 Okay, so we'll get started. Let's see the first thing that we have on the agenda is announcements. I have to this. And I'll, does anybody else have an announcement? I haven't announced it. Okay, go first. Okay. There are two more or less retirements that have taken place in the last week. First, Nate Barrington is no longer on the Community Preservation Act committee. He's been on, I guess, for two terms the last six years. And he's been chair for the last two years. And he's really been a great supporter of affordable housing for us. And, you know, he's certainly favored the things that we've favored money for the housing trust. Support of money for 132 more camped and road. And that's both in the AC meetings and also before town council. So I don't know who succeeds in mind, much or whether they've had a vote yet, but I do know that Nate's often will certainly miss them. And the other retirement that I wanted to mention is Joanne Campbell. After 20 years as executive director of Valley Community Development. And I guess two more years on staff. She is taking retirement. And I think that's very significant for us and for Hampshire County and others in the Pioneer Valley. So Joanne has provided great leadership over the years. In addition to working with Laura to spearhead the work at Amherst studio apartments 132 North Hampton Road. She also was involved in developing a family housing development in Amherst. I think it was 12 years ago. She's also been a great source of wisdom and advice for me. And, you know, she's participated. Certainly some of our meetings. And also meetings of the Amherst housing coalition. So I'm definitely going to miss Joanne. There is a new executive. Director Jane Lock here. Who has appeared on some of the calls with the board of appeals. So we welcome. But no question that we're miss. Joanne. So those were two things I wanted to mark. I don't know if anybody else wants to say anything about Joanne or Nate. I mean, Tom, you've known Joanne for longer, much longer than I have. She's an amazing. Who's been like. This leader for the area. Just a really. Nice. Calm. And. Hard working. Affordable housing. That place was. Pretty chaotic. She. She took a lot of time. And she turned it into a very, very effective. Agency. So. She. Thanks. Nate, you said you had an announcement also. Yeah. I had a call today with mass housing. They have. It's been, they haven't a relatively new program. It's been around for six or eight months or so. They call it, I guess like their Commonwealth builder program. It's for workforce housing for home ownership is what they were looking at. And. They have 60 million for the program. And they still have a fair amount of money still to give out. And you have to be either a gateway city. Or a qualified census tract. Or I guess the city of New York. But. Amherst has qualified census tracks. And so they were just, they've reached out to every community that could. I guess possibly qualify. And they asked if, you know, they, we just talked about it. And I had some information sent to me this evening, but. You know, You know, they're looking at like a 20 to 30 minimum 20 to 30. Minimum a unit home ownership project. And. I thought the East street school could be. Something that might be relevant. You know, it's up to $150,000 subsidy per unit. It's a, it's actually at the closing. So it's, you know, developer would still need to take out construction loans, but then there would be a. Repayment at the time of closing. And then they only ask for a 15 year deed restrictions. They're trying to build equity. So the program really started to. Advance home ownership and equity and. Minority populations and populations that don't typically have home ownership. So. You know, I don't know if it's something that could work in Amherst, but. It seems like they're. They said they probably have, you know. I don't know. A third of it is probably in projects already. Some of it is, you know, really perspective projects. And so. They're looking to get projects going. So, you know, whether or not it's an Amherst, but. It's up to 120% AMI. And. Like I said, only a 15 year deed restriction. And you can combine it with other funding, you know, but then you'd have to lower the AMI. So. And they're really hoping to get projects that are already through the zoning process. So. So. You know, it's okay if we have something that might be a year or two out, but. I just thought that we could have a future discussion if we think it's. A project that's worthwhile. It can't fund a home ownership program where, you know, they give out grants to different first time home buyers, but. I asked that. I thought that'd be a better way to go. Amherst, if we could get $10 million and whatever $3 million and do home ownership, but it doesn't work that way. Well, if not East street, maybe strong street. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. They do, you know, condos or, you know, any type of home ownership unit can be mixed rental and home ownership, but they would just, you know, subsidize the home ownership. Okay. Well, great. That's good news. Okay. The next item is review of minutes from June 11th. I sent those out. I think earlier this week. Or maybe earlier than that. So does anybody have any comments on the minutes? And they'll be accepted as submitted. No comments. Okay. Yeah. I have a comment. Oh. In the discussion about one 32. With Hampton road. I think Laura. Invited us or implied that, that we were welcome to help. Come up with a name for the. For the house. Yep. That's right. I forgot about that. And are you saying that's not reflected the way you want it to be? Or. I don't think I see it at all. Maybe I just missed it. Not right. I mean, it's not a big deal. Yeah. You don't have a name tonight. Do you? No, I don't. I think that's good. I can add that sentence to the notes. I'll make sure that's in there. That's what we want to do. Okay. Thanks, John. Okay. So with that amendment, I think we'll accept the minutes as submitted. And we're ready to move on to the discussion of. The general public opinion of the. Amherst COVID-19 emergency rental assistance grant program. And as people know, I invited Janet. Janna is the assistant director for community services. For community action, pioneer Valley. And she is the person primarily responsible. So I asked Jana to do a few things, including introducing the program. And then beyond that, there are a few open issues I think we could discuss. And also we should go over the work that we've done today on marketing the program and see if people have any other ideas. So I think that's the main focus of this agenda item. It's probably our biggest agenda item. So with that, I think I'll give Jana the floor. Right. Hi, everybody. So you have the flyer here in front of you. And I think John forwarded the application earlier today that we, yeah, there it is. So it's, I mean, so the program guidelines are, you know, basically what the town of Amherst asked us to do. So you need to live in Amherst, you need to be a renter, you can be of any immigration status, you need to have reduced or no income due to COVID-19 since April 1. Either living in subsidized housing, have a Section 8 voucher, have an MRVP voucher, be currently receiving raft, except if you're receiving raft for utility support. We are following the low income housing tax credit rules around students. I can't be entirely comprised of college students. There are exceptions to that. So if you were a single parent full time student and your children are full time students and that would be, or, you know, your school age children, that would be fine. You can have sufficient, you have to have insufficient income to pay your rent for three months. There's income limits. We're going to do a lottery and preference will be given to families with children under the age of 18. I will say that we are off to a great start. I'm actually, I was a little surprised. We've gotten 26 applications since Monday at 3pm. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty, pretty exciting. Of the 26, 22 of them are complete. Four of them are partial. So what I realized is happening is if you go, and this may have happened to any of you who went to look at the online application, if you go on to the online application, and you either start filling it out or you even just look at it. And then you close your browser. The online platform we're using then counts that as a partial application. So I have four as a 4pm I have four that are partial. Some of them. Clearly, you know, wrote their first name and then in email address and then close the browser. So I don't think that those folks even actually know that they submitted an application so we I need to contact them. I mean, it included me, Jenna. I mean, it included me this morning because I kept thinking, why is this happening. I looked at it too, I think so on Mondays. I did too, but I didn't write anything anywhere. So I don't know, maybe didn't count that. I'm more blank. So I meant to look to see if I could change a setting so that would stop happening just because it's, I mean, it's fine but it's a little confusing. Of the so of the 26, three of them so far appear to be ineligible I have two that live in subsidized housing. And one that lives in leverage. So I will follow up with them. The good news on the people who live in subsidized housing are good news bad news is that they, they, they appear to owe rent, owe back rent but community action has a whole lot of other money that we can spend on those folks and so we can just contact them. And let them know they're ineligible for this program but can actually then most likely assist them with some other that we have so I think that's that'll be fine. And, oh, let me see five of them, which is what's most interesting to me, just looking at the ones that we've gotten is only five people are behind in their rent. We have a lot of proactive folks which is great. But I was surprised I thought more people would be behind there's definitely a lot of comments about people worried that their unemployment is going to end. So, I think this, you know, is perhaps what you all were thinking about when you designed this program is that it really could help folks who aren't behind maybe not get behind or, you know, help keep them afloat longer. So we, yeah, so we've worked out some of our procedures about how we're going to handle this. Again, the volume is a bit higher than I expected in the first three days. But we have staff working to contact the completed application folks. The way that it works is we fill out the online application it doesn't ask you to submit anything. And so we have a program called share file that's a Citrix program that we've been using for our other programs that you send basically an email to the applicant that said with a link for them to upload for example their pay stub or their, you know, their documentation of their related income loss or reduction so we have staff that are basically dedicated to this project that are going to be contacting those folks some people also have some some you know there's some questions missing on their application so we just need to clarify. One person has 11 million dollars and listed as income and I think that that's just a fantastic. Yeah, it is. And then it's like, okay, that's clearly wrong. So, you know, sometimes, you know, when you people are filling it out themselves they make mistakes and so we just need to make sure that we know we have all the correct information. And so all these applications started, they've been submitted online, right, so they, they've been. Right, so we haven't, I don't think as of today have had any requests for the paper applications we've gotten some calls. We've now at the top of the online application it says in Spanish if you need assistance with the application to call community action and we have bilingual staff that can help folks. Either do it with them over the phone and translate into Spanish or we'll figure out how to get those folks the application. And that yeah though that's I mean I've seen john sent it out a lot of places so that's clearly working. It popped up on my Facebook feed in several places already. I mean that's my update and I'm happy to answer questions or other concerns that folks have. I'll just say quickly that you know we, the town put it on, you know, our website and our Facebook page, we emailed every, every landlord who's registered for the rental program so you know, this week, you know to, I don't know how many hundreds of landlords should have received it this week. I know some have they've emailed back so that hit a lot of people. Yeah. Great. I got a question. This is said for our non English speakers. You did say that you do have Spanish speakers but as we know, in Amherst, you know we have came both in Vietnam means the ocean Portuguese we have all these other folks who don't speak English, you know when I took a look at the application, I understand why you need all that information but when you first look at it again, you can look over well right. Because I think it's like six or seven pages. So for our non English speakers outside of Spanish, what kind of help is there for them. Um, so we can actually has a contract or account with the language line. I think that that is probably what we would do if we had folks who were speaking on something other than Spanish. We have the language line to probably, we have the application, the staff have it in a fillable form, so they could go through the application with the person on the phone, which could be time. But I'm open to other suggestions if there's other community organizations that we could work with to help with translation. I'm happy to reach out to them. And on the Amherst webpage, you know, the way we embed text is that if someone uses Google translate or if they have a software that they can it translates everything to their native language and I think we accommodate up to 80 languages so I don't think the software program does the same thing so if someone you know because it's it's it's different when you're in this when you're in the application it's not you know like the webpage it's the software so I don't I don't know if they would offer a way to do that so. I can look into that. Yeah. Thanks. That way you don't have to, you know, translate over the phone it's you know if someone has technical difficulties you could, you know, but, you know, I worked with our it on that so whatever we put on our website can be translated I guess pretty easily I don't know how clean it is like I don't know how accurate it is. It's a different language. It's fairly accurate, you know, I do, I check the Portuguese translation is it's fairly accurate. It's not 100%, but it gets a point across let's put it this way you're done. Good. Yeah, sometimes we're told not to. Yeah, sometimes if it notices that something we want on the web page is either like, you know, compound sentences or something that may be difficult to translate to the web now so. I was just wondering where else. I mean it went to landlords went to programs I wonder if there's any like just general public outreach and papers or any other what other kinds of outreach things have happened if if they have. Yeah, it will probably be in the bulletin. I just made a note to myself I had meant I thought I'd emailed it all a double check to the Amherst human service network into COSA to the Hampshire Council of Service agencies. And that'll hit a pretty broad, you know, a lot of agencies can then have that information. Community health center. They're part of I think the human service network, the Amherst human service network but yeah, they just make sure. Yeah. The process of doing a mailing, not specifically for this but just in general of all of the programs, sort of coven related programs that community action has. And we were sending out 2800 postcards, I think they went out today, not specifically in Amherst but I think the Amherst there's like at least 200 families on the Amherst list, using our fuel assistance database so that will also hit people some people directly at home. I know that I've emailed and I might send out some more emails to like family outreach of Amherst. I told Laura Reichman to Amherst community connections whaling to Craig stores Kevin Noonan, and also to the Amherst tenant assistance program run by Julie Federman and Nancy Schroeder. So those are all places I've emailed. I also emailed to the Amherst schools, they run a meal distribution program for poor families. I sent it to two people who have responsibility for that program. My hope is that they will take the online form, print it and distribute it with food to people who come to the six or eight locations where these meals are available. I don't have any good feedback from that but I hope so. Mindy Dom has also distributed on her Facebook sites and on Twitter. There was something else. Did it go to the survival center. Did the survival center get it somehow. Lev is on my mailing list. Lev Benesra so I'm sure she got it on the other hand one of my mailing list or notes to left kick back and said that she's away till July 20. And I'm not quite what we emailed today so I think she knows about it. Yeah, well she might have been away today because that's when I got a kickback. Maybe if you talk to Kelly, she'll know somebody else there who can be responsible for making sure it gets distributed at the Amherst survival center. Right. I mean I'm hoping to email to the landlords. You know, I'm hoping they'll approach their tenants, you know with it we don't. I mean, I don't know how that works but like I said a few were interested in it and they had follow up questions or something so at least we know I know it went out but I'm really hoping that we'll get you know landlords interested. Yeah, I actually got an email a couple of weeks ago from a small Amherst landlord who has two tenants that she believes are eligible for the program. And I did send her an email with the announcement. We'll probably get something back from her tenants. I don't know if there are any other ideas that we haven't mentioned that people think we could use. Yeah, I don't have a particular thing in mind I wonder if there are any, I can't think of them offhand but if there are any immigrant support organizations, for instance that we could make sure get a copy. Are there any Americans? Is that is there an office in Amherst for Center for New Americans? Yeah, they're part of the Amherst Human Service Network so they would see that you know just thought when you said that I thought of community legal aid. You know they might not be, they should, I should probably contact them directly. The Amherst Senior Center is also on my mailing list. The director and one of the staff members. He said this but we could also reach out to Massachusetts Job Jobs with Justice, they might have a few ideas or be able to distribute among their network. Okay, good idea well thanks. How about churches, the churches and synagogue. I was gonna say the exact same thing Rita. At least a half a dozen of those, the pastors or somebody else is on my email list. I'm not sure whether it's enough, but it includes at least half a dozen churches and Amherst. Maybe we could do it a little bit more systematically. Make sure we don't leave anybody out. And the JCA. The ACA is on my list, Judas Wayne is on my list. The rabbi. I'm not sure the mosque in Hadley is on my list. I don't know if I have an email for that. Anybody has contact there. That would be another to. I think I could, I think I could get it through a circuitous route but I think I could get it there if you. Yeah, I could get it there. Okay, good Carol thanks. I just emailed it to the, the Amherst Pellum neighbor to neighbor group. Oh, yeah. I do think if John right if John I saw John's email to the schools and lunch program I mean that's if that goes out that'll be. You know, reach a lot of families to directly. I don't know how they would, you know, if they send an email out but that'd be a good one. I don't, yeah, I don't have too much else. I mean, I guess I can email a few more places and we can see what happens. It seems like the words out there who already received 26 application or 22 or whatever. As of right now I'm not worried, but it could slow I mean sometimes you get a lot in the beginning and then it slows down. So, yeah. That's what you would expect. But I at the level that it's funded we kind of guessed that it could serve as much as 80 households, maybe even more depending on how many are family family versus single. Okay, there were a couple of issues that have come up that I thought we would talk a little bit about seek everybody's advice on these. One has to do with the fact that there are several pieces of demographic information that are requested on the application. And Nate raised the concern that that might be a barrier to some households and applying either because it introduced the level of complication or they were reluctant to answer those questions. And as a consequence, they, they might not complete that information. Jana, on the other hand, just speaking for her for a minute, said that community Action Pirate Valley uses that information on all of their programs or maybe virtually all of their programs. And it's part of information they need on reporting to the federal and state government about who enrolls in their programs. And so, even though this is a separate program from Amherst, they still would follow that that procedure. I was wondering whether or not you could allow people to simply skip those, and it would show up as missing data, but you wouldn't necessarily tell people that they could skip it so that very few would end up not filling it out since it would be present there. Usually with an online application, if you skip an item, the application will say, oh, you miss this, you've got to get this, it's a required field. So, those are the concerns, if you like, that have gone back and forth between Nate, Jana and myself. The other options would be to say, okay, we're keeping them all in, they're all required. Another would be to drop them all. So what do people think about those questions. I can also just clarify to on what, so the way that the online application is is set up. Race. So these are all listed as required fields race has a decline. Oh yeah, military status I made not required. I could add decline to the other ones and so people could not they could choose not to answer ethnicity. Primary language is kind of important for us to be able to communicate. But I could, I could make the other ones. I could make it. I mean that one. I have mixed feelings about why we ask it in general. But I so and I work status included for the head of household because again I feel like that's actually sort of helpful information for the program to know, you know what they check off but my concern about keep putting them all is not required is that then people will skip them entirely. I would add a decline so that folks could just choose it not to answer them if they didn't want to. That seems fair to me then you me so you know that someone looked at it they had to see it, but they can decide that I don't really want to answer this but you know that they decided that they didn't just miss it. Not see it there or something so you as long as there's an active ability to say I don't want to answer this seems okay to me. Is that for the items that Jenna described where she would include that or for all of the items Carol in your mind. I would probably go either way, especially the ones that already have something like that there are you like sexual whatever it is you can say other race you can say you decline. I wasn't thinking about this when I ever looked at it first time so. And it may not be an issue. I mean I didn't realize that some of the things were to say decline so I do kind of like that option that means they actively had to answer the question as opposed to not knowing if they skipped it or missed it. I will say on gender. I can't, I can leave it other I can't put decline. I have a database. I have to have first name last name date of birth and gender in order to put like those are the four unique identifiers that the agency uses to not duplicate people. So that one would be really hard for me to have decline. But you can have other. Yeah. I could also add other things if people wanted it to not say other but to say other categories. Well, I mean I know for the race, the HUD has those, you know, odd, you know, categories and so, you know, when we for some of our agency sometimes a lot of them come back and a lot of others just checked because, you know, either they're comfortable or they, you know, how do you, you know, if you can only check one. I mean, I think the, yeah, as long as the trust doesn't feel like it would be a, you know, a barrier I just didn't want, you know, applicants to become ineligible if they feel uncomfortable answering one or two of these demographic questions and so you know we as a trust we had never discussed that. And I just, you know, just now we can now I just want to make sure that we're, you know, we wouldn't be excluding, you know, potential applicants. Any other discussion? It looks like Mindy, Mindy Dom's an attendance that she has her hand raised. Oh, okay. Welcome Mindy. Mindy, you can unmute yourself, you'll be able to speak. Hello, can you hear me? Mindy, thank you for, I'm thrilled to be here and kind of listen in on the implementation of this incredible, wonderful program. You're fading out. Can you hear me better now? I'm going to be right on top of my computer. For gender I was going to suggest if it's possible with the community action database that the third option should be an X. And the reason why I'm suggesting that is that I actually have legislation in the state around creating a non-binary option on state applications and forms. Currently, the RMV uses an X for a third non-binary option for gender on driver's licenses. So instead of other, we could conceivably put an X, and that would allow people who consider themselves non-binary to see that they're represented in those options. That's all I have to say. Thank you. I'm really grateful to have the opportunity to listen in. Thanks Mindy and thanks for distributing this to your network. My pleasure. I wanted to tell you, I think I texted you, John. I've also sent it to other elected officials and the United Way. And I think that you may want to also include the housing court in the places that you send it to. Okay, good idea. I'm going to agree with Mindy with regard to gender, but I'm really torn with having it all be voluntary in terms of putting in there or not. I mean, certainly decline is an option, but I think it's important also maybe it needs to be said there somewhere that we want to ensure representation and that's why we want some of this information. Because we also want to make sure we're targeting or that we're including, I don't like the word targeting sorry, including as many members from our community as possible. And if we're not reaching them, I think then, you know, we have to rethink how we're doing this. Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, sometimes we'll let service agencies do what we have a lot of funding is say that, you know, we encourage them but it's not required but I think on the online application I guess it's maybe you don't have the ability, I don't know if there's an ability to write, you know, like a disclaimer in or something or like, you know, used for grant reporting only or, you know, stays in house, I mean, you know, just, I think sometimes we get questions like, you know, does this get reported to federal authorities? Most part it's no, it doesn't. So I don't know if there's a way to look at that on the application just so it eases people's apprehensions if there are any. No, I think I can tell I think that's a great idea. I can do that. I can send, I'll draft up a sentence or two and then I can send it to John and Nate to just make sure that it's capturing what you want it to say but Okay. Okay, I want to move on to another item. We all agreed that a letter should be sent out to landlords, asking them if they would match or contribute in some way to additional rent forgiveness beyond the emergency rental assistance program. And both Dana and Nate, I believe, said that we really should have some kind of form that the landlord sends back to us if they are going to do rent forgiveness. I, on the other hand, were thinking, why do we want to add other paperwork to this program? And so I wasn't sure that we needed to do that but really just have some informal process where landlords could email back their response. So I guess I'm willing to be outvoted by Jana and Nate unless somebody else has a thought about this. I just want to clarify that I actually was suggesting that we give them a sample lease addendum that they could use because I feel like if I was the landlord, I wouldn't want to just have like a verbal agreement with my tenant that I've reduced their rent for three months. They, you know, the lease is going to say that they owe that money. And so if there was a way to say, oh, and you can use this, here's a sample lease addendum that you could sign and have your tenant sign and attach to your lease that reduces the rent for those three months so that they feel like their lease is still valid. And it would save them the time of actually like writing up their own lease addendum, because I think they would not want to do that. Nate, would that satisfy you? Yeah, no, I think, you know, I thought, I, yeah, I think the lease addendum is fine. I mean, I think, you know, along those lines is just to have some, you know, formal way of that of kind of documenting that otherwise it's, you know, you know, a landlord might just say yes, maybe they think that means they would get, it would help them win the lottery for their tenant or something. I don't know, right? Or I'm not sure why they would if they wouldn't, but I mean, I think there was like a, you know, one page addendum that seemed pretty simple. It was like filling the blanks if a landlord is willing to and it was pretty generic and easy. I guess it seems important to me is there's some place where there's a record of the agreement so that you can't have either the tenant or the landlord come back and say, I never said that. You really owe it even though I said you didn't or whatever. Just so, just so there is some way to go back if there becomes something unclear later about, well, what did you really mean? I thought we didn't have to pay any more rent forever and no or whatever, you know, it just seems like it would be useful to both parties to have some record of whatever the agreement was. Okay. Well, I was going to say, so we're going to send the landlord an agreement, right, that says we agree that this person's our tenant, and that we're going to accept this amount of money from the town of Amherst for these X amount of months. If you could also then send them the, you know, at the city we could have then also say if you're going to reduce your rent for those three months with your tenant, send us back a copy of your lease addendum with your contract. So let's hold up the process necessarily and have them then take a long time but I feel like my experience with landlords is you really only get one chance to get the documents back and it's usually when you are, they are waiting to get money from you. So if we pay them, I think we're giving, they're getting less incentives to return something. So if we are trying to sort of get it all at once and sort of wrap it up and then they don't have to talk to us again, you know, every month, then that might be an incentive for them to return. I apologize if there's any landlords on the phone but sometimes, you know, it's just easier if they are looking for your payment. So we also want to provide an incentive for them to be recognized by the town as being part of this program. So I think we want to collect their names as well and maybe not how much, you know, we don't necessarily want to publish how much they forgave but a cumulative amount of forgiveness seems like it would be something positive to publish. Yeah, I think that's a good idea Rob. Well, we'll work something out with Jana that includes the addendum, but also lets them know in the letter that we do intend to publish the names of landlords who have put in their own rent forgiveness but not the amounts. Great. Okay, there are only a couple of other things that I wanted to mention. You might want to talk about this. There is apparently an avenues from the state or federal cares program where the state will end up reimbursing us for 200 of the $250,000 that we've agreed to put into this program. Is that correct Nate. Yeah, it may be all of it. I think, you know, we're, you know, the, you know, just from talking with the finance director and accounting in town, you know, this is, you know, this really is in response to COVID so it's not as if, you know, I mean we say it, you know, we say it seems like we can get reimbursed through that. So, you know, if we were just doing a rental program, and it wasn't so directly related to the loss of income because of COVID it wouldn't, it would be harder to be, you know, reimbursed but I really think that this seems eligible so I've sent information to different staff who I think then conferred with, you know, I don't know what agency they're working with, but it seems like this is eligible for reimbursement so, you know, we do have to, the town has to pay out first and then we would request reimbursement at some later but yeah I think we may even be able to recoup the whole cost 200,000 was originally for what was thought was the rental subsidy amount but I even think the full cost can be recouped we're still working on that. Okay that's great. It also means that after we get through with phase one and we look at what we've learned. If we want to expand the program and continue it into another phase. Then we would probably have the resources to do it, whether we get reimbursed for that second phase or not. So I think that's very good news. Yeah I think the only caveat there is we need to spend the money by the end of the calendar year, which I think you know I don't think will be a problem but Right, we should be able to do that. And could I just clarify calendar year being December? Correct, yeah not fiscal year but just I think calendar year is what I was told. Two other items to mention. Wayfinders has just announced a new expanded raft program that people can apply for. It's actually a new state program again I believe using federal money but I'm not quite sure. In any event, it's broader than our program in a number of ways. The one that I particularly recall is that it would include mortgage payments, not just rental subsidies but also mortgage payments. And that will be a first come first serve program. There aren't population or other priorities for it. I believe those applications are probably now available online. It's a statewide program but in the Pioneer Valley, it's run by Wayfinders. So it's possible we'll have some people applying to both programs which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I don't know quite how you would handle that, Janet, but it would be a possibility. We ask them if they're currently receiving raft but we don't have to receive applied. So when we send the landlord verification out to the landlord asking, you know, saying, asking them to sign off, we do ask, you know, are they receiving assistance from anywhere else. So sometimes if there is a lag from when they apply to us and then let's say they got approved by raft and raft paid something. Then presumably the landlord would know and if that was the case then, you know, we would perhaps reduce what we were going to pay. I mean, or, you know, figure it out with Wayfinders. So, yeah. It could extend the program so that they get three months from us and three months from Wayfinders. It could. The other thing I wanted to mention is that CHAPA in collaboration with Mass Housing Partnership did a survey of voluntary survey with towns and cities that are doing these programs. And I believe there is something in the neighborhood of 20 programs that now are launched or will be launched shortly and another 20 towns or cities that are considering launching these programs. Now there are 356 towns and cities in Massachusetts, but nonetheless, if we had as many as 40 towns and cities that were undertaking this, that would have a very significant statewide impact because I think we're talking about larger rather than smaller communities. And I did send people a link to the CHAPA MHP report if you're interested in knowing more. Yes, there are other comments or questions. I think that wraps us up for discussion of emergency rental assistance. Thanks very much, Dana. You're having me. Nice to see you. Yeah, nice to see everyone. Wait, how do I get out? Okay, the next, most of the next items are relatively brief items, I think. The zoning board of appeals is now met twice to discuss Amherst studio apartments. And I was going to say a little bit about them. I know, I think Laura is sitting out there. So if she wants to add what I have to say or maybe just substitute for me. We can do that. Yeah, Laura, could you raise your hand? And Nate can recognize you. She raised your hand. She's, she's brave. Laura, you can, you can speak. Hi, everyone. Can you hear me? Yes. So, yeah, we just embarked at last on our hearings with the zoning board of appeals. I think some folks here listened in or participated. The initial hearing was a presentation primarily by valley about the project with a bevy of questions coming to us from the zoning board. And then the next hearing was public comment. And again, some of you spoke and I really appreciate it. Most of the commentary was positive. We didn't have a lot of critical comments. And then there's been a mix. John's been keeping you at prized of the letters and things public comments written public comments that have been coming in. Again, strong level of support with some mixed in with some pretty fairly intense critical commentary by people who live nearby. Our next hearing will be on August 6 and we'll continue the discussion then with the zoning board of appeals. People who can join our most welcome, because I think from here on the least portion of each hearing for public comment. And so people can speak their mind or they can address other comments they've heard during the hearing. So, the more the merrier. Yeah, we'll say at the last hearing, the chair allowed approximately three minutes for each public comment, which is still significant. I assume the same thing that will happen on August 6 at 630. I'll probably send out a an announcement and a link just before. But if you can put it in your calendars it's great for the zoning board of appeals to hear real people in the community. Talking about the support for the project. In addition to receiving written testimony. I agree with that and, and to give a balance. I mean if they were hearing, you know, 10 negative comments in a row, it would affect them and so we always wanted to be a balance of comments that are that are being heard by the zoning board. Also, if people want to follow along the towns done a nice job of posting a lot of information online. So our zoning application is there you can see what the plans look like now. You can revisit the support of services plan if you want to you can look at budgets so really, really a wealth of information is available online. Yeah, I think the August 6 meeting will focus, at least in part on the social server service support plan. Because it didn't seem as many of the ZBA members were familiar with that in the earlier two meetings. And it does appear that that's something they wanted to spend more time talking about. Right. So, if anybody has anything to say in particular about that. Again, I would welcome it as obviously Laura would. Just, you know, remind us members or if you want to let people know they can also you can also submit comments online is an online form where you can send an email to myself or to marine pollock is the planner who stats the ZBA so comments can also be submitted and writing and they're transmitted to the ZBA as well. I think the ZBA. My thought on it is they've been they've been talking about some pretty small details in my mind on the project and I think the social service plan. And there's some questions my neighbors about you know why 28 units why not less why not family unit so I think maybe in August will be a more kind of robust discussion about some of the substantive issues of the project. And so it could be good to have people there to support it in the ZBA has been talked about, you know, landscaping and free to things which is, you know, important part of their review but I feel like the members are satisfied with the plans or they just haven't been asked to just to talk much about in general in terms of, you know, the number of units or that it's studio apartments and kind of quiet about that so I'm not sure how, you know, what will happen in the future meetings that. So, I think more support and explain the need for that, the better. Okay, any other comments or questions about the ZBA process. Then we will move on. Oh, somebody have a hand up Nate. Yeah. Am I unmuted now. Yes, you can. Okay, thank you. I just wanted to say that my impression is maybe unfairly that members of the ZBA, for the most part have no understanding of how much housing costs. You know, they haven't been dealing with this issue for months and months. And so they really don't understand the need as well as I think they should. So I would like to encourage people to weigh in on that topic. Thank you. Thanks, Alyssa. Okay. Nate has been trying to get contracts for wetlands consultant and possibly another consultant related to both the East street school site, and the strong street site. So, where are you with that now Nate. Actually, there's a consultant out of window who's we're working on a contract for the East street school site now. And I thought I would have had a little more information. You know, he provided one quote as well and do the flagging. And then we, you know, we're at we actually want the consultant to bring this to the conservation commission and get it. So it was approved as a. So previously we had some study it but it didn't go anywhere. So it's never a formal wetland delineation and the consultant we're working with is willing to do that. And so, you know, I'm hoping maybe the next people have a contract signed for East street school. And then, you know, you mentioned strong street but East street was the priority so just trying to get that moving. And if there any word when the town would allow people to come in to look at the asbestos and lead issues in the building. Just this week they said that they would allow people in. So, starting, you know, mid July to let people in so you know, I'm going to reach back out to Accutec or, I forget what it was, who had been in there before but yeah I mean I was just told this week that they're allowing people and consultants. Okay, it would be great if we could move East street along and even get started with strong streets and people know my preferences to be looking to get the next thing into the pipeline, not to sit back and say oh it's great we've got going, but to start to think about how to get C and D going as well. Yeah, yeah. I assume that there's nothing happening on Hickory Ridge at this point. No, I've heard that it's, you know, still looking positive for the town but nothing, nothing yet. Okay, any other questions or comments on East street or strong street or anything else related to finding new sites. Anybody have a new site we can go for. Okay. Next item is brief. I'm not actually quite sure about this, but I believe that the CPAC has made two recommendations related to housing to town council but I don't think they've been reviewed by town council yet. A new program would give approximately $245,000 to Valley Community Development to start up a new home buyer program in Amherst. A few years ago, which they did pretty successfully, a new program like the older one would allow for four households to be supported through the home buyer program. It's getting harder and harder to locate possible homes in Amherst, but nonetheless, if it has some success in the past, then I think it's great that CPAC has voted to recommend that program to the town council. I heard and I can't even remember where I heard it, but that CPAC also included $200,000 for the housing trust in its recommendation to town council. I guess I went around looking at various sites on the town web page and couldn't find any confirmation, but somewhere I believe that that was communicated to me, even if I can't tell you the source of this moment. So both of those are great for us and great for affordable housing in the town, assuming that I've got it right. Okay. And, you know, in the future we're going to have to continue to work on CPAC for support. We've done pretty well for the last few years, and I hope we continue to be able to do that in the future. I had a couple of legislative updates. Since Mindy's on if you want to talk about what you're familiar with related to housing or augment whatever I have to say, that would be great. The House and Senate have agreed on language for the FY 2020 supplemental budget, which is basically money appropriated into the principal budget they passed earlier. The good news is that includes $20 million to expand draft. The cap had been pushing for 60 million. But I suppose they'll be happy 20 and hope to get maybe 60 million in FY 21 21 budget. That would be good. The budget also includes 13 and a half million for housing authorities and 5.8 million for permanent supported housing, which I guess goes into the DxE budget. So that's good news on the positive end for funding for affordable housing. Some of the things that have happened that I thought I would mention, and these are bills introduced by people in the House and Senate in the house. Mike Connelly and Kevin Honen have filed a bill to protect family stability for tenants. Homeowners also and certain multifamily housing owners impacted by COVID-19. These protections would lengthen the eviction moratorium and a number of people you may have also received other emails about extending the eviction moratorium. So this bill that's been introduced would accomplish that. The bill will be assigned to the housing committee, I think is a joint committee. So if people want to send letters or emails of support, I think that would help push that along. And then the other thing earlier in June, Senator Sal Domenico filed legislation to create a statewide right to council pilot program. And again, that's something that we voted for and cast town council to push as well, which they agreed to do. And we're moving toward a right to council program to help to prevent eviction. That would be great as well. Mindy, if you're still out there, is there anything you wanted to add? Maybe not. Okay. I don't think Mindy's here anymore. Okay. Thanks. Any other notes or thoughts about affordable housing related legislation? Okay, then moving on to the next item. We're getting towards the end of the agenda folks. There is an opening for a new trust member. This is the position that Nancy Schroeder left. I don't know if it was two months ago or three months ago, I can recall exactly. Anyway, at this point, I think there could be as many as 10 people who have applied for the open position. Yeah, I'm not sure they've all applied. Some may be holdovers from the last application who may still be interested or may not. There are 10 people on Antwell Mills lists. She's the one who's managing these four. The town manager, and she's working on setting up interviews with the candidates. Hopefully, which will occur later this month. So I'm not sure if they're still. If they're still entertaining do applications. If you know somebody who's interested, check back with me or with the Angela Mills and we'll find out if there's still additional opportunities for people to apply. I think I was trying to look quickly you still can complete a citizen activity form right I think that's just seeing it. Maybe you can submit at any time. And so if someone's interested, I would just, I would encourage you to find it actually online. Interest and survey. Yeah, oh community activity. So yeah, I think you can complete that anytime and submit it so. Okay. The only other item that I had is just to mention upcoming events. We already talked about the ZBA hearing on 132 Northampton Road, which will be on August 6, 30pm. If you can put that into your calendar to potentially speak on that occasion. That would be great. The schedule date for the next housing trust meeting is Thursday, August 13, which would again be at 7pm via zoom. Is there any public comment that we haven't heard already this evening. Is there any public comment that we haven't heard already raising an eight. No, I was going to say, I think I'd emailed the trust and the planning board would discuss 40 are next week and they may not think there's they're reviewing the Amherst media site plan for the new headquarters, and that was continued to July 15, depending on how long that that review goes they may not discuss 40 are coming next week. So I'll just, I'll email the trust, you know, sometime next week just to see if there's any thought on that from the planning board chair but, you know, if I don't want people to sit around for two hours waiting for them to discuss it, but I'll let you know if I think it's will be an agenda item and I'll get to it. Thank you. Someone told me the town council discussed something and earlier in June, and it was, it was almost a five hour meeting. And so I find I was like, well, when in the meeting, I'm not going to have to watch five hours to listen to 10 minutes. Luckily, someone could tell me, luckily, someone emailed me and told me when I could start listening. Yeah, so I don't I don't want anyone to, you know, it's reported anyway so if you can't make it for next week when they talk about it you can always watch it later but I think you know the board has received a lot of comments about 40 are. And so they're discussing whether or not it's something to move forward with in the downtown or, you know, more move forward with it all right now so I you know I think I think they haven't had a chance to really discuss it amongst themselves which they hope to do. Okay, I don't have any additional items. Anybody else have anything they want to raise before we sign off. Okay, well, this time we're leaving you with the rest of the evening actually open. You can all go online and watch Hamilton or something else. If you'd like to do that. I thank everybody for participating in this meeting and for your comments on our emergency rental assistance plans. Thanks everyone. Okay. Thank you everyone. Thank you everybody.