 Got it. All right, now there are five of us. So two attendees and Tim's here and Sam is here. And Allegra's here, I'll let her in. Just allow her to talk, promote to panelist. Okay, Allegra should be on. Eliza Campbell, Ashley's here, okay. Put her in, promote to panelist. All of you put promote to pan Rob is here, promote to panelist. Well, this is happening pretty slow because it's not happening. Okay, we made it promote to panelist. All right, something's happening with Rob and Paul that it's not, they're not moving. Okay, well, there's, I think Rob just got in. Okay, yeah. And Paul just got in. Paul's coming in. Yep, Sid is here. All right, Sid's here. Hello. Oops. It is here, yeah. It is here. He's, yeah, Brisha's here. Okay, do we have everyone? Looks like we have everyone. Did we miss anybody? I think we're all here. Yeah, I don't see anyone missing or. We are, are new Grover's here, Grover's not here. Yeah, Grover's not here yet. I think that, did Grover say there was some reason where they couldn't be at this? I don't remember that really. Grover's here, Grover's here. I'm gonna let Grover in. Okay, super. Grover, yep, here's Grover. I think we're all here. All right, fantastic. Welcome everyone to the June 8th meeting of Housing Trust coming to order at 701. That's really good to see everybody. We are grateful to Rob, who said he would take notes again since Jordan available this time. And I think that our first order of business is we have two sets of minutes to hopefully accept. One of them is the minutes from our May meeting, the meeting of May 8th, the minute should have gone out a while ago with things that Nate sent. Are there any comments or questions or anything about the May minutes? My hearing none. I am going to accept them. Assume, I do, I don't have to vote on this to do it. We will accept the minutes since there are no questions or comments about the minutes from our meeting of May 8th. So the minutes have been accepted. The other set of minutes we have are the minutes from the joint meeting with CRC that was May, I believe it was the 18th, but I might be getting the date wrong, but the minutes have gone out. And Erica is telling me I got the date right. So are there any questions or concerns or anything about the minutes from this joint CRC meeting of May 18th? I am getting nobody saying anything. So I am going to assume that the meetings are acceptable as presented. And therefore, unless I hear something in the next couple of moments, the meeting minutes for May 18th have been accepted. So with all of that little bunch of stuff done, I'm gonna turn the meeting over to Erica to introduce him who either is in the room or will be momentarily. Erica. He is, thank you very much. He is in attendance and we'll move him over to panelists in a few minutes. I have the great pleasure to have Tim back. Tim had come once before to talk about Craig's Doors and also talk about the new model and the new approach. We actually were together and Carol will talk a little about that meeting. Mindy Dom had facilitated a meeting with many different advocates and to those of us who work on affordable housing and Tim was there as well. And we started talking a little bit about what may be the vision for the old VFW site that the town has taken over and is planning on creating lots of different services, both for permanent sheltering and also moving towards some transitional housing. So we thought it'd be really a good idea to start thinking about how can we support some visioning. I know that Dave has talked about creating a group eventually, but we thought it'd be really important for someone who spends so much time with individuals who are unhoused and really has a lot of connections with regards to advocating for those who are unhoused that we start just listening to Tim and seeing what might be some of his vision that we could also think about. So Tim, you've got the floor. All right, thank you Erika and thank you guys so much for the invitation. It was great seeing you at the conference with Mindy Dom and the round table. And I think it was an opportunity for a lot of the folks who operate in the housing space. It's an unfortunately a lot, typically silos. And so we don't always have the opportunity to come together and share in conversation and vision. And it was a good opportunity to sort of see where folks are at. I do know that being in regular conversation with Dave that it's a very prescriptive approach that they're taking that the town has to take in order to sort of move the project along. My understanding is that there's hope that there would be demolition done by the summer and then they have to go through the process of finding an architect. And so I just wanna avoid suggesting in any way that I'm speaking on behalf of the town or that I'm in any way privy to that process. I know that Paul and Dave are working really hard and have a huge number of projects on their plate. But I know that they're super committed to the project and it's incredibly exciting to think that there'll be a space like this in Amherst. So in terms of modeling for the sort of project that I think Craig's doors would love to see. I can point to what's called the Yaqui Housing Resource Center. It exists in Quincy Mance. It was recently opened. They had a ribbon cutting ceremony and it really illustrates I think what all of the academic and as far as sort of data aggregation and research and empirically supported programming along with the historical housing first model, I think it really does do a terrific job of blending sort of the things that we know work from the past with the things that we know don't work. And so that program in particular is a multi-use building. It has emergency shelter capacity. It has mental health resources on site. It has medical resources on site. It has transitional housing and I believe it has a PSH component as well. So not to suggest that in our vision, there would be a medical office or like a specific clinician, although we would love to, depending on how far down the line this is, Craig's doors would love to have a clinical component and we'll be having some exciting partnerships that we'll be announcing later this summer, but we're gonna be bringing on some folks in the area who have some really amazing expertise from the more mental health perspective. But I think the best that I can do is to sort of speak in generalities and to emphasize the overwhelming need to acknowledge that the population that's entering entering into permanent supportive housing spaces, these PSH programs are almost never receiving the services that they require to be successful. So I guess what I'm suggesting is even when we are exercising the housing first model, or getting someone into shelter, the services that are supposed to follow rarely ever actually come through. And so it's imperative that the services be brought to the population rather than trying to get the population to the services. And so I think this idea of a hub is really a priority model. And so again, without getting into any level of detail, the idea rather than having a medical office that's specific to one practitioner would be having space where practitioners can come and meet with their guest or their patient or their clients, whatever that terminology is. I think that there is a small need for administrative space, but above all, I think is creating safe spaces where people can meet individually with their privacy respected that is in immediate proximity to their home, to where they're gaining shelter. The more that we look at these sort of wraparound opportunities, I think what fails most often is a lack of authentic collaboration. And so part of our mission right now is working as hard as we can to get together with all of the other community organizations in the Valley that offer the critical services that our guests rely on and the population that we serve rely on. And so I think moving into the future and imagining what this space could be, I think it's not exclusive to one entity, by any measure, it's a space where, again, these siloed components of self-efficacy and independence and safety are able to share in a physical space and collaborate at a deeper level to the support of the tenants. And the more that we can help build that self-efficacy for the tenants, that offers, that of course, affords higher success rates and the ability to exit homelessness. But I really wanna emphasize this to truly exit homelessness, because what we're finding too frequently are that we're able to get people housed. We go through this process, it can be a five-year process. It can be a 10-year process. We have people who have stayed with us, who haven't had a lease in 20 years and get keys in their hands, and then they don't know what to do from there. How could they? What experience would have prepared them for that over the last 20 years? And the expectation is that they're going to be followed with services, but it just doesn't happen. And then a year later, we find them returning to homelessness. So these cycles of homelessness don't just end with getting someone inside. It requires community buy-in, and it requires everyone that is performing services that support this population to be able to come into a space to collaborate and for that space to be a cultural hub for change in terms of, I think, overall care and well-being for each other's neighbors on a community level, as well as a clinical space and a therapeutic space and a place that we've tried to do emulates the benefits of home. So Craig's Doors was honored, and I'm sorry, I can go on for hours. I'll try and be quicker, but Craig's Doors was honored with being named one of the only pilot programs on the East Coast for the Federal Reimagining Homelessness Initiative. It is being led by a coalition of experts, primarily those with lived experience. One of our newer board members, Chandel Diaz, who is an administrator for the Three Counties CoC, served as a consultant and helped us to, again, be honored with the opportunity, and a lot of it has to do with language, right? So instead of talking about having a congregate shelter, we might call it interim housing. And I know that we go through these periods where we sort of change language, and that can be for a myriad of reasons, but I think in this space in particular, it's really important because it's baffling how frequently resources and opportunities are unavailable to our guests because they are homeless, because they're identified as homeless, so when they have to write down a shelter on a job application or on a housing application, you can tell me statistics and you can show me reports all day about anti-discrimination policies among landlords and housing communities, but it's just that it's a very real thing. And so again, looking towards using terms like interim housing to describe what could be a congregate shelter, having a non-congregate shelter option, having transitional housing, maybe having some permanent supportive housing and maybe having some affordable housing units. I think it's about getting really creative with the space and above all, the most important component is again, that multi-purpose element and ensuring that there are the required services and supports so that everybody at every level of their journey utilizing this community resources is able to be seen, to be able to be met where they're at and to be able to have success in leveraging what is really like a, not only an incredibly needed but an incredibly progressive and innovative community resources. This is, we have an opportunity as a town to really form the model that can be replicated and have legitimate systemic impact on ending what results in very real individual trauma. Paul? I just wanna like recognize Tim and his team what they've been doing. I mean, to speak with such specificity and nuance to the needs of the community is just really fortunate for us to have. When we first looked at this, the council said finding a permanent shelter as a goal a couple of years ago. We knew, we looked at Father Bill's place as being like, wow, that's a really interesting thing. They got a bunch of money, they got four million bucks from the state or something like that. And to be honest, I was thinking we need a place, right? And I was focused on bricks and mortar and it's gonna be a lot of money, it's ambitious. Tim is really framing it as sort of a continuum of care model that we all, that without that, it's not gonna be successful. And so I think that that's been, that's a really valuable perspective. And Craig Stortz has been just really remarkable in their efforts this year. In terms of the space, I see Dave Z and Dave Zomek in the audience, if we could bring him in, I'd appreciate that. We have the first order of business and our biggest challenge was finding a location that met the zoning and location needs and all that. We were really fortunate to jump on the VFW site. It's gonna take a long time to develop this. It's a big number in terms of millions of dollars that we have to secure. But we're gonna be working on this but as a team, as a partnership with a lot of our agencies. So, but again, first, just who does Tim, the sort of acuity of identifying what specifically works and being on the forefront, like Craig Stortz is, is just we should be really proud of our community and the leadership there. And in terms of the space, I'm really proud that we had the opportunity to use ARPA funds to secure the space, to secure the site. And now the big task comes in, you know, it's, I don't know, Dave can comment. We're sort of putting the number out there of eight to $10 million to really bring this to light because it is, we have big ambitious goals for this and whether we can achieve that is gonna be a question. Dave's in the room. Dave, do you wanna respond? Sure, I'm just joining, I just heard the last of Tim's comments, so I may have missed some things here. Apologies for being a few minutes late, but just to build on what Paul said, yeah, I think everyone on the trust and in the audience knows that we did purchase the VFW site, my staff and I are now working on kind of next steps. One of the first steps is just really kind of assessing the building. You may have noticed that there's now a dumpster outside the building, so we will be getting the building ready for demolition. That means basically stripping down the building of anything that isn't attached. And then we have basically put out a call for estimates for demolition of the building. The goal there is to kind of clean up the site, get everything ready. Eventually the town would do something similar to what we did down at East Street School and Belchertown Road. Again, work with the trust, work with the community, work in collaboration with Craig's Doors and others to put out an RFP for the site. We're also hoping it would likely be this fall. Right now we are going on all cylinders and down a few staff, but it would likely be in the fall that we would bring on an architect to at least do some preliminary renderings of what a building could look like there. Again, with the broad vision of having a shelter and other supportive space on the first floor and then supportive housing of some type on the second and third floor. So very early, but we're getting the site ready. Doing some cleanup, it'll take us some months to remove the building and do some other work. But as Paul said, probably in the seven to $10 million range is a rough number for what this building may cost. And those numbers will fluctuate based on the market out there, the building market. So yeah, that's happy to take questions. So Ashley had her hand up up before Ashley. I recognize Ashley. I just wanna say what is gonna be really, really important is all of us taking what Tim just talked about and thinking about how to design the RFR. The RFR is gonna be so important for us to then have that end goal of this continuum of care, this hub, this really opportunity for what I hear Tim talking about, which is an opportunity to really transform how we work with individuals who know their experience, who know what they need. And we're just here to provide the support to make it successful for them. So that RFR is gonna be really, really important for all of us to come together and vision and make sure that that space reflects that vision. So let me recognize Ashley first and then I think Carol was next. So let's go Ashley first. Okay, well I really like this model and I think it is likely to be very cost effective compared to any other thing we're calling affordable housing in Amherst. And I'm wondering, this will be I guess the test case, but I wonder if it could be scaled up so that this one was with people transitioning out of homelessness, but there could be these kinds of buildings with on the first floor different kinds of nonprofits, different kinds of resources and maybe commercial space and then floors of very low cost dorm-like buildings and those people that live in those dorms could have mental health issues or not. They could be workers. They could be people just coming out of college and they just need a dorm room that's very low cost and they could be working on the first floor. I wonder if this is a good model for very low cost, very efficient affordable housing compared to the $500,000 a unit affordable housing we're doing now and serve a lot more people who don't need a house or a duplex. They need an apartment that's like a dorm room. Thank you, Ashley. Carol? I don't know. Okay, well I had two thoughts or one thought and question and the thought is given the combination of what Paul, Dave and Tim just said I wonder if it wouldn't be useful for the town to have some kind of steering committee for this project that includes people like Tim unless he's too busy to do it. But anyway, why not at the beginning right now when you're getting started, develop a team that includes the other kinds of expertise that we need from other people other than the town staff and the trust. We would be happy to participate but I even think it's more important actually in this case for people like Tim who've been doing this work on the ground for a while. So I'm asking why not and also suggesting that that happens. And I guess my other question is much simpler if Tim or somebody could just give us a link to the place in Quincy that Yaqui or whatever it was I'd like to be able to look that up. Thank you. No sweat. I think I'll agree you next and then go over. Thank you Tim for bringing forward the idea of having the services on site. I think that's so important. And actually I just watched a webinar this week about youth homelessness and although it was a pilot for trying to prevent the initiation of opioid use with youth and exiting homelessness, it was supportive housing and the retention rates in housing after like nine months were in the 80% at least if not higher. So I think there's real promise to a model like that. So I'm glad that that's something that we're looking into. My question is would there and this might be like too early to know but would there be any funding through like DHCD for either building or would that just be for once it's up and running operational costs? I know CDAC put a put a foot form they helped the state will put money into these programs. I think it's a high priority for the state. So we'd look at any avenue and work with DHCD to get funding for it. So CDAC is a community development assistance something they would help. And then this is kind of off topic but also related is university motor lodges that are that is that still running as a shelter site? Yeah, thank you so much. I wasn't, I thought I typically anticipate the roundhouse update and didn't anticipate to jump so much into the project but we are actually the UML site. We are moving that program to the bottom floor of the Econolodge in Hadley for a variety of reasons above all at the center. The fact that it's just a, the building is going to afford such a dramatic increase in the quality of life of the guests. Ultimately, that's what all of our decisions boil down to and this one is no difference in. Yeah, it makes sense in terms of again, accessibility and being able to get to downtown Northampton to get to these appointments. Luckily, we have our free transit program thanks to partnership with Town Hall and Cress so that our guests are able to access but even still there are disability limitations there are circumstantial limitations that even provided all the resources in the world if it's not down the hall you're not going to make your appointment. Thank you, Grofer. Mine is very technical question, which is Erica, you used an acronym I'm not familiar with and I'm wondering if you could define it because you said it was so important and it was RFR. Request for response. Okay, thank you. Sure. And Dave and Paul, you can correct me I think it's RFR Request for Response that's what we use for the state so I'm not sure if the municipalities use the same thing but it's generally Request for Response. So the process is that we put out an RFR and then yeah, lots of response and we actually, Carol and I and the whole trust spent a lot of time putting the RFR out for East Street and Belcher Town Road that was the first one I was involved in and we spent a lot of time really thinking about the vision we had and so it's a real great opportunity to just not look at the site in terms of buildings but in terms of a hub and how people are interact and how you wanna create community and really take what Tim said and really create a vision out of that and that I think it's so important in terms of design because that's what we want people to respond to. All right, any other questions or comments? I would just love to emphasize I am not a developer of any kind I have absolutely no knowledge in how those projects work but Craig's Doors is such a, we're just such a proud member of the Amherst community in any way that we can help Paul and Dave and the folks at Town Hall and over the trust we're here to help in any way that we can and we're grateful to be a part of any conversation. Thank you. Rob? Could you clarify what the RFR would be for? Is it for a builder? Is it for service providers? Who is it being, who are we asking for responses from? That's a really good question. Dave, do you wanna respond to that? So yeah, I'll take a stab. I think, in the discussions we've had Paul, Nate, myself, Rob, Mora I think the goal here not to get ahead of ourselves is really to think about the site. I think Erica said it best and following Tim's comments about, really what infrastructure improvements? What kind of building do we want? What are our goals for serving the community and serving those folks in our community who need the kind of services that Craig's Doors provide and need the housing that we hope to create here. So it's kind of in my mind like almost creating a program when the school's Fort River School great example, you bring experts together, you create a program. In other words, how do we meet the needs of those people in our community? So that function is carried out by a building. So I think we start with the building but serving those needs of the people in the community. The town of Amherst to be clear, I think Paul, I think I'm clear on this which is we would not be in the sheltering business. That's not the goal of the town of Amherst. So somewhere along the line, we would work on the physical infrastructure, the building, the site, parking access, all of that with the developers. So we would put out an RFP or an RFR like we did with the trust for Belchartown Road and East Street School. It would likely then be the successful bidder, if you will, who might then put out some sort of a or create some sort of a process to select a provider, a service provider. They would bring the services to the site. I don't think it would be the town of Amherst because we are not in the business. We have no business. That's not what we do best. So we would let the experts create that and we've got great potential partners in Valley CDC and home city and wayfinders and CSO and many others in Craig's Doors. So I think we're gonna work on the building and what the building might be like and with a developer. And then we would hand that off to the experts to bring in the services to support those people. Grover, do you still have your hand up? So RFP, RFR, same thing, request for responses or request for proposals. And so I think, you know, what Carol mentioned before, having a steering committee way before I think is really important because, again, what you just mentioned, Dave, in terms of all the different players, we wanna make sure that whatever's being designed from the developer will really meet the needs of that vision that Tim talked about. So having all those different players who would understand, you know, confidential space or a space that creates community, you know, a space that gives, you know, a trajectory of slow independence, that's really important right from the beginning. So Tim, I think you had your hand up and then Ashley. I was just gonna, I'm looking for, I actually had some good content about the Father Bill site, the Yockey Resource Center. I'm looking for it. If I can't find it, Erika, I'll get it over to you. I just wanted to give that heads up. Yep, thank you. And then I'll respond to everybody. I also feel obligated to emphasize, obviously the scale of Father Bill's versus, you know, Quincy and Amherst are not the same space. And while we do carry a regional need for sure in terms of preg store sites, you know, the emphasis on Father Bill's more than anything is that it has conduits to allow the services that are required by the tenants to be local onsite available and accessible. But I just wanted to emphasize, when you do look at it, the scale is not anything that I am alluding to. Thank you, Tim. Ashley? Yeah, I was gonna ask Tim, like if you had all the money that you need, how many people would you serve? And, you know, don't limit it to people that already live in Amherst. Like, if you were going to serve anybody that needs it, how many people are you thinking? I think, you know, it's a tough question. It's a really important question. And it's one that we ask ourselves regularly from an organizational perspective. You know, I think what we found to be the most important thing, and this isn't really difficult and complicated response I'm gonna do, but I'm gonna do my best to be sincere and authentic and transparent. So I think what we found at Craig's Doors since our administration took over was that the heads-on beds model, which is let's get as many people in as we possibly can, was a radical failure for the people that we were able to bring in. What it did was it alleviated the pressure from other communities to participate while limiting our ability to provide the necessary services that I've been talking about, right? And so, you know, when we got to the level of about 63 in aggregate as an organization, that felt like it was shouldering quite a bit of the regional burden, but it also was clearly providing an incredibly necessary service and the access to a community that does draw a lot of folks towards it because it is a progressive and welcoming and engaging and inclusive community. And I would never wanna speak to limiting the potential scale and impact of that community and what it can do, but at the same time, I think we have to be conscious of ensuring that we're not tipping the scale so far that we have so many people that we can't take care of and that we can't ensure the success of. And so, you know, I couldn't give you a number right now. I can tell you that 63 where we're operating now feels like if anything, tipping further away from what I would consider to be a more balanced point, which would probably be in the 50 to 60 range. With that said, if I had all the money in the world, I'd take everyone in the region. I can't tell you how transformed I've been through this work and seeing what suffering really is for an individual who is in a state of survival, who doesn't want to be in a state of survival. So, we'd house everyone that we possibly could, but in order for the entire region to start waking up and taking accountability for this problem and ensuring that we can provide successful supports and services, it really is more of a, it's a finer balance than you might anticipate. That's not to say that I don't appreciate how welcoming Amherst is, only that we need other municipalities, particularly Holyoke where there are no shelters currently. We wanna make sure that there is accessibility throughout the region and not just bottlenecked. Well, okay, so this is the highest needs people. So these people will need the most services, the most 24 seven, someone's there, there's therapists, there's lots of people. So, I mean, I'm just saying that this model potentially Tim could work with people who need less services. I mean, this is the most expensive one. The next one might be a little less expensive and so on and so forth because you're not, this will have the most amount of people that will need the work there all the time. The next one could have people just nine to five. Absolutely, no, I am a major fan of looking into innovative approaches to affordable housing. You'll never find me on the other side of that. I only mean to say that when it comes to shelter in the way that we shelter and I take a lot of pride in the way that we shelter, which is we still remain a low threshold shelter. So you're right, we are taking people who have comorbidities and complex physical and mental health issues. We have people who have active substance use disorder. And what's been amazing is that by creating these smaller versions of these hubs, like we have at the ILC right now or at our resource center, you're able to provide such a direct level of continued care and consistency that a lot of the mental health struggles that folks face, they don't need to be clinical to be therapeutic, right? We can have folks who can again rely on staff that they know and know we'll be there to create that sense of continued support, 24 seven service support without having to over develop infrastructure, if that makes sense. Yeah, makes sense. Thank you, I'm not seeing any other hands up. Thank you everyone for putting your hands up so we can make sure everybody gets a chance to speak. So I'm gonna thank Tim, it's the work that you're doing is amazing. I absolutely agree with what Paul said. Your vision is comprehensive and it's focusing on transformation, it's focusing on systemic transformation, really helping individuals move through their own journey to independence and self-efficacy. I mean, that as a goal is amazing and that should be the goal for every single individual in community. So the work that you're doing is just absolutely amazing. And the fact that you're also very, very introspective about wanting to make sure that you are working at a place where you can actually help individuals versus numbers and counting heads that I think is just inspiring. So we're gonna continue having you come or have us talk to you or us working together because I think we actually have a vision to work towards with that old site and I would be so proud to see that fruition. So I really wanna thank you very much. Thank you so much for having me. Again, I'm at everyone's disposal all the time. I would love to give tours of the shelter anytime anybody wants to come and join an activity. We're really trying to kind of re-spark that social engagement and we wouldn't wanna be doing it anywhere else. So thank you to everybody here and don't hesitate to reach out. Thank you, Tim. Thank you. All right, we're gonna move to the next item on our agenda and that's the listening session. So I'm going to ask Ashley and Allegra to join me in just giving an update if I've missed anything. We've been working for months now and the we is, it's the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust, the Human Rights Commission, the Board of Health and the Community Safety and Social Justice Committee. So we've all been working very closely meeting almost every week in terms of planning for the June 20th listening session and including that too. Thank you, Nate and Jennifer Moisten who's been part of this as well from the town. So it's going to be June 20th from 6.30 to 8.30 at the bank center. So we hope this is an in-person meeting. It's not hybrid, it's gonna be in-person. And as we talked about before, we're thinking about having 10 tables where people can talk to each other and we're gonna facilitate conversations about what priorities are, what people think priorities should be with regard to housing in the town of Amherst, what their experiences are, lived experience, professional experience. So we're very, very excited that it's really two weeks away. So let me just ask Allegra and Ashley if there's anything that they want to add to the, go ahead Ashley, you're on mute Ashley. Yes, I think it's really going well and I guess just a little tiny bit of conflict I have is that putting the burden on people that need affordable housing and already live in affordable housing seems a little bit wonky when, clearly we need a lot more affordable housing and it needs to be a lot cheaper and that there will be a report apparently like we're gonna create a report all together. The different committees and I just wonder what the town's responsibility will be to read this report and then do things that make affordable housing more or better according to the wishes of the people in it or the people that want it. Like how is the report gonna be taken is I think as important as even just having a forum for people to talk about affordable housing is great. What matters is if it gets better because of it. So how could we make that happen that if they say we need lots more affordable housing it needs to be a lot cheaper perhaps, how will that be incorporated into Amherst affordable housing? I don't know, but I mean, I don't know what they will say but let's say they say a lot of things, you know. But anybody like to respond to that, including us. I mean, with the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust and so we're asking for people to voice, you know their experiences and the concerns. Risha, go ahead. I mean, obviously I can't speak on behalf of the town but I had understood that this was going to be a major input into our next five year strategic plan. And so that is what I'm hoping. I also, you know, not to be too researchy about this but I'm not sure who we're gonna hear from and it's great to hear from everybody but I don't think we should assume that we will only be hearing from people who are currently in affordable housing or looking for affordable housing. I suspect there will be a lot of people who are in not affordable housing who have lots of opinions on it. And so safe ring through that. But yeah, I'm hoping to take it as one of the primary inputs into our next priorities. Thank you, Risha. And I just also wanna add, thank you, Nate for putting it on the town website. So people can use the QR code to answer the questions. If one, they wanna submit their comments and writing or cannot make the session or if they wanna come to the session as well. So we've been distributing the flyers. Lagros had them translated into four different languages along with English. And it's so we're really, I know when I've been walking around talking to people asking them to go ahead and submit their responses even if they're gonna come because anything can happen on the 20th they might decide, you know, they can't make it. But to get that response would be really important. So we have two opportunities. One written responses through the QR code on the town website and the other is coming in person and participating. So we're very excited. We're hoping that it's going to be a really rich discussion. And then if anybody wants to work with us to then take all of that information and then create a report out of that, we absolutely welcome. We're hoping that as many of you can come on the 20th, we may need some help with some of the tables. Just in terms of facilitation, we already have the three questions that we're gonna ask. Phillip Avila and Liz Haygood are going to be the main facilitators of the night. And the rest of us who are part of the planning committee are gonna help facilitate at each table. So we're really excited about doing this. I think it's a real opportunity and we talk about we wanna listen to what people have to say. So it's an opportunity to really be present and just really listen. Okay, I think I'm not seeing any hands up. So, Grover. I was just gonna say I'll be there and I cannot put a table. Thank you, Grover. All right, so it's not seeing any other hands up. We will go ahead and move to Carol. So I don't know how much there is to add here. There are two things that happened that it seemed that we should update people on. One was we did have, but you were there, the joint trust with CRC and the trust. And so I guess I would just maybe wanna point out about that and the minutes went out, everyone saw them, they've been accepted. There are some things in there. It was mostly Mandy Jo that suggested what people might do next and had the staff focusing on zoning and discussions with the planning board and the CRC trying to get some of those priorities into manager goals so that they can be, so that they can be move forward more easily. They might do some survey and outreach on what people want. Although we're also doing that obviously with the, as was just discussed. And we might be able to, although this might be a thing a town wants to do, we can all can tell us about that. Begin to have some conversations with UMass about housing. I mean, we're not concerned just about students, but also about workforce housing. How can we have employees at UMass and at town and various townplaces, even police and firefighter sorts of people, how can we begin to think about workforce housing? That's something that maybe the trust can think about. And then there are perhaps town properties that we, I at least certainly don't probably even know about. So there might be some effort that we could put into, put in with the town to look at whatever property the town does own and to begin to thinking about and some of the creative ways that people have been talking about, is there something here that could be done to have this be able to be useful as housing in some kind of way, either something else like what the VFW hopefully is going to become or something more like Ball Lane or like East Gables or like something entirely else who knows, but we could at least have some kind of inventory maybe of what the properties are that might conceivably be considered and maybe none of them will work, but maybe some of them might, especially if we keep thinking about newer, different, out of the box, ways of thinking about things we might do something. So I think that everyone was there or a lot of, I can't remember honestly at this minute who was there and who wasn't, but if there are comments or questions about what we did with the CRC, we didn't specifically say we should meet together again, but we certainly didn't specifically say we won't. It seemed kind of more like a beginning than like a done deal. So there certainly I believe would be room to continue some of the conversations we had if that's what we think we wanna do. So I will ask if there's any questions or further comments or anything. Anybody wants to say any, see that Ashley already has a hand up. So Ashley. So we're getting a new school that is making apparently two other schools empty. And I'm just wondering like going forward when we get a new building or and other buildings are vacated and also whatever empty building Amherst has or UMass has or Amherst College has, is that on the radar of the town to like put that into the, we had to vote on this new school and it won, but that makes two empty buildings. Like why isn't it just central to like whatever is going on and makes an empty building in Amherst is that could be affordable housing and is that central to what you're thinking about when you're making a new building and vacating other buildings, always? Oh, thanks. Yeah, so it actually will be one building because one building is on the site. So the Fort River School building will be demolished but that'll be replaced by the new school. The Wildwood building will be vacant and the town council obviously has been thinking about what that site could be used for. There's been lots of suggestions for use of that site that ultimately the council will have to decide the process it's more, you're a few years away from having that building become available. The school committee would have to say they don't need it for educational purposes anymore. If they say that, then it reverts to the town's possession. At that point, the town would go through a process about how if that building is useful can it be changed into another existing use or is that site useful for some other thing? So the question is, is it central to everything you do with a new building that or just empty buildings are, I mean, is it working to see if those could be affordable housing central to the idea of whatever you're building next? Like is it, I don't think we should have to bring up every single time, oh, there's an empty building. Why don't we use it for affordable housing? Are you proposing to use affordable, like whatever empty building becomes accessible, can, are you putting in affordable housing? That's like a possibility without us meeting every month, you know? So I mean, whenever there's a vacant building there are a range of needs and uses that the town can use it for. It's a public policy discussion by the council particularly. People have talked about a senior center, senior housing, a cultural center, ultimate options for different buildings. All those things have to be considered by the town. Affordable housing is central. Obviously we're always on the lookout for sites for affordable housing which we've been very successful at. That's why we transformed the East street school and we purchased the Beltertown road parcels for this, for that purpose. But yeah, so I got, I'm not really sure what the question is. Yes, the town is always focused on affordable housing and developing more affordable housing. So. Rover. Ashley, what I hear you asking is I am understanding it as a next level request, or I think you're pointing out that it seems like the town goes currently with an array of options model where every individual vacant property is considered with the range of possibilities. And it is an option that we have. I believe that we could advocate for a formal vacant land affordable housing policy where affordable housing got the top priority. But we would have, as a community, we would have to advocate for the council to pass that. And my understanding is that it's currently not the policy. Yeah, I mean, that would be great to have affordable housing be the priority. I mean, there's a bunch of land at Hickory Ridge that is not affordable housing. There's going to be an empty school. There might be a myriad of these things that I'm always continuously saying affordable housing should be the priority because actually it's more important than a lot of senior centers, which we already have one. Maybe we could have a joint meeting with the CRC to see if they would help us prioritize affordable housing over many other things that is, lots of people want senior centers for sure. But a lot of people need affordable housing. How do we make that more important in the myriad of choices? And I think we need the CRC to help us because they are town council members, clearly. Okay, so I think that that's an interesting thing that we could just try to think about in the way that Grower and you have both suggested, is it something we want to try to talk with the town council about urging them to make this a top priority? And that would be a way to go to try to get something like this to happen. I don't have any idea how much support it would have or wouldn't have, but it does seem like something that we could attempt to do. And there's two more people who want to talk, which are Erica and then Dave. Thank you. So I thought I heard when I spoke to John, who is in the audience, about that there might be a policy that would include a right of refusal, meaning that when Paul talked about first the school committee because they have the right that's their building, that's what it was used for, to refuse then it goes back to the town. If we were to be able to create a policy that says, then we would be next and being able to look at the building. And if we then decided that it was not optimal, it was just too out of reach, then it would revert back to the town in terms of those other spectrum of options. That would require writing a policy. So Ashley, I don't know if you'd be willing to think about drafting a policy that we could take to the CRC and to then think about presenting a policy and if they were to be on board with that, we can then present it to the town council. But I will now let Dave speak. You're mute, Dave. There we go, sorry. Yeah, I'm not gonna speak to the policy. I'm not gonna address that, but I just wanted to kind of re-emphasize or emphasize even more what Paul said earlier because I'm sitting here with my colleague, Nate Malloy and Rob Moore on Chris Breastrop. And I just want to assure the group that we spend a tremendous amount of time and are committed to looking at every available option. And I was, as you all were talking, I was thinking about the number of affordable housing projects that we as a community have gotten done in the last 10 years. And housing, I just want to reassure everybody, it is at the top of our list. There is no policy, but we as planners, I mean, part of my job and part of Nate's job and Rob Moore's job and Chris Breastrop's job and other planners' jobs is to think about the community's needs. And there's no question that affordable housing is right up there. Clearly, as Paul illustrated, a large property and a complex property like a Wildwood school is really a large community conversation. But as we look at things like, oh, working with Beacon communities in North Amherst, I mean, that was the town that brought in Beacon communities that ultimately resulted in a collaboration between Beacon and Coles for 130 units of housing and 26 affordable units and a very large tax income and financing plan. Olympia Oaks, sorry, there's too many Olympia projects up there now, but Olympia Oaks, we took a piece of property that we, the town, the community took a piece of property up there that was set aside for municipal uses and through a process decided that seven or eight acres would be used for affordable housing and the back kind of wet portion of the property would be conserved and earlier planning folks worked on that. So I just wanted to reassure you that it is always at the forefront of our minds, we're always trying to think creatively. East Street School is a great example of picking up that property on Belchtown Road, same idea. So it's always there. It is, we are always working that angle and trying to figure out. I have a number of properties that I have been looking at and will continue to look at where we've been cultivating relationships with landowners who may be willing to part with their land, maybe not today, maybe not next year, but maybe three years from now and those properties might be for some kind of affordable housing yet to be defined, workforce, et cetera, et cetera, whatever the need is in the community. But then there may be other properties that say might have 10 acres of wet land in the back and five acres of developable land up front. And Hickory Ridge is a great example of that. We are now taking a closer look at the frontage on Hickory Ridge, where the clubhouse is, where the parking lot is and saying what kind of massing could occur there. We've talked about the potential for a South Amherst fire station there that doesn't preclude other uses of the frontage there. So that's the long-winded way of saying it is always something we're working on, five days a week when we're in the office. So watch probably showing the time that you're not. Ashley, go ahead. The reason we need a policy is so that when these things come up, we're not talking about senior centers and we're not talking about fire stations, we're talking about affordable housing second. So whoever has the building and now vacates it, it goes to us first. And so we just skip that process where you think of a lot of different things. We don't think of affordable housing first because it has come to us when someone hasn't used it. And we don't have to like muddy the waters with a whole bunch of stuff when we need affordable housing to come first. The thing is actually that has to be a decision the town makes that it decides that that's what it wants to do. And that's the reason the way to, if that is what I don't know that that's what the town wants, if it does, we can advocate, try to find out something from some of the people in the town council and others about were we to bring something like this? Would it fly? What do you think is this popular? But at us saying it, we have a lot of ways to go to find out. And that's something that we can do and check out but there's no magic to make it be first. I think we need a meeting with the CRC to propose this. I mean, I could write something up but the idea is that we could propose it and see what town councillors are in favor of it and then start there, you know? See if we could be putting affordable housing at least second, if not first and not muddying it around with like what five other things they're trying to deal with. We could ask to do that. Yes, we can. If there's no, does anybody have anything else they want to say about this? So that's possibly a beginning of maybe another CRC meeting or whatever other thing makes sense, which might be that. Grover. Yeah, I mean, I would just like to say I do support this idea, Ashley. I would like to see it come to be. And I would also like us to have time to move forward as a body or an entity and like, I would like to add it to the list and then have a time that I hope soon that is the meeting or meetings where we're really hashing out the list and saying, because we're only gonna have so much capital to push the town council to pass XYZ that we're advocating for. And so really trying to determine what we think will be the most impactful top policies and push for that. So just before we churn our wheels, that would be my opinion is like, put it on the list, you know, I don't know where the list lives right now, but, and then it to be one of the things we consider. And as these questions come up, it allows us to clarify what we're actually, right? Like, like there's an impulse to say I want us to consider this first. And that's like, well, actually as a policy we could advocate for. So that goes in the policy column, as opposed to like that's a state policy. That's a town policy. Yeah. Can I just ask Grover for a point of the list you're suggesting is a list of possible priorities or possible things we would like to see the town legislate about or make a policy about. Is that what the list is of? Yeah. Bad grammar. Okay, thanks. Got it. Nate. Yeah. And I think that goes back to having a second meeting with the CRC and maybe it's after another meeting with the trust and having these discussions. So some of it could be, you know, you mentioned Carol, you know, talking with UMass, I think addressing student housing is important. You know, having certain policies or other incentives is important. So, you know, all of a sudden we have, you know, we could generate a half dozen ideas and we bring it back to the CRC and we discuss, okay, is this a policy action? Is it a regulatory action? Is it education and, you know, start figuring out what, then who's doing it? And so, you know, we, you know, the minutes kind of have some of those ideas. And I think we, you know, another meeting would be important to, you know, maybe the trust has another meeting where we discuss this and then we can meet with the CRC and have, you know, these ideas to discuss because I think it's, you know, there's many, I think a number of action steps that could happen. You know, I agree with Grover that, you know, a policy recommendation or two is one, but I think, you know, conversations with UMass or other ideas about student housing is another one. Or, you know, even this model with the BFW, you know, that's something that's gonna take a lot of input. So, there's another thing to discuss. Okay, how are we determining what kind of model or process we're gonna use for the BFW site? And so, you know, I feel like just tonight we have half a dozen ideas that we'd wanna discuss with the CRC. You know, even zoning, right? Even housing. What kind of zoning amendments would we wanna see? I mentioned that the joint meeting, changing inclusionary zoning. So, we have a percentage that's required to be affordable. Is it worthwhile now to say it's, you know, it hasn't deterred development. Do we tweak that zoning a little bit? And are there other things we can do? And so, you know, in the aggregate, all these things are gonna be very, you know, we'll work together. I think, you know, housing can be slow. The town is in a developer. And so, even if we have town property, you know, like say Belcher Town Road and East Street School, you know, that's years to get something developed. There's other ways that could be more effective to get housing or services or whatever happening. I think, you know, that's why I like to, you know, I do think we could have another meeting or two at the CRC over the next few months and really, you know, and then with the public forum in June and then other things, we really then have a really good foundation for our strategic plan, the trust strategic plan. And then we have a good understanding of who's doing what in town. Okay. Thanks. I think we have a lot of things to talk here and probably something for our own future agenda and building to a future agenda, joint agenda again with CRC. I'm going more time in because this wasn't just a report. It was kind of a what do we do next in more depth than we might have thought of, but I think it was a good discussion. So I guess I don't, the other thing I was gonna report on was the May 18th, 18th and 19th, whatever day it was round table, thanks to our own representatives, Mindy Dom, she was able to bring Jim Larsiro, the joint chair of the housing committee to a round table that was attended by the town, council town, people who were in other departments of the town, Grace George was there, many of the providers, developers, the trust was there represented by Erica and I and either also by John Hornick or else she was representing the affordable housing advocacy group, but anyway, he was there. And it seems to me that the most important thing to say about it is that there, everybody had a few minutes to make a, to say what are the things that they thought were most important and there were repeated themes like we need more units, we need more of the continuum of care kind of stuff that Tim was talking about, we need to be talking with each other and working together and we need the state to come forward, fund DHCD with more money, match the town's community preservation act amount fully instead of only partly. There were clear asks of the state, I think, to try to have them working on things and one of the most interesting things I remember hearing was some amount of opening on the part of at least the Amherst College president to perhaps finding ways that some of the Amherst college university, college land might be able to be helpful to the town in developing affordable housing. So there were openings of all sorts and it was kind of inspiring to have so many different people in the room and to have the opportunity for those two people to listen to what we all had to say about our town. Mindy kind of framed it as, so there are things about Amherst that are unique and there are things about Amherst that are just like everywhere else. And that seems like some of those things came out in that round table, some of the issues with the university and just the size of the town compared to the size of the university is kind of dramatic in this case. Lots of towns, lots of cities have universities in their midst but they aren't always so small, the town compared to the university and we have more than one university. So there are other people in this room who were there if there's anybody who wants to add something or would welcome that. So Erica, Paul, I think we're both there. Dave, I think you were there, I believe. So if there's anybody who wants to add anything please speak, Paul. I mean, I agree, I thought it was a really, it was a unique opportunity for a lot of people to be in the same room, to share their ideas because we haven't really done that very much since COVID and it was sort of like people connecting, people hadn't met each other in person who've been in new jobs or been executive directors and things so that was an exciting time as well. I think you're right that there were a lot of overlapping themes that people had to share but it was a real honor to have the chair and Kudos to Repdom for getting him out here and to get someone out to Western Masses and from bosses off of the challenge. So that was a good thing for us and I think that time was well spent. Thank you, Erica. One of the things that I thought was really important along with what Paul just said and a real opportunity for all of us to sort of see each other in terms of advocacy, action, policy from lots of different experiences all the way from advocating for and working with people who are on house all the way to getting permanent, sustainable, equitable housing that is also affordable. So all the different perspectives that people presented really build on each other and what I walked away with is that there's not one answer in order to really make a difference in increasing affordable housing, sustainable housing, housing that's available to a range of ages and workers. You really need to work together and this was a really great opportunity to get everybody into the room and to think about how can we work together? So I think Representative Dom did a great job in doing this. One of the things that I had spoken to her about is the possibility of getting the Secretary of Housing here as well. So Governor Haley and Lieutenant Governor Crisco named Edward Augustus as the housing secretary and so that's another opportunity because I think it has to be a multi-pronged approach and it has to be the state, the legislators, the Haley administration and then us on the municipal level we need to really have a multi-pronged approach to have enough funding and enough support to really make a dent in making a difference. So it was exciting, but it's just the beginning. So looking forward to the next opportunity to collaborate and coordinate. Yeah, I guess the one thing I forgot to say or that I meant to say was it was also some part of the beginning or somewhere along setting some kind of context was this is not, this is a problem in Amherst but it's also a problem in Massachusetts. It's also a problem in the entire country. The housing crisis is a crisis everywhere and it's just worth noting that I'm not thinking that we're sort of alone. We have some unique things about it that are unique and some things about it that are not really that different than every place that is dealing with similar kinds of problems. Anything else? If not, I'm gonna pass it back to Erica who has her hand up. What else do you want her to say? Something or shall I pass it to you? No, I wanted to say that there was an opportunity to hear the president of Amherst College say that they actually have some land that's available. And I really feel the need and hopefully maybe Paul and Dave and Nate can speak to this position because there's only so much, I think Carol and I could do to follow up on things but hearing Amherst College say that they're interested and they have availability of land. It's like, I know I was not the only person who walked up to them and said, we're interested. But it's when those opportunities arise and we need to move fast and we need to follow up. So hopefully we can do that with Amherst College. And Paul, I think you wanna just respond to what I just said. Totally agree and we did follow up on Monday. Fantastic. Okay, I think then now I will pass it to Erica to discuss President Chairman, Chair Personship. Thank you, Carol. So at the last meeting we raised that this is the end of sort of the year, the timeline Carol and I took over for John who had some pretty huge shoes to fill, took two of us. And part of it is just to be transparent as well is that both of us felt it was really important to do co-leadership and co-facilitation. It gives us different perspectives. Carol comes with her own experience or perspective. I come from my own experience perspective and it's a real opportunity for us to check in with each other and to really give each other that perspective because sometimes you have your own blinders and biases. So it's been a really amazing opportunity to do this but we felt it was really important now to open it up to see if others would like to take on this leadership. And so one, we would just wanna open it up to if anyone wants to step forward to think about becoming the chair or chairs. We wanna absolutely give that opportunity. We can have a conversation in terms of what it is that we're looking for in chairs. Both Carol and I are willing to continue if no one steps forward but we thought it was really, really important for everybody to think through it. So that's why it was raised at the last meeting. So it's been a month so hopefully people have thought about it. And so we're just gonna open it up to whoever would like to step forward or would like to raise any feedback about the chair positions. Or nominate somebody else or whatever you wanna do. Ashley had the hand up. Oh, sorry, I didn't see that. Yep, Ashley, go ahead. Well, I think that it's really important going forward not just in the chairs, but like in the affordable housing plus that there are more people that have ever lived in affordable housing or have like actual experience, lived experience with the matter at hand, affordable housing or trying to find affordable housing. And so as far as I know, I mean, not everybody maybe wants to talk about their own experience. There's only two of us that have really experienced the need for affordable housing. And so just members-wise, I think there needs to be more care for who becomes a member and that those people should have had some kind of experience in needing affordable housing and the system in Amherst that is very difficult to navigate affordable housing-wise. And then chairs, if there's two, maybe 50% should have some kind of lived experience with affordable housing or 100%. And so, and that's hard to find because maybe there's just not enough people that are even willing to do this stuff, but I think it's essential we start thinking like people that have like lived experience are prioritized, that's all. That's all. Do we still have one vacant spot? I mean, in terms of just members? We have one vacant spot after today. So Sid is ending his term and he is committed to stepping down because he wants others to have an opportunity to step forward. So we're gonna recognize him at the end of the meeting, but he has pretty much said to me that he wants an opportunity for others to step forward. So yes, we will have one position available. And I just wanna recognize Allegro who has her hand up. So I have a few things. First of all, I really do appreciate that Erica and Carol stepped forward when John stepped off the trust last year. I think you guys have done an excellent job and I think you really play to each other's strengths. So if nobody else steps forward, I would be certainly very happy to see you continue on in the role of co-chairs. However, I really do appreciate what Ashley just brought up and I do think it's really important to center the voices of people with lived expertise in the area. So just thinking about the creation of the Community Safety and Social Justice Committee, which is a committee that I co-chair, our charge itself actually has written into it that five of the seven members have to either be BIPOC members of the community or people from other marginalized backgrounds. So I don't know what the process of amending a charge would be and if that's something that we'd want to think about, but perhaps that is something that we would consider writing into our, Paul, am I making things up? Like, is that something that like by law we can do? So I see Paul has his hand up before Paul, you respond. I just want to clarify, Allegra, are you saying for the chairperson or are you saying for the chairperson and for the members of the trust or one or the other? For both, okay. At least having one chairperson with some sort of lived expertise in the area plus additional members really does bring to the forefront something that a person who might work in the field of affordable housing might see but not fully understand firsthand. So. Okay. All right, Paul is next in terms of hand up. So the, I think the trust doesn't have a charge, it actually comes from the by law. There's this town by law that creates the trust and that's where the membership. So you'd have to actually change the law to if you want to put that into the charge per se. We're always looking, if there are folks with lived experience who are applying, we need people and are welcoming any folks who put their names forward to do that and our CPOs are out there recruiting but the best recruiters are the people on the screen. You know folks and if you can get people to put in their names, that'd be awesome. In terms of the co-chairs, I think it's often, we can say that it's a requirement but I think that puts an undue burden on folks who might not be able to take on that additional responsibility. And so it might be something that the trust as a body might want to keep its flexibility but I'm open to whatever, and they take a backseat on all these things on what the committee wants to do. Thank you, Paul. Ashley and then Risha. Well, so I guess one thing is if do you have to commit to being the chair or co-chair for the whole term or could you be? I mean, I would like to volunteer because but I don't necessarily want to volunteer for two years. I'm just wondering if for one thing I think it's really important that at least one chair has lived experience. And so that I'm certainly willing to co-chair but also I would be willing to do it in an interim kind of way until we had, for one thing, there's gonna be a new member that CID isn't and someone hopefully who will have lived experience because that's more or less the most important thing to get from a new member. And then maybe we could have another vote a few months down the road. Does it have to be like a year or two or like three? Could it be much shorter? Well, it's something the group's gonna have to make a decision on, but let me have, first of all, I just want to say I think we need to be clear about what we mean by lived experience. Do you mean current live experience? Do you mean life experience? Because I think there are assumptions made about who has it and who doesn't. So I think we should also define what we mean by lived experience. So it's just something to think about but I'm gonna go ahead and recognize Risha and then Nate. I am commenting on a slightly related but slightly different topic. And that is just that I would not, I appreciate both the jobs that you both have done as well as the reason you wanted to co-chair. With the open meeting laws, I've found having co-chairs to be complicated because as you write to one person, it's already three people and that starts to become difficult to have conversations and not knowing, I don't wanna just pick one of you. And so I wouldn't necessarily try to set ourselves up for forever co-chairs. And a 50% is where I start getting worried that we've locked ourselves into co-chairs with open meeting laws. I think that might get complicated. So that's my only thought. Nate. Yeah, I was gonna say that typically, boards and committees will elect chairs and officers once a year. They can reaffirm who's already in that position or they can nominate and vote on new ones. And so it's not the term of the person, right? It's not a two year term necessarily but it's really an annual discussion and vote. And so, the by-law does also say that, the trust is composed of members that have personal or professional experience and a number of things. At one point, I think that housing and sheltering committee or maybe the first version of the trust by-law, we actually did require a member to have, say some experience with, whether it's like being housing insecure or something. But I think that becomes way inflexible because if no one volunteers, then you have a vacancy. And so I think, we have a citizen activity forum. They have a process where we review, people who are interested in volunteering. And I think that's something that, if the trust knows they would like that, it's conveyed through staff and then it's part of the process when we're selecting new members. I think writing something like that into a by-law is very specific and rigid and it's more difficult than you think maybe to actually implement it. Same with co-chairs. I actually think that having a co-chair who does or doesn't have certain experiences may not make them a good co-chair. I think a chair is someone who can actually manage a meeting, do a lot of homework outside the meeting and do things. And sometimes it's really about, you might have a good mindset for that kind of organizational strategy. It doesn't matter necessarily what your experience may be with housing or other things, right? So sometimes the good chair of the Historical Commission may not be someone who has a PhD in preservation or anything, but they are very logical and they can manage a meeting and they can put an agenda together and they can do homework. And so I wouldn't want to limit a description of who could be chair or co-chair to something that, again, the person may not want to volunteer for that role. And so I think that it's really an individual's, being a chair who does take a lot of extra work. And so it's really, John put in a tremendous amount of time, Kara and Erica have as well. And so if the trust were to get rolling and all of a sudden, a chair might be putting in 20 hours a month, 30 hours a month, if they're taking on a lot of initiatives and organizing things. And so I don't want to scare anyone, but you can make it as big as you want it to be. And so I think, but I do think it's really important to have that flexibility to let who wants to be chair, be chair because it is something that they'd want. I want someone to want to do it, right? Not just think that they have to do it. So what I've heard, Carol, sorry. She's a very interesting conversation, but I'm feeling like I trust the trust to be able to say yay or nay to people who step forward and think that they want to be a chair, knowing some enough about each other. I would rather trust us than trust a rule that we made up. And especially I would not like to see it be that we have to have some elaborate way to figure out what lived experience counts and what doesn't in order to see if someone is eligible to be a trust chair, that just seems kind of actually icky and horrible to me. So that's all. Well, and the only other thing is I would like to find some way that there are interesting things here to think about, but to also be able to move forward tonight. Risha? Following Carol's desire to move forward and then sidetracking us is for a great role, but I feel like several times, so Ashley and I joined at the same time. Grover has joined since we have all joined in a time that we've never, I have never met this group in person because I was not able to make some of the in-person and I won't be able to make the next ones. I, you mentioned that we all know each other well enough. I'm not sure we do. And I really, really would like to have the strategy meeting as soon as possible, ideally in-person, at least part of it, to really feel like we're working sort of more seamlessly and with a shared vision of what we're headed towards. So off topic, apologies. Thank you, Risha. Ashley? I think, well, Allegra maybe can speak to this a lot more because she's the chair of her own committee, but the reason you have people with lived experiences because they know the impact of the decisions we're making. And so if you have people that, and most of the people here have not been impacted by affordable housing personally, potentially, or maybe was 30 or 40 years ago, that's not terribly relevant to right now. And so things have changed. And then having room for voices that are different and maybe under-heard, younger people, I mean, people under 40, people under 30, people that are people of color, et cetera. Like that's really useful. And so I think lived experiences can be pretty wide, but some kind of necessity of finding affordable housing is a lived experience that I think is very valuable. For any committee, like civil rights and different committees, but this is one where some people are very acutely impacted and some people probably never were. And that's important. Actually, I wanna recognize the fact that you do prioritize individual with lived experience and I do as well, but I really wanna caution making assumptions about anyone else. I think what Risha said before, which is we don't know each other very well, but I do agree with you that we want as many people with lived experiences as possible and we want a diversity in terms of whatever diversity that we can get, that includes age diversity, but I just really wanna caution about assumptions. I think the decisions that I hear right now is a decision about co-chairs versus chair. It sounds like people are interested in having a vote to have one chair versus two chairs. And I think there's also a decision to be made around the length of the term. I would recommend the length of the term be one year because I think it's just too much Well, that's my recommendation. It's not my decision, the decisions in terms of this group, but I think those are the two major decisions that I've heard people raise. So I think Risha, you just had your hand up and then Grover. So I'm gonna recognize Risha and then Grover. Yeah, because I'm the person who brought up the co-chairs. I wasn't suggesting we take a vote this round. I was just suggesting that we don't put something in writing long-term that forces us to always have co-chairs. Thank you, Risha, for the clarification. And I think if Carol or I had made a decision about being the chair, there wouldn't have been co-chairs. I do believe in collective leadership. So for me, it was very important. And I also believe that I had limitations in terms of my time. I think, Ashley, you've raised that their high expectations of how much we can turn around and how much we can do. And so being chair, you really feel the need to be available and to do a lot of work in between meetings, not just the agenda for the meetings, but really to connect with people and to follow up. And so I think whoever wants to step forward in being chair, you have to make a commitment around time. And so I knew that was limited with regards to my time and I couldn't fully commit to it. So being a co-chair was a way to address that. So anyone who wants to step forward, think about time because it is really important. Allegra and then Grover. Grover was first. Very Grover, Grover and then Allegra. Thank you, Allegra. Okay. Well, I just wanna say, I think this is an interesting discussion for us to be having. And I also am resonating with like, we don't know each other very well. And I just wanna appreciate that like Carol and Erica's leadership and the amount of time it takes and also just know like, these are unpaid volunteer positions. And so it's part of the reason that it's difficult for people who have lived in poverty recently or currently to join, right? And so I'm just saying that and that I'm actually, I agree with the one year term and I am excited to talk about the legislative priorities. So I would move for us to make motion soon on either, on voting for who the chairs would be. I feel agnostic on the co-chair versus single chair for this formation. Oh, like this next year, I agree that I would not like to write it into policy one way or the other because I could imagine, I could imagine myself feeling quite burdened by co-chairing with some people and strengthened by co-chairing with others. And it all just depends on people's personalities and capacities. So I wouldn't want to write a strict one way or the other. Thank you for over Allegra. Can I just clarify whether anybody else has actually put their name in that for chairing? Cause if we're, if nobody else is and then it seems like the decision would be easy, but if somebody else is, then that would be good to know. Ashley? Can we, do we have to vote this time? Could we think about it and then vote next time? Like, why does it have to be right now? You'll still be chairs next time, probably. Yeah, it doesn't. It's just something that, you know, we thought was important to raise just in terms of a democratic process. Both Carol and I have been doing this for a year and we just wanted to make sure that other people who wanted to do this had an opportunity to step forward. And I think this conversation was really, really important. We may not know each other a lot, but I agree with Carol, I really trust you, all of you as my colleagues here on the trust to have the best intent in mind in terms of the best way we can work together to increase affordable housing. So this conversation has been really, really, I think important for us to have. So I want to, first of all, thank you and I know Nate has his hand up. So I'm going to recognize Nate next and then I think what, well, let me recognize Nate next and then I will recommend what we do next. You know, I was going to say that if the co-chair model isn't followed in the future, typically we'd have a chair than vice chair. So that in the absence of a chair, we have someone else who can run the meeting and staff can also contact. So just to, you know, I just want to put that out there as, you know, if you're thinking about nominating someone or yourself or you know, if you're talking to, you know, if you're figuring out what to do, you know, see either, I mean, I like the co-chair model or the chair vice chair model because we really, you know, I think that we do need to have a vice chair if we have a chair just so we can make sure everything can operate. Thank you, Nate. I would like to, if I can make a motion that we take another month. I actually feel that, you know, with Sid moving on and us having a new member that it might be an opportunity to bring the new member on board but it's up to the group to table this conversation right now for today but to have a converse, have a vote on do we want to chair a co-chair? And that might be dependent on if somebody is interested in stepping forward and if they want to step forward with someone else. But I think, you know, we can, I would like to make a motion to table this conversation so we can think more deeply about it. And then also I would like to recommend that whoever does step forward, think about it as a year commitment just because I think it's a little difficult to do it just for a little while and then to coordinate that. So I would just like to recommend that we move forward and table this conversation. That's totally fine. I just was also like wanting to second Richa's that a lot of us have never met in person and that when we perhaps meet in person and to do our strategic for the next term that might be like a good time to vote on this like when we actually meet each other because I don't think that sense of trust. I mean, I just don't, I don't trust necessarily that the priorities well, particularly of the town is creating thousands of affordable units for workers and low income people because I haven't seen it yet. So I just don't think we need to trust much. We need to see results. And I guess that's all I'm wanting. So we haven't even met. So why would we have all this trust in each other, you know? We'll plan on having meetings in person. So I think I'm going to not seeing any other hands up move to the next item just because we wanna make sure that we can get to John around the legislative proposals but I again, wanna thank everyone regarding this conversation I think was so important to have. So the next thing on our agenda is some town updates and in spite of that, I'm gonna suggest given what time it is that we move straight into John and do that first and if we don't do all of the town updates, we will do them next time and we will do whatever other updates we have to do next time. But the thing that we have that is actually something that we need to do something about presumably is the legislative stuff. And so my suggestion is Erica, I'm gonna give it back to you who is gonna give it to John unless you object Erica we get to do this because we're the co-chair. So I'd like to rearrange things and have John next. Yes, I'm going to make them a panelist. Yeah, sometimes it works and sometimes it does. Oh, here he comes. Yeah, John, you have a floor. Okay, I think I'm here. Thank you. You are, thank you. I sent that a note. Well, actually, Caroline Erica sent out a note that I had drafted. There's been some discussion about town policy. Town policy is obviously important but we also don't wanna neglect the opportunity to weigh in on state policy to a significant extent what we're able to do as a town is dependent upon things that the legislature and the governor decide. So trying to keep track of those things is not necessarily easy but it's something that I volunteered to try to help to do and I'm going to talk about a few things immediately that I know when they are on the legislative agenda that I thought are important. Although there are other things that I think are important that I'm not gonna get to. I'll briefly just mention those. Basically, the process should be this. I will suggest something and other people can suggest things too and the goal is to decide whether or not to send a note at a minimum to our state representative, Mindy Dom and our state Senator, Joanne Cumberford advocating for a certain piece of legislation or certain pieces of the budget. Typically those letters also go to the chairs or the Senate president and the Speaker of the House and also the chairs of relevant committees. For example, we talked about having James Arcero here who is chair of the Joint Legislative Committee on Housing. I can't remember who the he's, who's co-chair is who's the Senator but then there are also other committees that do get involved in legislation related to housing which I will touch on as we go forward. So ideally, if you all wanna do this what it means is you agree to take a position on a piece of legislation and then Carol and or Erica will, would write a letter to the appropriate people as I outlined telling them that the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust has taken a position in support of this legislation. So this can be a part of your meetings for the next few months since the legislature currently is focused on budget but it will also be focused on other policy issues probably at least through September, not October. So I guess I'm assuming everybody wants to do this but if not, you should be letting the chairs know that you don't wanna tackle this. Okay, well then I'll go forward hearing nobody making any objections with the first thing that I had. And again, this is something that I sent to you all or that Erica and Carol sent to you all. Senate Aide 69, an act to reduce the financial barriers to renting homes. One of the things that happens when people wanna rent a house or an apartment in Amherst or elsewhere is that the landlord or the agent for the landlord will impose a variety of different kinds of charges. Some of them are pretty straightforward like first month's rent, last month's rent, a security deposit, but then there can be other kinds of charges as well. For example, a charge for an application or a charge for a key or honestly, I don't know what else people face because Ashley, I'm sorry to say that I haven't faced having to rent a place in a long time. Nonetheless, I know this is a problem. I talked to people at Craig's Doors, people at Amherst Family Outreach and I know this is something that their clients face when they try to rent in Amherst as well as elsewhere. So the purpose of this bill is essentially to say there are limitations on what a landlord or landlord's agent can charge for. And if you like that as an idea, then that's something that we should support. So maybe we have to have an actual life. I move that we write a letter in support of the thing John just talked about, Senate, whatever it is. 869. 869, thank you. So, I second it. Oops, sorry. Who seconded? Okay, so, Rob. Does this... Oops, absolutely was first, I guess. That's okay, Rob. Rob, go ahead, Rob. Does the bill pose specific limitations or is it just general limitations to be decided? There's specific limitations. In essence, it says you can charge for this and that and this third thing, but you can't charge for anything else. I believe that's the way the bill is framed. That's my understanding of it. I didn't quote or bring with me the specific language in the legislation, Rob. Can I just follow up quickly? So it limits certain charges, but does it limit the amounts of, you can't charge more than X for security deposit, you can't charge more than X for whatever. Or do they say you can't charge a key fee, you can't charge... No, it doesn't place a limitation on the amount. I think there actually is legislation before the... It's been proposed that would... Create rent control constraints or at least allow local communities to do rent control, which would have the kind of effect that you're talking about, but that is not part of this legislation. But if it does say first month, last month, last month and security, there's an amount to build into those, right? At least based on the rent, you can't charge a security deposit of $3 million and it's connected to what the rent is, right? I believe that would be the case, Carol. Ashley? Yeah, I'm totally in favor of this. I hope that we could also talk about not just a state law, but that if we could internally sometime vote on this could be part of our permitting process, that we could... Because this is probably, you know, the state law might happen in one or two, three years. Who knows? We could even put in our permitting process that there is a limit on fees, there's a limit on security deposits, you know, et cetera. Maybe we could think about that in a much more local sense as well as writing this letter that, you know, supports it on a state level that might happen in many months from now. There will be permitting of new apartment complexes, even affordable housing ones, at some point probably even quicker that we could act locally. Ashley, I don't know if the town would have the authority to do that. There are certain kinds of things that the legislature or the governor keep for themselves. And if the town wants to do something that is not otherwise allowed by state law, they have to ask for permission to do that. Allegra? So I might be wrong, but I thought that they already did away with finders fees. So basically when you rent an apartment, they can charge first, last security, which are all equal to a month's rent. And then a finder fee, which basically goes to the real estate agent, which can equal up to an additional month's rent. So you could be looking at paying four months upfront, which is a lot of money. But I thought that, and maybe it was just in like Northampton that this happened, but I'm looking at Mass Legal Help, which is one of the organizations that does a lot of like tenants rights stuff. And they have it listed that there's, they can only charge you when moving in a security deposit first, last in the cost of a new lock and key. So I'm getting a sense of deja vu and obviously if there's legislation pending, like I must be incorrect, but I'm just a little confused because I thought this already happened. Well, again, I had conversations with both Fran Rodriguez of Amherst Family Outreach and I think it's Sam Schilke of Craig's Doors. And my impression is that these practices continue. Now, I didn't raise the specific question that you just did, but again, the understanding that I had from them is that there are landlords or real estate practices that represent landlords that do ask for something above first, last and security. And that's not only in Amherst, but obviously it's elsewhere in the state, which is a reason this law is proposed. The distinction- I would be in support of signing, that's just FYI. Sorry, the distinction is landlords cannot charge a findus fee. A rental agent can charge a findus fee only if she, he, they is a licensed real estate broker. So it still can happen. So I think this would get rid of that. So, yes. Nate? Now, I was just gonna clarify what you just said and that also, they charge processing fees, application fees. I mean, so we'll see application fees in hundreds of dollars. So to process, there might be a processing fee of $350 in addition to the findus fee and everything else. So, I mean, I was looking at the bill now, the specifics. There is some language, but I think it's a step in the right direction. And I think that it's something that may need to be amended and then changed over time. It's hard to capture all of these things, right? So the bill says probably speaking a lessor, it doesn't say if it is it the owner or the agent or the, or whatever. And so then it becomes the, you know, there's probably gonna be some interpretation there that it's anyone working for the owner, whether it's the agent or something. And so it's really trying to limit all these fees that then other different parties can charge, right? And so the legislation is somewhat broad, I think to capture all that and then it limits it to first, last or security and then a key. So really there's only three fees that can be charged, not first, last and security. And then blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, like whatever else they start inventing. So I mean, no, I mean, that's what I see. I mean, I mean, I mean, processing fees, it's really, like you never think like, oh, I'm gonna charge a $400 processing fee. But all of a sudden I'm seeing processing fees. Like what is that? Anyway, so I, yeah, I think that, I think it seems pretty straightforward. I don't, I think it's a really good idea. So we're hearing a lot of support for this. Do we need to take a vote? Yes, you need to take a vote. Thank you, Erica, sorry. Thank you, sure. Erica says yes, Carol. Yes. Allegra, couldn't hear it. Oh, thank you. Ashley. Yes. Rob. Yes. Paul. Yes. Sid. Yes. Risha. Yes. Grover. Yes. Thank you. Hopefully I didn't miss anybody. So Grover, you have your hand up. Well, I was gonna make a request of the chairs regarding agenda. Good. So I liked, I liked it. I supported everything on John, that John submitted on the list. And also there was some other bills that were in the link. That was also shared that I thought was worth lending support to or sending a letter to or at least having the conversation. And also I know we're nearing the end of time. So I'm wondering if someone could clarify for me the time window that we have on these. Do we have another month? Like if in a month we decided to support other bills, would that be effective or is it too late in the session to have impact? Good question. John, can you answer that? I believe it varies with the type of bill. For example, anything having to do with the budget needs to be acted on now, I believe. Anything that is a non-budget bill could be, could wait a month or two. But in general, the sooner the better because the legislative process moves on. And if you miss the window when they're holding hearings or gathering information, it is what it is. Risha? Sorry, I'm just acknowledging that I have a hard stop and I'm gonna have to step off if it's possible for me to vote via email, I'd be happy to do that if not you have a quorum. So. So we just voted on the first one saying that you vote that Carol and I write a letter to Representative Dom and Senator Comerford to support that bill. I think you have so many more, John. I think what might be helpful is to figure out which ones we need to act on quickly and which ones can wait and then we can bring it to the next meeting. Well, the next two items are I believe budget related. The next two have to do with transfer fees, which is something you've already had extensive discussion of. Essentially, there are two transfer fee proposals for you to consider and they're not mutually exclusive. It's important to point out. The first one is one that has been proposed by the town Amherst and specifically the legislation's been sponsored by Senator Comerford. And that's the Amherst specific transfer fee in which there are provisions in that one that are not in the general transfer fee legislation that's been proposed by a statewide group. There are a number of towns that have proposed specific legislation in which they're asking for the state legislature to give permission for them to proceed to do a special transfer fee. And that includes Amherst and you've heard from Andy Jail and Anna about that. And my recommendation would be that you tell Senator Comerford and Representative Dom to support if they already are supporting it, but it wouldn't hurt to repeat the fact that you are supporting it. The general transfer legislation, I would also recommend you support. That's one that really just has to do with providing towns the flexibility to create a transfer fee within certain parameters. It's up to the individual town to determine all the money in that case goes. Excuse me, into supported housing. That would benefit many communities in the Commonwealth. I personally think that it's worth supporting both transfer fees because honestly, we don't know what the legislature is gonna do and I'd be happy with either of both being supported. So I'll make a motion that the co-chairs be given the approval to write a letter to support both. Thank you, Allegra. Any questions, concerns, comments? Ashley. Just that the next meeting, hopefully on the agenda is the things we want to talk to the CRC about that are, you know, let's say bigger than the afford, things we can't do on our own. Like there's probably quite a bit of a list going on. Thank you, Ashley. And just to clarify, are you talking about the legislative items that John has brought forth? No, I mean, not just that one. I mean, if we need the CRC for those things, that's fine. But I'm saying like all the things we talked about that like we probably need town council members to like ultimately vote on. So like, can we change not our charter but like the bylaws that kind of help guidelines that help our board have more people that are impacted by affordable housing recently. The kind of thing that, I think we talked about several things that were CRC like things that they need to input on because it's eventually gonna get to the town council. And so it's kind of like things we need town council to eventually vote on. We need to talk to the CRC about. Let's make a list of that. Okay. Thank you, Ashley. That was proposed prior. So yes. Okay, good. Yep. So it's 903 and I just wanna pay attention to time. John, I think you said these were the two that were budget related. Are there any others that are budget related? Well, there's at least one other that was in my memo. And that has to do with the full funding of Community Preservation Act. Don't we have to finish voting on the thing we were trying to vote on? We have a motion that was made and check it in there. And then we got off track and I think we should finish voting on the thing we're voting on. Thank you, Carol. I vote yes. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Allegra? Yes. Rob? Yes. Paul? Yes. Grover? Yes. Sid? Yes. Ashley? Yes. Erika, yes. Okay. So the last item has to do with the match for Community Preservation Act. The state has typically, well, has not in the last several years appropriated enough money to be able to what towns appropriate at a local level for Community Preservation Act. So I believe, I think Erika, you got this estimate from Sean Mangano. Yeah, about 52% we received versus 100%. So we got 52% from the state. Right, so that's about $700,000 that the state could have given the town of Amherst. Typically, the CPA funding from the town is about 50% of what's available. So housing does quite well in CPA funds. And if there were more CPA funds, I would hope that the town would do better. So the legislature actually is in a little better position this year than they were certainly two or three years ago. And so if it could be full funding or something closer to full funding of Community Preservation Act, that would definitely benefit the town and probably benefit the affordable housing program. So again, I moved that we support that the two co-chairs write a letter in support of full funding of the CPA. Anyone would like to second? Sure. Ashley, go ahead. Yeah, I second it. I second it. Any conversation concerns, questions? Okay, we're gonna vote then. Grover? Yes. Sid? Yes. Paul? Yes. Rob? Yes. Ashley? Yes. Allegra? Yes. Carol? Yes. And Erica, yes. Okay, all voting yes. And I also recommend that we put legislative proposals a little higher on the agenda since there seem to be really important and will impact the trust's resources and opportunities to increase affordable housing. Yeah, Grover reported, sorry, referenced the chaplain priority list which does have a number of important things that we would like, I think we should look at the biggest in terms of budget would be a housing bond bill which the governor has yet to propose. There was a housing bond bill a couple of years ago under the previous administration and we were supposed to get some money out of it but I don't believe we did. I checked with Mindy recently on it and she didn't think there was anything that was sprung by the governor related to that. So many of these really are social justice issues although there may be some that have budget implications. There probably are that I'm skipping over but unless you wanna spend some time as a group looking more closely at these tonight then I think it'll be time to move on. Yeah, I think it'd be since it's already 907 and I'm not gonna assume that other people don't have some things that they need to do. I think we're gonna move on. Okay, I thank you for your attention and I'll try to be a little more succinct and be prepared to come on a little earlier next month. Thank you, John, thanks. Thank you so much, because this is so important. So absolutely. Nate? Yeah, I was gonna say that on the CHAPA website, the link that John sent, I think there's like about 14 bills and other things and I think there's other. So I agree that having this earlier on the agenda and then if John wants to come back there's a number of ones to discuss. And so yeah, I did that's all I wanna say for trust members that we can send that out again. I think I sent it again today but that document had the link. And then if you go to it, you can go to CHAPA's website and they have a nice summary of each of them and then I'll link the actual text but it will take a bit to read through and digest it all. And I did provide you with a link to all of the bills that are before the joint housing committee but there are well over a hundred bills. So that's really getting into the weeds. The other thing I wanted to point out though is that the transfer fee legislation is not before the joint housing committee. That's before the revenue committee. So you have to be somewhat cautious in trying to be sure that you cover what's important because it all doesn't necessarily come out under the housing rubric. Thank you. Okay, I think we're gonna have to wrap up since it's 909 and Carol is there any announcements? I know we're supposed to also ask the public comment before we adjourn but I feel like we have run out of time and I don't see any hands up. I do wanna just appreciate the fact that more King Jennifer from the CRC and town council and Sam attended throughout the whole meeting are still there. So not seeing any hands up. I think we should, if there are any other announcements before we end, I just have one more last thing. So Carol, I don't know if you have anything. I don't think there are any announcements that you haven't already seen in something that someone sent out and most of them are out things that you could do. So you've seen all of the things that I would have announced. So I'm gonna assume that if you wanted to do any of them you've already figured that out and are doing it or not. No, no, there aren't announcements. Thank you. Nate, could you put up the last item? Yeah, can you enable a share screening, screen chairing, sorry, as the host? Okay, let's see, where do I do that? Sometimes it's easiest just to make him co-host. Yeah, make him a co-host. Yeah, that's right, I have to just go to your name, sorry. I know it was somewhere around here. Thank you, your co-host. All right. All right, well, it's my pleasure. Also, it's with a heavy heart that Carol and I and hopefully all of you will join me in thanking Sid for his extensive commitment, his extensive work in terms of increasing affordable housing here in Amherst. I think Sid, you said you've been on the trust for maybe 10 years? Eight years, I think. Eight years. I did look and I think it was 2017 that you were at least on the website. And so the service that you've provided, the input that you've provided, the perspective that you've given us, it's just really invaluable. So we just wanna appreciate you and appreciate your commitment and appreciate work and appreciate the connections that you have in the community, both at UMass. And we know that you could never speak for UMass, but to give us some insights, not to speak for them, but to give us some insights to help us think about how to create the bridge in a relationship that's meaningful and that can get us moving forward as well as with all the community members that you are very well connected to. So we just wanted to thank you. We wanna recognize you for your commitment. And I also wanna also underscore one last thing, which is that what you said to me today is that you would be willing to continue to serve, but you really believe that we need to have opportunities for others to step forward. And so you're making a space for that. So I wanna thank you for that. Thank you. Well, thank you. Appreciate it. If this is important work, it's, you know, save lives here by doing this type of work. So thank you everyone. It's been an honor to serve in here in this group. And best of luck in all ways at your disposal if you ever need me, ever need any connections with anything. And best of luck to all you guys. Thank you so much. Thank you, Steve. Thanks. Okay. With that, we are gonna close the meeting. We have a lot to discuss at our next meeting. And I just wanna wish everybody a good evening. And I wanna thank everybody for all of your, what you've shared, your commitment to making sure that we do the best work and that we never forget for those people who are struggling to get housing to be housed and to not be housing burdened in terms of either rent or mortgages. So thank you so very much. And we'll see you next month. And please come to the June 30th listening session. Thanks, Sid. Thanks, Sid. Thank you, Sid. Thanks, John. Still in the meeting?