 5th 2022. And I am calling this community resources committee special meeting to order at 7pm. Oh, wait. Oh, you did start recording. Thank you, Athena at 7pm. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 21 and extended by chapter 22 of the acts of 2022 and by chapter 107 of the acts of 2022. This meeting will be conducted via remote means members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so via zoom or telephone. No in person attendance of members of the public will be permitted. But every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time by a technological means. At this time, I'm going to call the role of the community resources committee members. We can make sure they can, everyone can hear each other. Shalini. Yes. And Mandy is present Pat present did that out of alphabetical order Pam. And Jennifer present. And we also welcome Michelle Miller into the panelists section of this meeting because CRC has has voted to include her in all meetings that deal with rental registration as she was one of the original sponsors that had this matter referred to CRC. So Michelle can you hear us. I can present. Thank you. So at this time, we're going to move directly into our community forum. This is going to include a plan for the evening I'm going to start with a little introduction and then we'll talk about after my introduction. We will talk about an update on CRC's work the issues we hope to address the goals that we have and what CRC has done so far where we are. And then we will move into our comments and discussion portion of the meeting. When we are in that portion of the meeting. There will be some guided questions that we will ask the public to answer. And those questions each member of the public that raises their hand will have two minutes to answer those questions. Each member of the public for each question can speak once. In fact, it will be a long evening. And so I'm going to hold us to that. And at the end, there will be a general sort of say what you want again for at that point we'll see what time it is when we get to that that will either be two or three minutes. I will be keeping time. That is the basic plan during the guided comments and discussion if there's a particular question that people ask in response to some of the questions we're asking if we have the ability to answer it. We will try. And as you will hear, we're just starting a process. So we may not have answers for every question. This is much more of an evening to try and get thoughts from the public. And in case people are wondering right now we have about 26 attendees. This meeting, we are also using the community click platform. So, I am going to go through once I find everything. I think that's the right share. Are you guys seeing just the slide. So community click is an interactive live way to render your opinion while people are talking. So what you want to do to participate in community click is either scan the QR code, or go to that website. Once you do so. You will see a page that is like this, and you will click the I am attendee button. Once you have clicked the I am attendee button, you will have to choose a session the session you're going to choose is the CRC community forum on rental permitting. Once you've choose that session, you're going to have a screen that pops up for some demographic information the only demographic information you have to answer is your location. It would be appreciated if you answered the rest, but everything is anonymous. And we do not collect that information that can be used to identify people. But it will help us determine and see who has attended and who has participated in this. Once you've answered at least the location question, you can hit submit. And then you will be shown a screen like this. This is your community click screen. You're all set to participate at this time. And while we are doing our meeting, you can use the buttons to share your opinion. Agree disagree important confused and all of that. Unsure other to let us know your thoughts. We have turned on for now the actual live reaction so as people do that, you should be able to see the screen. We have a live shot of this so this is not going to be there and if you want you can click that small triangle up there and what will pop up is a method to be able to send a comment or question to the administrators at the time. So myself and Shalini Balmil are monitoring those comments. And if they relate to the use of the community click we should be able to respond to you directly through the messaging system if they are a question that you have about something someone has said, then we will try to Shalini will try to notify me and let me know and then she on behalf of you will potentially ask that question during the meeting at the appropriate time. So please bear with us with that. And when you're done commenting or if you don't want to send that message you can always click the back button, and you'll be back to that. So that is a brief stop on a tutorial on how to engage with community click, you can see I've put the website as my background so people can see it throughout the evening. Throughout the evening for everyone else if people come late so that they can see it there is also a video tutorial in the packet for tonight's meeting that can be watched to go through that if you also have problems with that. We are up to 32 attendees. And Shalini has raised her hand so I will recognize her before we move on to our update on CRC's work Shalini. Yeah, this may have been clarified already about community click. The main advantage or reason why you may choose to use that is if you don't feel comfortable speaking publicly which you can also do by just raising your hand and you'll be invited to speak publicly, but some people are just not comfortable doing that in which case you can share your comment and your reactions to what's being said using community click. Thank you. Thank you for that Shalini and the other thing I forgot to mention is after the end of the meeting. Are you mass partners, I believe are the ones that will match a transcript to the clicks. And so we'll be able to see transcript wise when the agrees or disagrees came in the live. One thing I do want to mention some people don't get confused the live graph is a graph of all the agrees throughout the entire night, not in the last five seconds or 10 seconds so it's not going to necessarily tell you immediately be immediate feedback on any one particular comment. But we're trying out whether the live graphs people like or not tonight. And so with that, I'm going to move on to the update on community resources committees work we are going to start with Jennifer top committee member top, who is going to help talk about the issues that CRC hopes to address Jennifer. You need to unmute Jennifer. I'm sorry. Thank you Mandy Joe and thank you to everyone who has joined in and submitted on, you know, many survey responses, I think that we've exceeded 80 so we're very appreciative of the community's involvement and interest in this issue. I'm just going to briefly review the issues that CRC has been seeking to address and remedy in the revisions to the residential rental property by law, and then Michelle will be reviewing the goals that that we're hoping to achieve so the overarching issue, of course is to ensure that rental properties adhere to health and safety codes, and provide safe and healthy housing for their tenants, the interiors of rental houses and apartments must be maintained for the well being of those who live there. The interiors, you know, must also be well cared for both for the benefit of the residents, as well as the surrounding neighborhood. Among the issues with which CRC is grappling is that dwellings can suffer from deferred maintenance, especially on the exterior, but still be up to code on the interior a number of the completed surveys we've received in advance of this evening included such concerns as aging and intermittently working appliances. This may not rise to the level of a code violation but are the kind of issues we're hoping to address and remedy in the revised bylaw. The inspection of rental properties is also a major issue to be addressed. We would like to move from a system that is both based on self inspections and is exclusively complaint driven, often tenants and neighbors are reluctant to lodge complaints with the building commissioner's office. So health and safety issues, as well as noise and nuisance violations can go unreported and are allowed, you know, to faster or worse, and we want to implement a system that is fair, equitable and effective. We welcome your suggestions and input, which is, you know, really why we're here tonight. We're also looking at other cities and towns, for examples of successful inspection systems. You know, for example, in Salem, Massachusetts, two or three, two or three family buildings where the owner occupies one of the units are only inspected when there is a change of tenant. Also in Salem, if the unit has no sanitary or building code violations and hasn't received a disorderly house citation in the previous three years, the unit is upgraded to a five year inspection schedule. Again, these are just examples of what other jurisdictions are doing, and that we are, you know, thoroughly researching and again are eager for your suggestions. The Congress does need a systematic well understood non-complaint driven inspection system because the lack of enforcement provisions undermines the town's ability to really ensure that housing is safe, well maintained and compliant with building and zoning codes. The reason for implementing the rental permit system, as many of you know, back in 2013 was so a permit could be suspended or revoked if there were repeat violations. At that time, at the same time, we'd also like an inspection system that includes incentives for landlords to provide well managed and complete free rental housing. Another issue we're addressing, we hope that the bylaw revisions will address is the requirement to obtain the rental permit itself. Currently, there is no clear enforcement mechanism or penalty for failure to obtain the permit in the first place. And in fact, some new landlords may not even be aware that a permit is required. We're exploring asking realtors to notify clients who are purchasing properties for the purpose of renting them to inform their clients at the point of sale that a permit is needed. And we're also exploring having the town include information on rental permits in official notices and sends to property owners. And finally, one of the most important issues with which we're grappling is the fee structure for the rental permits. The charge for permits must be fair and equitable. And for example, you know, we're looking at should there be a permit fee for, you know, maybe a sliding scale for a unit for dwellings that are one to four units and maybe another permit fee for five to 25 units and another for buildings that have more than 25 or should the permits be priced per unit. Should there be a low cost, you know, for each unit. So we're looking at other cities and towns to see what kind of fee structures they've implemented. And, you know, so far it seems that there's as many different structures as there are jurisdictions, which suggests the towns are working hard to implement the right permit fee structure that works best for them. And we are, you know, working to do the same and Amherst and again, you know, welcome your suggestions. And with that kind of recap of the issues we're hoping that the bylaw revisions will address. I'll turn the discussion over to Michelle to reveal to review, excuse me, the goals that we're working to achieve. Thank you, Jennifer. And yes, thank you to everyone who's here. This is a great opportunity for folks voices to be heard. So our goals are born from the issues that Jennifer just reviewed, and also from the recognition that this matter impacts residents and business owners and varying ways. And therefore requires us to sit in each other's shoes a bit when we're working on this review. So I think that's that's something that's really important to keep in mind. And the goals that we have are to ensure that rental homes are properly maintained and code compliant, so that they are safe and healthy for tenants to occupy. Another goal is to adopt a more equitable fee structure as Jennifer talked about a third goal is to create a clear licensing program that educates property owners and tenants. The next goal is to safeguard quiet enjoyment of neighborhoods. The next goal is to address climate action goals of the town. And then finally to learn from other college towns, what management tools and best practices other college towns are using to to to work with the challenges of rent registration. I think with that, Pam, is it going over to you at this point. Okay, on to you Pam. Thank you and thank everyone for attending. This is a really good opportunity to hear from you tonight. What we've done so far is approximately six working sessions that have occurred within the CRC to talk about different sections of the bylaw. So we have, we have started with material cobbled from our existing bylaw material from other towns, and we're slowly walking our way through each of the sections to get input on and to sort of craft what may work for for in tonight is the the public forum but we will have another, I think about 18 sessions beyond this with the goal of trying to craft a draft bylaw by the end of December. The, the, the follow up of these 18 work sessions might include going to a particular committee going to the planning board going to the planning department so there'll be a range of people and organizations that we reach out to as we talk about certain subjects. So I think there, there are and we hope lots of opportunities to hear back from people. We also accept females, that kind of thing, and also welcome everyone to look at the community resources. Community resource committees website, on which every, every meeting date is a packet of information including the agenda and what will be talked about at that time will try to reach out to folks and let you know what's happening. But you can always check there to see what the topic of interest is that night, and the material will be there in the packet so that you can review it yourself and look at it. So with that, I'm going to turn it back to Mandy Joe for what we're here for which is to listen to you. Thank you. Oh, you're not here to listen to me. But yeah, thank you to Jennifer Michelle and Pam for for doing that quick run through. We also have an engage Amherst webpage engage Amherst org slash rentals on that webpage as some people have mentioned today is a survey that survey will remain open. We have approximately 200 responses to that survey as of today. What is in the packet is a summary of the first 50 or so we received it, I have not updated that because I have to do a download of all of it at once. So in the next week, I'll do another download to to and another posting either in the CRC packet for tonight's meeting, or Thursday's meeting or hopefully directly on that engage Amherst website will be able to keep the response up for that. The committee itself have received all of the responses or nearly all of the responses in individual responses so we have been able to read them as they have come in. But we'll get that out and try and keep updating it regularly right now we have about 36 attendees. And I'm just going to we mentioned the community click option for people. I'm not going to go through the presentation again there is a video in the packet for people to be able to watch. And there's also the PowerPoint presentation that has this and then you can also see my background to try and sign on to it, if you can. And with that, we're going to move into hearing from you. And as I said, we have about six guided questions that we would like people to answer and then we'll open it up for just regular questions and concerns. After those we get through those six that we hope will help us work through the rental permitting. The person will be able to speak once for each question, which will leave up to about seven possible times to speak to us tonight. And for the first six questions there will be a two minute limit for speaking so that we can hopefully hear everyone that wants to speak without going into the really we hours of the morning. And it is to allow everyone who wants to speak to speak tonight before we adjourn this meeting, because we really are here to hear from you. So with that, the way you indicate that you want to speak is if you are on zoom and not through the phone there should be a raise hand button, you will hit that raise hand button, and then I will recognize you in turn. So as we go, I will be keeping time. I don't know whether you'll be able to hear it through my computer but I can't run it in the background with this background screen haven't figured that out yet, but I will be keeping time and as the time when it's down when it runs out. I will, I will politely ask you to finish up if you have not. First question, Pam, did you want to add anything. Yeah, I wonder if you could quickly go through all of the five or six seven questions so people have a sense of what's coming. That is a fantastic suggestion because not all of them are in the packet because I came up with some others that we sent out. And so the six questions are I think it's six three six questions and then and then the open ended. The first one's about permitting requirements and it will be what should a property owner need to do in order to obtain a permit to rent a property. And then as I come back to it I'll give you some suggestions that we've thought of but obviously that's just some of the things and we're looking for everyone's thoughts. The second question is about inspections what should inspections look for and how often should they happen. The third one is about fee structures what would an equitable fee structure look like. The fourth one is what would an equitable incentive system look like. And the fifth one is what penalties should be considered for violating the permitting bylaw either by not applying for and receiving a permit, or not complying with other potential provisions of the bylaw. And the last specific question is what are your ideas for permitting requirements that would help safeguard your quiet enjoyment of your home, whether you rent or own your home. And then when we get through them will ask for other comments concerns questions and ideas that you would like to share with us regarding rental permitting and rental housing in Amherst. So with that, we are going to start with the first question which is about permitting requirements, what should a property owner need to do in order to obtain a permit to rent property in Amherst some suggestions that we've considered are like inspections, energy efficiency improvements, parking management plans, proof of tenant notification, lack of local bylaw violations, that's just a small number of many things that could be suggested. So if you have any thoughts on that question, please raise your hand right now, and I will start recognizing you in turn. So we're going to start with Ira Brick, please unmute yourself. And then once you do state your name where you live, and then make your comment on this question. Hi, I'm Ira Brick at 255 Strong Street. Thank you so much for doing this. My suggestion on this question is that when I worked at UMass they wanted to make sure that people understood the security concerns of getting hacked and giving away information and once a year if you could not pass a computer course and that you could not get into your computer or your internet. And I think that a similar thing would be understanding the limit of unrelated people and the harm that it causes and parking and just just have somebody be able to take this course and pass it to be able to even get the permit. Thank you. Thank you for that comment, Ira. Are there any other people who would like to comment about what property owners should need to do in order to obtain a permit to rep property in Amherst. We're going to recognize Sasha, please Sasha unmute yourself and raise your hand, we've already raised your hand unmute yourself state your full name and where you live and then make your comment. Hi, can you hear me. Yes, we can. My name is Sasha Weiss I live in Amherst and I think that there should be some sort of system baked into the permitting structure to keep rents under some sort of to incentivize lower rents because at the moment. Things are pretty horrific. Thank you for that comment Sasha. Tom Crossman, please unmute yourself state your name and where you live or if you're representing any particular entity that Hi, good evening. I want to start off by applauding all of your efforts for taking on this beast that is the rental permitting system. This is one of the safe and healthy neighborhoods coalition as a spectator and watch that entire process in 2013. I appreciated that process because the entire board was composed of interested parties from all areas in the town from municipalities to landlords as well as residents in the community. I just want to start by saying that I think that the rental permitting system did a terrific job in cleaning up some of the absentee landlords who thought that this was the Wild Wild West. I do agree that I think there's a lack of access to information today. And I think that having this meeting and and this committee is important to revitalizing the efforts that were put forth by Amherst in terms of putting the system in place for a safe and healthy neighborhood in the community of Amherst so I do think that maybe a quick button on the home site or or something that maybe a flyer that gets distributed with tax bills or something that can guide people to finding more information for what you guys have been trying to put together associated with permitting, as well as an example the town bylaws that's specific to Amherst that's not specific to surrounding towns that people may not be aware of so that would be something maybe maybe using that effort because every taxpayer in Amherst receives a tax bill one way or another. So that may be an outreach channel that you could explore getting new information on an annual basis to homeowners. Thank you for your comment. Seeing no other hands at this time on that question. We just got one more before we move on. Mark Murdy please unmute yourself state your name and where you live and then make your comment. Yeah, so my name is Mark Murdy I live in Amherst. I'm a student at UMass Amherst and I was wondering if there's any contingencies for how much transparency there can be between the landlords and the tenants. So, you know, obviously the thing that I think sets landlords aside from the renters is that they can make a down payment. And then renters and landlords seem to pick up that burden together in order to make sure that the landlords get their mortgages paid off, and it can be pretty difficult for us to see how much money goes into rising rent prices. And, you know, I've heard numbers as much as like rent being raised 50% this year. And I think it would be great I don't know. I think it would be great honestly if there was some sort of transparency between how much we were contributing to paying off the mortgage and how much we were contributing to paying off the taxes. There could be more transparency. I really like the previous citizens comment about getting rid of absentee landlords that are treating this place like a wild wild rest less as a person who is at UMass. Housing is scarce and the housing that's being built is wildly unaffordable. It's not as feasible that is, but I think in an ideal world that would be an amazing thing to have is that transparency between at least some of the finances of the landlords and the renters who subsidize them. Thank you for that comment. I just want to confirm before you your fully gone mark that or raise your hand again if if I'm not right that you're thinking some sort of ability to see as you said, what, what is going into that rent price. What portion of it is taxes what portion of it is mortgage what person portion of it is insurance or other mandatory fees and stuff like that is that correct did I interpret that right. Yes, I mean I know my landlords own multiple properties and they, they're raising rent and I would like to see as a person who subsidizes them and as a person who gives them the wealth. In exchange for a roof over my head to see where that's going. Thank you for making sure we understood that properly. My, Myra Ross, please unmute yourself, state your name where you live and make your comment. You are not unmuted yet Myra. Okay, hear me now we can hear you. Okay, sorry, slow reaction time. I live in district four and I got this announcement from Pam so I confess that I did not do any prior thinking about it but one of the, I am a former renter and Amherst and I am now and have been for a while a homeowner and Amherst. First of all, I don't know what the town can do to keep. Certainly landlords from gouging but I really want to echo the thoughts of the prior. The prior speaker who was much more judicious with his words. Then I am but I'm sure that there is some of that going on and I don't know how to do that but one of the things that I think is a real neighborhood issue is that there are some landlords who take extremely good care of their property. There are some landlords who don't take any care of their property. And I think that those, those things need to be taken into consideration if there are applications for subsequent properties for, you know, for sub for subsequent lease rental agreements I guess. I don't know what words to use, but I want to make sure that anyone who is not on the, you know, not taking care of their property. And I don't know how to establish that other than mandatory inspections at the time of a turnover of renters, but there are some people who are really taking advantage of renters. They are not providing well kept property they are spending much they are charging much too much money. And I think that they should not be allowed to do that, nor should they be allowed to get any subsequent property agreements for rentals. For a certain period of time, until they show that they can take care of their property and that they can treat the renters well. Thank you, Myra for your comment. And next up on this question of what should a property owner need to do in order to obtain a permit to rent property Dylan when please unmute yourself and state your name and where you live and then make your comment. Hi. We can now hear you yes Dylan. So I'm Dylan when I live in Amherst Center and I'm a student at the math Amherst. I think a really important aspect is that I think renters will not rent it. People who are applying for renters permit need to take some type of basic course of overviewing rights. There's so many complexities within current system that I think it's important that renters actually know what they're getting into especially since due to kind of the housing squeeze. A lot of families are now opening up bedrooms temporarily either it's for summer or it's for a year. And the question ability of Howard, where's the line of the legality and rights come into this becomes very murky and I think it's coming a lot of issues, especially when you add an element of that. Now people like me who are now staying in Amherst for a longer period of time. Or international students who may not know American laws as well or are not comfortable with speaking with English or communicating through English, being held a very vulnerable position where they can be taken advantage of which has been an issue and I think another aspect that is that besides just when people who are interested, landlords who are interested in renting out properties is also holding real estate companies responsible because as it currently is a majority of rental properties that especially students have access to are mainly controlled through rental pop real estate which is a fairly unusual arrangement and it's not. And not all students are exactly knowledgeable or all just regular people are knowledgeable about how the system works and USA companies can take advantage of that. Thank you for your comment Dylan. Next up is says, please unmute yourself state your name and where you live. Hi, my name is Susan Jehoda and I live at 786 North Pleasant Street in Amherst and I wanted to comment on the person that spoke not just prior to me but the one before that who was talking about rental permits and as someone who lives in a neighborhood where there are many student rentals. I wanted to address the impact of land absentee landlords who don't take care of the property, their properties and how that impacts people in the neighborhood. Regarding noise garbage. And a whole range of whole range of issues that don't we we've struggled with for years and years and we don't seem to be making any headway with because the bylaws don't seem to be functioning that well. I think those properties are not inspected there are many people living in those properties there are too many people living in the properties so if it's for rooms they're renting out, they're renting to 10 students. So the bylaws are not really very effective. Thank you for your comment Susan. Hi, my name is Pearl Ann and Nathan Marguely. Please unmute yourself, state your name and where you live and make a comment. Hi, so we live on Grandford Drive in Amherst, and basically conquer with an agree very strongly with all the opinions offered to date. My concern really is that, and just want to thank you, all of you sitting on this committee, and this immense portfolio that you've undertaken with great diligence. We're all concerned about having something that's going to be equitable and fair, and that's going to actually respect the, the bylaws that Amherst has on the books. But the, the challenge that I really see is enforcement is so much that needs to be done. And currently we have one person who oversees 1000 plus rentals and has a commitment to the health department as well. I understand that eventually the intention is to raise permitting fee, but even so, how are we possibly going to come up with, you know, something that can be enforced suitably enforced, because that's a behemoth task. You know, that's, that's certainly on my mind. Thank you, Perlan for your comment. And we're going to move on to our next question at this point. And that question is, what should inspections look for and how often should they happen or conditions for how often they should happen and things like that. So if you'd like to make a comment on that issue regarding inspections or on inspections in general, please raise your hand at this time and we will recognize you in turn. Please unmute yourself state your name and where you live and make your comment. Alex Kent at 83 North Prospect Street. I would like to see inspections triggered by nuisance house violations, so that if a rental property receives a nuisance house violation that automatically triggers an inspection. I think that would provide a greater incentive for landlords to not only maintain their properties but also to ensure that their renters respect the right of quiet enjoyment that their neighbors have. Thank you for the work you're doing on this committee. I greatly appreciate it. Thank you for your comment Alex. Renata shepherd, please unmute yourself state your name and make your comment, where you live and make your comment. Hi, my name is Renata shepherd I live on 81 justice drive, and I own a property in Amherst that I live in with my family, and I also have a condo that is rented in Amherst. And regarding what the inspection should look for would be what the state requires the state of Massachusetts has a long list of requirements for sanitary code. And if the inspector follows that list upon a complaint. That should be sufficient in terms of what is required for a rental property to have. Inspections could happen at the beginning of anybody applying for a permit. And after that probably complaint based because when a tenant has a problem they do complain. Thank you. Thank you, Renata for your comment. Next up is Anthony Anthony please unmute yourself and state your name where you live and make your comment on inspections. Hi, can you hear me. Yes. Okay. On the last comment. I don't know I've lived in Amherst for like five or six years now, and I'm pretty consistently I've had disgusting apartments that seem to be uninspected. And if that if that is what the state requirements are, then I mean it needs to be better than that. Those are some pretty low standards. I mean, just as much as as far as like moving in and seeing like mold growing in the shower and stuff. And if they're only triggered by complaints, then like, I don't know, whatever is happening right now, like isn't isn't enough. Yeah, that's all that's all I had. Thank you for those those comments Anthony. Next up. I rebrick, please state your name again and make your comment. I'm I rebrick I still live at 255 Strong Street. And one thing that I think would help is more data it's very confusing to people that are curious and good researchers. How many student rentals there are how many rental houses you mass says the town knows the town says you mass knows. So I think it would be even interesting to know what is the size of the population that we're trying to protect. I lived in, I had a store in a village that had 45,000 population, but the police said there were 90,000 people there because it took 90 policemen to control crime and takes one to control crime. And the fire department would go in and count extension cords and say, there's supposedly a family of four living here but there's, you know, 85 extension cords and it's a fire hazard or counting beds to just kind of notice what occupancy rooms there are I think that people need to. I don't know anything about how it's been to inspect houses here but people going to have to go in with curiosity and just say, you know I didn't get a complaint on the number of beds but this clearly 10 beds in this three bedroom apartment. Thank you so much. Thank you for those comments Ira. Next up Sophia marks, please unmute yourself state your name and where you live and make your comment. Can everyone hear me. Yes. Fantastic. All right, I'm Sophia marks and I live on jink street in Amherst. I'm currently a renter. And I just like to say that I think it's vital that inspections not only be complaint triggered on there are very few protections in place for tenants who make complaints and are then retaliated against by their landlords. It's a really important issue that we're not talking about enough but I've heard a lot anecdotally. I'm a graduate student at the college and I have many colleagues who have made complaints and then been either passive aggressively or downright aggressively retaliated against by their landlords, and just have no position of power to do anything about that basically except for move out of their home, and they don't have the financial recourse to do so. So I just like to say that I think having something that absolves the tenant from the responsibility of making sure their property is inspected is absolutely vital in this case. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for your comments Sophia on that, and the retaliation issues that you're seeing. We're not a shepherd. Please unmute yourself state your name, and we live and make your comment. Hi, we're not a shepherd again 81 justice drive. Regarding the living Amherst and have a rental unit. Regarding the state requirements. When a landlord takes a security deposit, they are required to follow an extensive list of demands from the state you have to have, you have to do an inspection with the tenant and have a statement of condition sheets that is specific, you know, it's specific to the size of the font on the paper that requires an inspection of every single portion of the house of the apartment or the kind of whatever it is. The tenant has 10 days or 15 days to reply back to the landlord, regarding the points that were made or checked or not checked. And there has to be some kind of agreement of what's going to be repaired what does it need to be repaired. The process is there. I understand a lot of landlords don't know this and a lot of tenants don't know this. So maybe that's what the problem lies in regarding you know like mold in the shower whatever when you first to rent a unit. You know we should be clean ready to be rented. And then if six months later, you have mold in the shower that is not related to cleaning then it needs to be repaired but you know there are a lot of people that don't clean. So. Thank you. I have a comment Renata and I want to recognize to the attendees that I had said I would not recognize people more than once and I lost count of who has been recognized for each question so if I will for this question because I have recognized Renata twice if you have spoken and want to add something I will add my own rule for this question because I've already waved it once in efforts to be fair. And before I go to Tom who is going to be next of the community members. Shalini did you have something from community click that you needed to say or is there some other issue. There was just a question in the comment box I can read it after Tom. It's okay. Why don't you read it now. Okay. I just wanted to go to get this question on record, which was in the comments. How do we balance the overcrowding issue we're seeing with absentee landlords with the homelessness issues we also have an Amherst. So thank you for that question. Thank you for for airing that one that came through on community click. That's, we can't answer that question now but as with all the other comments it's something we can take into consideration as we move forward. Tom Crossman please unmute yourself state your name where you live and make your comment. Yes, Tom Crossman. I am. I am a native of Amherst but I have since recently moved out of town I still conduct business in the property management industry. I do. So the discussion I wanted to contribute that there are, I believe, for building inspectors maybe four and a half they may have some support, and then a lead, Rob more would be the lead building inspector so there's about five if you include the part time the ones that's supporting. And then I years in 2013 I think the numbers were roughly 9800 housing units in the town of Amherst, of which about 4800 were renters so it's, it is, it is, as you can see with those numbers there may be the burden of managing the houses to inspect all of those properties and I know there has been development since then. So I think the housing stock has increased from 9800 to whatever it may be. In addition to that you know we have to manage our town's resources and make sure that they are diligent with the directions that they explore as a property manager I have had neighbors. I have had a nuisance or a noise complaint against the property that I manage because they heard noise in the street. So I'm just cautious about triggering an inspection every time that a nuisance call is made on a property so I would just, I would just be cautious with that I don't think that it's a terrible idea. I think it just needs to be revisited to make sure that it's kind of polished up I do think that there are some people that neglect the properties a little bit that ends up representing the majority of the landlords but I don't think the majority of the landlords neglect properties. And, and, and the representatives person from Justice Drive, you know, did iterate that the state of Massachusetts does have a long list of items already in their state sanitary code that I think that we could continue to buy by and I do feel sorry for some of those individuals that have been forced to live in substandard conditions. They do have the right to contact inspection services to get it inspected. So that you know there are rights and I would encourage people that if they feel they need to explore those rights, you have, you have the opportunity to do so, because I think that we have the benefit of some terrific building inspectors in our community. So, in terms of inspections and how frequent that's, it's tough, but I don't want it to be believed that our four and a half inspectors can inspect all 4800 units on an annual basis. Thank you Tom for your comment menu chopper, please unmute yourself state your name where you live and make your comment. My name is Manu. And I'm from Alexandria, Virginia. And my favorite ice cream is cookies and cream. And common as well. Manu, do you have a comment on Amherst Massachusetts rental properties. I, I, I, I do. How do things. When you're walking with with safety precautions. Manu, thank you for your comment regarding safety precautions. And you're concerned about how we would deal with that. We, we are taking comments right now on that. For work later. So, next up is Anthony, Anthony, please unmute yourself state your name and make a comment. Hi, I'm Anthony. I live in the boulders I talked earlier but so someone mentioned that it's not like the majority of landlords and Amherst that are neglecting their properties and I mean they're probably right but the majority of landlords don't own most of the property right like came in for example owns I mean a ridiculous amount I forget exactly how much but probably around half. And I mean, if you ask anybody in town they're pretty well known for neglecting their properties. And so it just, yeah, even if the majority of landlords don't neglect their properties. I feel like that. A lot of the actual units and end up being neglected just because people like came in for example just own most of the property that that's all. Thank you for your comment. And this time we're going to move on to see no other hands our next question which is about fees. So, as Jennifer stated any issues and everything we're attempting to address and I'll start that and then shall Shawnee will you had a question so Shawnee before I go on to the fee question. Yes, there are two questions. I'll just read those out quickly. One is how will Amherst fund the expansion of rental regulations while reducing the financial burden on already burdened tenants. And the second one was how do we make sure that tenants know their rights, especially tenants who don't speak English as the first language and students. Thank you. Thank you for that. So we're going to move on to fee structures. And the question on this one is what would an equitable fee structure look like to you. Whether you're a landlord or a tenant, or just a resident in Amherst, I know Jennifer in our introduction talked about that's an issue. We know people have had issues within the past on our current one and so we're trying to figure out how to address that issue and it's one of our goals. And so please raise your hand at this time regarding anything you'd like to say regarding fee structures. And we will recognize you in turn. We're going to start with we're not a shepherd. Please unmute yourself state your name and make your comment and I know we're not at your hand was up about the time I started this so I wasn't sure whether it was the prior question or this question feel free to speak on both. We're not a shepherd again, 81 justice tribe. Regarding the fees. I think one of the reasons that there's not enough money to either hire more people or run, you know, the rental system the rental bylaw is because a lot of units that are rented by large investors pay one fee. For 1020 30 units the same one that I pay for one unit. And if the fees were based on a percentage of the rents charged. It would be fair to those people that charge very little rent because it would be maybe a 5% of the one month's rent to a cheaper unit, and it would be a 5% of a very expensive unit. This way, people that are gouging would pay more and people that you know are more reasonable would pay less. And everybody would pay a fee. For example, you all know who the investors are in the city and who own several several properties. I would say names of I like those, you know, some of those people are friends and some of those people I know them. And some of those just pay very little for having 40 or 50 units. But each lease should be one fee, maybe 5%. If everybody pays 5%, it would be a ton of money for all the units that are rented in Amherst. And it would be a more fair for me to have one unit and possibly would be fair for an investor that charges, I don't know $2 or $3,000 for a one bedroom apartment. And I think that would be a little more fair. Thank you for your comments, Renata. Next, Hilda Greenbaum please unmute yourself, state your name where you live and make your comment regarding fees. Well, my, my, you are, I guess, Paul, Paul Baldwin was quoted in the newspaper saying he isn't going to be hiring anymore staff. And I know the budget is tight with the several new things that have been added to the budget beginning with, with the several new departments that were added and new employees that he doesn't intend to add any more inspectors. So my first question would be what are you going to do with all this money you're getting and the money, whether you want to charge landlords 5% of the rent or whatever it's still coming out of the tenants pocket, which many would find a reason to say, this could be a form of discrimination and you're going to end up with a law case that the town is going to have to defend. But I already understand and very, very well, the problems with the single family homes and landlords are not careful with your property. We don't all follow that there are very few of them. As a matter of fact, anything that has more than one unit in it is has more than one unit because it has a special permit already with a list of enforceable conditions. And the Chief Inspector has made sure that they are enforceable conditions. And when I was on zoning board I made sure that the maintenance of the building property itself had to be maintained in perpetuity as well as the landscaping had to be maintained and those in perpetuity and those were enforceable. At this point, I really don't want to pay any more taxes to this town if we're going to have to pay for four building projects to. So obviously this is a fee that's going to be passed on to the tenants. So the problem is the single family homes and the absentee landlords. We need to deal with that problem and leave all these people that have special permits and the larger partner complexes are all and anybody of us who have section eight tenants get inspected with multi page question is before, you know, every single tenant release can be renewed with a section eight tenant, if you're just adding bureaucracy on top of bureaucracy which isn't going to cost a landlord anything because the tenants going to have to pay. And the tenant is the ones that can least afford to pay. So I think you have to figure that went out. And, and as was said at the time of the passing of the rental bylaw. The inspections department the same thing to go and look at puffed in village to inspect puffed in villages that does to go look at some of these health holes you'll find the expression that might be on Grant would drive. So I would be very careful about the whole idea of an escalating scale, which punishes the landlords that are maintaining their property and letting the single family home, and I have to also say that I know plenty of single family homes that are on our occupied and renting out or not renting out that also could use maintenance on the on the house and the ground so it's not just the tenants it's the homeowners to this is a town problem. Everybody should pay for it if you're going to infest the piece, put it on everybody's tax bill. Don't tax the tenants, not the homeowners it's not fair, and it's probably not legal. And so the Shawnee do you have something else from community click. Yes, I do. So the three questions that came in. You did want me to read these questions right. Yeah, I think that's good for everyone to hear them. Yeah. Okay. So how do we make sure that inspection and fees don't inequitably impact landlords who rent out few properties versus landlord companies who rent out many. The second question that came was, how do we make sure that inspections don't target people of color landlords. What are we doing to promote diversity in Amazon's housing boards. And the third question was, is there a permit renewals process that we're abiding by. We are taking into account tenant feedback, specifically from tenants who are moving on to leases under different land landlords when issuing renewals. Thank you for that. Thank you. I rubric please unmute yourself state your name where you live, or you don't have to restate where you live. Hi. I just want to say, first of all that, of course there are landlords to be proud of and landlords that do create these conditions and I'm talking about the problem ones but unfortunately they they will fall under the category of student landlords and I would just say that one of the facts you're talking about obviously is a user fee and that's a cost of doing business a landlord of students and Amherst has to expect that the town needs to keep it safe. And from what I've heard from many people that a lot of these houses are getting $1400 a bed times six people in the three bedroom house I'm sure they can afford the user fee. All costs of doing business are passed on to all customers, but I think it's necessary to keep students safe and the town safe. Thank you. Thank you, I refer your comments. Dylan when please unmute yourself state your name and make a comment. I think a very important aspect when it comes to balancing fees is that I think as Hilda mentioned is that a lot of especially smaller landlords end up getting caught in the crossfire. Before I moved into Amherst, I lived in Worcester and and what still requires a boat load of fees and taxes against landlords to maintain inspections to ensure safety, and those are really important aspects they do help. So I think Worcester is actually a really good example and just the past two weeks. It's there was an incident where a entire roof collapse on a complex on a building that was already known that it needed to be fixed, and they were passing off the fees. There was a heavy steep cost against a already vulnerable population to people who couldn't move just because of the, and because of the livelihoods. And I think it's an important aspect that Amherst has kind of considered of that. In this past 10 years, as the population of people who are renting has exploded. I would say the least, and it will continue to grow as many of these colleges and as well as just the local area continues to grow and develop. And I think it is. I think there's requirements that they're likely needs to be maybe I know in Worcester there's inspections from three plus family units, typically are every three years. And I think kind of the question is, is the can Amherst even handle that and also, I think another aspect is that there's just such a lack of transparency right now in the town of Amherst about how does the renting process work. What rights do you have and what is considered violations or things to bring up and how does that work. And I think that makes a very big hurdle, especially for because a lot of students that are coming to Amherst all coming from eastern mass where a lot of places do then all the coming from Boston, which is a very heavy city. But it's, but I almost doesn't have the quite the infrastructure yet. And I think that is a serious question of how is Amherst going to build that infrastructure, along with these bylaws, because you can't have just one that the other. Or it all falls apart and it will lead to accidents that are going to be immensely tragic. Thank you for your comments Dylan. Before I recognize Mark Marty, I want to say if people have been watching my timing I am timing. Almost everyone has sat under two minutes. I am being a little lenient because people are generally not making it and so I haven't cut anyone off yet. Even if they've gone over the two minutes but I am aware and I'm not. I'm trying to be equitable. If it becomes more of a problem I will be a little more. I will become more timing specific, I would say, but right now it has not been a problem, but, but I am still running the clock. So I can keep track. And Mark Marty, please unmute yourself state your name where you live and make your comment regarding these. Hi, Mark Murray again I live on Palm Road in Amherst. I want to second what Dylan said before me I think that there needs to be transparency. And I think that also needs to go into the profit margins, especially with these corporate landlords, like Caymans. I have a hard time believing that rental agency like Caymans that owns most of the properties in Amherst and charges a one month equivalent of a finder street whenever you go through them. It's going to be hurt by having to pay taxes on all of their or sorry having to pay fees on all of their units. I do believe that they're going to try and put that on to renters, but there has to be a method for managing that for example, looking at their profit margins versus rent hikes. Because if it's clear that they're from their finances that they're extorting renters in order to maintain their profit margins, then we as renters deserve to know that. So I think this goes into what Dylan was saying about making sure that the inspections are that there's an infrastructure to carry out these inspections and that there is accountability for landlords who decide that they want to charge extra. Thank you for your comments Mark. And next up Tom Crossman please unmute yourself and make your comment. Hi, thank you and I'm sorry for a few things. Some of my efforts is to add context to part of the conversation that we had about this rental permitting system in the past. One of the things that was cautious about some of the larger pools of units that are in a in a cluster, so to speak, was that those pools tend to navigate more inspections than the single family homes already. So they pay additional fees throughout the year, and they have more inspections for fire suppression systems and stuff of that nature. In example, a vertical building that has an elevator will have an elevator inspection as well as a fire safety inspection, and then having the regular building inspections as well so that's, that's three different parties that are collecting three different systems within the building. So that was one of the reasons why the previous coalition the safe and healthy neighborhoods coalition was a little hesitant to charge a per unit across the board fee structure. Just because those larger clusters were paying more already on top of it. So they put that out there so the general public understands, you know, some of the thought process previously that went into the safe and healthy neighborhoods. And then, yeah, I mean, that that was one of the bits of context that I wanted to add to the dialogue at this meeting. Thank you for that Tom. Next up is Kent Higgins please unmute yourself state your name where you live and make your comment. Hi, Kent Higgins 30 Columbia Drive 11 district three I rent in district four right next to the university. In my experience the university does a pretty good job at educating student renters about what they need to ask for in rentals. And it's open to the public you don't have to be a university master's student to learn it there. That's all. Thank you Kent for your comments. Just unmute yourself and make your comment. Hi, Anthony again. So two comments, one at the previous speaker. Yes, the information might be public, but I mean, it should be easier to find if it's so public, like we should have no trouble putting, like for example renters rights and our leases right. If you if it's so easy to get anyway might as well have them there. Secondly, about like renters, not the renters that the fees impacting landlords that rent out like tons of properties. I don't know I've lived here a long time four or five years ago, I was able to find a two bedroom for I mean I mean my roommates at each pay like 750. I mean it's averaging about 3000 for for a two bedroom apartment, which is like double what it used to be. So in terms of fees impacting landlords. I mean they can cry me a river it's it's really a nonsense complaint. That's all. Thank you for your comments Anthony. We don't have any more hands for this question we are about halfway through our questions so I want to take this opportunity before we move on to the next questions, because we're in some sense switching topics to see if there are any committee members who want any clarification on any of the comments that have been made up until now. In case anyone who's made comments leaves earlier something is there anything people would like some clarification on before we move on to our next question. I'm not seeing in anyone raising hands so we will move on to our next question then the next two questions are sort of related. We talked about fee systems we are moving on to in some sense in incentive systems what an incentive system could look like and the question after that is regarding penalties for violating the bylaw. There could be incentives for not violating the bylaw but there could also be incentives for how often inspections happen or how often, or what fees you pay so examples for things about incentive systems potential are less frequent inspections for permit validity, lower permitting fees self inspection capability for meeting various goals and things like that for if you meet various goals such as energy efficiency requirements code compliance lack of town bylaw violations. What would, if there was an incentive system. What would be part of the incentive system and what would it be for and what would it look like we are exploring whether to have one or not, and we'd like to know what people think about the possibility and then what should be in it. So if you've got anything to say about an incentive system. If you like it whether you don't. What you would put in it what you would incentivize how you would incentivize it please raise your hand, and we'll recognize you so you can make your comments. JCA BR, please unmute yourself state your full name where you live and please make your comments. Hi, this is James Cabrera live on fear and street. And I'm a full time landlord, I rent to students and families in North Hampton, East Hampton and Amherst, and living the valley off non for 60 years so I kind of fit a lot of the slots of the discussion tonight. What I observe is a crushing demand for housing in Amherst for undergrad in particular, and all the problems that stem from that are what we're talking about tonight. It's not landlords that cause the problem. It's UMass, they're benefiting from the way they can have more and more students without actually building dorms for them. And so, yes landlords, some of them are gouging. I think that food clothing and shelter are the essential human needs and landlords provide one of them. Unfortunately, some some landlords take advantage of that need and I'm not proud of some of my colleagues that in some of the things that I see. But I do see that there's this spiral kind of a death spiral that Amherst has slipped into where landlords need to charge a pretty good rent, because there is a lot of damage there is a lot of problems with the undergrads. The undergrads know they're being overcharged. So they're kind of upset about that and they don't treat the properties well they misbehave, and it spirals up and landlords need to, you know, even do more things to maintain their properties so that students move out. So we're stuck with this system this this paradigm right now. And all we're talking about is a reaction to that. How can we, you know, put fees, fees in place how can we put more transparency. But I think that it would be your question about, you know, kind of a more proactive approach is right on. I think that, you know, some kind of a system where I'm thinking of rotten tomatoes or Yelp or something where the students or tenants can give a score this apartment was nice the landlord was cool or not. And the town and neighbors can have a different score that says this is a landlord who follows the rules this is a lender who takes good care of his places and treats the community with respect. And so there's two different numbers that can come into play. And then, you know, it's on an app it's something that's accessible. And I think that the bad landlords who overcharge will soon get weeded out because they're just going to have, you know, single digit review numbers and no one's going to rent from them. And finally, neighbors, those of us who live, you know, around these properties can weigh in and say this building gets a low score, because there's trash in the yard or people are, you know, having parties or the cops are called regularly. So some kind of accountability. Rather than just letting it become a problem. Yeah, yeah, and all these my wife's chip chirping in here. It could be done anonymously. So it could be very accurate in that way. So that's my comment. Thank you James for your comments. Anthony, please make your comment after you've unmuted. Hi, Anthony. I just wanted to make a couple comments about the last guy that spoke. So a few things. First of all, I agree that UMass is at as like largely at fault here. I mean, they drastically drastically over over accept students and you know now tons of undergraduates are competing with everybody else in the housing market. On the other hand, so okay about that Yelp system that the problem is, there just isn't enough space around for that to be effective if if a unit gets a one star review. It doesn't matter because there's no housing anyway so people are going to take it regardless. And that's, again, a problem of UMass just completely over accepting students on the front of, you know, rent has increased because unfortunately undergrads damaged properties. That's where I think that's just incorrect. I mean, rent has, like I said, doubled in the past four years. Did students just become more rowdy. I don't think so. There's no evidence for that. So like, and also we have security deposits for the damage if you like if you really are worried about damaging the apartment, increase the security deposit, right, but doubling the rent makes no absolutely no sense in that regard. I don't know, just dipping in for that. Thank you. Thank you, Anthony. Tom Crossman, please unmute yourself state your name and make your comment. Hi. Yes, speaking as a property manager. Again, just an effort to add context regarding the security deposit we're allowed to hold up to one month worth the rent so there are limitations to what we can hold for security deposit. I do think that UMass is a is a terrific opportunity and they do try to capture the demand of student interest, but I don't think that they're keeping up with the housing stock. I do think that we have housing stock in the pipeline if you look at Lincoln Avenue Apartments or North Village. I think those will be coming on within the next. Next three months it could be the next 12 months so I think that will be a little disruptive I think collectively as a community I think we need to figure out additional opportunities to add housing stock because of the nature of economics when you have more supply, or the supply outpaces the demand it tends to reduce the price and I do think that Amherst is is. If you look at the incomes in Amherst and the expense for housing, I think that housing is excessively high correlated to the incomes of the community. We do have wealthy people in the community, but we are not as wealthy of a community as we think we are there's a lot of support staff that you know make minimum wage or a little more than minimum wage and these these housing price points just don't line up to give them an opportunity for adequate housing so I think collectively. We have work to do as a community to try to add housing stock to create more opportunities, but this is a discussion about rental permitting system. And as I do own a few rentals myself and I have a dreadful challenge balancing rent levels, as well as keeping up with the costs of services that are rendered at the property which include heating electric plumbing and general maintenance including landscaping and other upkeep. It's getting harder and harder to find service trades people that are willing to do good quality work at a reasonable level. So one of the things about the, the, the rent levels it's a combination of taking into consideration people's income but also trying to keep up with the rising costs of labor supplies materials taxes insurance water sewer, and so on and so forth so just just adding context that I think that UMass may be a large culprit but I think collectively as a community we have work to do. Thank you Tom for your comments. Ed Van Bruggen please unmute yourself state your name where you live and make your comment. Hi, my name is Ed. Can everyone hear me right. Yes. Great yeah my name is Ed I live in East Amherst. I just wanted to comment on the last previous comment. So he, you know I'm all for increasing the supply of housing, but I'm not sure exactly how increasing the five housing is necessarily going to bring the cost of went down. Because housing is a very inelastic products because you're increasing the supply doesn't mean that they can't just increase it to the same price, you know they can't just increase the same price again. People have to choose housing, you can't just not choose housing, increasing the supply of an elastic product isn't going to necessarily lower this cost. And I'm very curious to see what the actual cost of those new buildings those new units being built is because if they're building more luxury apartments, like the university is so UMass is not replacing the graduate housing with affordable housing, the building luxury graduate housing which is not affordable to the majority of grad students. So I'm curious to see how those new properties are going to be priced if they're going to be priced at a reasonable cost, because if they're not increasing the supply isn't going to do anything to help those who are struggling with prices right now. Thank you. Thank you Ed for your comments. Pam, you had a comment or question potentially for someone sorry I didn't forgot to recognize you between commenters. I wanted to note that there was one of the one of the speakers talked about Cayman's management company. And I think I need to correct the understanding that Cayman's that probably doesn't own most of the properties that they manage. They are hired by typically out out of town property owners to manage for them. So they, they have a lot of responsibility and a lot of control that they probably aren't the actual land owners. Thank you. Thank you for that Pam. Are there any other comments that people would like to make regarding potential incentive systems for rental property permitting and Amherst. Dylan, when please unmute yourself and make your comment. I think in terms for creating incentives. I think an important aspect is that a lot, a lot larger landlords that aren't like individuals who are typically owning properties and managing themselves directly. I think is that a lot of the larger ones do focus also on besides typically undergrad taking advantage of undergraduate populations, but also section eight housing since section eight often creates a very stable income. And that also ends up leading to a lot of abuses with the section eight system. So I think incentivization is really important on, like, unpack is to make sure that those properties who are taking in significant portions of the section eight population who are also simply those areas that are going to be at risk of homelessness, which is obviously a concern that the time Amherst has is making sure that those areas are being inspected thoroughly because those those areas are the most likely to be vulnerable. There is some incentives. You place into how the second system can be done. Depending on either whether it's intervals, it's costs. But it has to be done. Or, again, I'm going to bring up my hometown was there where you've seen major spikes in issues with section eight housing just being straight up abused as a way of make income while basically being a lazy landlord. Thank you Dylan for your comments. Hilda Greenbaum, please unmute and make your comment. I would like to repeat again that the inspector for the section eight apartments that we have encountered from Amherst and from Greenfield are scrupulously careful in checking every look and corner be every single year before a section eight lease can be renewed. My second comment is in terms of incentives. I think you need to set up a system whereby you hit deal with the problems. And if there are places that are fine. Maybe look at them every three years but if they're fine. Don't go back for another five years and spend your time with annual inspections of the serious problems, because most of us are not the problem. But the single family homes that are not regulated with special permits are a problem. I just, I would like to see a budget before you start raising any fees where this money is going to go to and how you're going to manage if you got a department now of inspections that isn't able to keep up with the workload now what are they going to do with a new bylaw. They're going to be able to find time out of thin air I don't know but you've got a, I would like to see a budget before there's any more raises or fees that are obviously going to be passed on to tenants. And I don't see at this point how anything is going to change in town hall if they don't have an incentive now. So I think, manage the problem you have and and try to not waste their time going and inspecting non problems. And that would be an incentive for people to want to keep up if they don't want to the tenants are going to let you in while we're living there I'll tell you right now. The tenants want their privacy respected and if they want to live in a big band and not do the dishes. There's nothing anybody can do about that. That's the way they want to live. Thank you for comments Hilda. Ira, please unmute yourself and make your comment. I'm Ira Brick. This is a related point, several people have mentioned about UMass, not providing enough housing and then they always say the large percent that they do provide, not noting that most state universities are in large cities and can absorb the amount of campus people that they, that they have. And I don't know what happened to the town gown committee of a few years ago it kind of whimpered away. Before I even paid attention to it but I don't know if the town has serious discussions with UMass I don't know if, you know, Chancellor Subbaswamy actually knows how much pain. I would refer as a town in dealing with the kind of true cost of the large acceptance rate as somebody pointed out before and I would just encourage the town council to sit down and have a, you know, a summit with UMass and just say, here are our needs that you are kind of making worse. So thank you. Thank you for those comments, Ira. Anthony has already been recognized once on the system, but seeing that this is the last hand at this time we will recognize him again before we move on to the next comment, the next question so Anthony. Thank you. I just wanted to ask for a clarification earlier someone was talking about how single family houses are like the real problem when it comes to inspections and I just want to know, is this like a commonly known fact like is, I mean, yeah, is there anywhere that I can like read about that specifically. Obviously I'm not a landlord here so I don't I don't I don't know this kind of stuff. And secondly, I just want to know I wanted to know, since part of the reason that that housing has gotten so ridiculous is because UMass is over, over accepted students is, are there any mechanisms that allow the town to prevent UMass from taking any students? Like, if next year UMass is like I want to accept 30,000 students and just flood the town even more. Is there any way to prevent that from happening? That's all. Thank you. Thank you for those questions. I was looking to see who's in the attendees. The person who would be able to answer the question about whether which homes potentially fail inspections would be our building commissioner or building inspector Rob Mora or John Thompson. Neither of them are in attendance tonight so I can't recognize them to see if they have an answer for you. We can add that to questions that we ask at a later meeting of CRC. My understanding, and this is just my understanding is that there are no mechanisms that allow the town to control the number of students UMass accepts. And so, I have never heard of any mechanism that that would where that would be the case. Pam. So there is an example in Berkeley where the state actually weighed in and directed Berkeley to not accept students because it was overwhelming the community. And so the state legislature in fact forced the university to reduce itself. So I don't know that we're ready for that kind of a drastic move but that has happened. I believe through a state law or state constitution. And, okay. Stephen Korn's please unmute yourself state your name and where you live and make your comment. Hello, thank you. It's been a very stimulating meeting. And I think, you know, I would come down on the issue of UMass as being critical. To both the support and the demise of Amherst, particularly around housing, nevertheless, housing I think is going to go up and has been going up because of scarcity of housing. Even students aside. One thing I wanted to add by the way was was that there is in terms of town and gown and the function of the university I know that in our neighborhood north of campus. We live on North Pleasant Street, but we've we've managed to organize a meeting with some of the university. We have around. You know, conversion of single homes to to single residences to student housing in our neighborhood. It is fairly on conclusive on on productive and, and I want to mention the university meets as a team with the town weekly. We address issues. Housing is, you know, and who was it is it Tom that is, well, there are their liaisons that we all that are publicly known. I would just add that it's regrettable that it's a very unaffected, ineffective way to organize and I think organizing as communities and as neighborhoods, as they did in Berkeley, probably is, and then to have, you know, various communities, homeowners, or even, you know, to the degree they want to or are able to to organize like landlords in a kind of community based with a community based focus to to address. Well, community problems at large the environmental impact of more conversions the issues of how much how many on the street. This is I assume these are zoning issues, fundamentally but you know that the notion of environmental impact is so powerful in any kind of new development any kind of corporate or industrial location schools etc. I guess it occurred to me in this meeting tonight and and I'll wrap up with this is that, you know the environmental impact to a community to its identity. By extension of the entire town is is, you know, there's a lot of precedent, certainly about water and sewer and all the other air pollution all things that are measured in terms of the environment but how do we get you mass involved in this. I think with lawsuits, as they did in Berkeley is probably the only answer I can think of. Thank you very much. Thank you for your comments Stevens, Steven, Emily please unmute yourself state your full name, where you live and make your comment. Hello, my name is Emily and I live in colonial village. I just wanted to add to some of the questions that Anthony posed. Any past examples of incentives like have been proposed working in other towns, because I'm a little skeptical of if they would actually work. That's all thank you. Thank you for that question. I will leave it to Pam or Jennifer, Michelle I know we've all read about some I think Pam and Jennifer have read more than I have about some do you have any comments you'd like to make or statements regarding other towns that may have successful incentive systems or appear successful on from the outside. Pam. I don't, I don't have enough details on my fingertips to be able to answer that appropriately. I know there are some towns is really good. I don't want to interrupt our permit processes and and opportunities, but I, but I can't out the facts right now but we could certainly include that conversation in one of the work sessions, and then we could come prepared for that question. Thank you. Mark, Marty, please unmute yourself and make your comment. Yeah, so my comment was from the person spoke. Sorry, two terms ago. I was wondering if you would achieve a meeting with some of the administration at UMass and I was wondering if you needed any more support from the community, whether that's through in person attendance or whatever means you need necessary. Grad students are currently in the contract negotiations with the university and it's like pulling teeth so numbers definitely matter and if we could support you in that way we'd really like to. Thank you for that comment. We will keep that in mind Jennifer. Now, as opposed to the question about incentives, I mean there are certainly towns that if a property has not had a violation or complaint for a certain number of years, they will have inspect less frequently now whether that provides the incentive for the property to be that we don't know that it may just, you know, be those are property owners that maintain their property and therefore they're relieved from annual inspections. So we have examples of that, you know, again whether that provides the incentive or it's just a kind of reward for, you know, the response the many, you know, responsible landlords so that's hard to distinguish. Thank you. Thank you for that comment Jennifer. We're going to move on to our next question which is the penalty side the opposite of incentives in some sense, which is what kind of penalties should we consider for violations of the permitting bylaw. So those violations can include things like not even applying for a permit or receiving that permit or not complying with other potential provisions those potential provisions could be things like prohibiting retaliation, not passing inspections, excessive bylaw violations by owners or tenants, things like that. And so right now we're going to open up the floor to thoughts on penalties for bylaw violations including what should be violations and what the penalties should be if there are violations. At this time, Mark Murdy, please unmute yourself and make your comment. I think that if landlords are price gouging their renters and there are a lot of landlords that seem like genuinely good and caring people here but I think that there's evidence to suggest that not everybody meets the standards that are met by the people in this conversation right now. I think that there should be some penalty system in which they don't pay a fee to the town, they pay back money to the renters. If they charge an absorbent rate increase and there is no improvement of the property and there is no basically if they're price gouging then the people who are the victims of that price gouging should be able to see their money return. Thank you for that comment, Mark. Does anyone else have any thoughts on penalty penalties? Tom Crossman. Hi, thank you. I think that this is, it's tricky. I think this goes back to our landlord from Justice Drive iterating that the state of Massachusetts does already have a lot of metrics in place for essentially for penalizing. So for example, mishandling of security deposit would potentially be trouble damages for the resident, which means they get three, if the security deposit is not handled in accordance with Massachusetts general law then the tenant would be allowed triple what the security deposit was. That's just an example. Again, the state of Massachusetts and our inspection services do have tools at their reach that they can currently strip the rental permit if it's egregious behavior. There's also fees and penalties already in place. So I'm curious if what your efforts are is to increase the existing penalties or if maybe there's not enough information to iterate that there is a lot of responsibility held by the landlords already. So I guess I'm curious for the board the question would be are you looking to try to increase existing fees and penalties? Is that part of the forums efforts? So I will attempt to answer that question. As we stated earlier in our meeting, one of our goals is to create a clear licensing program. But also one of the issues we've heard from constituents is that there is no clear enforcement mechanism or penalty existing even in the current bylaw for things like failure to obtain a permit. It is my understanding from our building commissioner that a rental permit has never been revoked in the 10 years we've had this program. And the reason is not, I believe what our building commissioner has stated is that that's because the bylaw itself is not clear on what a reason could be for revoking a permit or the bylaw is not clear enough for the steps to go through in revoking it. And so one of our goals is to clear up the bylaw and all of that. At this time, the committee itself has not discussed at all penalties. So I can't say where our discussions are even going or what they might end up with because that has not, we have not reached that point of our discussion. So, so that's as far as I can say, does that answer your question for now Tom. Oh, yeah, yeah, no, that's fair. And I think part of this is to have a discussion that puts all information on the table so that we can all make informed decisions and, you know, I value all of the input that is coming from current renters current landlords. And I think it all should carry the same weight when discussions take place in terms of what's going to happen in the next chapter. Thank you. And Shawnee, I believe you've got something from the community click submissions. Yes, there's a question and asking, can you legally prevent someone from renting their property. And yeah, yeah. And at this point, the answer is we don't know. At least that's how I would say it before if that is something we write into a bylaw in terms of revoking or not issuing a permit. We would certainly have our legal counsel the town attorney review that bylaw the town attorney will review be reviewing our bylaw in its form, no matter what's included in that but those issues would be reviewed before the bylaw goes into effect to ensure that whatever we write is legally allowable in Massachusetts. And was that it Shawnee. Yeah, I had a clarifying question for one of the residents who spoke that they would be willing to support in community engagement or. I wanted to understand who is the we and how do we reach them if we wanted to reach out to people who said so I will ask whoever that person is to raise their hand if their hand is not already raised so that we can recognize that person as we get through the list it could be a while, but I'm going to work my way through the hands but okay so Anthony is up. And, and then I will go to Pam, after Anthony, no Pam on raise your hand so Anthony please unmute yourself and make your comment. Anthony again. I just, okay so about the people sorry people were commenting about how the mistake of Massachusetts already has a lot of penalties for landlords that do stuff like cheap people on their security deposits etc etc. I know a lot of people who have been screwed, but like from their security deposits, and they didn't seem to think they had any recourse. So, if it's if this is all public information, is there anything wrong with requiring all of this to be put in the lease for everybody to be able to read. I mean, people should know if they can, for example, sue their landlord for not giving them their security deposit back for no reason, or, I don't know, like, either this needs to be better communicated or better enforced I guess I don't know which one this is at the moment. Thank you for that. Sophia marks, please unmute yourself and stick and make your comment. Can you hear me. Yes, fantastic alright so I'd like to second Anthony's comment. It's exactly what I was going to say I think that in terms of what constitutes a violation I think that clearly defining that a failure to list in sort of clear and comprehensible language the full sort of bill of rights of the tenant should absolutely constitute a violation and that should be just handed over in document form at the time of the lease with whatever sorts of accessibility needs meeting is important in such a document, following the same guidelines as Elise would follow with any questions if maybe English is not the primary language of the tenant. I would also like to say that in terms of sort of crowdsourcing a list of what might constitute a violation I think that being able to reach out to renters in the community in general is a really great idea I think that people are clearly facing a diverse array of issues and having a survey that circulated on when compiling a list of these things and sort of ranking the severity of violations is pretty vital. And then in terms of creating a clear system in terms of maybe taking away a landlord's right to rent. I think that there are many point systems in place I think that having a list of sort of violations, maybe with sort of cute ranking of severity, and then having just simply some kind of point system or strike system, where if you have a certain number like just an easily quantifiable thing, or you can say this is not personal but you have accrued this many violations of this severity that adds up to this number. And there you have it. And then the last thing is that in terms of Mark's comment and then Shawnee's request to understand who to reach out to we are geo the graduate student organization the Student Union at UMass Amherst. You can reach out to us either through the geo leadership there's a website or I'm happy to stay late with my colleagues to share contact information. Thank you. Thank you Sophia. Next up, Ira brick. Please unmute yourself and make your comment. Thank you. I didn't see unmute for oil. Okay. And while we're on the topic of punishment I just want to say, I would love it for it to be rehabilitative like good prisons are supposed to be and make it educational instead of punitive and just look around and see how people are educated and other realms of life of going back to driving school which everybody finds torturous but I'm sure you learn a few things. Or when you get a speeding ticket in Massachusetts you have to make a large donation to the head injury fund that could fund the reparations program or other programs that wouldn't get us national press for being Amherst. And I also support the idea of the booklet for tenants that I think the landlord should also have to read that Anthony and others pointed out of just telling them what their rights are and I just remember going to sessions on bullying, where the educator was saying if this is happening to you you're being bullied, and it was an eye opener for a lot of people that just thought this is how life is working for an organization and you know you may take a lot of mistreatment in certain situations and again I'm, I do believe there are many good landlords in town but I do think that educating in the land in the town where we say that transparency to the max. And that students are our big customer, we should be making them more educated. Thank you. Thank you, I refer your comments. We're not a shepherd. Please unmute yourself, state your name, and make your comment. Hi run out of shepherd again. Regarding the punishments. Hearing the previous comments like Tom and some other people. There are punishments for landlords for mishandling security deposit. It's all searchable, and it's easy to find the law is complicated, and you can't expect a landlord to put in layman's terms something that's very, very legally binding. You have to present to the full language unless the town provides a document that he needs to be handled. That's great. You master does that for off campus housing. And if you, you will know what you want to know. If you wanted that information, it is easy to find. I think the town also provides a list of information regarding tenant and under the current permit. And I give it to my tenants and I make them sign off that they have read understood and received it because the town asked them to say here it is I handed it to them. And I tended to if I can translate it I translated but if the town can have that system already set would be great. So that's a lot of punishment for not having a permit. It is my understanding that if there is a certificate of occupancy or a permit that is required by the town, and the landlord doesn't have it and the tenant goes to court. They end up not having to pay back rent for that unit that's not allowed to be rented so that's a lot of punishment. They're not renting a place for three months they don't pay rent and the landlord suits them they go to court and they will not be paid back because there is no permit in place the places and illegal rental. So, you know, there are a lot of punishments in place. As I said the law is there. They are not being searched and understood there are a lot of explanations online also from no low from from, you know, landlord tenants experts that explain in more layman's terms, without the landlord having to get in trouble for trying to explain something that they're not equipped to because they're not lawyers. And I guess, that's all for punishment. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. We're not a Dylan when please unmute yourself and make your comment. So, I agree with the price begin to the extent that the information is available and for, I won't give the example for you mass, we do have a student legal office that does offer pretty extensive amount of advice for students who are trying to deal with legal issues but I still think it. We can't rely on people fully on this research abilities we've already known for years across us that people's research abilities aren't the most fantastic and especially for a legal rights it's because it's a fairly hard thing I think a lot of people to understand So you said we do have to have a final way to help at least put building blocks or stepping stones to get people to that point where they can understand what Israel. What are the rights how, what are the recourses at least and local recourses like legal advice in the area or legal resources that are reliable and trustworthy for the specific topic. I think for penalties like not having a certificate, I think, or not having a permit. I think it is becoming an issue where it's questionable if the town of Amherst has the funding or the resources to be able to enforce those laws because no matter what the wall constructed bylaws are, if we can't really enforce it becomes an issue and I mean that's, I think that's kind of an obvious that it has become an issue that the current permitting system can't be really enforced. Looking through violation, fire violations, when I was in my apartment search I remember 10 years ago, there was one from 10 years ago where there was an overpacking of apartment building and it seemed like there was nothing really done as a recourse to help correct that issue. And it seems like there wasn't really anything much that was corrected or punished in that sense. So it's, it's very frustrating to see if we're trying to create a system of accountability without creating a necessary idea of how we're going to budget. How. And again, also I guess, a bigger stand. Can the state help us in funding this can the county or whatever entity, it can help us fund the proper needs to make sure that this expanding town can actually do it. Thank you Dylan for your comments. Emily, please unmute yourself and make your comment. Hi. So I would just like to speak to previous comment that was made about. I guess I guess bullying landlords. I'm a little bit more concerned about whether or not tenants are being bullied by their landlords. That's a much larger concern. And just in general, I'm very for penalties towards, especially like these large companies that own all these different buildings and yeah, if you're accruing multiple violations I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be penalized for that. Because at the end of the day you're making life harder for low income people. So that's just my opinion. Thank you. Thank you for that Emily. Hilda Greenbaum, please unmute yourself and make your comment. I just wanted to say the worst punishment in the olden days was getting a multi page letter single space from UMass legal services filled with everything that you've done wrong for the last 10 years to this one poor person. And it ended up being so onerous to respond to all this stuff and end up in court anyway, with UMass legal services which was a free service to the students but we of course had to pay the hourly rate to all it. I don't know what happened to them, but, but that seemed to be a good service that was provided through off campus housing for many, many years and there are probably 304 or more lawyers associated with UMass legal services that dealt with tenant landlord issues. And my next thing I want to say is getting back to incentives. If you don't want to have problems with your tenants, you treat them right and give them a nice clean well maintained place to live and then you don't run into these kinds of problems and took me and we wanted to let us from UMass legal services to start screening tenants very, very carefully. And they get a, they know what the rules are when they move into my place and if they don't like it they go live in a slum house somewhere else where they can get away with doing what they want to do. Maybe we need to reinstate the UMass legal services that look out for the students rights because I don't know what I don't even know how many years ago it disappeared. Except that many of the local lawyers started out there UMass legal services to get their feet in the door, get some clients to start their own practices. Thank you. Thank you Hilda for your comments. Next up is Stephen Korn's please unmute yourself and make your comment. It may be in reference to our communities. Invitation to UMass and the town, the town supervisor and staff. And police representatives came to our house for a community meeting. We're just a small neighborhood north of UMass. Others have asked how can, you know, this movement be supported. I think we're at the point, our initial and our major reason for coming together were noise complaints. We have a fraternity. It happens to be next door to our house, but next door to many of the houses here that participate in this community meeting, our series of meetings and now a kind of, you know, phone tree and email list. It did then spread to other issues of difficult houses, students not caring for the property trash outside parking violations, all the list of things that primarily we as residents and families saw as a threat to the family quality of the neighborhood. And, you know, I'm not singling out undergrads but six people, six undergrads in a house tended to be less manageable than two or three grad students, etc. You know, so it's a matter of parsing the population seeing what you know enforcement is out there. This town proved to be, you know, overworked, welcoming any kind of complaints we saw any kind of violations, and so forth. I wanted to just make one comment here about penalties and I'll sign off again. That is that complaints seem to be an effective way to quiet down houses to a degree. And, you know, this was a matter of the Amherst police department being called. They would respond. Usually they visit. They wouldn't always in this past year I should say post COVID or whatever we've been. They wouldn't always issue a violation that $300 a ticket. And here's that, you know, there isn't it's not really clear what the protocol is about when a violation is served or not. Maybe on the third call or the number of neighbors that are calling to complain and so forth. I just wanted to make this suggestion that if landlords were involved in that issuance of a ticket if they were the target or the recipient. And I'm not sure they are or not. But if it wasn't something that only the tenants had to deal with. If in fact three violations or 10 violations or 30 of these, these calls on a particular house led to some review of the permit. Now maybe that's the kind of punishment that has that is functional. I don't know if, if any other way to enforce the landlord screening of tenants. It has been true in our neighborhood that more than four or five, or perhaps, at least six unrelated people lived, you know, students lived in one dwelling which is a violation of the code. I'm just thinking if, if there are complaints and they are somehow, maybe they are already served to the landlord, I don't know, but if there was a threat of further penalties based on their track record that might help. Thank you. Thank you, Stephen for your comment. Ben whites. Please unmute yourself and make your comment. Hello. Can you hear me. Yes. Great. Thank you. So I've just been having some audio issues with my laptop. So I'm a student at UMass I live off campus and I just want to address some of the points that were brought up recently maybe I can provide some clarification. So first with student legal services. I actually are a very helpful resource and I know a lot of students rely on them, except for in the past year or so. They've been severely understaffed and students getting bookings with anyone over at the legal services office that has been nearly impossible so I do agree that's a great resource that students once had access to and it would be nice to see students have access to that again but I'm just not sure how soon that's going to be maybe this next year. Maybe we can be hopeful about that. Also, just some points about landlords being more selective about the students who they provide housing to I understand that. That's a super important concern but I also feel like at a certain point you know students got to live somewhere and by allowing students to opt for maybe less, less strict landlords or less strict properties you're creating, you know, densities of maybe like louder noises or more like not following trash laws and I think that there would be a lot of benefit to exploring you know a stronger partnership between landlords and students where landlords do provide students with all of the information they need to know in a less expectations more teaching way and then also just I mean I know this is kind of off topic but while noise complaints were brought up I just wanted to express the concern that you know I've seen this idea that noise complaints you know the police showing up is a great way to keep students and check but something I've noticed is that especially in recent years where we've seen that police presence has put undue stress on people of color I'm always afraid that relying on noise and relying on a police presence to keep properties you know within noise restrictions does put certain demographics of students put certain demographics of renters and more unsafe positions than others so I think generally it would be nice to explore more options where you know landlords can describe to students they're right so describe to students the partnership that they're going to have because this reliance on selectivity or this reliance on services that you mass may or may not provide and this reliance on you know policing doesn't always feel the most appropriate. Thank you so much for holding this though means a lot. Thank you Ben for your comments. Right now, the only three hands we have left up are three people who have spoken before I'm going to recognize those three and then after those three are recognized we're going to take a break before we move to our last two questions. So, Mark Marty, please unmute yourself and make your additional comment. Yeah I just wanted to say I was one of the people who initially reached out to ask about supporting. I was one of the people who are struggling with the US Amherst, but I think Sophia spoke up for us in the graduate employee organization at UMass. I really appreciate Ira and Renata and all of the other landlords who have come on here and helped give renters their perspectives. And I'm happy to know that landlords do face consequences when they don't do their jobs. You choose to be a landlord. You don't choose housing, because the only other option is being homeless. I chose to be a graduate student that was how I chose to pursue it and I know that there are certain standards I need to do to do my job, and that if I don't meet it with those standards. I could see that go away. And I recognize that the power dynamic between tenants and landlords is one that benefits landlords tremendously because no one has a say in housing. But you do have a say in landlording. And if that means that people who choose to be landlords need a certain amount of legalistic expertise. And an ability to explain in layman's terms. Whether their protections are to the tenants. That's fine. If the town can support the landlords in that way I think that's fine but we also need to recognize that the vulnerable people here are the tenants. And regardless of whether their rights are explained to them or not regardless of what they whether or not they know to pursue the UMass legal services office or if they know that there are information online about their rights. Those tenants are protected because no one has a say in the house. Thank you mark for your comments. Anthony, please unmute yourself and make your comment. Hi, this Anthony again. I'm really just going to bring up. We're not as earlier. Comment about how, you know, landlords are not lawyers and so it'd be hard for them to draft up a. What's it called some kind of document for. Like, you know, people that lease leases rights and stuff. I just wanted to say that, like, first of all landlords use lawyers to draw up the actual lease. So that's just nonsense. And second of all, the town of Amherst can draft up a standard document, just to give everybody that's leasing and in Amherst an idea of what their rights are. Realistically, I think the only reason you'd be against that is if you would directly benefit from people not knowing what their rights are. I just I think that this needs to happen for just clarity and for people to know what they can do about. I mean, getting taken advantage of by their landlords. That's all to say thank you. Thank you for that Anthony, we're not a shepherd please unmute yourself and make your comment. Hi. Hi again. Yes, in terms of the punishment and in terms of calling the police or noise or anything like that. There's a lot of things that landlords don't have a lot of power to enforce themselves. My lease is like 12 pages long was drafted by a lawyer. Still, there are certain things that we cannot say or we have to be careful how to say it. Yes, everybody should know their rights. And we can provide links to where the information is but we can't just, you know, try to explain layman's terms. This bylaw has to be careful in terms of what is the responsibility of the tenant and what is the responsibility of the landlord if they're having a huge party. Yes, the landlord can call them and say hey stop it. But if they don't, the alternative is to evict, which can take six months and they they can be partying all the time who knows. Yeah, just just to be very careful of how the complaint happens and how the violation happens and who's responsible. So it's a it's a, you know, kind of a fine line to tread. Just need to make sure that the right people get the right punishment or the right people get the right incentive. Thank you. Thank you for that, Renata. At this time, there are two questions left one specific question and then an open ended. Anything else people want to say basically, but it is 916 we've been here for two hours we're going to take a five minute break we'll come back around 921 to finish up the hearing hopefully everyone will stay around we are down to about 23 attendees our max was somewhere in the 40s. So we'll be back at 922 panelists can stop their videos and mute themselves until we're back. As my committee members come back, please turn your video on so that we can see that you're ready to join us again and we can then get started. So online we were just taking a break, we are through five of the six planned questions and then after the next question is done for guided questions and comments we will move to an open ended. Anything else people would like to add after that. So, we are to almost two and a half hours into this community forum here. So, I'm going to turn my video off again on Shalini, and then I just want to confirm that Athena is is back to because I wouldn't want to start without her being ready. I'm here thank you. Thank you for confirming Athena. There's Shalini and Pat was back and then she turned her video off again. So I believe she is back. Yes. That's what I thought she's back and snacking and doesn't want to have everyone watch her snack. So with that, we're going to move on to our next question. This next question is, what are any ideas for permitting requirement. This is Stephen corn. Can you hear me all right. I think it was this, this concept of environmental impact that's kind of got me excited because that is this question, you know, what is, what is the environment of a neighborhood. And are there qualities of neighborhood or, or, you know, neighborhood identity that we would want to first identify, or even label or, or, or designate, you know, name, name a neighborhood, let it become a neighborhood, there's no one another. Well, that's, that's not a town issue. That's a neighborhoods issue, maybe, but what I can see is that as again, probably aspects of zoning come into play here and I know there was been discussion about how certain streets and Amherst have had one conversion of a single family house to a student house, then another, then three houses down and then at a certain tipping point, there might be in a given block. Just one, maybe two out of 10 homes are still family homes, but it's essentially a student street. Now, that's a lot of income for the owners, the, whether they be present town owners or absentee, you know, distant owners, corporate, whatever, but the point I'm just want to mention again is that even with well-behaved students, it just has a different identity and so are there issues about zoning that if you want to have quiet enjoyment of your home, if you have children, it's not just finances, it's that as older people age out in our neighborhood, it's true that a lot of these properties that'll come on the market will be, we've received notices in the mail, would you like to sell your property? We can make you an offer based on what we can rent as students. So the point is, you know, how do we, as it makes sense, are you all interested in this notion of environmental impact which has a lot of impact in this country? And in particular, with zoning or restriction of density of student housing, together with pushing that you master say the town can't be what it is if you, if you're, if you're on an agenda means that more and more and more houses are converted to student houses, you know, what's the town going to become and how much of this is your responsibility, as well as that of individual homeowners who may be selling. Thank you. That might help safeguard quiet enjoyment of homes. Pam Rene. Could, Manny Jo, could you check your mic? It's a little odd, maybe you need to get out or do something different because a couple people have texted me saying they can't hear you. Weird. You sound louder now than you did a moment ago. Yeah, I think when you just spoke, it sounded fine. Can you just say something, Manny Jo? Can you hear it better? Yes. Okay, I think it switched mics on me, maybe. Yes. Thank you for that. Are there anyone else that would like to make a comment regarding ideas for permitting requirements that might help safeguard the quiet enjoyment of your home, whether you renter on. I think we're going to now open up the floor to any other comments anyone would like to make or any concerns, questions, ideas, anything you would like the committee members of the community resources committees who are working on revising the rental permitting bylaw to hear they can be questions, comments, thoughts, ideas, concerns, issues you think we have that we haven't raised or might not know about anything like that. So I'm going to because this could be encompassing a lot more up the speaking limit to three minutes the time where I'm going to reset to three minutes instead of two, so that people have more time to make their comments if they would like to add comments. So if you would like to please raise your hands at this time and I will recognize you. In turn, Mark Murdy, please unmute yourself and make your comment. Again, I want to say thank you for hosting this and it was really lucidating to hear from all of the landlords and all the tenants. It really helped shape my own perspective on housing and hammers, and I would just like to reiterate that whatever policies we do pursue in the realm of rental permits. I think it's important to keep in mind and really stress the power dynamics and the relationship between landlords and tenants. Because I think, I think I may have misspoken earlier. It's not really a job, it's work, but it's not a job is a form of home ownership. And it's a particular form of homeownership in which you pass the financial burdens of paying off your mortgage and paying your taxes onto low income people who don't have that luxury of investing in a home that can give them generational wealth and appreciating wealth. And as homeowners enjoy that wealth that tenants give them through their rents and tenants don't see that they just have to deal with the fact that they need housing and that they're going to take it and whatever forms they can get it. I need to undermine any of the landlords here. I'm just saying that some of the comments that were made at this meeting are a little disheartening because it seems to reflect the anti tenant ideas that have been so alive in this country for so long. In 2008 there was no sympathy for all the homeowners who took on the financial burdens of paying off their own homes. We did that on subprime mortgage loans, but during the pandemic when there were moratorium, when there are eviction moratoriums. The homeowners that passed the financial burden of paying off their mortgages on to low income people had a huge platform in voicing their concerns. And I really do believe that Amherst is a very great place. You know, we're a very beautiful city. We have residents who care. And we have what I really see as a potential for a very idyllic town with our worker cooperatives with our businesses with potentially the universities if we get them to be a little more reasonable and how they handle housing and handle their students. I just want to prioritize and leave in everybody's minds that again tenants don't have a say here but homeowners who passed the financial burdens of homeownership on to tenants to this isn't something you get boxed to. This is only something you choose. Thank you for your comments Mark. Carol Lewis please unmute yourself state your name where you live and make a comment. Can you hear me. Yes we can. Carol Lewis I live on Ward Street in Amherst, and it's maybe asking this entirely in the wrong place, but I've, I've looked over the draft, a couple of times. And I understand a lot of people have talked about it tonight the problems there are with things that could be homes for families being turned over to become student rentals. Not that students don't have lots of problem problems finding where to rent also, but what I still don't understand is how the distinction that you've made up this called student housing. I have no idea how that addresses any of this. I don't get it. Any of the things that need to happen, like quiet enjoyment and cleaning up messes that stuff should happen no matter who the heck the landlord doesn't no matter who the tenant is. I don't know how does this thing that you've put into this the, how does this distinction address the problem that I believe is what you're trying to solve. I just don't get it. I've looked at it a bunch of times and I don't get it. Thank you very much for listening and thank you for doing all this. Thank you Carol for your comments. And we will take that into consideration as we review the draft. Anthony, please unmute yourself and make your comment. Hi. So I just wanted to ask, is there any precedent or any way that there could be a cap on how quickly rental prices can grow. I mean, because I'm just speaking out of experience. I've mentioned this a couple times now, but in the past four or so years rent has doubled. And it's become pretty unaffordable to. I mean, a lot of people that aren't students who have loans to specifically student loans to kind of, you know, keep them afloat. Yeah, it's become unsustainable and I don't I don't see how this stops because places can keep increasing rent with, and people will keep renting because student loans will cover pretty much anything. Yeah. So that's that thank you. Thank you for that. My understanding is Massachusetts has outlawed rent regulation bylaws. Similar, you know, I know New York City and I'll have some sort of rent regulation and rental increase regulation and all. I believe Massachusetts has outlawed that Matt Amherst had something a couple of decades ago I believe it was that was through a special act of the state legislature I don't know the history around how that happened or why it's no longer in effect or what happened there. But that's my understanding that if anything could be done about that it would have to be done through the state legislature through a special law that applies only to Amherst because the general law in Massachusetts prohibits regulating rental increases. But that's my understanding it's certainly something that has been mentioned by more than just you. But I thought I'd provide a small answer to, to that, that question. So, please unmute yourself and make your comment. I don't see that. Oh, he did. Tom did unrace his hands Tom. Now your hands raised again. Yeah, I, I, you know, I, I wear a lot of hats and I, and in my life I've worn, you know, a lot of different lenses that I looked through. I started off in a single family home I navigated the foster care system I lived in village park apartments I, I scrapped together enough to make it to a community college to pursue a degree in business management and I started a property management community in this community, because those were the skill sets that that worked best for me I was a math and science guy and I you know I also tried to take into consideration the community that I that I was born and bred in. You know, I, I will not speak for every landlord but from my perspective as a property manager in a landlord is, I would like to provide adequate housing adequate shelter for the renters that rent the units that I own. And also like, you know, one of the businesses that I support would be Habitat for Humanity and part of their objective is to provide shelter at an affordable price point. You know, I think that there's there's, you know, I hear the renters and you know I wish I could wave a magic wand and help all of them find you know the housing that they would like to achieve. I think that we have a lot of good things in place with the previous rental permitting system so I'm nervous about shaking that up and making it more burdensome for the mom and pop. You know, homeowners the the small, I just don't want it to be too expensive for the, for the small landlords that have one or two properties whether they inherit it from a passing family member or, or they stayed saved up, you know just enough to purchase the property so that they could offer more housing. I would not like to see this owned and operated by large companies in this community either so you know I just one of the things that echoed time and time again in the previous neighborhoods coalition meetings was the small landlords that felt a significant burden from the rental permitting system going into place. In this past year I have seen some, a lot of our, our outlying single family homes go through disposition they went on to the market to be sold, because there was such a demand for housing. So there's actually, you know some of those single family homes have actually gone to families to live in. And are the particular company I work for has not added single family housing stock to their rental portfolio so we've navigated some disposition so some families are coming back into the community. So again, you know, part of my efforts this evening has been to add context from both the safe and healthy neighborhoods experience that I was part of, and then to add the perspective of the landlord, and, and, and to the renters that, you know, are expressing concern, I hear your concern and I, you know I wish I had the silver bullet to, to create affordable housing stock but I think that it takes further discussion and the rental permitting situation I do appreciate the efforts that the permitting system initially and I just don't think that it necessarily should be blown up to the extent that, that the small homeowners are essentially ruled out because they can't afford to manage an additional unit or two in our community. Thank you Tom for your comments Dylan win, please unmute yourself and make your comments. It's a fairly important aspect where we're across so it's those after two years of pandemic where we have a housing, a massive housing need and as only our town but as a nation as a whole, the housing crisis places a lot of complex elements into on into things like permitting and regulation for rental properties. I think it's a fairly important aspect, I think, and the formation of by law of these bylaws and the reconstruction is not only include landlords tenants of both those who maybe are not specifically just students, as well as students in the local area. As well as the UMass, as administration at whole who play a massive role into how these laws will be, these, how these laws will work, especially as UMass Amherst changes leadership from 10 year. 10 year sub as army. I think this is the time where we could see a major change of not only rental but also community relations with the university, its students and, and as well as with landlords and tenants within the town as we will see a continued growth, both overall. Any other comments Dylan. Is there anyone else who would like to make some final comments, questions, concerns, anything else they would like to say to the community resources committee members before we summarize the meeting. Renata, please unmute yourself and make your comment. Hi, just one last thing. I saw in the paper, the bulletin to story apartment building approved for main street complex. And one thing that caught my eye was a paragraph that starts with though parking will be somewhat limited on site planners determine that what is available to be sufficient to meet the needs of tenants based on the landlord's track record. The town is approving places that seem to have appropriate parking, but maybe that will spill into a taxpayers will have to pay for people to park that belong to that new to story apartment building. favoring, you know, LLCs and large companies. They all should be and they are probably going to charge a very high rent, even though they may have a couple of low income units, which is great. I still feel that a percentage of the rent charge would be fair in terms of what we would have to pay. And thank you very much for all your work, and thank you for all the comments and the possibility to let us speak. Thank you, Renata for your comments tonight. Anthony, please unmute yourself and make your final comments. I just had a quick question. So this meeting is for like updating town bylaws right. So, so what has happened is there have been four counselors myself Michelle Miller Pameroni and Jennifer Todd that began working on an update to the current rental residential rental property bylaw which is our rental permitting bylaw in town. So we brought that to the council and the council referred that work, as well as the actual drafting of a new bylaw, and making a recommendation to the town council to the community resources committee of three of us are actually on the community committee and then we've invited Michelle the other sponsor that is not to the meetings to do that and so the council has asked the community resources committee to look at the bylaw the work that that those council sponsors have done and draft a recommendation to bring back to the council by the end of December. This referral to CRC happened in March and so we're three or so months a little over three months into that referral. We've done a little bit of work and this is one of our first community forums to really hear from the residents as to what issues there may be what ideas they have on how to fix and create more safe and healthy housing. So that create rental housing and ensure that rental housing is safe and healthy and then address some of the issues that the current rental permitting bylaw that is now 10 years old has shown over those last 10 years. I see. Thank you. My only question was, is there any way that we can see a draft of the recommendations. The draft bylaw is a working but working draft bylaw in each packet there is always a draft the committee has started and in tonight's community resources committee council packet, and that packet is linked from the website, the bulletin of this that showed that each meeting. Some meetings don't have a draft the tonight's meeting had the current draft Thursday's meeting the July 28 meeting also has the draft in it of the latest draft that is up for discussion. It is not a complete draft because the working the work plan has us dealing with individual sections at a time. And so the sections we haven't talked about like penalties aren't even in the draft. So it's not that there won't be penalties or there won't be a violation section we just haven't gotten there yet. Other sections have been talked about other sections are are going to be interrelated and maybe we talked about some but not others and so they might undergo a lot of change over the next course of months including in response to tonight's meeting but there will be drafts. They are in those packets it is also the goal of myself as chair but the whole committee to keep those updated drafts instead of having to know what meeting we talked about them at. We need to easily update the latest draft on the engage Amherst website for this work, which is engage amherst.org slash rentals. And so, one, we've just started that website the most, the thing that's on there right now the most prominent is the survey. There's more information including updated drafts so that will be a place that anyone can go to see the latest draft that has been published in any packet so that you don't have to know what meeting we discussed it in that draft is not on that web page yet I do not believe, because our community participation officer is, is quite busy and have the last couple days off and so we're working on adding more to that website as it comes but there is a goal to try and centralize all of the information CRC is looking at on that web page at some point including getting the drafts keeping the most updated draft on that website so so mark the engage amherst.org slash rentals website for that information but until it's up there and the individual packets for these meetings is where you can find them. Okay, thank you very much. You're welcome. Any other comments questions from the members of the public that are here. Please unmute yourself and make your comment. Hi, yeah. I think one of the things that stood out most to me from this entire meeting is the possibility of landlords providing sort of an itemized bill. You know, rent increases. Do you know something like that would be possible in the future. No, I do not know and I'm not sure any committee member would know we would have to talk to our town attorney about whether that's something we could put in a bylaw. But we've certainly made note of it and it is probably something that will be discussed as part of requirements for inclusion in this bylaw. Okay, thank you very much. Shawnee. Yes, I just wanted to make sure that everyone attending today knows about the survey. There was a mention about that we can put out a survey and for those of you who don't know there's already a survey, which is hosted under the engage amherst website. I encourage you to answer that and share. And that's the survey we've already received more than 200 responses, but we need to hear from as many people as we can so please do share that. And the other comment that I also wanted to make was there was a concern about police, the impact of police being called especially on certain communities and people of color. And so I just wanted people to know those who don't know that we have the town of Emma says a new department called the community responders for equity, safety and service the crest department. So in the future, right now the the department is getting up to speed but in the future that department will be the one handling, hopefully the noise calls and complaints. So I just wanted everyone to know about that new department as well. Thank you shall any before I move to concluding and a summary and remarks are there any other committee members that have any comments or have any questions for clarification of anyone that might still be in the audience. Seeing none first I want to thank everyone that is still with us we have 17 members of the audience still with us after nearly three hours. Thank you all for coming out and helping us and giving us your thoughts and your comments and your perspectives on rental and formatting rentals in Amherst being a renter being a tenant being a landlord owning properties or just living in a neighborhood. In general and trying to make our town better and we really appreciate it we know it's a long time to sit through a meeting and we appreciate you taking your time. What's next is that we're going to continue working on drafting a new bylaw. On that we'll incorporate these comments into those drafts and into those discussions as we move forward. Our next big discussion is on inspections and other requirements to obtain a permit. We'll be discussing that this coming Thursday. We have other mechanisms for you to give your feedback, including if you read those drafts. You're welcome to email. Any of us at any time. The easiest way to get to all five of us is to get to the whole council with an email is to email the email address town council at Amherst m a dot go and that is emailed to all 13 counselors along with I believe our town clerk Athena and I believe our town manager is on that email too. And so that reaches a lot of people and it would reach all five committee members here along with Michelle and the rest of the counselors so that they can read your comments. We do have that engage Amherst webpage it does have a survey on it right now that survey does not have an end date right now. It is still getting about 20 responses a day if not more it has received about 200 responses in the last two weeks. I will do my best to regularly update being regularly have published a, a summary, well the full set of responses to that survey on a regular basis, depending on how frequently comments come in depends on how frequently that will be updated on the site so that the community can read those responses. And you're welcome to come to all of our meetings we tend to meet on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month at 430pm. They are on zoom until at least September, and then the council will decide how else we're doing the meetings. So we hope to in September have another community forum that will have different questions probably and different time options and opportunities to respond and talk to us about the work we've been doing since now until then that may be September that maybe October we don't have a date yet. We'll be figuring that out later. And so we thank you I see Michelle's got her hand up so before I finish off this agenda, I will recognize Michelle. I have a quick question and wondering I know this is something you might not have an answer for now but do we have a paper survey available and being distributed anywhere either at town hall or in the library or somewhere else. And do we have a way to translate the survey. I know for some other surveys that are out there right now there are numbers that you can call if you need translation and so maybe that's something that we can discuss on Thursday at our meeting. Yeah, let's discuss that on Thursday I do not believe we've created a paper version of it. So I think the answer to that one right now is there is not. But we can discuss how we might be able to create a paper version. And I do not know about the translation because I do not know whether engage Amherst has sort of an, because we've created the survey through the engage Amherst bang the table platform, and I don't know what capabilities that platform has for the translation so I can't actually answer that question right now but it's certainly something to bring up at Wednesday's meeting we do have an agenda item about outreach and so it would fully fall into that agenda item for discussion. Pat. Yes, the website, the town website can has a language click area at the bottom of the calendar, and that you can and it has a list of languages. There is some trouble some people are able to access the survey in Spanish and some people are not. So it has something to do with the server and I'm trying to get that information from Brianna. Thank you for that clarification Pat. Anything else. Seeing none while we've got people here, the only announcement on our agenda is on September 8 we actually have a continued public hearing but it's not related to residential rental bylaw it is on flood maps so if you're really interested in our flood maps and where are various streams what the floodplains are for them, come to the hearing on September 8. We don't have any anticipated items and so Pat you've still got your hand up before I formally adjourn. I want to make sure that that was that was residual with that thank you all for attending thank you to Athena for being here tonight and taking the minutes for the meeting and making sure it's recorded and has closed caption. With that we are adjourned at 955pm. Thank you everyone. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Good night.