 Then I'll share the agenda. Oh, wrong. Let's see. Can everyone see the agenda? Yep. Yep. Sorry, my screen. I have a lot on my screen right now. There goes my camera. Yeah, you're working. Okay. You're an angel. You have a halo around you. Yeah, that's right. Okay. I guess we can begin with announcements. Okay. And. People can learn about this in the minutes. After. After the meeting. I went to a meeting of the homelessness committee. For the pioneer valley. Or. Whatever it is to end homelessness project and homelessness. I'm not going to talk about homelessness. But anyway. A couple of things to mention from there. One is that Craig's doors is expecting to start. In October. In October one, if not a little earlier. They and the other. Shelter providers in Western mass. Are expecting more demand. To accommodate as many people as they did last year. Craig's doors. Expect that. I think they'll be able to accommodate 15. At the Baptist church. And they've. Also. Received. I think it's called. The less space is because. They have to do social distancing. And as a consequence. The shelters that the existing shelters. Can accommodate as many people as they did last year. Craig's doors expects that. To accommodate as many people as they did last year. Received, I think it's called an ESG emergency solutions grant. That would allow them to have. 20 motel rooms. That they can use for shelter on top of the 15. Cots at. The Baptist church. They've also added a seasonal shower to the trailer. And they've also added a couple of other items. That will be available. Or it may already be available. Actually. I can't imagine they'll be using it much beyond September. Let's see. I had a couple of other items related to that. I don't know if anybody else but me is interested in this. But. I don't know if anybody else is interested in this. Community Action Pioneer Valley. Serves as the continuum of care. For the three Western counties. Hampshire, Franklin, and Berkshire. And for years, they've been using. A homeless management information system. That was purchased and sponsored by DHC D. And they've been using that system. Beyond, I think it's 2021. And so. The COC has to procure a new HMIS system. There is a committee that's formed that meets, I think, weekly. To decide. Essentially what the requirement should be for a new system. That's. I had one other thing to mention. And that is. I received a notice from. Katie bossy. Who's working on tracking the emergency rental assistance programs for. Mass housing. Partnership and Chapa. I don't know. Anyway, Katie reports that the program's really growing. As of August 6, 63 communities have adopted such program. Up from 48. From in the initial survey, which was taken during the month of May. The total amount of local funds fledged. Is now over $30 million. The city is in a state of emergency. The city is in a state of emergency. CPA or local housing trust funds. So that's the status for. That. I think that's it. Does anybody else have any announcements? I'll just say that, you know, if you were on earlier, I was talking about the block grant funds, the cares funding the town applied for. And we're trying to get contracts going. So Craig's doors will receive about 20,000 for the resource center. To help homeless individuals. Find housing or, you know, receive counseling. Family outreach is receiving 52,000 to help. Households, you know, with their housing stability and find housing or not lose their housing. And the survival center is going to receive 90,000 for their food services. And that's going to take place very soon. And then. 160,000 is going to Valley CDC for micro enterprise assistance, the small businesses in town. That might take a little longer to get going, but it is, you know, we have contracts at least get going and getting in place. And you also said, Nate, I think at an earlier meeting. You know, I think the town will basically replace the $250,000. That we're spending on the emergency rental assistance programs. That right? Yeah. So there's, well, the town. Can. There's two kind of pots of money in the town can use to get reimbursed for COVID expenses. There's state. Money going through the state and then money through FEMA. And then, you know, I think the town, I think can get up to, um, it's a few million. I think it's over a little over three million. But anyways, since this money from the trust was an unanticipated expense and it's directly addressing COVID, we can. We, I think the town's finance director's already put it on the reimbursement request. So. All of it will come back in the end. Which is great. I mean, it wasn't, I didn't think that, you know, we didn't do it because of that, but it's, you know, I think we've got to do it. Um, but you know, like fire emergency response, you know, all the things that that town's been doing with COVID is all. Yeah. I didn't realize like how much. You know, they're saying that one, you know, they've had a number of ambulance runs and I guess the expense to clean an ambulance after every run is, is huge and. You know, the, to disinfect it and all the, all the staff time is, you know, that's going to be reimbursed. But. I think the, um. Yeah. I mean, I think that's great. It's almost like, well, would we double down our money and. Put more in, but at least we have the ability to get paid back. Right. And you said, we have to expend the money by the end of December. Right. Yeah. So if we were to spend additional money on expanding or extending the program. Uh, is there a chance that could be reimbursed as well? It could be. Yeah. It may, it may be December was, you know, I'm not sure that's the hard deadline, but that's, I think what they're looking for by the end of the calendar year. So. Um, yeah. Okay. Great. Yeah. Any other announcements. Okay. So the next order of business is reviewing the minutes from July 9th. I think I sent them out last weekend and then again today. So people should have had an opportunity to take a look at them. And, uh, The question is, are there any changes that. Uh, anybody sees that we need. I can share those with people like. I don't think you need to share it. People have had a shot at it. And, uh, if there are no objections or concerns raised, then I think we will. Uh, simply take the minutes. As accepted as transmitted. Any objections. Okay. So is Jana tetra joined us? Yeah. So we have, I was going to just mention that we have a few guests. We have whaling, uh, Jana McGowan, Jana from community action, more a keen and then Mindy Dom. Those are the guests tonight. And I'll bring Jana on as a panelist to discuss the, um, I think we can, you can hit raise your hand button. John Honecker. I can recognize you. We're a co-host and we can. Allow you to speak. Okay. And then after Jana, we will. Uh, hear what Mindy has to say. Cause it's related to. Uh, other rental issues. Okay. So you want to bring Jana on. She's on. Can you, can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Hi, everyone. Um, so I'm just going to give a brief update on where we are with the emergency rental assistance program. The application deadline has passed. Um, I don't have final, final numbers because we still have a few applications to review tomorrow. Um, we received 104 applications. Um, 22 of those did not meet the initial thresholds to move forward. So that means that they were either living in subsidized housing. Um, was a, either a single person or an entire household full of full-time college students. Um, or didn't live in Amherst, which we had a few of those. Um, so those folks got letters right away, knocking them out. Um, and then we had a couple of, uh, Uh, of the remaining batch, uh, 42 of them are incomplete. So, um, this is one thing that I think we should talk about either tonight or, um, At the next meeting about, um, what may have happened to those 42 people and why they filled out the online application and that didn't complete their application. Um, I think that's, um, Interesting, something that we didn't necessarily expect. Um, so far I have 11 that are approved. 15 that are denied. Uh, 11 left to look at tomorrow and two that withdrew. Um, Of the 11 that are approved so far that would. Um, I think that would cost basically, uh, 23,542 dollars. Um, so if the remaining 11. We're all eligible and cost about the same, we'd have about maybe $50,000 to spend in round one, which would mean we would not need a lottery. I don't believe, but you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think we need a lottery. Um, I think that's a really important thing. Um, I think that's something that has been denied so far. Um, the two biggest reasons are that they're over income. Um, Mostly that is because of unemployment. Um, though not entirely. Some of them also had, um, pretty significant assets. So this is another area that I think, uh, Somehow something has was missed in terms of when folks applied. Um, Um, I think I mentioned this to John of the, I would say anecdotally, we didn't ask this question and we can ask it in round two. Uh, but in terms of where folks seem to be coming to us from, I would say we had, uh, Um, we had a lot of people that didn't have a loss of income due to COVID. Um, I think I mentioned this to John of the, I would say anecdotally, we didn't ask this question and we can ask it in round two. Um, I would say we had, uh, quite a few households that have been working with family outreach. Um, quite a few immigrant households. Um, and family outreach staff actually really assisted our staff and helping to get those folks completed applications. Um, and we had a lot, not a lot, but a decent number of international graduate students. Um, um, some who met the, we had meet the criteria and have been approved. Um, a few that, um, have had, have significant assets available to them so they don't meet the, um, threshold for needing the assistance. Um, the other interesting thing is probably of the. 104 applications. I would say maybe only a dozen of them were able to meet the criteria. Um, um, was surprising to us. Um, in just in terms of like what's been happening up until now, I do think that the additional unemployment benefit. Um, was really helping a lot of folks and they weren't behind in their rent. Um, and being behind in your rent was not a threshold criteria, but just was interesting to me that so few of the applicants were behind in their rent. Um, I don't know anything about that. All that information. I just threw you. Well, I'd be in. Oops, go ahead. Sorry, Rob. I was just wondering what the asset threshold is. So, um, the guidelines say that they had to have insufficient income and assets to pay their rent for the next three months. So we came up with. Um, math equation to figure out what that is, but basically, um, if they're projected household income. Plus whatever they had in savings. Um, 30, if 30% of that was more than their monthly rent. Then we determined that that was sufficient. So, um, if that was, you know, most of the time it was pretty easy to determine if they had sufficient because they had a lot of assets available to them. Um, other questions or thoughts or observations. I have a quick question. Um, what is the plan with the, uh, I guess with their 40 incomplete applications, are they just no invite at this point or is there going to be more follow-up or what was your thinking on that? Um, so the 42 or 43 that are incomplete, um, got letters that said, I'm sorry, your application's incomplete. Um, you know, we notified them that there might be another, there'll be another round and so they would be eligible to, to a reapply. Um, some of them had been actively working back and forth with the staff and then just like never finished the application. So I imagine we will hear from those folks. Um, there were quite a few that just never responded to the initial, you know, hi, we got your application. We need to send you some information. You know, please call me back. The staff attempted three times to contact folks to, you know, engage with them. And then after three times we, we did, you know, we stopped. So, um, you know, we have all their email addresses. So I'm, you know, we can be in touch with them. However, we want to, you know, we want to be in touch with them. Um, you know, when we get to round two, I think notifying them that the application rounds available again. Um, You know, I think, uh, they filled out the application already. And so figuring out a way to like, maybe they didn't, won't have to fill the whole thing out again. Um, cause they already did that part. But, um, At this point they're, you know, for round one, they're not in it. So, um, you know, you know, the town we sent, you know, an email to all the landlords, we sent it out to the, you know, as many social service agencies as we could, and we try to cast a wide net, but I'm not sure if we, if it reached people. So, you know, I don't know if you have other ideas on how to continue the outreach. Um, I mean, I think, and I'll have, you know, all the complete numbers after tomorrow, and I'm happy to come back to your next meeting. Um, I think, um, my proposal would be for round two. Um, Is that we think that you think about, um, what is the real goal of the program and think about, are there ways that we could change some of the guidelines to really meet the needs of, you know, if the goal is to keep vulnerable, I think that, uh, maybe not, you know, right now subsidized tenants were not eligible because the, the kind of plan was that we were going to pay monthly rent going forward. And so you can't subsidize tenants. That really messes up their subsidy. Um, so as a result, subsidized tenants aren't eligible even if they owned rent, had owed renter rears. And so I feel like we're missing a group of people. That probably owe renter rears, but we're not eligible to apply. Um, and so I, you know, I think we could revisit that group. Um, I was surprised at the number of people again, who weren't behind in their rent. So there obviously are people in Amherst who are behind in their rent. And so where are they? We were not, we didn't reach them. Um, and so I think, you know, potentially including subsidized folks. I also, I think that the, you know, in some ways some of the processes were kind of complicated. And so I think we might want to think about how do we make it simpler? Um, both for, uh, you know, people to apply and kind of understand what they're applying for. Um, and you know, it was fairly labor intensive on our end. So I feel like we could, there's things that we could do that would make it a little bit less intense. Um, but I think, you know, you know, normally when people apply to community action for financial assistance, they call us, make an appointment used to be in person. Now it's over the phone. We do the application with them. Um, and then we get the documents that we need. And because we did an online application, I think what we've learned is that people, it was really simple to fill it out. And then people hit submit and just, I don't know what they thought was going to happen, but I don't know that they understood what they were applying for. Um, it also doing the application with them kind of allows the staff to have a conversation, kind of understand a little bit more about what's happening, make more like timely referrals. You know, we have a couple of people who really should be applying to raft because they owe. Four or five, $6,000 in renter years. And so, you know, but we're, we're having, you know, it's not as easy to communicate that back and forth when. They're not calling you back and they, you know, you emailing them. And then three weeks later, they call you back. And so I, I mean, I can, um, I'd like to propose what we think could be some addition, some changes that might make it more efficient. Um, but also would probably like make the, you know, make a first come first serve model work a little better, work better than a lottery model. So that would be up to you all to decide if that's what you wanted, but. Um, Yeah, I just want to make sure we're not, you know, we're also in compliance with what CPA required, you know, requires for income or for documentation. So. Sure. So that was my question. And the, the ones that were not completed, it was a matter of submitting documents versus just the, the application. Right. So what we asked them for was, um, you know, to submit additional documentation after the online application. So proof of income, something about your COVID loss of, or a reduction in income bank statements, um, either a copy of your lease or something that shows that you, uh, what your rent is or bedroom sizes, you know, things like that. Um, and so some people, uh, there's a release form that we needed to be able to disclose, you know, some of the things that we needed to be able to do, you know, we needed to be able to share information in our database and be able to disclose things to the town. Um, And so some people just didn't respond at all to those requests. And then there's people who kind of went back and forth and then sort of just fell off. Um, And so, yeah, it was, and, you know, I admittedly this, you know, during COVID, this is complicated, right? In the old days, which was only six months ago, but it was a little bit more complicated. And so, you know, we did have an application. Um, and so, you know, it's, we do have, um, people can, could have mailed it if they wanted to. We did have the option to drop it off at the office. And then we also have this Citrix. Uh, you know, secure share file system where it sends them a link and they take a picture of it and uploads it. Um, and for some people that is easy. And so for some people that can be more challenging. Um, for some people that don't need it. Um, I think there's also some people that didn't really expect that we were going to ask them for all this documentation. And some people were saying, no, I don't, I'm not giving you my bank statement. And so, um, it's hard to prove that they had insufficient income or assets. If we don't know that. And I mean, and we don't ask for the whole statement. We're just asking for something that says what their balance is. Well, you know, I think there was more hand holding over the phone or whatever. That was involved. So that if they submit the online application, the next step isn't. Might be to email them, but if then you don't hear something. To make telephone calls. To try to get them engaged. Uh, you know, my impression is people find these processes that they don't need. They don't need it. You know, while you or I might not, they do. And as a consequence, people drop out. Not because they don't have a need. But because. They just get discouraged. And they're afraid they're not going to do it right. And it's hard to get around that. But I think you're right. We have to find a way of being able to do that. I mean, you know, you know, you know, you have to, you know, supply various documents as well. So I. You know, I would hesitate to say have a program where we don't need to see any. Income verification or, you know, Elise agreement. It's just, you know, it's like, we're going to have to. Collect some documentation from an applicant. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, even when the town's rental assistance, whether, you know, the one that's offered through the health department, they're asking for a lot of information. And so we'd be able to. Get in touch with the city of Minnesota. We'd be able to get in touch with the city of Minnesota. We'd meet with everyone. We'd ask for a lot of information. From them to verify that, you know, the funds were. You know, going to someone's income eligible and that they, you know, needed them. So. You know, and that was even for like $500. You know, it wasn't even for as much as we're offering now. We would, you know, we would have, you know, A meeting and ask for a number of things. I will say that more has our hand raised. I was just wondering how you guys were taking into account the loss of the $600 a month from the federal government as of the end of July as part of the application. So for the last time we talked about this with John and Nate and Rita was you know earlier in July and so it was we that was when no one really knew it was going to happen with the unemployment. And so we basically at the time of application we looked at what was their income for many people that included the $600 if you know and then we were projecting like what would happen if they lost the $600 you know come August and figured out what their projected income was. So that we did take that into account and for people that actually applied you know right at the deadline they actually could show in their unemployment statement that they'd lost the $600 because they've already it's already had already ended. So we did try to take that into account though some of those folks still ended up being over income or had then assets you know was a some of them were kind of complicated. So we did try to take that into account and I think you know for round two those folks will have if in fact some of them were ineligible their picture could look really different in round two. Yeah I think that we should just automatically transfer all the application applications that came in in round one and had income issues or even other issues you know if they weren't obviously disqualifying and get in touch with people and say we now have a second round call us we'd like to be able to talk to you about addressing these issues with your application if we can do that successfully then you may still be or you still should be eligible in this next round. So that makes sense to you Janet. Yeah it does make sense yeah. So we actually have a on our sheet we have a like a you know hold for round two kind of checkbox so we are identifying those people but yeah I agree I think there are a significant number of people whose whose situation could change for round two you know for a practical matter we had to cut off round one at some point otherwise we could go on for several more weeks. So. We have to take the eviction moratorium do you think people were missed or I mean the rents are still accruing but do you think they just have there's some safety nets in place that they're not feeling pressure and do you think the fall will change that or I mean you know I was hoping you know I thought like I said I thought we had pretty good notices and so I you know I don't think to me we didn't have as many applications as I thought we would have had so I thought you know we'd be we've had more applications coming in you know whether or not they're complete just you know just more applications in general. Yeah I'm wondering if we have to do somehow a better job of outreach we had almost a dozen email lists of one kind or another we're using to outreach I think as soon as round two is officially kicked off we should be getting in touch with all those same people and maybe with some more urgent requests that they follow up with people and get back to us I mean we don't know really other than you said family outreach of Amherst where people are coming from should we add a question saying something like how did you hear about this program so we get some idea whether people are or are not acting and I think we can do that I also think I mean I think if you wanted to boost the numbers again I would think about whether you want to include subsidized housing for renter rears only that's a that's a question that that I was wanting wanting to ask so what subsidized tents are you typically referring to because my understanding is you know if your income goes down and you're in a section eight you can get you know we we qualified or you know get an adjustment on your rent so I'm curious about what subsidized tenants are are in renter rears what kind of properties are they in and what kind of rental assistance are they getting so we I mean community action in general typically sees a lot of subsidized tenants I would say that in theory yes you your rent goes down when your income goes down but in practical terms a lot of times there's a delay so if the the tenant doesn't produce the correct documentation that the housing authority needs then they don't reduce the rent and so you know I used to work at the inverse housing authority for tenant called and said oh I lost my job I would say great I need a letter from your employer and then six weeks later you might get the letter from your employer the employer and the housing authority is not obligated to go retro to reduce the rent for the months that the tenant did not produce the documentation and so I think that that happens the other thing that that you could think about which we do for some of our other programs that we have different funding for is instead of asking for a COVID related loss or reduction of income they just have to have a COVID related reason and so we've had people who have who have lost their jobs but who also have had expenses go up or other things happen you know if your hope your kids were home from school all summer with no camp and you had to feed them and you know we've been a little bit more flexible and again you this would have to be appropriate with CPA I also think that at the employment unemployment picture changes we're going to see a lot of different changes going on with the income I think in some ways you know during the time that we were the application period was open people had significant there was you know increased SNAP there was pandemic EBT if you had kids in school there was increased unemployment so some people didn't need you know we're able to pay their bills and maybe in you know by October that's going to be really different you know again a lot of these folks were not behind on their rent and that was really surprising to us yes I still question whether or not we can give funding to subsidize tenant is that I think that's a I actually we've tried that before and we've been told no and I just think that it'd be a gamble then if they are still trying to get a reduction in their you know if they're working with a housing authority or someone in their administrator to get a reduction and then they're getting income from the town and you know it's not you know I don't know I just feel like that's not going to help them because you know that's that's the best you know they'd be getting income essentially for a few months and so then they're just going to wait to then get re-qualified right I would not pay monthly rent on a subsidized tenant I don't think that we you can do that but I was just talking about rent arrears because that would go directly to the landlord not to the tenant but John Wailing had had her hand raised sure anything I'll speak if you're good I meet now so thank you so much for recognizing me everybody my name is Wailing Greeny and I like to share some of the experience we have about helping people to apply for this emergency rental assistance can you hear me okay okay great so we help three people three families apply and just a small number and one has trouble producing the lease and the reason was that she didn't know whether she could stay in the apartment until she found out this this rental subsidy program so she applied then so she signed her lease the very very end about a week ago so because she sent a lease so late Cayman's wasn't quite ready to process the paperwork so we are still waiting for them to counter sign the lease and because the deadline was yesterday at noon time so she as a result missed out on the deadline otherwise she had every single thing that you asked her for the income and the verification that she lost income due to COVID and the asset you know information from bank statement so long so we feel really sorry for her and I think this has to do with the fact that people who are unsure about signing another year of lease uncertainty so I was wondering if anything can be done to help salvage this one particular application because she's so close and it's really it's the problem of you know unable to get a lease signed back by Cayman's so that's one comment to stop currently where she's currently living she is living at that apartment and she was back and forth whether she should sign it or not and she wasn't going to sign but then we told her about this particular assistance and she was feeling much hopeful much much more hopeful so she decided to sign the lease until the very last minute so because of that but she turned everything on time and your staff was very kind to you know communicate with her in Spanish and allow her to turn the stuff in give her the deadline yes it'd be a new time but unfortunately we still couldn't help her deadline well it sounds like she would be eligible for the next round there's a there we had a grace creator people could still if they submit an application on time follow up with to still get into round one with their information so if she submitted an application on time right yeah isn't that true like we had a few days where they still could submit you know because you know the idea is if someone submitted on the last day an application they may not have all the information but we gave everyone who submitted an application you know another week or whatever it was to submit the required documents yesterday but wayling it might be helpful I mean if you want to email me tomorrow or have her call me directly because if she she could have given us a copy of her current lease that hasn't expired so it sounds like there might have been I don't we didn't need her lease for September we would have we just needed the lease of where she was living when she applied a little bit of miscommunication okay I'm so sorry that indeed was a misunderstanding on our part we thought that she had to give you a new lease but she has the only still she's still living there okay well why don't we we could you could either have her call me tomorrow or we could chat tomorrow you and I could chat tomorrow you resolve that that would be great and can I give you the second example to show the difficulties people are having yes okay so the second example is just because this is a brand new process so this particular individual applied on the 4th of August and the deadline was the 6th so when he submitted on the 4th indeed on the 7th he received an email through our account asking him to sign a document which he did so we send out the document on the 7th Friday and then Monday Tuesday we didn't hear from your agency so we thought the process will become obvious to us while we are waiting so until today since we didn't receive anything we realized was nothing going to follow up on that 7th form the August 7th form that we signed so we are unsure of what what to proceed because we assume when we sign a form for him on the 7th this will be more coming to the email inbox but there's nothing came through so that's one example okay yeah I mean again I mean I'm happy to follow up with you tomorrow or with the applicant to see what normally there would have been yeah multiple things to sign and and a call from the staff so okay all right we can investigate that further great that would be wonderful and the third example is somebody who has excuse me whaling I don't think you need to go through all these examples get on please and go through them her I don't think it's necessary for us to take the meeting time to go through that same price right but could I give you a reason why I think that a committee should really consider helping people who already have the subsidy such as section 8 voucher holder and yet is unable to pay the rent well again I think Jana will do what she's able to in that area that's what we discussed earlier and again I don't want to go back over that ground okay thank you is anybody else have any ideas about how we could strengthen our outreach to the various organizations in Amherst most of them are listed on the agenda if somebody has a specific relationship with one of those agencies maybe you could do not the only outreach but additional outreach to them because I think we don't want to let people just go by the boards because we didn't we didn't identify everybody well look at the list and get back to me if there's something you can think you can do with something on that list I'll get back to me by email or if you have another idea for doing outreach get back to me on that please Jen I think we might also consult with Laura Reichman she might have some ideas about how to do better outreach to these organizations in Amherst I wonder if Nate there's a Nate you sent something to what was called registered landlords yeah so you know the is that I mean how much of a landlord does that hit 600 everyone who's registered through the rental registration program so we sent an email out with the flyer for this program you know I think went out twice you know sometimes it gets sometimes you know if you do an email like that we try to send it out in batches so it's not doesn't go to spam but I know it did go through because a few landlords called the town or emailed with questions so I know it did get received and so you know I spoke with one today and they said that you know they want to keep their units rented right so they can't apply on behalf of the tenant but it seemed like the landlord was interested in trying to work with the tenant so but you know you don't you don't know like if so say a lot of the landlord saw it are they willing to then approach a tenant and say here's a program to help you or doesn't work that way but you know I wrote you know we did say community legal aid I mean could the could housing court be a place you know we had I think we had sent it to people in the schools so then you know the thought was that they could then port it on to their you know their contacts you know I did the Amherst Human Service Network and a number of social service agencies we did the bid in the chamber and I can do that all again say that you know there's round two and it's continuing to you know applications and still be received I just you know it's hard now because at one point we had done a while ago with a program you know we actually had someone go into housing complexes and put something in everyone's mailbox you know the housing manager said sure you know what in their rental and their monthly notice or something sure the talent can put in something so I made hundreds of copies and we run around but it's not really happening right now so that kind of you know that type of outreach isn't isn't happening so you know emails can get lost pretty easily I think so yeah so this might be you know not a great idea but I know that UMass you know if sometimes their human service or human resources puts information in for employees I mean they're looking at possible layoffs and possible you know good call it furloughs that might put people at risk and that's the same thing with Amherst even though I saw Amherst College was trying to hire but all of the is there like a commerce place where all the different businesses could also give it to their employees assuming that they actually live here in Amherst that's a good idea I think yeah we can again that could go back to the bid you know there's I mean there's there you know Hamford County you know Resource Center but there's maybe a few places we could try to get more directly so beyond the marketing I want to get back to Jenna's suggestion that maybe we tweak some of the the guidelines and what I would suggest is rather than trying to do that here tonight that maybe John, Nate, you, me, Jenna, and Dana get together and just you know look at how you might want to tweak the guidelines and then they could be brought back do we have time right to bring them back to the next well we want to get round one started within a week or so right round I'm talking about round true round two I'm talking about round two so for round two just you know for example if we don't do an online application but rather people can call and then be walked through provided that's not too labor-intensive for Jenna and her staff and then just you know some of these other things that have been raised tonight you know my my reaction is there were 104 applications 42 are incomplete that tells me that there was something wrong there so you know the word got out to there were there were quite a few applications but if almost half of them never returned then maybe the you know it was it was too much it was misunderstood kind of what Jenna was talking about sometimes people don't you know things that are in writing they get confused and it gets put into a pile and so I'm thinking that you know if we could tweak some of the some of the guidelines in application procedures that that could really be a big boost you know maybe we gain half half of those 42 people or or more simply because they needed more hand-holding yeah yeah my hope is right if they are contacted and can get into round two that they're you know they've already started so we're not you know that they can continue to complete the forms yeah I mean it isn't you know with Wei Ling what she said I do think like the back and forth and just the way I mean I guess that's the way it is right I think it's it's a lot I mean it's you know it's a few weeks of possibly gathering documents having communication you know figuring out do I mail it how do I scan it what do I know how do I make a copy of it if I don't have you know so yeah I mean I just finally downloaded an app on my phone some scanning app I actually downloaded three just recently myself to try to scan documents and it took a long time to actually find something that worked really well some of more like you know ineligible you know illegible or they are too big the file size are too big so I mean it was a waste of an afternoon really but I think you know I mean so far I think of someone who's trying to scramble and then they're like okay well how do I where do I go like I'm I have to go to Staples now and then you know then save them somehow and then come back and email them to community action again but I don't but I you know I do think for instance like CPA has probably some requirements though for income documentation and things so I don't know by how much we can relax the process is that I've never seen any income documentation that's their income guidelines but I've never seen documentation whatever we've done and we said yeah I mean we asked for you know when we do other programs you've asked for the similar things you know assets bank statements pay stubs otherwise how do you know that they're income eligible yeah I'm not talking about income eligibility I'm just talking about helping you know obviously people have to be income eligible but it's more about you know how you kind of handhold maybe some folks through the documentation process yeah I think we can get together and talk about simplifying but at the end of the day there may not be very many things we can change the key may be creating a better handholding process yeah I mean I would I don't I agree that I don't think we should relax necessarily the documentation but I will say that the way that we do applications for everything else does not involve an online application and I do think that applicants feel both a little bit more invested in the process and also connected to the program because they spent an hour on the phone talking to the person who can then really say okay I'm gonna email this to you and this is what it's gonna have like I think it if we don't seem to have this level of drop-off for our other programs and so I do think that it's that personal connection that you know we didn't do this time and it's just lessons learned like I mean no one knew how this was gonna go and I think now that we've done it you know I think it was you know a little bit too easy to just hit submit and then not really realize what was actually gonna happen next and I so I do think some of those 42 could come back and you know there might be other folks that just were really intimidated by the online application or didn't realize I mean we said that you can call to get a paper application but we did not get any request for paper applications which I was really surprised about and so again I think potentially also changing some of the way we're marketing so it's a little bit more clear okay thank you now I want to move on to the eviction issue and I know Mindy is with us she's still with us I sent out a note that I received from Laura Reichman about two local developers of realtors sending the equivalent of an eviction notices out to two or more of their tenants and I know Mindy's been working on that so I'd like to ask her to speak about that and also about the opportunity for the trust and the town to receive money to support affordable housing in the future can you hear me John yes I can hi everybody I'm glad to be here tonight I also while you were talking earlier I just had a couple of ideas that I jotted down also in terms of outreach around the rental assistance so I can email that to you later John in terms of maybe some other places I certainly would amplify it on my social media I know other places would too and I have some ideas on where to do that outreach so as most of you know there's a state moratorium on evictions and foreclosures the governor has extended it until the middle of October it was due to expire on this month extended it for three months it very well could be extended again separately there's legislation that would establish a moratorium in case the governor wants to lift that before October we had been contacted by family outreach around some of these I'd say threatening letters that some landlords are sending to tenants which not only say you owe this much rent but indicate that they must pay by let's say hypothetically August 31st or eviction process will proceed which of course is not that latter part is not the case they may be accruing rent that's owed but at this point the moratorium would prevent them from being evicted and so we have been working with the Attorney General's office for on a couple of different levels one to work with family outreach to see if their program participants will work with the Attorney General's office directly so the AG can take some very specific action but we also have learned that you know these kinds of letters are actually illegal and so the Attorney General and I can put this in writing to you so you can include it in the minutes Mori Healy's civil rights division is now urging any tenant who's being harassed threatened or discriminated against to call their civil rights division hotline and this is considered this kind of letter is viewing is being viewed as both harassment and a threat tenants who are being unlawfully forced out of their homes which isn't happening in this case can also call the police department in the AG but it's being viewed as a potential violation of civil rights so what I would say is if you know of people in Amherst who are getting these letters they can certainly go ahead and call the civil rights division directly and again I'll give you the number for your minutes but they can also call my office if they live in Amherst and that number is 413-461-2060 I'll also put that in my email and we can help bring that information to light to the Attorney General and we can also reassure the resident that they're not going to be kicked out of the apartment that there's a moratorium but in the course of doing this we also found out one of the people I think that came to our office had a lease that was up in August and so the landlord was saying well the moratorium doesn't apply to you after August 31st because you have to leave the apartment when your lease is up and you can be evicted at that point and according to the legislation people cannot be evicted they can't be evicted even if their lease is up the moratorium is pretty firm the only way a person can be evicted is if they're causing harm to somebody else or if they're it's criminal activity or lease violations that quote may impact the health or safety of other residents health care workers, emergency personnel, persons lawfully on the subject property or the general public so it's very much tied to public health and safety issues and so again if people have leases that are coming up in July and August which tends to be the case in Amherst they actually can't be evicted until like the middle of October at this point and they can't be forced to move they can move well you know voluntarily but they can't be forced to move so that's on the eviction piece. Are there any questions about that? No thanks Mindy. This is Nate you know when you know the town through John I guess you know we saw I saw a few letters or family outreach so I did call a few places in South Point was one that sent you know notices out in April, May, June I think even into July and they then worked with their attorney in the AG's office and they sent a correction letter so I was sent that today so I'm not I'm assuming I'm hoping the tenants then received it but you know they someone brought it to you know I'm glad someone brought it to you know enough people that they were able to get get get the state involved. Yeah we also called but if you have any residents in the future also Nate I'm happy to make those phone calls in addition to you. Sure yeah. I'm happy to be the state rep calling on behalf of my constituent to tell landlord to back off so if that's helpful to you let me know. That's great yeah I mean I was able to get a letter in 20 minutes and I think it probably took some tenants weeks so you know the stress of not knowing for weeks. Yeah the other one that's interesting what the lease is expiring because I actually have heard that that a number of landlords are not going to renew a lease saying a tenant has you know not paid or they're just not going to renew it to that tenant but so that's that's a nice piece of information because I wasn't clear on that. Yeah so it's you know they may not renew it but they can't evict them until the moratorium is lifted so the tenant may you know that may be not so satisfying for a tenant because they may want to stay in that apartment even after the moratorium but as long as the moratorium is in place and they're not creating any risk they will not be able to be evicted so again if I can be a backstop to you in any way about that or amplify whatever you're doing or stand in support with the town I'm happy to do whatever is necessary to not only make sure that people get to stay in their homes but to also support the efforts of the town to make sure that that happens. No thanks. And we also have contacts with the AG's office so if it turns out you're feeling like you can't find the right person you should also reach out to us for that on too. All right thanks. Thank you. Mindy do you want to say a little bit about the economic bond bill? Sure so you know one of the things I've learned in my first term is that people have a lot of feelings about bond bills and some people refer to it as funny money and some people refer to it as actual money but it takes a couple steps to get to it. I'm in the latter group because a bond bill is basically reserved as many of you may know for very high ticket projects usually building of some nature where you are going to actually need the money over many years over a period of time and so because it's so much money and it's over a period of time it can be bonded and so we're going to borrow money for it but since the legislature doesn't have we can't borrow the governor has to actually seek the borrowing but we can give him the items that are eligible for being borrowed for borrowing money for and those items end up in bond bills and I'm happy to answer questions and if I know the answers I'll share them and if I don't I can find out so we have bond bills on a whole range of topics usually divided by the services of government so for example there's a higher education bond bill there is an education bond bill we passed an information technology on bond bill there's a transportation bond bill for like roads and bridges and things like that but there's also this year there's an economic development bond bill and a lot of it was tied to COVID-19 and the economic impact and so the bond had very specific categories of funding that they were looking to fund in the state and I was able to secure a couple of pieces in that bond bill but two significant ones related to affordable housing for the town of Amherst so in the economic development bond bill in the house version soon to be I think the state's version there are two items that relate to affordable housing in the town of Amherst they're each for $250,000 so together it's $500,000 one is $250,000 for the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust to be used to develop and secure affordable housing and that's pretty broad and intentionally so so that you know my thinking and actually submitting this amendment to the bond was when the meetings that I've attended there's usually been discussion about how do we get money for land how do we get money for design plans this that construct I mean there's all these associated costs and I thought that that would is broad enough to maybe be useful to you as a trust and then another $250,000 for a very particular program in the bond but it's for the town of Amherst to use to develop climate resilience affordable multifamily units upon receiving lead gold or lead silver certification and so this is a very specific program that is a building slash climate change program which I assume actually that all construction in Amherst would be eligible for since we have a net zero zoning law like it wouldn't be particularly special but it's also for multifamily units the two could be used together they could be used apart I mean I think that the way to think about it now is the money is not allocated it we have to once it gets into the final bond which is shortly it needs to actually have the governor sort of it needs to be triggered by the governor's request to get on bonding for it which will involve some advocacy but that also means it doesn't have to be spent this year so if there was no project on the books this year that's okay if there's something happening in the next one to five years that folks are saying yeah that's money that we might want to try to get out of that bond so that we could use it to underwrite a project in Amherst it would then be available so I'm pretty excited that it's in the bond I'm pretty excited that it's a significant amount of money I mean I'm sorry it's not millions but as a first termer I get pretty excited when I see $500,000 so I'm easy I'm a what do they call it I'm an easy date great thank you very much Mindy really thank you you're welcome and I was happy to do it thank you thank you for all your work as a housing trust and making sure that affordable housing and rental assistance and that people stay sheltered it wasn't a big leap for me to think about well if I wanted if I want to be able to try to support affordable housing who could use the money that is a trustworthy community entity who's always sort of looking out for folks shelter needs the house the affordable housing trust comes to mind immediately thank you does anybody else have any questions or comments Janet McGowan had her hand raised John yeah I saw that Janet are you ready to come on board whoops Janet I thought so here I am okay um so I was thinking when Mindy was talking that it and Nate might have covered this that it'd be easier if the town or the affordable housing trust or somebody contacted the major rental management companies and Amherst as well as the major um you know apartment building owners and say just to remind them that they can't evict people because it's like it'd be easier to kind of put that whole issue to rest than wait for case by case for people to kind of find you and find where to talk and stuff like that and so I totally appreciate what the AG is doing but it might be kind of a prophylactic thing just to inform you know the local landlords you can't evict people the other point I was thinking about when she was talking is that if people are moving their households you know planning to move into an apartment on September 1st and someone doesn't leave they may be displaced because they're leaving another apartment so that might be another problem happening and things like that so that that was it great I think that's a good suggestion I get Nate we could look into making an announcement through the landlord list that you were mentioning before yeah I think yeah I want to have the right language or resource or where to direct landlords but Nate would it be helpful um for my office to approach the AG and say that the town might like to reach out to landlords if they have a letter that they use or they have language that they suggest you know it occurs to me that that's a great suggestion because I think like South Point's landlord I think is out of state like some of these people may not even know that there's a moratorium going on right I think you know right an issue with Amherst is usually you know Lisa's end in August or September just you know the student turnaround so yeah my thought is that if people are you know that they would be getting notices soon so yeah I thanks Mandy if you would because I don't want to you know it'd be nice to have something to explain it better you know even like a link to send in the email just so I think I may also have the fact sheet that I can send you but I think tomorrow we can call the AG's office and at least see if she knows or if they know of any other towns that have done this kind of outreach to landlords right that would just be sort of an interesting thing to do and I'll look and see if we have a fact sheet to send you about it I think a gentle reminder and you're right that people may not even be aware of it so right yeah I think the South Point people were caught I don't think they were aware of it and so they had to get another attorney involved and then you know the AG's office so I think for them it was a surprise which you know it's odd because you think that they would be following the rules in Massachusetts because of the own property in Massachusetts but they weren't okay thanks everybody I think we're going to move on now to I'm going to do a brief update of the ZBA review Amherst studio apartments also known as 132 Northampton Road if anybody else was on the last meeting or any of the other meetings then you can certainly add to what I have to say I'm going to be brief the issues that came up on August 6th for the most part seem to be minor there was some questioning of where the smoking pavilion is going to be located and whether that would cause more problems than it solves there were some questions about the appropriate areas for snow removal assuming that they're not going to be needed in the winter there are parking spaces that are made out of grass pavers so they won't be quite as oppressive I guess at other times of the year and people were questioning whether that was or not appropriate place to put snow there were questions raised about the steepness of the incline walking into town there's about a 0.6 mile walk I think from 132 Northampton Road into the center of town and it's a little steep on route nine as you're walking toward town and is that going to be a problem for the residents the other thing that actually took up quite a bit more time was discussion of the services coordination plan and they didn't actually finish that so that will be a subject for the next meeting some of the other issues will come back and we'll see the other thing that was expected to be a focus of the August 20th meeting is need and density and finally the CBA chair Steve judge said that that would also be a meeting in which he looked to substantial public comment if there were people who want to be there for that purpose so I'll keep you updated on the August 20th meeting it's going to be on August 20th it'll be at 6 30 and it'll be via zoom the same process that we're using tonight are there any other comments about that or questions John if we already like submitted and made our statements in support of it at another meeting does it make sense to go do that again at another meeting it probably doesn't I think that if you're they're probably looking for people who haven't made public comment before at the August 20th meeting unless there's some very special reason why someone would come back thank you I was going to disagree I'm going to disagree sorry mate I think it would be I think it's helpful anytime someone wants to speak for it I think the ZV area now I agree with John they're asking a lot of detailed questions but I'm I'm afraid that they don't understand the need or the bigger picture perspective of the comprehensive permit process and so I'm worried that they're going to say like well you haven't satisfied where you're going to put your snow in the winter or you know it could kill a few bushes I'm not sure I'm going to prove this and that's really not what they're doing they're looking at the regional need for local and affordable housing and any possible you know impacts from the project and so you know the ZBA is used to going through this type of you know review of a project but I think if people on the 20th spoke up and said you know it is a need it is something that's important and you know just the bigger picture because I'm I guess I John I felt that at the last meeting that they're getting they're asking so many detailed questions I I hope that they're not losing the bigger picture of what's the purpose of this and everything it's hard to tell you know zoom is hard sometimes like you can't really see everyone it's hard to get a sense for how everyone's reacting and so yeah when they spend 20 minutes talking about snow removal I'm like oh my goodness like are they really is this like a sticking point for this project like you know come on and yeah the smoking bench like we don't regulate smoking on private property and I get it that they have the ability to do it but when they get so caught up in that it's like do they like the project or not and so I want I think anytime you know people want to get in on the 20th and say why there's need and it's a you know John spoke really well at the last meeting and so I think we need more of that just to explain you know about it or just say that you know it's something that is you know we've been trying a town has been trying to have housing like this for years and so it's not I don't know I just I you know the ZBA has been given so much information that you know I think you know just reminders even if it's like you go on for one minute and you just say you know I submitted things before but I just want to say whatever and you speak for 30 seconds because otherwise they probably have like 300 pages of public comment they've received you right I mean are they reading every letter that was submitted in the last six months you know we hope so but well then Carol based on what Nate just said I reverse myself you and every BL should follow his advice not mine the other thing I'll say is that I also have an uneasy feeling having sat through the first three meetings part of that comes from the fact that there are only two people who are on the ZBA who actually seem to be doing much speaking one is the chair and then there's one other member and the chair asks a number of critical questions this other member and maybe occasionally someone else will go into an area that who cares I mean there was a question about whether pine trees that are on the property line between 132 and what's next door should be taken down and the people next door want them taken down and Valley said they'll take them down why debate this and my concern is at the end of the day people will just fall back frankly on their biases and say we don't really like the population being served by this project and find one excuse or another to turn down the permit so that's one theory my other theory is much more optimistic it says that the process is going along okay the chair is being very focused to make sure that at the end of the day nobody can say that they weren't asking critical questions and they weren't detailed enough and at the end of the day he will lead them to approval of the permit so those are my two theories as you can see I really don't have strong evidence for either one and if anybody else has any thoughts about that or as Carol asked are willing to come back to the meeting on the 20th at 6 30 and speak to the issues of need or anything else that makes this an important project to the value of the type of housing the quality of housing that they're building etc I think it would be helpful since I've already spoken twice I'm not sure I'm included in that but I certainly would urge other people to do that no John yeah I agree I think the ZBA is asking a lot of good detailed questions for instance though you know they were asking about the storage and the units and their small you know studio apartments and so they want now elevations of the different unit types to show what kind of closet storage they have and you know Valley said well in other apartments you know the tenants just have to prioritize what they bring and you know they can't have too much stuff and so I understand that's important you know you want to have a quote closet and some other storage but it's hard to say well would they now ask that every unit be made bigger and have a double closet because otherwise they're not going to approve it and it's just it's hard to tell if those detailed questions if it's going to become a hang up for the approval of the project or if it's going to become a strange condition and I think they're you know it's good they're going through a lot of detailed questions they're trying to have different topics for each meeting but to me I hope that the meeting on the 20th when they're talking about the regional need that to me that outweighs you know that some of these other questions that are being asked that's all okay any other comments or questions about 132 North Hampton road if not we'll move on to the next item which is a major item for me on the agenda as I said in another note to everybody I started out this by thinking well should we have a full housing forum and once that idea popped into my mind the next question was well what would be the focus what are our goals why do we want to have a full housing forum and I discovered I couldn't really answer that question because I wasn't sure what we as a housing trust at this point considered to be our primary goals moving forward and once we kind of settle those then we could ask the question of whether it would be helpful to have a housing forum forum to promote those goals so I sent people a list and I think I've added to the list since I sent it which is not necessarily a good thing basically the list was divided into two parts and the easy part I think are the things that I assume are given goals given the time we've already spent on these objectives and I'll just briefly review them one is and this is the top of my personal list is releasing a revised RFP for the east street school site by November basically it's been almost a year it will be a year in November when we had the ill-fated RFP that had too many unanswered questions about wetlands and about hazardous materials in the building and I know it's been difficult, Nate's been working on getting contracts to be able to do both of those things and I think we want to get those things done quickly and if it turns out that we have to abandon this project well I'd like to know now rather than later on the other hand if we're going to go forward with it I'd like to get a revised RFP out by November which I don't think is unrealistic so that's one the others is to complete our work on the emergency rental assistance program which again we have some things to do and I think we want to continue to promote the development of the Amherst studios at 130 to Northampton Road so those are the things I consider to be given I allow some discussion but there doesn't have to be discussion if everybody agrees with me then we'll just vote to confirm that those are our given goals and move on to the other things we could consider just for while around this I do have someone under contract well it's going around town hall for signatures to do the wetlands and bring that to the conservation commission so that's that's kind of a big piece we hadn't done that fully to know the land constraints on the east street school site so we do have someone who's going to be doing that soon and again I think we can't do the our even if that goes well we can't do the RFP unless we also have the assessment of hazardous materials in the old school it's less critical but it's not unimportant right and I think if we do the east street school I will say that you know the town metland valley and there's you know I think that the trust we want to we could go back and review the RFP and maybe restructure some parts of it so you know just I still think it's something that I think the council actually asked the town manager recently about what's happening there so there's been you know been discussion of that site so I think it's something to trust you know this calendar year to go to do that again is is is a good thing any other discussion or comments about this or the the three given goals that I outlined okay then I will call the question all those in favor of accepting those three as given goals for the coming year uh say I and I guess we need to do this person by person carol I will I Rob I Erica I and obviously I'm a yes so that passes five to zero now the other things that are on there um and actually there's one missing that I thought of earlier today and I'll just mention that we used to have a homeless subcommittee that looked at what we can do on issues related to craig's doors and homelessness generally uh and that committee consisted of myself Jay Levy and Nancy Schroeder well two-thirds of the committee is gone and it hasn't met since Nancy left so I think that's another area that we should consider um in many of these things um I'm the only active board member other than outside of our meetings who are working on these things so at the same time we're talking about them I would be interested in knowing um what specifically um any of you might be willing to put some time into as well remind me that we had a subcommittee that was meeting for a while about uh making it easier to get rental figure out what was going on in the rental market we we went around and interviewed some people and then covid hit and we never got back together after that but it was a subcommittee of this committee and it uh kind of just ground to a screeching halt yes it did and actually you I don't know why but that reminded me of one other thing that I thought about earlier this week but didn't get on this list and that is revising and resubmitting the draft affordable housing plan for the town and again it's been almost the year since town council tabled it as I say later in our agenda uh there is expected to be a meeting now I think it's next week of the week after I've lost track in which the uh community resources committee will take that up but nobody's rushing to deal with it and I'm also a little concerned about that so we have our list um and I don't think we necessarily need to do it strictly in order I'm interested in whatever comments people have about what's on the list and what they think is most critical I was going to add john that you know the planning board and planning department is looking at zoning in the next year and so I don't know if and I think it would be good for the trust to whether or not initiate zoning change but you know be a part of that discussion so you know whether it's revisions of inclusionary zoning or you know for instance um you know the playing word discussed updating the definition of apartment so or how multi-families allowed uh in different zoning districts and I think those are pieces that the trust could be involved in so I you know I don't know you know if it's you know how that if it's a subcommittee or if it's just you know being uh asking to be sent um information but I think it's I think it would be good for the trust to just stay up to date on that yeah it seems important to me if the if the zoning changes work probably really slowly but maybe they make a difference in the long run and not being not being at the table or not really looking at it and trying to figure out what would seem to make sense to us would seem to be a mistake that's really negative way of saying it's a good idea to look at so Nate you could add it was improving access to rental housing improving access oh yeah there was just an email about that yeah I think the um yeah I mean zoning's I think some people it is maybe people consider esoteric but it is a pretty powerful tool so you know for instance we were looking at the 40R district which may or may not move forward but there I think it brought out a number of different um points of discussion that the town could have and so you know the planning board may have them but the trust could also um you know encourage the planning board to have some of them if we think that you know it's worth it and that could go hand in hand with updating the strategic plan if you know in the plan there was a few strategies that were recommended and maybe those become you know brought out again through zoning or other regulations well Carol since you've already been active in this discussion I'll go to the well twice and ask if you have anything else you want to say or talk about what particularly is important to you uh not really what I was going to say is I was part of the subgroup um increasing access and so yes COVID did hit um and so for me to look at this I really need to think about what are the different steps um and how can I actually participate you know from from afar from you know tele tele participation um because uh I mean at this point with COVID triple E and anything else um my days are pretty long and extended um so I I'd want to commit to something that I can actually fulfill um and it's it's hard to figure out what all the different steps are and what the commitment is to that. I would say I thought about it briefly and left it off because what I was hoping when we get through the emergency rental assistance program there might be some lessons learned there to come back to this issue of improving access to mental housing. That makes sense to me. John are you are you envisioning these additional goals to be you know like a year a year like a for next calendar year? Yeah I mean you know it could be the next academic year if we're talking September through June or or August whatever but yeah uh I don't have a strict timeline in mind but it isn't something we're going to try to accomplish in the next two months. Right right. Some of these things even if we worked on them in the next year might not get completed in the next year but that so that seems I guess maybe that seems okay I don't know I mean that's an argument for getting started now Carol. Yeah yeah but I just don't want to make like if you look at that whole list and say we're going to do all those things this year that seems kind of like that's just not going to happen so to me it's helpful to at least acknowledge that these are the other additional things might be things that we're working at trying to get started on or to be moving on that necessarily to complete it makes it seem more real to me. Well some things are involve more staff time than committee time for example the first item evaluating additional town property for affordable housing is mostly falls honestly on Nate to some extent on me and to some extent on Rita but other members aren't necessarily deeply involved except to approve expenditures related to evaluating those other properties so in a sense that falls harder on Nate Rita and myself than anybody else whereas the other things are going to involve in addition to me at least one and maybe two other people I mean our legislative act of advocacy now consists of me talking to or emailing with Mindy once or twice a month which has been valuable I'll say and also I contact Joe or staff also about once a month so a little less frequently and that's our legislative advocacy the difficulty is when it comes to kind of following up on specific legislation and urging people to support it particularly when I look at Chapa's email I just don't have enough time to get to it so again if there was somebody else interested in that it would strengthen us in that in that area Will, Rob well specifically without John I mean I would be interested in sort of lending my uh lending a hand in the legislative advocacy side of things something I'd be interested in helping out and sort of learning from you along the way so okay I'd be glad to talk with you about that and we'll think about how we can be a little bit more active than I have been other thoughts well I think what I'll do is bring this back to the next meeting that is the additional goals and hopefully people have an opportunity to consider what they think we should put set as a priority between now and our September meeting and hopefully we can reach more resolution by the end of that meeting I can commit to reviewing the our plan our strategic plan I mean I think it's going to take probably you know a focused couple of meetings to think about changes but you know taking a look at it you know identifying areas where we might want to have conversations um you know facilitating those conversations and doing the edits I certainly can do that you're talking about the draft affordable housing plan Erica no the reviews they are a strategic plan it's uh the third bullet down oh I forgot about that I remember writing it and then when you just said it I'd lost track of it okay great uh yeah it's really a question of looking at what's there and asking are there things missing are there things that should be added are there things that we're not doing that we should take out of the plan okay I will leave it there uh and we'll move on to the other few agenda items uh in general these will not be long and in fact we've considered most of them uh okay uh I mentioned that the interest in town housing policy seems to be growing I noted a few minutes ago that the town council community resource committee is beginning to work on a general town housing policy the primary explication explanation for tabling the affordable housing policy was that we really needed a more general policy that would incorporate affordable housing and without that we couldn't move forward that I should say is not my opinion but that was what town council decided so that's where that is and uh if anybody is interested in following it uh I can send out a note about when Mandy Jo plans have hearings on that there is one planned uh yeah for Tuesday August 18th at 2 p.m which is when that committee typically meets again it'll be a zoom meeting uh that item was on the last CRC calendar or agenda but it was canceled at the last minute so we'll see uh the other thing that I mentioned is that the energy and climate action committee or ECAC of town council has decided to develop a broader policy on yeah the what's called the town's climate action adaptation and resiliency plan it has four task groups I'm sorry I can't remember the names of all the others but there is a building task group which I was invited to be on and as I recall there's also a land land use or zoning task groups and then there are two others and I may have sent people the link to that or information about that I don't have it handy at the moment uh honestly I don't know what will come of either of these but is anybody interested in following it let me know and I will keep you informed I'm interested in following it but I can't do anything on our state team well it's probably will be recorded by by uh in zoom so then you get to watch it for fun later yeah and the entire meeting not may not be focused on that carol so assuming I am there uh I can let you know what parts of the recording to focus on uh or uh whether it's worth let's think to it all great thank you uh any other questions about these okay we've done legislative updates except for one area which is honestly confusing to me uh we formally um supported a bill that would allow counsel for people who are being evicted and I don't know honestly whether this is another bill that's related or it's part of the same bill but the legislature is now considering legislation that would allow a pilot program of having counsel for people who are being evicted uh I've I've seen a couple of notes asking for legislative support but as I said I haven't had the time to follow up to decide whether or not that's a new request or it's one we've already met does anybody else know anything about that okay well uh if I can I'll do a little bit more research but uh it it's more likely because I don't think it had passed as of the end of the session last week so it's more likely to come up when the legislature reconfines in September October whenever they get back in session upcoming events I've mentioned these the community resources committee meeting the next zba hearing on august 20th and our next meeting which will be on thursday september 10th uh same time same place uh any public comment I don't see anybody with a hand raised um any items not anticipated that we haven't gone over someone wants to offer something that we should discuss now or might be taken up in the next meeting well then I think I will move to adjourn is there a second carol I think I won't do a roll call all those in favor of adjourning please say aye aye okay thank you everybody I appreciate your dissipation and look forward to our next meeting thank you