 Not your fault. Okay, we are now recording and so seeing a presence of a quorum I'm calling this special meeting of the community resources committee to order at 708pm pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 21 and extended by chapters 21107 of the acts of 2022. This meeting will be conducted by remote means members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so via zoom or telephone. No in person attendance of members of the public will be permitted but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time. With that, I want to announce that we are recording this meeting and we are going to take our role to make sure and confirm that everyone can be heard and can hear everyone else. So I will just take roll Shalini. Present. Pat. Present. Mandy is present Pam. And Jennifer. Present. Thank you. With that, we're going to move right into our thing, our meeting before we get into moving people in from the audience into the panelists for the first part we're going to have essentially four parts to this meeting. And we're going to start with a conversation with those property owners and managers that own and manage 15 or more dwelling units that contacted either Pam or myself prior to this meeting, indicating that they wished to be part of that conversation. That'll last approximately a half an hour. And then after that we will have a similar conversation with those property owners and managers that own or manage less than 15 dwelling units in Amherst. And again, with those who have contacted us ahead of time to indicate their desire to be part of that conversation. At each of those instances we will move those people who contacted us into the panelists section will have the conversation they'll be able to turn on and control their own might their camera and their mic. And then when that portion of the conversation ends they will be moved back into the attendees section. After those two conversations are done in approximately one hour, we will move to the general listening session that if people have come to these before they'll have been used to where we'll just open it up for people for approximately three minutes at a time to talk about the residential rental bylaw and regulations, particularly any concerns they have with the current drafts, because we are in the final stages of getting to making a recommendation to the council so we're looking at the actual language now. If there is time, when all of that is said and done. We will move on to discussing the public nuisance bylaw which is currently titled the public, the nuisance house bylaw. And in this one, we just want people's thoughts on the bylaw in general. We've are on draft two of a very preliminary work on that one so the language in the drafts is not necessarily the most where we want all of our comments right now, because that language is very much evolving, but just comments in general about the bylaw, any proposed updates or improvements to the bylaw that you see any concerns you might have regarding the direction it may be going where we've had the conversations would be helpful. That is only if we have time. So with that, I do see one hand so I'm wondering if Bob is if he's got a question or if he's trying to just raise his hand, because right now all we want is questions regarding the format of the meeting so if you do not have a question regarding the format of the meeting please unraise your hand. Thank you. Are there any questions regarding the format. See none I'm going to ask. Let's see I think am I the host now, I guess I'm the one that's going to bring everyone in so be patient with me as I'm going to bring in the, the three individuals who indicated they would want to join the conversation for those who own or manage their own dwelling units and those are Tom Crossman Pat Kamens and Cinda Jones. So please give me a little bit of, I will be working on doing that. And the three of them should be able to should be joining us momentarily. And once we ensure that they are all here, we will welcome them and begin our conversation. So I see Cinda I see Tom and Patrick. I now see Patrick and let's just make sure if all of you could go one to make sure we can each hear each other to so Tom can you hear us. I can hear you yes. Thank you and Cinda. I can. And Patrick. You'll need to unmute Patrick. Yes, I can now just got disconnected. Okay, thank you. We're going to start. I don't want to put anyone on the spot but I'm just going to go through the three of you. I know some of you might have prepared statements and others haven't but and I know some of you have been very involved and watching the process so I just want to start with. Is there anything you would like to that particularly concerns you that you want us to be responding to or talking about and discussing with you right now. And, or anything that you're concerned about, or that you like about the current plans for the current drafts of the bylaw and regulations and I'm just going to start with Tom, because you're the first one on my screen right now. Yes, thank you so much for granting us the opportunity to speak thank you for all of your efforts thus far. As I communicated to the members of this committee that you know we, we had hoped to have had a seat at the table so to speak and, and so this is an action that demonstrates that you've been listening and you're granting us the opportunity to speak. I am speaking up about this working draft bylaw, because there's a number of items within this bylaw, as well as the residential rental property, working draft regulations that I can see as challenges and hindrances lost it. You can continue Tom. Okay. So yeah I just I just wanted to take the time and make sure that you know I've been granted the opportunity to express some of the challenges that exists from the lens that I looked through one of the things that I do. I have participated in property management and owning rentals in this in the community of Amher since 2009. And, and I, my efforts are to provide shelter from the elements for the residents that come to our community, whether they're a long term stay, or if they're temporary stay pursuing higher education so one of the things that I'm trying dreadfully to do is provide terrific shelter to provide a great response time to any concerns that come up because housing is important to our community as well as to myself. I think I have lived in a number of different environments to understand, you know what it's like to be in a subsidized environment to understand what it's like to be in a multi family environment as well as a single family dwelling. So some of the, some of the, some of the things that I think that prevent me from continuing to expand the resources that we have to offer to our residents that I'm looking at quickly in the working draft would be, you know, some of the fees that are here to be piling up in section H, particularly part one, and then part two, the late fee as well. It seems to me like the $250 that we pay for the rental registration per parcel should be directed towards the, the supporting of the staff that would be conducting the inspections. So in addition to being charged the $250 for the rental registration, there is an initial inspection fee, a renewal inspection fee, a reinspection fee, a complaint inspection fee, no show fee, appeal administrative fee, transfer fee and a late fee. Now, what I've been able to communicate with some of the members of the Community Resource Committee is that that we don't, we don't necessarily make an obscene amount of money that we can just pay for these fees we're actually operating on pretty narrow operating margins. There are certainly some properties that have a little bit larger consumer surplus and maybe have a little bit of flexibility to absorb some of these fees but there's, there's a lot of people that we work for that we represent that these fees would impact whether they have money available for capital expenditures that may arise. And, you know, we see stuff like burst pipes or tree branches recently tree branches that might collide, you know, collide with the house and cause substantial damage. I mean, that's one of the things we have to manage when we're managing the resources that come that we collect with rent, and that we reallocate to maintaining the property. Oh, so seeing these fees come into play is a little bit of concern because you know one of the things that I've been trying to do in the years that I've been managing properties is to make sure that my properties are great but to be prepared for any capital expenditures that might arise but also taking into consideration that at some stage, you know, I think that it's necessary to continue to develop more housing options for the residents that come to our community. And in order to be able to create or develop more housing options there would have to be some sort of, you know, revenue that's made on the existing housing options. So, so yeah I'm, I'm seeing a lot of challenges that exist with the existing proposal for the bylaw, as well as some of the residential rental property regulations that are being proposed. And for these sometimes it feels like the people who are working on this may not be aware of some of the challenges that we face as property managers, and, and another thing that I want to make note of would be, I appreciate the efforts into trying to create energy efficiency standards. But I think that's there there's some people that that may not be able to go above and beyond on some of these energy efficiencies, but they are still providing adequate shelter that meets building health codes and such. So, and that those are, yeah I mean I, this is interesting to ramble without a specific question. Why don't we, why don't we stop you there so that we can hear from Pat and then we'll see if there's questions from the committee well Pat and Cinda and then we'll see if there's questions from the committee that they'd like to ask you so thank you Tom Pat. Thanks, and yeah I want to thank you all too. When we did this from the committee on rental registration when it started many years ago, a lot of the stakeholders are on the table, and Steve and I were represented landlords but we had the town there we had you mass there we had good conversations as to the problems with the town was and we had a chance. And I think it's been difficult for you guys because you're hearing what you're hearing your experience is what your experience. But we didn't have the opportunity until up until this now, even though I have spoken to all of you and I appreciate that time to to get our points but what happened in the last round was the building commissioner brought a specific problems. Okay, here's a house that has a deck falling off and we don't know who it is it's an LLC in New York City, I don't know how to get it fixed. And here's all these properties that have cars parked all over the lawn, and we don't know who to take care of that. And this this trash cans been out for weeks and weeks and weeks, and we can't find the proper person. So rental registration was put in, and it corrected those things. We got parking plans, we got people to park we're supposed to the trash got put away. Everyone must register. So now when one of the building officials has an issue with the property they go to the card and say okay I need to call Joe landlord and ask him to clean up. So a lot of this data that was given to us last time. I've not seen I've asked each of you, and I've asked the building commissioner what actually brought this to our table again. I mean why are we even trying to revamp the existing rental registration. I mean, it seems to me by any account that it worked and what the, the meaning of the original registration was supposed to accomplish it accomplished. So, if that's true. So, what I come up with is, there's a handful or maybe two handfuls that are problem houses. That's what the building commissioner has brought to my attention. And I'm thinking myself if nine years ago 10 years ago, we're on that committee and a 5500 rentals that we have. And 10 or Tony, our problem houses wouldn't we consider that a success wouldn't we think that we did our job with rental registration, and it did what it was supposed to do. I mean 20 out of 5500 rentals. So I think, I think we can be comfortable with what we did. And we all can be comfortable. But it seems that obviously someone has brought to your attention that more work needs to be done. And so, I think to, to Rob's point on the building commissioner, and use a very modern saying, we don't know what we don't know. Right. We don't know what we don't know we don't know. Even now, maybe this first round of the rentals registration has, you know, done a nice job of cleaning up the outside and with the neighbor see. Maybe we still have substandard conditions on the inside. Maybe we don't. And maybe we're in pretty good shape and maybe the majority are doing what they're supposed to. So if that's true, do you really want to go through all this effort and pain and added expense. And when I saw a number of you're trying to raise $475,000 from a from my industry. I'm like, Oh my, you know that's a big number. That's 435,000 per year. So if this is a three year inspection cycle that we're saying that's almost $1.5 million to get everything inspected. And then I thought, okay, maybe that's worth it. Maybe, maybe that's what this town needs. But then what happens in the fourth year. We're in compliance after year one, two and three, and the building commissioner inspects everything or someone inspects everything. And we're in compliance. What are they actually going to find in year four. I mean, things just don't break that quickly. I mean, if we're in compliance, what is going to happen why did why does this have to be a recurring process why do we have to inspect it all the time, or every three years. I understand you put some language in there that maybe it gets every five years. But I'm wondering if we go about it a different way. Instead of hiring staff members with, you know, salaries and benefits and mileage, and then we have to train them and take time. The trust of this is what we really want is to see what we to know what we don't know if we got to get into these units and we got to prove to the building inspectors that the landlords in town are doing what they're supposed to do. There are agencies that do inspections, they do sectionary inspections they do whatever. Why can't we hire them to come in. Inspect everybody. And then present to the council. Okay, 90% were in compliance or somebody compliance 5% needed a little bit of work and 5% were in tough shape. After all our inspections the building and department now will enforce what the inspectors find, because you know as property managers we need to be in compliance. So, after that time period maybe these inspectors can get it all done in one year. Maybe it takes two maybe takes three, but at the end of that, we will know and we can all feel good that all of our housing stock is in compliance and meet state sanitary code as of that date certain. And we can feel good about that. And then it's up to the council at that point. Do we want to do this again, or do we feel good about it that we're in compliance and you know, there was only 5% there was not in compliance do we really need to go through this entire process and this entire program. And this expense to keep it ongoing. So I think before I was a council person and I would spend half a million to a million and a half of someone else's money. I'd want to see the data that supports that this actual project is needed. And so that's what I that's that's what I kind of been thinking since we have spoken. And a lot of it and I really appreciate you guys have taken a lot what I've said and what Tom said and what other people said, and the bylaw itself has been reduced dramatically from from where we started many, many, many pages to where we are now I think it's getting to something very close to something that would be acceptable to us. I'm not excited and Tom may mention to it about the energy conservation piece. I don't think that has any purpose in this whatsoever. I mean if you look at your purpose of the actual bylaw itself there's nothing in that whatsoever that has to do with energy conservation. And I've heard many of you say well it'd be nice to know. Yes, it would be nice to know, but what expense. And now it takes one of my staff members, approximately two full weeks so 80 labor hours to do rent a registration, just run a registration. The way it is now, 80 hours and that's not counting all the inspections that we do in the maintenance work because I think I should be doing that anyway I think that I should just be doing that. I'm just saying the paperwork to report to town takes 80 hours. And if we add all these other regulations and these other questions and this energy conservation things about building envelopes and kilowatt hours used and the other things that are in there. I don't, I'm going to have to hire another person to my staff, just to accomplish all this. And so you may say well Pat you got the most will take you to longest is not so bad for guys that don't have so many. But it's the same I got 11 staff members to help. So if, if you don't have 11 staff members it is a burden for the guys that don't have as many as many. So, I think the energy conservation piece, although very proactive and very well thought of, I don't think it belongs here. I don't think it supports what the purpose of the bylaw is. And I don't think the amount of time and effort and money. And the last piece of that is who's going to analyze the data. So even if we could get you all this data, and we give it to the building commissioner, who's going to analyze it and tell us what it means. I mean you're going to have if you get 5500 rentals that's a percentage of all the electric use or gas use or whatever you're looking to in the entire town. Who's analyzing this data and for what use is it going to be. One of the counselor said to me well, if all the landlords have to provide the information then shouldn't we as homeowners have to provide that information to so we have all the information. Excuse me, yes, I do think that probably is where we're going to go at some point. This bylaws not where it should be. I mean so that needs to go. In my opinion, and it's just too much of a burden and too much of a cost. So, if you if you like my dear of let's just get all the interiors inspected. Just so we know the data, just so we have the data do we need this program or not. Now we still have to pay for it. And you have some brilliant, brilliant grant writers in the town of Amherst I've seen some brilliant stuff being written. Why can't we put something out that says the town of Amherst wants to do a study on the habitability and conditions of rental properties in the town of Amherst and write a grant that grants us whatever we need. And let's negotiate a price to do our, you know, we're not going to do all 5500 rentals because the ones that are just built, they don't have to be inspected right away let's let's give them a break. And then the ones that are already rented because of subsidies or section eight or whatever, we'll give them a break because they're getting inspected every year anyway. We're going to get over 3,000 3,500 whatever the number is, let's negotiate a price of one of these outside consulting companies, get them inspected and get to you counselors, the information that you need. So you can determine how what we will we don't know what we don't know. So now you will know exactly. And we also will feel good about it because at the end of the day. We know all of our housing stock will be in compliance. Thank you, Pat. I'd like to move on to Cinda right now if she's got any words to say before we ask questions. Cinda. Hi, thank you. And thanks for intentionally reaching out to landlords is this unprecedented input and you've been really generous with your time. Thank you for that. I think this is a well done document and I was going to go page by page and just give a couple of comments. On the second page, I wonder, this made me laugh out loud, the owner, the term owner is defined under public nuisance. Okay, and that is just so funny to me. And are we really defining owner under public nuisance and isn't there another place in the zoning bylaw where owners define that we can refer to so the owner is not a public nuisance I just find that funny. Second one. I noted on page three lodging facilities are not considered but I know a lot of lodging facilities right now are used as rentals so I didn't know if that changed things. If when they are uses rentals they are counted in the inspections. They are used as UMass housing, often when there's not enough housing. So I think they're not only dorms for students sometimes but also homeless, which begs for more oversight on page. The main overall comment is, I think it's a well done document with a lot of thought but I really think that tenants need to be included more landlords, it all falls on landlords and property owners and property managers, and there's not a lot. What the Lord can do about a text that creates a party, and thousands of people coming to a house and red cups on the long the next day, and maybe stealing a sheet from the middle district the next week, and maybe having a blowout party. Three times in a row so I think you should put the tenants Nate, one of the tenants. I have all four tenants names and phone numbers and emails on the rental registration to so that when I hear the Amityville horror across the street from where I live on a, on a Saturday night Sunday morning 3am. I don't have to call to Wadi's guy who I do any response instantly, but I could call the kids across the street and ask them to keep it down. I could call the kids in from the porch, talk to them directly. There is no accountability for student tenants, and until we do create a little bit of accountability. This won't change. They need to be the ones receiving the fine for the red cups and the parties. And that that was page four. I'm sorry that was item four on page seven. And the public news it's by lot probably impacts the owner and not the tenants. I mean if I have a, if I have a dog that is unruly and invites everybody. You're not going to put me down. And that's what you're talking about doing with these student rentals. You're not going to take it out on the dog that's biting people you're not going to take it out on the owner of the dog. Yeah, I think tickets and violations that are in the tenants control need to be going directly to the tenants on on page one item h requirements of in person to person contact information that's especially where it needs to go. So the energy and efficiency information is there just like gun registration actually so that eventually regulations can be tracked and people who have old plumbing or old showers, they can see what a problem it is and if, if they can be asked to be replaced at the same time at least I'll have a record of it. And it's just very hard if you have 48 apartments to all of a sudden have to upgrade every single toilet, every single shower, the electric panel. It's just unwieldy. Before worked with tenants who wanted a washing machine, and we pay part, because they might not last the life of the washing machine we're pretty generous, maybe if a tenant wants to partner on energy efficiency, they might request it. Maybe it could be a request and we split the cost or something if they want to help us do the right thing. I realized the town needs money for the library the school DPW and rental enforcement and it. It sometimes feels like the only profitable business in town is educational institutions and people who serve them real estate rentals is not a guaranteed profitable business, if there are no repairs and no painting, no roofs, no Orangeburg failing that house might make $10,000 in a year, but if you have 10 houses. You're going to hopefully do better than break even because there's one house that has a new paint job for $20,000 and another house has a new roof for $15,000 and pretty soon, you're hopefully out of 10 you're going to have a couple that make you above, above into the black. There's a lot of money left to take in the rental business, these days, with all these expenses going up. If you would like a guaranteed money maker might I suggest solar because there is no adverse expense that goes with the 70 grand tax and from for everyone you accept. That's a different subject. Thanks for listening. I'm recognizing that's a different subject that we're not here to talk about today. Committee, are there any questions we have for our three guests. Pam. I thanks everybody this is very interesting and very, very informative. Something you mentioned, I just didn't understand it in the context. You were talking about revenues are needed on existing properties and I didn't, I didn't understand what that meant it was in in in the conversation or the. It was in the sentence with that we need more housing. And then that revenues are needed on existing properties and I didn't understand that. Maybe I heard it wrong. Okay, that's, that's, that's fair. I mean, I, I didn't necessarily come here with a script I came here to just speak from my heart about what's going on. So the, the, the philosophy that I would have is that somebody who is professionally in the real estate industry has an obligation to the community to provide adequate housing stock. And part of that would be to be adding new inventory to the community, because the truth of the matter is that that that housing, once it's constructed it's continuously deteriorating. And in the world of tax law, it's called depreciation of the asset. So, you know, it's important for us to be setting funds aside for capital expenditures that may arise, such as what Cindy was mentioning, you know, roofs. And that's a big one that hits a lot of people in our community because they it was the product used between 1940 and 1960 that connected houses to the sewer lines. And the product has about a 50 year lifespan and so we're seeing a lot of those fail and people don't see that. And then they get a $10,000 bill for replacing or repairing the Orangeburg that exists, you know, these are things that we have to take into account as property managers. We're managing the resources that come in, and then we're managing the resources that are allocated, which could include, you know, monetary resources as well as human capital. I use the term human capital because we have to think about hiring the appropriate staff to go in and make appropriate repairs. We have to work electric plumbing, you know, all of these expenses have increased dramatically, especially in recent years, and we have to manage the rental revenue that comes in to make sure that we have the appropriate capital when it needs to be dispersed to hire vendors that might need to work on the property. And so going back to what I was mentioning before that I feel like it's our responsibility to provide adequate housing stock. And as populations grow, we have to be, you know, we have to be responsible for adding new inventory. What's been happening is, you know, we do have some local developers that have the capacity or the ability to add inventory, but you see people coming in from out of out of town out of state that are the ones that can afford to develop in our community. So I don't know, I just felt like as a member of the Amherst community and being engaged in real estate services, specifically property management, I felt that it was, you know, part of our responsibility is to be mindful of the rent that's coming in. And a percentage of that would be needed to be dedicated to adding new housing inventory to our community. That's that's what I meant by that. I hope that adds a little bit of clarity to what I meant. Pam, do you have anything else? Right now. Excellent. Shawlani. And then, Shawlani and then Jennifer or Shawlani, did you get yourself back so you could hear from Jennifer first. Yes. Okay, so Jennifer. No, Shawlani's hand was up first. Actually, this is so helpful. Thank you so much. I know everyone's so busy. So I really appreciate everyone was in attendance today to have this conversation, which is always so helpful to us. I think I'm one thing I just wanted to respond to Pat's question about this survey, like what percentage of the people are, you know, of the houses are and complaints we've received. I don't know if you're aware, we haven't yet officially accepted or adopted the findings from a survey, but we did do a survey which was very thoughtfully put together by a manager and me, and was analyzed by me and with some help in what we did find and of course it's not a representative sample, but we did get 277 responses that were analyzed and we've got some more responses later, but I just wanted to share the numbers with you that 50% of 46% of the 77 tenants were dissatisfied by the management of the building and 35% of the tenants were dissatisfied with interior quality of the homes and in residence out of the 97 residents, 55% were unhappy with the maintenance of the buildings and 46% were dissatisfied with the management of the building. Again, this is not a representative sample, but you know just to speak to the idea that yes we did adopt a rental registration bylaw, which you all participated in creating and crafting. And, but something is not working. And that's what we're trying to figure out part of what we also heard from the survey. One of the open ended questions was, yes, the, the fact that some of the bylaws are not being enforced, or, and so there is that issue as well. We are trying to get a sense of what would. This is not to penalize the landlords or homeowners, but to find out what could be a pathway where we can ensure a regular inspection rather than being in complaints and that's another huge area itself. The process or the pathway for tenants to complain is either not clear or not utilized or they're afraid to do it. So there are many problems that we've identified in the, in what has been accepted so far so what I think what our goal is how can we create pathways to ensure that landlords are indeed maintaining the homes and the quality of homes but without adding too much burden to the landlords which we know also gets passed down to the tenants and increases the rents. So, you know, so, you know, so I think it's just, I think it'll be helpful to identify what are the specific areas where, where we, where you think that the, the fee, or is not justifiable or, you know, I think some of the questions that Pat raised about like, okay, we do it in the, you know, once we have everyone down, has everyone gone through the initial inspection system. What happens then, like we have that staff now which we've hired to do the inspections and so there I mean there are those questions of course but in the current what we have right now what are some specific things like whether it's in the process itself that's adding excessive burden whether it's in the fees or, you know, if you can give a specific or what you think is not justifiable that would be helpful. Thank you. I saw Cinda raise her hand I think she might want to respond or answer something that Shalini brought up. So then I'll go to Jennifer after Cinda. Thank you. That's interesting Shalini. I appreciate the survey and I know that you guys revamp the survey several times to make sure it was representative of all different groups was this. So, I wonder if you might consider the bias of the people who would respond to that survey because I think politically active neighbors and owners will respond and I think disgruntled tenants would respond more than satisfied tenants and rather than not politically active people in town. So, and property managers will respond more than some older woman with apartment over a garage but I think there's a bias toward dissatisfied people. That's all I want to say about that and then people keep saying that they're afraid that will pass down the cost to tenants. And that's really not how it works. The market is supply and demand. So if there are lots of houses out there, they're going to cost less. And if there are no houses out there like there are now, it's a bidding war for, for, you could charge what the market will bear and that's high, but as soon as there is more housing in the market. It will, it will lower because people can get rental housing everywhere so I really don't think you guys are going to determine the market rents by what you charge it's just making us less profitable and there's very little profit margin and I just can't say to a tenant that your, your rents going up because we were charged more it's probably not going to happen. Thank you. Thank you send Jennifer. Yes. I was wanting to respond to, you know, Cindy's, you know, example of, you know, well, the whole discussion of who's responsible for the behavior of the tenants because I think that's really one of the greatest, you know, issues that we're grappling with and that we want to be fair and how we address it, you know, in any of the rental permit bylaw revisions. But, you know, I think the example with the dog was a good one because you would, you know, hold an owner responsible. I mean, ultimately, if you know your neighbor's dog, you know, were to bite you. So how, you know what, so how do we balance that because I know where I live I have two student houses behind me and if they're having a party they'll actually say we're having a party this weekend and, you know, give us their phone number so that, you know, if a resident neighbor was disturbed, they would, you know, knock on the door, you know, of the tenants before they would call the property owner. But at the point at which there may be a house that repeatedly they're causing a noise or nuisance that at some point I do think that the, you know, the landlord, you know, has responsibility there so we can continue that discussion but I think it's where we find the right balance. And I just, you know, also after Espanol the concern that you have the more supply, then, you know, that if when demand way exceeds supply then of course you can, you know, charge more than you would otherwise but my concern is in a town like Amherst where the student population so exceeds, you know, that of the year round population. We at the point at which we built so much housing that demand was satisfied I think we would have sacrificed a lot, you know, we would have sacrificed a lot of the town and the quality of life for people in town so I just had. I just had to add that I couldn't let that go and not respond. Thanks. Thank you, Cinda. Yes. In terms of satisfying demand. It's, it's not just Amherst it's Hadley and Sunderland and Belcher town and they all have student housing and when there is less housing available it balloons out to these towns and Amherst would never be expected to be housing all the students they go quite a ways farther. You asked a question and I'm stuck on the second one. You asked, oh, about landlord responsibilities. So, in this real estate, we take many steps to make sure that tenants understand their responsibilities, and we hire security guards every weekend to walk around and make sure if there are more than a couple people outside they're asked to go in. If they're speaking outside, they're asked to go in if they're talking loudly outside they're asked to go in. We have constant patrol from, I think, 10pm until 1am. I'm pretty sure those are the hours. The next morning have our cleaning lady Janice go to every house and pick up red cups that might still be out there and we try so hard and Pat and Tom take several steps and I'm sure I'm forgetting 10 other ones that they have also do. I think it's a checklist that if that this is what is necessary or this is what expected or if this is done, then the landlord has done everything in his power to stop it, because I, we really try so hard, and we try to communicate we try to meet them we try to tell them you're in the middle district isn't especially a part of a community don't steal our pigs, yet our pigs are gone and our sheep are stolen and and I don't know what to do about it and it's it's honestly it's hard and and to get our rental permits pulled because kids don't hear us would be hard but if you start holding them accountable to will win together. I see Tom, and then I see Jennifer and I know we are at about 40 minutes or so so we're going to try and wrap up a little bit before we move on to the next one. But I do want to give people a chance but I wanted to acknowledge everyone that I recognize we're a little bit over that 30 minutes right now. So Tom. Again, thank you for having the platform to to engage in conversation. One of the things that I think we also forgot to indicate that they're the previous safe and healthy neighborhoods coalition had university engagement. And so the University of Massachusetts responded to our concerns and implemented some things that are still used today in terms of educating the tenants as they transition from on campus to off campus housing. With the rental bylaw, there's something alluding to the training and one of the things I'm concerned with with the change of staff and administration at the university that that we may be kind of disappearing in the background because we're not continuously engaging with the university to make sure that those programs stay. I don't think they understand the gravity of how important it is that our students behave and that our students are educated when they move into off campus housing. And then the supply and demand side because everybody wants to chime in on that. The state of Massachusetts was looking to add 130,000 housing units over the course of five years so there's there's a need for more housing across the state of Massachusetts. But one of the big concerns we hear is that student rentals are moving into family neighborhoods. That is a consequence of not enough housing stock for the students to to live in areas that are close to public transportation or downtown or academics. So they move into these neighborhood the family neighborhoods by default because that's the only option that's that's remaining. So that's one thing so when I started a while back that you know we you could rent stuff out in Leverett Shoesbury Pellum, Granby Belcher town you name it, because the added inventory hadn't come on recently we've been seeing a lot of developments that are completed and starting to absorb the demand that falls into the neighborhoods by default so I think I think the supply and demand dynamics are starting to take effect to to the to the point that those single family dwellings in the outline neighborhoods are starting to be sold back to those who are occupied, whether it's small family young professionals or retirees, or what have you. So, we're already seeing some things but I just wanted to echo again that university engagement was critical in the previous safe and healthy neighborhoods and I think that we might have missed an opportunity to reach out to the university and make sure that they have a say as well. Thank you. Shalini. Oh, okay, so I think I just want to highlight one issue that has been identified by our staff and we've discussed in CRC about holding tenants responsible is they're not on the rental registration by law and so if if the town has to staff has to notify or find them, it, it seems like right now there is no pathway. And maybe that's up for discussion if there's a way to find and I think one of the suggestions was to put one of the names of the tenants on the rental registration form. But the timing of it, I don't know if that can be done at the time so all of that but just to say I heard that. And again also to acknowledge what Cindy said, yes, this is not a representative sample so they could be a bias in who we hear. But that being said, it wasn't 98% of the tenants or residents were unhappy it was like 45 to 55. And if you really hear the quotes the open ended responses from the tenants there are some really good ones where they're very happy with where they say like oh the high quality apartment with great management team we really love living with our landlord who really takes care of us in the building. So there are a lot of really positive responses out there as well and we hope that everyone gets to read these responses so we can all learn how to do how we all can do better. Thank you, Shalini. Cindy. Thank you. I think the problem that we're all trying to address is student behaviors in residential neighborhoods and it's coming down to rental registration and rental regulations, when the real problem is student behavior. And it's it's kind of curing the industry and the business of owning rental houses and making it harder and more expensive and less fun. So maybe there'll be less of it in the future. But the real problem now is that with diminished police presence and ability to respond to these things. There's a, there's a worry in my heart that this will get worse because we don't have police able to respond to noise complaints on weekends. So I think if we can ask Cress to change their hours on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights from 10pm till 3am and ask Cress to monitor student neighborhoods in North Amherst and Faring Street and downtown. Maybe we can have some heart to heart chats with unruly houses that have a history of noise complaints, and maybe we can change behavior by accountability and conversations. The police have told us they don't have the bandwidth to respond with the amount of staff and calls they have now. And that's not good going forward. So it's something that should be looked at. Thank you, Cinda. Patrick. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. So one thing I was thinking, Shelley, thank you for the, I forgot that we did do that and you did a great job on the demographics and checking everything or whatever. I think I agree with Cinda is more likely that a bad, you know, experience is going to be to respond, whatever. So that's already been covered. What I want to mention is each time that a tenant of mine has gotten a nuisance house fine. That was it that ended it. They go there they're not going to door. There's four people living there they give them a $1200 fine. That's it for the semester. I mean they shut down it hits the pocketbook somehow right now they have the ability to find them and the kids pay it. That's what truly works if crest can do it, if we can give the ability to crest to get more of those. But the unfortunate thing is, um, we just get the kids trained, and then they graduate, and then I get a next group of 21, 20 year olds that move in there. And then we got to train them, and they always going to mess up once because they get a 21st birthday and they get crazy. I know we're living on time. So I just want to say that I think we do have the ability to find I think it is very effective. And thank you all again. Thank you. I want to thank everyone, Cinda, Tom and Patrick for coming for this conversation. I'm going to move you back into the attendees, and I'm going to bring the owners and managers of those less than 15 units in now. Pardon me while I work on moving people as I figure out how to do that. So I believe we've got them going, and we're going to bring in. I had four names on my list. Elsie Fetterman, who I do not see on the list. I see. So we will promote she and go. We're not a shepherd. And so we will promote Renata and Andrew George. Pam, if you could keep out to see if Elsie joins us some time and if you see it or the other committee members that would be great as we, I believe we should be seeing shangu, Andrew George and Renata joining us soon because I think I've just done the right thing to promote. Joe, I also see Mary Sayer, and she has her hand up. And I'm not sure, and I know Mary Sayer has a dwelling rental unit. If you are to other people who are in the audience that didn't necessarily contact us ahead of time, you might want to consider that. I think like shangu is still in the attendees. Yeah, I keep hitting promote to panelists shangu and did Renata move Renata has moved okay. When I hit that the person has to accept the promotion to panelists for them to be promoted and and so I keep hitting the button for Andrew George and shangu. I'm going to Mary is the I'm going to ask you to unmute and let me know if Mary the if the reason your hand is raised is because you'd like to be part of the conversation Mary. Well, I have a rental on Chestnut Street, and I didn't really I don't know whether I need to be on a panel but I just wanted to be able to express my opinion. Okay, well I will promote you to panelists for now. And so that you can do that. Let's see. Let's make sure. Let's try shangu again, and we are still missing Andrew George. And then I'm going to ask Sam. Could you explain the reason for your hand up. If you're looking for people to be panelists I own a property on Gracie that's a two family I do have comments to make. Okay, but I don't want to intrude. I didn't register. I'm busy working obviously but but I'm glad to do that. Do you like to. Okay. Okay, then I will promote you. Okay, I'm still having issues promoting Andrew George and she and goo. I've. Nope, she and is back in. Yay, she and has worked. Okay, I'll try Andrew George one more time. And so, Renata, Mary, she and you guys should have the ability to control your own mics right now and should be able to show a video if you would like to show a video. And so I'm going to go through and make sure everyone can hear us. So I'll start with Sam because I see that Sam has already un-miked and Sam, can you give us your last name for the minutes. McLeod, M-A-C-L-E-O-D. Thank you. Thank you. Hear us. I can hear you if you can hear me. That's good. Yep. Okay. Renata shepherd. Yes. Hello. Welcome, Renata. Mary Sayer. Hello. Welcome, Mary. Can you hear us? You'll have to unmute yourself. Can you hear us? Yes. And could I ask you just to clarify is, do you want address by Sian or goo? I'm not sure which way you wrote your name. Sian. Thank you. I didn't want to be telling you the wrong one. If you wrote it the other way. Okay. Thank you. We're going to run this one about the same way. So I'm just going to talk to everyone and just recognize everyone for a couple of minutes to see if they have anything that they would like to point out specifically that they have concerns with or like about the current drafts of the registration by law and regulations. So I am going to start, I'm going to go upside down on my screen. Okay. So I'm going to start with Sian. If you have anything you'd like to. Mention right now, you can do so now. I would like to just listen to what other people have said. Oh, excellent. Okay. Mary. Hi, I didn't know this was happening until just a few hours ago. So I don't have a copy of the draft. So mostly I'm listening. I'm listening to some comments having listened to the previous few minutes. Would you like to make those comments now? Well, just a couple of things that I have noticed. That it's very often very obvious when a landlord is not a good landlord in the fact that the landlord is not a good landlord. I mean, like you go down band meter, not band meter, a Harlow drive and a house is sold recently. And now there are six students in it. There's five cars always parked three on the lawn, three on the sideline. So clearly that landlord has not been. I don't know whether they filled out a registration or not, but there's clearly no parking plan there. So I think the landlord is a good landlord and they have to make sure that they're not going to crash on the lawn. So I understand the defensiveness of landlords, but I also think that, you know, just drive by their properties for them to take responsibility. That's number one. The second thing is that I think landlords can in fact, in their leases, I understand where Cindy is coming from and I think that she does an excellent job, but she's only one of many landlords. So I'm wondering if landlords could be encouraged to put within their leases. I don't know, you know, like this is the expected behavior if you get two complaints, your lease is ended. I mean, as a landlord, you have a lot of control over who's going to be living in your house. I don't mean discriminating, but I mean, if the behavior is disrupting the neighborhood or, you know, as a nuisance, I think you can go a long way in your lease. Thank you. Thank you, Mary. Renata. Hi. Thank you for talking to us. I have something written that I would like to read just to first interject a little bit on the lease part of it. Yes, we can do a lot with our leases, but enforcing it sometimes is a challenge. And yes, you can threaten the tenants that the lease is going to end, but that means eviction. And that means, especially if you sign a one year lease, you're going to have to evict that tenant. And that's going to take a while and money and resources. Yes, even with the best preparation and interview, you're still, you know, bound to once in a while get a bad tenant, a lot of them are great. But if you get that one bad one, you can get into a lot of trouble. You know, discrimination can come about, you know, accusations can come about, even though it's not true, but you have to defend yourself. So, if I can just, I, you know, I agree completely with Patrick Cinda and Tom, you know, their comments and suggestions, I think they're great. It's a burden, the way that this bylaw is written. It's a dissertation with punishment and regarding bad behavior, you need to hold the affecting party responsible. You know, we're not their parents, and we can only do so much. We can maybe drive by the property to have somebody drive by the property once in a while, but we can't catch everything. We want to. And I have wonderful tenants now, you know, a family and they've been there for 10 years, I love them. And, you know, my rent is below market, and I don't know how long I'm going to be able to do this, because, you know, it's more and more money being bled. There are more. This town is pushing away landlords like me and therefore tenants like me. They're your policies taxes and our fees and my own children will not be able to afford residing in this town on their own and building their own wealth here. I see expensive, expensive buildings going up charging exorbitant rent, paying either lower no fees compared to myself who currently offers below market rent for similar properties. And UMass, for instance, you know their new student dormitories they rent for 2200 for studio 2800 for a two bedroom without any arrays to supervise them, and a private company will run them. And I've, you know, coming to the meeting, attending the meeting for the CRC. It seems the CRC doesn't know if they're going to be inspected or pay fees or not, given, you know, because they are a new mass land, and more and more cumbersome processes hopes to jump through an expensive fees will drive away small local landlords in favor of big companies and administrative staff, their fingertips combined inspection registration fees above $100 is a burden for landlords like myself. Inspections are also unnecessary and burdensome for properties the town is trying to define as good properties. There is no more affordable housing in Amherst and it's only going to get worse. At the moment, now I'm lucky to have a good long term tenants but if I'm unlucky to have yearly turnovers because of, you know, bad tenants or because Amherst rent is unaffordable or any other reason. My property would probably be penalized and be inspected yearly instead of every three to five years as, you know, seems to be suggested. So it's getting tough. Thank you, Renata. Sam McLeod. Thank you for having the session I'm glad I can you hear me. Yes. Okay, I'm glad I got a chance to just scan the bylaws and issues today. My property I probably rented for about four or five years I try to fix it up as best I can on it, but it's quite expensive. A few comments. I do have empathy and understanding for the initial session landlords. I think we should hear some of what they say they have experience in the field. And I think there's a perception that landlords make a lot of money that oh look at all the property that you can get it's really not true. And I don't think the town should really be involved in that issue of what people paid for it what their interest rates are what their expenses are I don't think it's relevant. A couple comments. I, you know, there's a saying be careful what you wish for. Landlord is a complicated involved process and there's a lot of legal issues involving tenants I am proactive in limiting the options for the tenants, but I don't think the town should get involved in landlord tenant interactions. I don't think the town has any business getting between the landlords and their tenants, because it's just an ongoing process. I think that the issue, and my understanding from listening to people is the issue is bad behaving houses. If that's the issue, then I think the bylaws itself might be a bit of an overreach. And I would recommend instead focusing on those specific issues that are problems. If the problem is, in fact, bad behavior among X number of houses then I would put the resources to focusing on that problem. If the capacity exists to have fines for those properties and force them, just like there are speeding issues in town, we put up some nice speed control signs on southeast street works pretty well I slow down when I see my speed on that. So I would recommend or advise that the town focus on the actual problem that exists, as opposed to delving into a new arena in depth, because it's pretty involved and once you're in it's longer. If the object, you know, it is going to be a lot of money for some of the larger landlords for the smaller ones such as myself I can unequivocally state that rent prices will go up for those of us who charge below market rates. There's no question about it. This doesn't even factor the amount it costs for new roof. Another comment is I don't think the energy efficiency should be a part of it because I don't think that's part of the issue that the town wants to address I'm not even sure how to get the. I'd like to but I'm not even sure how to get the exact ratings for that all these expenses will be passed on directly to the tenants unequivocally rent prices for the smaller landlords will absolutely go up because the embers is a destination market. So if you're in the town's anyone would bias towards the MS over the surrounding towns at an equal price. So that's, that's kind of it. It's not as easy as people think and it's not super profitable. Be careful how involved you get this is my comment, obviously, you know, you've thought things through but it's it's a slippery slope and I would highly recommend not getting in between the landlord and the tenant. I think that's one of the problems that are actually the issue to get solved if the desire is to lessen the number of rental properties in town. Then maybe this is a good process because it will drive folks out if that's actually the agenda. If the stated agenda is to solve the problems that had bad tenants, focus on that to start charging the rates for charging the fines for people who are behaving badly. That would be, you know, if the town has limited resources, which I believe we do, do we really want to be spending and hiring three or four more staff in inspection, or would we rather hire those staff in the fire department, or would we buy that hire that staff in the school department or other areas something to think about. So thank you for listening. Those are my comments. Um, she and I saw your hand go up at one point. Do you would you like to say something else? Oh, sorry. That's my mistake. Oh, okay. Yeah. That's my mistake. Sorry. No problem. Committee, do you have any questions for our guests? I have. Oh, yes. Go on. Sorry. Hello street. Isn't 19, 19 hollow street. Hello. Yeah. Yeah. See, and we're here. What was that the person that first person said something about how, how low street. Hello. Hello. Hello. I'm sorry. It says 19 number 19. I'm not sure what the number is. It's the second or third house in on the right. Is that a wrench? Is it a rental? No, a wrench. A ranch style. Is it a ranch, Mary? Yes, it's a white. Ranch. Okay. I will let the, the owner know. Do you have any other questions or comments at this time? No, no, no, thank you. Thank you. Um, Sam. Yeah, I had one other comment I meant to say, which is in terms of reading the text, which I did do. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Uh, Mandy Joe, thank you. Although it's hard to retain it all because it's a lot there. Uh, one item that jumped out on me is the implications of the transition of those who are currently rented. If you have a property with two people, right? Two units rented and there are permits and they expire in, let's say June. Uh, the way I read that is that you have to get a new permit and inspection in advance. Um, so I think that's going to be a significant issue. Uh, impact existing rentals. I would advise or rather, my opinion would be that it's desirable to have some slack time on renewals. So that their implication of people who are currently live there. You don't automatically have a vacant unit based on some inspection violation. Uh, that is within the document as opposed to a safety issue. Uh, and I think that's going to be a significant issue if it's not going to be. Uh, if you must get the inspection prior to renting, it's going to create gaps of timing for people to be able to rent the unit because they're not going to get an inspected or fixed in time. But if you consider to roll that in over the course of a year or longer, it would be, uh, desirable because I could easily envision a lot of units, not necessarily passing everything. At the first application. And if they can't rent. You're going to have vacancies. Vacancies are going to drive up the rent prices. I saw that as the singular, um, uh, critical path issue associated with this. Thank you for that. Um, I believe we've tried to address that issue, um, by issuing, um, conditional permits. If the only thing, you know, so I would have you read that section and see if there's still a concern there. If the only thing. That has not been complied with when applying for the permit is the passage of the inspection, because there was some faults found in the inspection, then a conditional permit can be issued, allowing that rental to go forward as long as the owner is communicating with the town to get those, um, items fixed. So I think, um, let me see if I can find the section and page number it's on the availability of the inspectors to meet the demand for the inspection, because my experience has been that there's a lag time between application and the current status between you even get that singular permit. So I could see there being a lag time. The recommendation be a phase this in over a three year period or so, so that whoever the inspection folks are, they have time to smooth out their own processes similar for the landlords to be able to react to it. That's from a small landlord standpoint. No, thank you for that. Um, the conditional permit starts on page three. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You can find it. Um, thank you. Any questions from the committee? Jennifer. Thank you. Not so much a question, but I did just want to clarify that. You know, our, um, intent here is not just. You know, behavior and, you know, certain, the, the few certain properties that may, you know, pose a noise or a nuisance. You know, to the surrounding neighbors. And that is, um, a reflection on probably any, you know, of the landlords that you know, are joining us here tonight, but we did in the rental surveys. We did receive a lot of response from tenants. At who were very concerned, I think rightly so with the condition of their properties. You know, there are. You know, um, tenants living in, you know, maybe it's older homes where the windows don't shut all the doors open. And so, you know, there are many problems, things that really, you know, that it would, it would be beneficial for an inspector to be able to ensure that these, um, you know, health and safety violations are addressed. So, you know, we're certainly, um, we set out to, you know, revise, you know, and tweak some of, um, parts of the rental by-law because we really wanted to address some of the issues that we had, um, and we did, you know, get a lot of feedback from tenants in the survey where that was problematic. So that's, you know, so the inspections aren't really to address maybe noise and nuisance, but there to address those properties, um, which are not, you know, up to the town standards of health and safety. So I just want to clarify that, that, that we're not looking for inspections to solve noise and nuisance, but the inspections would be to solve, um, to address some of the issues that we had, um, to address. Thank you, Jennifer. Pam. Yes. Again, not, not exactly a question, but I did want to, to express my thanks. That have, that have, um, raised the concerns so that we can focus on addressing those. Um, and also appreciate the advice to keep it simple. To, um, to make sure that we are. Get to issues and as, as everyone. It has seen in this process, it quickly becomes a fairly elaborate document. And, um, Um, it just gets, it gets complicated quickly. So I appreciate the, the reminder to go back. And, uh, and simplify if, if we possibly can, to address problem behavior as sort of at the source rather than creating a complicated process to include the owners, the managers. I think I would like additional feedback on that because we do in town see a number of places that have repeated issues. And at some point, at some point, there has to be some pressure put by the manager, the owner on their tenants. And I'm not sure that that's always happening. So the ability to balance some more pressure from owners and better behavior and address or targeted penalties to the issue causers is a good thing to keep in mind going forward. So thanks, everybody. Thank you. I had a question and I'm gonna probably forget it right now but it's about the, I don't know whether it was Pam or Jennifer or Shalini, one of them mentioned. And then I know Cinda I think mentioned it or one of the other Pat maybe about potentially the issue of being able to hold non-owners responsible for behavior, the occupants responsible for the behavior on the property. And that being an issue that we've heard from inspection services because they don't necessarily know the name of the occupant. And so I'd like to hear from our guests that we have now what their thoughts are about having on the application a request to disclose or to list the names of the tenants. Would that be something that would be doable? And thinking not just for tenants that might be attending educational institutions but tenants that might not be attending educational institutions at one point, I was a tenant, I was not the person on the lease. And so if we're looking at that, is that something that's doable? And if so, would it just be for those, would your recommendation be just those listed on the lease or all occupants? Because I'm struggling with how we would do all occupants if not all occupants are on a lease, it's particularly when the occupants are related to each other and only one might sign the lease. Renata. Hi. It could be a problem listening to the open public. When you have a condo, it's part of condo law that you have to inform the management company who's living in the unit, but informing the town who's living in the unit could be a problem occupant another person in the lease. The person in the lease is the one responsible for the unit. And I don't know in terms of privacy issues if that's a possibility. Certainly they are the ones responsible. Occupants can be their children, can be another the parent, that's not responsible for the rent or the maintenance, but the person listed in the lease is the one that's going to be responsible for that unit. Thank you for that. Any other thoughts by other of the guests? Sam? I would agree. I think it would be, I'm uncertain what the legalities are on the capacity to list them, might be able to, but I only speak for myself. I don't speak for all the other landlords that are here, of course. I wouldn't have a problem getting fined for bad behavior of a tenant because I put it in the lease, but I could see issues for the town if they seek to get in between the landlords and the tenants. If we think that the bylaw document is long, I suggest reading some leases. And when we start merging those two things together, there's an awful lot of text and actions involved. And I think the town's in a difficult spot in terms of how to manage it. And I don't have the answer, I haven't delved into it, but my suggestion would be, I don't think it's a problem to necessarily communicate with the landlord and have the landlords contact their tenants. It may be different. I certainly respect the comments and opinions of those who truly do this a lot, such as Cynda and Pat and David, but I'm just speaking from the smaller landlords position. Thank you, Sam. Pat? Yeah, I just want to mention that Richard Goldes had his hand up and Pat Kamens and John W. All had their hands up. I see that those will be some of, well, Richard and John will be some of the first we recognize when we conclude this conversation. Shalini? I was wondering if this for all of you here, if the lease has a way of educating the tenants regarding trash responsibilities and noise by-laws, because again, those were some of the things that came up from tenants, but they weren't clear what is expected in those. I mean, it sounds like they should, but they didn't. And so I wonder if there's, and then the other thing I heard was, like some of you mentioned, the lease is so long that they actually don't even read through it. So maybe a separate one, which is a separate checklist of some sort, which is not full of legal language and all of that, but just a checklist that just sort of welcomes them. And so maybe you're already doing that, but kind of what are the expectations from the neighbors or, and then the trash, you know, things like that. So is that already a practice? Can we have our guests? Let's make sure. Thank you, Shan, Renata. If it's not part of the lease, it will have a heck of a time enforcing it. It needs to be part of the lease. Like in my lease, I have it, for example, certain behaviors that have to be attained. You have to abide by law. You have to, you know, take care of the trash in this manner. You cannot put oil in the disposal. You know, all those little things that are part of how to manage a household are in my, I have like a 12 page lease, you know, very compact and go through the lease with the tenants. And obviously now it is a lot of words that, you know, people forget, you know, you just have to remind them. But again, it all comes to enforce them and also, and if you can't enforce it, then by the end of the lease, you might not renew it with that person, but you still have to go through that year unless you wanna get into a legal battle. And also coming to, in terms of behavior, I love the idea of Crests, but you have to also keep in mind that police are trained for this and they are prepared for conflict. Maybe Crests can accompany them to those places, but I think it could, you know, we need more police officers, you know, they provide a great service in the town. And I think it should be a combination. Just send Crests there by themselves might be a problem. Thank you. Are there any other questions we have for our guests? Seeing none, I'm gonna give our guests one more time before we, one more time, one more chance to give us any thoughts, remaining thoughts before we move them back into the attendees. I will start with Mary. Just one quick comment. And I don't think the town can enforce this, but I do think that people kind of tend to live up to the standard of where they are. And so if you introduce students to run down houses that look terrible, there's no incentive. And then those are often the problematic houses. And I think that, and I don't have any suggestions of how we can make landlords make their property look like you wanna respect it, but I went around looking for a friend for a rental and it was horrible. I mean, going into some of the houses that are being rented to students, they were dingy, dark, dangerous. You figured they probably had knob and tube wiring in them and there was no landscaping, houses are kind of unpainted. And you think, what's the incentive for somebody to respect that property? So I know the town probably can't do anything about that, but I do think that's one of the issues we're facing with some of the probably out of town landlords. I know that LLCs are buying up properties and they are probably people who have no investment in the town themselves. Most of us here I think are all local landlords who rent one or two properties and are very invested in the town and our neighbors. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mary. Sam. I guess I'd summarize by saying keep it simple if possible, focus on the problems. My opinions if it were me, I wouldn't wanna get between landlord and the tenant, that's me and I'd consider whether or not the desire is for more staff and inspection versus police versus fire versus school, which would be the tangible outcome. And the last thing would be the phase it in in terms of the compliance issues because there's apt to be a learning curve. My guess is the vast majority of property owners, just like the vast majority of residents in town will want to do the right thing, try to do the right thing. And this town has great staff and I think that flexibility will be beneficial in whatever transition occurs. And lastly, thank you all for working so hard on so many issues for so many hours. Thank you. Thank you, Sam. Shen, do you have any last comments you'd like to make? Oh, no, thank you. It is very helpful. Thank you. Thank you for coming, Shen. Renata. No, thank you for including us. And I echo that, keep it simple. We need less wording and less regulation and help with the difficulties. Inspection is okay when it's needed, when it's not needed, just a burden. Thank you. Thank you, Renata. I want to thank, I'm going to move these guests back into the attendees. As I do that, I want to thank Renata Shepard, Sam McLeod, Shen Gu, Mary Sayer, Tom Crossman, Patrick Kamens and Cinda Jones for coming and being willing to come in and give us their thoughts and have a conversation with us, however short it ended up being, but we appreciate you taking the time to do that. At this time, we're going to move on to just everyone in the community and we're going to stick at this point to the residential rental bylaw and regulations, not the public nuisance. So if you would like to make any comments, have any questions regarding the language and the proposal as it stands now, I'd like you to raise your hand. I will try to recognize everyone in turn. I want to recognize that I had prior told Pat and Tom that they would be recognized last after everyone else was because they were brought in with a conversation. So I'm not ignoring Pat with his hand up, but I will recognize him at the end because he has already had a chance to speak with us. So with that, we are opening the floor basically to anyone who would like to give us their thoughts and comments and I'm going to ask everyone to try and keep it to three minutes. I'm going to have a timer going, but I'll give a three minutes initially and I'll give people a little warning and then an ability to wrap up as we get closer to that time, but we hope to be able to hear from everyone who wants to speak tonight. So with that, I am going to, as I manage this, it says, Gold Richard, you should be able to unmute yourself right now. If you could, please state, after you unmute yourself, please state your name and make your comment or ask your question. Richard Gold, I've been a landlord in Amherst over 40 years. We bought our first property in 79. So we've dealt with thousands of tents, but never had a large number of units at the peak. I think we had 20 apartments down to one building with three apartments, but over the years we had occasion to deal with the town inspectors, backed up sewers. So we've experienced the usual kinds of problems and we've been very happy with the complaint-driven system. The tenants can find out that they can make complaints. The legal services is very helpful if a student has a problem. They'll refer them to make a complaint to the town. I think having an inspection of all the properties is gonna be a big waste of resources. The other concern I have is if you want listing of the names of occupants, that's gonna change every year, sometimes twice a year. That's gonna be a lot of bookkeeping. I think if you just contact the landlord, the landlord will know who the tenants are can give you the information of how to contact the tenants. That's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you, Richard. John W, please unmute yourself and state your name and make your comment or ask your question. Hi, thank you. John Roblesky, my wife and I owns a few properties along Main Street. We've been landlords pretty much like Mr. Golden and his wife since 1981. Now, one thing regarding the names and addresses and so forth, you may not be aware of this, but on January 5th, they got a request from the assistant town clerk for the names and dates of birth of every person three years of age or older as of January 1st. This is regarding any units of eight units or more. So the town does have that information or has the ability to get that through chapter 51 of the National General Laws. So maybe you can follow that up as far as the bigger units anyway. This whole thing, well, I can understand trying to address the problem properties. Like a few other people have said, I think that's where you got to go with this. And I think there's plenty of state laws and the rental registration that is currently in place seems to be working fairly well on the complaint-driven process. You're just creating more levels of bureaucracy, so to speak to gather information or enforce things that I think already have things in place in order to be enforced. And like one person said, a lot of the bigger units that are charging these crazy rents and I agree they're just ridiculous. My wife and I have tried to keep the rents lower below market rent, so to speak, for years and years. And we've developed a good rapport with our tenants and a lot of them have been long-term. And with all of these added expenses and all, like many people have said, there's not a lot of margin for profit. And when we're running rentals, this is a profit, a business rather. And when you're in business, it's in order to make a profit and have something to pass on. So I really just don't see the need for this. And if there are problem properties, Arizona Police Department in Amos for 22 years and I can understand what you're saying, but those are the people you go after. When there's a rotten apple in a barrel, you go after the rotten barrel. You don't punish the mass and add expenses that are gonna be passed on and lower that profit that we're trying to pass on. So I think you really gotta take a hard look at that and look at what's in place already, how it's been enforced and handle it that way rather than trying to add a lot of different things. And regarding the energy efficiency part of it, a lot of the newer buildings obviously are up to code, but when you get into the older buildings and you start adding insulation and tearing walls apart in order to do that, some of the older homes that don't have insulation, I just went through that on one of my units that I bought a little over a year ago. The second floor walls had no insulation at all. So they had to drill holes top and bottom on the inside because the outside has cement asbestos siding on it. So that whole process was $10,000 just to insulate one unit. So there's a lot of things that get involved about bringing things up to code and trying to make them energy efficient, but there really is a point where it just doesn't make sense to spend a lot of money in order to improve it a little bit type thing. So that whole energy thing has a lot of ball of wax attached to it where I think you can just end up being a big problem for smaller landlords especially. I think there's also part of the state law that when you start renovating or moving interior stuff that if you have like more than 30% of the floor area disturbed or living space, then you have to bring the whole unit up to the current code. So that's a tremendous expense. Maybe talk with Rob and the staff and try to meet some median point, but you take care of the problems. You don't try to pass it on to landlords who are trying to do the right thing. So I appreciate your time. I know you're in a tough situation and my wife and I thank you very much. Thank you. Kelly, you have your hand up. So I assume you have a question for John. I was just wondering if the gentleman who just spoke could spell his last name for the record. Thank you, John. Yeah, W-R-O-B-L-E-W-S-K-I. Thank you, John. Thank you. John Kinshla, please unmute yourself and state your name and make your comment or ask your question. Hi, my name is John Kinshla. I'm also a small landlord in town. I also have a landscaping business here and I've worked for a lot of different landlords through the years. And I think that a couple of things really need to be kept in mind with this proposed bylaw. First of all, there's quite a few landlords that are small and they rely on their properties as retirement income or additional income so if you're going to, they fall in sort of a unique class because if you're gonna ask them to do improvements to their properties, it could present a pretty serious hardship to them, especially an unplanned improvement like Mr. Robolesky was referring to the $10,000 of insulation. So every action has a reaction and the town's intentions are good but I think they have to be very careful about how much impact this has on landlords because if you push the small landlords out of business and they sell their properties, most likely it's going to be bought by somebody from out of town who may not take the same care and pride in the property. And I've seen this occur in my own business on the landscaping side. We'll have people buy properties from out of town and I'm familiar with that property on Harlow Drive. When you have people that live a good distance out of town, they're looking at that property as an income property, strictly an income property and they're just not as engaged as a small local landlord would be. So I would say tread lightly with this. The other thing that I would like to say is, well, first of all, I'd like to know, is there gonna be an opportunity for written comment or further verbal comments down the line? So you can always write the entire town council and that would go to all five of us. It's easier to just give you that email address. It goes to all 13 counselors which includes all five on the committee and that email address is town council at amherstma.gov and that will hit all 13 of us and those comments can be as specific as you want and related to just this. It's easier to give you that than to give you each of our five individual emails. So that's why I'm giving that. This is our third listening session. I'm not sure we're going to do another listening session specifically on this bylaw and regulations but we always have public comment at our community resource committee meetings which are generally the second and fourth, no, first and third meeting Thursdays of the month is generally when we have CRC meetings at 4.30 PM and they have been on Zoom and will continue to be on Zoom. So you can find the links on the town calendar. Okay, so that said, I do believe that the town does a pretty good job already of monitoring properties. I wish that there was a way for landlords to be more involved in the enforcement with their tenants because leases are simply a piece of paper. I know there's a misperception that a lease can be enforced entirely and quickly. And I think for the most part, if you've got tenants that are bent on not obeying the lease, it's very difficult as a landlord to enforce the lease. And it takes a lot of time and a lot of these tenants are here for a year or less. So it would be nice if the town figured out a mechanism where the landlords would be involved as well as the tenants in any type of action that would result in the tenants or the landlord being penalized. As far as putting the tenants information out in the public sphere, I would be opposed to that. But there are some good programs that the town has like the one that the police does where the tenants can report their party before they have it. I always encourage my tenants to do that. And maybe the town could model something along those lines with tenant behavior outside of Friday night parties. I think that something proactive that puts landlords and tenants in the town in a more beneficial situation, mutually beneficial situation would be good because a lot of these college kids, they just simply don't know how to live off campus and they don't even understand that their loud music can affect somebody that's five blocks away. You just simply don't know. So it's important to educate them to the highest degree possible. And I'd love to see something like that come out of this process. Because one thing I've realized in the few years that I've dealt with students is that if you don't explain everything and also think of everything that they might do wrong and explain that to them, then everything's just gonna go wrong. So you literally have to be a step ahead of them the whole way. And it would be really useful for the town to step in or the university and be a mediator or a partner with the landlords to modify the behavior of the students rather than having it just strictly be an enforcement model. So I'd love to write more comments and get my thoughts on paper. But I think that right now you're requesting quite a bit in fees and quite a bit in time. And in business, I say you can request my time or you can request my money but when you start asking for both you're really asking for a lot and really need to be careful about how far down the road you go with that. So those are my comments and I really do appreciate that you guys are doing this because I think that the perceived problems we have in town are real but they're also solvable and mostly through just working together and educating these students on how their behavior affects the people outside their four walls and striking some type of cooperative method sort of like that party registration program something that's cooperative that benefits everybody it would go a long way towards solving some of these issues. And I'll leave you with this one thing. I've been advised by the police in the past that if I observe a party like an out of control party at one of my own properties I can't even call the police and inform them. So people have this perception that landlords don't do anything that's not necessarily the case. And a lot of times we can't do anything and we're just in the middle and we're trying to maintain a good relationship with the tenants so that we don't fight about crazy things and lose that kind of common ground but we're also trying to work with the town and help the community that way. So thank you for your time. Thank you, John. Next up is a Fulmer one. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Hi, thank you for taking my comments. So my name is Andy Fulmer, F-U-L-M-E-R. I own my two of my best friends and I have been landlord since 2003. We own three rental houses in Amherst. A couple of comments, I agree with really all the callers here. It feels like the town is trying to solve the problem of the couple of bad apples that are spoiling the bunch. I am a believer that a good landlord takes care of their properties, they take care of their tenants, they make sure that their properties are safe, good for the tenants to live in. And unfortunately, I think you're hearing from all of the good landlords in town at this meeting. And I think we all have the best intentions and this by-law just feels like it's kind of punishing the masses for the sins of a few. One other comment I would make too is one of the, if I'm reading correctly, there's a piece in the by-law that says a voicemail has to be responded to within an hour. That, so personally, this is an investment property that the three of us own, the three houses, we all have day jobs. As much as we were in constant contact with our tenants, well, one hour response time is probably impossible. So I would hope that the town would, I hope that the committee would possibly change that. So, but I appreciate everybody's time. Thank you, Andy. Next up is Dorothy Pam. Please unmute yourself and make your comment or ask your question. Okay, I do agree with the last speaker that the good landlords show up but I think that they've offered many helpful suggestions. One of the things I believe that I've been told that the fee structure as it presently exists does not support hiring more inspectors and we need more inspectors. So that's one thing though, how much and whatever that's not up to me to suggest. And how the inspection is related to behavior, certainly overcrowding can lead to bad behavior and rundown housing, as people said, can lead to bad behavior because there's a feeling of anything goes. So the houses that often cause a lot of bad behavior are ones where there are too many people living in the house but I did have a question. The town inspectors cannot do a surprise inspection. They must inform the owner of the inspection ahead of time. Is that true or can they do a surprise inspection? I believe, we don't have Rob here to answer that question but I believe if there is a complaint coming in that could potentially be a life hazard type complaint that the inspectors are allowed to go in without sort of that 48 hour notice but I don't want to quote me on that. I know when they do not get permission, Rob has talked about needing to go into court to get the warrant and all to get that permission from the court if they don't get permission. But I do think there's some circumstances where they might be able to sort of inspect near immediately but I think it has to be some very serious fire hazard type things. I think you're probably right. So I was thinking of if you have give notice then the excess tenants above the bylaw could hide the bed on the front room couch and all of that stuff. So we've certainly seen today that this is very complex and I would suggest that I'm not being facetious that we do create an honor roll for good landlords and that they get a certificate that can be posted in their properties and that can be maybe in the paper now and then. We have to, you guys are putting together this very complex bylaw but we do need to find some way to honor the good landlords who showed up here tonight. So I expect that you'll make many changes and adjustments in the rules but I hope that many of the thrusts of your proposal will go through. Thank you. Thank you, Dorothy. Thank you. Thank you. So I love you. Please unmute yourself and make your comment. Hi, yes. You're like shepherd. I've been a landlord for a little while. And I have a, I actually get to meet all the. Tenants that I have and we go through the rules. five colleges and all, we should spend more time educating these young people that we call the students that make noise to not make noise. I mean, there's moments and times, you know, I'm a parent, I have, you know, four kids. But I don't believe my tenants are going to be my kids. So, you know, we tell them everything that they need to know. And, and then there's the, you know, the natural consequences of their actions. I find that interesting. What is it that we're trying to accomplish with these new rules? And one of the things that I'm seeing happening, at least on my side as a landlord is my fixed costs are going to be going up taxes, fees, so on and so forth. The probably occasional fix that's going to be just like, you know, health insurance is going to be out of this world to, you know, make it happen. And it is, I mean, I call it my bread and butter, you know, we use some of the money to eat and pay for some things. So, there's so many rules and regulations. I've been to housing court. And if you just look at everything that you have to do to just be able to be okay as a landlord in this state, I mean, the tenant, as soon as they take hold of the keys, that's their property. We can't just do anything just out of the blue. So it has to be on the lease. So I think we're, I find that there's, I kind of feel like there's more bureaucracy happening here and more hoops to go through. And these, you know, are, you know, add time and money to do it. And the other thing that I thought, I mean, one of the comments that I'd like to make that's about the fee, you know, $100 and then $250. I mean, you know, we have to have a little reality happening here with what's happening around us. On top of that, I understand this is a very complex and hard thing to resolve. We have ways of resolving it. But one of the things that come to mind is for housing for, I'm sorry, I just, I just lost the ear for a second. Hold on a second. No problem. Low income housing. There's no such things as low income housing. If I, I have friends from work that this year they got a lease of $1,000 for a studio. And they are afraid that their next lease, they're going to have to move out of Amherst because it's going to go up a lot. Okay. And maybe they're going to get a, try to go to the voucher system. But that doesn't, doesn't say anything about all these fixed costs that are going up and up and up. And it is going to come out in there. And they're, they're going to have to pay for it. And eventually five years from now, what we're going to see is just student housing because those are the ones that are going to be, the only ones that are going to be able to afford it because they're like, oh, okay, to live off, off campus is going to cost me so much. So I'll just get alone and do that. I'm just trying to find out if what we're really trying to do and the hoops that are we putting in place, are we educating or penalizing? And the other thing is, who is it that is going to be able to afford to live in Amherst? How is it going to look like in five years from now? That's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you, Eli. Patrick, Heymans, please unmute yourself and make your comment. Hello. Yep, we can hear you. Yep, back to me. Thanks. So it must be at the end. So just, um, Manny Jo, you had asked a couple of questions. I'm not sure they're answered. I think John answered a good one of the bit was, yes, Mass General Law says any aid or unit we have to give to the town clerk by January 1st. So the town does have that information. Also, when we put in the rental registration the first time, the landlords must provide to the town the list of the tenants upon 48 hours or something like that. So, so yes, they do have the ability to get who lives there. And as I mentioned before, anyone that has been fined has been fined. There was no problem collecting it and it did. So I think that is a key piece because I think that is a good piece of how to curb the behavior in the neighborhoods. Shallie, you asked a question about educating and things on the town produced a handout that every landlord is supposed to give to their tenants upon moving in. So maybe part of the rental registration you put in there that here it is, make sure your tenants have this. It's just like a bullet list of XYZ, just like you would mention because, right, the leases are pretty lengthy, but there's a bullet point that the rental registration or town wanted the tenants to know. So it is in place already. So maybe part of rental registration is to remind the landlords to give that. And then someone just asked about a surprise inspection. So yeah, the master in a lot is not allowed inspector just to go in whenever they want, landlords or inspectors or what have you, without proper notice. And less like Mandy Joel mentioned, you know, if the place is on fire, of course, they can go in and put out the fire. But yeah, that's why Rob's always saying is I need to get an enforcement order or get something through the court. So I just want to answer those questions from you folks. And then the other one thing I had for you Mandy Joe was how do you make the so it's trickier with the students to get fine because they may leave their apartments. But the non students, that's their home. So you know, you can send you can send the mail or whatever to the actual apartment address because it's their home. So those are the things I want to answer for you guys. Thank you, Patrick. Sam McLeod, please unmute yourself and make your comment or your statement or your question. I did not intend to have my hand. Sorry about that. Thank you again. And Peter, please unmute yourself and then state your full name and make your comment or ask your question. Peter, you should be able to unmute yourself now. Peter, if you'd like to speak, you'll need to unmute yourself. I have hit the button to formally ask Peter a couple of times to unmute himself. So we are going to move on to Tom Crossman. And please unmute yourself and make a comment. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Yeah, I just I just the thing that keeps coming back to my mind is trying to gain further information before trying to implement this rental registration. Again, we had heard numbers that were published that they were looking to raise an additional $475,000 annually to support more staff. The size of the pool in the survey was 277. However, I believe we do have north of 5,000 rental units. So yeah, I don't think we even hit 10% surveyed. And then so 35 or 46% of the tenants that respond, which I think you mentioned there was 77 tenants that responded. So it looks like about 30 of them were dissatisfied. So we're less than 1% of the entire rental portfolio that exists in the community of Amherst is saying that they don't like or they they feel that their housing is substandard. I do think that we have the channels in place today to look into though that 1%. And the reason why I'm reiterating my concerns is that, you know, this is what we do for a livelihood and to tax us landlord to another $475,000 through this rental registration and regulations. It puts a strain on the capital that we have to deploy towards landscaping services, snow removal services, HVAC plumbing, electrical, all of the services that we need to keep these houses adequate. You're essentially draining a portion of that, which makes it even more difficult to provide adequate housing. So that's why I keep coming up and echo some sentiment that was iterated before. Why don't we focus on what we have in place and target the problem areas that exist? Because from the survey size, I do think that it is the, you know, the people that have something to say that speak up. But if it's only 77 tenants in a community that probably has north of 20,000 tenants, I think we're doing pretty good in terms of the housing stock that we're providing for the people who come to our community. So I don't think we necessarily need to implement another rental registration that makes it harder to provide that adequate housing stock. That's it for this evening from me. Thanks again, everybody. I appreciate it. I know that you have a hard task in front of you and you're trying to do the best you can to represent your districts that elected you into this position. So good luck. Thank you, Tom. There are no more hands for this portion of our agenda. It is 9.13 p.m. We've been here for a little over two hours or approximately two hours from the time we called the meeting to order. So I believe that is probably then enough for the evening that we're not going to move on to the public nuisance bylaw. As we move forward with that, we'll probably look at scheduling another listening session or maybe an extended time during one of the meetings to hear from people regarding the nuisance house public nuisance bylaw and our work on that. But for now, I want to point out that the agenda for the evening had the full set of reports, the raw reports, I will say, for the Engage Amherst Rental Permitting Survey. So this is just the download of the data. The charts come with the downloads. There are full sets of them that one of them I think is over a thousand pages long that is by respondent or by response. And then there are shorter ones if you'd just like to see the people who answered the first question that they were tenants or that they were landlords or that they were neighbors of rental units or that they were property owners that rent houses landlords and also neighbors of rental units. We've put some shorter ones in there so that people can look at some of those directly. But the link to that set of that folder with those documents is in the agenda. So I wanted to point that out. The next agenda previews are just guesses. The February 16th agenda is actually we will not be dealing with the public nuisance bylaw. We will actually be dealing with rental registration instead, along with the preview of the other one. Is there anything else the committee has before I adjourn the meeting? Seeing none, I want to thank everyone who has come, who has spoken, who has been here to listen to see where we are. I was looking at the attendees through the whole thing and I think we maxed out at about 50 or so, close to 50 attendees for tonight's session. We still have 30 in the audience. So thank you all. Thank you to those who were willing to come in and join us for small conversations about everything. Pam? Yeah, I'd like to reiterate that we look forward to seeing written comments if people have additional thoughts. And if you weren't in a position to speak tonight, doesn't mean you can't write in. So we look forward to that. Thank you. Thank you for that reminder. And again, you can write to the whole town council at the email address town council at amherstma.gov that will hit all 13 of us, including all five members of this committee. So with that, I'm going to adjourn the meeting at 9 15 p.m. Thank you all and have a nice night.