 Will, is that an eye exam you're in front of? Patient of my newborn daughter, eventually learning the alphabet. That's great. Last time I was at the eye doctor, they left the screen up before they came in to check my eye. So I kind of looked at the letters and they said, oh, read that line. I was like, no problem. So we're recording. We have a forum. Paul's here. So I think everyone's here that from the trust. It's great. Paul's here. Yes. Oh, okay. I didn't see him, I guess. Yeah. So we have, um, John, we have you, uh, Sid, Will, Carol, Erica, Erica, Rob and Paul and Tom. Okay, well, um, I think our goal here is to come to an agreement about what we're going to do in terms of moving this program forward. We need to vote in favor of establishing the program and taking $250,000 of trust money. If people are comfortable with that figure and moving it into a position where we can do a request for quotations and get a contractor to administer the program. So I think that's our goal for the meeting. We've got a couple of other items actually. The discussion of landlord forgiveness. I sent out a draft letter to go to landlords this morning. Or, yeah, this morning, which was my way of saying, well, maybe that's one route we can take to voluntary landlord forgiveness of rent. But we'll come to that after we talk about planning for the program. I wanted to start by asking Rita just to go over where we are with the design of the program or the program requirements, since those have changed since the last meeting partly in response to that discussion as well as in in response to other things. Let me read this learn through Shelly Gurring of mass housing partnership, other resources that Shelly put us in contact with related to what other communities are doing. So hopefully we've got the best of what we've learned and I'll leave it over to Rita to talk about some of the changes that she's made. Okay, great. So I'm just going to step through as we kind of go through the the guidelines here issues that were questions that were raised by the trust members the last time and kind of how those were discussed in this second draft of the guidelines. So the first major change is adding a trust commitment of up to $250,000 for the combined cost of program administration and grant funds, and just making a statement that any additional funding would be contingent upon securing funding from other town or state resources. So that's the first one. I did not incorporate the $50,000 maximum program administration which we had talked about because I didn't feel like that really belonged in the program guidelines so much as it would belong in a in the RFQ that would go out to developers. The next just minor tweak of the program guidelines were based on a comment that I had gotten back from Shelly Gehring at MHP who's been doing the training on rental assistance programs and I sent her a copy of these guidelines after I had been in edit after the last meeting. And she pointed out and something that was news to me is that if you look at bullet E there, the draft program can be rental assistance but it can also be utility support. So we wouldn't want to disqualify a household if they were just getting utility support. If they were getting rental assistance then that would be that would be they would be excluded but not if they were just simply getting utility support. So then if we move to the next change was within the income certification section and after thinking this through and kind of talking with Shelly a little bit about it, I had originally included that the maximum subsidy per unit would be calculated that you would first calculate what a family, let's say a household was able to pay something towards the rent, have zero income. And I was suggesting that we calculate what is 35% and then pay them the difference between 35% of their income and then our maximum subsidy amounts and I decided to eliminate that 35% requirement because we're talking about families that are under a lot of stress and it just seemed a financial stress and other stress and it just seemed like a unneeded kind of complication both in doing calculations from the administrator's point of view. And you know we're not paying, we're not going to be able to have the full amount of rent. So why kind of penalize families if they have some income. So I did take that out. In section four went back sort of based on our discussion last week and I think the points were very well taken about we really providing enough money to make a difference for households and as I said last week we're in this difficult position of we can't pay all the rent, we can't afford to pay all the rent for three months for every household that might need it. I don't think there's going to be enough money. So what is a fair amount of money? So I went back and did some research around market rents in Amherst and I gotta say I was kind of taken aback when looking at what rents have gone up to. I'm sort of heard but I haven't ever searched for apartments in Amherst. So I increased these, the per month subsidy to effectively bring the subsidy amount to approximately 50% of what the rent is in a not in one of the new developments in Amherst but one of the kind of more, I don't know what you'd call it, seasoned apartment complexes. I looked at where we might have families and tried to kind of come up what I thought was a fair and approximately 50%. Obviously in some cases this might be less than 50%, it might be more than 50%, but we're trying to achieve some consistency and a figure that's fair and my recommendation was to look at approximately 50%. What that doesn't, you know, probably the one of the toughest areas is in the larger bedroom sizes because you know you can rent four bedroom houses in Amherst and you know the rents are kind of extraordinary. It's again, we're just having to provide some kind of limits and I think we should talk about that some more tonight. On John's recommendation, he really wanted a maximum subsidy per household so that again we could, you know, we could make this, we could assist as many households as possible. So we set that at the greater, you know, $4,000 and so you could go no more than four months although we're initially we're setting this up as a three month program and if there are additional funds then maybe we would go to, you know, an additional month of $4,000. Do you want me to stop with you to want to, like this section and talk about it or do you want to talk about this at the, after I go through all the changes? What's the pleasure of the committee? Do you want me to just keep running through? Yeah, go through. Okay, all right. The next section where there's a major change and we talked about the lottery process, I think there was consensus that yes, a lottery makes sense. And so this is a pretty straightforward lottery approach. Very often, well in most affordable housing developments, both home ownership and rental, there are lotteries that are done and a lot of programs have lots of different buckets within a lottery because you know you might have a little preference in a lottery and you have bedroom sizes and so, you know, it's a fairly complex process running a lottery. In this instance, you know, it's a little bit more straightforward because we're not going to be looking at any kind of local preferences. This program is available to residents, current residents of the town of Amherst. We're not going to be sorting by bedroom size. We're not saying we're only providing X number of dollars for one bedroom units or two bedroom units. What I think the trust members do need to talk about is whether or not there are any priorities that you want to set forth in the lottery which would result in maybe more than one bucket. So the things I immediately came to mind for me were do you want to have a bucket for set a priority for households that have no income and a second bucket for households that have some income. Is there, do you want to have any kind of priority for households with children versus households without children? So that's something that I think should be discussed this evening because it just needs to be incorporated into the lottery process. And those are really the, you know, the big changes kind of based on the discussion from last week. I mean, I just had one question. When you were saying the second release of funds you mentioned that that's, that's in addition to the 250,000. No, what I had been thinking about was that you don't release all the money, release the money in two phases. And the reason for that is that, you know, my concern has been, and I've actually heard it from some folks out there, that you, that you make sure that you, that it's kind of a level playing field for everybody so that, you know, if you have households, let's say, who don't have the who don't get, who haven't been helped to apply for this money. So some people might be within a network where either, you know, a property owner or a management company, you live at South Point Apartments and the landlord's going to know this is going to be available and they, you know, they help a family apply for it. But if we miss households, it's just that, that you get kind of another bite at the apple that if you didn't get in the first, the first time around, and that you would take, let's say you didn't get picked in the first lottery, then you get folded back into that, that you get into the second lottery. But it's just a way of making sure that there's really thorough coverage. You know, we could, we could have a three week application period instead of doing two phases or a month long application period, but my sense is that you want to get this moving, kind of get it rolling, and then it doesn't have to be 50-50, maybe you release, you know, $150,000 initially and then another 50 later. But it was just a way of making sure that for people who aren't quick, that they could come in. Right, right. If they're right, for instance, like if a landlord really wants to be a part of this, they might, you know, like the bigger landlords might already be set up to do this quickly. Exactly, exactly. So then who, I guess my question is who, who decides, you know, for instance, like with the release of funds and you have the lottery process, you're saying the administrator will proceed until the first half of the program funds are awarded and then the process will be repeated, but I guess to me as an applicant, how do you know if you, you know, if you should keep on applying because it's really, you know, we're only doing a two week application process. So is it really only, is it, there's only one two week application process for both release of funds or is there a second application round? So there should be, it should be a second application round. Yes. Okay, that's, that's how I, that's how I thought it would be. Yeah, yeah. To get in, not just another. Yes. Right. Yeah, that's right. And so that should be specified so I can make that. Five days is enough. So we think an administrator can verify the household eligibility within five days. Well, you know, I think we're, we're talking about a pretty straightforward. It is verification process. So, and what I wrote was within five days of the receipt of a complete application. So, yeah, if you have a complete application that it should be pretty straightforward. Yeah. Okay, no, yeah. And I have discussed this, I feel like we should put a priority on families or households with children. But if we're trying in part to prevent homelessness, and one of the things you want to do is keep people in housing, because once they leave housing, it's much harder to place them. And that difficulty is highest, I think, with families with children, the disruption is greatest. And so my thought is that we would have essentially two eligible pools. One would be families with children, and they would go into the lottery first. And we would choose, you know, as many families as we could, until we reached the point where there was still money available, and then we would go into the second pool of people who weren't characterized as families and children, and do that second lottery, not in the second phase, but a second lottery in each phase really with the people who weren't households with children. Does that run afoul of any fair housing laws? There's a question I wanted to know last time, I still, I don't know. Yeah, I don't think so. Households or families with children are a protected class. If we were to do it the other way around, I think we would run into problems with fair housing, Carol, because then we'd be excluding or reducing the chances of families with children. John, if we do that, though, for instance, with local preference, it's capped at 70%. So if we said the priorities for households with families or children, minors, whatever we define it as, we could run the whole program just for that. So if this is a priority category, would we say, you know, up to a certain percentage of the program funds, just because otherwise, you know, that category could deplete the whole program. Right. So, you know, whether it's like 50%, 40%, I don't know, 60%, whatever. I think we need to have a percentage in there if it is a priority, if the trust thinks it's a priority. I think that's a good suggestion. That makes sense to me. Otherwise, I can't imagine we'll all be used up and we should just, as Nate said, just say it's just this program just is for families with children. But I'd rather do it the way Nate suggested. Well, I understand the logic of that. On the other hand, from, again, from my point of view, if the outcome is that we end up only serving families with children, and we reduce the likelihood of homelessness with that group, I would not be disappointed. I guess it seems to me likely enough that if we do it that way, no one except families with children will get it, that I worry that anyone else who applies who isn't the family with children is going to feel like they've been offered something that's fake because they never had a chance anyway. And I would like to avoid that situation. Well, I guess we need to know what other people think. Personally, I like the idea of, of definitely give priority to the people who have children, but I also like the 7030 split. But, but I think that what you say John that families with children should take should have priority. That's my view. Can you say that at least 70% will be families with children. So, so everyone's in the same pool. And if the first 30% are as natural than all the rest of the kids with children, otherwise it would just be just be working up until you have reached the maximum 30% non children families. Yeah, I understand the same way. Yeah, I guess I don't think of that right the mechanics of lottery then but that might work. Yeah, I agree Nate we don't need to get into the mechanics here that would be something for the administrator to file. But if we say okay we want 70% of the of selected applicants to be families with children households with children. And then remainder is 30%. I think we just leave it up to the administrator to run the lottery in a fashion makes that the result. John, Chad is raising his hand. Do you want to allow him to speak. Sure. All right, Chad, you're not, you're live. Hey, Chad, you can speak to muted. There we go. This is the hardest part selection and lottery process. If we had data about the universe of our town and knew which sections had, you know, what percent of the market. We would, you know, apply it equally across the whole market. You know, we could also look at it and say, wait a second, the restaurants and all these retail places have been hit the hardest. Amherst is a bedroom community for Springfield people go to Springfield and work. That's going to be open later. They're going to have more problems. This is the hardest part of the whole process. What are some of the statistics that let us know the sections of our market and how, how much housing is in each section. A good question. John page is some, you know, some unemployment statistics, but it doesn't, you know, equate to or relate to the household type. I mean, it's just, it's just a figure. So we don't know, you know, who's employed, whether or not they're an individual or a household or, you know, for the family or children or a partner. So the other part is sections of the market. What are what are the hardest hit sections of the market, which pieces of the market are going to open latest. So I'm just trying to complicate things for you guys. Sorry. Yeah, I don't think we know the answers to your questions. Maybe we'll get some idea as we see how applications come in. But I think readers structure in which there are two application periods. And maybe we say only 60% of the money that we have available will be spent. We're the first application period. So we reserve a pretty good chunk on case many new people come in in the second period. How will you educate the public about this program. That's partly the administrators problem but I think what we would do, what we'd be doing is going to, first of all, all the landlords in Amherst, and Nate has a list of all the landlords in Amherst so we can do an email to alert them to the program. We can also go to local organizations that serve individuals and families like the survival center, family outreach of Amherst, Craig's doors, Amherst community connections and so forth, and alert them to the program. So what we would do as much as we could imagine would lead us to as many if not everybody who's potentially eligible. Excellent. Is there a particular question we're dealing with right now. I had another question. I just wanted to. I think we should sort of resolve the question about what it does it mean to give priority to households and children and I sounds like with nobody strongly objecting. People would be comfortable with the 7030 split. My suggestion was at least 70%. So could be more. I couldn't be more than 30% without families. And one way of dealing with that in the lottery is that you have. You kind of have the, you have the two buckets you have the families with children in one bucket, everybody else in the second bucket you pick the maximum if you're going to use 70% then you pick up to 70% from the first bucket. Then you can roll all the rest of those families into your second pocket so it doesn't preclude you from picking more families with children they just didn't get picked sort of the first round, but they could conceivably be there. Then put into that second pocket and could be picked in the second pocket. I guess the question is, you're burning the lottery you'd have to be recording subsidy amount to right because it's also it's not just great we did we did it but if you're getting a lot of yes, you know larger bedroom unit someone has to be. Yes, you have to be right. Yes, you have to be doing the calculations, as you're pulling, pulling names. So comfortable with Rob's idea of it. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay, well I guess we'll move forward with that then. It means Tom we could go to the issue you wanted to raise. Yeah, Rita, do you know off the top of your head how this program would, what significant differences it would have with the raft program existing wrap program. You know I don't know raft well enough time that I think we've categorically excluded people who were eligible for for raft I know raft as first and last month and you know it's supposed to be a homelessness prevention program so and it does emergency utility assistance. And this is, you know, this is complimentary in some ways but I, I'm not an expert at all about raft. So and raft has a limited, you know they got I think $5 million and they're hoping to get more money for raft but I don't think the current amount of raft funds will cover only me. My question, what leading up to is, if you had a agency that was administering the raft program and could implement a program in Amherst instantly without any delay by simply folding our money into their raft money and allocating it solely to Amherst renters. You know, so that we would be able to immediately help people out of it may be no administrative, you know, extra costs that just I wonder if we can when we do the solicitation for the contractors. Leave open the discussion, if they were to come in and say we've got a, this is all very nice but we have an alternative proposal that we could implement in a matter of weeks, and we would charge you minimal fees. I think we would be able to do that, making more money available for the tenants. I'd say the minimal fees is a, is a pipe train, but Well, if they're already, if they're already running a program. Yeah, I'm not sure anybody's going to do that. You know, we have certain requirements just Not lead up, but I just wanted to, I just Sure, you know, I We would be willing to listen to a proposal if one were presented or whether we're locked. We finders runs the raft program in this region. So obviously we should be reaching out to them. I think this is part of our process of searching for an administrator. So I think we should do that Tom, and see what they have to say. I'm just saying that when you do the solicitation that you include some language to suggest that we would be open to alternatives if they thought they would be more expeditious. Yeah, my only thought Tom, there would be the trust votes on certain things like a subsidy amount or a local preference for household children. You know, how does the respond and change, I think, usually when the town, you know, goes out for procurement has to be on a, you know, a standard set of You know, elements and so You know, unless, you know, I could see that they might have some, maybe they have some different processes, but I don't mean to me if like they're saying, well, we're just going to do our raft program and give the Amherst money through our raft program. That's not really the same as the program we're setting up. It's, you know, in terms of you know, the target audience or the subsidy amount. So I don't know. Is that what you're asking like they would just essentially deliver raft to Amherst? I've just this program. I mean, I've worked with programs for many, many years and we're setting up something that It's pretty complicated and it's got a lot of moving parts and could take some time to implement and Right, it's only everybody were able to come forward with something that was quicker and cheaper and easier to implement. Would we be interested in hearing about it. Yeah. Well, I think in any event. Whoever the administrator is has to coordinate with raft. I mean, one of the things that I understand is raft has a limitation of people who are at or below 50% area median income. We're up to 80. So we may end up serving a somewhat different economically distressed population if we're between 50 and 80 and they're below 50. So there definitely needs to be coordination. Whether that means that could easily take it over or not. There's a question we can only answer by asking them. I had a question about it seems like a new thing that was added here was households. I'm looking at program guidelines eligible households. Have insufficient income and or assets to cover rent for a three month period. I don't remember the three month period and that's probably even okay but the part that seems really hard is, how are you going to figure out whether someone has an income forecast for three months from the date of application nobody know what is going to happen in the next two weeks, let alone three months. So that seems like just kind of a, I would rather not have a requirement that seems so impossible to do anything with just like, I don't know how anyone is supposed to forecast that. So, I'd rather not have it in there. Yeah, that's less a forecast Carol and an existing at present that you don't have assets. I know that's that's the thing though I mean you don't know I was laid off say, and maybe I'm going to go maybe I'm going to go back to work within that three months maybe I'm not I mean I have no idea I don't know how I would forecast three months. The main kind of income that could be forecasted would be unemployment insurance. So if someone's eligible for that and then getting the extra $600 a week bump. If it's set up under the cares act, then they're, we probably would not want to serve that individual or that family, which I think is the reason for talking about income forecasted. I agree Carol that you can't forecast whether someone's going to be coming back to work after a layoff or after being fired. I don't think that's what we're asking for we're asking where they actually know whether or not they have income coming in the next three months. If they don't, then the forecast is zero. If they do, then as in the example with unemployment insurance, there is an amount that we can talk about. Okay, I'm not I guess I'm not sure how much more information you get by saying that and just saying what's your income now. I think it's trying to get do you have assets now to so that you when you might not have income now but if you had a $10,000 savings account where Okay, you could access those funds that's really what that is supposed to Should we say then if I'm if I'm reading that I don't see I don't I would read that as calculating for you know using Assets It says income and or assets. So does it need to be made more clear. Wait, where does it say that. Yeah, I don't see the word assets either. It says how some it will be calculated based on current household income and income forecast for three months. If you look under program guidelines and eligible households. Yeah, it's up here. It's right there in F. Okay, I think you just have to repeat that. Okay, just repeat it in the other part. Okay, okay. Okay. Yeah, Carol I think it's a funny thing but you know on like business Business loans through block ran or other things they're all they're all kind of doing a kind of just a kind of a litmus test of what your income is and they're trying to do, you know, rather than just say what is it now a lot of them are using a three month forecast. Just to show that there is an impact from from COVID so I agree it's a little difficult and, you know, on a lot of webinars I've been sitting on on people ask the same question well you know, I don't know what's going to happen in a month how do I do a forecast and you know, so it's kind of like you know do you anticipate anything if not then it really might be that there's not you know you don't have any income to report for the next three months but at least you know we're kind of taking it on fate we're not asking them to supply anything. Well, actually that leads me to another question I had which was, when I look at the timeline of this like somebody might get money in July. I don't want to have been kicked out of their apartment because there can't be any evictions right now. But people who are going to help, can they use this money for a rears rent because probably they couldn't pay rent between now and whenever this and whenever they get the money. It may not so three months of forecast may actually be if you go from when they were not able to pay rent anymore maybe the past three months not the next three months. And really I don't mean to connect the two what I wonder is, can and what difference would it make to the program description but can this money be used to pay the rent that you already weren't able to pay. So that's a good question. There are some communities that are doing that. That's not specified here it's been it's been looked at kind of projecting forward, but it could go back you know to, you'd have to decide what is that you know what is the starting point when they not be able to start paying rent so was it. You know, when did people lose their jobs I don't know March 1 when did layoffs begin so you'd have to pick a point certain and say you could go back. You know, you could have somebody that wasn't paying their rent in January of February but they were still working. If you said, if you have rent in a rears back to March 1 or something or other because that's when this all started lambing people in March and April. Because I don't, it's going to be weird for a landlord to agree I'll accept this month, this July, August and September one grant or whatever, but even though you still haven't paid me for March, April, May. Most people, most people who collect money for anything want to apply it first to the oldest debt and then work their way up. So that's a question what if I'm just a question so you know knowing the right terms and Amherst would are we asking for tenants to provide a lease for instance what if they what if the lease expires. You know, in June. Or in August you know those are likely the likely times are we. We're asking where they, you know, do they have a new lease or if they have a new house we're just saying will help you with, you know, your expenses right so we're not really concerned if their lease has been renewed or if they have a new lease it's really just. Well, they're staying in the program is dependent on having their having a lease for an agreement with the landlord. If that leaser agreement ends on a certain date. Then, you know, I would hope interest of housing stability that they would be able to continue to stay. They'd have a new lease and therefore they, the landlord could continue to receive the rent subsidy from us. What kind of application would we need that from someone. I mean I just, I feel like that a lot of leases expire in June, probably. Yeah, so we probably need, you know, when the application from the, yeah, the agreement with the landlord. But I'd like to get back to Carol's question because I think that's that's something we should resolve. I guess, I guess I always thought that maybe we were dating it as of March 1 or whenever things started happening because, you know, the renters are still they're collecting or I mean they're, you know, they're collecting a rears they're not that you know they're not, you know, any rent they haven't paid is just stacking up so to me it's I mean money's fungible so I don't know maybe we have a start date. I think that should be in the, in the program guidelines. Let the April 1. Because you should have paid your month, your paid your March rent on March 1 before the start. Seems like April 1 April is the first month that you might not have been in. If you're affected by COVID. So the rental, we could use them, they can use the money to pay rental arrears going back three or four months from the date of the award. I think it'd be cleaner if we said, you know, as of April 1. Yeah, I think the landlord can develop, you know, could write a statement as to, you know, for that. And then with me. My only hope is that while the landlord still can't evict them because of the new state eviction law. And I guess any money that we give them is a way of preventing eviction when that law expires. Right. OK. So David. Back to April one. I support April one. I do as well. Just go to let folks know that I have to live in the latest five minutes. We have another meeting. I gotta get a clock that I absolutely have to be. Dank fantastic meeting. Okay. Well, have we wrapped up changes in the program requirements? Are there any other comments on what Rita has presented? I just have a really quick question. If you could go where the rents are. Um, so you said up to three months, but if someone has a hundred, I mean, a thousand 100 three months is going to be more than 4,000. It's 4,400. Yeah, I don't know if we need to have that greater than four months since we, at this point, we only have a three hunts program. Okay. Just leave it at three months. That out. Yeah. Yeah, that confuses me a little too. Yeah. Okay. Any other comments or questions? Yeah, what about, um, What about a low income homeowners who can't make a mortgage? Is there any program for them? There is. I mean, there's the other programs, Rob, but this is not for that, I guess. Yeah. At any event, um, there are restrictions on CPA money, which make it more difficult for us to use this as a mortgage subsidy program. So we're, I don't see we're stuck with, but what we're best able to do with CPA money is a rental assistance program. Yeah, homeowners can, you know, basically. It's a hundred and eighty days. They can not pay it. And they just put it on the end of their mortgage. Um, so there is that, that program. Um, it also applies. I learned this week that, um, a homeowner occupied, um, units of four units or less. So, you know, if there's a four unit building with a home owner and they rent three, they also qualify for that mortgage, um, program. So, you know, they, you know, they could, you know, it's just, you know, it'd be great if they had rental assistance too, but then they, you know, actually they, because they have a mortgage relief, they don't have to pressure tenants to pay rent. Um, I mean, they said my want to, but you know, I don't know how many homeowners know of that. It's one of those things that, you know, it's all in the detail of the, the legislation and everything. I don't know how broadly all that stuff is getting out there. So Rita, um, how many, uh, um, renters do you think this will benefit? Depending on how, if we do the 200, I forget what the number was, John, 250. 50, but assuming 50 of that might be for administration. Okay. So 200,000. What would be your estimate of people being served? You know, Paul, I really have no sense because I don't know if we're going to get all three bedroom units. I mean, it really depends upon, um, what the, what the demand is. And I, I don't, you know, anecdotally, I tried to talk to a few people just like the Amherst family outreach. I mean, they were talking about, um, families that they're already seeing. So, but I didn't, they didn't have specifics on, on, um, on bedroom size, you know, sort of a breakdown. It's, uh, I don't know. I tried, I, I did, I tried to like run some numbers. And I thought I'm just operating in a void of information. So hard to. Well, is there a range that you could estimate? Not without getting pulling up my calculator. I think we should know that. I just did my calculator. If you tell $200,000 and divide it by $3,300, which is the most a family could get you. That's how many year old families, 60, 60. Yeah. That was everybody at the maximum, right? Yeah. So that's, so you won't serve fewer than 60 families. If the administration stuff doesn't cost more than $50,000. Right. And do we know what the need is by any chance? We don't. And yeah, related to that, if it's less than 60 is the, is the administrative fee going to still be 50,000 is going to be 50,000. Whether it's 10 families or 60 families. Yeah. So it's based on the dollar. It's an interesting question actually, but, um, my guess is if we put 250,000 and someone is going to estimate, okay, well that 250,000, you know, part of that is the administration money and part of it's the subsidy money. And then the war goes to whoever has the lowest subs, you know, administration money. So, you know, someone's going to be doing the same thing we're doing. Okay. You know, I mean, I came up with you, you know, 80 families, right? You know, depending on how the breakdown works. So it's kind of up to the administrator to say, okay, well, my administration fees 25%, I'm going to quote 50, you know, my administration fees 20%, I'm going to do something less, you know, or whatever the numbers are. So it's really, it's independent of how many households are helped. It's really based on the dollar, the program dollars. Right, but what if all the dollars don't go out? Is there any chance that all the dollars won't go out? But we'll still have to pay the entire administrative fee of 50,000. Partly the dollars won't go out. I think if we exhaust, don't exhaust the dollars with the three month program, then we would allow applicants to come back and ask for an additional three months. So I think one way or another, the dollars are going to go out. I mean, the information about levels of unemployment. Problems families had paying rent even before the COVID-19 pandemic started to hit us. Suggest to me that we're going to be more likely overwhelmed than underwhelmed by applicants. But you don't know it's a risk. And I should say we're talking about the risk. If we put $250,000 into it, that's $250,000 excuse me, that we might not get back easily. Right. You know, there's concern now about what's happening with the CPA program statewide and whether the towns are going to get much of a match. They were originally promised in the legislative budget that they get a higher match than they have in the past. But with the revenue situation being problematic for the state, that may not happen. So we don't know what kind of CPA money will be available in the future. So I have to say that on the one hand, I was thinking when we did this, I'm not sure that we're going to have a lot of money to get back to the city. But I'm not sure that we're going to have the $250,000 to get back to us next year. Frankly, I'm not so certain about that right now. Rob, your question. I mean, here's the. The contractor scope about, you know, there's program payments and reporting. I was just thinking we need to have everything's monthly. Maybe we just make the contractor invoices to the town monthly. And so, you know, we're saying, we're talking to contractor, but we're not going to be able to do that. So we're not going to have to spend that. It's just based on invoices. So. The idea would be that they, you know, we'd only pay knowing that participants are getting service. So. That's not to say we, we'd spend all the administration dollars and not going all the money out, but I'd like to think that it would, you know, it would correlate. costs that have to be front loaded. Like marketing. An application intake because you could have 500 applications and then, you know, only a hundred people are eligible. That sort of thing. So that's, you know, that's something we have to, we have to think about of just not, not having it evenly, like 33%, because you have more, more costs initially. We would we, we wouldn't have here something about in this area or in the program guidelines to Rob's point about having something, you know, documentation of, of, you know, like complete, you know, participation before final payment to administrator. I don't know. I mean, I mean, I think we're getting into the contract stuff with the administrator that that town needs to be looking at kind of what standard practices with this sort of thing. Usually, yeah, we usually break down like maybe a few different payment percentages. Right. So, so I don't think that's, I think that's, that's a good, good point. I don't think the trust needs to specify what the, what the contract, what's in the contract. Yeah. I mean, I think Rob, to your point, though, the only thing I could see happen is if, you know, the dollars don't round out, right? We don't know how the lottery works and then what the subsidy amount is. So it's a maximum subsidy amount. There could be different subsidy amounts. So, you know, it's kind of up to the administrator, the math and see if they can, you know, make the money work, right? They get it all spent out. Well, with the first round, we're not too worried about that. It'll happen when they do the second round of applications to obviously spend the money as closely as possible to the maximum. But again, I don't think that's something we need to worry about now. Right. So are there further questions about this program or things that people think need to be changed? Are we comfortable voting to take $250,000 and ask and trust money and put it toward this program? Can I ask just one other question, which is how much money does that leave the housing trust with, if any? It probably leaves us with a little over $100,000. Is that right, Nate? As I say, around $150,000. Some of that money is for consultant fees and consulting and then there's the general development pot that the trust has. So the trust has almost $450,000, I think, in just general developments. But I think trust wouldn't have a lot of money after this. So there's still some. The trust voting this is saying a priority. And then, like John said, it's continuing to ask CPA for other money. I think the value of the trust is that we don't need necessarily a council vote in a big process if we want to move this forward. But it does, for instance, say a project all of a sudden came out of another project, really need some money that trust would have to consider. Do we put the rest of our resources to something else too? Thank you. I'd like to add, I think the trust should be voting this. I support this. I think the trust should expect to vote this because it's a high priority and not expect reimbursement. If we're voting it based on that, I think that's not, we should really have that conversation. But I think this is a high priority. We should vote the funds not expecting to be reimbursed, but hoping that we do get reimbursed and refresh our funds. Will you have something you wanted to say? I thought. Oh, I was mostly just expressing my support for the program. Okay. I support the program too. It's an immediate need. And our focus has always been on reducing the possibility of homelessness. And right now, the situation is so dire for so many families. And I agree that prioritizing families, especially single households too. I think this is really important. And I, I support it. Okay. Are we ready to come to a vote then? Okay. There's a motion to support this program, the amount of $250,000 and ask the 10 to move it forward as expeditiously as possible. So moved. I second it. Okay. So I guess we need a roll call since on the air or whatever. So I'll start with myself and say I vote in favor. Let's see. How do we do this? I can see on my screen. Paul, how do you vote? Yes. Will, how do you vote? Yes. Tom? Yes. Rob? Yes. Yes. Now I'm missing Carol. Yes. Erica. Yes. And do we lose Sid? He left, I think. Yeah, I think he had to leave for another meeting. Did I miss anybody? Yourself, John, I guess? Yeah, I did say myself first. Yes. Okay. So basically we have everybody who's now here in favor. And I'm sure Sid would have been in favor, but I can't vote for him. Okay. So there are a couple of other things for us to look at. Last time there was a question about whether there's a way to get landlords to forgive rent based on the fact that we're contributing. And so I heard that and was thinking about it and decided that the only thing I could come up with is to send a landlord to a letter. This would happen after an agreement was signed between the tenant, the landlord, and the town. So basically the deal was sealed. And then soon thereafter, as possible, a letter of this would go to the landlord. It could be signed by me. It was also suggested it might be signed by Paul or it might be signed by both of us. So what does anybody think of this approach? I will say I had a conversation with Nancy Schroeder about this. And I assume Nancy's not on the call. And Nancy was honestly skeptical that landlords, given the fact that they've been hit pretty hard by losses of revenue with the fact that students aren't around and many of them appear to have walked away from their existing leases, would make it more difficult for landlords to do this. That's not to say we shouldn't ask, but it does mean we may not be doing something that is going to work out. And as Nancy suggested, it may even annoy some people. I think unless you can build it into the program, I wouldn't bother. I mean, if we get one of the, one idea was if we get a whole bunch of things, we have to choose from people not to, if a landlord is saying, well, I'll take 80%, that would raise this up to a higher level in terms of awarding funds. Yeah, but you can't, you can't do that if you've got a program and people are expecting they're gonna say, wait a minute, there's a rule that you didn't write down that said that, you know, unless you can build it into the program and provide incentives and things, I wouldn't bother asking a voluntary contribution, John. Okay. Well, that's why I offered it up. It's not something that we're required to do, but I thought I would at least operationalize the idea and see what people think. Yeah, I think, you know, Tom, this was also, I get it, it is tricky. Someone was also getting at, you know, could we help prevent eviction, right? If the rental subsidy is a stopgap measure, is there anything else we could do? But I agree, landlords may not find this, you know, maybe skeptical and not take this too kindly, but they're running a bit. I was going to say also, there are lots of landlords who don't like to rent to families. And so I think this is, you know, these landlords who are renting to families are probably a little bit more, you know, giving. So I don't know. Yeah, I would say too that they're probably struggling themselves. Well, it sounds like the sentiment is not to go to try to get landlords to provide voluntary rent reductions. I don't know. I'm kind of of the mind that, I mean, the way that the letter is written, it's not particularly, it's not offensive to me, granted, you know, the rental market, it sounds like pretty voluntary, talking about partnership, you know, recruiting people to join the effort to, it's like, I don't really see a, I don't see the cost in sending it personally, but that's just me. I am kind of the same place will is, although I might be inclined to write it so that it doesn't ask so much for a specific amount of reduction, but any reduction, but some amount of reduction. So if somebody can't do a whole match what we're doing, but they could do a little, that'd be better than nothing. And if it's written to me, if it's written kind of like it is, like, gee, this is a request, and if there's anything you can do, it would be, it would greatly help us be able to help more people. I don't, but I don't, I don't know the rental market either. I don't want to make somebody particularly angry, but if it has no strings attached, because if things already been done, you already got the money you can get from us, we're just asking if there's any way that you can help. But I'm also happy to go with whatever everybody else thinks. John, Janet McGowan has raised her hand. Would you honor the speaker? Have the trust still speak on this a bit? Sure. Now we can invite Janet. All right, Janet, I'm going to allow you to talk. I think you're all set. If you unmute yourself. Hi, Janet, if you unmute yourself, I can try to unmute you as well. Oh, I got it. I got it. Okay. My weak skill. I just appreciate all the effort that is going into this. And I actually think this is a good idea. And I speak partly as a landlady myself, where I really value the stability and not having to, you know, have people move out and keep people in, and I recognize that this is, I'm providing in my small, in my two-family house is homes for people. And, you know, I think about their lives too, not just, you know, rent and what I can get. And so I think that if you just ask, and also it's a business. And so ask if you want to lower the rent, you know, with the idea that the town is providing some money and people are in bad shape. I don't think that would make me angry. I could just, I might feel bad saying no, like no, I need that missing piece. But I think it's, it's, I don't think this would hurt people's feelings or enrage them or anything. But I do think it's a good idea. And landlords are probably, especially in Amherst, really wanting to keep tenants in their homes. If you're already having problems with student rentals leaving, their goal is, you know, keeping as many people as possible. And the other thing is nobody really wants to go after missed rent. And so that's a really torturous process that probably doesn't lead too much. You know, you could be in housing court or you could be in small claims court trying to get money from people. And maybe the pitch is, hey, we can, you know, if you shrink it down, we're helping people get through this hard time. And at the end of it, you go back to the regular rent. I think that's pretty compelling. And so my pitch would be just there's something wrong with asking people can just say no, if they don't, if they're not comfortable with it. So that's it. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks, Janet. Thank you. Following up on what Janet said, I think at the end of this, at the end of three months or however long it lasts, I presume there'll be a report, you know, we helped X number of families with 200,000 or 300,000 whatever comes to be of subsidies. If the landlords can, you know, kick in 10% or 20%, then we can report a greater amount of subsidy. You know, they report to us, well, we reduced the rent by $100 for 20 families. That's another $20,000 that we were able to leverage. That's a good point. Chad has a comment, John. I'm going to let him speak. Sure. All right, Chad, you're able to speak. Just my thought that the landlords are also permitted relief from the federal government as far as being businesses. Okay. Well, I can change the text of the letter. I think consistent with Carol suggested to make it for next month by an equal amount or a smaller amount. So that softens it a little bit or doesn't make the bar so high for working with us. Well, at first I thought sentiment was swinging against this. Now it seems to be moving perhaps more in favor. Why don't we, I'll move that we include sending out this letter as part of the program. And is there a second? I second it with all the changes that were recommended. Right. Okay. So now we'll pull our group and see whether people think it's worth doing or not. What are we voting on, John? Exactly. We're voting on whether to send this letter as amended under the circumstances that I described before, that is after a rental agreement between the landlord and the town and the tenant have been reached. So time for discussion. I was going to bring up, have we identified who's sending the letter? Is it just the trust or is it the town and the trust or how are we managing that? Paul, what do you think about that? I think it's more powerful coming from the trust actually. Does it probably pay in taxes to the town? They hate that doing that. So the trust is a better source and it's going to extend the trust money anyway. Okay. So that resolves that question. Thanks, Nate. So let's do a voter of the group and decide whether to move forward with this or not. Nate, well, I just, I see people on the screen. So I'll just start with Will. Yes, I'm in favor. Carol. Yes. Rob. Yes. Paul. Yes. I'm losing people on screen. Erica. Yes. Tom. Yes. And I'll vote in favor. Yes. Is there anybody opposed or anybody I missed? Okay, then we resolve that. I had one other question really, and that is whether we should ask town council to not so much approve, but say, okay, we like the fact that you're doing this program because it's trust money. We have the authority to do that without asking for their approval. So we don't need to go to them. We can do it in a way that doesn't necessarily hold us up. I guess, and I'm assuming they would approve it and that would be a good thing for them and for us. On the other hand, I suppose the have to ask what the consequences are if they say no, I don't think you should do this. So I'm inclined to do it to try to get it on their calendar as soon as we can. Hopefully they don't refer to committee. May I suggest that you just write them and say, and we're doing this and not ask for permission? I think time is of the essence for this. We've got people who are going to be missing rent payments. And I think they would tend to support it, but if you're asking them to vote on something, which I don't think you should be doing, it's not their role. But I think that they should certainly be informed about what the trust is doing. Okay, we'll definitely do that then, rather than seeking their approval or recognition or whatever. I did put up an implementation schedule draft. I think that anything significant on there we've already covered, but again, I don't know if this is exactly the way it works, but maybe it can be expedited a little bit. I don't know how much. I just wanted to give people a chance if they had to ask questions about the implementation schedule. It includes in it, in italics, an assumption that we may eventually get additional money into the program through the Community Preservation Act Committee. I know I've talked to Nate Buddington and he's interested. The problem is the uncertainty about CPA funds, even those that were allocated last year. There may be a problem and it may be that CPAC will have to revisit its recommendations for last year. They did have some money theoretically available for housing that could go to this. But again, I think there's uncertainty with the state budget and as a consequence, Sonia Aldrich is not comfortable at this point having the committee meet and really do go through this exercise, which I can understand. Nonetheless, I kind of optimistically put a play forward in the calendar. I have a question about if it seems both maybe overly complicated and also like it would not be maybe the incentive you would want to give to whoever the administrator you pick in the first place is to have the whole thing go out for another request for proposal things if you get more money. When somebody's already set up to do it, if they've been doing it well there may be some law that makes this impossible. But I would like to see that whoever got the first one is at least prime candidate to just keep on keeping on with the program if there's more money and not have to go through the whole process over again. It seems like a disincentive to anybody who took it on in the first place and a lot of extra work for everybody else. But I don't know about the legalities of it. From talking to Nate and he can clarify further, if we go through an RFQ process, which is an expedited process, we can't later amend the contract for a significant amount of additional dollars. Yeah, there's public procurement has some restrictions on that. I mean we could tighten the timeframe in a way that it makes it more difficult for the people who aren't implementing a program to be able to respond and meet the timeline. But you know the idea is we can't, I mean without knowing that these funds are available or will be available, I don't think the trust could put it out saying you know it's a $500,000 program because we just don't know that they're there. So I know really it'll be two separate programs. I agree, I mean it's things we'd have to go through a whole other procurement process. But if we find that the first one's working well and we like the rental amounts and the way the administrator is working, we can try to expedite it. But we still have to do some type of procurement. Okay. Okay, any other questions related to the schedule? Okay, then I think we're wrapped up as far as discussion of the emergency program is concerned. I certainly thank everybody for coming back to this a week after you had also a very thorough discussion. We had a couple of other items that you had on the agenda, Nate. I just, has there been a vote on the overall program? Did we vote? I mean we took a vote, but I just want to make sure that was on, was it on everything or was it? From the notes, it's both approving the program and the allocation, but it would be better to separate those votes. But that's up to John. Well, I don't know exactly why when I thought about it. I think you're allocating $250,000 for a particular program. So it makes sense to vote for both at the same time. Yeah, we think that's clear. Yeah. All right. Okay. Then the other items that we had on the agenda. I know there was discussion last time about UMass residential development based on an exchange of emails that I had with Tony. And there was a question about inviting Tony and or Nancy to our next meeting to update us and talk about response questions. I haven't done that, but I could do that. Just a point of order, John. This meeting was specifically for dealing with the emergency around the funding and our next regular meeting was going to pick up where we left off on the rest of the items. Okay. Yeah. And I think this was included, Tom, just so John knows, if he does invite Tony and Nancy back, what would they be asked to present or if there's anything the trust really wants them to come back with? Well, hearing no comments, I also will say I don't have anything that I'm prepared to discuss about legislative issues at this time. The biggest news was the eviction news, which I think everybody is familiar with. So I don't think there's a need to prolong the meeting, Tom. I agree. Is there anything anybody else wants to add as a last comment? Well, just quickly, would we ask Tony and Nancy to come to the next regularly scheduled meeting and discuss, you know, the student housing projects or do we want to push it off a meeting in the trust's meeting pretty shortly? So I don't know, you know, we had said May 14th, John, at 6 p.m., is that still good for everyone? Not that we have to invite you, Mass then, but May 14th as a regular scheduled meeting. I don't think there's any clarity on what the university is doing. They're not going to know anything more in two weeks than they know now. So I wouldn't suggest you invite them in. It's just going to be saying that we don't know. Well, that's part of the problem. Always that they keep saying that they don't know and they're waiting for others to tell them what the program's going to be. And we thought maybe since they have professed to be deeply caring about the affordability of the project that we might get them to proactively define what they mean by affordability before the developers tell them what they want them to do. That's all. Yeah. Well, sorry. Someone else wanted to say something? Well, I'll invite Tony and Nancy and say we'd like to talk about the issue of affordability and if they feel they are not in a position to talk about it or anything else related to these projects prospectively, then I guess we'll put it off till a later date. Okay. Any other last comments? Nate, you look like. No, our chat just raises hand. Allow Chad to talk. Yeah, just announcements. 132 Northampton and East Street School. There are no real announcements on either of those. I think for the East Street School, we need to contract for an analysis of the wetlands and also the hazardous materials in the building. Nate's in the process of doing that for 132 Valley is preparing a special permit that will go before the ZBA. I assume sometime next month, but it's a little uncertain. The ZBA is just getting training actually earlier today because they have a lot of new members. So there was training on their responsibilities and how to process applications, I guess. That training actually was being recorded online. So if anybody is interested in it, there'll be a link on the town website somewhere. And it might be interesting to take a look at it. I'm sorry. I just meant for the next agenda. Oh, I haven't thought about our agenda for the next meeting. I've just kind of gotten myself together to prepare for this one, Chad. So I don't have anything to say about that at this time. I'm sure we'll have a report back on how we're moving ahead on the short-term rental assistance program. Whether we're going to have Tony and Nancy, we'll see what comes up. Hopefully we'll have heard that there are new contracts for the analysis of the East Street school property, including the building and also for Strong Street, since I'd like to be able to move ahead if we can with those projects. But we'll see where we are in a few weeks. Thank you. Okay, are we ready to adjourn? All those in favor of adjourning say aye. I think the ayes have it. Okay, so thank you for participating. Great to see you all. Chad, you didn't have to look for a new housing trust here. Thank you. Thank you to the people who worked on all this stuff between just one week and brought it back to us this week also. Thank you to them. Thanks. Thank you very much. Yeah. Have a good evening.