 Thank you for joining us for the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust meeting, January 11th. It is 7-0-1. We will wait a few minutes to ensure we have quorum. We're just waiting on one or two other trust members. Grover is in the audience. There's Grover. So that should make it. Great. Thank you, Allegra. I'm trying to. I expect that Greg is trying to bring her in. There's Robs here, too. Okay, Robs here as well. And as soon as Grover joins us, we will go ahead and begin. Grover, you might have a pop-up on your screen that you're going to want to accept to be promoted. I wonder if Grover might be transporting youngsters, perhaps, too. Okay, well, we do have quorum, and if Grover is in the audience and can hear us, and once we can move Grover over, then Grover can participate. But we do have quorum, so we'll go ahead and begin. It is 7-0-2. Thank you again for joining us at the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust meeting today. So I'm going to start with our December minutes. I'm going to open up to see if there are any additions, corrections that need to be made. And if I don't hear any, I'll go ahead and accept them. Okay, not hearing any or seeing any hands up. I'm going to go ahead and accept the December minutes. Indus, thank you, Carol. In December, we noted that there was a correction to the November minutes. We corrected the minutes and we redistributed them. They were already voted upon with the corrections, so we don't need to have a vote. So I'm going to go ahead and move on to trust updates. So the first update we have is that we actually have a new trust member. So we've been filling the positions. Our trust board is of nine members, and we're up to eight right now, with Gaston being our prior new member. Now we have even a newer member. Corinne Olson will be our newest member. And she, unfortunately, was not able to make it this evening. She will be with us in the in-person meeting on January 30th. Her daughter wasn't feeling well, so she was unable to be with us today. She will be listening to the recording. I did ask her for a quick intro, and so I'm going to read her intro. So please don't confuse that I am Corinne. I'm just reading it as the way she wrote it. I've been an Amherst resident since 2021. I have a husband and a two-year-old next week in a loving and loyal dog, Nevada. My husband went to UMass, so our connection to the air runs back many years. I graduated from Columbia University with my master's in social work in 2013, although since then I have not had any direct housing experience. Many volunteer and career opportunities have given me experience and united a serious passion for the sector. After working as director of volunteers at a domestic violence shelter, helping run a homeless shelter for families, and taking a housing course taught by the Director of Safe Passage in New York City, I've gained a deep and somber understanding of how necessary housing is for everyone. Stable mental health, career, a functional family life, even proper hygiene just aren't as possible if you don't have the comfort, consistency and safety of a roof over your head. I'm very excited to join this board and continue to guarantee this right to more citizens of our town. It's tragic to me that anyone be homeless, and although I know this is a problem that may sadly never be completely eliminated, I hope we can work to expand it as much as possible and to create a more solid network of supports for folks to help them stay sustainably housed by underlying the importance of ongoing wraparound services for residents. Thank you. Very excited, so welcome Corinne, and as I said before, she will be watching our recording of this evening. The next item is that we actually have a vacancy. So Ashley Jensen has resigned as of the last meeting, and I want to thank her for her service and her commitment both to increasing affordable housing and the advocacy that she's shown and the commitment she's shown by being a trust member, and especially for her commitment to ensuring that people who are unhoused do get housing. We are working hard to fill our last vacancy, and we hope that we could possibly fill it before our next in-person meeting on January 30th. Then the next item is the CPA funding. Very good news. We have received $300,000 from the CPA, and we want to thank the CPA for their support. If you have been to any of the meetings around the CPA having tried to make funding decisions regarding all the applications, it was very clear to me how committed they are to supporting affordable housing. At the same time, there was a lot of competition for extremely critical projects. So even though we got 2,000 less, we are very, very happy that we got the 300,000. So at this point, quick note that we got it provided town council approved. It hasn't been approved, but they probably will. Thank you, Carol. It's the CPA recommending to the town council. The town council has to make the final decision. So thank you, Carol, for the clarification. All right. Now I'm going to go ahead and pass on the floor to Shelley. But before Shelley goes on, I really want to thank her in advance on behalf of the trust for working with us tonight, providing a Housing Trust 101, and then continue to work with on developing our action plan. So thank you. Absolutely. So can you see the slides correctly? Not yet. Not yet. It says we're viewing your screen. There we go. But there we go. Yes, thank you. Sometimes there's the delay. Okay. So my name is Shelley Gehring, and I am with Mass Housing Partnership. And tonight I'm just going to do a little bit of a Affordable Housing Trust Fund 101 kind of overview. Before I get started, I just want to say that I am more than happy to be interrupted if something's not clear. If I'm speaking too quickly, if I'm using acronyms, if there's some kind of clarifying, something that you need to clarify. At each section, I will pause and ask for questions. And then I suppose Erica maybe can help facilitate that if there are questions. But we don't have to wait until the end if there's something pressing or something that's not clear. So please don't, I don't mind being interrupted. So I'm going to start with that. And for those of you who maybe are not quite as familiar, okay, who may not be quite as familiar with MHP, we are a quasi-state agency in Massachusetts focused on increasing the supply of affordable housing across the state. And we have four main kind of outward facing teams at MHP. The first is our Center for Housing Data, which is a small group of people that are collecting, analyzing, and sharing data to help inform effective housing policy on the local, regional, and state level. They are also the team that puts together some really incredible online resources as well. We have the community assistance team that I'm part of, and we're really about helping to build a local capacity to support affordable housing. We also offer technical assistance with 40B developments and working directly with housing authorities on surplus public land. We have a lending team. We've lent over $1.4 billion to Creighton Preserve, over 27,000 units of affordable rental housing at this point. And we have a home ownership team. So the one mortgage product comes out of our home ownership team, but we're really supporting access to home ownership for low and moderate income households in the state. So today, there are a few things that I'm wanting to cover. One, just some housing trust basics. And so for some of you, you may be more familiar than others, but I just want to kind of a baseline of what an affordable housing trust is all about. And then I'm going to get a little bit into trust operations and best practices just based on working in dozens of communities across the state, some things that we've learned. So it's just some suggestions. And then I'll get into eligible activities, the kinds of things that your trust can be funding and engaged in. And then I'm going to do a little bit about working across boards. I do this in some communities, particularly when you do have a community preservation committee. And I know in Amherst, you have a variety of boards that are working on housing. So I'm just going to give a few just kind of tips and suggestions for working with other boards. Again, if you need to interrupt me, if I'm not clear, if I'm using acronyms, please, please don't, don't wait until the end. So first, some housing trust basics. The municipal affordable housing trust fund statute is organized under mass general law, chapter 44, section 55C. So that's your trust is organized under chapter 44, section 55C. You are a public entity. You're created by, it was created by your local legislative body with a majority vote. So at the time that was town meeting, the purpose actually is quite narrow. It's really to create and preserve affordable housing for low and moderate income households. Some communities want everything housing to fit under the trust. And that's not really how the statute is written. It's led by a local board of trustees that's elected locally, that's appointed locally, excuse me. And because you are a municipal entity, like all your other public boards, you're subject to public procurement, designer selection, conflict of interest, and public meeting laws, just like all of your other municipal boards. Very generally, a housing trust fund can address affordable housing needs locally, support local control of housing initiatives. Your trust can engage in real estate activity. You could sell, buy and sell property if that made sense for you. You can make timely decisions because you don't have to go back to town council unless something's written into your bylaw. But typically you're more flexible than for example, the community preservation committee, which Carol just brought up that they make recommendations, but then it still has to go to town council. But that's not how a trust is set up unless your bylaw requires it. But I don't know, most do not require that. And you can be collecting funds from a variety of sources. And I have been told by a municipal attorney that donations to a municipal board are have tax advantages just like with a nonprofit. Showy, are you maybe one slide behind? You seem like you're one slide behind what you're talking about. I'm not positive. Right now it says, what can a housing trust fund do? Oh, no, that's not what I'm supposed to be saying. Yep, I'm still on that. Yeah. All right, okay. Yes, sorry. You can be collecting money from a variety of sources. And we're seeing communities be a bit more and more creative around how they fund their housing trust, which we'll get into a little bit more detail later. So the statute is a very short, simple statute, and it offers, it's kind of minimalist. You need at least five members on your trust. You need to include the chief executive officer. So in a town with a select board, that'd be one select board member in the city. That's the mayor in, honestly, I don't know who that is with the town council. Who is that? We have our town manager who's the fact. The town manager is considered CEO. Okay. These members are appointed by the mayor, the city council in some, some cities, the city council has some oversight select board. So it differs depending on the structure of your community. The statute says two year terms, and many communities will stagger these, just like with nonprofits, so that you never have 100% turnover at the same year. And then the trustees, your public agents, special municipal employees, just like with your other municipal boards. The statute outlines 16 different explicit powers, and the big ones are accepting, receiving real property, purchasing, retaining real or personal property, selling, leasing, there's one that's borrowing. So there are 16 different powers that are allowed. A community can modify these powers or create caveat, like borrowing is a concern in some communities. They might require two thirds of the board members, the trustees, or they might require that trust couldn't borrow more than a certain percentage of the assets that they hold. A town can also add to these powers. So while the state statute has these 16 powers, of course you always want to make sure that you're paying attention to your local bylaw or ordinance to see if there are any modifications. So you're not just going by the state statute. And then several years ago, there were some changes made to the municipal affordable housing trust fund statute, for two key reasons. One is that there were CPCs transferring money to the trust, and the trusts, in many cases, were not reporting back to the CPC how they were spending the CPA funds. And so then the CPC was not able to report to the state how the housing funds were being spent. And so our data on the state level is flawed because there isn't this circling back to report how housing CPA funds were being spent. And that's important because when we're advocating on the state level for more CPA funds, we want to be able to adequately explain how CPA housing funds are being spent, how many units are being supported. So one change to the trust statute is requiring that trust report back to your CPC, your Community Preservation Committee, on an annual basis, how you're spending CPA funds, if you have them and if you are spending them. So then the CPC can report in their annual CP3 report to the Department of Revenue how the trust CPA funds are being spent. So the screenshot is a document, a fillable word document that I created with Stuart Saginore of the State Community Preservation Coalition. And this helps the trust report back to the CPC. It's using the exact language on the CP3 report. We also have a document that's directions of how to fill this form out, which might sound silly, but you'd be surprised at actually how it's not so easy to fill these forms out. So just a reminder that when you do have CPA funds and you're spending them, you want to make sure that you're reporting back on an annual basis. And the CP3 is due, I believe, September 15th. So you just want to make sure that you're getting that information to your CPC in time for them to report back. I'm sorry. The other thing that was changed is that the trust statute, the purpose, as I said before, is to create and preserve affordable housing for low and moderate income households. In the CPC, there's the verb support that's specific for housing, and it didn't explicitly say in the trust statute that support activities are part of the purpose. And so there were communities that were transferring the funds and the trust wanted to do support type activities, but town councils didn't feel like, some town councils didn't feel like it was appropriate. So now the trust statute allows everything that's allowable under community housing with CPA allowable for a trust as well. So that means anything that falls under support, a trust can engage in as well. To just... Kelly, does that include emergency rental assistance or rapid rehousing? Yep. Yep. So everything that's allowed under the CPA, community housing for CPA, is now allowed for a trust. So because so many communities create a trust because they have CPA, it just made sense to make sure that those statutes were more online. So just two clarifications or tips when you distribute funds, just like we tell every CPC, when you're using public resources, when you distribute funds, you should have a grant agreement. You should make sure that you're clear about what the funds that you're allocating are for, the parameters around when you expect them to be spent. And you want some sort of language about in what circumstances the funds would come back to the trust if they're not used, as you intended them to be used. The same that we would expect from a CPC. We also suggest strongly that CPCs have a grant agreement with trust when they're transferring funds so that there's clarity between both of your boards. And then to just throw out that CPA area median income differs from HUD numbers. So the Department of Revenue overseas median income for CPA, they do use HUDs 100%, but then when they do 80%, they just do a straight 80%. That's not how HUD does 80%. HUD takes into account household size. And so if you want the units that you're funding with trust resources to count on the subsidized housing inventory, you just want to make sure that you're using HUD numbers for 80% and not CPA numbers. So I'm going to switch gears. Are there any other questions at this point from that beginning material? So trust operations and best practices. So as I said, we are seeing communities be more and more creative about how they're funding their trust or there are a variety of resources that communities are using. Certainly CPA is the most common funding source, although it's not a given in every community, but about 76% of our trust communities also have CPA. Other ways that communities are funding their trust is that some communities have inclusionary zoning and they may have an in lieu of payment option that a developer could pay cash instead of providing a unit. And in some cases these funds are, it's actually in the bylaw or the ordinance that these funds would go to the trust. In other cases, they're just allocated at the trust. We have some communities that transfer free cash or funds from the general fund to their housing trust. So Truro, Brookline are communities that have done this. We have one community in the Cape. They have a cell phone tower and the income from the lease payments are directed to the trust. It's not a lot of money, but it's a guaranteed small chunk every year. We have one community that has, so they voted to allow a million dollar bond to support their trust and they don't have CPA. So it wasn't against CPA, it's against their general fund, but Medfield allowed this. I don't think that they've drawn on it, but they do have that as an option. Orleans on the Cape has passed a tax override, a $275,000 tax override that they see as an annual override. So they're the only trust that I know of that has been able to get a line of credit from a bank because of the source of funding that they have. We have communities that are seeking donations for their trust, and this can be in land or cash. There may be developer negotiated fees that can be directed to the trust. Of course, you need to be careful and cautious about how you try to negotiate developer fees, but we do have one community where it was a, what was referred, what's sometimes referred to as a friendly 40B development. A local developer was doing a home ownership development and for every market rate unit that he sold, he donated $10,000 to the community and then the select board directed it to their housing trust. There may be special bylaws or ordinance payments. There are some communities that are using short-term rental fees. So Gloucester is an example of this and some of the Cape communities are working on this. There are communities that have talked about income from the marijuana tax. I don't yet know if any are directing it to their trust. Tax title sales are an option or a community like Chelsea has actually transferred tax title properties to their trust to disposal for affordable housing. There was a Supreme Court decision that was made earlier this year that complicates this a bit, that I'm not going to get into tonight, but that has gotten a bit more complicated this last year. And so I think I went through all of them. So there are a variety of different whites on then the real estate transfer fee. You're likely, you likely are familiar with the legislation of there's statewide legislation that would as an enabling legislation. And then there are individual communities like Nantucket that are trying to get real estate transfer fee law passed bill passed. I'm not sure I know what a tax title sale is. So for properties where they are behind on taxes to the community, the municipality and the municipality takes up takes those from for because they're not paying taxes on them like property tax or it could be water sewer could be other taxes that are owed. And so there are times that communities may take those parcels. Thank you. So when trusts are starting out or when you're kind of regrouping, we always suggest that you start by determining housing needs in the community that you start with current data about what's going on in the community around housing needs. So I think that you're, I think that you are planning I think Nate had said at the past meeting that you're working towards updating a housing production plan. So I think that that's in the works and we would highly suggest that you move forward on that because it looks like that the data that you do have is perhaps a little bit dated, but we would always suggest that when you're looking to kind of regroup to create new goals and priorities that you really start with current data around what's going on in the community where need is. People have opinions about it. We have stories and those are all important, but we really want to make sure that we have a clear picture across the community. And then that you use that to then set priorities for the things that you're going to want to focus on as a trust. And you could create benchmarks if you wanted, if there's a particular need you wanted to address, you don't have to do this, but the Somerville Trust, it's actually written into their ordinance that a certain percentage of their funds has to go towards households earning, I think it's under 50, below 50% of the area meeting income. So they just have that to make sure that not only is it a reminder to the trustees that they need to be funding the lowest income households, supporting the lowest income households in the community, but it also helps to tell anyone who would seek the funds that that's a priority for their trust. So you don't have to create benchmarks like that, but if there's a particular need you want to address, you could. We would suggest that there are not only with your housing production plan and your process, but there are other resources out there as well to get some information about your community. So Datatown is one that MHP has developed and is updating regularly as data is updated through the census. It gives you a picture of what's going on in your community and it can just help with the conversation. You're also able to make these graphs that I have here on the slide, and you can just use that, it's not a cost, and you can put that in your presentations or your reports just to help facilitate easy access to data about your community. There's also a tool that you can compare Amherst to other communities if that feels helpful with your local conversations. As trustees of your trust board, because you're looking to support affordable housing development as one of the things that you're doing, it can be helpful to understand the process of financing affordable housing, what it takes to put together a deal. This is not to become experts. I'm not suggesting that you try to become experts. It's extremely complicated, but one thing that you might want to consider is to learn a little bit more about how affordable housing is financed. On the housing toolbox, that there are multiple trainings that we've had where we talk through financing affordable housing and the different funding sources, state and federal funding sources. We also have a couple trainings where it's the developer perspective and nonprofit developers walking through what it takes for them to put together a deal and how communities can help support that process. One thing that you could also do is if you felt like that there is some learning that would be helpful for you is you could invite a developer, either an affordable housing developer. And sometimes you might prefer a nonprofit, but I know a trust that invited a for-profit developer to come and talk through a real development pro forma and walk through the process of putting together a real deal that they had worked on. This can just help you feel a little bit more familiar with what it takes and ways that you can help support the process as well. So it's just a suggestion that might be helpful. And we would suggest, we always suggest that you have a mission statement. So yours does. And as mission statements go, it's important to revisit them occasionally to make sure that it still fits with how you see your role in the community and how you want to talk about your role in the community. You don't need to spend that much time on it tonight, but you keep them short. You already have one to start with, but you just might want to revisit that because it may have been several years since you've done that. And then just a planning framework that I've been using in communities is encouraging trusts to have, to identify two or three goals that are well-defined and measurable goals. Oftentimes in our housing plans, the goals are very general. It's things like increase the supply of senior housing. It's so, so general. And it can be really hard to figure out how to move forward from something so general. So we're really encouraging trusts to narrow in on two or three goals. So this is something that I'm going to be working with you on this for the next several months. And then from those two or three goals, then to come up with strategies, a variety of strategies that will help you meet those goals. And then once you get to that point, you can get even more specific with tasks that you can then delegate to those different members of the trust to help moving forward with implementation. This is an example of one small trust, or a trust from a small community wealthily on the Cape. So they had decided, they've decided working with their housing authority as well as their affordable housing partnership that the trust is going to focus on housing development. Their housing authority actually doesn't have any units, but they've historically managed some housing programs. And so they've decided that their housing authority is going to continue with programs. And their partnership, it might be a committee, is going to focus on advocacy and education and some policy. So they've talked with each other. They've decided that that's how they're going to allocate their focus. So the trust is focused on development. So they have two goals. One, as a measurable goal, create 100 units of low, moderate income rental and homeownership housing over the next five years. And then to raise a million dollars annually. So for well fleet, which is a pretty small little community, these are fairly ambitious for such a small little community, but they felt like that they wanted to push themselves and they wanted to, they know that the housing issue is dire there and they really needed to kind of put some pressure on themselves to do shoot high. And then they've come up with different strategies under each of these goals about how they're going to try to meet that goal. So they're trying to focus on what they're doing to not spread them themselves out too thin, but to be ambitious, but to be really focused and targeted with what they're working on. And this is what we're suggesting with every trust, because we've seen so many trusts get really overwhelmed with how intense the housing needs are in the community and how the resources are always really limited. And so oftentimes trusts really end up spinning their wheels because they're really overwhelmed and they're not sure where to start. We're really trying to encourage trusts to work with other boards to identify kind of a niche for the trust of what you're going to focus on so that you can do a couple things really well, two or three things really well, instead of really struggling to do five or seven or eight things. And then we are encouraging trusts to, and I don't know if Amherst has anything like this yet, but to have some kind of guidelines, a document that puts together a variety of things. Where your mission statement, your goals and strategies are, roles and responsibilities of the trust, priorities or the things that you're really focusing on with your funding, any kind of stipulations you have with your funding. So to be clear about what income level, as an example that you're wanting to fund, perhaps some language around monitoring and reporting, so your expectations when you allocate funds and applications, some selection criteria and an application form. So these are just examples of things that are in guidelines, but we're encouraging communities to do this just so that you have things in one place, that it's easy for people to understand what you're about, for people who might want to access your funds, they understand the process, and they understand your priorities. And what your mission is currently is it's really reminding people that you're a municipal entity and that you're really, you see your role at this point as helping to implement the goals of the community. So this is, the guidelines should be connecting all of those pieces. So it shouldn't be something that's outside of that, but it's just articulating the piece that the trust is working on or the pieces, what you're really focused on. And we do suggest that when you have multiple housing entities or different entities that are working on pieces of the affordable housing puzzle or needs, that you have conversations that you're clarifying roles across boards, that you're having conversations about how you're going to work together, what might overlap, and you might even have conversations around who's going to fund what. So just going back to Wealthly, they've decided that the trust is going to focus on development, housing development, and that's what they're really going to fund. The housing authority is going to work on funding programs like rent assistance and home ownership program. So they decided up front to have some conversation so that there's clarity around who's doing what, and we would suggest this for every community. So this is just from Manchester's housing production plan, and they identified housing strategies on the left, some shorter term, a little bit longer term strategies, and on the right, the lead board or boards to help with, so there isn't stepping on toes to help with some accountability. Having something like an exercise like this can be really helpful if you haven't done it yet, or if you have done it in the past, perhaps updating it. And then we always remind communities to trust to be transparent. We all know that housing development, particularly affordable housing development, can be controversial, unfortunately. Don't make it difficult for people to understand who you are, how you see your role, who's on the trust board. In some communities they have joint board appointments, perhaps they have a CPC member on the trust board or another board represented on the trust board. And we just caution against having people that are on too many boards, because then it's hard to get quorums, it's just hard to get participation. Your board really needs to be an active board, but in some communities they've decided that that's important for communication. We suggest that you report back to whoever you identify, whatever boards you identify is the critical ones, and sometimes that means a joint annual meeting between different boards like the CPC or in town sometimes a select board. Or reporting back to the town council, try to do that regularly. And when you do fund different initiatives, then promote them. Use social media, use that. If you have a webpage, just make sure that you don't make it difficult for people to learn about what you're doing and who's engaged in the work. So I'm going to shift to algebra activities, but I want to pause if there are any questions. Any other questions? I know it's a lot of information. Yeah, I have a question that I think that can wait till the end, but it does have to do with the relationship you just talked about. So often our work is very much entwined with the town's work. Ergo, we have Nate who is wonderful in terms of Planner who is always supporting us. We now have Greg who is funded both by the town ourselves to support affordable housing, and Dave is on right now. And then we have Paul who's the manager, who's a de facto member. So when we talk about roles, we really work very close and in tandem jointly in terms of what the town does. And the town often reports to the town council so I think, you know, later on you can talk, if you can answer this, how have some of the towns sort of distinguish themselves separately from the town and how have they used their role to actually either present to the mayor or to the town council or to the select board in terms of what they're doing or have they done it jointly with the towns themselves? Okay, let me think about that a little bit. I want to answer that. Thank you. So switching to algebra activities, so I'm particularly because you are a CPA community, I'm using this graph that the Community Preservation Coalition uses and because all the eligible activities, again, I'll say again, all the eligible activities under community housing with CPA are eligible for a trust. So the verbs that are used in CPA is acquire, create, preserve and support. Rehab and restore with CPA funds is only allowed if the housing was created or required with CPA funds and support is the category where under CPA it's only intended for housing. So I'm going to go through different activities using these verbs just because of the relationship between the two statues. And then some of the examples that I give, it was really technically the CPC that funded these activities but everything that I am presenting are things that the trust could fund as well. So this is just an example in Barnstable where there was an existing apartment complex that only a portion of the housing, the units were affordable and a nonprofit developer Poa was able to use $500,000 to CPA funds to acquire the entire complex and now almost all of the units are affordable in perpetuity, although a few were kept at market rate because they didn't want to displace any households that were not income qualified at the time. So one example where you could support acquiring existing housing to make it affordable. Erica, do you want to facilitate, should I just call Ungrover or I don't know what the process is? Oh yeah, go ahead and you can go ahead and just call Ungrover. I think some of us have just openly just asked questions versus being a horrible employee. They're hand up, thank you. So my question is, can you clarify the difference between preservation and rehabilitating because I think of those activities as one of the same. Yep, so I will, I will get to that. I will obviously do that. Thank you, sorry. Yep, that's okay. Nope, another acquirer is we have, we actually have quite a few several affordable housing trusts where they run small-scale home ownership programs where they're helping to, oftentimes they're called buy-down programs and they're structured a lot of different ways. But they're essentially helping an income-qualified household purchase an existing unit of, an existing home in the community. They're oftentimes like this picture in Norfolk, more the more modest sized homes. It's high subsidy per unit. Oftentimes it's several hundred thousand dollars, couple hundred thousand dollars depending on the community. I don't know of any community that adds more than two, maybe three units a year. But as the market gets tighter and tighter everywhere, it's just very expensive per unit. But it is one way to help access, help folks access home ownership. It is spreading the affordable units around the community. And then there's a restriction that's added in some, in some communities. It's the universal deed writer that the state requires because they want the units on the subsidized housing inventory in other communities like Leverett, not far from you. Their program is up to 100% of the area meeting income. So they have their own restriction and they're not on the subsidized housing inventory. So they're structured a lot of different ways, but this is one way that some trusts are using some of their funds. And then we have a lot of examples of trusts helping to support new creation, the new construction of affordable housing in Norwell. This site had been a police station and it was voted to be surplus land and then they transferred it to the trust. And then the trust actually oversaw some pre-development work and writing a request for proposals, reviewing applications. They accepted one from a proposal, I'm sorry, from a developer, a nonprofit developer who built these 18 units of, in this case, a restricted rental housing. And between the trust and the CPC, they put in over a million dollars into this development. In Brewster, this was some housing authority surplus land that MHP did some of the pre-development work, worked with the housing authority in the town on this. And then the town supported this additionally by applying for a mass works grant to help create road access as well as connecting this site to sewer. And now it's 30 units of rental housing in Westport. This was municipal land. This was a project that took many years. The trust was engaging it for about 10 years. There was a municipal site, the trust helped to acquire an adjacent site that gave access to the municipal site. They did some pre-development work and released a request for proposals. And then the trust also gave some funds to the developer that was chosen. It's a nonprofit, the community builders and it's now 50 units of rental housing. So we're seeing more and more trusts engaged in development and helping to dispose of municipal land for affordable housing. In some cases, like in Norwell, if the land is transferred to the trust, in most cases it's just that the trust is engaged and supportive of the process. And then there are quite a few examples of adaptive reuse. So reusing existing buildings for affordable housing. In Middleborough shoe shop place, this had been a shoe factory and two nonprofits were able to redevelop it into 25 units of rental housing. There are quite a few examples of schools, municipal schools being reused for affordable housing. The Swam Scott and Auburn are two examples of that and you can't see it in the Swam Scott photo, but in the Auburn one, you can see how the developer also added on to the historic building. They added an addition to get a few more units just to make it more economically viable. And then in Williamstown, this was a had been a mill. I think it was a mill that a developer redeveloped into affordable housing. And then some of them, you can see the Middleborough, they were a brand new CPA community at the time of that development. They didn't have very much local funds, so they only contributed 25,000, but it was enough for them to access other resources that they needed. And then in Williamstown, the contribution was 200,000. So it differs depending on the community, depending on the resources, depending on the development. So getting into Grover's question, what preserve means? So in the CPA statute, the definition of preserve is the protection of personal or real property from injury, harm or destruction. It's a higher bar than rehab. So again, CPA funds cannot be used for rehab unless the housing was created or acquired with CPA funds. It is true that in the trust statute, the preserve is not defined, but because the trust statute came after the CPA statute, we do consider this definition, particularly if you have CPA funds because the restrictions of CPA follow CPA funds to the trust. There is this memo that DHCD at the time, now HLC, put together around housing authority units because this issue of rehab is an issue with existing affordable housing when you're using CPA funds because housing authority units were not created or acquired with CPA funds. When we talk about preserve, we're typically talking about the expiring use when affordability restrictions are expiring. However, there are cases where it could be used for actual building when we're talking about the envelope of the building. It's not renovating kitchens and bathrooms. It's really keeping units livable. For this example, in Gloucester, the housing authority had a roof that had been leaking and they had already had to shutter one unit and others were at risk. They were not livable because of the leaking. They used some CPA money that they added with the supplement, the state modernization formula funding to replace this old roof so that they didn't lose other units. This is preserving. It's preserving the asset. It's not rehab where it's new flooring. It's really protecting the asset of the unit. In most cases, we're talking about expiring use or restrictions that are set to expire. So you have a great example of rolling green in Amherst where you had a large rental development and I swapped it out to use Bedford's but just to remind you that you have a great example. 41 of the units were affordable. The restrictions were set to expire as you're at rolling green. Your community, you were concerned about this because of the need for affordable housing. The owner didn't want to extend the affordability. You reached out to MHP and we did some work. You reached out to Beacon Communities, a large-scale developer that has a lot of experience in 40B developments in low-income housing tax credits and multifamily housing. They negotiated to purchase rolling green and then your community, you voted to bond $1.25 million of CPA funds to go towards that so that those 41 units are now affordable in perpetuity and Beacon is now the owner. So you have your own great example of preservation of affordable housing. This is another one in Bedford, Bedford Village Apartments, 96 units of rental housing, affordable rental housing, spread over 10 buildings. Restrictions were set to expire in 2018 and POA, a nonprofit developer, negotiated to purchase them and this community put in $3 million of CPA funds towards this development. So now these 96 units are affordable in perpetuity owned by a nonprofit whose mission is to create and manage affordable housing. So this is typically what we're thinking of when we talk about preservation of affordable housing. Grobert, do you have any other questions with that or anything you'd like to talk about more with this? Well, yeah. So just to clarify what I'm hearing, the loss of use includes the loss of use of the property being affordable. Any exactly you gave about ruling green? Okay. So it's not just that the building will crumble but the building will no longer be affordable. Exactly. Yeah. So sometimes it's called expiring use or just the affordability is set to expire. So maintaining affordability is typically what we think of with preserving affordable housing. So under support, the kinds of things that have been seen as possible or as allowable have been pre-development. So if there's a municipal site that you're considering for affordable housing using some funds to do some initial pre-development work could be something that you are engaged in helping to fund. You can be using CPA trust funds to help with updating housing plans and rent assistance. Someone brought up rent assistance. That's explicitly allowed in the CPA statute. And so that's something that trust can be engaged in as well. And in fact, during the pandemic in several communities it was actually the affordable housing trust fund that initiated an emergency rent assistance program. So any other questions at this point before moving on to just a few tips around working across boards? Okay, so one thing is that you're going to be doing a housing production plan. We encourage that just to make sure that you're doing this kind of updating this kind of work not in a vacuum to make sure that it's not just a trusting or just a planning board thing but that multiple boards are engaged, that multiple different stakeholders are engaged in this. You want to make sure that the needs that you're identifying are known widely across the community. So we would just encourage you to make sure that you have and Amherst is typically good about this, but did you have a community engagement component to any of this kind of work? And another board is the CPC. Make sure that the CPC is also engaged in understanding housing needs as well. That's an important group because of the funding that they have. CPCs can fund housing trusts and it can just be transferred to the trust. The statute doesn't require the CPA statute doesn't require that it be for a particular purpose. It needs to be CPA eligible purposes. So we have some communities where the CPC just will transfer funds without needing a specific project. In other communities, the CPC really wants the trust to apply like anyone else for a specific program or project. We have some communities where the CPC is willing to suggest an allocation kind of automatically every year. Maybe it's the 10% that have to be housing funds. Maybe it's a different amount. Other communities, they really want the trust to apply every year. We do have a couple communities like Cambridge and Somerville that transfer a significant amount of their CPA funds every year to their housing trust. Cambridge is 80%. The maximum amount goes with their trust every year. They really see the trust as the community housing arm of their CPC. Somerville has been transferring about 45% of their CPA funds every year to their trust. Although I think a developer could come to either entity, but the trust is really the primary housing entity. Most communities, it's significantly less, but it looks different in different communities. The hope is that the relationship is strong between your boards and that your good news of the $300,000, hopefully that continues and that you build that trust. Again, just grant agreements. We always say you should have grant agreements between the CPC and the trust, between the trust and anyone that you fund. It's municipal land. I'm sorry, municipal money. You have fiduciary responsibility over how these funds are used. So you just want to make sure that there's clarity in that. And we really suggest that you decide critical elements upfront about how your boards work together, how you work together. I'm sorry, how you, oops. What you may need from each other. One thing is if you do have CPA funds and you want to use that for any kind of administrative position, I know that you already have some staff, but you just want to be clear that some CPCs don't want any other CPA funds being used for admin, kind of support for the trust and others are okay with that. So it's just something that sometimes that ends up being a surprise, just be upfront with that kind of a conversation from the beginning as early as possible. And then one thing, yep. Can I ask a question? Going back a couple slides just about around, I'm just curious, how other communities handle scenarios where projects might be seeking funds both from the CPA and the trust. Do you see that? Around the state? Yep. So in some communities, that's fine. They're okay with that. In other communities, they want certain things to be funded out of the trust versus the CPC. So it really just depends on the local community and frankly, some of it is kind of territorial stuff as well and a little political. So it just, it looks different in every community. So some communities like, I'll bring up Wellfleet again. They decided that the trust is going to do development and the housing authority is going to do programs and the CPC will just allocate funds to those entities for those purposes. And so they've really made that clear in the community. In other communities like Somerville, they transfer a big chunk of their CPA funds to the trust, but a developer could potentially go to both entities for funding for development. So it looks different in different communities and I think it is helpful to have those conversations just so that there's an understanding of kind of expectation. Okay. But part of why I think it's really important for trust to really narrow in on your goals also is particularly in a community like Amherst where you were, what I've been told in the past that you have a variety of different boards, groups that are working on different pieces of the housing puzzle that you want to have some clarity around who's getting limited funding for what kind of initiatives just so that you're not stepping on toes, that you're not duplicating, that you're being really I think efficient with your people resources as well. So one thing that boards can do, and this is something that I think Amherst has done, one thing that Connie from many years ago training that I did with, Connie and her last name is escaping me, but you're Connie, Amherst Connie, she brought up, she's involved in housing for such a long time, but she brought up this phrase of a culture of support that an Amherst had worked on creating a culture of support for housing, affordable housing, and I like that kind of phrase, that kind of image that it's not a one-off thing, it's not just one development that brings people around or that solves this challenge, it's really a long-term effort and it's people working collaboratively. This is just one resource that a couple of groups tested messaging, housing messaging in the market to see why I do certain messages, housing messages backfire, it's a super simple read, you can Google it, it's just as a resource and they talk about things like, when we talk about housing and housing needs to balance people with places and systems that we don't want to just talk about people that need housing, but also the places and the systems that make it difficult for people to access housing, so to balance that conversation, to not talk about the story of them, but the story of us, that these are people who are part of our community, they are us that are struggling to access housing, connecting housing to other social issues. We know we have such so much more data now to know that that health outcomes increase and educational outcomes, education outcomes improve when people have safe, affordable housing to live in. We know now that where you live affects your outcomes, your children's outcomes and then also just to consider the language that you use, and these are some things that you can do across boards to make sure that you're talking about housing similarly, that you're being thoughtful about what kind of messages work in Amherst. So they tested words, home versus housing, and what they found is that housing people think of as more, unfortunately, some people think of it they think of public housing and that's as critical as that housing is for a lot of people that has a negative connotation or it sounds more like market-based language versus home is where they find themselves and their family. So even talking about affordable homes may be more effective than talk about housing, affordable housing. One thing that I try to be careful within communities is that in the housing development world, the word project is used. It's just a language that's used in the development field. But for a lot of people that means projects and that's really negative. And I've had communities talk about Cabrini Green in Chicago that was torn down years ago and they still have these ideas of this massive housing and that's what affordable housing is. So there could be some conversation if you haven't done this already or refreshing it of how do you talk about housing needs in your community and perhaps do that jointly with other boards so that you're speaking the same language. And just to kind of to wrap up a little bit, I just like to remind communities to really start with understanding your local infrastructure of the needs but also the assets that you have and as a trust board to work on finding your niche so that you're not duplicating work that you're not stepping on toes but you're really finding what's the best what are the best roles or the best things for the trust to be focusing on given your capacity and that you really create suggest that you really create goals that reflect identified needs people have opinions and thoughts and stories and those are all useful and helpful but sometimes those lead to kind of the path of least resistance investing in things that are the path of least resistance that are that are going to be bought the least and they're not necessarily a reflection of the greatest needs in the community so we really urge you to to create your goals reflecting identified needs in the community and then be real about your capacity you're a volunteer board the needs are huge your capacity is limited the resources are always limited so try to try to find a couple things you can do really well instead of being spread way too thin we have a ton of resources online resources from an updated operations trust operations manual we have data town housing toolbox a variety of different resources and mhp as mhp staff we want to be partners with you we want to support your work as well so I'm gonna I know that was a ton I'm gonna stop sharing and I did send this presentation and PDF form to Greg and you're welcome to to post it to send it out but I am happy to stay for a little bit if there are other questions or just conversation that you want to have at this point well first let me just say thank you very very much Shelly for giving us this housing 101 we really felt it was very important before we start focusing on our actual plan that we're all on the same page of having an understanding of what we can do as a trust and what the parameters are so thank you very much for that so Carol has her hand up go ahead Carol well I know that in a lot of the things that you described and in a lot of things that we've talked about trusts can own property trusts can get the property but how does that compare to trusts doing other things and not owning a property and the one specific question I had which I thought there was a place you were describing me was in Brewster where the trust acquired the property and then all these amazing things happened and there was a big development there and who owned it in the end and how did it get from the trust having acquired the property to wherever it ended up what is the relationship between trust owning things and the future of them I'm not being very clear on my question I don't think but so it is true that the statute does allow a trust to own property the thing that we really caution against is that that to own property that that takes managing the property and so we while theoretically you could there are a couple trusts that thought that they would own small scale homes and rent them out but they're not thinking they weren't really thinking about the capital costs the long-term costs of maintaining it and when you have a depressed rent you're never going to get enough to cover that so you're just always going to have to add additional funds into it to keep it up and a trust that's volunteer-based it really is not we don't think it's the best use of your resources and your time so I don't either I just was wondering that's good to hear and and if you own it you're a public entity so then that means that you have procurement laws that you have to follow so it can be expensive too so it's in all the examples that I've that I've given it's that the town might have a land lease so they might technically own the land but it's the developer that owns the development in many cases the land is actually the developer buys it or is transferred to the developer in some cases it's a land lease in other cases it's the developer ends up owning it and then manages it over the long term with a if you if you're using CPA funds the CPA statute says that if you acquire a real property interest using CPA funds then there needs to be a restriction in perpetuity for the purpose in which it was bought so that's a given that it needs to be affordable in perpetuity with CPA funds and a trust could decide if it's non CPA funds that you're using you could decide to have a shorter restriction but if you're using municipal land there's probably an incentive to have having units affordable in perpetuity Yeah, thanks Thank you Carol Guston Hi, I'm wondering looking at one of the the brochures and what those 16 powers are I guess the trust can pledge their own assets as collateral I'm wondering if they can also pledge town assets in any case are there other assets that can be pledged by a trust besides its own accounts or property So, that's getting beyond I think you need to consult with town council and I don't know if there are very many communities that would want non-trust resources used that way but that's going beyond what I feel comfortable actually advising on sorry Okay, thank you But for most trusts they most trusts never have that many resources to be truly honest in their account at any given time and so most it's not really they're just not operating in the realm where most are on a cash basis I actually don't know any that have borrowed other than Orleans having a line of credit and I don't know if they've actually used it they just have it and there are communities where they're using ARPA funds with their trusts and they so like Lynn Lynn has more resources they put three million dollars into their of ARPA funds into their trust Wooster has put quite a quite a bit of funds ARPA funds into their trust so they they have been able to work on a much bigger level and of course Cambridge just has so much more money because it's Cambridge so in some cases the trust does have a good chunk of money but in most of our communities the resources are fairly limited and I don't I don't at this point know of any trust that's actually borrowed against the resources Can you say again what the ARPA is? I'm sorry federal federal funds through the the American good grief rescue rescue plan that came out of out of COVID yeah so some still have some of those yeah yeah yeah and I think that those funds are I think it's they have to be allocated by I think it's the end of this year so they're they're trying to trying to get them allocated and there may be towns that have used have transferred ARPA funds to their trust I don't know of any off hand and I think Nate wants to respond to that good Nate Hi I was gonna say Gaston in the by-law it says you know trust assets as collateral or to mortgage again so it's not you know any town property it's what is under trust control I guess it would have to be a side deal and and that could happen you know the the trust can enter into contracts right yeah yeah yeah I mean so like the CPA committee in town often borrows against this future revenue right so there's a lot of debt service if the trust were had a steadier stream of income you know it could borrow against future earnings but you know like Shelley said it's it's a little risky if you don't know cash flow and so you know I think there's other ways the trust can facilitate something if that's necessary so you know the trust works closely with the town and we could you know work with a developer or other nonprofits to do you know to facilitate something I would I really wouldn't think the trust would want to have have that kind of you know borrow itself to the max and then have trouble paying it or yeah well I mean I'm thinking collect right collateral to back on there to give backing as opposed to producing money thank you but I think it speaks to the importance of the trust having a strong relationship with the CPC because if there is something that comes up that the trust is interested in it could be beneficial then to you could potentially use CPA funds in that way and if you have a strong relationship between the boars and the trust could help kind of facilitate that kind of an investment perhaps of CPA funds Carol I was this was this was something that John Hornick said once but if the if the real estate transfers free were to go through so that we so the trust had kind of a regular you wouldn't know how much it was but after some years of of history we would have some kind of regular revenue stream then you might actually be able to use that to do some big project but you know borrow against that stream right now I wouldn't I wouldn't know you know there's nothing there's nothing you can count on really so yeah so it gets it goes back to the question that I sort of had and I think I clarified a little bit more of my own mind but I think it's part of the process we're probably going to go through in terms of you talked about our niche you know what is the the niche that you know this trust can have and thinking about the resources we have that includes we as board members who are volunteers as well as the assets that we have I mean I think you know part of our major role that we play is a catalyst role keeping affordable housing on the radar and on agendas for the town and town council and really constantly thinking about opportunities or creating opportunities or how you know we talked about pipelines to get things in the pipeline to get them moving so I think you know that's part of our role that I think you know we play but I still I think it's actually not a and I'm sort of stream of consciousness so excuse me for that but I think you know having real close relationship with the town and town council knowing there you know their housing plan is really important to know how to maximize you know where we can push development of either home ownership or rentals by working with the town that can actually make it happen more so that we can be it with working with the developers or getting we can write an RFP but generally the town is the one that posts it and also pays attention to procurement in a lot of the infrastructure that now we're having help with with Greg with and Nate has provided a lot of help with there's a lot of infrastructure when we're not an agency we don't have you know we don't have operational and management infrastructure we have thinking power infrastructure we have a lot of advocacy we have a lot of you know interest so for me it sort of clarifies that you know we have a good relationship with both the town and the town council and the CPA and I think clarifying that making it more I think clear in meeting with them and talking about this might be helpful for us in the future so I'm sorry that's a stream of consciousness but it really helped me clarify that what what I think our role is yeah and and I know that I hadn't both answered your question earlier and and I maybe want at this point either but you know the relationship between trusts and town staff and other boards is of course different in every community and part of what your current mission does it reminds people that you are municipal board you're a part of the community you're not a separate silo and so you really should see your role as helping to implement some of the town's goals or housing goals and that's why we'll be looking at what exists what your existing kind of goals are in the community as we're trying to identify goals for the trust it shouldn't be outside of it it should really be in partnership and it should be there should be open communication so that people there's kind of agreement about what the trust is going to be focusing on I think that builds your credibility and the significance of your the importance of your group but then also to make it practical because you're volunteers so and I know that the needs are great and I know that we can feel really because people are suffering we can feel really impatient but don't forget to celebrate and feel good about the wins that you have had the work that you have put in because you've had some really good developments and your trust has been engaged in some really good developments so don't don't forget to kind of celebrate what you have done and as you find ways to do more thank you Gaston thank you I'm wondering if you could kind of issue spot yellow or kind of red flags associated with affordable dwelling units or any experience you've seen in the commonwealth with trust getting involved in somehow promoting their development to me some of the biggest concerns that I have with some trust is that there's particularly smaller communities there's this interest in supporting really small affordable housing developments particularly wanting to turn existing small developments like say a 10 unit apartment building into affordable housing and I am always cautioning communities because the owners of those developments typically don't know affordable housing they don't understand the de-restriction they don't understand the implications in terms of refinancing when you have restrictions on the units they don't understand income qualifying households like they just the world of affordable housing is really complex and so I try so I worry a lot with trust that want to do that kind of housing affordable housing development because it's actually really difficult it's much easier to work directly with developers who know affordable housing who have experience in affordable housing and that's for-profit developers as well as non-profit developers so that would just be one of my cautions is that it seems like an easy fix or win but it's actually really complicated because of all the laws fair housing laws and just the laws that govern deed restrictions so that would be one kind of from affordable housing and then two and I think Carol was kind of getting into this we would never suggest that a trust actually be the developer or try to manage affordable housing and we do have a trust the Western trust decided to be the developer to redevelop small municipal buildings one or two small municipal buildings and MHP warned against that because of just how volunteers managing that is really intense and it's very expensive because it's a municipal project then under procurement so we would never suggest that you should be the developer but that you partner with developers that have experience does that get a little bit of what you're what you're kind of asking yeah yeah so I mean any any structure that that could work has really got to be built around the the deed restriction issues and you really want to work with people who are either either it's a smaller scale developer that's hired an affordable housing development consultant to help them or a developer that's already that already has experience you want you want it to be done well you don't want there to be any issues or mistakes because you're using public resources you don't want anyone in the community to get cynical around it like you want your projects to be done well Carol something that you said reminded me we have an we have inclusionary zoning here and so there have been projects developed with inclusionary zoning requirements and I was wondering if you have any experience we're trying to figure out for ourselves is this working I mean are there are they being used what's happening to them and for the same reason that you're just talking about those people probably don't know affordable housing and requirements but they have five units among a bunch of things that they're supposed to do as affordable housing and I just wondered if you guys had had any experience or thoughts or anything about how effective that actually turns out to be over time yeah so in some communities when it's really small developments inclusionary developments that then that's where and I know that some people really react they don't want to hear this but with really small developments it might make sense just to have an ill of payment because of that exact issue that if you have five units and only one's affordable that the management of that can be really difficult when you get to be a bigger developments where there's more then it's might be more feasible but in some communities they might have if it's rental they might have a they might help they might build some capacity in the community have a like a ready rentered list that developers can draw from or the community might help with if it's a home ownership unit selling it but there can be a lot of concerns if it's if it's five or six units that are home ownership and only one's affordable just the challenge of how that's managed long term when the when it's the unit sold like you just want to be thinking through having some perhaps having some kind of town capacity to support that to make sure that the units stay affordable that there's monitoring going on and so it's just why the smaller scale programs can be challenging there can be a place for them but it can be challenging and so I I do think that as you're thinking your inclusionary zoning to maybe think through if you don't already have that kind of support how can you build that if you want to continue with that kind of program the things we have are not that small but there's maybe like 30 units and five of them are affordable or I don't know the exact numbers but they're they're still a small a minority like what is it 10% I can't remember the percentage it's a low percentage of the total number of units that are affordable and that's an interesting thought that the community should develop some kind of support to help those help those those units be able to be happen the way that they should or I don't know if you've heard of in the in Eastern Massachusetts there are a few different regional housing services offices that were multiple communities pay into the regional office that then provides services like monitoring and resale of affordable units and so you basically it's like you're contracting with the office so communities based on the number of units that each community has that need to be monitored then communities have a contract with the office and then they contribute a certain amount every year but there are about three or four of these now in Eastern mass and that could potentially be an offer a kind of a model for several of your communities that might want to so that you're not reinventing the wheel that one office is providing those kinds of services to multiple communities that could be something that you consider thank you Greg yeah I mean I had one now I have a set I have one A2 or A1 because it's riffing off of Carol here is anybody doing like buy down or anything like that of of like like inclusionary like 80% unit say or or yeah or maybe could you point us toward like somebody who's doing a renter ready list that that that kind of thing yeah so I can I can send you so I'm going to send information about the regional housing the regional housing service office I always forget what the acronym is but I'll send some information on that I'll send some on the the ready renter list that usually I think that that usually is I think that HLC provides kind of some guidance of their expectation about how those are run because they have to be kind of refreshed every year or two so there's kind of a process they gotta meet the marketing requirements you know the fair housing market requirements presumably exactly so I'll give you some of that information as well as the regional housing offices information what was the other thing that you'd asked about yeah you know and then I hear you on the sort of cautionary around like partnering with you know mom and pop owners you know like you know of you know of your smaller buildings who've been you know sitting on it for 25 years I'm curious though you know is there any you know are there any trust or any examples of deals where where trust are involved outside of the lie attack world you know like do you see most of the the projects really are kind of in the sort of center you know around like student tax credit stuff so we have some trust that like in Medfield they have part of the role of the trust is actually to support developments that include affordable housing so like 40 B kind of developments chapter 40 B developments that include affordable housing where they're not contributing any cash but the trust is engaged in helping with the community process and advocating for the developments in front of town boards to help with the permitting process so that that's that's a possibility that some trust are engaged in where it's they're not contributing cash it's not lie tech but it is contributing some affordable housing there is the possibility in one community it was a redevelopment of a historic site in Easton and the shovel shovel shop the shovel works whatever that development is called but they wanted deeper affordability than the eight it was 40 B under 40 B but they wanted the 50% am I affordability because under 40 B it's either 25% affordable at 80% of the area median income or 20% affordable at I'm pretty sure it's 50% of am I and they wanted the deeper affordability but financially particular with the historic site like it can be and depending on the the market the numbers may not work out so they contributed some funds to get the deeper affordability to get it down to 50 because they wanted deeper affordability so that is a role that the trust could play with funding is to with the development to contribute additional funds to get deeper affordability if it doesn't work on its own even under just chapter 40 B so there are other ways that the trust could be engaged outside of lie tech developments thank you and it's not that a developer a smaller scale owner of an apartment building couldn't it's just that a lot of them just don't understand and a big thing is if they needed to refinance and take out cash for capital improvements they just it wouldn't have the same value and they might not understand that so it's it just can be I think really challenge a challenging way to try to add just setting up huge you know masses down the line basically possibly yeah yeah it'd be better to help fund a different developer like a valley CDC or a different developer to buy it outright because they understand sure how it works Nate yeah I mean Greg and I mentioned this you know kind of scale of housing we talk in the office I think it's important because you know valley did their strategic planning their visioning a number years ago and a lot of communities were there and they said they'd love to see 12 to 20 unit developments right that's kind of the scale that might be appropriate not always you know the 50 unit building that is the tax credit program sweet spot you know maybe sometimes it's up to 70 whatever it is but you know the cost per unit subsidy that is greater because it doesn't have you know these other subsidizing programs but it might be the what's appropriate so in Amherst we have main street housing you know down on main street it was a kind of a pilot project between the town valley and the housing authority it's 11 units it's often used as a great example of a good massing you know nice design porches townhouse style but you know you know it's something that I think it's a really good question and that's something that the trust could consider like what is you know as we try to narrow our goals and our focus you know what is something that the trust would want to do because if we find something like that it you know it might be hard to find a developer or to find subsidy for it even if it's something that might be really kind of appropriate in certain parts of town and so you know what we are seeing you know our bigger developments just because that's where the how the funding gets brought to it you know so I yeah I just think it is interesting you know we just the trust just voted I don't know that just last month of two months ago an additional funding for we have the Amherst Community Land Trust you know that does the ground lease with units and they're trying to do a home buyer program and they've had trouble given the cost of property in town and they're trying to raise $250,000 to subsidize one unit of home ownership and they have you know CPA dollars for it and the trust voted some money they think they have a buyer to you know finalize their last unit but you know it's a it's a lot of dollars per unit and so I think it's something to consider you know we talked about what can the trust do if it didn't have money you know is it advocacy is it certain partnerships and so you know I think I think as we move forward I think it's something important for the trust to consider okay you know what are how how could we help with the town is it identifying other priorities we work with council and the you know the community resources committee and the planning board you know there could be a few things that the trust does if it's not outlaying funds but fun and to kind of speak to what you a little bit what you're saying is from a developer perspective if the developer is working on a 60 unit development and also a 10 unit development it's not that the 60 unit development is six times the work it's a similar kind of work a similar amount of work whether it's 60 or 10 units you just have fewer units to spread the cost over which is why it's more expensive per unit with small development so it's just something to keep in mind that it's it's a lot of work for a developer to do just 10 units I don't see any more hands up Carol I think Carol just put her hand up sorry Shelly if you need to go just let me know oh you're mute Carol Hey I tried to unmute myself when I muted myself I just sad this have to throw out my thing that I frequently say in the sort of situation which is one of the things we need to do is figure out better ways to do this stuff so it doesn't have to cost more to build less it just it's it's crazy all of the ways to do what we're trying to do somewhere in the back of our heads I know we can't fix it in 10 minutes but somewhere in the back of all of our heads we need to keep the idea that this isn't this is nutty that it costs this much to build affordable housing how can we somehow work on changing the whole thing so that we can get more of what we want thank you for listening so it looks like Nate has a response to that no it's it's actually a question I mean Shelley I don't know if you've seen it you know sometimes staff talks about it you know a private developer could build a unit for bigger and a lot cheaper than you know a non-profit developer that goes to like the tax credit program and so have you ever seen any trust or communities that will actually just work with a private developer in a way that buys down units that are developed privately so you know for instance we could hire our local developer does a subdivision builds 13 units you know at 300,000 a unit which is half the cost of what it says to build an affordable unit and so essentially we could subsidize those 13 housing units at a rate that would probably be you know less per just as much as a less per unit than if we were subsidizing a bigger development that gets tax credits and other things and so have you seen any trust kind of approach it that way to Carol's point it's a different it's a totally different way you know not actually finding an affordable housing developer you're finding a market rate developer who can develop units cheaper and then you're subsidizing units that way have you seen anything like that I don't think I've seen trust engage with that you could try it of course Lytec is the key funding source from affordable housing in this country and the cost is there's a lot of overhead and admin costs to to Lytec so that drives up the cost as well I don't know if any trust has done that thanks yeah I mean I agree I feel like when we hear like oh it's $600,000 to build the unit it's it's scary I mean that's you know that's what we've been hearing with some of the recent affordable housing projects that's that's a lot of money for for one unit I mean Cambridge Boston New York it's very very expensive yeah yep okay I don't see any hands up including we have one attendee I don't see any questions from our one attendee so I think we can let you go Shelley so we're meeting in person on the 30th 30th yep at five o'clock and the we'll be doing a little bit of prep work for that and yeah I'm looking forward to seeing you all in person and we'll start digging into some of what you've already done and some of what you may want to focus on moving forward we're very excited to be working with you so just to sort of clarify what you just mentioned for all the trust members Shelley and Greg are working very closely with Carol and me in terms of identifying documents to read before we meet and Greg is going to prioritize in terms of what you absolutely need to read and some background documents if you have more time to read as part of that we have actually looked at the strategic plan our prior strategic plan and looked and identified what we've actually achieved during that time what's yet to achieve so we're going to share that with you as well because I always think it's really important to know what we've accomplished and what's left to accomplish if we want to include that as part of our action plan so that's all going to come including an agenda to prepare all of us for the January 30th in-person meeting we have yet to identify a place more than likely it may be Town Hall or the Bank Center so easily accessible because that'll be important but it will be at five o'clock and we we I want to openly acknowledge and apologize that Gaston is going to probably be calling in because it's going to be a challenge on that day so we're also making arrangements to have a Zoom link for Gaston to make sure that he will be able to participate but we will get the materials out early enough that if anybody wants to prepare comments and if they don't think they'll be there or they can have if they may have audio issues we'll have that all prepared and Carol and I are also and Greg are also willing to meet with people prior and also afterwards as well so we're very excited about this process and we're hoping that our last vacancy will be filled by then so we can have all of us participate and feel included and have all of our voices heard because this is going to be sort of our guide for the next uh you know next year to three years so I think that'll be really important so thank you Shelly for working with us to do that and MHP will cover pizza and drink so there'll be some food for you oh wow that's great thank you so I'll just and anybody if you have any dietary issues or or needs is just let Carol and me know and we'll work with Shelly on that great okay well thank you so very very much thank you so much nice to see everyone nice to see you as well take care it was great thanks see you next time have a good night you too all right so next is we actually have one person in the public but it's open for public comments so any public comments I don't see thank you George for attending I don't see your hand up so I'm going to assume there are no public comments okay any items not in anticipated within 48 hours I'd like to offer that that we didn't prepare Nate or Dave to present an update on on the town but I think Nate if you want to share what the CPA is going to recommend for the town in terms of the town's proposal for affordable housing that would be useful and also I don't know Dave just wants to mention we're how we're going to go forward with with the VFW sort of engaging the community around the VFW design plans sure yeah I guess I have another update or two you know speaking of inclusionary zoning units there's three down on Main Street the center east commons and so those are you know being marketed and you know all the paperwork is getting done get those the restriction you know reported and on the SHI and then there's 11 units at 11 East Pleasant Street the new building downtown there's 11 affordable units there and those are also under you know I think the marketing period has begun and then those will be on the subsidized housing inventory so that's something that's happening and it does take a little work with staff and the developers it's a learning curve you know before COVID John had approached wayfinders and asked them if they would be kind of this regional entity to have an applicant pool and they they were interested they did say you know there'd be fees and you know we were trying to aggregate a number of communities and it didn't it didn't work out but it's something that we talk about sometimes so that you know when these developments come along you know we could have a pool of applicants ready and it's not like you know a developer is having to do something all over again they're not necessarily reinventing the wheel but it is a lot of work individually so anyways those two are happening and then I was gonna say just quickly wayfinders you know they're hoping to submit their you know there's kind of a two-step process for a comprehensive permit one is an initial project eligibility letter and then that's something that says the site is generally feasible the project is generally you know financeable and there's a 30 come 30 day comment period by the municipality and then that goes to the subsidizing agency and they review everything and then they respond and say that yes you can move forward with your comprehensive permit anyways the PEL phase they're hoping to submit next month and then we're hoping to have kind of a public meeting form on that in March and you know sometimes it takes even after the 30 day commentary it might take that state or subsidizing agency months to get back to review it all and say it can then apply to a as a comprehensive permit the hope is that it would get back and they would apply in July you know or this summer for their comprehensive permit and the permit would be issued this fall so anyways that's something that will be happening you know spring summer fall and it's you know it's they're moving it along so that's really it's really nice and then Erica to your point the CPA I think the town have reduced this as to 150,000 and so you know the CPA committee you know for everyone there's it's getting really competitive and so the town usually has 1.5 to 2 million dollars there's debt service but and in the last few years there's anywhere from you know 3 to 5 million dollars requested and they really can't fund all of it so the CPA committee really really does a a diligent process and they try to fund as much as they can and sometimes it means you know reducing budgets but trying to fund something to make it manageable and so you know the town and the trust are both receiving money that they support affordable housing and you know I think it was a really good kind of compromise and solution that they had so the town has some funding and it was for specific properties you know the VFW there's the South Amherst campus there's a town owned property on strong street and it could go say toward Hickory Ridge and so you know that that funding is you know can be applied to those properties and projects and I don't know if Dave's available or not maybe not but we we are I think starting the process of bringing community members together to talk about the VFW design I believe the town has been working to get an architect oh Dave go ahead see you back when you're oh hi I I'm Erica can you see me yes I've been here most of the time just had my camera off but no I just want to say I really enjoyed the presentation that was fantastic and I learned a lot and yeah some really creative things going on all over the state before I talk about the VFW I just want to say I mean you know to me one of the key takeaways was you know for all of us to set you know goals what are our realistic achievable you know focus goals and we all want to do so many things but you know the presentation was very clear limited you know we all have limited time energy and most importantly funding so setting those goals and and you know your plan and the the council's plan how does that how do they mesh together and what do we want to focus on in the next three to five years because we can't do it all we love to rental home ownership you name it but yeah so I'm looking forward to that and measurable measurable goals right that's fantastic in terms of EFW Erica started to say yeah so we are we do intend to bring on an architect here very shortly hopefully in the next I'm going to say six to seven weeks for kind of a small short short-term contract to work with you all and staff and the community including Craig's Doors and any anyone who wants to participate in this in this process to kind of do some visioning around the site of the the VFW we have completed the our due diligence on the old building looking at you know hazardous materials in the building that has all been assessed we know what's in the building and we know we're we're very shortly I believe going to put out the bid for a demolition of the building our goal is to you know clean that site clear that site and make it as attractive to a potential developer partner as possible so we're looking at a couple of public forums meetings where we bring together you know folks like Valley CDC wayfinders potential partners including Craig's Doors you all and the community to do some visioning around that site looking specifically of course at a shelter on the first floor and you know I don't want to pre re-suppose that I know what what we all will come up with but what has been talked about is a shelter service provider space on the first floor and then permanent supportive housing on a number of floors above that to be determined how how much density we can achieve there so that's really the goal and to have that all done you know in the next 60 days would be Michael 45 to 60 days so and then we're you know ready to to work with you all to put out a formal RFP for for the site and so exciting very exciting thank you Dave we're looking forward to starting off and doing that with you so very exciting to do that okay any questions about any of the updates that that Nate and Dave have provided or any comments okay none seeing none any announcements I Nate just made an announcement about the inclusionary zoning units that's one Nate do you want to you've got off mute so I was wondering if you you're going to say something no no no I'm okay okay I sent out a webinar for next oh go ahead I'm sorry was that I'm just going to say Rob's got his hand up oh sorry thank you Rob go ahead thank you Carol yeah I just wanted to announce that the amount that that you committed to Amherst County Land Trust last time got us over the hop our buyer did make an offer that was accepted was just in the last few days closing is scheduled for February 23rd so it really helped yahoo thank you so much Rob yeah really that is really really great news thank you so Nate Jim will be in touch I hadn't heard so that's that's really good news very good news okay so I sent out or Nate shared the webinar housing homelessness and health the webinar is going to be next Wednesday the 17th I've registered so I can try to take notes of people can't make it hoping that it's going to be recorded and if it is then I will send out the link often for the people who participate they often either send slides out or they send a link out as part of the eval so hopefully you will be able to make it's 330 on a Wednesday and I know many people work but if not I will try to take some notes and then share it it looks like it's actually a three-part series and I this is probably the first so hopefully I'll be able to make the other two as well but I think that'll help us make the case I think education is one of the areas that we all agree that we could do without funding so that might help in better educating the community about why it's so important to have housing the connection with health and eliminating homelessness so any other announcements well I just Nate also sent out a thing about an in-person three-day what is it housing and justice or something three-day thing in Springfield somewhere coming up in April that has a registration fee so it's both an announcement I know Nate sent it out to all of us but the other thing I was Nate if somebody goes to that and pays for it will the town reimburse a trust member for going to something like that yeah we could either pay for it beforehand and if you want to seek reimbursement I would just say you know we have to you have to keep invoices and registration confirmations and things but we can reimburse as well yeah so I I don't know I think that looked pretty cool I haven't quite made up my mind if I can do it or not but and and if somebody does want to do it we can get reimbursed by the town so that's my announcement thank you Carol thank you for that reminder as well all right um just possible future agenda items I know we've had this on the agenda for a while I actually reached out to again Michelle and now Jennifer moistin to see if anybody from the African heritage reparation assembly would be willing to come and speak to us about the recommendations I've heard nothing if anybody has any clues of how to get in touch personally with either of them or any of the members who might want to come talk to us I think it would be worth having this conversation also in terms of our planning and our future planning so hopefully someone will get back to me I may just visit Jennifer and check in with her personally versus using emails since I've not gotten any responses I can try and also put a bug in here but I could also reach out to Shavas if thank you thank you Allegra that I think that would be very helpful all right and upcoming meetings so as we said before January 30th will be our in-person meeting which will be our kickoff for our we're calling it our strategic planning Shelly's calling it action plan because she's clear that a strategic plan is much more comprehensive is going to make take more human power than she's able to provide but it will be our plan for our next you know few years ahead we are still looking for a location it will be in person and as Shelly said we will provide refreshments and if anybody has any particular allergies or candy pizza or has gluten-free needs just let me know to make sure that everybody has something that they can nibble on and Gaston we'll save you something so when we see you we'll bring to you all right sounds good I'll bring cookies and some vegan cupcakes and then our next regular meeting will be February 8th at 7pm via zoom so before we're actually going in early but before we do let me just ask any comments last comments announcements yeah just the in-person meeting will probably likely be in the town room in town hall just because it's we have the equipment so we can either video or phone in Gaston so you know the other meeting rooms in the bank center would be difficult to actually have a conference call we do have a conference call stations I think we can have IT help set up we would put tables in the middle of the room so I don't have to sit at the council seats and then it can be something where you know it's a nice setting and we can all hear each other so you know that's probably what it'll be and we you know we've confirmed that it's available so you know unless right Greg I mean that's kind of where we're leaning I think it sounds good that's let's confirm it yeah so everyone knows that that's going to be it's going to be the town room and if it's good for the audio that's that's really important so okay great and as we said before Greg is going to send out the materials we're still solidifying the agenda and then we'll have that available way before so everyone could prepare for that meeting so I think the head carol all I want to do is thank you for doing this whole meeting by yourself because I messed up my back and I kind of sort of not I'm all here kind of but I'm really grateful to Erica for having run the meeting so thank you very much very simple very easy we're all we're all here as leaders so I want to thank all of you for your commitment and for being here this evening I think it was very insightful and it's really the beginning of our process of creating this action plan that I think will be so important for the next few years so hope everybody stays safe stays well or recovers a speedy recovery and we'll see you on January 30th and we'll get to meet Corinne our our newest trust trustee so have a nice evening so I'm going to adjourn at 847 the trust meeting thank you thank you very much good night thanks all