development that maybe that should be our priority, especially in terms of what Carol just mentioned. And you mentioned in terms of possibly condos or maybe small housing developments. But to really, if that's where we make the most impact and we can make the most impact, then that should be our focus. And then of course, supporting the rest, either through, you know, going to town council or CPA or writing letters or doing articles, then that's what we do. Okay. Well, I will start thinking about what to say to the Community Preservation Act committee and maybe begin to draft something between now and our meeting in July and see what you all think. I mean, the way we can do the kind of support for other organizations is to do the same thing we did for emergency rental assistance. We can write a request for proposals. We can ask for money to support it. And then we put the request for proposals out. And if it's a home ownership, a small home ownership program, then Amherst Community Land Trust or Valley Community Development or Habitat can bid on it, depending on the nature of it. And that's what happens. If it's going to be to build, say, 20 to 30 new affordable home ownership units, then we'd be looking for Valley Community Development, home city housing, wayfinders, or other potential development agencies to bid on that. But we can do exactly what we've been doing without saying, okay, we're going to be the developer, or we're going to administer the program. And then we can put something in like, because we can maybe do some of the pre-development work, or there are some little pieces that we can do that make it more promising, or at least make there a little bit less that maybe the developer has to take on. So it seems like if we take our little bit of money and put it in the right place, we can make it do bigger things. Exactly, Carol. So you want to set things up to make it easier and more attractive for a developer to come in and follow through. And that's what we've done with Belcher Town Road East Street. We've tried to do everything we could to make the opportunity attractive to potential developers. And that's what we need to continue to do. Okay, let me move on to the next item. Let's see, I had state legislation. Will, is there anything that you want to bring to our attention? I haven't been paying attention myself. Yeah, well, there are two things. One of which I've been wanting to talk to for a while, but I missed a meeting a couple of months back. And then we've had other things to discuss in the last few meetings. But this one is the local options transfer tax, which I mentioned a while ago, which just to refresh everyone's memory, speaking of financing the trusts, this is a piece of legislation that would allow each town on a town by town basis to pass a tax on basically luxury property or luxury real estate sales. And the proceeds from that tax would go directly to affordable housing trusts in those towns. Again, like this legislation wouldn't pass it, it would just basically allow town council to then subsequently pass it. But it seems like a cool idea. Joe Comerford is sponsoring the legislation already. I don't know if Mindy Dom is, I assume she's supportive of it, but I don't think she's a co-sponsor at this point. But with respect to the local options transfer tax, John, you'd propose a format with respect to sort of the shape this advocacy could take is that we propose a motion that we read a letter of support to our, both like Mindy and Joe, in addition to the state speaker, the speaker of the house and the president of the Senate and also the town council asking them to endorse it as well. So I would propose that we do something along those lines with respect to the local option transfer tax. And then the second item is, this is, it may be too late. Apparently they, there was just a vote on it today in the Senate. But the bill to end the, sorry, I'm just pulling up my notes on it. The bill to end the state of emergency, the governor state of emergency, there were a couple of provisions related to, I think I actually heard Allegra reference this earlier about sending the eviction moratorium. And there were two amendments in the original or that had been proposed that were so schooling withdrawn. One of which was to extend the eviction moratorium. The other was to close an eviction loophole. So apparently there's a provision in this bill that would allow for no fault evictions. And both amendments, the two amendments one was one was to extend the moratorium. The other one was to prescribe these no fault evictions. And both of them were withdrawn in this round. The bill was voted on in the Senate and is now moving on to the House. I don't exactly know whether or not there is leeway for advocacy at this point. But in the event that there is, I think it would be a good idea to send a letter to at least touch base with Mindy and see where she stands and similar sort of approach to advocacy with respect to this bill. So those are the two, I'm sorry, what was that girl? I just wondered if you could give us some idea what the heck a no fault eviction even means. So no fault evictions, for example, it would be, oh goodness, my housing court days are far enough behind me that I'm trying to think of an example and I'm coming up blank. But basically there are three types of evictions. There's eviction for nonpayment, which is if you are in arrears, then there's a four cause eviction, which is if you violate a term of your lease and then there's a no fault eviction, which basically is the landlord wants you out for no particular reason. They refuse to renew your lease and then they try to get you evicted on account of that. So this would guard against that. So basically it's great that it has been, just because there's been such flux and flows of people, it's been pretty helpful that the moratorium has extended to no fault evictions. So yeah, does that answer your question? I'm trying to remember if a landlord is foreclosed on and the tenant has to leave because of that, if that falls into that category perhaps as well, like would that be? I don't know. I mean, I know, for example, leases survive transfer of ownership typically, or at least residential leases do. So you know, for example, like a bank forecloses on a property and the bank becomes a landlord and they don't just get to evicts right away. But it may, there may be some circumstances where that's true. I might have just had the whole thing the wrong way around. I thought you were saying that because this amendment did not go through, then no false evictions would be allowed. But I think you're saying they won't be allowed because it didn't go through. I want to make sure I got it the right way around. So because the amendment was withdrawn and not included, I'm pretty sure the state of the bill as it is right now is that no fault evictions would be permitted unless this amendment were included somehow in the house version and then passed and also included in the reconciliation process. Thanks. Yeah, sorry. Unfortunately. Yeah, right. So those are the two things on the on the agenda that I was hoping to flag. The option transfer tax or the local transfer tax, that one has a little more leeway. It's a little more, that's on a, that's in the slow cooker and the the these two amendments related to the end of the emergency and to say the emergency bill, you know, it may be too late because again, the Senate voted on it literally just today. But you know, we could at least take a stand and stand up as a body to advocate for those in principle, if it's not in effect actually going to make a difference. Okay, well, I think the real estate transfer fee is pretty straightforward. And so I'll ask about that first. Is there anybody who thinks we should not go on record of supporting that and asking town council and our Senate and House representatives to support that? Okay, so I guess I'll make a motion saying that we as a housing trust send a letter in support of the real estate transfer fee bill to the appropriate parties and ask them to do what they can to make that happen. I will second that motion. Okay. And I'll go around and ask if everybody's in favor of it will. Yes. Allegra. Yes. Rob. Yes. Carol. Yes. Erica. Yes. And I'm a yes to so that's six to zero. Will, can you draft something that I can send out? Sure. Okay, that would be great. And as soon as you get it to me, I will do my best to get it out to the various parties. Okay, so then the question becomes, what should we do about no fault eviction? We can generally, as you were suggesting, take a stand against no fault eviction and ask the governor and the legislature to do what they can to block that. Is that what you think we should do at this point, Will? I think so. Yeah, I think so. Okay, does anybody have another idea? Sorry, I'm not more creative. About how to approach this. No, that's fine. I just want to be sure that we understand what we're talking about. Okay, so then I'm going to make a motion that again, we send a letter to the same parties saying that we are in support of making no fault eviction part of state statute. And again, asking various parties to support that to try to make that happen. Is there a second? I will second. Okay. Are there any further discussion before we come to a vote? Okay. So we get it the right way around. We do not want no fault evictions. No, no fault evictions. Right. I get it backwards too easy. I was trying to look too. I know, I thought, I don't know, maybe it was in there. There was also, all right, I thought the bill this year too was to seal no fault evictions. I was wondering about that too. Yeah. And I can't tell if I was trying to find, look quickly to see if that actually passed, but there was, you know, an effort to seal those because, you know, they can go, they can work against the tenants. So even if they happen, then they can't be part of a public record so that, you know, they can't be used to discriminate against a future tenancy. So I think that could be some of it. So I'm not sure if that's on the books either. What I recall is that the legislature did pass a limited eviction seal bill, but it was limited. It didn't include all of the provisions that the advocates had hoped for. And I don't know whether a broader bill now is before the legislature or whether that's something that would have to be brought back in another session. Right. But I do know that something passed, I believe last December, I just don't, I just can't tell you exactly what it did or did not include. Right. I'll look into it and report back. So Susan's been putting in the chat some questions. I think, you know, no fault eviction, you know, what I was reading is really about, you know, their tenants at will who don't have, you know, maybe a month to month, but not a long-term lease. And so the landlord has to give them the, you know, a notice just for the, you know, what their payment period is, and then they just say they're out. So, you know, I think that when a lease ends, a landlord doesn't have to renew. That's not necessarily an eviction. It's when you get noticed that becomes the eviction. Okay. Good. Susan, do you want to raise your hand and say something in addition to what you've put in the chat? Hi, Susan. You can unmute yourself. Hi, Susan. Oh, sorry guys. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, I still can't haven't gotten the complete hang of this Zoom, even though I'm a teacher for heaven's sake. No, also former lawyer, like Will was saying, I did some housing court stuff. And I know, you know, I think a lot of landlords have been chattering about, oh, we have it so bad and we have no recourse and this and that, but I have her tenants complaining. I, this woman I thought of in Amherst where she said, oh, my landlord just wanted to rent to some family member. And he, I don't know if she had a month to month or a lease, but it could have been a lease because I think she had some advanced notice and she was very upset because she lived there for years. And he basically just said, well, you know, I have a family member who needs the apartment. And it's so incredibly disruptive like Carol said, I mean, or John with the woman he was quoting who said, you know, she and her daughter were something going to have to move. My daughter is on the line with me here because like I said, she's doing a project for history on housing. And, but I think historically it has been allowed to not have a reason kind of like employment at will. Like I don't have to have a reason to fire you, unless it's discriminatory, then I then I can't right because I can't fire you for being, you know, Jewish or Black or whatever the reason is. So, like John said and Nate it'd be interesting to find out and will like what is the procedural posture I'm a former lawyer to now I teach about was it the pandemic where they said, oh, we're not going to have any no no false evictions are not permitted during the pandemic but when this is over the state of emergency we could go back to that. Maybe the Wild West of like, well, too bad for you, you're out because I need the apartment. So I know Carol was saying, you know, she's concerned about that but I think it's always been like that hasn't it Carol. I don't know, I assumed that that meant you could be evicted someone while they were within a lease if you don't have a lease if you haven't like an like employment at will as you said, but if you have if you're on a month to one thing then you know that you're on a month to month thing. So you presumably that's the way that you it's not a surprise but I didn't think I thought eviction was I'm getting you out of here, even though the lease isn't over with even though you're still in this contract period but on and I said so then doing it with no fault means I can do it just means there's no point to a lease to me. If you can do that during the period of time of a lease if you can evict somebody for no reason while they have a lease what the hell is the point of a lease? Oh, it doesn't even mean anything so I wouldn't think that would be it that sounds terrible. I know that's what I thought it was saying and it's probably just me being naive so yeah. Okay, so we're in the middle of a motion to send the letter opposing no fault eviction and is there any further discussion of that or are we ready for a vote? Okay, so we'll take a vote. Erica yes or no? Yes. Carol? Yes. Rob? Yes. Will? Yes. Allegra? Yes. Okay you're nodding your head yes. Okay and I move yes so again that's six to zero and I will ask Will to provide me with a draft of a letter which I can send to again the appropriate parties. Okay the next item I wanted to move on to is one that Allegra's involved in the town manager appointed a committee to look for a permanent place for the seasonal shelter in Amherst and Allegra is what one of seven members of that committee. I won't I'll stop talking and give you a chance to tell us what's going on. So we had our first meeting a few weeks ago and we are meeting again tomorrow but it was Mary Beth from this who's the director of senior services Kevin Noonan from Craig's Doors Jay Levy from Elliott Homeless Services and Kim Alley who works at the Greenfield Savings Bank and I believe Lev Ben Ezra from the Survival Center had been invited on to the committee as well and they were still looking for potential other contributors. So our first kind of charge is to find a place for Craig's Doors to operate over this fall winter season and then by the end of 2021 we are to present some more permanent ideas for where a shelter could operate and the group did discuss the idea of also strongly recommending to the town to have ongoing support of affordable housing either development or by fostering relationships with landlords who would be able to accept vouchers and then also kind of thinking about rapid rehousing as well. So that was I mean that was really all we did the first meeting was kind of talk about the charge and what I guess the the only other thing that came up was the idea of the congregate shelter that was run over the winter versus the how the motels had been going because they had used the University Lodge and I think the Ocona Lodge and Hadley as placements to help during COVID with distancing and people who might be more compromised and I believe because the state of emergency is ending the FEMA money that has been funding that is going away. So that was something that they were also trying to figure out how that could be funded if that is going to be funded further. There's some talk about a number of emergency housing vouchers coming down through stimulus. I believe it looked like maybe seven for all of Hampshire County from the numbers that I had seen but basically the long chart is that's what we're going to do. We have not formally identified the location as of yet. So good luck. Are there any possibilities? Are there any possibilities that are proposed? It sounded like Kevin was doing some work. He did not identify to the group yet any of the places that he had been talking about perhaps we'll hear more about that tomorrow. There's an old school in North Amherst which was the last home of the Amherst Survival Center before they moved into their current location. I think there was still some use of those for storage and for office and I heard people talk about that at one point. You're looking quizzical so that's something that hasn't come to you apparently. Nope but that doesn't mean anything either. So you said you had to have a preliminary report to the town manager by the end of 2021? So for the permanent site that I think the due date is December 31st. Oh December 31st because I was thinking the end of the fiscal year is this month. Right so that's soon. And actually for the for finding the site for this winter July 31st is the date by which we've been told to produce results. Okay so you don't have anything to report for what's potentially under consideration? I do not. I thought they had a contract for I can't remember what it's called but the old motel that's unused in the center of town for another year? I had seen that number somewhere in 2022 but I don't remember where I saw that number. It wasn't discussed during our first meeting so I think we're looking for citing for the congregate shelter was my understanding although I know that has also been extended at the church for a little bit longer at least. Okay so the it's the Unitarian Universal Society right? Yeah that's where it's been and they're going to be allowed to use that for you think another season? I don't believe another season I believe a little bit longer this season but I don't know the exact date. Because this season ended I thought on April 30th. Right and I know it's been extended a little bit in June. Okay what other numbers you're looking at in terms of congregate spaces male female? I honestly don't even have that information. I think Craig Stores housed a record number for them of individuals who are homeless between the three locations. The UU, the Old Amherst Motel or that's not what it was the University Motel and the O'Connell Lodge. They had more people they housed this past season than they've ever housed before. The number of units they had and had in the past was generally somewhere between 28 and a little over 30 and now they were housing I think more than 40 people on an average night. Wow yeah I think for more. Yeah as a group Allegra folks in kind of what the programmatic needs are so like right number of beds facility size you know what are they looking for and then identifying a site because you know it doesn't necessarily have to be new development it could be an existing facility or building you know Craig Stores is receiving block grant money and Kevin gave an update the other week and I thought he said that the UU was done if not now soon and they're hoping to extend the contract with the motor lodge or one of those but you know I think he'd said that come this winter right now they don't have a they don't have they haven't secured a spot yet. I think they're working on it but they don't have it secured. I guess the other question I had with this group is is the expectation that it's gonna be run or managed by Craig Stores or is it just you know is it a town is it gonna be a town thing or who's I get you know because I was part of a previous work years ago now on identifying sites for shelter but you know you know for instance is the town gonna buy it or help is or is Craig's door is doing it I guess I'm you know I think I'm a little confused too about kind of the roles of everyone involved um anyways. These are excellent questions um and I think part of what we're also supposed to look at is like is this going to be a site that is operating during the day as well so that there are services on site and and who's staffing that and who's paying for it I think those are all questions that have yet to be asked or answered and I think because a big question so you have you have a day center and then a permanent shelter so you know almost two separate it could be two separate things you know they might be run by the same agency but programmatically they have different purposes um so yeah that's a big task. William you have a month or two for the first time. We're good. You're meeting daily right? So yeah that's that's the update I have not much of one. Well thank you thank you for being there and doing that. Yeah thanks Vagra um should we invite Kevin to talk to us next month about what's happened this past season generally and what he expects? Yeah I think that's yeah because I think going back to the powers and uh stat you know the authorities of the trust I think and the trust was expanded to nine members you know an additional responsibility was put in to help ensure the operations of a shelter and amour something to that effect so I think it would be important to have Kevin or you know correct Doris come in and give an update. Okay I would agree because I mean homelessness is pandemic and I you know this is this is huge and seeing the people turned out in the morning walking downtown trying to find I mean a lot of them look so disoriented and if we're talking about evictions at the same time you know we definitely I think this is this is important. Okay well I will definitely invite Kevin I don't think we have to take a vote on that my sense is that people would like to hear from them. Chad has his hand raised John. Oh okay Chad. Hey Chad you can unmute yourself or maybe it's not Chad it's just Mac. It's Chad. George Ryan has talked about this I don't know how far he's gotten but it'd be a great place for in a departmental communication between you guys in town council talking about having a permanent shelter in town instead of a partial now it's at a crisis because maybe even the partial is going to go away. Mass housing and sheltering a statewide organization has come up with a module approach which you can retrofit into existing buildings as needed the modules or packages that you can wait and hold in abeyance until needed it's reduced the cost because it's factory built prefab so you can have a full building whether it be new construction or you know like I was saying re-retrofitting a building and then lastly with the environmental crisis that we're in getting worse and worse there's a national movement for something called resilience centers. I don't know of anybody who's doing this but what a resilience center is is a place where your citizens of your town can rush to a you know out of a flood can rush into a building that's ready and waiting for them. I'm wondering you know Northampton is on the verge of building something like this for their citizens. I'm wondering if something like that could not be you know expandable contractable whatever but used as a shelter and when we're not under a flood a hurricane a nuclear power plant explosion etc so those are just some ideas. Okay thanks Chad. We do need you know you were talking about where are we going in the future the housing production plan and the other privately Amherst contracted study all say what our needs are right now we're talking about the neediest of the needy my belief is we need triage them first because of the high rates of death of these people dying on the streets so it's good to you know triage the most needy first. Thanks for your time. Thanks Chad. Okay I'm going to move on we have two agenda items left and I'd like to get to both of them one involves the two forums that we had my granddaughter is studying latin and I asked her what the plural of forum is and she couldn't answer the question so if anybody else can that would be helpful but in the interim I'll continue to discuss them as forums. I wondered what people thought of them and what you felt we learned and what we might think about doing as next steps I mean I found them really interesting I will say I mean there were some things that I already knew a lot about like home ownership but it was still good to hear the detail from the three organizations that are doing that and I probably knew the least about the sustainability and climate change topic so there was a lot of new information for me there and the racial equity in housing was kind of somewhere in between so personally I found them interesting and certainly worth doing and I'm not clear necessarily on what we or anybody should do next but if I came away with anything that really hasn't been on our priority list or anybody else's it would have to do with improving the quality of rental housing for low-income people in Amherst there's a lot of rental housing as I understand it many of the tenants bear significant costs for heating in the winter and cooling in the summer because they are poorly designed and poorly insulated and as well as being generally quite costly and if I was to pick out anything that I hadn't necessarily been thinking about before it would be to develop a program that addresses some of those kinds of issues for people in town who are living in those facilities I don't know what are the issues that other people took away I think you know Keith Ferry from Wayfinders did a great job of summarizing the newer data from you know Mastani who instituted about kind of the legacy of discriminatory practices so if you look at one or two statistics in isolation it might not show much but if you look at then you know the statistics of homeownership and renters and then wages and income and you know proportion of who's spending what on rent or living if you know it paints a really clear picture that you know so you know so I had the persons of color and indigenous populations are really discriminated against so you know I thought that was really powerful because it just makes me think like okay what you know and we heard it we heard it from some of the you know moderator even had a story you know personal story so you know it just made me think about education or advocacy you know we did a we did a landlord forum you know Nancy did that we this was probably a while ago I think it was before COVID right we sent a we had a distribution to although everyone on the rental registration and it was J J helped but it was like you know kind of trying to dispel myths of renting to low-income people you know like it's not you know and so I feel like we could do some things around that you know just more education and outreach you know I because I think John it's interesting when you said about the the apartments my thought is like you know a lot of the newer developments like beacon and wayfinders they actually make nice units and so the units that are more costly to live in are probably older units or single-family homes that are rented or things that maybe the property owners may or may not be willing to take money to fix the homes up you know I was thinking that they could take block grant money to rehab homes but then it's you know there's de-letting and they have to have a deed restriction on the property but if we could do you know I think that's important but I was also thinking through some of the the forums like I feel like there's a lot of just education that still needs to happen you know on a number of fronts right not just equality and equity but you know right insulating your homes or letting homeowners know or landlords what programs they could use I mean they could you know even a landlord could do mass-save energy audits I mean you know it doesn't benefit them necessarily but it will benefit their tenants and so I don't know I just feel like those are the things that we could like I don't know we somehow advocate for or publicize yeah it's a good point I think our poorest attendant was on the climate one we had about 35 people plus or minus two for that one and for racial equity and housing we had close to 70 people and the home ownership one was somewhere in between I think I learned the most from the climate one but I think the I think the challenge often is even though they talked about how affordable it is it still sometimes seems like you have to jump through hoops to get things and oh I mean you work for government here so they do have to jump through hoops bureaucracy is the way you don't get anything oh did I say that sorry so I learned a lot and it was great but even when they say low cost for you know for some people they put everything into buying a house especially possibly later in life and it's still expensive so and then some of the language and some of the ideas were still like you know there were there were people who understood it very easily and it still wasn't user friendly but I did learn so much and you know came back home and started talking about all things that we need to do here so I think there's got to be a way because I think there are a lot of people who don't know of all the resources that are out there to create you know a more insulated house more energy efficient house and so not only are they doing good things for the environment but they're also reducing their risk you know using the money for paying for energy resources but it's often an upfront investment in the long term there you save and that's hard sometimes when you don't have the upfront investment so I think a little bit more needs to be done around user friendly and getting the information out in a very simple way and not in helping people not have to go through hoops but all three were phenomenal um and the one um the one on um racial equity and housing there was some history there about amherst that I had no idea about so that that was very fascinating any other comments or thoughts okay so then we'll move on to development um oh okay Susan picking up on what Erica said um you know I recently read the color of law by Richard Rothstein about the institutional background of of segregation and how you know people in authority lawyers and powerful people put rules in effect that then you know get blamed on average people when there's racism but more to the point I think a lot of people don't know how to access services Erica like you said it's amazing like whether it's a climate change thing or whether it's knowing that they don't have to put up with like John said certain conditions in their apartment um a lot of people even like when I lived in this long that I think I might have mentioned this there was a woman who I was talking to about a foreclosure and she literally thought that they were going to come put her furniture out you know in the street she didn't know the whole process like well they have to come and serve you a notice to quit and then they have to evict you and you have defenses and and I think a lot of people of color indigenous people you know I see like I work in Fitchburg um and the population is pretty much half Latinx an incredible amount of deference you know toward teachers toward people in positions of power toward landlords so maybe some kind of um you know practical workshop about how do you access government services and why you're entitled to them and who would be the person who could help you and almost just like um bolstering people's confidence that they're entitled to this and that they should not be afraid I mean even the fact that John said there's so few people have applied or have thought well I have to use my savings or I can't I mean that's a whole different thing they might just be proud you know they might but anyway that's I just wanted to say that okay thanks Susan um so let me move on to the last thing which has to do with the pipeline for affordable housing development Nate wanted to give an update on Belcher Town Road and East Street and I wanted to take a little bit time to talk about where we go next now that we resolve Belcher Town Road East Street well I think the um yeah thanks for meeting you know I guess it was a little over a week ago the you know the request for a proposal was finalized and sent to staff and legal counsel for review um so that's underway the um you know one question I had of the trust that came up recently is that now the town's you know a property owner and there's electric bills and property maintenance fees uh that the town you know the assumption is that the trust would cover with the unrestricted account um the thought would be it'd be at most five thousand more likely two to three thousand over the next six months and then uh would become you know in the request for proposals it becomes the developer's responsibility to carry the the cost of the property but um you know I think we would need a vote of the trust to allow you know that expense you know you can say up to a maximum of five thousand or four thousand for the next six months the um yeah I mean I think it's moving forward you know we're uh you know the the request for proposal changed to uh require the reuse of the school building and then if that didn't uh and that wasn't fruitful then perhaps amending the RFP and not using a new one then you know changing the parameters of the of the of the request and so um you know I was thinking that it would be it could get out this month you know I'm not it's not it's not you know it's the town manager's decision but I feel like it's I feel like the document was was good I mean I guess you know people could have different opinions about sections or things but I feel like in terms of what was presented was a really thorough document so um yeah I mean that's I mean that's kind of it uh okay so basically there's two things there we're hoping that the RFP is formally issued by the end of this month I hope that happens I think it was if not a perfect document as close as we were going to get and that it definitely deserves to see the light of day so I hope that happens very shortly the other thing Nate brought up is that the town does need to cover the costs of particularly I guess it's the belch town roadside which has two houses on it and a certain bit of property maintenance that's a part of that um in the town wants to continue uh a contract with the organization that's already been maintaining that property Nate estimates the cost would be a few thousand dollars over the next six months so I guess I'm going to move that we authorize the expenditure of trust funds up to five thousand dollars for the next six months to cover those maintenance costs is there a second there's a second but I thought we had already done that but there's a second yeah I thought maybe we had two but Nate didn't seem to think so so yeah I mean the trust had voted to um you know I think it was up to 20 000 for the properties but to me that was more it's a site feasibility work or other things I just wanted to you know have a clear vote accounting's been really making sure we have a clear vote whenever the trust spends money now so we may see more votes coming back to the trust just so you know it's clear to the town okay any further discussion or okay I think Erica did second so I'm going to take a formal vote uh I'm a yes Erica yes Carol yes yes Rob yes Allegra yes and will yes and I have a are there people still living in those houses or one of them no I think everybody moved out by the end of May that's what I recall hearing from Rob is that right thanks John yeah maybe the trust did vote wrong value just had another vote just to make sure um yeah I know the the one property in 72 belcher town road was vacated you know a long time ago because the owner didn't want he knew he was trying to sell and then the 80 belcher town road which is the brown cape closer to the road they were told in their lease agreement that they couldn't renew the lease at the end of May or June um and but the owner and asked them if they they had to give notice last October if they wanted to renew or find housing and they they indicated no so you know if they had said yes then you know the town and the owner maybe you know could have helped relocate them or they're all graduating undergrads from UMass so they were okay ways and I think the owner you know I don't know if he tried to find students who wouldn't stay longer than a year but um the management company said it was clear when they were showing the unit that it was only for a year so you know they were pretty clear up front that they you know the owner even after if the town did buy the property I think the owner was not going to rent it again but I mean it says it in a lease actually um which is pretty unusual you know in Amherst you'd want to secure a tenant I mean wouldn't it be ideal we got a tenant that's going to stay for two years but they're clear that they were going to leave after a year so no one's there okay yeah so the maintenance would be like you know electricity has to stay on to maintain temperature you know maybe once a once a month check just have someone go in make sure you know nothing's vandalized you know mobile on you know pretty basic pretty minimal stuff um you know and if there's a major capital expense then that would kind of have to come back to the trust though okay so the next agenda item is what's next as I said now that we've completed the work on Belcher town road and east street as a development we hope that goes through um but we really that means need to be thinking about and really acting on the next project at least that's my judgment did you say there was some little update on uh 132 or not no I didn't even say that okay no I didn't as far as I know um they're still in waiting for uh feedback from the department of housing community development on the uh subsidy application they've made to support the development of that property and I don't think that's going to come for another month or two that's what I recall Laura saying and Laura was on she on still she's there she may not know either I mean it'd be you know it's a pretty fast turn around um you know so usually you know you apply for funding in February or March and then it takes many months to hear um but yeah okay okay thanks sorry so what do we do next and for me the obvious candidate is this piece of property that's sitting on strong street um it's been there for a while the town owns it it was originally going to be developed by someone who uh wasn't able to follow through um stop paying taxes and so the property defaulted to the town there's a several acres there I can't remember exactly how much um it was laid out for a development there is no real road way into the property there's a little bit of a dirt road that uh one of the existing houses that's just off strong street uses maybe more than one but I think it's only one or at most two so the question is can we develop something there um could it be a home ownership development could it be a rental development since it's not on public transportation my own instinct and that's all it is in an instinct because I really haven't evaluated the property would be to say if we could do a low income home ownership development where we assume people would have cars to get in and out of the property uh to go to work to go to town to go wherever it is they need to go that that would be a better idea than a low income rental development but I'm not saying it has to be one or the other what I want to suggest is that we need to have a proper evaluation of the property done in order to determine whether we can do an affordable housing development either for rental or for home ownership and that would include evaluating the property potentially for wetlands for whether other aspects of the property that make it difficult or impossible potentially to build upon what are the unmet needs of the site in addition to the access road I don't believe there are any utilities that actually come into the middle of the site um they're obviously close by so all of those things are things that need to be addressed if we're going to move forward with this so my inclination is that at the moment that's our best opportunity and that we should be uh pursuing it questions comments I think we were talking a little bit about that when I first came on the trust maybe and then for various reasons I don't know it was a bad time to do some kind of testing or something and we found a lot of other things to do but yeah it's been sitting there for a while yeah I think the town's owned it for probably a decade maybe more is it possible to think about small houses there to get more units there I like that it could be small houses it could be condos it could be any number of things um and at this point I don't want to presuppose what it will be I mean I guess I my own biases and preferences but I don't necessarily expect everybody to share those yeah there's 11 I mean kind of you know it's really like one or two lots but there was 11 lots proposed and you know the subdivision was hard to develop whether it was cost or you know ledge or wetland topography whatever but you know I think Rob also had suggested that this could be a site where maybe some of the lots are sold and the trust could actually take the proceeds and there's still a few lots that could be used by habitat or something you know it's probably a number a combination of of um you know paths so I think yeah I agree John I think probably some of the initial assessments of wetlands kind of test pits you know soil soils utilities those are the things that could probably help determine how buildable it is um and and I will say that the town had gone out there and um the neighbors were pretty you know they were this yeah this is you know gosh almost two years ago uh the staff had gone out there once or twice and the neighbors were really concerned you know they they met staff and you know I think just because it's been undeveloped for so long they just and then in some of the lots are you know adjacent to the properties they you know it feels like it's their their property um so they were really surprised um and really nervous so you know if this if this is something that's moving forward I think there's probably to be some type of you know some some meetings with the neighbors too because you know they're used to having a quiet dirt road that's really their private driveway and then you know 13 acres of a backyard that yeah that's lovely Nate more fun and games with the neighbors yeah I mean no Dave Dave Z was out there once and you know two houses they must have seen him coming and so two neighbors like quickly it was like before he could even like get down the driveway they're already there uh waiting like oh okay okay well um you know as with any neighborhood it's something we're going to have to deal with you're actually right yeah I mean because I think yeah I agree I think but yeah I mean it's a private I guess it's a private way I'm looking on the GIS right now yeah I mean I think there's a lot of questions on access you know can that be is that going to be improved to be a mate to be a big paved road you know what are the impacts of the neighbors so I do think those are all valid there's something that you know the trust could pay for right we could have some some studies done um and I think the trust would have to make a request of the town that that it go through the disposition process right so the town adopted a disposition process for municipal property where it would look at the number of you know options or uses for a property and then determine what it wanted to do so I mean I feel like we could say that given a number of factors that this isn't necessarily a prime location for certain municipal uses right like it's not great for a fire station or public works right you think you have problems with putting housing there putting the DPLU there would be absolutely outrageous yeah it's just and it's it's it's not it's on a hill too I will say that yeah I feel like it would take a pretty good you know I think it does need some assessment but it's I think it's worth it well okay I I guess um I'm gonna move that the we the trust authorized expenditure is up to $30,000 for evaluation services including wetlands soil utilities the access road and really anything else that would be needed to determine whether we could do an affordable housing development on that site and that would come back with some specific ideas about what is and what is not possible on that site and that it might involve more than a single contractor although I suppose we could have a general contractor who hires some subs to do some of the pieces of it do we have to I I'm totally that seems great I just wondered if there's anything we have to do uh with the town since it's not it's the town's land and the town may do it has to be okay with the town that we do this I guess or something or they don't yeah you should see my screen you know there's here's strong street right here so there's this little property you know this one this big one and then this one so I think it's about 13 you know total acres um you know that's that's part of this property there's this is privately owned it's kind of a little chunk of something um and so yeah you know this had proposed to be a you know the subdivision road coming in and then you know you can see this here if I go to a different map so you can see the topography though it's a pretty pretty big hillside steep steep yeah and originally it was um you know proposed to be a subdivision right with all these lots on it and it looks like these it looks like this lot this lot was bought by someone who maybe thought they were going to be at the end of the road and it never you know just never happened I don't yeah I don't know but well Carol you're right we would have to eventually go through a process that we went through with the east street school site that is we went before town council and asked them to give the trust and the town manager the authority to go forward with an affordable housing development so at some point yes if we decide that this is developable we would have to go before town council and ask them to authorize the use of the land for that purpose I guess we just I maybe we know this already but we'd just like to know that they don't the town doesn't have already some other thing they're thinking of doing that would mean that we just spent $30,000 but they already knew they weren't going to look at it anyway or something you know what I probably a silly thing to worry about but I'd like to not spend the money if there's already some reason why we know it won't work before even start well as Nate said there is a intra governmental group that's looking at what town properties could be used for and they don't meet very often and in fact we kind of bypassed that group when it came to the east street school site because they just decided to go ahead with it and I suspect this would be the same but it's really a question of checking with the assistant town manager to see if something has gone forward without Nate's knowledge which frankly I think is unlikely yeah but I think Carol dear point I think if the trust voted the money I think John then it kind of implicit in that would be a request to the town that this property be used for affordable housing I think that would start kind of this internal process of saying okay well you know we have one proposed use what are other possible uses and so I think before yeah I would I agree Carol I think before the trustor I would hire a consultant we'd want to have some discussions with the town manager's office and whoever else is involved you know knowing that there's the housing has a right a fair shot at it we're not you know I mean I'm not I'm not aware of anything but there could be something right I mean there may be you know a lot of other entities looking at this saying wow there's 13 acres what what could happen yeah I it's possible but in addition to talking to the town I think what we should be expecting is the town expedite this review so we're able to conduct those evaluations if there isn't another obvious use for that site that's under consideration that's fine that's good how did you come up with the $30,000 figure uh well it's an attempt to be safe we've spent typically four or $5,000 on wetlands analysis I don't know if we've had soil analysis but I was guessing okay it could be the same there are some things that are really unknown about the site which is like I said where you whether you can put a road on the obvious place where there's a dirt road access now what you need to do in order to make utilities accessible to anything you built there and again the potential types of affordable housing that we could do there you add it all up I'm guessing it's at least $20,000 and it could be more so I put a cap of 30 on it Rob that's that's just that's close enough for government work I think you have to do anything because there's a railroad that goes right uh part of it no I think the um you know depending on the funding source and how it's developed you know you'd have to have possibly some mitigation if if it's deemed that the railroad is too loud so you know when Olympia Oaks even went in further north you know because it was within a certain distance that we actually um the you know wayfinders actually hired someone to do like noise you know attenuation and and readings when the train went by to show that it wasn't you know a nuisance or you know so I think yeah I noticed that too Eric I think that if if there's a moving forward for housing depending on the funding source they would have to do some type of you know review of that um there's also power lines that run very close to the property not through it but next to it I believe or not next to it then pretty close yeah right yeah next to the train tracks coming into the property right it's um there are power lines right that there's a little sliver of land owned by western mass electric yeah any any report that is produced I would hope that it's produced this way not so not so it just doesn't just inform us but also can be used to inform someone who might be bidding on an RFP if we end up doing an RFP it has to be informative enough for someone else to look at it yeah I agree that's what Carol was talking about before terms of pre-development work that so we understand what's there and we can share that to developer so they don't have to assume the same costs and uh yeah we set things up so that they can move in if it becomes appropriate to do that okay so I made a motion that we proceed with a cap of $30,000 to work on evaluation of the strong street property is there a second to that motion I'll second it okay uh any further discussion or should we come to a vote we just begin the process with some kind of conversation with town or Nate does or something yeah I'll send a formal note to the town manager and the assistant town manager saying assuming we approve this that we voted to do that and we would like to know uh whether or not they have another potential use or whether we should move forward to do the evaluation for affordable housing development perfect okay any other questions or discussion well then I guess we're ready for a vote will yes Allegra yes Rob yes Carol yes Erica yes and I'm a yes so that makes it six to zero um so I think we're probably past nine o'clock there's one other thing I wanted to mention if anybody goes and looks at the website for the affordable housing trust you'll find that it shows each of our names and when our terms and the reason I'm raising that is because my term ends about a year from now no and as of that point I will have served at least six years on the affordable housing trust plus a few years earlier than that on the housing and sheltering committee and so I think we should begin to think about transition planning and so if anybody has someone else in mind who might step up to become co-chair of the housing trust in the next few months uh preparatory to be coming chair in a year or so uh I think that would be a good discussion for us to have so if anybody's interested in that you can communicate with myself or with Nate directly and then we can talk about that as a group and some future date yeah no actually John that's a good segue usually every year that boards and committees are supposed to vote a new chair vice chair clerk whatever officers and so you know July September or July August September the trust should vote you know a new set of officers um so probably sooner than you know John can remain chair if he wants but you know at least if he doesn't seek re-appointment then you know someone else uh so yeah I think that's just something to consider every year we should do it just I think the town's going to try to be better about reminding boards and committees of that um I just want to say Erica typed in the chat about you know the golf course so yeah Hickory Ridge is still something that the town hasn't purchased but I think he's expecting to purchase in the fall now it keeps getting pushed back but yeah I think the um they're planning you know some type of public process so I think the trust we can just stay you know we can try to stay informed of that yeah it's not yeah I'm I'm I'm pretty sure the town will buy it it's just funny that you know I thought it was you know months ago and then so I've heard that by September uh it should happen but well that's good to know maybe next month we could talk about a process for developing a plan for what we would do with uh part of that site that's uh right on West Farmery Lane so we have something to contribute to the public process yeah I think that's a yeah that'll be competitive I think you know there's a number of town departments and you know there's outside organizations too also looking at that so I think that's a you know there's some a few acres on the front that people have been looking at okay any other last moment comments anyone think anybody wants to add okay thank you all for your participation it's been a good meeting and we will see you