 Okay, so I'm seeing a presence of a quorum of the community resources committee and I will recognize Carol and Erica after I do the spiel for a ma h t one. I'm calling the CRC meeting to order at 702 p.m. This is a special meeting pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 extended by chapters 22 and 107 of the acts of 22 and extended by chapter two of the acts of 2023. This meeting will be conducted by remote means members of the members of the public who wish to access this meeting may do so via zoom or telephone no in person attendance of members of the public will be permitted. But every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time. I'm also recording this, this meeting. So right now I'm going to call the role of the community resources committee. This is a joint meeting with the Amherst municipal affordable housing trust but I will call the role of the CRC to make sure they can hear and be heard. We're starting with Shawnee. I'm here present. Pat. Present. Mandy is present Pam Rooney. Here. And Jennifer Tom. Present. I have five members of the community resources committee at this time I'd like to recognize Carol and Erica to call the AMH team meeting to order and take their roll call. Go ahead Erica. Thank you. We are here as the Amherst municipal affordable housing trust as part of the joint meeting of the community resource committee of the town council. I would like to be in sync with the CRC committee. We will also do a roll call which we generally don't do, but I do want to recognize that today is a special meeting. It is May 18 and we are now doing a call to order and a roll call at 704. So I'm going to go ahead and call out my coach here. Carol, can you hear me? I can hear you and I'm here. Thank you. Ashley. I'm here. Grover. Here. Rob. Here. We have, I believe we have six members. We are a quorum. And so the call has been completed. And we may start. Excellent. Thank you. By prior agreement of the two co-chairs of the trust and myself have agreed that I will be moderating and presiding over this meeting. But anytime any of the co-chairs have any comments or any committee member of either committee have any questions, comments, please raise your hand. I'm going to right now explain the, what we're going to do tonight. And then we're, after I get through that, we're going to move to the presentation from Dave Zomek and Nate Maloy. But the order is we're going to, we're talking about affordable and attainable housing tonight. And the, we're going to hear a presentation from the staff, a short one so that we can get to conversation. And then we're going to talk, we worded it as housing gap priorities. So, so what our two committees might think of a conversation around what priorities we're looking at for affordable and attainable housing based on the staff presentation and all of the data we have. Once we talk about that, we're going to move to public comment. And we'll accept public comment at that time. And then when public comment is over, we're going to talk about the approaches we could use to address those priorities. And then we'll move on to trying to figure out who should do what approach. So that we've got a plan and then future plans for how we would implement those approaches or collaboration between the two bodies again. So some suggested time limits will try to stick to that, but our goal is to end by nine we don't expect to be able to complete the conversation in two hours. Are there any questions before I hand it over to Dave Zomek and Nate Maloy about the schedule the plan. If not, we're going to go right into presentations. I see no questions so Dave and Nate. Good evening, everybody. Dave Zomek assistant town manager and Nate Maloy who's going to join us here is one of our senior planner, Nate, we didn't talk about who's going to are you going to share your screen or I can do that. We didn't do it we didn't do a PowerPoint for this we're really going to use the some of the resources that we pulled together and basically do kind of a scroll through some of those resources and Nate can kind of run the show here while I do a few introductory remarks and then I'm going to turn it back over to him. But thanks. You know for the CR to the CRC and the housing trust for pulling this together. Nate and I really see this and we hope you do too as a conversation not really a presentation we we want to be part of this tonight as staff. We are deeply committed to housing production in Amherst and affordable housing production specifically in Amherst. And we're looking forward to this with the two of us I think see this as Mandy suggested as perhaps the first you know what might be a series of conversations about these topics that we're going to cover two years ago. I think it's really a great introduction, great introduction but it doesn't probably give us time to really dig deep into the weeds on on some of the potential opportunities and outcomes that we would like to see. I did want to give me a special thanks for pulling the resources that he that that are in the packet together. It took a lot of time and I think you'll find some of the data if you haven't reviewed it, particularly some of the data on affordability and units and the SHI really helpful. First off I guess I want to, you know, recognize the complexity of the topic that we're going to talk about tonight. I think in Amherst and the market in the region is very complicated. I think we all need to acknowledge that you know the university and the college community that we live in both here in Amherst and in the region creates both some incredible opportunities and helps to make our town richer in the region richer, but all of those folks looking of all different ages looking for housing definitely makes it a complex arena to do the work that we want to do. I also want to acknowledge that Amherst has and continues to be a leader in the state in the production of affordable housing. In the decades long effort, we're all coming into it at this particular moment in 2023, but many staff, many committees and boards, millions of dollars in funding, both at the local and state level have come together through the years to create the housing that we do and the town council, the housing trust, many committees and boards before us with different names going back to the many years of town meeting all contributed to putting good thinking into how do we keep Amherst affordable and how do we move forward with production of affordable housing. I think we're all here tonight because we recognize there there is we're reaching a crisis point here in Amherst and in the region costs to families and individuals have risen sharply over the last five years or so. And that's why we're all here is to try to look for some new approaches and creative solutions. I just say I will end by saying, you know, Amherst, I think our approach has been built on collaboration, commitment, creativity, hard work, and that's how we're going to work our way through this and hopefully find some solutions as through that collaboration. And I look forward to working with you as we move through this. So I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, neither is Nate on every one of these documents that we provided for you. I hope that you all had a chance to look at them I believe they were posted last Friday is that right, Mandy. Yes, we will, you know, hopefully be coming back. This first page is really about kind of setting the stage and giving everyone a solid base of understanding. How are we, how have we gotten to the point we are, how did we produce the units that we produce, what kind of funding went into those units, what are some of the approaches that we've taken over the past four or five decades to to produce affordable and what are some of the strategies moving forward. I want to highlight the 2021 comprehensive housing policy. That was the policy that was adopted by the council and the one that staff look at the most. I also wanted to link that in your minds to the master plan. Everything we do as staff in town and planning conservation inspections zoning, etc, is linked back to the master plan so I think in your mind having that framework of comprehensive housing plan and master plan what are the linkages between those two. How do we look at zoning moving forward how do we look creatively at creating density in our village centers. I'm not going to say a lot about this slide or this this part of the document. I do just want to call your attention to those to those five main goals of the plan. And as we look forward. How do we encourage all of us to spend time at some of the strategies that we need to, you know, embark on and embrace to produce more units and also look at our zoning. So that our zoning allows more units to be created where we want them to be. Right at the bottom native you could scroll down under implementation. I think that's where we're going to spend a lot of time tonight is what are some of the creative approaches solutions alternatives that we can look at. I think, you know, again, since our form of government changed. And the town council came into being there has been a lot of focus on zoning regulatory and policy strategies. Certainly, you know, looking at budgets moving forward, creative partnerships with those, those organizations in our community and in the region who create and build and fund affordable housing and housing of all types. We're not doing all of those things. But we're still struggling we're still struggling as a community in our region to produce enough units to really take, take a big bite out of the challenges that we face. Next slide please Nate or next. I'm going to try to go really quickly here because I want Nate to have enough time to talk with you all about some of the data because I know there was a lot of questions about data. I'm not going to spend any time on this this is really just outlining some of the roles and responsibilities if you will have the various organizations. I spoke about collaboration. We have a CRC subcommittee of the council working very hard on zoning and, and working on rental bylaws and other things that can make change townwide. We have a great working relationship with the trust. We've done some very creative projects with them. And then we have a, you know, we have a robust staff. We have an experienced staff and we're out there trying to make a difference. Look at properties creatively, look creatively with our, our, our private developers at how they can produce more units. I often say one of my sayings in a lot of meetings is, we need more housing units in all different categories. And I stand by that we need to produce units in as many different categories as we possibly can. Next slide Nate. Again, I think this is a great area for, you know, spending a little time later is talking about and Nate and I are happy to take questions on, you know, kind of what is the town doing what has the town done to support the production of both both market rate and affordable units. Obviously the trust has played a key role in that through the years, engaging the community advocating for projects advocating for funding. As I said the staff in a number of different departments works to promote affordable housing works to promote housing in general, through our zoning through planning initiatives, etc. So we're out there. If you keep scrolling Nate, we have a very active role in the CPA process. We fund affordable housing, if you keep scrolling if you could Nate a little bit down on funding, we fund as a community we fund affordable housing projects using CPA dollars, using community development block grant CDBG funding, and more recently when the town received ARPA funding, the town manager committed about $2 million toward housing projects in general. And then there are, you know, the number of state grants that and federal grants that we go after and have been quite successful at, at getting through the years. And of course there's always, we're not, I'm not going to go further into regulations and zoning, but again I think the council has taken a very active role at looking at zoning and how can we be more creative and responsive to some of the housing challenges that we've faced by changing our zoning. In the past couple of years. So I think I will stop at the next slide Nate, you want to quickly scroll to that, because I want to leave Nate, the next couple of pages I'm not going to take a lot of time but I think Nate did a wonderful job. Together, some of the great examples of projects that the town has been a part of. We have funded through all the sources I just mentioned a number of really creative, really wonderful projects throughout town. From the Olympia Oaks to the units at the North Square. And right now we have as many of you know, we have a number of projects in the pipeline that would include Valley CDC's home ownership project up at the Medusco property on Ball Lane and down the road. We're working very closely with wayfinders on the 70 plus units of rental housing at East Street School and Belcher Town Road. We just purchased the VFW site down Main Street. And we'll be working on some conceptual designs for that property, looking at a shelter on the first floor and permanent supportive housing on the second and third floor. And we've got other properties that we're looking around town, including land off of East, off of down in South Amherst at the South Amherst School, as well as a couple of other properties. So the key is to get as many projects in the pipeline as possible. And that's what the town is trying to do. So let me turn it over to Nate, and see where he's going to take us in terms of some of the data that you all requested. Thanks, Dave. Yeah, so I mean, I think, you know, there's a more comprehensive list of what's been funded that was provided in the packet so the town's been, you know, funding a horrible housing projects for for decades. You know, it takes a lot per unit to help help make things affordable. In terms of data, you know, there's been some question about the SHI I think, you know, the year on housing units is what's done on the census and so we have, you know, 9621 9621 year on housing units, you know, the SHI right is a metric used across all towns in the state so we're at 13%. You know, everyone's been asking well what really is the number of affordable units in Amherst, and you know, it's about 894 so, you know, suddenly under 10%. And so there is this, you know, this delta this difference. And, you know, so in some of the more recent developments say North Square, you know, 20% of the units are affordable. You know that means 80% are still market rate and so the, you know, it's just a it's a number to me it's not 10% was never meant to be satisfied the need of affordable housing or something that was a goal to help spur production of affordable housing and I think it's done that. So in Amherst, I mean, I don't think that we think 10% is where we stop right so some communities like to get there and say well we've done our, we've done our due diligence and we don't need to try anymore for Amherst, you know, we haven't used it as that kind of measure. You know, just in recent developments I think is important we support comprehensive permit projects. We also change our inclusionary zoning. And so with, you know, we've already provided 30 rental new affordable rental units with inclusionary zoning and the coming year. There's a few other projects where we'll probably have number another 30 units and so inclusionary zoning is working. It's, you know, is anywhere from one or two units in a project up to you know 10 or 11 or 12 residential units permitted since 2015 I think this is really important. You know there's been over 800 units permitted since 2015. You know, you know, 77 single family homes a lot of multifamily units and you know the number of accessory building units is growing. And so, you know, I at one point the town and the 2000s, you know it may have been around 40 or 50 units a year. But sometimes it was even less, you know, and it was all single family homes. So for, you know, late 90s early 2000s for 15 years or so I think the town probably would average about you know, eight to 12 single family homes a year, and maybe one or two multifamily units, and not a lot of additional housing. So it's really changed in the last few years and that's, you know, I think that goes to show what zoning and certain incentives and regulations can do to help get development in the village centers and downtown. Income is really important. So, you know, what this is showing is for a four person household, these numbers were just recently updated though. 150% of AMI is 140,000, you know, 80% is 75, and it decreases. What's important, you know, it's unfortunate these aren't on the same slides is that what's the cost for housing right so if 30% of your income is devoted to housing. This is what a price down to so at 80% AMI is 1800 a month. 50% is about 1200. And, you know, the bullets that we will see down below is that the cost of home ownership or rental is beyond the means of almost every income level. So if we say the average home price in Amherst is 450,000 given current interest rates and 20% down which is a lot. The monthly cost is $3,000, which is, you know, more than almost every income limit here except for the 150% AMI or greater. You know, from rental listings online, you know, it's anywhere from 1800 to 2000 a month right so that is above 80% AMI for most units. And what that also is, it's above what a voucher can, you know, section eight voucher can afford so it's above, you know, on average, any market rate unit in Amherst is more expensive than what a voucher can afford or what is considered affordable. And so really, there's a disparity between the market what the market is producing and then what we need to have be affordable at varying income levels and so, you know, the market really isn't generating those range of income you know those units at per range of income levels. And I think that's the takeaway from, you know, this information. Housing needs so you know we've had various reports over the years I don't think the needs have changed. I think the numbers may have but in terms of, you know, we need housing for all income levels and all types and you know individuals students families young professionals and seniors so the housing production plan from 2013 estimated, you know, a few thousand units were needed at different levels and different housing types. And really that that you know this plan is dated detailed census information from 2020 still is not available yet and that's what they use to generate this number plus some other sources but really I mean we're saying that you know for extremely low income it's a huge unmet need for 50 to 80% you know it's 1000 or more units and so you know that that hasn't you know we've produced a lot of housing but the need is still there. You know the housing production plan really mentioned you know for priority needs rental housing for families and individuals. And that's not you know the market right now is not producing those preservation of existing affordable units, I will say we're actually pretty secure with our affordable units. And the last few years we've worked pretty hard to you know with rolling green we were able to secure an extension of affordable units we've done that with mill valley. And so really I think the affordable units we have now are not expiring anytime soon. And then housing for at risk populations and special needs, the housing production plan noted is something that really isn't is lacking in Amherst. The you know the market study, you know what they really said was that I think the these the lot the two bullets in the middle is that you know we need 15 or 25 owner units per year and say up to 25 rental units a year. And that doesn't account for any growth in the university or colleges and so that's, you know that's about the 50, you know 50 units a year. And that's not, you know, again, at a range of income levels. I think it was really important is this agent a mentor friendly project that's happening now, you know we had almost 900 survey responses, many of the other responses said they want to agent place. And if half of our of our units are owned home ownership units, and then most of the say, you know, 83% of those would like to stay in their homes for the next 10 years then that's locking up a few thousand housing units that aren't going to be for sale for other you know for families or young families. It may be an opportunity for certain programs but if if individuals would like to remain in place agent place. And then there's very little housing for say right sized housing for, for these individuals or families will remain in place and that really doesn't allow, you know, changing, changing demographics. And so, I think that's something a lot of communities are facing especially in the Northeast people would rather agent place. I think there's a lot of benefits to that, but we don't have a lot of options if they would like to move. So either the agent place or they leave town, or they find very expensive assisted living facilities and so, you know what was really come out of this piece of the agent a mentor friendly project is this is a segment of the population that needs to be looked at, as well as well as others. You know mass housing has a great. I hate to interrupt you but could you conclude in the next couple minutes. Sure. Thanks. Datatown, you know it looks like they periodically update all this information with current census estimates which is great and so you know these are pulled from there. So Amherst is, you know, the student market really does impact Amherst and so, you know, I think the second graphic is great is showing that homeownership has a much higher income level than renters which is spread out over different income levels and so that's not that's all students right that impact that renter household income but it's really important to note because you know renters are susceptible to the imbalance in demand in the market. A cost burden is something that's important spending a lot of your income for housing and as you can see. A lot of the renters in Amherst are cost burden or severely cost burden spending over half of their income towards housing. So pretty good percentage of homeowners who also spend a lot of their income towards housing. And so that's something, you know, it's hard to to manipulate the market as a municipality but you know if just basic supply and demand is one thing we have the ability to help incentivize supply. So this impacts enrollment at the schools if you look here is dropped by almost a third right as it goes back to the highs in 2000s and in 20 years we've lost a third of our school age population. And so that that's a trend that looks like it's going to continue. Just quickly on student housing, you know I like this recent because that article, you know 900 students won't be able to live on campus and you know 13,500 beds were filled in four days. The demand for students to live, they'd like to live on or near campus. You know I think the preference would be live on campus are very close to it and so I think that's something to discuss. You know where can students live. The Donny who Institute I think is great for the region this I'll wrap this up. You know, I think Amherst can do its part but it's also a regional issue right if we we could produce 10,000 units or beds. It could all be full but that's not you know, more people might want to live in Amherst so I love this second bullet there's a housing income mismatch right. There's there's plenty of opportunity in the Pioneer Valley of communities where people would want to live work and live. And so I think this needs to have there needs to be a regional approach right people would rather live where they work where they go to school, but if they can they're going to be driving 45 minutes one way. And so Amherst can't solve this problem right they're saying there's over 17,000 rental units needed at a very low income or moderate income level. And Amherst can't produce 17,000 units, they can't be in our town but as a region we can start trying to help that equation. And you know in homeowner. The last bullet really is home ownership is expensive. You know I think the traditional single family home is a model that may not be sustainable moving forward or even now and so the question is what what does, what does housing types look like to be able to you know, retain and help, you know the different types of populations, we'd want to see an Amherst are in the region and so. I think the Donnie Institute is, is, you know is really pointed to this mismatch both in who lives where and who's paying too much for housing, and it's you know it's often people of color renters that are really cost burdened and subject to the whims of the market and so you know I think we can have, I think that we can leave that can lead off our discussion in terms of what are some creative solutions or what do we see as priorities, and how can we address those. We're going to start with Nate for that presentation we're going to move on into those priorities that Nate was was sort of talking about given some of the gaps he just highlighted and what what you in your reading has have figured out what are the priorities that people of our two committees have. I'm going to open it up. It might be given how many people we have better to raise your hand either using the button or you're just wait wave your hand. And I'll try to recognize people so that we're not talking over each other. Okay. So, would anyone like to start. It looks like Ashley would Ashley. A little quick but there is in that presentation there was a part that said, basically, there is no market rate housing that people at 80% am I, which is 70,000 give or take, is that true, I mean, maybe we could go back to that part, or if you just understand the data but basically, it looked like nothing market rate was affordable for someone who's who had 80% am a or less. Is that how you see that one bullet point. Right, right. So the average housing price in Amherst is right higher than someone at 80% am I could afford a. Okay, and so there's 895 units for every person that makes less than 85 am I, or even wants to move to Amherst that makes less than that in Amherst. There's eight 895 chances to have affordable rent, if you make less than say 7070 thousand dollars, which is 80% am I is that about $70,000. Right yeah for a family of four or 75,000. But what if you're just one person, if you're one person do you need that 75,000. No, a one so that was for a four person household so a one person, you know would be would be less but I think that the numbers are the same right it's a graduated scale so you know the redstone, the red it would actually be worse right so one person might be 47,000 and the rents are still the average of, you know, 2000 a month. And a single person let's say needs 47,000 or more to afford anything market rate and a family needs approximately 70 something thousand to afford anything market rate. I think I actually want to correct Ashley because you're getting at something, something good, which is for a family of 480% am I is about 70,000. And there is no market rate housing for that that only costs 30% of that number so if you're a family of one that 70,000 is actually closer to 150% am I to get to that that number. Am I interpreting those, those rents correctly Nate. Right. Yes. Okay, I just, you know, it's a good point to remember. This is why people are leaving Amherst they can't afford it. Anything at market rate. There's 895 chances and a lot of those units are full. I don't see any other hands so I'll I'll make a comment Jennifer. I can't we can you did Jennifer. I'm sorry. I'll just jump right in here I guess so you would say but since 2015. There has been 862 new units in Amherst. Is there any way of knowing so as one question is there any way of knowing, you know, kind of how many of that are being were built for students and are occupied by students. So I guess just to cut to the chase. I mean, how do we. Since I mean a realtor told my neighbor the other day just came right out and said, not a realtor I'm sorry developer, the business of Amherst is student housing. So, if housing is going to be built to rent at the highest price. How do we ensure that some of the housing is built for that's not being divided among people that are you know just paying for a bedroom because if you're. You know, if I rent an apartment for my family, I would have to pay for all the bedrooms not just one so you know that's when, when it's divided among roommates that are, you know, have separate budgets. So I guess just how, how do we get beyond that I just don't see how the building is not always going to be primarily for that market. You know, do you want us to comment as we go or do you want to just put out questions. No you can comment Dave and Nate and answer questions like that with ideas. And again, some of these things that you know this is part of this was to generate questions generate discussion generate ideas, creative ideas I know we have some folks in the audience as well and I'm sure there'll be time for public comment later but Jennifer I don't know if we have all that data, we certainly could extrapolate by project, what we believe we don't know to a bedroom, how many of those 800 plus units are rented to students that's just not a data set that we have. I mean, we, you know, we, we have a general understanding but I, you know, North Square is a good example some of the buildings even downtown, you know have a mix of students and young professional. They were built for that market. I'm just saying that that's the dilemma that we're in is I know you know in the was a comprehensive housing policy it said you know what we're discussing now we need to encourage housing to be built at different price points but it's that is really challenging because the private market is going to build to rent at the highest price they can get and that kind of exclude everybody. So let me just finish they're yes you're absolutely you're right for the most part yes right you're right, they're also going to build and design for that, for that kind of development. It was something else you said there. I don't know the question you asked within that oh so so one of the one of the mechanisms one of the tools in in any municipalities tool belt is, you know, trying to work creatively with those developers like Valley CDC wayfinders, you know home city etc. The way that's traditionally been done is to work with them to design units, either rental or in the case of, you know, Valley's new project up in North Amherst, you know home ownership, what, because of the high cost of, of building of raw materials right now and labor and land in Amherst that takes a tremendous amount of subsidy so that's the way you get some of those new units down and that's where CPAC, CBG, CPA and state dollars tax credits come into play. And of course for North Square we ended up doing a tax increment financing plan with beacon communities over 10 years so those are some of the tools we have but that's one of the ways to get units produced that are that can go toward people who are not, you know, not necessarily students, if you will. So, Nate, you were going to add something. Yeah, let's say that you know when we updated the inclusionary zoning and increase the percentage there was a concern that it would actually, you know, maybe stall development and so it's almost like you want to keep testing it so if we're seeing that full percent at larger developments isn't do we increase the percentage of affordable units to you know a higher percentage. I think there's so there's some incentives and maybe some regulatory things that could work. I get it you know so we can see zoning and regulations don't typically determine the interior layout of a unit. So if someone's designing a unit so that there's four equal size bedrooms and not a lot of common space. You know we don't typically regulate that to say oh you should design it with a living room in a dining room, or something where you could have, you know, more common, you know, gathering space I think that that can come about by working with developers and you know, but it's really hard to regulate how say the internal layout of the unit could be configured in terms of then how it's rented and so you know I think there's probably some other ways to look at it I do think inclusionary zoning and incentives can help but yeah so you know if we're seeing you know we some developers will say they don't like to develop that way and others might. And I think that's you know maybe just having that conversation more publicly can help in terms of how we'd want to see that kind of interior layout and maybe you know we we actually push the boundaries a little bit in terms of how the planning board or planning board reviews things to see if we can get at that if you know we say we can't rent by the bedroom. Does that mean we can actually see floor plan layouts and really scrutinize that more I mean you know I think those are things that we you know we'd have to check maybe with legal counsel but you know those are the things we can start looking at. Thank you. I'm going to take a chance here and say you know one of the things that struck me in the presentation and in reading is, is that aging in place or, or that the survey that that talked about 80% of those people would like to age in and how that sort of puts the housing market in a stasis without that turnover that we sometimes expect that helps bring families in. And so in terms of the needs in gaps I wonder if that should be one of our priorities because it's my understanding that at least for housing of 55 plus communities you can actually restrict who can go into them in a way you can't with a typical development and so that might be a way to create the aging in place housing. We would like if we can identify builders and locations, while also then once it's built potentially opening up that that other housing to other types of families to to move into Carol. I could be completely wrong, but it seems to me that when we're subsidizing the developments is what is what we have to do in order to make them be affordable as Dave just explained and so that's the place where we are expect to get the most inclusionary zoning gets to some I was impressed actually by how much it seems to have gone that's really great. But any but the other kinds of stuff that we do in order to get the subsidy are there not sometimes restrictions that can be attached to that I thought I had recalled some place where you weren't supposed to be a full time student, for instance. And since most of those projects have to go through, come in by some kind of 40 B process, have to go through a lot of planning looking at them it seems like there is maybe an opportunity to ask the people to we put out an RFR or whatever it's called for the project that's now going into East Street and Belcher Town Road and we said a lot of things about what we wanted to see in the developer who was successful in getting the bid. And they were things like we want a mix of bedroom sizes, we want to this to be advertised in all kinds of places for all kinds of markets so, at least it seems I mean what the, what the private market does is probably kind of what Jennifer is describing. And the stuff that has subsidy in it, we have some more say over what is going on and who's going to live there. Thank you, Shalini. Yeah, I'm just thinking of the different strategies that we need to employ and we have employed. So one definitely seems that you're hiring a person who's going to be dedicated to reaching out to developers who do build affordable housing. And I think that's a great idea. The other one that did not pass last time because the location wasn't right was a 40 our district. Is that something we can think about maybe in a village center or somewhere else that seems more appropriate. That seems to me like an important strategy. And the other thing I was thinking is also having certain areas like the gateway project which would open up space for the college students and so that they are there in, you know, they have a space. So it's like this multi prong strategy that we are that we utilize. Keep those thoughts Shalini as we move on after public comment into those strategies. But I'm going to probe you with a question of the gaps that we've seen and have been discussed, which would be the one you'd want to focus on most. And then we can talk about the strategies do you do happen to have one you're thinking about might be the most effective or or one you'd like to see the town focus on or one of the committees focus on. I didn't think about that. Excellent. Does anyone else want to answer that question. Ashley, and then Pam. You know that the Donnie school school, particularly their data, you know this is Western mass but it says it's 17,000 units that are needed that cost less than $500. Of those 895.5 units of of affordable housing we have. Do any of them cost under $500 like just straight out not section eight because that's like a federal program. I don't, I can't imagine we have a lot of influence on but how many of those units cost the person less than $500 to rent. Do we know. We don't typically know, and I'm guessing not many. I'm guessing zero because I mean I can, if we could talk to people. And if they have a section eight voucher, they do pay less than $500 sometimes, because that's depending on their income but I have not seen any that costs less than $500, and that's like a huge need. And actually, Nate and I talked about that that piece of the Donahue Institute study earlier and we need to follow up with that because we were both a little baffled, not by their data or their conclusion but I'm curious what other regional stakeholders of, you know, both municipalities and organizations that build affordable housing. What does that mean I mean $500 a month just. I don't. We understand where it came from from an affordability standpoint but it just we were kind of scratching our head saying when, when was $500 a monthly rent in the region. I mean how many years back does that go and are we trying to reset a clock that, you know, and and a cost that may not be usable I just don't know I mean, you know we're getting into economics here of you know if we could step our fingers and create 17,000 new units of housing in the region would I guess to your question would any of them be at $500 a month. I'm getting my head around how that would even happen in the market we're in in this in Hampshire County. But isn't that a decision people make when they make the rent like my rent is $857 and I live in North Square. So the people are making the decision how much they're going to cost each person on their affordability units I mean. So we can ask them to make different decisions or kind of require it. Yeah. We're going to we're going to have a series of, you know, we have another housing discussion tomorrow and I think I'm curious to talk to the wayfinders and the Valley CDCs of the world and and see, you know, kind of how they took that Donahue Institute over and where where they're going with it. You know, I just on affordability, you know, as we look at the project up in North Amherst, and we look at, you know, the current cost of building, you know, a 1200 1300 square foot, or a home ownership unit off of Palpatine Road and, and we see numbers for the cost of those units in the fives. And then how do we bring those numbers down. You know, between 100 and 250 thousand dollars to make them affordable as home ownership. That's a very significant subsidy so you know likewise on the rental side how do we how do we do that. What are the mechanisms one of the funding sources but I, I think you're right I think that's what brings it down in an affordable level for people in the region. Well, isn't one thing to build much more affordable housing like that green that East Gables one was a very good example and also Olympia Oaks. Those units are 32,000 each, and something like 41,000 each. If we build lots of units that are very cheap. More people live there, and then also their rent and their mortgage can be much less, as opposed to building the very expensive units that very few people can have like two or four, and then, you know, you're getting half off like the $500,000 and you're selling it for 250 you're getting 50% off. When there's like a third, I don't know the economics exactly but if there's a $32,000 unit, aren't you. It's just a lot easier to have very low rent. So I just want to jump in quickly those numbers with what the town contributed per unit it's not what the unit cost was. So you know I think North Square the unit cost was, you know, $350,000 to build each unit. You know it's so it's, you know, so I think that there's definitely some additional costs when you do a tax credit project. You know there's definitely some redundancy I think you know a lot of people across the state would say affordable housing is expensive to build just because the types of programs it's developed into right it's, you know a developer, a private developer can build even deeper than most affordable housing developers right on a per square foot basis. You could have someone build a 2000 square foot house at $250 a square foot right now, but to have Valley CDC build it it's going to be $500 a square foot, because the programs. You know there's just so much that it takes to actually do an affordable housing in this state and so I think, you know, people have been talking about this for a while that we need to change the kind of the whole system of how we develop affordable housing. But those that those that those I just want to make sure that the numbers we saw on the spreadsheet and are on the summary and what was in the form. It's the town contribution to affordable housing so at Olympia Oaks it was average of 41,700 per unit is what the town gave. So the town gave you know almost $2 million to that project it didn't that's not the cost per unit of construction the cost per unit of construction was something else but that's what the town contributed. So, you know, so just quickly at Ball Lane, Valley is going to be building at $550,000 a unit, they're trying to get 200 to $300,000 subsidy per unit, so they can sell them at $200,000. So they're still going to be made whole by, you know, using ARPA funding CPA funding block grant money for first time home buyer programs using the housing common builder program and so, you know, their cost is still 500 whatever it is a 500,000 unit. They're going to then figure out how can they sell them for 200 and how are they going to fill that gap of 300. It's not that they're building them for cheaper it's that they're getting subsidy dollars to get them down to a sale price that's affordable at those income levels. So, you know, it's that's the system how it works it's not like they're someone's building them for half the price of everyone else they're just finding subsidy dollars. Excellent. Culture thoughts, Ashley, Dave. I know you want to go to other folks, I just want to put on our list for later, Ashley made a good point I mean, numbers density, we've got to, you know, that's, that's where we're going to get more, you know, cost per unit goes down we get more units we get more, you know, diverse units if you will one two bedrooms, etc, etc. But that's, that's got to be the name of the game, you know, density in our village centers, and I'll stop there I know there are other hands. Yep, thank you Pam. Thank you. Just a quick comment on Dave's. Interestingly, though that we have the five story buildings in the downtown, and the outcome was, I don't know 130 something units, like for one one East pleasant. And it's pretty clear that they are not charging rents that are commensurate with density and and being able to build multiple units at once those are against some of the highest priced units in town. So there may be a profit, a profit factor that that you know, gets taken into account. So someone else, if there were particular priorities. And I think every study that we were provided every study that I've read has the two ends of the spectrum. We have the pressure from student housing, which, you know, I talk about all the time. But it is, in fact, a factor that was identified in each and every one of the studies that we were given to read it skews the market in this town. So density can be pressured to encourage what to either build additional housing on campus, or procure housing from some other source, such as Hampshire college to borrow and rent and look at opportunities like that. That is, that may take off at least some of the pressure from increasing enrollment. The other end of the spectrum, as we just heard is, you know, us old folks who would prefer to stay in our houses, but who if we if we had an alternative which was an attainable or reasonably priced place to move into then, you know, if, if I had that option, I could perhaps then sell my house, and maybe this house could become a duplex. I don't know. But I, but I'm not going to move out and, and unless I want to leave Amherst, or I have somewhere that's that's reasonably priced to move into so I think, in my mind, if we're trying to deal with those two big population chunks, getting me out of my house, freeze up something for a younger, a younger set of folks. Thanks. Thank you Pam, Risha. And, thank you. And just to be clear, we have a different time to talk about potential solutions. Yes. So I guess to answer the question on, I do feel like there's probably a, I don't know the phrase for it but you know a double win in addressing the senior housing, as people have said that if if we can create something that is for seniors, whether that is new senior housing, affordable senior housing, or something where there's incentives or less penalty for more house shares and co housing for seniors. And the accessibility dwellings that opens up more housing for others but I do feel like there's a bunch of questions we haven't, I don't see in any of these, you know, bylaw strategies or policy strategies, issues around taxation, questions around apartments. I know that they were stopped being allowed and what where that is and what the conversations have been. And then, yeah, just really, how do we incentivize or penalize as it were the kinds of housing that we want. Beyond subsidies right like, like, if you're building affordable you don't have to have parking, right that's a we've cut a cost. We've, we've given that incentive kind of thing so it's hard to talk not solution sorry. I understand that. Thank you, Shawnee. Yeah, I was just looking for clarification, I think need to touched on it about the town's contribution. But in terms of when we say, for instance, the town contribution for the middle district North Square was $2.8 million, but that's tax incentive over 10 years, versus 1.75 million. So is the difference that we're not receiving tax versus the other one being the town is actually paying money for the units, like what's the difference. Yeah, no, that is the difference. So, you know, North Square is the only development that took advantage of the local tax incentive and so it's foregone tax revenue that the town won't receive over a 10 year period. So it can be, you know, there's a write down period but right so for North Square that's the total over 10 years of tax dollars that, you know, that essentially is given to them so that they can help, you know, make that development for most almost I think every other city in that sheet in that we, we highlight that's those are actual dollars that the town provided either for construction costs for acquisition for pre development costs you know engineering architecture. And so for Olympia Oaks, over the course of many years you know we, the town paid for all the road work and infrastructure we paid you know 1.2 million with block grant money, we paid $300,000 to study the property to see if it could be money for construction, you know, half a million dollars in for construction so that those are actual dollars spent on that unit, you know, whether through block grant CPA, you know, community preservation app funding or some other funding grant funding and so most other projects it's actual dollars put in it. So also then per unit when we say 107,000 per unit. Again, that's in tax incentive or was that. Yeah, yeah, so it's taken, yeah, so it's over the 26 units it's, you know, that take the total value of what it will be it was $107,000 per unit of contribution you know it'll be end up being over a 10 year period but that's what the town, right. Yeah, but I think that's important for us to also understand because one we're actually physically paying cash and one is it's coming out of future earnings. Thank you. Carol, I just want to note the time we're going to go a little over, but after probably the four people that still have their handrails will move to public comment Carol. Um, oh yeah okay I want you asked about gaps, and it seems to me that there's there are gaps everywhere but one of the ones that I feel less able to understand how to get at is the gap of sort of workforce housing. People who are like making more than you probably can't get subsidy to do something for them, but they aren't going to be able to be served by general development because it's probably not going to happen to include them. So that's a gap that I there's gaps everywhere but that's just one that I don't see how to get at. But one other thing I wanted to say was I was, I was kind of interested to read in the 2015 mark housing marketing study, where it noted that Amherst has part of its problem going back. And one of the things that we were at least coming in 2015 is Amherst has bigger lot sizes. Amherst has fewer options for making things dense. Amherst has these things that make it harder for somebody to build something here, and they are still here. And that's kind of zoning issues and I know the council, and essentially Mandy and Pat are working there are working a lot on that stuff but I just think it's, it's worth noting that it actually is that we are different than surrounding towns in the way that we have done that and in the fact that our lots are as big as they are. I pass, thank you. Thank you, Jennifer. So first, I totally agree with you Carol that the big, you know, one of our major gaps is workforce housing. And I think if, you know, we could increase that I think we would also see, maybe we could reverse some of the trend of our declining K through and if we could, you know, also have families and, you know, sort of get more of that what do we say 25 to 50 year old demographic moving into Amherst that would be sending kids to our school, but, and it sometimes talked about that you know, we don't we want students to live close by so they don't have to commute but we would be terrific if you mass university employees a lot of people if they could live in Amherst and not have to be, you know, commuting long distances. But I did want to I guess maybe echoing what Pam said is that, you know, I density in Amherst it doesn't seem to have really opened up housing. I, Pam and I both, you know, our constituents where we live and the people we represent we live in the residential districts that have the smallest lot sizes, already zoned for, you know, all kind, you know, every multi, you know, category of multifamily housing. And we have seen that the housing that's built is for the student market, because that's the highest return on investment. So, and the other thing that we have seen and it's, we've seen it all over town is when we, you know, talk about people of retirement age, maybe moving out of their houses if they had other options in Amherst, so that the houses could turn over to, you know, members of the workforce, is that because we also have the pressures of the student housing market in that market as well of these houses, particularly, you know, maybe that are more at the average, being purchased by investors, and then we lose single family houses, and they are converted to student, you know, rentals because they, there's such a great return on investment there too so we sort of have that pressure coming in many different places. Thanks. Excellent. Thank you. Before we move to public comment, I want to just summarize some of the potential gaps that I heard people saying they might want to prioritize. Basically it's most of the gaps I heard, but I'm trying to put them into some categories which will come back after a public comment for and if I missed any categories, you know, we can, we can add them as we talk strategies after public comment. So I heard senior housing with the workforce housing gap, the less than 80% AMI units that gap. So, so everything up from essentially zero AMI into the workforce side, which is 121 30 AMI, and then student housing pressures in town. So we're sort of the four categories I heard will come back to that we're going to move to public comment right now. We're going to accept public comment on anything within the jurisdiction of either CRC, or the housing trust. Obviously we would love it if you focused on what our conversation tonight is, but you can provide us any public comment you want as long as it's in within the framework of one of the two committees, and you'll have up to three minutes to make your public comment. And we might take a little leeway with that depending on how many public comments we get. So, if you would like to make public comment now please raise your hand, and I will recognize you in turn. I have one right now so Dorothy. Oh, Nate, are you going to let handle that or do you want me to Nate's handling it. Dorothy please unmute yourself. State your name where you live and make your comment. Dorothy Pam 229 Amity Street Amherst. I'm very concerned for family and workforce housing. But I do not agree that that will happen by densifying the downtown residential neighborhoods for the reasons that Jennifer has so well stated, which is they will all end up going to high rent students renting by the bedroom. And then we'll be destroying our family housing, but I share your goal and I think that we can do it but we have to think differently. Many of you have heard me talk about sunny side gardens and Queens, which was a one two and three family attached brick house community that was actually many blocks. And it had interior greens, little front yard little backyard and then a green so that people had green space. But it was dense. Okay, and people were allowed it was affordable in that if you had a two family house, your tenant rent would pay your mortgage. And that's how we got in we came in as renters and ended up being able to buy something and then selling that when we left the area. How can we do it we cannot do it with market forces. We have to have donated land. And there is a piece of land that might be very suited for housing that was turned down for the DPW. We need donated land from some of the college or the university I think it's probably the college. sunny side gardens was not done with market force. You know it wasn't because the market force is going for high rent. Okay, it was done with a purpose which was to provide housing for individuals and families, because when you have one two and three family houses you have rental units you have home ownership units, and you have people have a chance to earn their equity, or to move up as they as they have more children or get more money, whichever it is. I would be very excited to work on that with anyone, but I don't think that the idea that density, particularly near the college is going to result in anything except truly breaking a really great residential neighborhood which already has incorporated in ways that mostly work out quite well. So, I would love to work on this with somebody because I think this is the way we're going to do it and I agree we actually have to build a wider variety of housing and it's, it can't be done with market forces, because the market is really bad. Thank you. Thank you Dorothy for your comment. Next up is john hornick. Please when you get the chance please unmute yourself state your name where you live and make your comment and welcome john. Thank you Mandy. I'm john hornick I am a resident of Amherst 59 carriage lane, at least for the foreseeable future. There is generally a concern with new development and it being taken over by students. I think the one area where that would not happen is new development of senior housing, because senior housing, typically when it's finance. When it receives federal funds is age restricted to persons over the age of 60 or 62 or whatever depending upon the source of financing. So I think that can be an important part of the planning and it should be, as folks may know, I particularly think that we should be looking at the buildable land on West Palm Roy lane, where the next to the development is for conservation. I think there's room there, and I think that housing for seniors would be the least disruptive to that area. It's also close to a village center. And so I think that should be on the priority list. Thank you john for your comments. We have no other hands up at this time. So we're going to move on away from general public comment we'll see how the discussion goes I may or may not take more comment after we talk about the approaches. But we're going to move on to approaches for reducing housing priorities so we talked about what our gap priorities might be. I just summarized them so I'll summarize them again. There could be more, obviously, but senior housing workforce housing less than sort of the hundred 80% am I unit. Am I cost housing and addressing the student housing pressure. And so we're opening up to thoughts on pick one of them I'm not going to make us go through each one you can pick whichever one you have thoughts on address I'll make the notes myself as well as George is taking our minutes on where that that strategy potentially fits into our priorities. So, floors open for talking about strategies we might be able to use to address any of these priorities. Oh, Ashley had a hand up to do you want to go. Well, it's you can go first. Sorry, I missed you Ashley. Okay. So, you know, I'm very interested in workforce housing and family housing like in making it and inviting place for families to move in and stay and live. Okay, one. The thought always is that when we are thinking of a solution to first find out from families, what is it, they would want like when people are living in leverage or moving to other areas. What is it that would they would want for them to move back because we can make a unit affordable. But if it doesn't have a little yard or if it doesn't have let's say something XYZ. Then, you know, it can be affordable but they may not move back. And I've heard that from some teachers who prefer to live in other areas because the value they're getting in lever it for, you know, and, and so maybe that's one of the things we may need to think about is actually doing a survey of some sort that gets to understand what the different with its seniors, what are they looking for or its families what are they looking for in a home that would make it attractive for them to move back or move to Amherst. Thank you, Shalini. Ashley. You know, I am no economist. So it's really hard for me to understand these numbers but, for instance, there was, it might have been a home ownership place that cost $500,000. It's going to cost $500,000 to make, but when they sell it, it's going to cost this the owner about $200,000 with $300,000 of subsidies. Was there something like that. Okay, so just your basic idea $300,000 is three tiny houses. So we're getting $1,500,000. I'm sure very nice house for $300,000 in subsidies we could be housing three more families. And so it's just like putting a fine tooth comb onto the economics. If we want to house people. If we want to house people at a very cheaper rate. It costs less for them, certainly, but it's not like it's not the town borrowing $300,000 to house one person or one family that then also pays $200,000. Does that make sense. Why are we spending so much. Dave's not in his head does he wish to. I have other comments to make, but, but Ashley, you know, raises good questions. I mean, these are, these are things we need to grapple with. That is a that is a lot of money and it's a large subsidy for one unit. And I think, you know, it's, it's, it's a it's a really good thing to grapple with. And then, you know, as Nate and I work with Valley and work with wayfinders and I, you know, I want to give them those two agencies tremendous credit because they are true partners here in Amherst and in the region and every time I go to North Hampton I, you know, look around and notice a new development that one of them has worked on and my wife is kind of tired of me saying hey look at that oh my goodness there's so many units and but they're very creative but yeah they're faced with the challenges as Nate alluded to earlier of rising costs and and raw materials and and everything all the legal costs that go into it and before you know it we're climbing into the fours and into the fives and where does it go from there. I can't imagine what units cost in Boston or Worcester, you know, per per unit so it's a challenge I think we need to We just know from a presentation that in Dover, New Hampshire if you work your magic they cost about $118,000 per two bedroom tiny unit. I mean, this is a lot of finagling and the best developer who is not taking a cut, but we know we can do it. 120,000 per unit, if we had to. I wasn't at that presentation I know there was a lot of discussion after it I, I do think land is a challenge a finite amount of land in Amherst is a real challenge, given the land that the university Hampshire college and and Amherst College all own. Again, somebody earlier alluded to, could there be opportunities for the colleges and UMass to donate land to allow something like that to happen. So, I think we need to look at that because land for a number of tiny houses and then the appropriate zoning. We certainly should should look at that. Thank you, Erica. Thank you. I was struck by the 2015 market study because I thought it was pretty comprehensive and it actually laid out what some of the, what the problems were and then some very specific recommendations, and it also broke it up between focusing on some of the student issues and the campus issues that included working with Amherst College and getting some donated land because they seem to have a lot of land, but it also then looked at how to protect non student renters as well. I think there are a lot of strategies there some that are already being implemented such as unlocking multifamily development which Mandy Joe you've really been putting that along with Pat, you know multifamily units by right, considering the neighborhood overlay district so to push the university and doing some of that enabling infill development with existing apartment complexes and then for the non student renters housing and centers overlay expediting review processes and then you know the units per acre having more housing per acre versus what we have right now and then small homes. So these are all things that we talked about and then it has a whole section on regulatory changes that could support all of that. So we have some strategies that are pretty specific within that study that that might be useful for us. Thank you Erica. Shalini. We didn't have a round before me back to do and go. I was simply going to say that while I really support the idea of tiny homes. And I'd love to see it where we wanted to put the DPW. A while ago, Dave and a small family, a tiny home is not necessarily going to house a family. So while I really support that as a solution for single people or couple of couples, and I believe in building smaller, you know, I think that that is not the solution but just one for families and for workforce housing. Thank you, Pat. Shalini. I just had a process question for a sake, you know, we're putting out all these different ideas at we meet someone making a note and what's going to happen with it. After we get the ideas our next topic of conversation is how are we going to implement them and doling them out to various people. So then going back to I think Carol or someone brought or Erica brought up that we have a whole list of potential solutions in our comprehensive housing policy we had come up discussed it and then also in the production plan. So that those are good places to look at. And then the other thing that was brought up today and I just want to reiterate it now because we're talking about solutions is the size of the house lots. That is a huge issue and I think we should put that as something we need to talk about in CRC and also the 40R and the Gateway project. Thank you, Shalini. Dave. Sure, I had a couple of, I guess, questions or things to put out there. They're all related obviously to housing but a little bit different. Excuse me, been talking all day. I wanted to just circle back to something Shalini said a couple of minutes ago is is really, really, we probably need to do a little bit more work on what do people want. What do young families want? What do single individuals want? What do people want when they look at, you know, I think we hope we understand what makes Amherst attractive to come here and work here and live here and study here and all the other things they want to do that make us a wonderful community. But I don't think we've done a lot of work with, you know, really understanding, you know, what young families, what are all the barriers clearly cost is a huge barrier. But what do people want? I hear a lot that people want smaller units. They don't, for lack of a better term, you know, the American dream of that one acre or half acre with a big yard and privacy and this and that in a cul-de-sac or whatever may not be what a lot of people want anymore. Many people want more freedom. They don't want to take care of a yard and the house burden and whatever. So do they want condos where they can still achieve equity goals in their lives as families or individuals or couples, whatever. So I think Shalini made a good point there about finding more, you know, more data in that, in that front, in that regard. A couple of other things. You know, I just wanted to put a point on, you know, five years ago, I don't think, and I know I don't want to focus too much on market rate housing. I heard everyone earlier, yes, a lot of the market rate housing that has been created has been geared towards students, but not all of it. We don't have all that data. I wish we did. It's very hard. We don't know how many non-students are living in the North Square development. We don't know how many non-students are living in the new units downtown. We know some are young professionals and graduate students, etc. But I also wanted to remind everybody that inclusionary zoning has captured more units than I think any of us thought, you know, would happen. And Nate alluded to this earlier. Maybe we need to look at that a little bit more rigorously and see if there's ways to tweak the inclusionary zoning by-law to capture more units. But again, five, seven years ago, I mean, if you look at, you know, lower Main Street housing, we have new housing going on on Southeast Street. We have U Drive South. We have Aspen Square. We have the Spring Street development coming on online shortly. So there's definitely more housing in, you know, all over town. I do also want to acknowledge that, you know, when we talk about proximity to UMass, we know that graduate students and undergraduate students generally want to live as close to campus as possible. So what's happened is, and this is one of the complexities of the market is, even though more units geared towards students have been created. Again, we don't have all the date on this, but I think there's a strong indication that we are pulling students from other towns who simply want to be closer to campus for the convenience, the amenities, etc. So from Sunderland, Nate and I and my staff talk a lot about what we believe is kind of the pulling sound from Sunderland. Again, not picking on that community, it's a wonderful community, but other than the flats, which is a relatively new student, student geared development off of Route 116, many of the units farther out. I think Cliffside has done a lot to keep their development updated and well maintained. But the other ones farther north, I think are less attractive to UMass students than they once were in the 80s and 90s. So I think as more building has happened here, students, if they can afford it, they're choosing to live closer to Amherst. I did want to just go back to kind of density again. I want to go back and just put a point on our master plan calls for densifying village centers and so as I think of that and we talk about it with staff. The east village, the lower part of College Street is a wonderful opportunity to densify already developed land from really from the underpass, east, potentially all the way to the transfer station, you know, on the way to Belcher Town. That is, you know, and all of us probably travel that way many times, you know, a week or a month and you kind of look around and go, wow, there's already some housing down there. We know that Colonial Village is interested in some opportunities there with their land. We know that Mr. Mikchi, who is doing the development on Southeast Street is interested in more units there. So again, the gateway, somebody maybe Chalene or somebody else mentioned the gateway a minute ago. I think we need to come back to the gateway. I think we need to look at Triangle Street. What could happen on Triangle Street? The Xana Block. You know, we all love the Xana Block, but it's a one story cinder block building from the 1950s or 1960s. We have to look at that seriously and say is that really an opportunity that we're going to pass on? Obviously it's private property, but could we get the developer to the owners to look at something creative by going up there and creating more units? So again, I know it's, you know, we need to be more creative around getting affordable units in all categories, but I'm just saying there are opportunities for redevelopment. We're happening all around us and developers we have in our community are taking advantage. Lower Main Street, Spring Street, Southeast Street, U Drive South, where we captured how many affordable units in the U Drive South development. I think there is four or five. Four or five in that development. But again, almost no opposition. Nobody came out as far as I know in opposition to redeveloping that old vacant lot on the corner of Snell Street and Rudine. But there you have it. We got affordable units and we got market rate units. So anyway, just putting another plug in for dense densification. Thank you. So I wanted to mention a couple of things I think the smaller, you know, if we're hearing a lot about people want smaller houses, we either have to look at the multifamily housing or if we're looking at some single family housing for smaller houses, we need smaller lots for those smaller houses because most people aren't going to buy a half acre lot or a three quarter acre lot or an acre lot and then build a small house on it. And that's just doesn't tend to happen just because of the cost it costs to buy that size lot. So if we want smaller houses, I think we need to look at the smaller lots that go with those houses for the single family home type houses for the others. If we're doing multifamily maybe not. I think I read somewhere about maybe senior overlay districts, you know, we've done a lot of overlay districts but finding places in town where we might, where people might want senior housing, or that we think is logical for senior housing and instead of relying on the zoning we have maybe create overlay districts for that that that could be potentially denser because of all of those restrictions that come with it maybe and what seniors want or don't want if we once we do I think the survey and finding out is fantastic idea. I think, you know, and I don't know how much the trust has leeway with this but but the East street belcher town road RFP, I know had a certain number of subsidized housings at certain different am Is and then had the ability for market rate housing and I know the plan is to bring market rate housing is in I wonder if we should be looking at also when we put those a minimum of X number of 80 am I an X number of 50 am I putting in a 100 or 120 am I to catch that that number I think the trust might even be able to depending on where it gets its money, which we're working on, be able to go up to that 100 or 120 am I if it's not potentially CPA money, and so we have to find you money somewhere other than CPA. But if we can start finding that money from other places, maybe we can start requiring, instead of going from 80 am I to, and then market rate, those those middle numbers in there. And then another one I thought of was for potentially overlay but other rezoning is our PRP land and, as Dave was talking the calm land in East Amherst that calm land can't have any housing on it. And at all. It has a lot of single story buildings that would probably be perfect for redevelopment into mixed use buildings not solely housing, but specifically mixed use buildings so either looking at rezoning, we're adding the ability for a special permit or site plan in the calm for a mixed use building of some sort might open and unlock some of that and then in the PRP there's also not housing allowed and I know where I live there's some PRP land that just is vacant that could probably take housing, either through mixed use or high density part or something and so I think those are some creative things we might be able to look at Nate raised his hand Carol's like honor. I just I just could you explain calm and PRP calm is our commercial zone. So it's a it's the zone. It's most, you know, there's a there's a strip of it on College Street in East Amherst and then there's some in other places of town but that East Amherst strip can't have any housing on it. And that I know the planning board has been looking at that when they looked at that they're like, hmm, if we want to develop East Amherst, maybe we don't want that calm. Maybe we wanted a different district. So that's what commercial is PRP is short for professional research park. And it also doesn't allow housing professional research park is some of it is where the, the Cooley Dickinson urgent care and on you can drive some of that is PRP land. I don't know where else PRP as I know there's some in the adjacent to Amherst Woods where the Atkinson building and all is some of that is PRP. And it was intended for what it sounds like professional research. So, so research offices, potential spin offs from the universities that aren't high industrial type spin offs. But it hasn't really done what it was originally tended for. So we've now got land sitting there that can't create housing. So Carol got that name and then Jennifer. Thanks. Yeah, I mean, I was just, I was going to say that the planning board has been discussing East Amherst village as an area for rezoning or looking at other village centers, primary village center in terms of, you know, there's a lot of zoning districts and I think the proposal by Pat and Mandy in terms of duplexes and triplexes. Some of the difficulties are zoning districts are so intertwined that if you apply things district wide. It may not have the impact you want in certain areas right so right near a village center we might have residential zoning where maybe it should be village center zoning and so I think the planning board for me. The conversation is okay do we actually have to then look at how do we change zoning districts or is it overlay districts and I think that you know, at your point I would rather see a 40 are over East Amherst and get affordable units. Then maybe, you know, say something that doesn't encourage affordable units I think, you know, rolling green we use to use as a great example because I had a mix it had 2025% affordable. There were families there were seniors there was individuals there were you know a range of different household types. And it was all rental and it was a great balance and so, you know, I don't know if it's that we need more, I think we need, whether it's through incentives or regulations to, if we have denser developments so that's not all students and then just a small percentage affordable we need to have some other tools to help balance those developments I think if we have 100 unit development down in East Amherst and it has inclusionary zoning 12% are going to be affordable. And the rest are going to be really high market rate units unless somehow we have other regulations or incentives to change that and so the trust could do that I do think it gets expensive per unit to subsidize things but I think. Yeah, maybe we have to think about what what are some other tools that communities are using or other places are using to try to get that mix of household types because the market Amherst is really strong. You know and so it's being built really isn't, you know, someone isn't going to develop a unit and then charge half of what they could necessarily and so I think I like where the planning board I like this discussion I like the idea of where can we change how can we change zoning or regulations incentives. I still think we need to think about how do we make sure that there's a balance of unit types for different income levels and so, ideally that would happen through market forces but I don't think it will be Amherst or say the surrounding region just because of the housing housing market and so it maybe could in Greenfield and maybe could in Brattleboro right Vermont but an Amherst where it's a we have a you know I think a really unique market that's even different than 20 minutes from Amherst and so I think we have to have that strategies that are really specific to Amherst. Thank you Nate Jennifer. Yeah, I would say a few things. Okay, first, in terms of like the, you know, I think it's often said oh well it's something new building like there's a lot of buildings that archipelago has built. Those are the buildings downtown well they're not all students. They're almost all students I live three blocks from the two downtown buildings, and when you met when school you masses on vacation, those buildings are pretty are almost completely dark, and the, the tenants that live their park along Kendrick park on the streets bumper to bumper when school is in session. There are no cars there when you mass is on vacation. So students are living there I would say with the exception of the inclusionary zoning affordable units and maybe there's one I don't know, very few and you and we see it all the time because most of those buildings are dark when schools not in session and again there's no, literally no cars parked at Kendrick on the west side of Kendrick Park, you know over Christmas vacation. And I don't, you know, I think we also, you know have that people move to Amherst because they did want a little green space I don't know, you know there has been a lot of. There are definitely many people that live in town that probably wouldn't be happy to see another five story building where Zana's is you know with no setbacks but that's another conversation. But I would just, you know and in terms of. We have to think about you know do we think that all the students at UMass who have to live off campus need to live in Amherst that will make Amherst a very dense place to live and I'm not sure that we were, you know, looking to move, you know to live in Amherst, you know, to not have some green space. And it does feel like I think, you know, for like the village centers and the area that, you know, Nate talked about where we, you know, could, there are many places we could do densification, but I sometimes it talked about that let's densify our densest areas and then leave our most open areas, the way keep keep the zoning the way it is. So I think some of what, you know, again, I live where I live it's small houses on small lots for the most part, but people that live in places where there's large houses on large lots, you know, do are do you and your neighbors, are you willing, you know I hope you are to divide up those lots but I, I always feel like that it's looking at, you know, the in town districts to become denser so the outlying districts don't have to change. So, and that might also be another conversation. I don't leave it with that. Thank you Jennifer she Jennifer also brings up a good point about I would be the camp the off campus student housing, or housing students off campus and where, where, who's, whose responsibility it is, and it can't just be the summer. Hadley has part of the campus on it and we need other municipal partners that also border the campus. Unfortunately, they're not always partners. That's what I would say, but the regional solutions are also just as important as the local solution is I guess, one thing I would say to summarize some of Jennifer's comments Ashley. I'm just thinking like, if we could take a look around and we don't have to like do a headcount but who among us is like under 40 years old, and I'm 46 so I'm not sure. Like, well certainly I don't think in this room, but I'm not sure that we're talking to people, even under 40, and what they want, and I feel like it's pretty disconnected like, when I talked to 25 year olds 26 year olds 27 year olds. I don't get the feeling they want a big house with a lot of dishes and like five kids. It's just that, you know, we talk a lot about what seniors want but it makes sense because we're in this particular room also, we're half seniors. These, these planning things tend to be 50% seniors and 0% people under 40. And so representation is a big deal. I just don't get the feeling that we're studying people under 40. Talking to people who are clearly 25 26 27 up to 49 who are I'm 46 so I'm just saying anecdotally, if I want to buy. It's definitely not an Amherst, there's places to go if you're 25 to 49, and it is not Amherst so there's a lot of seniors that live in Amherst and also that population is exploding. In terms of it's getting bigger. The population from 25 to 49 is getting less, and they have no representation in the in these rooms, or maybe one person. I just think that we need to start thinking about the people that are fleeing. And we never talked to, especially officially, and the, the seniors that we are 50% of the conversation, almost always. That's a great point Ashley. Erica. And so I just want to say that I do talk to people in downtown Amherst, especially those who work here. There have been a couple of people, especially young people who service Amherst, who wanted to live here and who actually over the year and a half and looking for buying an Amherst. Literally talking to them about trying to get them into Amherst and looking at, you know, what kind of subsidies they could get, you know, in terms of state subsidies to just do a down payment, etc. And the individual that I was hoping to actually get maybe onto the trust who is very young, I would say probably maybe late 20s, and has just had a child. They ended up buying in South Hadley because that's where it was affordable. The other people who work here, they're commuting at least 40 minutes to work here. So there are a lot of young people who do want to rent here and who do want to be here because they work here. This is where their job is. This is, you know, where they've invested in this community and they see it as a vibrant community. And so I think, you know, it goes back to that affordability. So Amherst is an attractive place to be. And I think there are young people who would like to stay here and be here. And there are also a lot of college students who have made a decision to stay here. So I think, you know, they, we have a listening session on June 20. We need to get those flyers out to a lot of different people around, but I think those who work here like, you know, teachers and firefighters and people who work in our community health centers. I think it's really important to listen to them as you say, Ashley, but I think a lot of them do, because they've invested here in terms of their work, would like to stay, would like to live here, like to have their students, their children go to school here. And that's also a lot of UMass people who work in the dining commons, work in physical plant. My husband worked there for years and he's been talking to a lot of young people about staying here and just not, it's just not affordable. They'd like to invest here because they spent a lot of time in this community and like to stay in this community. I agree, but then they buy in South Hadley and then they buy in Holyoke and then they buy in Jacobi. So it's like, it's great to want something, but it's not possible and I don't think they think it's possible and then it's not, then they don't do it. Jennifer, and then we're going to try and move on to implementation. Right, I was just, I do agree, Ashley, that of other people says a great point about having that younger or middle demographic in the conversation I know when CRC did our engage and her survey. We noted that the smallest response category, I think was that kind of 30s and 40s. So if it would be, you know, you know, for your listening session, it would be great if we could somehow bring in that demographic, because that's where we seem to be most challenged to get their input. Thanks. Thank you. So we've heard a lot of, up, Shalini. Just in terms of input, if you all are reaching out and having a listening session what really worked for us was reaching out to Tony Maroulis and what's your name. Nancy Buffon. And so they sent out an email to students so that you can get young voices in terms of if they want to graduate and stay live back in Amherst, what would make it attractive for them. So that's one way. We're going to move on to who might implement or work on or investigate some of the strategies we talked about. I think I have like 15 bullet points. So I'm not sure we're going to get through all of them. But I'm going to put Dave and Nate on the spot. I'm trusting some of them were taking some good notes too. But of the strategies and all you've heard tonight, Nate's laughing here. Which ones do you think would be most appropriate for the staff to be focused on instead of say the trust the planning board or CRC and I know we don't have the planning board here so it's kind of a cop out to say the planning board should do stuff. What are your thoughts on some of the splits based on some of the strategies you've heard in terms of investigating or looking at more or doing with? Nate, do you want me to start or do you want to start? Okay, so I was just writing something down. Yeah, I mean, I like the idea of like, you know, a multi-prong or multi-step approach. I think that a few things can happen at once. And so I do like the idea of whether we call it student housing or gateway or some type of overlay there. You know, the planning board has been talking about village centers and then they sometimes say, well, okay, let's also talk about students. But I think we, I think there really needs to be, you know, a conversation about that. And it's also, I think, I think it's right, you know, what's the capacity, the carrying capacity of Amherst in terms of units and residents, right? I mean, we, and whether it's zoning, it could also be, you know, conversations, UMass, it could be, you know, what are other ways to address the student demands in terms of what kind of pressure they put on for housing. And so, you know, I think, I think the planning board is appropriate to look at some zoning and they've kind of, they've been discussing and I think we could, you know, if that's something we think is a good priority, we could, you know, give them that direction, right? Say, okay, here, there's these, these ideas, let's have you continue that discussion. I think it's also staff. I mean, the Housing Trust had Tony Merulis, Nancy and Betsy Greco from UMass recently and there had been conversations before COVID with UMass, and we were hoping to have kind of a more conversation open up, kind of in the absence of UTAC. But, you know, whether it's the trust or staff, I think having those conversations is really important to understand. What are the, kind of the, the motives of UMass, what are their intentions in the next few years and kind of how do they see, you know, their housing and their student populations. And so, you know, it could be a few, but I like the idea of addressing the student piece. And I think that there's probably a few different, you know, I wrote, right, staff, trust, CRC, planning board, you know, so there's a few, I feel like there's probably three of those four could be actively involved in that. Let me jump in if I could Mandy real quick. Yeah, completely agree with Nate. And maybe, you know, again, I don't know as we're going to finish everything tonight and maybe there's a continued conversation here but, you know, I do, I do think we need to be realistic about, you know, how much staff can do what I do think it's very important to identify what are the staff roles in some of these. We, you know, and, and priorities of staff generally flow this way that the town council gives the town manager, you know, gives Bob Ackerman goals every year, and then those flow down to staff. And, you know, we have some, you know, flexibility and authority and, and, you know, to use our, you know, creative approaches and go after funding and sometimes we, you know, we get lucky and sometimes we don't but I do think we need to be realistic and really prioritize what those are. I know the council is going to be talking about, you know, kind of what some of their goals are for the town manager next year but I do think we need to be realistic because we don't have, you know, three staff positions just to work on housing so where does affordable housing the housing crisis fit into the goals of the council. How much of a priority is it. You know, honestly in the last two or three years, you know, certainly the council finished the comprehensive housing policy we're working on that not to say we aren't, but the two identified priorities for last year kind of flowing into fiscal year were diversity equity and inclusion, you know, getting the crest program going and then sustainability so that's a lot of staff time right in in those buckets. How big of a priority is this for the council, and therefore what will flow from that are the town managers, you know, goals for the staff. I'm going to say that we're not going to stop on all the projects we're working on we're going to work with way finders we're going to work with Valley CDC. And those are in those are intense processes to get 70 units built here and 40 units built there and work on the VFW project and some of the other land that's been mentioned tonight so I mean we haven't talked much about funding tonight at all and I just want to put a little plug in we're not even going to get to that, but all of these things take money. So local money, state money, federal money, so we need to talk that away for next time to talk about how do we get more money to do some of the things we want to do. Thank you Dave Shalini. I just want to touch on one thing which I think is interconnected to so many different pieces. And that is, you know, talking about money, one way we raise money for affordable housing is by increasing up tax base through some of those buildings that we're building. So that's why when we say that we, you know, like, we can't obviously absorb all the students who are at UMass, but finding certain areas where it makes sense for students to be when they're closer to UMass is an advantage to us when it's on private property because we're getting taxes and then that money can be diverted towards more affordable housing units. I wanted to highlight that and the other thing is, if we don't build housing areas for students. It's not like the some of them will go to different towns but sometimes, or many times they are buying over homes that our neighbors are selling because and get converted into student housing. So it's not like if you don't build for students, the problem is going to go away, which is not going to build, and let them go to Sunderland. Some of them will, but some of them will continue to live and buy over some of our homes. So we do have to think of them as part of the community and work in. How do we build housing for students and where do we build for seniors and where do we go for families and just think holistically, Ashley. You know, I would, I mean, I would kind of like to work on, like really kind of sussing out, does Amherst want to make the investment in having people that are 25 years old 49 years old live here. It's a long term, and that is also the workforce like people who are 25 to 49 years old tend to have jobs, and they might already be an Amherst the job could already be an Amherst. But when those people live here and and they work here they're paying income tax and they're paying sales tax. It's like, that is the workforce that is making the like they're making the most money. So wouldn't that bring in money. If more people 25 to 49 year old year olds lived here in an affordable way, but they're still buying a lot of stuff they're still like you know their income tax is like coming into town the town eventually. It just seems like there would be an advantage of keeping 25 to 49 year olds in Amherst, just for like the town, thriving, and making money, and expanding, and having kids, you know, like to go to that new school that's going to be great. But there's less kids every year so does the town want 25 to 49 year olds in it. Like, let's think about that. Thank you Ashley. In listening to the conversation, and I'm trying to figure out ways we can sort of go away from here with our own sort of lanes, as it were so we're not overlapping necessarily on some of the work. And so I'm just going to throw a couple things out here as I was listening to the conversations, what I kind of heard, or looking at the strategies we talked about what might fit where for staff concentrating on obviously the zoning parts, as well as everything else they're already doing, but managing some of the potential zoning issues. And some of that would fall to discussions with the planning board in particular, particularly with, I think Nate was saying village centers overlays. I added in there senior housing overlays 40 hour overlays you name it, we talked about a lot of different sort of possible strategies gateway was in there. So under the CRC, some of the things I thought might fit best with us are discussing how we could fit into the manager goals. Some of the priorities that we've talked about and some of the strategies we've talked about tonight to be able to potentially make a recommendation as we get towards setting manager goals in the fall, something coming from CRC on housing and zoning and all. We're actually handling the surveying and outreach of what we talked about of what housing people want, you know, we handled some of that surveying before with the rental permitting, maybe we could think about trying to do that outreach, and taking that on as a committee. And then what Ashley just said in terms of, you know, that goes to that outreach. What do certain demographic certain age ranges certain types, you know, Ashley was talking about the 29 to 49 year olds. What would they want and then, once we figure that out. And Ashley said, you know, what would the investment Amherst need to be what would have to be done if, and are we then willing to do that. And for the trust, I know as little, you know, I don't know as much about what you guys do is as I do CRC so I was writing down things like you've already started the conversations with UMass. And continuing those conversations about housing potentially with things like how would UMass like to do stuff with not just student housing or what that works but their workforce affordable housing developments, you know, particularly like how, how, how do they see bringing their employees back into living closer to town. What's the best use of subsidies for housing, particularly the AMHT funds you get what, what would you, you know, Ashley talked about how much money we put to subsidizing housing and all and I know that's been something that I think John, when he four years began as a draft policy from the trust on housing to the council, you know, are there targets we want to go with, do we want to focus it in one area over other areas I think that's a perfect conversation for the trust to be continuing. And potentially, I think you've already had these conversations but that surplus property and town properties what would be the best uses of some of them based on some of the priorities we've talked about tonight so those are some of the things I came up with. I'd love to hear people's thoughts on that sort of lane, trying to find lanes before we move on to what our next steps are. I was looking at the page of the document that we got that has kind of, I don't know what page this is or even which document but it has roles community resources, Amherst affordable housing town staff. I've never even seen anything like this before that even tried to say what the generalized roles were maybe that's just because I looked in the right place I don't know. But that seemed like a kind of a useful framework maybe for not different I don't think exactly from what you're saying Mandy but maybe a framework that will be useful. And the other thing that I don't know where this fits into who's doing what but one thing I would really love it. Is if as we try to track these things there could be one place that we can all look at the same thing. It feels like there's there are there were like four or five plans that we were supposed to look at all of them had goals, and not really any of them had here's how we have progressed against the goals which is understandable because there's not much going on but it would be helpful to me if somehow there was a a consolidation of this stuff so that we don't have to look at. This is the way the trust is looking at it this is the way CRC is looking at it this is the way the staff is like, there's $2 million of ARPA money for housing and the trust sent in at some point a whole lot of possibilities for what to do with it. And kind of, here's back things piecemeal every once in a while when it happens to come out. So, knowing having a better communication and a better system so that we all know what's going on, as well as who's doing what is something that I would very much like to see. Thank you. Thank you Carol. Any other thoughts. Shawnee Carol I assume you just have left your hand up. So there was this new Hampshire workforce housing bill, or a law rather that was passed in New Hampshire in 2010. And so they act like we have affordable housing laws at the state level they had it for New Hampshire is workforce housing law that was meant to promote workforce housing. I don't know if that's something that we can maybe send to state rep Mindy Dom and push for something like that at the state level, where we get subsidies for workforce housing or other strategies for workforce housing and I'm happy to send there's like a document that looked at what how effective and benefit that law was over 10 years I can send that to my teacher to you to everyone. Sure to to why don't you start with me Carol and Erica. And if you don't have Carol and Erica's email, Nate or Dave and we can push it out to all the committees members. Ashley then Jennifer and then we need to move on. Yeah, I was just thinking that it, the, the population that I'm most interested in is the 25 to 49 and that is graduating college kids, I assume there's like 1000 or more graduates, every year, or maybe like 2000 I don't know but anyway they have very shiny new degrees, and they probably have a lot of enthusiasm. And what if they could be compelled to stay in Amherst and help us have an interesting town. And also, and all the way up to 49. So that's, that's a large amount of people that like are not finding that living in Amherst, after, you know, graduating from college is kind of like their thing. I think we need to do a little bit of study about why that is, but then also the representation of people under 40, like being almost nail. Like maybe we could recruit some people that are under 40 and maybe the affordable housing trust specifically could have a quota of younger people. I don't know how old Grover is but maybe she's the youngest I have no idea, but the point is is that we need to be talking to the people that are leaving, because, like, if we don't we don't know why. And we don't know how to fix it. And so could we recruit some new people like to give us some perspectives next time on like what it's like being under 40 and trying to like afford something here. I think for Board and committee services, quite hard and an ongoing and I know our committees work hard for the ones we appoint and Paul's got people, community participation officers and all working on it but it's a great point. Shalini your hand is still up. Okay. So we were supposed to talk about collaboration and future plans for collaboration. I think we've kind of covered some of that. We've kind of got and we'll try to send out some some summaries, but we've kind of got some ideas of what we can each do to continue this conversation on our own. I personally foresee months before we get together again as a group, so that we'd have something to report in the next conversation or something to really talk about. But other thoughts on, you know, sort of future collaborations and and and that sort of topic. Pam. Yeah, I was going to ask if the presentation that Nate and Dave read through, I hadn't seen it before. I think there's some really good structure in there that could, you know, you were talking about zoning they're talking about categories of work that's being done. And that was that was a pretty nice way of organizing some of the material. I would appreciate having that send out to us all as well. It is in the packet. I didn't see it. I thought I had sent a maybe I lost track I know I sent it for the packet I know I put it in the packet I might have forgot to tell people I did that in a loss of things so I apologize. I have to tell us that there's something in the packet I clearly I missed it so I will go back and find it thank you. So, any other thoughts. If not, let me look at the formal agenda. Do we have any announcements from anyone or anything not anticipated by either chair in the last 48 hours. If not, I want to thank everyone. I want to thank Nate and Dave, well, Nate, especially for Dave to for doing all the work to put all that information together I know that was a huge task, a huge, a huge thing to do but I think everyone here found it extremely helpful to just be able to see it all in one spot as as one of us was just saying a place where we get it all. So, thank you for all the work you two did to help us have this conversation thank you to the trust for suggesting it. I think Ashley's the one that sort of started us on this thank you for suggesting it and all. Thank you for CRC members for coming on a Thursday night and adding a meeting I know the trust added a meeting to, but this was your sort of normal meeting just on Thursday evenings. I want to thank George in the audience who is taking the minutes for both committees for for coming and taking those minutes and adding that meeting in to I hope I didn't forget any thank yous. Thank you that you forgot was to thank yourself for making the agenda, chairing a meeting, hurting us cats successfully. A cat coming Ashley your kittens are beautiful. With that, I kept you almost on time so Carol and Erica, you guys need to adjourn your meeting and then once you've adjourned yours I'll adjourn ours. Right now, adjourning our Amherst municipal affordable house trust meeting, it is 904 and we are officially adjourned and CRC is also adjourned at 904 p.m. Thank you all. And thank you for chairing. Thanks. Thank you very much, Mandy. Good night everybody.