 It's a point of when that happens. Oops, OK. So Carol and Erica, you're co-hosts. OK. And now people can start joining. I mean, we're a little early, but. Yeah, that's fine. People like to be early. So we have a question for you. George wants to share that. Oh, yeah. Are you going to do that for us? Yeah, yeah, I can. And he emailed me. I guess I didn't get back to him. I was kind of busy today. I can make him a panelist when he presents, and he can either share it himself or I can share it either way. OK, perfect. He's probably happy to share it himself. I suggested he let you know he wanted to do that because I wasn't sure if somebody comes on if they can share it or not. So I wanted to make sure you had it so he didn't get in a bind where he couldn't. But I bet you that he'll be perfectly happy to do it himself. I don't know for sure, but I bet. What time is it? 6.55. Yeah, I know. I was at the block grant committee was getting set up for the weekend. It was like a few minutes to the meeting, and I'm like, ooh, it's one other person. But then before, you know, but then in a matter of a minute, all these people joined right on time. I was like, all right, here we go. Yeah. And I don't know if Paul may not be here. Is that? He said he wasn't going to be. He told me he wasn't going to be. Oh, that I meant to tell you, Carol, I will, for Dee, if you want me to talk to talk about Dee, even though you're on that search committee, filling trust vacancies. I don't know what thing is Dee, because I'm looking at a different version of this, I guess. Filling trust vacancies. Oh, OK. Paul shared it. He just wanted me to update everyone in terms of future. OK, good. No, go for it. That's fine. I don't see anyone joining yet. I know John said he was going to join us. And trust numbers, I don't think anybody said they weren't going to join. Well, it's not quite seven yet, even so. Yeah, four minutes. Four minutes can be a lifetime. Really? Everybody's in the bathroom. That's going to save me. Maybe I'm right to the bathroom. No, I'm just kidding. You think it's going to snow anymore tonight? Kind of surprising, is they said it was going to. The weather warning installed tomorrow night. Yeah, I mean, I'd like it to. It is winter, but supposedly it used to be winter, right? Yeah, I mean, it says it's. Yeah, I don't know. Actually, the weather right now, I was checking on the National Weather Service are saying it might. It could possibly stay above freezing and just kind of be rainy slush all night. That's too bad. But we might get snow on Sunday. Right. I know with that little bit of snow, we had just the other day. I was right around and kids were sweating. And I was like, I guess, you know, it's like you were. I mean, I guess it was like just enough to make it slippery. But I'm like, there's grass and everything. Yeah, it's the most. You're a wishing rolling in the mud. I usually totally root for the snow. But Pat and I have to get to a doctor's appointment at nine in the morning in Northampton. So I just assume it does its rain and slush tonight, I think. Well, actually, email me a question. So I know, you know, I'm assuming that everyone knows about the meeting. We sent out something and you sent out something. And I hope so. It's quieter now. I'm going to I'm going to give back the earplugs to my husband. He can be quiet. We sent out something before it in the process of changing. Hey, here's someone. Yeah, Risha. Hey, Risha. Hi. Hello. Just finishing up dinner. Yeah. I mean, we can't believe it on the weather exactly, right? It's not like we're driving into town hall. But. Well, you know, I was actually pretty pleased that we were meeting virtually because of the weather. I'm like, oh, thank goodness. You're sad. I was thinking the same thing. This would have been kind of a tough night. Yeah. Is it nasty out? I haven't been out in like two hours. And now I can't see out. Can't start. I don't know. I just was out a little bit ago. Actually, I think it was worse, you know, I got five than it is now. I have sent my mother to pick up my child. So I'm hoping it's not too bad. Hey, Ashley. Hello. How are you? I'm good. Good. Four members. Right. We need one more. Oh, Rob's here. Yeah, he's come over. All right, we've got five. Should we wait just one more minute? Yeah, let's see. I think I thought Sid said something that said he could come on this day at least. So let's wait a little bit. It's only now seven o'clock, according to my clock. Yeah, it's just seven or seven or one or something. So I think I'm going to wait a little bit. Hi, Rob. And I can't really sneak in and zoom. I said that once in a while. It's like, oh, you know, we're just through the quorum getting member. Are you? And George is here. So that's good. Let me know when you think it's good to start. Maybe one more minute. Is there a way for the rest of us to know? If I look at participants, I never know who's here that's not. If you bring up participants and you look at the thing it's called attendees, you can see who's here that's not in the room. That's where a leger just came. Perfect. Yeah, did that work for you, Isha? So can you pull up like a participant's dialogue box? Yeah, I had just never thought to do it. But I was like, it's always so weird not knowing if there's silent people. Well, that's weird to me. Whenever I go to a meeting that I'm not a panelist, like if you go to a meeting and you're just part of the public, you don't have the faintest idea who you're there with. You don't have no when someone might speak next. Or it's just it's really bizarre. At least here as panelists, we get to see who it is. Hello, Allegra. Hello, I've been in workshops where they have like 80 people. And then there's like so much static or bandwidth. I don't know, like lack of bandwidth. And they're like, can everyone please mute themselves and maybe turn off your video because it's not working very well. I'm going to go ahead and start. Sure. I want to welcome everybody to the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust tonight for the Thursday, January 19th meeting. We are starting at 7.03. And this is our first meeting for the year. So happy new year. We're going to go ahead and start with reviewing the minutes from December. So does anyone have any corrections, additions, not hearing any? We will go ahead and accept the minutes. And again, well, and Sid's here. Yeah, he should. Let's see. Welcome, Sid. We just started. Hello. Hello, happy new year. Happy new year to you too. Wonderful picture that you have behind you. Yep, yep, that's the island. I may have to turn off my camera because my internet's been very unstable today during my meetings for the university. So if it starts acting up, I'll turn it off. And then I'll turn it on if I need to vote or anything, something like that. Okay, just want to warn people in advance. Sure. Thank you. Thanks. So we just asked if anyone had any corrections or additions to the minutes. Okay, not hearing of any. We're going to go ahead and accept the December minutes. And I just want to thank George, Ryan, for being our note taker, a minute taker. And I now want to introduce George and have him be part of the panelist. He's going to talk to us about the affordable housing inventory that he's been putting together. And we thought it was really important to share this because I think it's so important to have a real picture of the number of affordable, both rental and home ownership units. You have to have data in order to make decisions. And so this is helpful. So I just want to pass this on to George and George, you can go away. Yeah, good evening. Nate, I was going to, I don't know how we want to do this. I was going to share this either through Nate's agency or through my own, I share the document with you. I believe you were all sent a copy of it along with the agenda. Actually, it's now version four. So the one that Nate has and the one that you all have is spent slightly edited. I'll explain why that is the case. We can look at either one, but I should be able to share my screen. So in a moment, I'm going to try that and see what transpires. Hopefully, good things. Otherwise, I'll have to turn over to Nate, but. Nate, do you have to make him a co-host for that to work? No, as a panelist, he should be able to. Yeah, I see your screen here. So it's been a while since I've done this. I'm kind of rusty, but hopefully I'll get it right. I just want to explain the origin of this. I had been speaking to Carol and to Erica and I've been listening at the meetings, of course, and I could get a feeling that, you know, there were a lot of questions about, you know, the so-called real numbers versus the formal SHI. And that's always something I've been curious about myself. So I just sat down and started trying to put something together. And I assume most of you had a chance to at least look at it and we'll go through it together. There's some things that still may be changed. And but the point is it's an internal document. It's something that may or may not be useful to you. And if it's useful, that's great. If it's not, it just goes into the into the outbox or whatever. You may decide at some point that you want to take some of this information and make it public facing. But right now, this is strictly an internal document and is in it's a work in progress. So any edits, changes, deletions, alterations can be made and updated and so forth. So I hope you find it helpful, I hope you find it useful and it might lead to an interesting discussion. So let me try and see what happens here. Share screen, host disabled. Okay, I'm not sure what that means. All right, it doesn't seem to like me. Let me try that again. I get a message box that says, host disabled participant screen sharing. So yeah, that's what it says. So I can't share my screen, at least at the moment. I can share mine and then we'll just, we'll walk our way through it. Yeah, and I'll explain what it is. Share screen, I'd have to see how that setting does it. Okay, so here's the document and in the most important thing are the tabs at the bottom. So what you're looking at right now is what I call the trust SHI, which is everything I could find. And it's divided into rental and if you scroll down just a bit Nate into ownership. So I'm at the very bottom of what I call resources and I've actually added another resource. It's called Seb housing, SEB housing. So in the most recent version of this, there's actually another link to another housing resource. And I'll explain what I understand to be their role in a few minutes. So that's basically the first and main page. And I've added a number of units to this. The SHI document that I was using was actually from 2020. I couldn't find a more recent one, but all I had to do was ask, but I didn't. So I finally did ask. And Carol and Erica both sent me the most recent one, 2022. So I've added a few more units in here and changed or fixed some of the numbers. But basically, if we can scroll back up, Nate. So what I have listed here is everything I could find. I've highlighted projects that are in development. And I believe this document, does this also show the ones that are under the IZ bylaw? Yes, a separate tab here. Okay, good. There's a separate tab. Thank you. But here. I think I put a hashtag after something. And maybe that's a later. Yeah, no, down the middle. Yeah. Yeah, you see the hashtag. If you see a hashtag, East Gables obviously is not, but 11 East Pleasant, 174 Sunset, 482, 432 Main Street, and then down below Presidential Apartments, University Drive. These are all under the inclusionary zoning bylaw. So I thought it would be useful to mark them both on the main list, which you see in front of you, but also as Nate pointed out down below, there's actually a separate tab for IZ bylaw projects. And we can look at that in just a second. I also put in, so I have then the address if I could find it, the developer, as far as I knew, affordable number of affordable units and total number of units in the project as far as I could find. And then I provided where I could find a internet link that talked about the project in broadest possible terms. So for the ones in development, there isn't anything I don't accept. There is something for Belcher Town Road, as probably many of you are familiar with, so I put that in there. And there's actually something for East Gables, which is the Valley CVC project. So I put something in there for that as well. So if you have some free time and you just wanna explore some of these projects, I provided links. And so the Housing Authority has a number of links for its sites, some of them work, some of them don't. I keep checking them to see if they still work. I think most of them do. So if you wanted to find out more about Watson Farmer and Wayland Apartments, you could actually go to the link. It's in column, what is it? It's called the website column, whatever column that is, I, I guess you can find the links there. And then I had a place for notes, which is at the moment not very informative, but they're just notes that I made as I went along. So that's the basic format. As I said, there's a now version four, I think you have version three at the moment, which is simply adding a number of sites that were on the SHI inventory that I either missed or the version I looked at didn't have. And also I corrected some of the numbers and for the units based on that. And I still think it needs a little bit more work. But I think this is generally accurate. At some point, Nate might wanna look it over and see if he sees anything really clearingly wrong. But essentially this, I hope is fairly accurate. And the latest version, which I'll send to the chairs and hopefully they'll share with you has got some more updated information. So that's the trust SHI page. Then if you go to the IZ bylaw projects tab at the bottom, again, I believe this is exhaustive, but if it's not, we can fix it. There are four projects that are up and running that are under or subject to the IZ bylaw. And I've listed their unit counts, affordable counts. So presidential apartments has six, university drive, seven U drive has four, North Square has 26 and Aspen Heights has 11. And I give the, I thought it'd be interesting to look at the actual prices. Now, in some cases it's not easy to find, but I think I found it for all of these. These are, as far as I could tell, these were the current prices for the affordable units, studio one bedroom, two bedroom and three bedroom. And then in the far right column again, what I call contact information or links. Again, there's a link that will give you some information as to the affordable aspect of an IZ project. And you'll notice that if you look at those links for a second, three of the four are not actually put out by the, as far as I can tell, by the agency or the owner of the project. They're actually, I could only find the information by going to one of these larger websites. But one is called the navigator, the housing, search housing navigator. And that's where I found the pricing information. The one that does have it is actually 70 U drive. It has its own unique website, which I found to be particularly informative. The only thing 70 University Drive is not informative about is the price of the units. But at least one of the four projects you can actually go to a link that takes you directly to an affordable piece of the project for the others. It's much more challenging to actually find it and then to figure out how to act on it. So that's something we may wanna talk about either tonight or at some later date. When you imagine if you are an individual trying to learn about what's available in Amherst and you're looking for these websites. So that's why I put them here. You could almost put yourself in the shoes of someone trying to navigate this. And I think you may find that at times it's pretty confusing and not easy to do. Now, maybe it turns out that most folks who do this have someone they're working with. They're working through an agency like Amherst Community Connections or something. So they have someone who's helping them. But if you're just an ordinary person trying to find an affordable unit in Amherst and you're relying on what's out there, this is kind of what you're gonna find. It's at least been my experience. So I thought it'd be interesting for you to have these links and sort of imagine yourself in the shoes of someone trying to actually see if they could find an affordable unit, at least for the IZ bylaws. Now it's also true for the other projects as well if you look into their links. And then finally, it just occurred to me, my first thing, so the final tab is the market rate tab. And that is, it gives you an idea of what these projects cost to everyone else. And so again, in the most recent iteration version four, I actually added two more that Paul sent me. I got the actual prices for the new dorms that are going up on Lincoln Avenue and Mass Avenue, both the grad dorm and the undergrad dorm. So in the most recent version, not unfortunately when you're looking at, I actually also have the numbers for those units. These of course would be prices students would be paying for student housing, but I thought it'd be interesting to look at those numbers as well. And they're equally high. They are basically competitive with the prices you see above for market rate units at Aspen Heights, North Square, and so forth. So that's what I created and I shared it with the co-chairs and they thought it might be interesting for you all to look at and to look into a mall over. And the one question, I have a number of things that I think about when I look at this. One of them is I've already talked about is ease of use for people trying to find horrible housing in Amherst. It's pretty challenging, I think. And I don't know what we can do about that or anyone can do about that, but I just thought it'd be interesting for some of you when you have a moment to try and check on some of these links and maybe you'll have better luck than I do, but I found it to be not easy, some easier than others. I think also under, if we go back just for a moment to the IZ bylaw projects, I just wanted to point out that there are a number coming online. So in addition to the ones that are currently, have produced affordable housing, we have four projects that are producing a total of what? 21, I think. Now I'm not sure about Sunset Avenue. I have to check with Nate or somebody, but I couldn't actually get the specific number. That's a great Roberts project on Sunset. I believe these are townhomes or condos or something, but I believe they have to produce affordable units as well. So that was a bit of a guesstimate, but the other three will produce 19 units of affordable housing once they're finished and all of them currently are under construction in Amherst. So I think it's something to keep in mind. These don't produce huge numbers, but aggregate over time, given the new IZ bylaw, we are producing as long as we continue to build housing, we are producing affordable units. And the other question, so the first was just ease of use or sort of what the experience is like at the user end. And I wanted us to think about that. I think, yeah, the other has to do with just, how does this work? And I'm thinking of the IZ bylaw now. In other words, how, you know, is there a role for the trust to kind of look a little bit closer? I mean, for instance, Aspen Heights for quite some time had vacancies. I don't know if they've been filled, I think they have, but there was a long period where I would look and there were vacancies, vacancies, vacancies. If you look at the prices, even the, you know, just the affordable unit prices, they're not cheap. So I was, and that was the first thing. And then I just would be interesting to know who actually is the people who run these affordable, you know, who runs the affordable aspect for these projects. Everybody has their own property manager, everybody hires their own agent or whatever who manages it for them. And they pay them obviously for that, but I don't know who they are. And I'd be kind of curious to hear what their experience has been like today. Has it been easy to fill these? Is there a lot of turnover? And I also have some questions about sort of the interface, you know, do they make any effort to make it, you know, accessible for folks to find this and to interact with it? So I had some, I guess I thought it was like to kind of audit, especially since soon we'll have eight projects and Amherst that are producing affordable housing. I wondered if there's a role, and this is the question, a role for the trust in sort of keeping it, just sort of auditing it a little bit or learning more about it and taking a closer look. I know that the planning people, the planning department doesn't have time for this. They don't have the staff, you know, the human power to do it. I wondered if that might be a role for someone or someone's on the trust, just to look a little closer at how these, at least the IZ projects are being managed and how successful they are. And I, because I just don't know. I mean, on paper they look very successful and that may be true. I just don't know. So anyway, that's what I did. Wow, thanks George. It's a great presentation. And I, do you know if it's in the inclusionary zoning bylaw, what the right, what the affordability criteria is, is it like some percent of, do you know what it is? I don't know. Yeah, it's been a while since I thought about it, Nate, I know a few. Yeah, it's 80, you know, the inclusionary zoning bylaw was updated, gosh, was it a year and a half ago now, but so before that, you know, it allowed 80% of AMI or higher, possibly up to 120. And now it's capped at 80% and then it has a requirement for 60%, 50 or 60%, but, you know, older developments, like presidential and maybe university, seven university drive, you know, they're at 80 and I think those are probably the only two that are at, you know, 80%. So, you know, the difficulty is 80%. AMI is an amorous is higher than the voucher, you know, a section of voucher can afford or even really qualify. So, you know, I think it's hard, you know, when we did it, we had the 60%, we want to tie it to a benchmark, right? So 80% is the standard definition for affordable units. You know, we've talked about, would you have a different definition for affordable? It's a little difficult, but that's what it is now. It looks like John has his hand up in the attendees. You want to let him say something, Nate? John, you're all set to talk. Okay. First of all, I do want to compliment yours. This is great to see. In particular, I've never seen, can you hear me? Yes. Okay. I've never seen the information on home ownership before put together. So I think that's definitely a help. The first question I have, and I don't know if you looked at this is, the logical, the first logical place for this information to reside where people looking for housing might access it is the statewide housing navigator. So my first question would be, does the housing navigator have access to all the information or all of the developments that you've identified here? Cause I think that would be an important goal. Cause when I get requests from people for looking for affordable housing, and since I don't know where it all is, the first place I send them to is the housing navigator. The other people who should have it, and I don't know to what extent they do, I'm sure they have some of it, would be family outreach of Amherst, Amherst Community Connections. And maybe there's another group of people who do housing coordination or try to help people get access to housing. But I know that Amherst Family Outreach and Amherst Community Connections both do. So the question would be, is this accessible to them? At one point, as I think Erica and Carol were recall, we had a subcommittee that we wanted to look into this. And one of the things we talked about, in part because John Page was part of that group, was the idea of having, I don't remember where it was, the bid or the chamber of commerce in town, will also be a repository of this kind of information because people coming into town in search of housing might want to, might stop in at that joint office looking for information. So I think what we need to do, George, is take the information you put together and maybe spiff it up a little bit, although I don't think it requires a lot. And make sure it gets into the hands of people who were likely to use it. And as I said right at the beginning, that it's all entered into the housing navigator because it's up to the people who control affordable housing to make sure it gets entered into the housing navigator and that it's up to date. So those are my comments, but I definitely think it's helpful. And I think we need to take what you've got and turn it into practice. I think those are great comments, John. And I think that the utility of it for ensuring that people know where they can access affordable housing or support for home ownership is one. The other is I think the point that you made, George, which is what's the role of the housing trust to really ensure that if people are creating affordable units that that information gets disseminated to the people who need it the most, what is the process of that? And when there's turnover, how quickly can they fill those since there's such a need and that there's a real process for that, not just on paper. So I'm wondering if it's something that we need to think about. And then the other piece too is that in doing presentations as part of education, this helps us to really think about what the real numbers are versus the numbers that people put out. Oh, yes, they're building affordable housing into a square of 120 and there's a percentage. Well, we know exactly what that number is out of 120. And then knowing if they're actually get filled and get filled quickly or not vacant. So I think there are multiple uses for this. There's the quickly getting it to the people who need to get in there quickly for these agencies as well as the Chamber of Commerce, then our role in terms of auditing to make sure that those spaces actually exist and they're being filled quickly and that the advertisement, the information gets out to the people who need it. So the responsibility on the end of those complexes and the owners and the developers and then last for our data to make decisions about what we need to do in order to create affordable housing. So I got Ashley and then George with their hands raised. Yeah, well, George, I think this is wonderful information and I just, I have one quick question. Do you know the total? I forgot what column it is that is the total affordable units already made in Amherst. Can you see that? I can't see the actual document anymore, but I didn't see the bottom if there had been a total. No, I haven't done totals yet because as you probably can see the numbers in some places are a little questionable and in some cases absolutely wrong that I've fixed, but there's still probably some changes that need to be made. There's also a couple of the large scale projects. And if we can go back for a moment to the, to what is it, they're marked with question marks on the main document on the main page. These are the big number places. In other words, they have, they're marked in purple actually on the document. They're looking at at least purple on my screen. Clark House, Mill Valley, Estates, Village Park. I did get numbers for rolling green courtesy of Laura Baker. They may be dated, I got 41 for that, but I had no numbers for those large scale. So those are the, you know, as far as the SHI, 100 units, 148 units, 200 units, 200, right? But there's no, I just don't know what the numbers are. So until I know that and Nate may have them at his fingertips or it may not be easy for him either. I'm assuming those numbers change from, you know, time to time. I don't think they're fixed unlike a lot of the projects. They're fixed number of affordable units. Nate will correct me here, but my assumption is that in those large scale units, there's not a fixed number, but it varies. Is that? No, they're fixed. I did totally, it was 420, but I think it's more than that, right? So no, in the larger apartment and the rental units, the unit numbers are fixed. So right? I didn't know that. That number, sometimes it's assigned to a specific unit and sometimes that unit can float, right? So if, say it's a one bedroom, but it's a fixed, there's a fixed total for each one. Okay. Right. So, you know, it could be that one bedroom, the tenant gets over income and then it's the next available one bedroom. We need to be leased out at an affordable rate. Okay, that's good. I don't know that. Yeah, the one thing that does, the SAI, one thing that this won't capture and it would be hard to is that, and at any given time, there's like 80 to 100 units enamors that are considered affordable that are subsidized to the department of mental health or, you know, that people that receive SSDI. And so that's actually added. I added that Nate to the new version four. Unfortunately, you're not seeing it, but your point I guess is that even with it added and the numbers there, those numbers are not absolutely fixed. Right. So there's a few, you know, we call it like group homes for zoning or land use purposes, but there's, I can think of a half dozen. And then some just move around, you know, no one's really aware of them, but the self receive, you know, have housing subsidy. So the ones that are here, are ones that typically have gone through permitting, you know, have a comprehensive permit or have deed restrictions and the state knows about them. You know, it's a, you know, a little more public than these other units that they don't even disclose location to the town unless we really, really ask for it. So then that's the other problem is, for instance, I live in North Square Apartments. So I really, I know what the process is of getting in an apartment. And also now, because my mother moved out, I have a two bedroom and they can ask me to move to a one bedroom, but they've never done it. And so, but I just don't think anybody is reporting these things to the city or to HUD. So it's like, if I'm overhoused and it's just one example, I can move to a one bedroom, therefore making a two bedroom open to people that qualify. I don't think anybody is reporting these things. North Square Apartments doesn't report anything as far as I know. Who is making every single place, like maybe every six months or every quarter, tell us or the city or Nate, exactly how many things are occupied and how many things are not occupied and how many, like, who has moved? What are they doing to make, you know, make sure they're efficiently working this? I don't think anybody's doing that. Yeah, they report on it annually. So, you know, we wouldn't ask, the state wouldn't ask for a quarterly or twice a year, but they're supposed to report on it annually. So, you know, they do annual certifications and, you know, they will reassess income for tenants. So they're supposed to report on it annually. And sometimes it's, you know, it's not a deep dive. So what the town might receive is like a self-certified checklist or a statement that, you know, these are the units and everything's fine. So the only time the town would respond or inquires if we hear a complaint or something that, you know, a unit's been vacant, right? So Aspen Heights was an example where, you know, they still needed some permit information, some inspections from the town. We had heard that the affordable units were vacant. And so then it just, you know, it came to our attention that way through a, I don't want to say it necessarily a complaint, but it was just, you know, the town was notified. Otherwise, we're not, you know, we only are part of the annual cert, you know, we're supposed to, we're not really monitoring the units, right? So they're supposed to be a monitoring agent. They're the ones who are hired to market the units, to can do tenant screenings. And then they're supposed to monitor them for a certain amount of time. That's what SEB housing does. You know, George mentioned them earlier, you know, the Amherst Housing Authority is supposed to do it. Beacon has their own management company that does that. So, you know, we rely on that. I mean, that's a whole, that's a, you know, that's a lot of information and a lot of work for someone to do, you know, it could be that we have to just make sure that they are submitting their annual reports. And maybe we, you know, it's like I said, it's not a deep dive into the information though. So... Well, that's what I'm saying is that when the information is submitted, can you see that someone has a two bedroom and they only need a one bedroom? Or can you see that also how many are empty in Aspen? And then is there some kind of remedy? Like, because it seems like we, we don't have a lot of units, period, obviously. Well, we haven't, so you think there's 420 you said? I think there's probably closer to 600 or more. Just knowing that some of these are empty. Well, okay, but maybe we need to figure out how many we have total, how many we have empty. And then I think this is someone's real job and from the town or from, from something that is monitoring them because if it's just once per year, things happen in one year. So you're just getting, you're kind of getting like surface information once per year. And I don't think it's telling people that someone has a two bedroom and we haven't figured out how to move them to the one bedroom so that the two bedroom is now open. Don't you think that someone's job should be to figure those things out? Right, but, you know, we're not, but yeah, well, yes and no. I mean, you know, it's on the job of the monitoring agent or the property owner or manager. So the town's not gonna be asking, you know, every two months or every quarter, you know, can you have the status of who's living there? Right? It's really intrusive and invasive and it's actually a lot of work. If there's, you know, I actually think I was looking at the numbers. I think there's probably over 700 affordable units. And it actually, it could be that there isn't a one bedroom available right now. And so their choice is either kick you out or leave you where you are until something opens up. I don't know that, but that's possibility. I just, I looked into it, they can't move me until there is a one bedroom. So they may not have a one bedroom, but so that's what I'm saying is that, like, can do we have some, you know, ability to look into these things that are, they're pretty detailed. And so it's like, how many things are open and how can we encourage slash, I mean, if it's only once a year, it's still some kind of report. You have 20 units and 10 are open. That's like an issue. How are we making that like their issue? Right, no, so yeah, we'll get that. So if someone during the certification, if we find that a unit is vacant, then we can, the town can take enforcement measures, but we only act through complaints or notifications. We're not going to actively look. And so, you know, recently, presidential reached out and said, you know, we have a vacancy in a two bedroom. Can you help us market it? Right, as opposed to leaving a vacant for six months, they were kind of caught with that a while ago. And so they proactively reached out to the town, saying, can you help us advertise it? Which we did. And so, you know, it's really on either a tenant or some, like I said, some reporting mechanism or, you know, during the annual reports, if somehow we're, you know, we're informed of it. We're not right. We're not actively going to go inquire about all those units. Well, I mean, I mean too though, I wonder if we need to start inquiring more than once a year. And like just, could we just ask? I mean, even if it's like a volunteer position, I mean, North, you know. Part of the issue probably is having somebody to do it. And I see George is wanting to say something else about this all that he put together. So, can we move to George? Ashley's question is one, certainly I've asked myself. And I understand, you know, Nate's point that, you know, it's left pretty much to the landlord monitoring agent, property agent to, we assume that they're going to do a good job. And most likely probably in most cases they do. But I just wondered if there was, and the answer, you know, is there a role for the housing trust to just keep an eye on these things? And the answer may be no, because we don't have enforcement. Powers were not an agent of the town in that sense. On the other hand, the town is not capable. The town responds to complaints or to when there's an outreach and they say, we need help with acts. Kamens, by the way, does their own, you know, they fill their own slots. All the other projects, including the ones that are going to come online, hire somebody and they pay out of pocket for that service. But Kamens does it themselves. So, you know, do they do a good job? Maybe, I don't know. But I wondered if it's just have at least a list of who the property agents are. Who is the entity that actually is marketing these and reporting to the town? Now, it sounds like from Nate that if someone were to look, I mean, they could find that the reports and they could look and see who the agent is. And then one could just make a list of that. So at least you'd know who they are. And as I imagine myself calling one of these places up and saying, hi, you know, I'm a citizen of Amherst and I would like to know more about, they'd hang up on me. I mean, why would they talk to me? So, and I'm not sure there's a, is there a role for that? I think there might be, but right now I'd just like to know who they are. I'd like to have a list of the folks who actually manage and fill these places. I'd like to know who they are and where they are. And I'd like to look at those reports and see what's in them, if anything. Just, and then just list it. Also, just quickly, Nate, it sounds like there are numbers for those larger units and I can get them from you at some point and you and I maybe when you have a moment we can just go through this and try and make the numbers as accurate as possible. And at that point I could produce totals that I would have confidence in because Nate would look it over and say, okay, I think you're fairly close to what it should be. Also, again, remember on that front page at the bottom is the mass navigator site. So if you're, you know, we're talking about that, you wanna see what it's like. The link, I think there's a link to the site itself and also a link to the Amherst page. It made, that'll take you directly to Amherst on that site. And is it complete? No, I don't think, my experience is it isn't. And I have no idea who informs them or how that works either. But also there's also Seb, which is not on this particular version, but in version four there's also a link to that. Yeah, so I can look at that. I mean, I think, sorry to jump in. I think, yeah, I think, you know, some of the permitting is wrong. Like North, North Square was a comprehensive permit. I can get numbers. I think it would be important to have number of bedroom. It takes a little digging, but we can get the bedroom sizes of the affordable units. And I think we can get the income limits or percent, the restrictions on income. And a few other things, I mean, I was thinking we would just make this a little bit more detailed. And then, you know, unfortunately, it becomes a static document once you sign it out. But if we, you know, like what John Hornick had said previously, if we could get it out there, at least to have a resource, you know, most of these units are not expiring anytime soon, but the SHI does have, you know, when the affordability expires. Yeah, no, yeah, this is good. You know, for resources, I'm gonna say the UMass Office of Off-Campus Housing is a great one I often use when I have to do local preference justifications, which I'm doing one now. You know, they usually have a good resource and listing of market rate units, sometimes affordable, but, you know, and I was trying to think there was one other site I usually use. Anyways, yeah, this information, it's interesting, it's scattered. You know, the state should have all the annual reports. I mean, I feel like DHC would be the best place to request. Sometimes we only have to get a statement saying that the reports are done, not that we get the, you know, some of the detailed information. Elections. Yeah, so I think there's a way to, by the way, sitting back to Ash's way, I just wanna say maybe the town, later in this agenda, we're talking about maybe hiring someone to work with housing. And it could just be that they make calls so often, every so often, you know, it's not like we audit every development, but we could just call a few and just do kind of some ground truth thing and just ask, like, you know, you have 26 affordable units, can you give us an, you know, what's the rundown? What's the wait list? Where do they fall? And just, you know, it's not, you know, maybe we make it more systematic in the future, but to start it could just be a random calling. I will say I've done that a few times when we hear about something. And a lot of times they're, the manager's more than willing to provide information. And so essentially, I never really asked about being over housed. They're supposed to provide that, but there's always a wait list. They'll give us the, you know, the breakdown, like, you know, there's 60 households on, you know, one unit, you know, right? In a one bedroom, there's 70, whatever on two bedroom, and they have the information pretty readily available. So it sounds as if they're doing their job in terms of maintaining wait lists and numbers. So let's see if we, it sounds like there's work to be done here. Nate and George will get together and see what else they can put into this. And we have a couple of other comments. And then obviously there's room for lots more work that the trust could take on, but let's see what Allegra has to say. I think it might actually be the housing navigator website that I was thinking of. But I remember when I was working in Boston, there was like more of like a real time, like unit search website that people could send in, like kind of more affordable units, whether it was like a private landlord renting them out or, you know, units coming up in affordable developments. The housing navigator looks kind of similar, but there was something like more specific out in the Metro Boston area. But I think again, that kind of requires the landlord to do the footwork rather than necessarily the housing press. And I guess my only other comment was I don't, I know George is saying that what we've seen tonight isn't the most up to date of his listings. And I just wasn't sure, because I thought that maybe there were some complexes that were missing, I can't remember. What's South Point called now? And... Renew? Yeah, like that and next to it. And then some of the ones over in North Amherst, I just wasn't sure, at least that's how it was. I've got a couple of questions. A couple more people want to say something, but I have a couple of questions first. One is, is there anybody who wants to join George and Nate in order to try and move this further? That's a question and actually, okay, great. And the other question is, if anybody has information like the kind of thing that Allegra is just saying, if you can think of things that you think might be useful, you could send them to, we have to, however we do this without screwing up open meeting law, they don't know, we send it to Nate. And because Nate and George and or Nate and or George, George doesn't, can't be an open meeting law violation since he's not part of the trust. So send anything else that you've got to them. And then I think I would like to move on if we can, if anybody has a comment that they really need to make right now, please keep your hand up and we'll give you a chance to say whatever you want to say and then we'll try and move on. John's hand is on. John Horick seems like has something else to say. We have time. Yeah, so go ahead, George. I mean, John, the... What Allegra was referencing was a precursor to the housing navigator. I can't remember the name of the group in Boston that was running it, but basically the housing navigator has taken over that and expanded that responsibility. So I come to think again that we shouldn't try to create our own database. We need to be aware of the broad picture, which is what George provided, but we don't necessarily or it doesn't make sense to me to provide the detail in an Amherst database. It would make much more sense, I believe, to make sure that the housing navigator is updated. So if we wanna use staffing resources or volunteer from the trust, I think what we need is somebody to make sure that the housing navigator is up to date. And if you can't find information on it, then the obvious next step is to contact the person who owns the development and say, have you updated this recently or have you ever provided information into it? If they don't agree to do that, then maybe this person could do it for them. But the ideal thing would be for the developer or owner of the property to do with themselves. And then for us or a staff member to monitor that so that there is an existing database, one place where anybody who's interested could go to. There's a second point that I wanted to make. Tom Kegelman used to talk about informal affordable housing. That is housing in town and there's apparently a fair amount of it that is not legally designated as supported housing. But basically it's housing where the landlord is charging rates that are affordable. And I wonder if we looked at the residential rental index or whatever it's called, I forgot the right name, no, whether that would provide data about where to find informal housing. That is housing that meets some criteria for affordability that might also be made available one way or another to people who are looking for affordable housing. Thank you. I guess I would only, can I add one thing or one? Sure. The one thing that George said that seemed like it would be very interesting to me that is a little bit like doing something on our own is to do some follow-up on the inclusionary zoning stuff and to see who's, because no one apparently is monitoring it or we don't know, maybe somebody is. But I would be very interested in somebody taking on a little bit of effort to try and find out how that's working. Are they getting rented? Are they reasonable? Are the people who are supposed to be doing, is there some kind of outreach happening? So people know about them? I mean, yes, they should be on the housing navigator, I guess, but it was just, I don't know, that seems like an interesting question to me since that zoning is the least part of it, it's kind of new. And now I will try to be quiet. Okay. This has been wonderful, very important conversation. I think lots of hope. Oh, go ahead, Risa. Did you wanna say something? No, I was just trying to say that others still have their hands up. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm not seeing that. Yeah, Ashley had her hand up for a bit. And so I put mine up, I'll lower mine, but I think Ashley had hers up for a little bit. Yeah, I mean, I was thinking all those were very good suggestions. I think it really would help us to have a very specific Amherst one because the housing navigator, it's all of Massachusetts, right? Is that true? It has a specific Amherst section. Okay. As George pointed out. Okay, so we need to kind of figure out if, but that's like calling every single property manager, which I think, I mean, I volunteer for. It's gonna take some time and seeing how often they report into the navigator because I just live in North Square, North Square Apartments. And I just, my inclination is they're not doing it very often. And they're not telling anybody that they have someone in a two-bedroom apartment that could be in a one-bedroom apartment. I don't even know where they would put that in the, well, that's in the report that supposedly Nate has, right? Oh, not necessarily. Yeah, but no, I think, yeah, John, I'm not sure we would duplicate efforts. I think we can, the housing navigator, when they first started, they reached out to the town and I asked if they were gonna put every property that was on the SHI and they said, yes. And I'm not sure that they are. And then I'm not sure, right, how frequently it's updated. But I think that what's nice about George's database is, especially if we had some of those details I had thought about in terms of bedroom sizes and AMI, the housing navigator doesn't actually say that, right? It'll say what might be available, but it doesn't have some of that granular data, which I think is great to have in one location. So I think that's worthwhile. I was just gonna say something quick about inclusionary zoning. It seems to be working. I will say that it's expensive for a developer. So I was hope, kind of, you know, we had looked at this when a little while ago with the trust, it's probably like a few years ago now of having like way finders be a regional marketing agent to administer affordable units for multiple towns with the hope that they could maintain a larger database. And when a project was permitted through inclusionary zoning or some local measure with affordable units, not necessarily one that was going through a comprehensive permit or some bigger development, they could quickly fill those units or market them. And way finders was somewhat interested in that. They did want a fee, you know, they had, you know, it seemed like maybe it could work. It wasn't that the conversation didn't go very far. But what happens is so say, you know, some development has to produce four affordable units. They have to find a marketing agent that might cost them $25,000 just to market the units. It might be $4,000, $5,000 a unit to screen tenants for each of those units. And then there's an annual monitoring fee. And so for those four affordable units, you know, a developer might be paying, you know, $30,000 for the first two years just to get those marketed and filled. And then they're half the cost of the market rate units. I'm not saying that, you know, that cost isn't justified, but it is a big expense and it's time, every time. Every time a development comes up that someone has to write a marketing plan, they have to go through all these steps, hold the lottery. And so I know in other parts of the state, Cape Cod is one example where they have this kind of regional approach. And so my only comment about inclusionary zoning is every time a developer starts, it's almost like they're starting from scratch. So, you know, 11 to 13 East Pleasant is done by Archipelago. And, you know, they don't do affordable units. So for them, it's really something they're not accustomed to or familiar with. And so they really have to farm it out to someone. The town can't, we can help them, but we can't, you know, we can't monitor the units. We can't market the units because we're a party to the regulatory agreement. So we're part of the permitting and the regulatory piece. And so, you know, it is something that isn't as easy as say like North Square or someone who comes in and they do affordable units as part of their company, right? So, you know, Valley CDC can manage that a lot easier than a private developer. And I do think there is costs and time associated with that. So I don't, I'm not saying that it's, you know, we, you know, those costs aren't justified, but I think it's pretty high. And then they have to have a third party be the monitoring agent. And so it's not as if they do it in-house. And so I think, you know, in the future, that's where like the future follow-up from having this database can be important because, you know, they just have to keep hiring someone, right? So they might enter into a three-year contract and then maybe in the future, they have to hire someone else. They have to hire a whole nother company to monitor those units. So it's not, you know, that we get to see how that kind of longevity plays out, but we do hold them. You know, we, what's nice with inclusionary zoning, we have it in the permit. We won't issue a building permit until say, you know, we'll have some strings attached, which really forces those units to get moving. We, you know, we've improved how we manage that through our permitting. So the inclusionary zoning is working. I can't see hands up. So I'm sorry if I've ignored anybody, but someone can help me with that. Ashley, hands up again. You're amused, Ashley. Okay. So when you permit something by the city, and it has, you know, or the town that has affordable units, can we, I mean, that might be one thing we discuss is that there's more reporting and the detailed, the reporting is quite a bit more detailed and someone ideally that we hire is the point person for that. Because I mean, if we need to get things to be a hundred percent occupied, and then we also need to get a lot more places to be occupied, we need both, right? Okay. Well, that was kind of for Nate, just curious. Right. So that's what I was saying. In our permitting, we have, you know, milestones that have to be met. And so that's where we can make sure the units are getting filled. But, you know, after the fact, it's that, you know, we don't typically require more stringent reporting than the state, right? So we can, you know, push a little bit, but that becomes, you know, could be part of the conversation with the developer. And see, you know, we'd have to put it in our zoning. We can't just, you know, as part of the permitting, say you need to report to the town, you know, every quarter in terms of occupancy and income limits of tenants. That's not, I mean, we could try. I have a feeling that we're gonna get some pushback on that. Well, particularly if we try with a person that has this job, I mean, if we ever create this job just that way, that would be good for a person to have this job to try that. Right. So I think that's reporting, or that's kind of, you know, the town reaching out as opposed to having it be, you know, a part of a condition of permitting. It could just be follow-up, but not, you know, a condition or a regulatory piece. So I think is that what you, George, you meaning Ashley and Nate, you're gonna talk about and work on and see if there's a process that we can think about that might be reasonable. Honestly, we just work on filling out the spreadsheet, filling out finding where resources are, who to contact, and maybe, you know, that's the second step would be then maybe doing some ground truthing. And it may lead into a conversation later on, and I just wanna pay attention to time regarding the position that we might share with the town. Okay, so just to pay attention to time, we're way beyond our agenda time, but I thought this conversation was really important and did have some leeway, but I think now we're getting a little bit of a crunch. So I'm gonna pass this on to Carol, who's just gonna give us an update on the CPA. And go ahead, Carol. Which will take about 10 seconds. The CPA recommended that we get $250,000, not the $500,000 that we asked for, but they also made recommendations to give money to the other projects that we were in support of so that Belcher Town Road East Street got not what they asked for, but they got enough. I think they had some conversations in the background about some other sorts of funding, but they are being recommended to get something. Ball Lane is recommended to get what they asked for, and Amherst Community Connections is recommended to get what they asked for for their rental project. And the next step, of course, is that this all has to pass the town council. I think it is not on the agenda for Monday. Pat just looked at that agenda, but when we know what agenda it is on, we'll try to let you know, because it might be nice to have at least a few of us show up as attendees at the town council meeting to at least speak for the importance of all of these four things, but ourselves, of course included. And I think that's it. That's kind of the report of the moment. So unless anybody has any questions, I'm gonna turn it back. I was gonna just say, quickly, right, it'll be in the next few weeks that it will happen. So the council is one of the first things they vote on for the budget are the CPA allocations. And so, yeah, I had heard that it was gonna might happen in January. So maybe it might be by mid-February or early February. So yeah, if you... Yeah, I can ask to see if I can get notified too, and I'll send it out. The agendas are, you know, usually it's pretty detailed and you might not have a time. So you don't have to spend three hours at a meeting. It could be that, you know, you know, when you get there. It's a part, right. Yeah. Yeah, good. Thanks. So back to Erica, who's gonna tell us something about Maher Healey's housing agenda, affordable housing agenda. Sure. And I think the conversation we just had before really sort of juxtapositions into this, it's very comprehensive if you haven't read it. This is our Governor Healey's and Lieutenant Governor Driscoll's housing plan. And I think they're very much aware, I'm sure they've done a lot of work in meeting with housing advocates to really have put this out. It's high level, but I think it's very comprehensive. So if, you know, again, if you have some time, I would take a look at it. And it supports actually a lot of the work that we're trying to do as well as look at some of the areas that were mentioned before, such as transparency of where affordable housing units are and how, you know, families, especially families who may be strapped with regards to time, access to internet, not having English as their first language to ensure that everyone equitably has access to this information. But just let me start with, so they actually identified as a housing shortage of 108,157 homes. Don't ask me how they got that number. But using that as a number across the state, they talked really about having a multi-pronged and approach and strategy. And this is exactly what they're doing. What I thought was interesting is that the first thing that they're going to do is establish a secretary of housing and have that at cabinet level. And that secretary of housing would really be tasked with looking at all of the different aspects that impact housing. So really social determinants of housing, I would say, to really ensure that people have the access to affordable housing all the way from the shelter system to permanent housing to home ownership and all the different aspects and the challenges with regard to that. So one of the first areas of that is looking at communications and really thinking about how can they work across the state to educate, communicate, increase advocacy, increase understanding what the complexities are with regard to housing, sustainable housing, affordable housing, safe housing, all the way across the continuum from shelter to rental property, to permanent rental property to home ownership. So I think that was really important in terms of this advocacy campaign and working with local and regional, both housing advocates as well as municipal leaders. One of the underlying things is invest in the affordable housing trust. So I think that is really great news that they highlighted that was one of the things that they're going to do that they understand that the affordable housing trust across the state have really been a mechanism that provides flexibility and vision and sort of support for mixed income housing and affordable housing. So that's one area. The other piece is production preservation. So Ashley, you talk often about preservation or what exists and what can we buy and what can be utilized versus producing them. So they look at both. So again, they're really comprehensive in thinking about both the production and the need for production of more affordable housing, both rental as well as home ownership, as well as looking at what exists. And one really innovative piece, first time I've heard of this is they're looking at state property to see what they can utilize in terms of state property to be able to create productive affordable housing. I think, they're looking at many different areas. One area too is simplifying the process for production. So looking at the whole process for developers and see if they can simplify that looking at DHCD. So looking at all of the different state agencies that impact the creation of affordable housing across the continuum and making sure that the processes that there aren't high barriers and challenges around the production of affordable housing. So looking at simplifying the process with DHCD. They also talked about recognizing regional unique issues such as down the Cape, the housing is so expensive, Berkshire where people have second homes and they're using Airbnb's, et cetera that they're different unique aspects. So they also wanna recognize it's not gonna be one size fits all and they wanna support local and innovative ideas. The one area that I thought that they didn't highlight which I think if we can access some of their thought is towns that have colleges. And again, I think what's really important is not to vilify college students or colleges, they have huge benefits but they do have an impact on access to housing and affordable housing. So to think about that as a unique aspect to also consider in terms of their plan would be important. They talked about deploying already designated funding. So ARPA funding and what the legislators actually designated for funding and it's a lot of money. There's like 59 million from ARPA that was already designated for affordable housing to make sure that that gets deployed and gets out really quickly. And I think 885 million for FY23 by the legislators. So to really get that out of a production as I said before was really important looking at housing choice making sure that places are in compliance with that in terms of having a multifamily zoning district addressing zoning barriers and supporting local and regional advocates as well as municipalities and addressing barriers that come through zoning ensuring that they can address that. Using different tools such as 40B and 40R which we do Commonwealth builders and to really look at what the spectrum of the possibilities are for creating home ownership programs that address light and re renovate and revamp existing properties. So that's the preservation piece of updating those homes, having funding to update those homes, having programs to see if they possibly could subsidize the updating of those homes and making sure they're affordable and that families can access those homes in an affordable way. And also look at climate resiliency and funding for that and making sure that that's available. Other pieces that they also highlighted is seniors and addressing seniors wanting to ensure that seniors can age in their homes and so understanding that they could be, the affordability of their homes could be very high either in costs for renovation and keeping them up to date or taxes and so really providing that but also providing the social supports that they can actually stay in their homes. So it's really, as I said before, very comprehensive. And then the next piece is tackling homelessness and expanding access to safety net programs for the whole continuum of those who are unhoused and ensuring that there's a strong emergency shelter system that also talks about data. The way we talked about data is to have a real time quick access to where shelter beds are as well as spaces for permanent rental spaces or permanent housing. Looking at voucher systems and affordable vouchers. Sorry about that. Having voucher systems, knowing that the voucher system that there's more eligibility for vouchers versus the existence of vouchers. So also having a housing first approach which is really important, understanding that there are a lot of behavioral health challenges for individuals and families, especially through COVID, prior to COVID but COVID making it even worse. So providing those support programs as part of it. So really understanding that there's some other determinants of why people may be unhoused or they may have housing instability. Looking at raft, looking at possibly providing first months, last months and security deposits. So this is really very, very comprehensive and very ambitious and it really tackles all of the different things that we've talked about. And so the last piece is around the home ownership and subsidizing or providing down payments for home ownership, but also not just doing that but understanding that it's not just about accessing affordable either rental space or home ownership but it might be providing support to make sure that that stays secure. There's also one other piece that I just wanna mention because it was mentioned here which is that when your income goes up and then you might not actually be able to stay in that space anymore, incentivizing to use that higher income allowing people to stay there, incentivizing that for funding for home ownership. So to create a savings for home ownership to sort of really provide that support and education and counseling about, okay now that you have a higher income we're not gonna make you move out of that space but that higher income we could try to help you ensuring that you have other needs met to say that for a down payment for home. So lots of lots of different pieces. And then actually the last piece is the pipeline for actually having skilled labor and having a whole workforce that supports the production, preservation, updating of housing. So it's a one last piece but that they also recognize that that's an opportunity to create jobs that help to sustain the plan that they have. So very, very comprehensive. I'd love to see a timeline but I think this is really, I think great news. I don't know if anybody else has read it and wants to add anything that I've missed. Hands are up, at least from our attendees, John and George. Just a quick question from the note taker. Is there a link to this report? And if there is, could you send it to me and I can put it in the minutes if someone wanted to read it or look over it? It was in our, I thought it was in our agenda but it's not, I will send it to you George. Okay, I'll check the agenda but if it isn't, please, if you could. No, it's not, I thought it was, but it's not. I will send it to you. I'll send it to everyone. John? Yeah, the Baker administration had somebody, a staff member in DHCD and I'm blocking on her name but I have it somewhere who was tasked with looking at state property for possible opportunities for housing. So the same person may be in charge of doing that task. The one thing that was outside of her purview was what would happen for housing on state campuses which of course has a particular interest to us and frankly other communities in addition to Amherst that have university or college property. I mean, it's the one thing that universities or colleges could do to really improve the housing circumstances partly for students but also for the rest of the community because when students are out looking for housing or are occupying housing that would otherwise go to families or individuals it means that it closes out a part of the market for them. So I think it's really important for this administration to think seriously about using property on college campuses to develop housing for students and that would kind of automatically improve the market for everybody else. Thank you, John. And I've been trying to actually find an article it was in the higher ed newsletter a while back it was actually an article that talked about the lack of college student housing actually impacts low income students and students of color who often are overrepresented the highest in terms of instability. And I've been trying to find that article because I think it's a very important article for institutes of higher learning to understand that by not building on campus housing can actually have a very negative impact on their goal to ensure inclusivity and racial equity. Any other comments and hands that I've missed and we'll go on to Carol who is going to go to the next section. Some updates. Well, this is a place where I'll talk a little bit about I had a conversation the other day with Nate and Dave Ziermach who is somewhere else and couldn't be here tonight but he had suggested to us in some other meeting that maybe there was a possibility of having a position that was kind of in a certain way shared or at least paid for both by the town and by the housing trust. The town has CPAC money that they got long enough ago that they need to start working on spending it soon for a part-time housing person. And apparently that makes it kind of hard to find it's hard to find part-time people. So what we talked about was Nate and Dave coming up with a proposal that they will try to bring to us a full proposal actually next time of a job description, three-quarter or full-time for two or three years that we would partly fund they will also bring us a budget to tell us what part of it we would have to fund. And it would be somebody who's a member of the town staff but who would focus was housing and some of the things built into the job description which Nate and Dave are gonna be working on would include things that we would want. Like they could do things like keep moving some of the projects like Strong Street as an example which are kind of slowly puttering along and maybe could benefit from some extra effort. They could do some of the kinds of things that we were just talking about tonight in terms of following up on how are the housing how is the housing that we have actually being utilized well or fulfilled? They could, they would be tasked to consult with the trust about things as we go probably to be attendees at the meetings. So they could help us if we come to doing another forum or something help work on that so that we would get some staff assistance for the housing trust and the town would get some assistance. As we have seen in a lot of things that we've done that's the merging or the separation of the town and the housing trust they're often trying to do the same project do different parts of a similar project or the same project. And so this would be somebody working on the project kind of from both points of view or working on both of the things at the same time. So the idea is that they will, Dave and Nate will bring us perhaps by the next meeting although the next meeting is sooner than usual since this one was postponed a week. So the next meeting is done February 9th so that's really only three weeks, not four. Anyway, if not then sometime soon they will bring us a proposal that will include some parts of a job description and also how much money they would be asking the trust for. And so I guess what I'd like to do now is just entertain if people have some thoughts about it's a good idea, it's a bad idea or also what are the kinds of things you would wanna see in such a job description from the trust's perspective then we can give that to Nate and Dave as our feedback and we'll see what they come up with next. So I see a hand from Ashley. I think it's a great idea. And then I think maybe, I mean, the first thing seems to be accurate data like kind of a deep dive. I mean, this will be the first invention of their job is to see where we really are at like in terms of really knowing how many units and really knowing like the details of the units and if they're filled or not. And so, George's spreadsheet could be the beginning of it but just having to report to us very accurate data and hopefully, I mean, if they're doing it, it's a full-time job. They could do that once every few months. Ah, Rob. I also think this is a great idea. I would like this person to be involved in inclusionary zoning from the beginning or before the beginning even. In other words, seek out projects that could become, they could have an affordable component in them. Work with the Economic Development Office Director through his one to make projects that are starting out as a typical development, a non-affordable development and try to include some affordability in that development, possibly by looking for grants or working with the state to access money to transform non-affordable projects into affordable projects. And if they can be a source to do that marketing for those small developers or those developers who are not affordable developers like Gargopalago to do that marketing and do that follow-up so that the affordable inclusionary zoning actually works. Thanks. Are there other ideas or suggestions? Well, if you think of any between now and our next meeting, email them to Nate, who is gonna be working with Dave on the thing anyway. One other update, this is an embarrassing update for me. We did send a letter to the town council and the finance committee as instructed last time. But in fact, I think I only sent it today because I thought I sent it three weeks ago. And then at some point it occurred to me, how come nobody ever even said they got it? Which seems sort of odd. So I looked back through all my email and could not find where I had sent it. And so with apologies, I sent it today. But it has at least now gone out and I apologize to all of you all who I was doing it on your behalf and did a lousy job. But at least it's done now, that's the best I can say. And I'm sorry that I didn't get it out when I thought I did. We have a couple of legislative updates which I really don't know a lot about except that I know there is still a push. I can't tell you any specifics. If I discover some, I will let everybody know to make sure that eviction records get sealed that people who are involved in evictions have a right to have a right to counsel. And I'm not sure who's spearheading that but I can let you know. I also know that there's a state coalition working on getting a state version of the property transfer tax. We just wrote the letter in support of what Mandy Joe and Anna presented to us. That was a particular, we amhurst version of this. There is effort afoot to get a kind of a state enabling document to go through that would allow any municipality that decides to do it to create such a tax following certain protocols or parameters that would be in the legislation. And they're trying to drum up support kind of all over the state to push this through. It's kind of centered I think in a group in Somerville that's where the coalition that's working on it is centered. And I don't have a lot more about that. I know that it's kind of incompatible with what from my understanding of what they were talking about. The statewide thing, I think it will be kind of like the housing trust enabling legislation in that it would say, okay, town, if you wanna do this, you can. It wouldn't make anyone do it. It would just be vehicle that somebody could use to do something. And it would not keep a town as Amhurst will from trying to do its own that would be slightly different which is what Amhurst is trying to do. So that's out there too. I have some announcements. Oh, wait. Erica is gonna tell us what Paul Buckleman told her about filling a trust vacancy. So right now we have one trust vacancy and Angela Mills is trying to coordinate an interview team to fill that particular vacancy. There were slots set up for doing that before the holidays and then time just ended up not working out for people. Carol's going to be representing us on that interview committee. So that is gonna happen and we will get that position filled but he also wanted me to remind all of us so that they're going to be some explorations of positions. Sid, Erica, me, Carol and Rob were all of our appointments end at the end of June. Our terms end at the end of June. Sid, you've been on the trust for two terms which means that you cannot be on for another term. For Carol, Rob and myself, we can be reappointed for another term for our last term. That said, we really need to think about advertising, finding people who we think would be really, really good. Would really hate to lose Sid and hopefully you'll continue meeting the way we've had other people stay with the meeting. You've been a really great connection with the university as well. But I think it's really important to think about who can we talk to about being part of our trust. Thanks, so if anybody has any ideas, actually I think what someone should do if they're interested is fill out that there's a form that you can form and find on the website to fill out of all of us must have done it, I suppose, in order to be here now. So you could send people in that in the direction of that form and then there'll be Erica, do you wanna say something? Yeah, I think that is important but just my own experience. And I know, I really want to recognize that Amherst staff are probably absolutely overwhelmed with the amount of work that they have but my experience has been that sometimes things don't move very fast. And so if we know somebody who's really interested and we think they're really good, let's let us be sort of an ambassador saying, they haven't heard back, is anything moving that we can push a little bit because I think it's, I would hate to lose good people. And I looked at the list and I saw some people and I'm like, wow, it's too bad they haven't been part of this group. So I just fear that, if things don't move fast enough people are gonna lose interest. And right now we have one vacancy we could possibly have more. Hopefully, we're willing to stay on but I also wanna note that both Carol and I are co-chairs and if we don't get reappointed, even if we do get reappointed, we really want everybody to know that you have an opportunity to take this leadership. So this group is as strong as all of us participating in it and leading it and being advocates. So I think it's really important for us to be out there talking to people about we're gonna have some vacancies, please think about it. And if we can be sort of their liaisons to push it forward, that's important too. Yeah, I was gonna say it's not illegal or it doesn't conflict with open meeting law to recruit people or have, talk to people about joining the trust or if someone's interested, I saw it, right? But I think it was for the housing trust. I mean, unfortunately, some of the people we were looking at had submitted forms years ago, like four or five years ago and there's a few more recent but really there weren't too many, I'll call them applicants who submitted citizen activity forms or whatever they're called now to the town. And so I was somewhat surprised that we were going back to 2018 or 19 earlier. And so I think if we can get interest, yeah, I mean, I sometimes we do have to remind the town to reach out or let them know it's, there could be an interview process. So for some other committees I'm staffing now, there's someone who was pretty interested in joining one. They submitted a form in July and they never heard anything, right? It had been six months and they were a little worried. And so I contacted Angela and she was great. She said, I'll just send emails out to tell people we're still, we're gonna have interviews for this committee. And so I think sometimes it just takes that little reminder. It might just be that, right? Everyone's moving, doing something and forgetting about falling up or something. And so, yeah, if we can get more recent applicants, that'd be greater. So I don't think there's too many. John, you have your hand up out there. Let's say that that last spring, I had at least two candidates who talked to me about joining the trust and I encouraged them to do forms. I think they probably did. And then nothing happened and I haven't had contact with them since then but I think this is a common problem. So I do think there need to be ways of keeping things up because there was a vacancy as of July one and it could have been acted upon. We shouldn't be waiting into January or February to get this done. The other thing I can say is if Sid would prefer to stay on, I think that's the possibility. There's nothing formal that would require that he not be reappointed. I know I was a member of the trust for I think at least seven years, maybe longer. And so I think if Paul was willing and there isn't objection from town council, there's no reason why Sid couldn't continue if he's interested. All right, we'll discuss it. Let's figure out first if he's responsible or not. Thanks John. You're welcome, Sid. All right, that's good to know. Let Carolyn and I know and we will advocate for that. So just let us know. We won't put you on the hot seat right now, but okay. Yeah, I'll definitely let you guys know. Appreciate it. Okay. Well, which I just wanna point out this could be also another area that this position could push on to make sure that there is a very short period of when there's a vacancy and when it gets filled. Question. Have we ever sent the posting out to our listserv of the people who might get the emails from us about events or people who have signed up for things, webinars or whatever in the past? No, we haven't, but that's a good idea. We should. I can do that. I will do that. Although I have to say I've had a bunch of computer messes lately. And so you might have maybe noticed I had to use an old list. The list that John gave me, which I had done updating to, which is now on a piece of tech equipment that I can't open. So I'm hoping to go back and find, if somebody has it handy, go back and find the place where people signed up at our forum to be on the mailing list because I put them all on the mailing list, but I don't have that mailing list anymore. So if anybody has any ways to help, I can send it to the list I have. It hasn't been updated faintly since I had this terrible problem. But I know that there are names that were on it once that are lost that I have to try to find again. And if anybody has any idea where any of that info is, please get it to me so that I can put it on the list again. Ashley. Does anybody, well, probably Nate, know when we can meet in person? Is that gonna be possible someday? Nate, do you have any update? I don't. Right now we're remote for the next few months and then it's, it might be back to in person all the time. It's really dependent on what the state does in terms of the open meeting law. So, you know, we're just kind of waiting to see what happens in April for, I think in April we have to go back to in person unless something changes. Wait, okay. So by April, it'll be good? Well, I mean, that's what the, you know, we're allowed to do this by, you know, through the state, not because of what, you know, not because we can't or don't want to. So I think the, it's really about the enabling legislation and if there's any, you know, any governor, there's laws extending, you know, changing open meeting law. So, you know, this is allowed because the pandemic executive orders are, you know, were extended until March or April of 23. Okay. So I think after that, I think, you know, all boards and committees, we'd have to have a discussion about how we'd want to continue meeting. I mean, I personally like remote, I think we could meet in person periodically. But I think, you know, I don't know how the legislation will work, but having hybrid meetings is really difficult to manage where some people are in person and some people are home. That's hard. And so it's either, I feel like it's either better one or the other, but I think it's almost a way in sea because I don't really know, I don't want to guess. I'm not right, currently, as far as I know, there's some people trying to push to keep it remote. And I've heard that there's not been a lot of action on it. So, you know, I really don't know. So we'll be remote at least until April and then we'll see what happens next after that. Yeah, I mean, it's nice that you don't need... These meetings are recorded. And I will say that I'm amazed sometimes after these get posted within a week, you know, there'll be like 40 or 50 views. So I mean, I don't know, people watch the entire meeting, but at least you'll see that there's been a, you know, quite a few more additional people are watching the meetings after the fact, you know, they might not sit here at seven or nine at night, but they do watch it afterward. That's a good to know. I had no idea how many people, if anyone watched. That's nice to know. Thanks for the info. John is his hand up. Okay. I was just gonna say that I always made announcements of the availability of positions because I do think that was important. It's pretty easy to do. It's not a big deal. And I can give you my original list, if that would help, Carol. I have that. What I don't have is the updates that I've done to it, except for maybe one or two since that's what... So I backed it up, but I backed it up and then forgot about it and didn't back it up after I changed it. So I'm doing better at backing up since all that happened. But thanks, John. So let's see what else I have as announcements. I know... This is a question, actually. I know that there is work in progress to create a change to the zoning bylaws that will make it easier to build duplexes, triplexes, other kinds of things that will perhaps increase the density of housing and allow for there to be more different kinds of housing in different places. The reasons given for doing this are affordable housing, economic justice, climate issues. All of those things are the goal and meeting the housing production goals that the town set before. These are the goals of the proposal that the town councilors are working with. I watched part of a presentation of it last night, some recent night at the planning board. And I was wondering, I think that we would be good allies for them in trying to get this passed, I believe. And I'm wondering if people would like... I was thinking of inviting them to come and present their proposal to us. And I wanted to know if people were interested in that, it could be a simple like just yes or no or whatever if you're interested in hearing about this. I got more thumbs than not. Rob, do you want to say... Okay, all right, I just didn't see it. All right, well, then I will invite them to make some presentation towards about their proposal because I think that we would turn out to be allies for them. There is also, if you haven't got it, we will send to you, there's a Habitat Home Ownership Opportunity in Northampton. You have to go to some sessions and educational sessions and then put in an application. I don't know how many units there are, but Nate sent something around. We can send it around again so we can encourage people to do that if they can. There is also, if anybody wants to do something on Saturday morning, February 5th, there will be the first winter walk to raise awareness and funds to end homelessness. It will be in Western math. The first one in Western math on Sunday morning, February 5th. There are more details here and here. There's two websites here in the agenda. George, let me know if you need me to send them to you for the minutes. I think that's what I have for announcements. Does anybody else have any announcements? Just Carol, that would be another good use of the listserv is the, sorry, I like where I saw you put, you did the right thing and put your hand up. The Northampton Habitat stuff, if we wanted to just tell everyone on the listserv, that's probably, I've sent it to some people, but. Yeah, I'll try to put together something that does, so I'm not sending 100 things to them. Send out everything that we come up with right now at the same time, but yes, thank you, Allegra. Maybe this isn't an announcement, so should I wait until 48 hours on anticipated items? No, I don't, well, no, you can do it now. I would just say that I was gonna say a long, I was gonna ask you actually, you had something you wanted to present to us that you wanted to do that you asked, you said, let me present it in February. Yes. So I was gonna ask you if that still makes sense, would you like to be on the agenda in February and then whatever else you're gonna say, go ahead. I believe February would probably make sense. And the only, the question that I had, and I think seeing George's spreadsheet jogged my memory on this, I know, so ServiceNet is planning or is in the process of requesting to develop some permanent supported housing on Dulce-Tembro, the old Mike's Billiards, whatever it was after that, I think it's about 12 units. And I know that at the last, I think planning board or zoning board meeting that they were at, they were requested to do certain things and get back to them. So I wasn't sure if that might be, if that would be something we'd wanna write a letter of support for, if that's something that we are in need in support of making more affordable, permanent supported housing units. I think, sorry, just to jump in, that will be approved if it wasn't last night. So I missed the planning board meeting last night, but it's essentially a site plan review, so it's a by-right use. It's a protected use under zoning, so we can't really deny it. What the planning board was really asking was for site conditions, so like more landscape plantings or lighting or green space or things like that, but they weren't, we really can't say no to the use. So it's considered, it's a protected use. So yeah, I mean, I think it took a little while to get to the approval point, but I don't think the trust needs to write a letter. I mean, we could, I guess Carol, you could email, or Erica could email Christine Brestrup just to say that trust would support it, but I think, like I said, I think if it wasn't approved last night, it will be at the next meeting. I mean, staff was expecting it was gonna be approved. Okay, well, we can say, should I, would I, shall I email Chris Brestrup and say, please do this if you haven't? I mean, we don't. I didn't board that, it'd be approved, yeah. Yeah, that's up. So that's the type of development, right? Just quickly that those 12 units, they're studio apartments that may not be, they would be considered those DMH homes or group homes where we might not have an address on our SHI, that'd be part of like the 80. And so, unless they have a certain deed restriction or something on them, they would just be kind of that informal number that would be, you know, part of the SHI and we don't have an address for it, but. That's okay. We still like them to happen so we can, we can. I know it's a great use of the space. Yeah, that's cool. I don't even know where that is. Mike's Billiards? It's right across, or next to the mobile down on Belcher Town Road on route nine right after Florence Savings Bank. Huh, okay. I have to look for it next time. I mean, it used to call it the Hop Pot restaurant or site. Oh yeah, okay. I like Mike's Billiards better, but. I'm dating myself. Let's see, Ashley. Well, so also did, maybe it was already in my email and I just didn't look thoroughly. Is George's spreadsheet in our email already? It was, well, there's a newer version of it. So it might be that with the minutes, when George gets just the minutes, George, will you put the most recent? Well, they're still working on it, but there is a more recent version than the one that went out with the agenda. It was in the materials that went out with the agenda. The announcement of the meeting included the spreadsheet in its form there, but we may be able to get at least a somewhat more current one if George who has his hand up, so he's gonna tell us in a minute we'll send us the most current one with the minutes. George, speak. I think it probably makes sense at this stage for Nate and I to meet and make sure the document is in the best possible form that may take a while. I certainly can send the fourth iteration. That's really up to the trust members if they would like that. I could just have that, okay. And but understand that we're gonna go take another whack or two at it. So you'll get a fifth eventually. I'm sorry, there'd be so many, but I'd be glad to send the fourth. And then eventually we'll follow up with hopefully a finished product soon. Great. And it doesn't bother me at all if there's so many versions of it. That just means it keeps getting worked on and getting better. That's fine. As long as I keep the numbers straight. In the past, occasionally I've misnumbered something and then all hell breaks loose, but yeah, hopefully it'll be right. Yeah, okay. So I think there are no more announcements. And is there any other thing that was not anticipated within 48 hours? We've never had one before. So that's kind of cool, Allegra. All right, so the things that next time we will perhaps have something from Dave and Nate, a job description, we will have a suggestion from Allegra. We have been working on Erika and I had the idea of at some point doing a kind of affordable housing development 101 as a thing that we do at one of our meetings, just to go through whatever there is to go through about what is the best way to use what we have, what, how does it leverage other things? What in the world is it take to develop affordable housing? We were thinking of doing it really soon. At the moment, I'm thinking of pushing on getting at least our one other new member on board and doing it then, doing it after that. But that's something that's on deck, I think, unless somebody says it's a really terrible idea. I think that's it, that's all I've got besides a lot of scratches on my piece of paper. Erika, anything, anybody else, anything? I was just gonna say, Nate had, you said sent out a chaplain newsletter and I noticed, unfortunately, it was January 17th, Tuesday, was affordable housing 101. But if we see either speakers that we wanna bring in or trainings that I think is important for us to share, just go ahead and share it with all of us. Yes, please. Okay, then are we ready? I have one more question. Yeah, I think it might very well have been in my information and I just didn't look at it very well, but to Nate, those reports, are they open to us? Like when all those property managers do their annual report, is that, well, is it public or is it somewhere we can look? Yeah, like I said, I think I'd mentioned, DHCD would probably be the best place to inquire because they really need to, they're sent to the state, we're either copied on it or copied on, we're given a statement that they complied or submitted it. Sometimes we don't necessarily get all the detail, but yeah, they can, they're public or they can be made public. They're not, it's not as if we keep them anywhere and have them, we'd have to do some digging, but if you request it, we can make them public or we can provide them. Okay, well, I think it wouldn't it be useful to have those reports to underscore George's spreadsheet? Yeah, so, when if the state or something notices there's something wrong, then we're notified. So that's where, say with presidential or some developments where they had vacancies or they have questions about filling a unit, then we're notified. So that's happened a half dozen times over the last few years. So, I'm assuming that if there's no problems then it just gets filed and that's that. There's, so I'm assuming that when I get notified or the town gets notified is because there was an issue, but we could try to get them and have a look at them as well. Yeah, no, after the conversation, I was thinking I would just email DHT and ask just send us the reports for us for two years or whatever. Cool. Anything else anybody wants to say? Well, thank you all for being here. I don't think we need a formal thing and anybody ready to adjourn? Thanks everyone. Thanks for coming. Have a good three weeks, only three weeks till next time because this was a week late. So see you February 9th. Take care. Happy New Year. Thank you.