 And they just published the second study or the second part of their first study. They expect to do some additional work, not necessarily immediately, but maybe a couple of years down the road looking at the work that they've already done, a sort of a first look, and then follow up later. In any event, I just wanted to briefly highlight a couple of things that are in the study. If people want to see the study or just look at the executive summary, it is on the UMass Donahue Institute website under the title, Greater Springfield Housing Report Releases Second Study. I actually think I put it in a note for everybody, too. And Erica's nodding her head saying, yeah, I did that. That's good. Sometimes I don't know. I think I'm going to do something, and then it doesn't happen. There were some interesting highlights to the study, which I will briefly read and then have one comment of my own on them. The first highlight is the Pioneer Valley has serious affordability issues, and it can be addressed. That's the optimistic side. They talk about there being a mismatch between the availability of rental housing and its cost. Basically, the cost is too high, and they said or concluded that about $17,000 more rental units at or below $500 a month is needed. And they also say this is possible with federal and state funds flowing into the Pioneer Valley to help with recovery. So that's optimistic. They also point out that COVID-19 made the housing situation harder. Sure, everybody's aware of that, particularly for those already in difficult economic positions. Prices are going up. They looked at some pricing data and found significant increases in generally the cost of both sales and rentals during the pandemic period. Another conclusion is what they call place-based opportunity is here and available to be shared. By that, they mean that access to clean air, public transportation, high-scoring schools, nearby jobs, networks of people who are not in poverty, and higher employment engagement by hiring local residents are some of the measurable critical entities that make the specific place people live important to their chances in life. But then they go on to say that segregation is a part of our present. Segregation exists both historically and in the present day in the Pioneer Valley. Housing costs, deficits, and regulations are reinforcing and continuing to perpetuate segregation across our communities. And finally, I have some say finally, but one of the conclusions related to that is the approach of working regionally on cost availability of housing is one of the primary solutions suggested to begin to change these trends. So I do have a comment on that, which is maybe less of a comment and more of a rant, which I expressed to both Keith Ferry and to Mark Melnick. Keith is the executive director or CEO of Wayfinders and Mark is the lead author on the study at the Donahue Institute. I wrote to both of them, I find it frustrating to see this defined as a quote unquote regional problem. Yes, the geographic area defined in Pioneer Valley does share these problems, but the legal and political authority to address them lies with individual towns as well as state and federal government. While the latter are needed to provide resources, the towns must decide through planning, zoning, and some financing what can actually happen on the ground. Groups like the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, the Franklin Regional Council of Governments and others can consult, convene and complain, but in fact, they can do nothing if the towns are uninterested in working with them. This is illustrated for me particularly by the fact that Hampshire County Government was literally dissolved two years ago. This is a major barrier to scaling up change, which was an idea presented by Frank Robinson, one of the panelists. So to my mind describing this as a regional problem is very, very limited value. When Wayfinders does a new development, it does not happen in the region, it happens in an individual town, or it does not happen. The idea of regional goals for housing production only makes sense in an academic presentation. It does not make sense on the ground. If it did, then Amherst Beltertown, Hadley, et cetera, would already have a regional housing production plan. Sadly, they do not and are not likely to in the foreseeable future. So that's my rant. I don't know if anybody has a comment on that. Paul, you're familiar, more than I am to some extent with the limitations or advantages of local government. I don't know if you have anything to say or anybody else. No, I mean, I have the same frustration. You have John and I think that, kind of Amherst does a lot on affordable housing compared to other communities, as you noted. And I think it's a model for many others, but it takes a lot of work, it takes a lot of planning, it takes a lot of patience over time, which we're experiencing with the most recent project that we're gonna hear about tonight that was years in the making and a lot of resources that go into it, but it will happen. And I find that the affordable housing in Amherst, it really defines a major part of what the community is and how it efficiency itself. So, yeah, it's amazing. Okay, thanks. Carol. I think it's so much bigger than that. The town can only do so much and only has so much money. The whole stupid country is so unbalanced with how much money is where and how much rent costs that you, whatever you do in that realm there, my rant is why are you calling this a solvable problem in this region or someplace else without doing bigger changes at bigger places than anybody's talking about? That's my rant. Thank you. Thanks. Any other comments, folks? Yeah, I think Carol, the panelists, there is a number of panelists at the meeting and some of them mentioned that, that it's beyond housing, it's also about employment opportunities and schooling. And so it's in transportation. So once you start looking into it, it really is a combination of factors that need to be addressed. So there's discussion about East-West Rail and how do you build up the corridor along 91 with other things? So I think they realize it, it's interesting that I feel like a lot of people know it and then some don't or they don't believe it. To me, the report just reinforced the need for, yeah, thinking collaboratively. I reach on, but I think it's important to say it is regional because I think that hopefully it gets other towns thinking that they can play a part if they change zoning or local regulations, right? It's a collaborative effort. What surprised me was though, the income ranges. So they had income ranges for households, like up to 10, like zero to 10,000, 10 to 20 and 20 to 35 or something. And that was a lot of the households in this region. And so that's not a lot of household income, right? If you take the minimum wage and a 40 hour a week job. So what it's telling me is that, I feel like the employment and economic piece has to be really bolstered as well as the housing piece. So they're saying a number of households make less than 10,000 a year. And so if they're saying we need 17,000 apartments with a rent of 500 or less, that's not a lot of income. So I feel like both things need to improve. I found that to be a really big takeaway. Yeah. Thanks. Okay. So Allegra has joined us. I'm gonna ask Risha and then Ashley to introduce themselves and also Jennifer Taub. So you have to promote Jennifer to a panel. That's just well made, thanks. But we'll begin with Risha who is along with Ashley, our newest members of the housing trust. John, should the existing members and myself introduce ourselves and then maybe... I thought we'd let Ashley and Risha and Jennifer introduce themselves and then we'd go around quickly. Sure. That's okay. So hi, thank you. I'm Risha, Risha Hess. I have introduced myself to a few of you in the past, but it's really nice to be on the trust at this point. I think I was sworn in two weeks ago, maybe. And I grew up in Amherst. I went to Fort River and graduated from Amherst High School and then left, never to return. And 25 years later, I just returned and in the middle of the pandemic. And so it's been a very strange time to come back. But I'm excited to be part of this. I, career-wise, I am a public health marketer or health communication specialist and I continue to work in international public health. So I don't do a lot of work in the US. But, and I was overseas for the last 25 years. I lived in India, Kenya, Papua New Guinea and Ethiopia. If there's any connections out there that are worth exploring. And that's it, yeah. And I'm really, I grew up in probably what would be now considered income-wise affordable housing, but a single family home. And coming back and looking at rents and the costs of house buying, which is what I eventually did, was really shocking. A lot has changed and not for the better in my opinion. So. Okay, thanks, Risha. Ashley, you need to unmute yourself. Okay, okay, I'm Ashley Jensen and I live in Amherst for the last couple of years and I moved from Northampton and I had lived there only for about four years. And before that, I lived in Los Angeles and the housing situation in Los Angeles is abysmal. It's just the worst. I don't know if there's a worse place in the United States. It would be hard to imagine. But I moved to Massachusetts and the housing situation is a lot better here. And then I also, I live in a tax credit unit, which I feel really lucky to have even figured out what that is. It's, and so I have a lot of experience with like the rigor role and it's a very long and arduous process where there's, it's hard to get affordable housing even when you find one. And so I'm really hoping to contribute to the trust but also with my experience and I'm hoping to go to UMass and figure out my career life in the future. I'm not totally sure yet. Great, thanks, Ashley. And Jennifer is the liaison from the town council. So that means she's not an appointed member unless you consider a town council appointment to be the equivalent. So I welcome Jennifer and I appreciate you agreeing to be here tonight. Oh, well, thank you. I was really, I was really eager to be the liaison that this was really the affordable housing trust is was my top choice. So I'm thrilled to be here. I should say I really have been instructed that I should kind of be a fly on the wall. I'm, you know, I report back what you discussed to the council, but I'm really not supposed to in any way interfere really, you know be an active participant in the meetings. But I'm, you know, I'm happy to be here and just I guess just a brief recap of my background that I did start my career as a community organizer developing something called neighborhood housing services programs which were programs across the country that were and this is going back a ways. This was in the eighties that were really designed to combat financial institution and insurance industry redlining. And it was to help home owners in older urban communities, neighborhoods that were starting to show signs of decline to be able to get home improvement loans to keep their neighborhoods from kind of that tipping point. The organization is now called NeighborWorks which still exists. You might be familiar with, we have an office in Springfield. But so I've always been very passionate about housing and neighborhoods and affordable housing. And part of what I really been struck by an Amherst and I have to say, John, you've been on top of this probably longer than anyone is that Amherst non-student population non-student households are actually declining and our most recent census revealed that and we're really losing a lot of families. We can see it in the declining enrollment in school. I mean, that's not the only reason but part of it. And I'm very concerned and this is just personally this is not speaking for anyone else on the council. John and I have discussed this but that as more outside investors seem to really be honing in on neighborhoods throughout Amherst because of our frankly, student population where there's a major return on investment. And I would like to see more houses maintained for a year round for families and retirees and young workers and rental houses to be able to remain at an affordable cost. And I think that the more it's so tempting for investors to purchase houses and rent them by the bedrooms at prices that are out of reach for anyone but unrelated tenants each paying for a bedroom. So that's part of what drove me to wanna seek a seat on the council but and I'm also a member of the community resources committee and we're going to be dedicated to implementing the comprehensive housing policies and strategies for how we can deliver on the goals in that document. Great, thanks Jennifer. And I just mentioned that Jennifer and I met together maybe a couple of months ago when she became the liaison and a member of town council. And I said, I really look forward to hearing what she has to say. And as I have said to the council president Lynn Greesimer in the past, I always felt like we always got very valuable contributions from the members of the select board who were liaisons, Connie Kruger, Alyssa Brewer, Doug Slaughter and that I didn't want to see Jennifer or any other liaison feel like they couldn't speak their mind in this meeting. And I assured her that probably just about everybody else would feel the same way. And I see people shaking their hands or putting thumbs up or whatever. So welcome. So let's do quick introductions. I am John Hornick and I've been chair of this group for two or three years. And I am a retired, I guess, evaluation and planning person in human services, particularly mental health and housing. So Carol, would you go next? Oh yeah, hi, I'm Carol Lewis. I'm somebody who's done different things all the time. I was a carpenter for a while. I worked with community land trusts for a while. I now still do a little bit of fiscal consulting with various nonprofits. And one of the main nonprofits, working with community land trust movement and the organization I worked with got me very interested in affordable housing and in just different ways of thinking about land use and housing altogether. And I've been here for, I don't remember, numbers that keep changing, like how long you've been somewhere, the number keeps changing, so I don't remember it. Anyway, I've been here for a while and I'm very grateful for all the new people and thank you very much. Thanks Carol. And Paul, probably everybody knows you, but let me give you a chance if you want to add anything. No, I guess Paul Bachman, town manager. I do wanna, I'm really happy with our two new members and they both bring unique care experience actually with her experience trying to navigate the affordable housing system and that was very compelling to have her participate. And Risha has, and she hasn't mentioned it, but additional personal experience with people with the unhoused community and stuff. So I think they bring very powerful experiences to the committee that will really inform the decision-making. So I'm really thrilled that they were able to join. I agree, thank you. Erica? Sorry, it always takes me a while to unmute myself. Welcome, welcome. I'm Erica Piadad and I actually work for the Department of Public Health and I've worked both in substance use disorder and now I work with the Office of Local and Regional Health. Housing should be a right. We know that unhoused individuals are at very high risk for lots of different morbidity and mortality. And I'm very interested in from unhoused all the way to someone being able to have their own home and own their own home. And we know people who own their own home also then are able to accumulate capital that they can often give to their children and are able to move forward. And I know for a lot of people of color that has not been the opportunity. So I'm very, very excited to be working with our two new members and very excited to continue working on this very impactful board. Thanks, Erica. Allegra? Hi, I'm Allegra. I am also a returning Amherst High School grad. I've been back in Amherst for about almost four years now and some of my, oh my God, I can't with this flathead. My work experience, I've worked with people at risk of losing their housing and doing mental assistance in the past. And I'm currently working with primarily people with substance abuse and mental health disorders. Great, thanks. Rob? I'm Rob Crowder. I work for a nonprofit that, among other things, provides advice and financing to community land trusts. And in addition to my position on this board, I also am on the board of the Amherst Community Land Trust. Thanks. And Sid? Good evening, everyone. First, I apologize for being late. I was in a graduation celebration here at UMass. So, you know, we went a little over. Sid Ferrara, I work at UMass Special Assistant to the Vice Chancellor for Semaphase and Campus Life. I joined the board. I'm also part of the Human Rights Commission and I joined the board of, one is because I believe that housing is a human right period. Second was, and John knows this, I had somebody who was working with me about five years ago, which made it a decent salary and I asked her why she didn't live in town and she said, well, because I can't afford it. And I was like, whoa, you know, then I need to get involved and figure out how I can be, you know, an advocate for folks like this woman that worked with me. So I've been in the trust, I think it's five years and it's been an amazing experience. And I think that for the two new folks coming in, you will enjoy it, quote, unquote. And, but it's an amazing experience and this results and that's the thing that I like about this, this trust is that it's resultally oriented and you see outcomes. So welcome and hope you have a productive time as I've had in this commission, in this trust, thanks. Thanks, Sid. And Sid's the person I'd go to if I have questions about UMass policy and actions, although I don't hold them accountable for those. Yeah, there we go. Nate Malloy is the principal staff to the housing trust. So Nate, could you briefly introduce yourself? Sure, thanks, John. Hi everyone, I'm a planner with the town. I've been working with the town for 12 years and I've always staffed the housing committee. So before the trust was housing and sheltering and then it was a fair housing partnership. So I also do a lot with just planning and general for housing and projects. So something I'm interested in and I'm glad I can help. And yeah, I try not to interject too much but it's really the trust and I'm here to help facilitate. It's always helpful. You're always a good source of information and ideas, Nate. And I appreciate it. And I also want to ask Rita Farrell to introduce herself. She is a part-time consultant to the trust. But in some ways, even though she's part-time, a very significant contributor to the work that we do. Thanks, thanks John. So yes, a very part-time consultant to the trust. I spent a big part of my professional career doing affordable housing work for 30 years. I was part of the community assistance team at the Massachusetts Housing Partnership, which is a Boston-based statewide cross-eyed public organization. And while I started out doing some lending work there, I ultimately oversaw community assistance. MHP worked with communities throughout the Commonwealth. So I kind of bring that perspective having worked with housing trusts, housing authorities, nonprofits across the Commonwealth. I'd been retired for about five years, I maintain, in fact, just went to an event and acted on the project that I worked on for a number of years. So that was really fun because affordable housing can take a long time and it was kind of great to see things coming to fruition that I had been involved with. And so I do, and I worked on projects in Amherst. I live in Schuttsbury. So it was always wonderful to be close to home and not in Provincetown for a night meeting or in Williamstown for a night meeting. And so I don't do any other consulting, I just do it for the trust because it's sort of where my heart is. And I also serve just in case you see my name around, I'm the chair of the select board in the town of Schuttsbury and also on the Community Preservation Committee. So we have quite a group of people to work with here and it's been wonderful working with everybody. And I'm glad as Paul said that Ashley and Risha have joined us. Okay, one other, what I hope will be a short piece of business, I distributed the March minutes, I'm still working on January and February, but if people have comments on the March minutes, I would like to hear them. I didn't have any substantive comments. I think there was one minor typo and I'm trying to find it. It was, anything was supposed to be as, so there was just an extra W. Okay, just point it out to me because I'll never do that. I'll put it, I'll send you an email. Thanks, okay. Anybody else, concerns or comments? Okay, then we will now move on to the main event for this evening. We invited wayfinders to do a presentation on their proposal to do housing development at the East street school site and the newer Belcher town road site. And it's people probably know at this point, they have been selected as the group that the town will contract with to do that development. That's still in an early stage as far as I know, although we'll learn more. The person primarily presenting tonight is Diane Smith who is the chief real estate officer for wayfinders. I think she's only been with wayfinders for a year or two. And before that, she worked in Connecticut state government in a variety of positions relating to housing and finance. So I do welcome Diane. She will be kind of backed up by Michelle McAdara and Rachel Blanger who have also both been involved in the planning for this proposal. So Diane, or can we give to promote Diane to be a panelist right, Nate? So I was muted. Yeah, I've just promoted Michelle, Rachel and Diane to panelists. And so that also gives you the ability to share your screen. And I'm sure they have plenty to share actually things that we'll want to see. So I welcome the three of you and thank you for all the work that you've done those far and for all the work that you will do on behalf of affordable housing in the town of Amherst. Thanks, I just want to let everyone know that this meeting is recorded. And so it becomes a video on the town website. So people do watch it afterwards sometimes if they're really, really interested in affordable housing you have to cozy up to that trust meeting. Well, thank you. I would say that when we joined as a panelist my whole screen went black and I got terrified for a second there. So I'm going to try to share my screen got Rachel as my technical backup here because I'm not always sure what I'm doing. Let's see, I don't know what you are seeing. Looks like we're seeing the title slide. Perfect, then I got something right. That's great. So first, thank you so much for having us here this evening. We're very, very excited to talk with you about our proposal for the East Street School on the Beltertown Road. I want to really thank the trust for your leadership and your vision and making these two sites available for affordable housing development. And we're very, very excited to work with you and the others in the town to bring this project into fruition. We also really want to thank you for the careful consideration that went into the RFP. It provided due diligence in advance aligning the RFP requirements with funding permitting processes that affordable housing developers work within. So you really were very thoughtful about how you put that together and including requirements related to fair housing, sustainable design, diversity, equity and inclusion and all of those things are at the core of Wayfinder's mission and values. So thank you so much. So I want to give you a brief overview on who Wayfinder's is. A number of you are familiar with housing and that became Wayfinder's and some of the work that we've been undertaking for several years. We are a nonprofit that's head of ported in Springfield. We tackle affordable housing crisis from a few angles. Someone had mentioned being able to see someone from being unhoused potentially buying their own home and really Wayfinder's plays a role in all of those spaces and working with folks who are currently homeless or have been chronically homeless, who are surviving domestic violence. And as they are moving through their own housing experience and providing them supports all along the way. And we are also a developer and a property manager. We have a couple of properties in Emerson that you're familiar with and we've been very, very, we've had very, very good relations with the town with regard to those properties and are very pleased that they've gone so well. Because we develop properties with a commitment to owning and managing, we're invested in working with the community. So that is why even with the properties we currently have Olympia and Butternut we spend an awful lot of time and energy making sure we're in contact with municipal officials on services and making sure that our properties are well maintained and that you understand what's going on. We manage over 800 units and the majority of our portfolio is in the Pioneer Valley and Amherst and Northampton and Holyoke in Springfield. And we also extend a bit east and west to communities in Great Barrington, Ludlow and Ware. In terms of serving those who don't live in our properties our housing centers in Springfield, Holyoke and Northampton are places where anyone can come and gain access to a wide variety of programs including emergency rental assistance first time home by our education or employment support services. So let me step into a little bit about our partners with regard to the project on the two sites. For this project, we focused on the best practices in energy efficiency and assembled a team that had the expertise to meet the goals of the town's RFP including those related to sustainable design. The narrow gate is one of the most experienced designers of affordable housing in the state and their experiences suited to both the adaptive reuse of the school and new construction. The Center for Ecotechnology is also a core member and is working with wayfinders on other projects. They're a fantastic resource to review plans and to advise us. And as we plan for the next phase of the design we'll be selecting construction manager to advise the team on costs and constructability at every step of the way. One of the things we wanted to review with you today is the requirements of the RFP and what our proposal had presented to the municipality and to the trust with regard to what we wanted to have happen in those two sites. The RFP was closely aligned with our experience and providing a family housing and a vision to create a range of housing options in the region. Our proposal met and exceeded the town's requirements and goals for the sites. And really where I'd like to sort of point out for you is that the RFP required at least 40 units for households below 60% or below of AMI. And our proposal proposes 45 units at 60% or below of AMI and 70 units in total over the two sites. The RFP required at least 13% of affordable units that are affordable to folks at a below 30% AMI. And our proposals suggest 25% of our units being affordable to the very low income, extreme low income population. There was a desire to have a number of units that were available to larger families for two or three bedrooms so that the RFP wanted 66% of the units being made available to larger families and ours of the 70 units that were proposing 74% are two and three bedrooms. We are focused on green sustainable climate and resilient design. We are pursuing passive house and enterprise green communities certifications and solar as well. So that is part of our proposal. In addition, in terms of management, we do manage our own properties or frequently and actually in all of our properties we have property management offices on site. And for our proposal, we would suggest having a property management office on each site of the two sites. So those are the ways that we approach to the responding to the RFP. We put together a very strong team. We really felt we put together a very strong proposal. We're very happy that you agree. I wanna stop for a moment and ask if you have any questions about what I presented so far. I'll just make a quick comment, Diane. When we wrote the RFP, we did have what we considered to be base requirements. And we did hope that the selected developer would exceed those. And obviously you've done that. And personally, I couldn't be more pleased about that. And I'm sure the other members of the trust feel that way as well because we work pretty hard on both what the minimum requirements were and our desire to see the actual project exceed those. Thank you. So the East Street vision, I have to say when we did the walk around and the property, I was so excited about this site. Really love the neighborhood. I am, as John mentioned, I'm from Connecticut. I still live in Connecticut. But this was really just a very exciting thing to try to move forward and to think about. So I'm gonna briefly walk you through this concept for each of the sites. And what I want to let you know is that the design for both of the sites is driven by the desire to have a more barrier-free housing. And that's a huge gap in the existing rental market and to glance the opportunity for a significant quantity of new housing with a neighborhood context and scale. Some of the other drivers at this early stage to provide wetland buffers and our goal was to create shared outdoor spaces. So our proposal for the East Street site converts the existing school to six apartments and then weaves it into a three-story addition with the front portion of the site you can see here. And we envision a fairly traditional style for new construction because it mirrors the existing neighborhood. So we really wanted it to fit right in. What you see here is the main entrance. I'm not really sure if you can see my cursor but this little bubble on the bottom. The main entrance would be through a shared courtyard and that's where the school and the new construction areas would connect. The property management office and the common space on the ground floor would create a hub of activity and it's located near the community room and next to the courtyard and that would really enable larger events to spill outside in good weather. So it has this very flexible indoor outdoor type of experience for the neighbors. The elevator is located between the school and the new construction portion and that would act as a bridge between the different floor elevations and make all the units visitable. So regardless of where you are in the property you have access all the way through via the elevators. Both properties have a mix of one, two and three bedrooms and for this site the new construction portion has two and three bedrooms on the first two floors with one bedrooms on the above. So the unit mix in this particular development that would have nine one bedrooms, 15 two bedrooms and five three bedrooms of the total 29 just for this particular site. So I will stop here and see if you had any questions about this particular site and the design. Okay, Beltertown Road vision. So for Beltertown we looked at a bunch of different options for townhouses or multiple buildings and we found that a single larger building would be the best way to accomplish wayfinders than town's goals for accessibility, energy performance and creating an outdoor gathering space. So from the Beltertown Road you would see a two-story portion in the front that transitions to three stories in the rear and what the architects rendering that you see here we used subtle changes in color of siding and roof lines to create a feeling of multiple smaller buildings. So you see here that even though this is all one building it looks like three. So it sort of breaks it up as you're looking at it. And the ground floor would have a similar combination of common spaces at the East Street site where the hub would be here in this general area where the property management resident services staff are the eyes and ears of the community and have a visible presence. And then the rear, the building frames and outdoor space that connects directly to the community room. And I remember us having this conversation around the community room and really thinking that having it back here and overlook the backside, the backyard, the patio area where kids could be playing and people can have an opportunity to see their kids. And that was a really sort of a nice way to lay out the property and have that common space. For this building, there would be nine one bedrooms, 22 two bedrooms and 10 three bedrooms with a total of 41 units in this building. Are there any questions about this? Okay, you guys are very quick. Yeah, I point out that the parking area which is right along Belcher Town Road serves as a kind of buffer between the main residential part of the property and Belcher Town Road. Yes, in visiting the site a few times, you are more certainly more familiar than I am. This is a very busy road. And we were thinking that in order to provide some quiet enjoyment for the residents here to give them a little space between the noise of the road and their apartments would be a good feature to again, to give them some quiet enjoyment there. I just wanna say I'm quiet because I'm an absolute awe in terms of developing the RFP, this is just amazing. So I'm speechless, it looks wonderful. And Paul, thank you. I'm wondering maybe is there, it looks like there's bike storage inside. Do people have any storage options other than just what's inside their own unit in this in either of these two places? Oh, Rachel, can you help me out there? Yeah, so we do have residence storage at some sites like but at Butternut Farms, there's kind of a storage locker system. We didn't show it in the plans for either site in this proposal because with the number of units it just becomes kind of a fairness issue. If you can't provide it to everyone, then how do you allocate that space? And it would be probably too much building area to provide everyone. But we felt that the bike storage was important and having that on the ground floor so that you don't end up trekking your bike into the elevator and then digging up the hallway on the way to your apartment. So I was just wondering, so if you provide storage, you probably lose units more or less? Yeah, I mean, there's always a trade-off. And I think looking at, yeah, what's the best use of any given space and just with the goal of cost effectiveness looking at getting the most bang for our buck in terms of office space and resident amenities. But it's certainly something that the team can look into and get a sense of what that would entail. Okay, and I was just one more thing. So everything is, there's no studios. Everything has a bedroom and a living room. Okay, I was just not these particular two things and maybe this will come up later in other projects. But I wonder if because that report that I listened to, we need 17,000 units of $500 in less apartments to like fill the need of the region. And I just wonder if some projects need to have a lot of studios to get 17,000 units of $500 or less cost. That's just something I was thinking about. Thanks, yeah. While we're on that, there's a little bit about the unit sizes. So we work within ranges that are established by the Department of Housing and Community Development. So a one bedroom will be between 600 and 660 square feet. A two bedroom will be between 800 and 880. And the three bedrooms start at 950 and usually end up close to that. So we have guidelines even for room sizes within each apartment. And the household size needs to be paired to an appropriate number of bedrooms. So there may be a household that needs a $500 apartment and you could provide a studio for 500 but we can't allow four people to live in a studio by my health code. Right, okay. And I'll add that our goals for this project were that it would be there primarily to serve families. And so that's something that was a limitation of what Wayfinders could do, which they respected. This really does look at least to me like a family project. But yeah, first off, I want to say like the proposal that Wayfinders put together, we had two very, very high quality proposals that were submitted. Wayfinders was a really superb presentation of your information. So thank you for the work that you put into that because it really made the job harder. We had two really high quality proposals and the town is fortunate to have that. I was really appreciative of what you did with the school on East Street. It was, we were told early on that that building could not be preserved. You've done it a very creative way to include that into your design. So really appreciated that. And these two parcels are within proximity of our village center. So one of the questions that I think we deserve additional conversation, not tonight, but just to identify it is the location of this building. And I get what Diane said about moving it to the residents have some quietude from the street. But in a village center, we instead of being sort of a suburban looking center, we're trying, we are tending to look at bringing buildings up to the street to create more of a semi-urban feel with a slight setback from the street. And I think it's a conversation for us to have because we're looking at it, doing some sidewalk improvements in this area and really creating East Amherst as a village center. So that's, I mean, the planning department is thinking really hard about that. So I just think that as I flag that as something that in terms of location, this is not set in stone in terms of location of the building. And we might want to have that conversation about what we're exactly in a lot of dislocated. Thank you. Any other questions? We talked, I heard as you all were introducing yourselves about having a need to serve very low-income households and extremely low-income households. So I want to kind of give you a sense of what those incomes look like at this point. HUD actually updates its income ranges once a year in April. So we expect to be updating this information. But when we're looking at folks at 30% of the AMI, we're looking at households between $17,000 and $26,000 for one to four people in the household. And right now the 60% of the area median income for a family of four in this region is about $50,000. And that really means that you've got a single earner that's making $24 an hour or two earners at $12 an hour. So we're really focused on making sure that we're providing really good quality housing that is part of a community that is affordable to families who really just aren't making a lot of money. I sort of broken this down to you earlier when we were looking at the two properties, but our proposal does have at this point, 70 units as part of their proposal with 29 units in East Street and set 41 units at Beltertown Road. One of the things I'd also want to mention to you is that we are making this proposal assuming that tax credits, this will be a low-income housing tax credit development. And knowing that Amherst actually is a town that does have an awful lot of students, the requirements of low-income housing tax credit does not allow for student housing. So that is not, they would not be eligible for these properties. These are really for families as permanent housing. With regard to the timeline, our focus for the first several months is a stakeholder engagement. And then following the execution of the land development agreement, our focus will be on the due diligence needed to get to move forward to the project eligibility application with DHCD. And one of the big drivers in looking at the pre-development timeline is when we can be ready to submit a pre-application to DHCD. So DHCD does its application process in two phases. You submit a pre-application and then you can be invited into a full application if you need certain criteria. So they do have their funding is it based on an annual cycle. The pre-applications are generally at the end of October and they require zoning approval as well as local funding commitments. And with that in mind, we're planning for a fall 2023 pre-application and a January 2024 full application to DHCD. So give us a little time to get going with our planning. And then once the application, the full application that's generally due in January is made to DHCD, they may pass on that and then invite you to a smaller application funding round if there's also local commitments that are made. So they have the full round and they have something called a mini round. So there are times where property, my development proposal will get another shot at a funding round. So I think I will stop here in terms of our overall presentation. If there are additional questions or comments from the trust or any other member of the community, I'm not really sure how many folks that have actually showed up here. And then as time allows, we can talk about recommendations for outreach. We can also talk about if you haven't been involved in construction or housing development most recently, there's significant changes in construction costs that people are experiencing nationally. And we can talk about that a little bit as well if you'd like to. But I think I'll just stop here and see if you have any other questions or comments. That's great, Diane. I really appreciate this. So other people with questions or comments, I mean, when I saw the proposal, my reaction was a little bit like Eric reported earlier, which I was kind of stunned how interesting this looks as well as how responsive it is to the criteria that we put in the RFP. If we can get this built, this will be terrific. I will stop sharing so that we can all see one another. Does any of the attendees have a question they want to raise? If you do raise your hand, please. I actually have a question as well. I just, I might have missed this, but is the income mix like 30, 60 market is that evenly distributed amongst bedroom sizes as well? Yes. So there's just to be clear, there's not of the 70 units and the four different income levels. It's not a quarter of the units to each of those income levels, but the unit sizes and the accessible units would be evenly distributed by income level. And really, I'll just add to that to say, any possible variable that you can use to be distributed. So if we look at low income units needing to be on all three levels of the building front, back, side to side, not just distributed by the bedroom type. So it's quite a puzzle when you go to actually assign the units. Yeah, I will say. Yeah, I'll just add that one of the things that I think was important to the trust members is that there's not a lot of low income development and, you know, we have everything from 30% area median and come up to a small number of market rate units, 200% or sorry, 100% area median and come 60 and then 30. And so I think that way finders did an excellent job of reaching that goal. So look, okay to you, Allegra. Do I remember that the ones that are above 80% have to be at East street because they can't be on Belcher Town Road for some reason. Is that true? So yeah, okay. You're right that there's a difference between the two sites, but the income limit, there would be 100%. And I, my understanding is that's because the Belcher Town Road property was purchased using community preservation act funds. Yeah. And CPA can only serve households under 100% AMI. Other comments. Okay. The next thing on our agenda, we can come back to this project because the next thing is related. Nate and I have discussed having a larger community of forum. Not in the next week or two, but probably in the summer or the fall. In which obviously we're going to have a larger community of forum. In the summer or the fall. In which obviously wayfinders would be invited back. They'd be a little bit further along. Probably we'd have a land development agreement with them. And maybe some other progress. That we would have to report by that time. So. I guess I'm. I'm not going to go into that. So I'm just going to go back to. The questions related to a community forum. I should say I've also talked a little bit to the. Unitarian universalist society about. Having this a face-to-face forum there, or maybe it could be hybrid, but. That is a possibility for us. It isn't necessarily entirely. A zoom community meeting. So. thoughts people have about who should be included obviously we want to include neighbors particularly those who are legally identified as the butters. At the risk of being obvious I mean Fort River community would be a key stakeholder in the construction that's going to happen. Sure yeah so you know I was going to say that we're still working on a land development agreement which serves as a contract with wayfinders between the town and wayfinders and then their schedule is you know aligned with what we were thinking it also you know has to align with the funding cycle and everything so I don't want to get ahead of wayfinder so you know John said the summer or fall and we would work with them you know in the town just to make sure that we're not you know we're not hosting an event before they're ready so if you you know if your schedule works and you know whether it's July or September we would defer to wayfinders just to make sure that they're ready you know it does become a pretty big public event right so this is a comprehensive permit it's you know they're going to be seeking a lot of waivers from the zoning requirements it's something we support and you know 132 Northampton Road was a comprehensive permit but it's not a you know a by right you so there will be a lot of discussions with the neighbors what this means what this looks like so although these there are concept designs now it may change through permitting you know there could be some slight changes to the site design you know we're saying they say 70 units now it could be that you know maybe it's 68 maybe it's 72 right so in their proposal it was 65 to 75 so there's a target for a number of units and some of that has to go through permitting I do think a public meeting is a good thing to start it off and then there's a public comment period with the initial product eligibility piece and so I'd like to have that form kind of kick off that at the timings right so we can you know have you know we're not doing double duty and having redundant meetings but we could have one serve a few functions and then move it forward so I you know I think it's a I think it's a good idea location to be determined in format but if that works for wayfinder I think something you know this summer fall is you know is a good idea I think we also should consider whether a smaller piece of the meeting should be used to introduce additional goals that the trust have beyond this project because as I always say it's great to have this project moving into the pipeline but I'm always looking to see what other opportunities there are for us to get the next project and the one after that into the pipeline Carol um I was just wondering if we could think about some of the techniques of outreach that we want to use in order to get people into the buildings to also get people into the meetings about the buildings so up front begin to consider some of the places that we maybe don't usually advertise such things that uh so that the public meeting would maybe have a bigger cross section of the public yeah I'm sure will be open to any suggestions um I know from my recent experience um it's a lot of work particularly to reach out to communities of color and low income individuals in Amherst we do pretty well with the middle class white population but not as well with the other folks and so we need to figure out how to improve on what we do what what have you used before I mean where where do you usually advertise like newspapers Facebook newspapers there are about two dozen organizations in Amherst um of all different stripes that I asked to publicize any of our events uh and generally they do that through their Facebook pages or their other communications with their membership and that ranges from the business improvement district to the League of Women Voters of Amherst to the local churches anybody I can think of um but recently working particularly with Sid and to some extent with Erica we've tried to figure out how to do a better job of reaching out to persons of color to complete an adult survey for our age and dementia friendly project which we're working on that I'll mention a little bit later uh we're trying to do our best to get more surveys in from those groups than we ordinarily would so any ideas you have Ashley will absolutely be welcome as will ideas from anybody else have we thought about doing outreach to like the teachers unions or other professional unions that have people who are working in town but might not be able to either afford to live here or are struggling with maintaining their housing here not the teachers union per se Allegra but I have reached out to the superintendent and of schools and uh Mike has published announcements of meetings that we do on school system communications with teachers and parents again something we could do more of but we've done a little bit of it and maybe we could improve on it and some of the information that you also provide John goes on the parent's newsletter because I get that because of my involvement in making sleep so he does show up in the parent's newsletter also um so the survey dementia survey um showed up over there in in various places yeah thanks Sid so yeah we've we do it and it's somewhat effective but we could improve um so this is very close to where I grew up um I'm very familiar with the neighborhood uh I do so Fort River seems like a really obvious one not just the teachers union which I think is a great idea but that community I'm in the kids who are already going there obviously you want kids who might not already go there as well but thinking through that it might also be smart to think through the timing of this forum I know there's a lot of variables that will decide when it is but it might be smart to wait until the school year starts um so that the families are back in the area if they do travel for the summer yeah I think that's a good idea Risha something for us definitely to consider other comments or ideas Diane do you either you or uh Michelle or Rachel have thoughts based on your prior experiences I know you've got lots of them in trying to talk to communities about project plans yeah I think um Michelle has really been at the helm at uh the work that we've done in Amherst in the past Michelle did you want to talk about how we've how we've done that working past I'm going door to door around butternut neighborhood I'm going back quite a few years but we did do that but you know in other communities we've gone to the senior centers and posted there had sessions at senior centers we've always had pretty good turnouts at senior centers we've posted flyers in the local elementary schools we've asked uh superintendents if they could put you know a flyer give it for the children to bring home and they allowed that I don't know if Amherst superintendent would allow that um local businesses not only the larger ones but your smaller ones you know your smaller restaurants um sometimes they're willing to post flyers to or hand them out to employees um there's all different avenues you know I think the most successful though has been really to get to like places like the senior centers uh places like blogs and things like that especially if you talk about families you know that's great we'll definitely be collaborating on this including the date and approaches to outreach um and uh this is not the last time that we'll be talking about organizing a forum for this purpose yeah so I just say too that um you know we you know there's Amherst Human Service Network and uh the Council of Social Service Agencies in Hampshire County which we advertised through um I mean it's interesting I think we do put a lot of public outreach out there maybe that then the follow-up right it's easy to dismiss an email or two and so then it may be you know is there other other ways just to reinforce the message or encourage people to come to a meeting um because I do think it gets out there um what I was going to say that typically when a product starts and if it is um you know uh corresponding with permitting the town also has a web page where we will have um you know a product information we may have a survey form or a comment form that all the comments received get compiled through the town it's something we we typically do um and then that gets folded into the product eligibility and the comprehensive permit process so you know in terms of public comment and as we get closer you know we can strategize about ways to you know have a web presence or if you know wayfinders if you have something in terms of collecting comments but usually we'd like to do that just have a central portal for things to be um um you know stored in so even if we receive comments through letters or emails we end up putting everything in one place and it's you know we can compile it easily uh and it's you know beable for the public so for Northampton road we did that and for North Square we did something similar and so you know we'd have I'd like to have a similar process for this project as well whether it's you know unengaged amorous or you know how we we manage it but have some some place where information can be readily available I'll just say briefly that go ahead go ahead the page on the wayfinders website um is now live so we don't have the capability for um commenting set up but just to make some of the the basic project information about you know what was our proposal and what's the timeline um that's that's up on our website yeah I was gonna say I couldn't share the proposal with folks because it's so big that my copy of it exists on a thumb drive and so it really isn't shareable maybe after this we can share the slides that Diane used which are definitely a simpler approach to the presentation than all the detail of the actual proposal okay other thoughts okay um then we can move on to other agenda items again I want to thank Diane, Michelle and Rachel for both their work on developing the proposal and for being here tonight to do this presentation for us and we look forward to working with two out of the three of you in the future thank you very much for your time thanks everyone take care thanks okay um our next agenda item has to do with potential changes to the zoning bylaw um as Jennifer mentioned earlier in her introduction there is a bit of competition between the use of housing in Amherst for students and the use of housing in Amherst for families and each year the competition seems to increase at least that's my experience including in my own neighborhood so I asked Jennifer if she would talk a bit about that and both some combination of what she personally thinks the direction for change might be as well as what the community resources committee is working on to look at possible changes so Jennifer are you well I just you know briefly um you know could review you know some of what's on the community resources docket which is really about you know just housing generally and we're you know now at the point where we're going to you know kind of be deciding you know how and which you know would be would be able to implement first but some of the um what's you know kind of on a matrix that we have and also what the planning department suggested I could just you know that we're looking at um you know different uh tiers of housing you know to have different tiers of apartments um and we're looking at um you know what what you know apart the definition of apartments would it be 24 units would it be over 24 units would we have you know sort of different classes of apartments because you know we definitely you know are looking at more you know options um for housing in Amherst um we're looking at um duplexes you know whether um and how we might go about um allowing duplexes and triplexes by right in uh different residential districts um we'll be you know uh looking at you know cottage developments and really how we can just um facilitate more options for housing to serve you know the entire um community in Amherst um so personally what I'm and this is just speaking for myself as we said uh you know would just be concerned about is you know some of the strategies I think we all agree those are goals and inclusionary you know expanding inclusionary zoning those are we all you know share I think the same goals but it's you know how we can ensure that if we allow for more development of duplexes and triplexes you know that it will in fact serve everyone in the in the community and you know some of that it um I think sometimes left to market forces alone of course you know there's the greatest return on investment is what will prevail so what strategies can be developed to ensure that you know housing serves all residents and frankly not predominantly the student market so part of yeah what so um I think that the the wayfinder is just um even the design the way it looks is you know kind of awestruck by that it was um really very exciting but um you know I think just a general trend around the country is you know private development money you know tends to serve the higher end of the market and you know how um we haven't had a lot of development of you know sort of houses in Amherst it's mostly been you know rentals for kind of the higher end of the market that's where that's my concern so as John and I have discussed um you know we're looking at what other university in college towns have done to try and protect some of the housing you know for year-round residents and part of the goal would be to make to expand and sustain our our population of families you know and year-round permanent however you want to non-student households but um so that's so there's the general goals that the you know community resources committee is looking at and then of course I've shared a little of my personal perspective which is you know but I think we all we all um want to get to more housing for everyone in the community and it's how we get there I'll just share a little bit of my perspective one of the things that Paul said to us a meeting or two ago I can't remember exactly when is that we don't want to make students the enemy and I think that's a very important point um students are very important to this community but even for significant students are also people and they're getting very often the short end of this stick um you know there are at least three things that I've seen in the last year or two that indicate that students have to go a long way from Amherst in order to find affordable housing um you know we're talking about going to Springfield or Holyoke or occasionally even further south um there's at least some anecdotal evidence for that uh and uh so I don't think the university is serving its students very well whether we're talking about undergraduates or also when the university talks about students somehow the fact that there are graduate students and students with families seems to me to get swept under the rug or doesn't get adequate attention so one of my personal beliefs is that the university needs to find a way of doing more on campus I understand that there are financing barriers to do that but it's possible to overcome them it really needs to be a priority for the chancellor and others at least on the Amherst campus if not in the UMass system overall um and Amherst may be worse off but I I wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that other UMass communities are experiencing the same kind of housing pressures where they're increasing in numbers of students who are enrolled and less and less local housing to fill the need so I really do hope that town council takes that up with the university I think it's very important the other thing I've mentioned and I did send this to Jennifer and to Pam Rooney and to our planning department I saw a piece I think it was in the Washington Post about homeowner associations and a couple of communities in the south who are banding together and essentially restricting the right of people who buy into homes in those communities from being able to rent them for at least a year or two years after their purchase I mean imagine the disincentive that would create in Amherst if LLCs or private corporations coming in to invest quote unquote in Amherst could not actually rent the single family houses that they purchased for at least a year or two I'm sure there'll be objections to that but I think at least it's something that is worth exploring so again from my personal point of view I would like to see more restrictions on what owners can do with their homes particularly initially after their permit purchased it wouldn't affect existing homeowners and also in urging the university to do more development on campus I'll just say one other thing related to the latter the governor has made it important or he has asked state agencies to look at their property and whether there are opportunities for housing development on state property I talked to someone at DHCD who's involved in this and I said well what about university properties and she said well they're not on my list nobody's asked me to look at those so once again I think there's an opportunity there and it would be great if the state statewide as well as in Amherst would look at those opportunities and take them seriously because if we had 300 sorry 3000 to 5000 new units on the UMass campus that would really make many more housing units available to families and individuals in Amherst than we have now and I did want to add I think you know we can now you know allow the last council did this which was a you know terrific you know change and policy that you can build accessible dwelling units you know by right and part of the requirement is that the owner live in either the primary assessor or accessory unit so it makes it more affordable if someone wanted to you know convert a garage or you know build an accessory unit at your you know retire you didn't your kids had grown you could move it to that unit and rent out the primary unit so it creates more unit but it also keeps the owners there who have you know an investment in the neighborhood in the community and it's not an absolute you know it's not a speculative arrangement so I think looking at more of that is also a good thing. Yeah that would be great that's been available for some time the question is how do we encourage people who own property to take that direction? Yeah I mean the change just happened last year that Jennifer mentioned so something that was just you know the accessory dwelling unit bylaw was updated last year through staff so I think you know I was going to say that you know the town council adopted a comprehensive housing policy it's available on the website under town council they have town town policies and it's it's there I think it's a really good document and then at the end it lists about 50 strategies to try to help achieve the policy and so you know Jennifer outlined a few in terms of like low to medium density types of housing you know the planning staff has come up with a list you know it takes a while to get a zoning measure changed so zoning is a really powerful local tool but it does take a while to change and so we have looked at changing it's footnote M and it sounds like something really small right it's a footnote M but what allows a lot more dwelling units on a property and you know once you started assessing that you realized there weren't any conditions or ability to regulate once you if you could waive that how many units could go on a property right so all of a sudden the impact of neighborhood neighborhoods could be huge and so you have to be really careful about how you make a zoning change even if it's to a footnote right so you have to have standards and conditions to regulate it because as Jennifer said the market will will seek the highest and best use which is usually you know as many units as they could put on a property with the dimensional regulations and zoning and so you know we've discussed having you know a triplex unit definition maybe a four-unit type of definition and then this tiered level of apartments with standards and conditions to allow them in certain zoning districts or neighborhoods so right now an apartment building can only be 24 units or less in one building you could have multiple buildings on a property and then there are some conditions in the bylaw but they're allowed in some districts and not in others but if we had different you know unit sizes that were allowed or different types of townhouses they could be allowed in different districts and so it becomes a pretty complicated zoning measures but we want to be you know kind of really judicious and careful on how we do that because you know if you just say let's just allow apartments everywhere without certain standards or conditions you could get you know buildings that aren't really appropriate for certain neighborhoods and so you know anyways I was just encouraged like this the trust to look at the housing policy and then the strategies and it's something we could talk about too you know there's a number of them listed what do we think are ones that could be taken in the near term you know right now planning department is working on six zoning amendments that are things that some of them need to be done like new flood plain bylaws and there's some that are you know we're I've been working on since last year so you know we have about six right now and if we you know that's that's going to take the rest of this year so you know if you say let's have five zoning strategies for housing that's you know nine months of work right or you know it's a it's a amount of time to actually thoughtfully go through certain zoning amendments so I think it is important though to prioritize them and discuss the moving forward I mean again this is my my personal concern but yes I I think you know and it's it's not that people you know don't want students or an integral part of our community I live in a general residence district I'm three blocks from the university so you know we have many students that you know we're a very a neighborhood with you know we go from you know students to retirees but the concern is the pricing by the bedroom which is expensive for the students and it also then you know makes it more out of reach to the community so the you know the temptation is as you allow for more densification and more building you know how much of that building will be accessible to all of us you know who if it's priced a thousand dollars a bedroom it's it's out of reach yeah go ahead so I don't know what this is I mean is there a particular guideline for how much square footage like each you know one bedroom or a studio has to have because these two new buildings they only have one bedrooms but don't you think that if we also at some point made lots of studios students would also like those and they would also be well fairly affordable well so there's a new building on the corner of university drive south south and um route nine it's under construction right now you know where snel street um you know in that area and it's um actually how many units it is but they're all studios and they're you know um I'm maybe like 270 to 350 square feet they're small but you know I'm hearing that they're going to rent to between like 1700 and 1900 for a studio and so yeah I mean so I think the it's just you know I in you know so I think there is an imbalance in the demand and what people are willing to pay and some of them might be well you know to get a nice um room on campus might be you know 1500 a month anyways right if you're living in a a suite on campus I don't know but I know a few years ago even living in southwest it was about 700 a month and that's sharing your dorm room with someone else right that's and then with a meal plan and so it may be that for a family for one year 1700 a month is it's more than living on campus but it's not you know if it's a few hundred more a month it's really not exorbitant for a family if they're spending that much on camp on on a college tuition but for anyone else it's it's really high and so um you know zoning doesn't necessarily control that we don't control the what a what someone will charge so we can try to regulate site design and number of units and other things but if someone is willing to put studios in at 250 square feet and charge whatever they can get that's that's something that's really difficult to regulate through through land use regulations you know we have inclusionary zoning now so certain percent of those will be affordable but you know it's really hard to say property owner please charge 1200 a month I mean there's certain ways to try to buy down units or do certain things but it becomes very expensive to do that okay interesting but yeah no I agree I mean there used to be more boarding houses in town you know 50 60 years ago right there used to be a wider variety of housing types and that's been lost over the years right I mean it's even statewide nationwide but if you know if if there were more you know different types of housing perhaps even more you know studios and smaller one bedrooms that might really help alleviate some pressure but it's not you know it's something to consider a long way from adding 17 000 new units at under $500 a month's rent no kidding yeah yeah but that's the goal right I mean well that's that's what the wayfinders UMass Donahue Institute proposed I don't know if anybody has suggested that's a state goal Carol? I just I guess that one of the things that seems most promising to me is the inclusionary zoning stuff because then at least if somebody builds that building with all those things that cost that much a certain percentage of them have to be affordable you can't control what somebody is going to charge for some of the units but you can put into zoning regulations I think that if you do this then you must also do this and have some of the units be affordable and it seems to me then at least you get some affordable units instead of only these things that are high priced so I can't remember exactly right now where all that inclusionary stuff is it I think it seemed to me the last time I looked at it like it was so why don't you do it in more places than it's being done in but I honestly can't remember but in because of the fact that you can't control the price that particular approach seems seems like a good one to me and the one Jennifer said about the accessory dwelling unit you can only do this in your place if one of them is occupied by the owner that also seems like something that is has some amount of control over what's happening part of the problem is and again I'm not certainly opposed to inclusionary zoning but how do we bring it to scale how do we really increase the number of affordable units that are available when mostly we're talking about doing it in increments of two or three units here and there pretty tough agreed but at least that's some otherwise you have no units here or there so agreed Carol agreed okay I was just going to say that's part of the pressure on purchasing the single family homes is that you can rent them for so much money yep yeah if the if the um luxury tax that moves forward and happens is there a way that you can like slip in an LLC tax as well that's I mean I'm kind of being facetious but I'm also kind of thinking like you see all these things that they're turning from you know sold by a person to an LLC and it seems like that might be a place to tack bin to something if if the doors are open to this luxury tax well the LLC to the extent that they buy houses the property would be subject to that I believe but I don't think there's any special provision for LLCs at the statute that's being considered but I could check yeah no I think there has to be some creative ideas like that Northampton is trying to petition the state to you know be able to not even waive but just deny finders fees you know so right now I mean it is it's surprising but you know Massachusetts allows someone to charge you up to a month's rent to find a unit and now really with the internet and just the way you know it works you they're really not doing the same type of thing they were and they're actually going out showing units every day and really maybe some are but you know anyways it's hard to think that someone may need to put down basically five months worth of rent to get into a unit between first-class security and then this finders fee so there has to be some solution there's probably a number of things that would work and as you were talking I had a night I was going to say something I've forgotten it but yeah I don't know it is interesting I feel like there has to be a few creative solutions to that would have to work inclusionary zoning carol is you know if it's a big unit it's 12 percent of the unit so it does you know I think depending on you know I'd said previously there could be about 20 new affordable units this year this in a year with inclusionary zoning and it may actually be more it might actually be closer to 25 but you know I agree it in some some developments it's one or two units but right I mean I think right so wow in a year we might have 25 affordable units you know de-restricted affordable units and if development continues at that pace if we have 25 over a few years also we have you know 50 affordable units and you know it's not you know it's not the 1700 but I think you know we're making some really good strides to to have that be you know part of almost every housing development now I was I just wanted to mention that I you know if there's a there is a marijuana tax like but the does the state get it how does the marijuana tax work for Amherstown in particular getting the money from the dispensaries well that the state tax is twofold a part of the money goes to the state treasury and then towns can elect to do a fee if I understand it correctly that would be something close to what the state collects from the dispensaries and I believe that Amherstown probably is already collecting those taxes Paul can answer that question better than I can yes that's true we are collecting taxes and fees and none have been allocated for anything in particular they have to be the fees have to be dedicated to impacts that the town may experience as a result of the marijuana industry putting up retail establishments here and I just want to note that I need to sign off at nine so I just want to make sure we're on time for the things yeah I think we should be thankful yes Sid disappeared yeah he had an 830 meeting yeah I remember I was going to say that yeah I mean the pendulum as swung I think where LLCs are buying single-family homes and maybe even you know duplexes so you know we're Valley CDCs trying to administer a first time home buyer program the Amherstown community land trust is also trying to have some home ownership units but I know Valley we've I've been in communication with them they're having you know home buyers you know really stretch their limits you know up to almost 350,000 and they're getting outbid you know cash offers you know after one showing you know a dozen cash offers well above asking by you know investors and so you know may have been five years ago we did a comprehensive housing markets study and they said at the time it does it does change right it shifts sometimes home buyers can get in sometimes investors get in and so right now investors are winning the day and it is you know it becomes a really challenging problem because you know we're providing a fair amount of subsidy for these home buyers but they still are having difficulty competing you know because they have to go through financing they just it's just they don't have I mean I you know I I was like do you just this really happened they really get cash and value is like actually yes there's a we had a house at like 335 we you know the seem like they were interested in our buyer and then the next day someone came in literally with cash at like 350 and it was gone I'm like okay I mean like you hear it but you know like it happened it really did I'm like wow that's just like okay I mean how do you compete with that it's a really difficult thing okay I think we should move a little bit further along on the agenda we're doing really quite well there were a couple of items three items at least for updates one I was going to ask Nate to tell us where we are with strong street I know he's been working with Bob Mora and trying to make some progress on our capacity to see development there for home ownership yeah so we looked at strong street maybe it was just last last month and you know previous months and the town has about 13 acres close to northeast street on strong street it's it's a wooded site it's a pretty steep hillside and there's natural there's priority habitat for natural and endangered species and it it so you know really we have to decide what can happen there and so we came up with a concept plan of I think it was about 16 units on the site with some impacts to the natural heritage area and we've submitted it to the state and they just this week they've they've done it as a pre-construction filing and we're meeting next week next week with an engineer and a botanist and a biologist and so we're trying to determine if if we can have impacts in this area and so it's actually a pretty rare plant and maybe you know another insect or some other creature and so they're really concerned about it and so they're they haven't said no but they're just determining how much of an impact we can have because most of the site is in this this priority habitat you know ever sourced did some line clearing in this area and they had to replicate habitat they had to pay money it was a you know pretty expensive for them to even fix the power line so it's a little bit of a challenge but the state seems pretty willing to work with us I'm I'm actually really pleased with it that they you know they didn't say no at the concept development of you know 16 units so I'm hopeful that you know something that could move forward it's not a large you know it's not a large project but we're looking at you know eight duplexes all home ownership again and so yeah I don't know John I think next month hopefully we'll have you know keep moving forward enough that you know if the state says sure maybe we're going to then have to do a little bit more due diligence and have someone come out on site and do some on-the-ground survey work for this these habit you know these species we'd have to refine the concept plan a little bit but you know we're I know I'm kind of optimistic that they'll say okay that's great I appreciate that I mean it sounds like a lot of acres but obviously there's a lot of limitations to what we can do on this site and at this point I'd be really happy if we could put up 16 affordable units home ownership units on that site I was gonna it's gonna mention the east gables project which is valley community development project at 132 northampton road presumably with everybody else they're fighting the traffic on that segment of route nine you know to get trucks and other equipment in but they have actually broken ground and so they are starting the development of what will be 28 studio apartments at the so-called and well I shouldn't say so-called at the now renamed gables site just off belcher town road near the center of town so that's good news Laura was with us earlier but I don't think she's here anymore so I think that'll be our report on this for tonight the other thing I was going to mention and if people have questions about them I can try to respond to it I did note earlier that we are in the midst of doing a an adult community survey as part of the age and dementia friendly community project that the town is collaborating with uh the valley uh valley the pioneer valley planning commission on um the intention is to develop a plan to make the town more age and dementia friendly and people in the planning department are working on it hailey bolton who's the new director of the amherst senior center is working on it as is the council on aging and other folks in town uh one of the things that we're contributing is some work on uh getting the survey accomplished uh the housing funded uh a mailed survey we initially mailed about 500 people we got at this point over 200 returns and we're climbing toward 250 we did a first wave and then a second wave and returns are still dribbling in uh two or three a day and so I'm optimistic that before the end of the month we'll have a 50 return weight on two waves which will give us a pretty reasonable sample of individuals and amherst we have done a major job in supplementing that sample in a number of ways there are what I would call convenience surveys that is surveys available for people to pick up at the jones library at the bang center including the meals on wheels program at the bang center uh sits no longer here but he and I have been leading an outreach effort to try to make sure that community of color are better represented than they would be by uh the mailed survey alone as of the last count we had about 73 older adults from the communities of color and amherst who had responded to the survey um which was about double the number we had three or four weeks ago and again by the end of april I'm hoping we won't double again but maybe we'll get closer to a hundred so we have reasonably reasonable representation from those communities so we're doing a lot and I think we're going to end up as I said with data that is reasonably representative of the community and hopefully providing information that's useful for planning for housing for older adults for social and health services for older adults and for other needs that the community has including potentially a new senior center I know there's a lot on the town's plate but um for folks who keep up with that and look at the comparison between amherst and Hadley south Hadley north hampton and so forth those communities have really done a very nice job at developing senior centers and amherst is really lagging behind and so I'm hoping that's one of the outcomes of this age and dementia friendly project so questions about that okay um I had some notes on legislative advocacy from Kappa but I will put those in the mail the one thing I will say from that which is kind of interesting is that on the one hand the legislature proposed and the governor assigned a budget supplement of a hundred million dollars for emergency supplemental income however the filing deadline for asking for those funds for individual households ends tomorrow and the state will not be accepting any new applications at least until the beginning of the next fiscal year which is July 1 and as you might imagine the advocacy community is up in arms about that because there still are many families that are risk of being evicted and that need these funds in order to protect themselves so that's the one thing I'll mention from the chappa report it's also something that's been highlighted by the pioneer valley network for planning homes helpless preventing homelessness led by Pamela Schwartz so I think those are all the things that I had on our agenda are there any further comments or questions okay we are still looking for a new chair and that among other things will be on our agenda for the next meeting Dave Zomek will return and we'll talk about uses of ARPA funding for affordable housing in Amherst as well Carol do we have somebody like we the person who takes the notes or the whatever the assistant person who left and we are we still going to get a new one of that or are you taking the notes or what's happening I've kind of been taking the notes and trying to produce minutes myself it's a little hard to do and really um so we have to figure out what to do uh Nate and Rita and I have talked about hiring a new person there are some new barriers to doing that that we need to figure out how to overcome before we can do that successfully it's no longer a simple a matter as it once was to hire a part-time person even at a few hours a week given the state requirements for whether it's local communities a really private industry as well in hiring part-time people yeah I think there's a you know there's there's been a through town audits there's you know a lot of municipalities you know may consider someone an employer or contractor and that's a it's a big distinction in terms of taxes and other things so that's something that's happening with uh but you know what Lucia had been doing so the easiest way is to have a volunteer someone who's just really likes to attend trust meetings who's not a trust member and just really wants to take minutes um so yeah John Reed and I met the other week and we're trying to figure out how best to move it forward and so um we hope to have someone you know helping the trust uh there's also you know there's a transcript and this is recorded so this doesn't become available we still have to keep minutes but um you know you know the meeting is posted online uh you know every every friday it now uploads all the videos from boards and committees online to the to the town's youtube channel so it's readily available but yeah John's been doing a lot of work you know I've been trying to help um but it really is it is a big task to have um to run a meeting and take minutes so we're yeah that's crazy yeah I should add one other thing um last time we talked about the possibility of changing the evenings for these meetings um subsequent to that I've talked to Paul or emailed with him and for the moment he's fine with thursday evenings so we're gonna stick with that until it becomes a problem and then we'll look at changing it again if we hadn't stayed with thursday the obvious alternative was tuesday given everybody's schedules but we're not going to do that at least not now just to clarify it's when there's a council meeting or council committee meeting that's a my priority on those evenings so if there's not a conflict don't be here obviously okay thanks Paul John there's a hand raised I don't see it so would you call in the person sure yet George you can unmute yourself I was interesting comment Nate about people who like to attend housing trust meetings who are not members of the housing trust I'm sure that wasn't aimed at anyone in the audience but one of the pleasures of being removed from the council is that I can now attend housing trust meetings and I actually would consider myself in the category of people who actually enjoy attending housing trust meetings and admire the work the housing trust does so perhaps I'll reach out to you or to john at some point and see if I might be able to provide that service because my intention is to try and attend if I can because you're doing important work and the issues as we saw tonight are very complicated so having said that and made that planted that seed we'll see where it goes maybe nowhere I'm actually going to make two brief comments if I may which may remove me from the consideration for this job I want to put back a little bit on Nate's comment about speculators and it's something that was kind of going through the meeting tonight I actually been spending a lot of time trying to understand this market and I'm not saying that Nate's wrong I'm not I'm not sure who's right or who's wrong here but the realtors I talked to actually right now are saying that it's going the other direction given the high cost of homes while there certainly are probably cases of individual speculators there's actually fair evidence that suggests that the market is going the other direction and I'm just trying to get some data so I think people should be a little cautious about making generalizations about the speculator market and how people are coming in and gobbling up single family homes and that this is getting worse and worse it's I don't have any evidence of that there may in fact be it and I hope we can I can find it or someone can find it but anyway I'd like to just push back a little bit on that because when I do my research and I look at these evil LLCs a lot of them actually are local people and some of them a lot of these cases also are people who lived in a house for years and then they downsized or moved and they still kept the house and it just provides them an income so it's a complicated story I just get a little nervous when and I'm not accusing native this because I hear it in other quarters as well that sort of like it's the speculators that may be true but I think there's a lot more work that needs to be done and I'm I'm hoping to maybe well we'll see but that's number one number two I just noticed that Aspen Heights has five vacancies for affordable housing and that's up on the town website and that just kind of struck me and I just wondered about it maybe there's not time to talk about it tonight and maybe that's just normal this happens every so often but five vacancies in one site seem a large number and so I just kind of wonder what was going on there and it led to something else over the you know my three years the one thing that I really wanted with the inclusionary zoning bylaw was some way we could get a report occasionally about how effective it is and how it's working and how it's not and and they spoke about that at the time and he made it clear that look you know once this you know a an entity you know is is running out these these rooms or whatever the whole process is run by somebody else it's not the town has nothing to do with it so maybe it's just not possible to get a report or sort of a you know how effective is this and and is this inclusionary zoning bylaw working are we reaching the people who want to reach and that was just in my mind it was ticked off by hearing that Aspen Heights currently has five vacancies for affordable units in the Aspen Heights project so anyway that's that's my comment thank you very much thanks George you know I haven't looked into Aspen Heights per se but I do know that elsewhere when we define affordable units that we think will be reachable by families or individuals these days we're looking for 60 percent area median income and ask Aspen Heights is working at 80 percent area median income so it may be that uh there aren't enough people that fit that I really don't know but I know that's possible explanation so yeah I was gonna just George yeah thanks for your comments Risha put in the text that she had to leave um I think Paul's gonna leave soon too yeah in terms of the investors buying properties I said for I meant I said first I'm home buyers and I guess I should qualify that you know there's a you know say it's 250 to 350 right there's an income range or price range where that's happening whether that's true for all single-family homes or market rate units that's I don't know but when the comprehensive housing market study from 2015 did say there's a price point at which there's more competition and so what I was just relaying my experience with the first time home buyer program we're trying to help out and there's you know a narrow income range and home home value and there's competition there um for Aspen Heights yeah I think you know I think the pandemic may have played a role I think John's right in terms of um income so you know if they're priced at 80 percent AMI it's actually above what a voucher program can um can actually provide an AMR so it's you know anyone with a section A voucher can get into a unit at 80 percent AMI so sometimes a developer will voluntarily lower the affordable unit you know the rate just so they can accept a voucher holder in terms of the pandemic I think what happened was you know they had a fair number of applications actually they went through the lottery and then after the lottery you still have to complete an application screening right whether that's income verification or other steps and it seems like a lot of um applicants didn't follow through with that step and so my thought was that maybe they became underemployed or unemployed and they couldn't meet a minimum income to get into units or you know just something with the last year and a half there's some difficulty in the situation that they didn't follow through and complete the application and they didn't get into the unit so the the firm that's doing it SEB housing is actually pretty well respected and they're a big company from Eastern Mass and so you know they they reached out and asked if we could help advertise again um you know I haven't followed up you know I did ask and they had some explanation but not too many details about why they there are um vacancies so I think it's probably a number of factors and yeah I think it's something to watch right so as we have more units through inclusionary zoning we can try to have you know some type of assessment you know some type of follow-up data in terms of how well were they um you know occupied so I think typically we get a fair number of applicants but it's it's then that additional screening to get them into the units so we usually put a local preference on them so 70 local preference so you know at the initial lottery and lease up it's for you know people with school-aged children who work in Amherst who currently live in Amherst we're trying to you know we do that um and then there's a general applicant pool and typically we have a fair number of applications for every for you know three times as many applicants as the number of units and then it's always somehow there's a barrier between number of applications and actually getting into the unit so it's something we can look at look at in the future yeah I know there was no trouble renting up the North Square units that were affordable but those were lower than 80 percent area median income well well I mean I don't I wouldn't say that I think you know right okay they you know like I said so at initial lease up in lottery you know there's 26 units and then as through the application screening process a number of applicants were either denied or they didn't follow through and so they hadn't been working down the list quite a bit um it's just you know um so even though you initially they can say oh we have 26 units occupied or 26 tenants selected oftentimes you know you go through a number of tenants they don't either they don't submit the paperwork or I don't know what happens right and so there's it could be um there is some you know that's where the town isn't involved with right we're we can't be involved with that as a permitting entity so it's through the property management company the developer possibly and then the tenants and so we can recommend that tenants talk to like family outreach to assist them and there could be barriers to that right there could be some some disconnect in the process uh and so you know it you know and it might be happening you know statewide as well right not just an amour set to somehow there's this disconnect so you know if we hear about it we always try to help out um and maybe it becomes a bigger systemic problem like what is you know what why is it that the initial tenants can't get into the units I don't know okay thanks Nate I think we're at nine o'clock I'm gonna make a motion to adjourn uh is there any discussion to the motion then I will ask all those in favor just say aye thank you all I think this has been a very interesting meeting and I appreciate everybody's participation see you next month