 Okay, I think, I think that's the signal Linda. Good afternoon. I'm Linda spink and Amherst Stabers board member. And I'd like to welcome you to the day session on the future of housing and Amherst. It's wonderful to have so many of us here today for this very timely and important topic. And I'm excited about a very lively discussion that I'm sure will ensue after our comments from our speakers. Some of you I know are members of Amherst neighbors, but for those who aren't I'd like to share a bit about us. Amherst neighbors is a member led, no fee nonprofit organization that helps to build neighbor to neighbor connections and offers volunteer services and programs to adult older adults who wish to live their lives independent and socially engaged within their communities. And in Amherst or Pellum is welcome to join as a member as a volunteer, or both. We've found that sometimes a helping hand is all someone needs to live independently. So members who are 55 and older can request services that make life a bit easier, such as rides to appointments curbside pickups for groceries, friendly visits in house chores. And some like gardening are examples of how we can provide that little assistance to make life a bit easier. We also provide programs, much like this one that entertain and educate and connect members to members. That's through like say our monthly coffee chats and gatherings are annual picnics and social gatherings. We have a first Thursday speaker series. Today is the third of that such series. We have a bunch of groups for people who are wanting to hike and buy or see movies and talk about them. And we have much more. To date, most of our virtual events have been virtual, but we'll be developing more in person events as we can. As we know that all of us could use good referrals for reliable contractors and so we provide to our members access to a list of member recommended service providers for such tasks as landscaping help or yard work or snow shoveling, or even professional services such as legal assistance and health care providers, something that allows you to make informed choices about people you might need to help you outside of the general assistance that we provide. We have a list served now where members can share information and resources directly with each other. Again, ways to communicate stay connected and build those connections over time through helping each other. I invite you to check out our website for a listing of upcoming events and consider becoming a member of Amherst neighbors and be part of your community in this way. In the chat, you'll find a document that provides more details and has a link to our website. So please check that out when you now or after the session. Speaking of the chat. If you'd like to receive handouts and resources from today's sessions. Please put your name or type your name into the end email into the chat itself. We'll get the information back to you after the sessions over. I can assure you that the information you put into that will not be shared with others so feel free to put your name and email in the chat. We're especially excited today to be presenting today's session with our co sponsors, the town of Amherst, the League of Women Voters of Amherst, the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust, and the Amherst Affordable Housing Advocacy Coalition. I'd like to thank all of them for helping to make this session possible and for their vital work in our communities. It's now my pleasure to introduce Linda Slakey, our moderator for this event today. She'll be introducing our speakers guiding us through the session and taking questions as appropriate giving us information on how you might interact with your questions. We're turning the program over to Linda, however, I'd like to share a little information about her. Currently, she's the chair of the Amherst Community Land Trust, which assists slow and moderate income households and purchasing homes in Amherst. Over her career at UMass, she was chair in the Department of Biochemistry, Dean of the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, and Dean of the Commonwealth Honors College. She's an insulting practice, working with universities on projects that support faculty in adopting teaching practices that reflect on what we know about how people learn. We're very fortunate to have her with us today. And I'd like to thank her for moderating this session, and I'd like to thank all of the panelists that you'll be meeting a little bit later. Linda, I open it to you and everybody, welcome to a fabulous session. I know you're going to learn a lot and be connected in different ways to the housing issues in Amherst. Thank you, Linda, for that kind introduction. And since you opened for us, no one introduced you. So let me rectify that by sharing a little bit about you. I suspect the Amherst Neighbors Group already know you well, but we have attendees, I think, from a number of interest groups. So, to all of the rest of you, Linda Spink is a founding board member and a mainstay of the program committee of Amherst Neighbors, and she's in that heading that committee responsible for this afternoon's program. Similar to her retirement, she was the executive director of the Insight Meditation Center in Barrie. So, thank you for getting us started, Linda. So, yeah, you should see on your screen now, an agenda. You've heard from the two lenders, I'll stop in a minute. You're subsequently going to hear from John Hornick, who's going to give an overview of the status of affordable housing in Amherst. Donna Hancock, who's going to speak in a more personal level about what's available as affordable housing, especially for older adults in Amherst. The vice will be talking about specifically the housing needs of older adults who are without housing. And then we'll hear from John again, sharing with us some specific plans for an affordable housing development that would focus on older adults. And then we'll welcome Mary Beth Okulowicz, who will be responding to the things that she's heard as well as sharing some of her own perspectives. And I'll introduce each one of the speakers as they begin. So let me turn now to introducing John Hornick. He has a wide range of professional positions in higher education in state mental health over the years. Among many research projects, he led a HUD funded study of strategies for improving homeless people's access to benefits and services. In the relative to today's discussion since 2016, he served on the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust and he now serves as the chair of that group. So John, we'll go on to your overview of the housing situation in Amherst. Thanks very much, Linda. I have a set of slides and I'm going to try to march through them fairly quickly so that we don't. I don't take up too much time from the other speakers. Basically, I'm going to offer up some facts, some information about trends and some thoughts about the future. So next slide please, Nate. Thank you, Donna. I got that. Okay. I have two quotes here. The first this town suffers from a severe housing shortage. We want to be welcoming and livable city, but people of all ages backgrounds and occupations are struggling to keep or find a home here. Children can't afford to live here. People who work here can't afford to move here. Seniors can't afford to stay. A combination of high land prices, restrictive zoning, an unpredictable often lengthy permitting process and neighborhood opposition to new multifamily development is making it very hard to build the kind of housing we need. I really could have said that about Amherst, but in fact it comes from something somebody said about the city of Newton. So, this is not just an Amherst problem. This is not just the Newton problem, but many of the cities and towns and Massachusetts and elsewhere are blessed or challenged by these kinds of problems. On the next slide, let's see. Briefly, there are three main factors which I'll talk about that explain why we're in this situation. First, there have been significant population changes that create demand for housing. Second, there's a lack of housing production so we don't have enough places to meet the demand. And finally, increasing the demand has been the growth of UMass enrollment over the years. So let's move to population changes. This slide only goes through 2010. We wanted to go through 2020, but unfortunately the data that we needed won't be available to the end of this month. So we'll update it then, but for now, this is what we think we know. Let's see. I left out the legend. The top line basically is the population that's 18 to 24. So that is your student population. Not everybody 18 to 24 is a student, but the majority of those people are. And you can see they are far and away the largest group in Amherst. If you drop down to the bottom line, those are people, I think it's over the age of 65. And what you see is a steady increase in the number of older people in our community. So then there are a few other things that are of interest here. One is what's happening to adults who are 22, sorry, 25 to 45. I think that's the line which is the dashed yellow observations and that group's been declining. Similarly, right below them is a line in red that's dashed. That's the population of zero to 17. So basically we have a community in which young people and families with young children have been disappearing or did just been disappearing over the 20 years from 1990 to 2010. And everything indicates that that's continuing to happen. So, those, those really are not positive trends for the community. Next slide is interesting. It doesn't necessarily have to do with housing but since the data were available. I thought I should at least comment briefly on it. The top line is the white population of the community. And you can see that in the last decade, this does include the decade 2010 to 2020. The size of that population has been going down. At this point about 675% of the population of Amherst is classified as white. And the other non-white or minority populations have been rising, including at the very bottom a small number of people who are mixed racial and ethnic origin. So Amherst is changing to become a more diverse community. It's interesting that speaks for Amherst. But if you look at similar data for the communities that immediately surround us. It shows population to remain large, largely white. You're talking about 80 to 90% of their residents being white and not a lot of new population influx from other people. Okay, moving along. So we getting a look at population changes. I mentioned that there hasn't been a lot of housing production. In this slide you'll see from a period from 1970 to 79. And even the 10 years earlier, there was a huge amount of housing production in Amherst. That represents the growth of the university. A lot of this was housing in order to meet the needs of new faculty and staff who were being hired during this period. And there's huge growth there in a number of parts of town. Then you see that growth really drops down significantly in the following 10 years and continue to drop down so that between the years 2000 and 2009. This slide shows only 200. I think it's 27. I'm not sure. New houses over that 10 years. It's a little over 20 new units a year. And then finally, in the last 10 years, we've had some growth in housing, a little over 1000. And in the past year 2020 we had another 242 units. And what's the significance of this? Basically, while demand was increasing in the community, because of population changes overall demand, housing production simply wasn't keeping up. And so anything we've built in the last 10 years, or build next year or the year after is really an effort to keep up. And we need to do much more than we've been doing in order to manage that. Next slide. University residential planning. You can't talk about housing in Amherst without talking about housing at the university. The university now has an enrollment of roughly 28,000. That doesn't include various off campus programs would add a few thousand more students. On campus the university has roughly 14,000 residential unit. So the difference is about 14,000. That means that you have about 14,000 every year who are looking for housing off campus. And it's important to say that in many cases, it's not just an individual student looking for housing, but it could be students and family members, since there are a fair number of students who come to Amherst with their families. The university has some announced plans to replace some existing housing and to build a little bit at the same time, but the truth is the actual number of new units is net about 400. There's honestly very little going on at the university. And this is where their plans stand today, and mostly the announced plans are stuff that, frankly, they have yet to break ground on. Never mind thinking about something else. Next slide. The university is extraordinarily important. The university of the university as an academic institution of course that's what it is. But it's also the largest landlord in Amherst. If they've got 14,000 units on campus, that makes them far and away, the biggest provider of housing, certainly in Amherst and probably in the Connecticut River Valley, or at least north of Hartford, and Springfield. And so as student enrollment increases, and it outstrips the demand for housing on campus people move off campus. And so we have a huge impact, economic impact on the housing market in Amherst and beyond. It creates problems not only for students, but for people who work for the university, people who work for the town and people who work for local businesses, because they can't find a place to live that is near where they work or where they go to school. Next slide. So briefly, older residents in Amherst that were aged out of child raising. Remember all those units, maybe 2000 that were built from 1970 to 1980. Those people are still there. They remain a significant part of the town's residential population, although many of them no longer have children. The lack of housing production, it's been a big problem, although it picked up in the last few years. And finally, overall university enrollment growth has significantly outpaced on campus residential growth since 2000. Moving along, one way to think about this that I like is remembering my childhood game we used to play called musical chairs. And I'm sure almost everybody remembers this game. Essentially, the players walk around a set of chairs while the music is going on. And when the music steps, everybody has to get into a chair. And with each round, a chair is taken away. But, and also people who can't find a chair taken away until finally you're left with one or two players at the end. What you have in Amherst now is adding players to this game, but not adding chairs. And so musical chairs is not fun for people who need housing in this community. Okay, going further next look a little bit more at the consequences. A lot of these consequences are individual. The Amherst Community Land Trust, of which Linda Slakey is the chair, assists low income first time home buyers in purchasing a home. Generally, they're trying to find things at the lower end of the market. So there one family was able to find a place for $250,000, but then a second family that they were working with was outbid on a number of properties. They couldn't find a place at that same value, or even a little bit higher value. So, like the cost of rental units which will come to in a minute, the costs of homes are also rising in what has become a seller's market. They have entrepreneurs who for years have been buying up homes to rent to students so that they go off the market for say new families. And there are also now people moving to Amherst from urban areas as a result of the pandemic. So the market is pretty tough and getting more and more difficult. We look at the next slide. One of the consequences which I briefly alluded to earlier is that there are fewer families with children. Here are some stories, this is one and there are others will come to that people have told me. I met a man who was a single parent to work for the town of Amherst and for many years he lived with his son in a brick house. The rent didn't increase too much until now probably three years ago reached a point where it was no longer affordable on a salary, and he and his son had to move out of Amherst. The good news is his son had completed the Amherst schools at that point, but nonetheless if they, he hadn't, they still would have had to go someplace else. And what we're seeing in the data is that the numbers of families with school age children are declining. We've dropped close to 700 students. Sorry 700 families with children and other data tells us that the number of school age children residing in Amherst is dropped by more than 1000. Next slide. The woman who was a new PhD. Actually, this is now two years ago. She came from another state on a research fellowship, and she was unable to find housing in Amherst. So what did she do. Her parents live in Massachusetts, not close to Amherst, but close enough so to speak. So she decided to move in with them to move back to the family home, even though she was 45 minutes away from Amherst. Nick grabby just did an informal survey. He has a unit in his house that he rents out the student, and he had a lot of people asking if they could rent. So he had information about each of these people. He had a, had their emails, and he asked, he followed up with a fair number of one to find out what they where they found has, and they found housing as far away as field spring field. So, we've got a significant problem. Another way in which this problem manifests itself is in housing insecurity. At the bottom of the slide, the US census identifies or defines cost burden as a family that spends more than 30% of their income on housing and severely cost burden. If they household spends more than 50% of its income on housing. So that's pretty burdening. If we go up and look at what's happening for renters in Amherst, 20% of households are cost burden, and 40% are severely cost burden. I may have reversed those two it may be 40 or cost burden and 20% are severely cost burden sorry about that. So homeowners, we have less of a problem homeowners are better off in Amherst and so there are fewer that are cost burden, but it's still a bit of a problem. So moving on. In the pandemic, there's a lot of concern about foreclosures and evictions, and I just wanted to summarize a little bit of the information that's known now for our area and Hampshire County, and Western Mass. I also wanted to note that there's state legislation pending that would try to reduce the risk of foreclosure and eviction. Some may know the state had an eviction stoppage that a moratorium I should say that was lifted last October, and then the CDC had a less expansive moratorium but number less one that was important that was lifted. I believe in May, and then reinstated, and now again canceled by the Supreme Court. So, lots of people are at risk of being forced out of their homes. Okay, so let's see we're waiting for the next slide. I wanted to talk about the future. I didn't have to go to Greece to the Oracle with Delcy to figure out what the future is. Frankly, the future is our past. And so if you're a student in Amherst developers will continue to build high rent apartments. But there's not going to be much growth on campus, despite the fact there is interest in demand there. If you already own your own home, your neighborhood may see more student rentals. I know that's true for my neighborhood of about 25 or 20s 25 homes now, about nine of them are now student rentals. If you're a family with school age children opportunities to become a homeowner or a renter at an affordable cost will continue to be slim. You can build living in Amherst and want to downsize new opportunities to find an affordable place that would allow you to stay in the Amherst community may not materialize. If you're a low income renter your rent will probably increase making your housing more insecure, while the quality of your housing may also diminish. So, honestly, this is our future, unless the university and town council find a way to make major changes. I can't be optimistic about what's happening. Let me move on and talk a little bit about some of the efforts that people have made. I think that's important. There is a thing called the subsidized housing inventory, which keeps track of all the housing that is quote unquote affordable, mostly because it's subsidized by one source of income or another. The town has tried to engage the community to support the expansion of affordable housing. There are some dedicated resources within town government. We continue to work to find ways to increase it. The most significant local change was the updating about what's called the inclusionary bylaw to require construction of affordable homes and all new developments greater than nine units. And I should say over 1 million and CPA funds have been spent on community housing in the past five years. So, there are things happening, but quite honestly, it's not enough. Let me mention a couple of other things, or at least briefly show you the slide which shows them. These are four key projects that have occurred. People are probably familiar with North Square. That's the most recent. It includes 26 affordable units out of something like 128 total units. Habitat of humanity has created five recent homes for home ownership for low income families. Probably the most recent was now a couple of years ago. The town has a first time home buyers program, which is run by Valley Community Development and the Amherst Community Land Trust. And I think that's affected something like 14 house households over the last five or six years. The rolling green, which is shown in the slide, the town preserved as affordable 42 of the units that were there. When it assisted with the kind of purchase of the property by beacon communities from real estate group that owned it before. So some things are happening. We look at the fact that the town council or the community resources committee is working on a new town housing policy. That will be fully summarized in the next slide. I don't want to read these, but basically there are five major goals that are interdependent that the community resources committee has said we need to move toward in order to improve housing for really all populations within the town. So in the interest of time, I'm not going to go over those, but I will go to the next slide to talk about some of the specific things that they proposed as part of the policy and things that would get attention in terms of measuring progress. So a minimum of 250 new units for households earning less than 80% of area median income, reducing the percentage of renters who are cost burden and severely cost burden by 50% reducing percentage of owners who are similarly cost burden and reducing the number of how homeless individuals are served at Craig's doors, because they become housed. So, we've put in the chat actually a link to the new draft policy. It's continued to be draft CRC will work on it and then present it to town council, a little bit later this month. Other issues are what they call safe and secure housing, reducing the number of health and safety violations, and also, again, consistent with the last issue, trying to implement a year round sheltering option in Amherst. Finally, these are things that are on the drawing board. There's the Amherst studio apartments which people may be familiar with the town has drafted a request for proposals which should be released soon that would allow a affordable development for families at the old East Street School and a nearby property on Belcher town road. We see a home ownership development on strong street and additional funding come through for helping to retrofit heating systems and weatherization in low income rental developments. And, and also potentially the purchase of the university motor lodge and new subsidies for home ownership. And finally, as we'll talk about a little bit later, the development of a rental property for older adults potentially at Hickory Ridge. I've kind of alluded to this. The next thing I wanted to say is that this is not own. Oh sorry, I think I'm going to skip over this slide in the interest of town time sorry, but go to this one. This is not just an Amherst problem. The Donahue Institute recently published a report with support from wayfinders and the Community Foundation, in which they showed that the kinds of problems that I've been talking about in Amherst are problems really north and south from Springfield to Greenfield. So an increasing housing supply gap, which is driving up prices, continuing housing instability, and the fact that more than half of renters in the Pire Valley are quaff burden, spending 30% or more of their income on housing. What's also important to note is that this trend is even worse for communities of color. So the last slide, what do we need, where do we need to go. Again, I've got a list of things here. They're consistent with things that I've said, this is to change that bleak future that I talked about earlier. There's a partner in the university that recognizes its role in the local housing market and plans to develop 3 to 5000 new units on campus for its students, including those with families for the town itself. Consistent with what the Community Resources Committee has said, we should see at least 250 new affordable units in the next five years or so. We need to make sure that these units are available to groups that need them. We need to be sure that they're not segregated or isolated but close to services, including transportation. We need to find ways of assisting people who are looking for affordable housing and identifying and accessing available homes. Finally, we need to maintain our commitment to supporting the Amherst seasonal shelter, even as we develop new housing. And for all of this to happen, we need your ideas and your advocacy. So thank you all for listening. And now Linda, I think we're ready to move on to our next speaker. Thank you. I believe that's Donna. Yes, I believe. Yes, it is. My name is Donna Hancock. And thank you, John, for allowing me to be a speaker on this panel. I was asked from, I think it was Nancy Schroeder, because I am a senior and I'm living what you all are talking about. She thought it best that I could give you a personal synopsis of what I have gone through as being a senior. I moved here in 2011 to be with my mother from Florida. Prior to that, I had a six bedroom house and I had to downsize. Working for the phone company for 21 years, I had a pretty good retirement. I got caught up in the housing bubble, bought two houses, lost both houses and lost all my money. So then I come up here to live with my mother. I had to move somewhere, but there was nothing available. Not even the housing authority could help out. Finally, staying with my mom for like a year, I ended up going to the Ann Whalen apartments over here on Kellogg Street. And I stayed there for seven years before I got a chance to move into the Clark House. That was the waiting list that goes to show you how some of the seniors have had to wait. That was a waiting list that I got, and I moved into Clark House in 2018, I believe it was. And I've been there since. But the catch is, for affordable housing, they take a third of your income to pay for your rent to help you out. Each year that I work here for the Meals on Wheels program for my precious seniors, and I get a raise, my rent goes up and up and up. Before I started working, my rent was like $360 something. Now, because I work, it's third of my income plus my social security, I'm paying almost $7, well I am paying $710 a month. And the more I pay, the more I wonder, am I going to have to leave Amherst? I may have to move where my kids are because I am going to be 70. These are some of the things that plague our seniors. The strength, I think, of Amherst is that you do have affordable housing that is decent housing. I've seen affordable housing, if you will, for seniors that wasn't quite as nice as they are up here. I've seen some that are rat infested, roach infested, not nearly as good. People are clumped together. So the strength of this area is the fact that they do take care of their seniors. I have to give you kudos. I think it's a marvelous situation you have here. The other strengths that some of the seniors have told us is that you do have a well-rounded community who do think about the seniors. It's not a thing where we know they're there, they're going to die, whatever. They know that they fit in the community, which makes Amherst a place where people want to stay. But with the housing problem like it is, they are not aware of what is being done. That's why I'm so glad I'm on this panel so I can share it with my senior friends. The shortcomings I would say that I got from some of my seniors was that the places are very small. They don't have a lot of storage. For people of color, they feel that they've been left out. They would like to have apartments like the ones that they build down here on Pleasant Street for the seniors. This is like a cross communication that I'm hearing from my senior population. And I try to let them know, no, that's not the case. That's not the case. Well, how do you know? So I think that with everything that John has covered, I would love for this information to be given to some of the seniors that live in these two areas here. I'm only familiar with these two areas because I haven't really learned Amherst as well. My choice to live in the town was because I don't have transportation. I would have to be someplace where there's buses. That's a big problem for a lot of the seniors. But for the most part, I think if we work together and we're able to realize we do have a senior population, I think that this would work out. My only problem that I have personally is define what is affordable housing and how do seniors look forward, even though their futures may only be months or years, how do we make them feel like they are not squashed in a corner somewhere? So that's really all I was going to say. I just giving you a personal synopsis so you that are on this panel hear it from a senior who is living this dream. Thank you. Thank you very much, Donna. And I apologize. You didn't get a proper introduction. I didn't realize I was muted. I started to do that and realize that you had begun to speak. So let me just tell the participants that you're the Highland Valley Elder Services Nutrition Site Director for the Bank Center and that you coordinate food services for low and moderate income adults every weekday. And you've also been a longtime resident as you shared with us of the Amherst Housing Authority's public housing. Thank you very much for that presentation. Thank you for having me. Yeah. And our next speaker is Jerry Weiss. Jerry's the President of the Board of Craig's House, which operates at the Amherst Seasonal Shelter, as well as other services for homeless persons. And prior to his recent retirement, he was in full time practice as a psychiatric social worker in Amherst, and he's going to share his observations of the needs of older adults who become homeless Jerry. Hi, thank you. I'm going to start with a few statistics and data about homelessness. Additionally, according to the annual homeless assessment report to Congress, there were about 67,000 elderly individuals, and that's age 62 or older. Interestingly, as I did my research, there isn't a standard on what's elderly. Some say 62, some say 65. HUD seems to not even bother at many statistics and just say people over 24 is a group. So it's actually hard to get these numbers. But this report had 67,000 people, 62 and older who were homeless. And that, and that was in 2016 and it was that represented an increase of nearly 50% since 2007. And they don't see that stopping so that it's just growing. It's probably the fastest growing part of the homeless population. They expect that to hit 100,000 in the next decade. In Massachusetts, we had just under 18,000 people total experiencing homelessness on any given day in 2020, with about 1500 being chronically being considered chronically homeless. I had a lot of trouble finding the the elderly number. So you can extrapolate this from the national statistics that about 9% appear to be elderly. So you can do the math on that 9% of 18,000. Number, when you think about all those people that are 62 and older. In the past four seasons at Craig's doors we've given shelter to 49 people age 62 and above, which represent about 8% of our total guests, 10 of these were repeat guests. Some all four years in that in that data range. In the past year there have been 15 people in that age group, which is higher than most years. I tried to get data from other Hampshire County shelters, and roughly found out that the be there are probably about seven elders age 62 and above, beyond what Craig stores is able to house. And of those 49 people that we housed enough in those four years 11 were 70 or over. And we with the oldest person being 78. We are currently serving a 78 year old person. That numbers has remained fairly consistent. However, the number of female guests 62 and over has increased at a faster rate. And all these numbers represent people who are sheltered. It's harder to get the numbers of people who aren't sheltered. And in this area to known elders have been living without any shelter for at least a year. But it's, it's a very hard one to track down. So, housing is of course the first need. And it's pretty much covered the affordable unit problem here. You compound that with the conditions for, for what happens when you're homeless on health on mental health on dietary needs. And it's much worse for the elderly. It's estimated that an elderly homeless person has four times higher morale mortality rate than their peers who are in homes. Older populations of course struggle to manage chronic diseases without the structure of a home. If anybody's been sick you know it's nice to have a nice home to be in and a nice bed to be in. If you're very sick it's a lot harder to be in a shelter. Elderly people with diabetes or heart disease. It's harder for them to maintain regular doctors appointments, medication regimens, including proper diet. And some don't trust health care and don't trust social service providers. And accessing public assistance programs can be daunting. Some get discouraged by the application process. Some have a hard time getting to places to receive care, and some refuse help. I checked into the Amherst Housing Authority to see what, what's the process if you are elderly and homeless. How do you apply for housing in Amherst. Well you fill out an application so you need somebody to help you get that application if you can't get it yourself. It's a fairly complicated application, as Donna is shaking her head. And if you've been homeless you have to prove it. You need documentation. So if you've been in a shelter that's not hard to get. Craig Stores could write you a letter saying you've been a guest here for some X number of months for X number of years whatever. If you've been couch surfing, they require you to get a letter from whoever you've been couch surfing with. And if you've been in the woods, there's no proof. Maybe agencies like Amherst Survival Center could help out then because they probably know of people who are receiving food from them or clothing who are living in the woods. But that's a lot of hoops to jump through and then if you can jump through those hoops you become known as emergency housing. So you think emergency housing. Oh, that's going to be quick. No, it's not. There is approximately a two month period where they have to turn the apartment over once a unit becomes available two months to get it ready for a new person. And then you have to wait for that apartment to open up. It could take four months. It could take six months. It could take eight months and you are considered emergency housing, even if it takes six or eight months. Not, it's not an adequate way to get emergency housing at all. And that's not the policy of Amherst Housing Authority. They, they said this is the state's regulations how it has to be done. And maybe one thing should be to approach the state on their definition of emergency housing. As you know, probably many older homeless individuals have difficulty with self care, keeping up with high genes that can cause infections increasing, increasing their health needs. Of course, of course, more stress, social isolation, social isolation. Any mental health issues they have are going to be exacerbated by homelessness by the stress of it. Homeless seniors and urban centers have an extremely high rate of premature death. As I said, it's four times higher than the regular population. And there was one statistic I read that elderly homeless people age 10 to 20 years faster than other people. So if you're 60, you, you could be aging into 70 and 80 as you remain homeless without aging there. Well before you get to that age. So like break stores, the senior center, Elliot services, veteran services, Amherst Survival Center, community connections are all trying to put people up with their services with medical services with mental health services and with housing, but it's not easy is the housing is the hardest of all of those to help people with. We have an increase in evictions. 80 crash. People lost their wealth. People became homeless. And they're aging now. So, one way to prevent more homelessness for elderly people is to prevent evictions, which we now know is now an increase because of COVID. The departments of social services often help with housing emergencies for the elderly by providing housing for low income seniors, religious organizations help homeless seniors. But as if we have that many people that we're, we're serving in our shelters, you know how many must be out there. So that's, I don't want to, I don't need to talk more I can answer questions at some point if there are. Thank you. Thank you Jerry. And by the way, I've noticed a couple sets of questions coming in the chat. And we're going to proceed with the speakers just so we hear from everybody but that hopefully is going to leave us time at the end to come back to some of those questions. Right. So john, you get a chance now to tell us a little bit more about the potential for an affordable housing development for older adults. If you look at the first slide which will probably be on momentarily, it asked the question is if we were to initiate a new rental development for older adults. What would it look like. And I'm going to suggest some answers to that question. But I think as we leave time for discussion at the end. I'm most interested in hearing what your answers are to that question. So going on to the next slide, I just. There we go. Okay, okay, there's one that was the right. Okay, so someone would say well why are you involved in this what's the housing trust have to do with it. Well I didn't introduce the housing trust but basically that's our job. So we have to do what we can to promote a diversity of affordable housing and Amherst. There are a number of specific projects that we're working on that are listed here. But overall, our goal is to try to get together and produce a pipeline of programs and projects that will make housing more affordable in Amherst. With the Community Preservation Act committee and the town council, and we also seek public support, primarily through the Amherst affordable housing coalition. So that's why we're involved. And that's why I'm talking about this. This is a kind of preliminary exploration of ideas. So as I said earlier, I'm going to suggest some things. I also want to say that there's a lot of uncertainty around this that are briefly summarized in the next slide. If we do have a new rental development for older adults, I can't tell you where it would be. We face various hurdles with respect to approval by town council or the town zoning Board of Appeals. We don't know what neighborhood opposition might materialize, because this would likely be a size of development. And wherever its place. We know that people will object. They say it doesn't fit in with our neighborhood. It'll add too much traffic or there's really no need for this type of housing. So we can expect to see some opposition. And there are various uncertainties that we need to overcome. So this is an early conversation. This is an opportunity for me to suggest some things. But for all of us when we come to the discussion to share some ideas. To assess what the level of interest is for you to give feedback, and whoops, we're moving around quite a bit. What else to take advantage, frankly, of our collective wisdom and experience in thinking about this. And the end goal was develop for the housing trust, a preliminary plan to present to the town. I did a little bit of research. And so I wanted to talk briefly about my understanding about options for senior living. And that starts on the next slide. Next one after that. Here we are. There are various options and when you read about specific examples they honestly start to blend. There are things called independent living communities. There are something called assisted living residences, there are nursing homes, and then there are continuing care retirement communities, which tend to be a mix of the things above. The biggest difference to me, honestly, in these different groupings are whether or not healthcare is integrated. If there are healthcare providers on site, or part of the community, and that obviously happens in nursing homes. It also happens in communities for assisted living. But it doesn't happen with independent living with independent living living healthcare is coordinated. As you'll see in a moment, it's something that comes on site. If residents need it and get some help from the people who manage the community. Okay, moving to the next slide. I have one example of an independent living community. It's an organization called Two Life Communities. They operate largely in eastern Massachusetts, and they use what they call an aging and community model. Their goal is everybody can stay there. No one has to leave. It's not labeled though as assisted living because people come in, and they are independently in control of the units where they live they have a lease. They pay monthly rent, and there may be services on site, but they aren't obliged to use them. The purpose of these communities is to address economic insecurity by making the housing affordable, and also address loneliness by having people live together. It can be mixed that is include subsidized as well as unsubsidized units and affordable to people who are dependent on social security. So, it really is intended to meet the needs of a lower income group. Obviously one bedroom and two bedroom. And if we take a look at the next slide, some of the other things that are designed into Two Life Communities are having a ground floor that serves as a village hub. It will have a large welcoming entry. It'll have large and small rooms incorporated to support a variety of activities. And that includes encouraging visitors to come in and to use the facilities as appropriate to share them with the residents as allowable. So this is the Two Life Community Model. Then I wanted to mention another model which will be in the next slide. Oh, I'm sorry. I have one more slide on Two Life Communities. As part of their design they do have onsite staffing. They have a resident coordinator and an activities coordinator typically with the goal of helping the residents to navigate the challenges of daily life. They said healthcare services in this model are not provided by people who work for Two Life Communities. They coordinate healthcare services. The services come to residents and the resident coordinator will help to bring the necessary services in. Partly by having agreements with outside agencies, for example, Highland Valley Elder Services in our area or the Amherst Senior Center. They also, the activities coordinator arranges for activities that will be of value and of interest to residents and those can be a wide range of things. I put in one that seems to be pretty important and that is fitness services. Okay, I have another example and this is a senior living residence. This is an assisted living program. And there's a program in Born on the Cape. And actually there's a similar program that's in Westfield called Armbrook Village locally if people have heard of it. They aim to provide outdoor living spaces, enriched daily programs, restaurant style dining with healthy food options. That's part of what their goals are. And then if we go to the next slide a few more items. So they have studios as well as one in two bedroom apartments. And again you'd find this with Two Life. There'll be a kitchen net in each unit, a shower, an emergency alert system, control of heating, housekeeping and laundry services, maintenance of the apartment and utilities, and it would be wired for cable TV and phone. So many of these things you'd find in both assisted living and independent living. Again, to me, and people can tell me if they have another understanding, the biggest interest difference has to do whether healthcare is integrated with the program. That is, there are people who are healthcare providers who are employees of the community versus depending on healthcare being brought in or coordinated as part of the program. I'll just briefly mention something about financing. If we're talking about independent living, there is a mix of public financing available. It may require some additional fundraising in order to pay for all services. The intention is to use funding sources that assure the units will be affordable. And typically, federal funding sources, depending on what source you're talking about, do carry age restrictions, either 55 and over or 62 and over and occasionally have different programs that are needed that may be in conflict with each other because these are a little different. I know less about how financing works for communities, assisted living communities, or continuing care retirement communities that have integrated healthcare. So I'm not going to talk about that. I'm not going to speculate on how that works. So, two more slides. One possibility that I thought about as a site for an independent living rental development for older adults is the Hickory Ridge Golf Course. As people know that town has a contract to buy it. They've yet to close. Most of it will become town conservation land. But there is an area of roughly five to nine acres of developable property right along West prom or Elaine. So there's a place to build a good size community for older adults. So that's pretty much what I've got to say. I have one more slide, which you can take a look at. And basically, the question is, what would you all like to see. And I've noted some of the things that I talked about. And what I'd really like to share with you is that if the town closes on the property and if we all agree that this property or this part of it should be made available for a community for older adults. So that's some of the things that I talked about. And what I'd really like to hear is what people have to say, probably beginning with Mary Beth, who is next up. Linda. Yeah, thank you, John. And I'll just briefly introduce Mary Beth. Most recently, I think probably many of you know, knew her as the director of the Amherst senior center. And she's just begun a new job as chief of elders and persons with disabilities unit in the office of Northwestern District Attorney. So, Mary Beth, we'll ask you to reflect on what you've heard as well as sharing your own insights on these issues. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be with everyone in Amherst once again. And I have to say that off the top of my head that looking at it from also a county point of view now. The issues that you raised today are not singular and unique to Amherst, though I think some of the positive factors are very unique to Amherst. And I think like climate change, aging in Amherst really requires us to rethink how we are living and developing community. And I want to just start off with sharing, I guess, two points of reference. And I think that they were very stark when I first arrived in Amherst. The Amherst Institute in their projections of demographics indicate that by 2030, the individuals who are age 60 and older in the town of Amherst will comprise 30.3% increase in that population, which is a significant shift. And throughout the Commonwealth, we are all discussing the graying of the state. And so I think that this program and the focus on elders and housing because housing is directly related to safety and well-being is really well timed. And I really appreciate the emphasis on this topic vis-a-vis elders. And people are interested in looking more at that demographic information. If you go, you can find that online and I can, I can share the link with you around the Donahue Institute and the social and demographic information. And more importantly, there is a breakdown of those demographics, which also shows that when we're talking about are we looking at independent living versus assisted living with medical care. When you look at what portion of elderhood is going to increase the most in Amherst, it is those that are at the higher end of elderhood. So we think of elderhood is right that 40-year stage. And it's really those 85 and above. So when we're talking and looking at the needs, I think that that demographic information becomes far more relevant about what the needs are. You know what we call a young senior in the 60s is going to have a very different idea of what they need then if you had a larger population in their 80s. So that's the first piece. And then the second sort of demographic piece, or actually statistical information, I think is really important to this conversation is the elder index. So the Gerontology Institute at UMass has comprised an elder index, which allows you to search by county, the amount of money that an individual who was an older adult needs to live securely to meet the needs to live within that county. And if you look at Hampshire County, it's actually rather startling. And some of the information that I was that was able to find that person that Massachusetts rates the highest in the nation in the percent of older single living alone adults with incomes below that elder index. So what it says is that 62% of older adults have an income that is less than what is required to live in that community. And that, you know, if we also look at the intersection of race and age, I think it plays out far more dramatically, and that three out of four black singles living alone in Massachusetts have incomes that fall below that elder index. And so what that means is that older adults have to make very difficult choices, just merely to survive. So again, you know I can put that link up there but I think it's really important, relevant probative information about how much money do we need, and what, what in this county, how are we faring our older adults about trying to afford even affordable housing as Donna relayed that search and the angst that's involved. And then also the folks in our community. You know, again, economic insecurity is 31% higher for older black persons who are living alone, and then 33% higher for older black couples and that's within the state of Massachusetts. So, so I think that the picture is, is a rather stark and I think it really speaks to an urgency that we probably haven't really threaded that needle quite yet. And with regard to the, the impact, what I would also suggest is that these are regional discussions and certainly so when we talk about homelessness when we talk also about older adults needing supportive care. I'm sure Helen McMillan who's now the director of the Emerson Center can talk about the number of communities that we work with and that really needs to be regionally strengthened and resourced. And then also that this isn't just so I noticed that probably most of us in this conversation are older folks, and that I would suggest this is this is a family wide and community wide discussion because 83% of older adults who need help are cared for by their family members. So older adult children who are in community and certainly that was something that we saw at the senior center are involved in this. During the pandemic, we received weekly calls on the on the double from older adults but adult children who are moving their family members to Emerson because of the pandemic. And so this is not just a conversation for older adults. This is really a multi generational conversation. And I think that there's a more robust interest that we can generate around this within Emerson for that. And I really appreciated John's sort of extrapolating housing beyond affordable housing to looking at that conversation of long term care and independent living in those various arrangements, because again I'm sure Helen can can address this more than I can but you know with the calls that we receive in Amherst are often when somebody reaches the point where they can no longer live independently. And either the families are concerned about them, where the older adults can see themselves slipping. And so we really need to sort of balance and keep that conversation going with both of those balls in the air around how can we support individuals, as their faculties and as their abilities do in fact diminish because that is a fact of life right we are all aging and and you know not everybody will will age without the need for some supportive care. So, I think that that one of the interesting I'll just leave that on a positive note so amidst all of that. There are some some unique opportunities and possibilities and I think like the Nestor Lee program that runs out of Boston I know it was featured in the Times a couple of years ago, I had contacted them to see if they might be able to help us and that's a shared housing program where you have an agency that helps to match older adults who are in their homes and maybe can't afford them and it affords companionship it gives people rental income. So in in the instance where we're not going to have a housing stock that's going to allow people to leave other some interim measures that we can help to facilitate to have safety and you know written agreements people with with Corey checks and you know reference checks to live with older adults in a matching matter. So I think that that's a that could be an interesting conversation in the meantime while we're talking about housing is coming to come up with a housing match program, and then the last one I would I would suggest is based on my conversations with adults in Amherst, they love multi generational. And so when we're talking about senior housing, I know that oftentimes there's that sort of exceptionalism of Amherst where where we like to be in community and all of that means, and I think that those are also some of the housing communities that are our mixed generation can be really vibrant. So, I'm here to learn and listen with all of you and so hopefully support this and county wide measure as well. Thank you very much. So we have some time now before we need to draw this to a close for questions from the participants. You can raise your hand and I made some notes of questions that are in the chat. I see Adrian has her hand up and has had for a while. Hey, can you unmute Adrian or can she unmute herself. There I see you. So unmute yourself Adrian. Thank you. And what's your question. So we're not hearing you. So Adrian I'm sorry I'm going to move to somebody else even though it shows on the screen that you're unmuted we're not hearing you so maybe we can try again. Problem solved that. I'm going to call on Lisa Campbell, while you sort out what it's going to take to get it so we can hear Adrian. Lisa. Okay, can you hear me. Yes. Okay. I just am hoping everybody rattled through 109 numbers really fast. I was just trying to take notes and couldn't keep up. So is there going to be a way other than me emailing individual participants and saying what was it you said for me to capture those numbers. Because I don't see a way at this point. You know, like, how many elderly people and how old are homeless and how many, you know, what are all these various, everybody did it, you know, so. I mean, the speakers said, if they could at least put some of those things in a form, where would you like them sent to them to me, then I can send them out. That would be excellent. Yeah, actually, I just want to come back to another request we made earlier. I'd really like people to put their name and their email address in the chat. If they haven't done that already. So we can send out new information. Thank you after this forum ends. So there's also a question earlier and I said we can post this on the housing trust web page so, you know, in the coming, you know, next week or so the information can will be posted up there and it'll just stay there. So, you know, you can go back to. Yeah, it wasn't clear to me that every speaker would have given you something you could post but if they did that's great. If they did or if they will. Yes, either way. Thank you. We'll encourage them to do that. Thank you for that prompt. Bob greenie I see your house your hand up. And you need to unmute. Am I unmuted. Yes, thank you we can hear you. Hi. Well, I, I, what I wanted to do is expand the conversation a little bit, but it, it maybe we're running out of time so let me just throw out a few. What might be provocative ideas Linda knows some of them. The brochure says older adults, families and students. So, I get that we've been talking about seniors. And I get that that's a huge problem. And I get that we can spend forever on that. But before we leave let's just think about and Mary Beth kind of mentioned this in her comments about how I think those of us that are elderly and becoming more elderly. Really want mixed living situations in our seniors and, and so how do we create that not these, you know the conventional model has its place, and yet we should be thinking very broadly about some really fresh and ideas for new models. But I think a lot of the things get addressed when we just address housing. And I, I'm not in a position to be articulate about this. And this is not the time, but I think there are some big opportunities for really new fresh ideas that were just not accessing. And let me just give you one kind of interesting statistic. We have 100 we have 14,000 students that need housing. 14,000 students are going to spend 10 to $20,000 a year just on housing minimum of 10,000. So that's 140 to 280 million dollars. That's about it. 140. So let's just say $200 million is going to be spent on housing. Now I know it goes to Sunday when it goes to Belgium town it doesn't all come to Amherst, but that's an Amherst resource, two to $300 million. So we should not be satisfied with skimming off the tax money and we do get substantial tax money for that. So, what I would like to talk about sometime and probably not now, and get people thinking about that hundreds of dollars is leaving Amherst, because of the way the housing most of it especially the recent housing is being built by large corporations and funding agencies. How do we one way in which we can keep that in town is to stimulate small scale right Linda we talked about this growth of multi family units that are Homer owned. The profits, those huge humongous profits that are going off to hedge funds we don't know where could be funding and supporting affordable housing by people that live in Amherst. I don't know how to emphasize that I think there's a potential here if we can get enough creative minds working on this for addressing in a big way in a fresh way are affordable housing problems and those multi family units. Give the opportunity for seniors to rent. Where there's a family downstairs or upstairs. And of course, when you get to a health care situation when you need all those services. That's where Linda comes in to help those people stay in that unit as long as they possibly can eventually maybe they need to go where there's more intensive care. Anyway, I encourage people to think about the potential of what I'm suggesting. Okay, sorry, no one for a long time. Thank you for that suggestion Bob that certainly is a piece of economics that deserves some level of attention. Do you have any questions have I missed someone who actually raised their hand or put a question oh Ralph you put a question in the chat. Do you want to raise that with everybody. Are you still with us. It still shows him as a participant but I'm not hearing him respond. I'll just read the question that he put in the chat. How can we enjoin the university to expand. I'm paraphrasing a little to expand the amount of housing that they provide to the students sort of what are sort of creative ways to think about that. John I know you've thought about that a lot. Well, that is a great question and maybe it's the 64,000 or 64 million dollar question I don't know. It's really a political question, frankly. I think the information that I have talked about is available to the university I don't think it's new information. I simply don't think of themselves as a landlord, and we have to find a way of changing that thinking. And I think that means involving our state senator or state representative but other people. I think that's the process of saying, really why aren't you doing something about this. You've got thousands of students that each year are looking for housing. I know someone would like to live off campus and apartments but there are lots who would prefer to be close to campus, if they could find a decent place there to live. And it is part of your obligation to figure out how to do that. That brings us according to the clock on my computer to 529, and we did agree to draw this to a close at 530 so I want to thank the speakers and also the participants who raised all kinds of thoughtful questions. And Linda, do you have any last comments you want to make as our host here. Thank you. I really do appreciate everyone Linda and John and Donna Jerry and Mary Beth for bringing such clarity and light to the challenges that we face and the obstacles that need to be overcome in order to serve the housing needs of our community. And the thoughts and the creativity that's starting to bubble in this collective around how to advocate for and make materialize some of this housing that we need to have for elderly in particular from our vantage point but as was pointed out the students and families as well. So I appreciate that. And we will work with the panelists on collecting the resources and the information shared and make that available on the many as many platforms as we can the trust the website for Amherst neighbors and out directly to those who provide their email and name in the chat. I appreciate all of you and those of you that came in Alfred questions, and who are committed to making this a collective effort to solve some of the problems we have around housing in the future, Amherst. Thank you very much. Thank you and thanks for hosting. This is recorded. I'm Nate Maloya playing with the town I'm going to end it in a minute so then you know everything will go away but the chat will be saved and the video will be recorded and like Linda said we can compile it and then and then you know have it on a few different platforms and media so thanks so much everyone. Bye bye.