 This meeting is being recorded. All right. Okay. Who's here? Yeah, I'll take a minute. Maybe I see Ashley's. George is here. Hi, George. Thank you for being here. I'm here. Ashley's here. Yeah. And reach us here. Oh, I'm just finishing up dinner. I will, I will be off the stove in a second. Look at that wonderful teacher you have. That's going to be very supportive. Paul is here. Yep. We'll wait a few minutes before we start. I see that Tony and Nancy are both here. I'll just say that we're. We have a couple of things to do for the first 10 or so minutes, and then we'll invite you into doing with us. But hello and thank you for being here. Allegra's here. She needs to be moved on to the panelist. Thank you. Are you co-host? I don't see her. Oh, there she is. And sits here too. Yep. Looks like I can do it. Oops. Unless that was you who just did that. All right. Rob. Rob is not here yet. So we're missing Rob. Grover is Grover going to join us. There's Grover. Okay. Grover's here. So I believe we have quorum. It is 702. I, we should start since we have guests. And we also know that Sid needs to leave early. So I am calling to order the Amherst municipal affordable housing trust for the meeting of today, May 11th, 2023. I welcome everyone. And we will start with review of the April minutes. And thank you for completing those April minutes. Does anyone have any additions, corrections. Comments with regards to the April minutes. I move to approve. Thank you very much. Second. Thank you. So Paul has moved to approve and said has seconded it. Everyone is there anyone who. Has not approved this. Or should I just go through a roll call? Okay. Ashley. You're a mute. If you're. Yeah, I approve it. Thank you. Risha. Carol. Yes. Allegra. Yes. Sid. Yes. Grover. You are not yet on the trust. But I am. Oh, at the time. Of April. These April minutes. Oh. Okay. And I agree to approve them. Sid. Sid was a yes and I'm a yes. Yeah, I said yes. Yeah. Okay. I think we're good. All right. Thanks so much. So everyone has agreed to approve them. So we will accept the minutes as they are for April 2023. So now I will pass this on to Carol. Did we want to welcome Grover first? Yes. We absolutely did want to welcome. Yeah. Welcome Grover. Do you want to stay a minute's worth of. You know, while you're glad to be here, which I assume that you are so. Give us a minute or so. You. Sure. Thanks Carol. Hi everyone. My name is Grover women, Brown, and I've been listening in on your meetings for about a year. And I'm excited to join you because I really feel a long-term lifelong investment in making sure everyone has. A safe home that they can afford to live in. I experienced homelessness as a young person. When I was a child, I worked as an adult and have spent many years. Trying to understand how it is that we accept homelessness as a nation and why it keeps growing. And then. I worked in affordable housing advocacy before my current position in the Oakland area and learned a lot about tax credit, affordable housing development and rental protection law. I wanted to make sure that the place my children grow up. I have two children at Fort River Elementary is a place where they see homelessness decrease, not increase in their lifetime. So I'm glad to be here with you all. Yeah, thanks for having me. We're very excited to have you Grover and Carol and I will be reaching out to you just to welcome you personally and also to give you an orientation. To the embers municipal affordable housing trust. So thank you. Hi, Carol. Here's Rob. So now the next thing we're going to do is we invited Tony Morales and Nancy. If I'm pronouncing your name incorrectly, please help me out. To come and talk to us about hopefully about you mass, the approach of you mass, the housing, it's students kind of a general. So I'm going to ask you to come up with a little bit more of an understanding of what they're doing and how they're doing and what they see themselves doing. And so I'm going to ask to see that there's Tony has arrived and I expect that Nancy is on her way. And I'm going to turn it over to them to begin by telling us what they want to tell us and presumably then they'll be able to come up with a little bit of an understanding of what they're doing. So I'm going to turn it over to you. We can't hear you, Tony. Yeah, I just saw that I was muted. Sorry. Just two quick things. Nancy zoom just crashed as she was invited in as a panelist. So she's going to try to come back in. And then we also have with us. Betsy cracker. Who is our assistant vice chancellor for campus life and she's going to invite her and sure. Please. There she is. All right. Thank you all for being here and we look forward to hearing what you have to tell us. Yeah, well, thank you, Carol and Erica, particularly and all of you for inviting us to come to the housing trust meeting today. We know that you do have a lot of questions. Not only is housing on everyone's mind in this meeting, but it is a topic that is on the minds of many folks throughout the community, including us here on campus. So, you know, what we'd like to do today is, you know, talk to you a little bit about some of our approaches as we were asked around student housing, what some of our trends look like on campus. And, you know, I think, you know, I'm happy to answer questions at the end of, you know, our little start here and have just a, we hope a fruitful conversation, you know, just to make sure that everyone is, you know, on the same page around housing as it relates to the campus. So I'm going to pass it off to Nancy to give you a few facts and figures that I think are important for this conversation. Thanks, Tony, and thank you to the trust for inviting us for this conversation. So just to help kind of, you know, set the tone for where we're coming from, some of the things that we have to think about. So right now we are seeing very strong enrollment at UMass Amherst, which, you know, it's that's good for the campus, of course, but it's also good for the community to have a thriving campus here. One of the things that we're seeing, especially, I feel funny calling it the post pandemic error, but I'm not quite sure we're post yet, but, you know, as we're in this phase now, the national trend that we're seeing is that flagship institutions like UMass Amherst are enjoying strong interest and enrollment from potential students, but more smaller regional campuses are struggling a lot more. And so there's a lot of things that are shifting in high red right now, and we're not quite sure where things are going to play out. One of the other things that's on our mind a lot is looking at this kind of demographic cliff in 2025, where the number of college age prospective students, it's going to drop off quite a bit. So as we're talking about housing, we've got to look at all of these trends and we have to try and figure out, you know, what are things going to look like for the campus in five years and 10 years and 50 years? And so thinking about what our challenges are now, solutions that we may want to put in place now may not actually help us in the future. So we really got to think through very carefully what this all looks like. So I'm going to talk very broadly about some of the enrollment numbers and then pass it to Betsy, who can talk much more about housing on campus. In terms of our enrollment, we are currently at, this year for the current undergraduate class, we're 23,146 students who are in-person. I know lots of people, we put all of our data out online. So if you go to our institutional research site, you can look at the enrollment. You're going to see a different number. And what I want to point out on that is that the numbers online also include our online students. And we have thousands of students who, the only time they come to campus is for commencement. So it's really important to, when we're talking about issues around housing, that we're focusing on that in-person number. In terms of housing on campus, since 2006, we have added around 3,500 beds on campus. So in terms of our normal housing number is around 13,500 beds. There are ways, however, that we can maximize those phases. And so right now, by converting lounges into residential rooms and taking a room that's a double and making it an economy triple, we're able to add more beds. So we are somewhere around 14,300 beds right now on campus. We do require our freshmen to live on campus and we guarantee housing for them. Sophomores are not required to live on campus, but what we have found over the years since we stopped reparning them is that about 80 to 85% of them still live on campus. So the on-campus living is something that is of interest, especially for our younger students. I'm going to pass it to Becky to let her talk a little bit more about the different options. And I think maybe some price conversation as well. And at any point, we're happy to take questions too. Thanks Nancy. And I just would, so just to give context in terms of my role at the university as the assistant vice chancellor for campus life and well-being. I come to this work as a mental health professional, but housing is one of the units that I supervise in addition to counseling, campus recreation and health education, just to frame my role a little bit. And so this past year with consultation with our governance structures and with our student government in particular, in December of 2022, we moved for the first time to a lottery system for those juniors and seniors who might want to remain on campus. So we're looking as Nancy was suggesting, they're shifting demographics. We don't know what's coming in 2025, but also COVID has shifted things a little bit in terms of the number of students who want to remain on campus. So there was probably an era where, you know, students put in their first year, second year, and then maybe moved off campus. We're seeing increased interest in that communal living and maybe that sort of institutionalized living that they may have missed during high school or their earlier years. And so we went to a room selection process where their first year students are guaranteed housing. Transfers can live in community guaranteed housing. And then the juniors and seniors get priority in the lottery based on the number of semesters they have lived on campus. And then they're assigned a random number based on that because obviously there's a number of students with similar tenure on campus. And so that's the first time for UMass engaging in that process. But we could look at last year and decided that we don't want to be in the position of having promised rooms to students that we weren't able to, what we were able to with the Econolodge. And then from there, we have active engagement with our office of off-campus student life who are running extra advertising, extra roommate matching nights, extra crash courses on how to find housing. And they're keeping tabs on the off-campus rental market for us and that there are many price points available in that market and plenty of stock. As far as the options that students have on campus, there's quite a range of accommodations. Everything from what we call an economy triple that many students select this option where there's a standard rate per semester of about $2,882 all the way up to a single room in an apartment which would be around $7,000 per semester rate. So that's a broad overview. Most of the rooms, Southwest, et cetera, are a standard shared room around $3,900. And so there's quite a fluctuation whether students choose to live on campus during the breaks or not, changes those rates a little bit. But that's sort of the broadest overview of what's happening with campus housing and some of the new things that we're seeing both trend-wise and in terms of the process that was passed through our SGA this past year. So those rates are per semester, correct? I just want to make sure I'm getting my facts right. That's correct. Thank you. Thank you. They have it broken down by month. Like what is the monthly rent? Even if we could just, I mean, we could do the math, but what's the lowest rent and what's the highest rent? So, you know, this is an estimation because they move in right now on the months depending on when move in. On the high end, I think it's in the range, you know, a single private room within an apartment in the range of 1,700 a month somewhere in that range. And on the low end, I get my calculator out, but it's much, much less than that. Like a standard shared room is in the range of about $930 a month. So Ashley, I just wanted to point out that while we're talking about this in monthly terms, when a student is with residential life, they're signing a residential life contract for the duration of the school year. So it's not a month to month lease. Like one would see either off campus or in our field stone or in the field stone apartments, which are on campus, but independently managed. So there is a difference in how this contract works. And I'm not so sure it's apples to apples with regard to how we, you know, think about rent. I guess the other thing I would say about living in residence, and this is particular to my perspective on it and probably why I'm involved with it, is that there's a tremendous amount of programming, hall councils, one-on-one check-ins with our first year students, developmental conversations, education. We really see our residence halls as a home for students in a place where we're helping them develop along their pathway to independence. So. Are you two of you have referred to the cliff in 2025 when somehow the students disappear? And I had never heard of that before. Maybe everybody else child, but if somebody could tell me more about where that's from or how you came up where the, what that, what is that? So the demographic cliff gets referred to a lot in the literature around higher education where the birth rate basically started declining and those students in 2025 are going to start to hit higher education. So there's, there's a lot of universities that are very concerned about how that will impact demographics, but Nancy, you might. I'm going to say if I remember correctly, I believe that the Northeast in particular gets hit pretty hard where the birth rate slowed faster in the Northeast than in other parts of the country. So it is, but it's even a little bit more unknown for what it'll look like for colleges in New England. And Carol, if I could point out that that birth rate is tied to the recession of the great recession of 2008. And that's when we saw a dramatic decrease in, in births. And that has continued. So, you know, what we're also seeing, I think, you know, with this new trend from that Generation X millennial group in 2008, now with the millennial to generation early gen or late early generation Zs, I guess is the right term. And I think there's a birth rate decline there as well. So it is something that is continuing. And something that a lot of demographers, including those of us in higher ed that are really paying attention to other questions. Go ahead. I was wondering if you, I mean, not like ideally you, but also anybody at UMass had data about the impact it has on towns, even other UMasses, which are different towns, but at the, the rent price point and then also who, if, I mean, particularly Amherst, the town, the, the amount of people in Amherst goes down. What is the impact of more students and the very high rents on the towns UMass is in? Is there anybody that has that data? Ashley, I think that the data that we have is more around our own enrollment trends and then plus, you know, looking at census data from 2010 to 2020. Indeed, you're right. There's been a slight decrease in those that are outside of the 18 to 24 demographic in Amherst. You know, there are also a lot of reasons for it. Nancy and I just recently had a conversation with our colleagues over in the Donahue Institute, which does a lot of census analysis. And along the same lines of the demographic cliff that we're talking about household sizes have decreased as well. So, so we're seeing a lot of that in Amherst. Well, I don't want to speak for Amherst. I looked at it a lot. I know you have to. And so I want to, I want to stay out of that because that, that is more, you know, we'll stick to the UMass side of things, but we have not, you know, we had our enrollment trends that, that we had talked about going back to 2010 about raising our student enrollment 3000 over the course of 10 years. We've hit that mark and we've stayed steady for the last three years, give or take a couple hundred students here or there. We'll see, you know, some slight fluctuations, but, you know, our numbers have been about 23,000 undergrads or the last three years. And at this point that is where we're standing, you know, any changes to that, you know, will be certainly mentioned publicly and in the future under the next administration. I wonder if I know that you spoke a moment ago about helping students who don't have on-campus housing, find housing off-campus and I wonder what you are hearing or have heard about availability and affordability from the students who are trying to do that. It kind of seems to us like we at least hear stories about there being problems. So I wonder what you're seeing. What I can tell you is when we checked in with the professionals that work at the off-campus student life office, they are saying that they have availability across a number of price points in the market. So, you know, I know obviously there are expensive options, but they also have some affordable options that are on par with the rates that we're offering on campus. So that's what I can say about that. I don't have specific. You're lying a couple of hands. I just said that on par means to you about 900 to a thousand dollars a month. I can get more specifics on the full range of those prices. I don't have those. But I'm just saying that you quoted, that you quoted where when you're saying, you know, your rent is about 900 to a thousand. So when you're saying there are comparable options, that's like 900 to a thousand dollars of rent a month. Something like that presumably, but that was for something that was a shared room. I think so. So I got a couple of other people who have hands. So Betsy, if you want to say something to that, go ahead. Other words, I'm going to see if we can let the other people who want to have asked the question, ask it. Yeah, I mean, we have lower price points available on campus. And I don't have those data in front of me from off campus. Risha. Hi. So I'm Risha. I grew up here and I also have a kid in the elementary schools. And I'm wondering, I guess I have sort of two questions. One is the follow on, on Ashley's and when they talk about availability and housing, what are their specific groups of housing that they are keeping their eye on? Or how do they define what's available? Are you talking about the off-campus housing that we're hearing about? Yeah. Yeah. So our off-campus student life lists apartments that are coming from rent property managers and landlords throughout the town. So there's a small fee and they list their properties on the off-campus student life website. There's a regular conversation with that office. Also with Nancy and my office with landlords just to get a sense of how things are going and what occupancy levels look like. There are certain complexes that are, you know, quote unquote hotter than others that, you know, have less vacancy, but there is still vacancy across the board. I also want to remind everyone here too that our students do not only live in Amherst, right? So we have better data than we've ever had before on the number of students that are living in the 01002 area coat, which also includes my town of Pellum. Not many people live there, period. But, you know, but it does include Pellum. But then we also have students in Sunderland. That is a big area for rentals as well as Hadley, Northampton and Belcher town. So it is a wide range. When we have some statistics, you know, we get that information from the landlords and they keep us aware of it as we go on. Okay. I mean, that's interesting because it's, we don't hear about lots of affordable availability and affordable in the sort of general sense, like somewhere around the thousand or lower would, would be something we don't hear a lot about. So it would be interesting to sort of understand which developers are listing to you. And if those are listed elsewhere as well. You know, I can say a couple of things based upon experience. You know, my daughter was a, she's been abroad and has been studying outside of UMass this semester, but this year that is, but she's finishing up. I think it depends what you're looking at in terms of, you know, beds, right? So her, you know, in her situation, there were a number of options that she had that were in about the $700 bed range, right? You know, three roommates in a space. We see a lot of that throughout the area. You know, again, the newer units, the newer apartments, the managed departments are generally more, are pricier based upon the data that is shared with us. And from, you know, so we know that, you know, some of the newer apartment buildings are well over that $1,000 threshold, but, but, you know, there are spaces out there like that, that our students are renting and at that rate, that's under $1,000 bedroom or a bed, not a bedroom necessarily. The other question I had was, I couldn't quite do the math quick enough as you guys were talking, but in terms of the percentage of students on campus that are housed on campus, do you have those numbers and percentages? You know, I know it was 23 and 13 and, but I couldn't quite do that fast enough. That's it, you're muted, but you have the numbers, right? It's 51. Oh, no. We're at 61, 60%. How has that changed over the last decades? It's actually gone up. Yeah. Well, I think it's held fairly steady. I don't know if it went up or not, but it's been around there for a while. So, you know, one of our data points, you know, as of, you know, we've been at 61 to 63% for some time. Okay. Thank you. If somebody else here has a question. That's. We'll take that, but otherwise I see we have an attendee with a question. So. I'd like to ask. Nate to let John Horwick speak since he seems to have a question. I do. You've spoken largely about undergraduates, but we know that there are several thousand graduate students who come to the Amherst campus. Often students from abroad. Often students with families. So what are the numbers of those and what's your planning to assure that those people also are accommodated? So, John, if, if I may, you know, we just gave you a quote of 23,146 undergrads are total with, with full-time, part-time. Undergrads, Stockbridge and graduate total is 27,706 this year. About 2,500 of those are full-time graduate students. Then there are a number of graduate students who have come to the Amherst campus this year. About 2,500 of those are full-time graduate students. Then there are people that are, you know, like me who live in Pellum and will be taking classes this year. So the graduate count is a little bit harder to kind of quantify because the conditions are a lot different. And so, you know, I think that when we try to parse the numbers out for everybody, we're really careful in talking about what our population population is. And we try to distinguish our full-time population versus our, versus part-time because, you know, situation is different. And we certainly stay away when we talk about these numbers from our online numbers, which put us over 30,000 students. But grad students are in person. I mean, whether they go full-time or half-time, I mean, I have grad students that live in my apartment and they go to UMass. I have 27,000 people coming to UMass physically. Physically, but not all of those is the reason why I distinguish the grad graduate students from full-time and part-time actually is only because they're not in the same kind of competition for housing in all cases as what we're talking about now. It's just a harder number to really kind of analyze and understand. But they are people who need housing and they go to the physical campus of UMass. And there's about 27,000 people that do that. That is correct. But as I was mentioning, you know, if I'm a graduate student and I have a house that I own and I'm working at UMass and I'm going part-time, I also get factored into that count. And so I'm slightly different. I've already had housing and I'm not taking that away in the sense that we're talking about now, right? I'm not in competition for the resources in the same way. So that's why, again, we try to be really careful about how we talk about it. It doesn't mean that you're not right to some degree. It also means though that not everyone is in that same kind of boat. So, you know, so again, it's just a little bit tricky. It's, you know, counting this count is very fluid. So if I can also add, many, many colleges are moving away from even providing housing for graduate students. And so a few years ago when we were looking at our housing stock on campus and, you know, we had Lincoln apartments, which was primarily graduate students, but not all, and also North Village, which was family housing, which it supports mostly graduate students, but also some undergraduate students who, who have dependent family members. We knew that they needed to be replaced for all of the buildings had long outlived their life. And in many instances of other universities, they would have just knocked it down and been done and not offered any graduate housing. And we, we did not do that. So we are, we will be opening. I'm forgetting what the name of it is, but the back building of field stone Betsy. Wait. Slate. Thank you. We'll be for graduate students. I think that's around 200 apartments. And then we have, I want to say maybe 150 units over at university village, which is the family housing. It's my count off. 140 140. So we were able to provide some housing for graduate students. We know that's not going to house all of our graduate students, but we did make that investment. Erica has a hand up. I have a different question, which is around your, if you have data around your employees, including, you know, faculty and those who work in facility, physical plant in the dining commons, just in terms of where, how long their commute is here and what their sort of average salaries are, because I, I know a lot of people who would like to live in Amherst and can afford it because of all the pressure that we're just talking about in terms of market rate and, you know, just lack of availability of affordable housing. So I'm just wondering if you have any demographics around that. That might be useful for us as well, because we're looking, you know, to increase affordable housing. And we're also looking to ensure that especially middle and low income people who would like to live in Amherst have an opportunity to do so. And that includes the workers here, be it at UMass or at the schools or firefighters. So I'd be interested in demographics for your employees. So I don't know. We don't, I don't have that off the top of my head. I can't tell you that Tony was 2013 when we did you three. Yeah, it's a, it's a very long time ago now. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, 10 years ago when we partnered with the town and brought in you three advisors to think about ways that we could partner together. They calculated that about 24% of faculty and staff lived in Amherst. And that's just broadly faculty and staff. It wasn't broken down any further. And again, that's, that's 10 years ago. We can find out, you know, parking services or UMass transit may have some information about commutes and things like that. So we can look into that. But I'm glad you, you raised that, Erica, because you know, you know, that's really important to us as well. And we're seeing this challenge as we are recruiting faculty and staff and they are looking for places to live and to find something that is affordable and where they want it to be and all that. It's been really challenging. And I know we're not alone in that. I'm hearing that from the other colleges. I'm hearing that from friends, like everybody's really struggling with that. So I'm glad you raised that Erica, because that's really important to us as well. And as we think about how we recruit faculty and staff and how we retain them. So. Grover. I have two. Very technical questions. One is you mentioned the new grad student housing and the family housing units that. The university provides. And so my first question is. What is the average price to rent? A total unit, not by bed, but a unit. And do you have occupancy limits for each unit? And if so, what are they? The occupancy limits that were set by the zoning board were. For people per unit. And I'd have to get you the price on that. And I did not. I have the undergraduate roommates, but I don't have the. Thank you. Can I ask a follow up question, Carol? Yeah, go for it. So you said for people per unit on average, how many beds bedrooms are there per unit? I believe we're talking a one bedroom apartment or like a three bedroom apartment. No, I believe there are two to three bedroom apartments. Okay. Thank you. The couple of things that you said you could get for us. I'm assuming that you'll somehow get it to us later. As we're going through this. Thank you. Thank you for that. Are there, I'm. I guess I have one other question that occurs to me. I'm wondering if. The off, I forgot its name, but the off campus student life. Department that has that has rentals available at all these price points. Would they be willing to share to just let us know who the landlords that they're working with or anything, or that somehow. Proprietary information or is it available information? It's available. It's available and we can actually put the link into the. Into the chat. Well, we don't have a chat, but hold on. Student life. You mess. Betsy. I'm just trying to think here. So yeah, here we are. I'll just quickly jump in. I mean, if you go to the. Off campus. The office and they have a rental search. So you can. You know, actually just go in and they list. They show all the listings. So you can see that, you know, I'm, I'm on it right now. So. You know, under $1,100. There's 27 rental unit, 27 rentals available or 27 properties. And you can, you know, see where they are. So I mean, it is, I think most of it's probably public. I think it's public. I think it's public. I think it's public. I think it's public. I don't know where they are. So I mean, it is, I think most of it's probably public. It's very, it's public. And you'd be able to see it. So, so any, okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. Let's see what we have. Maybe another question or so. Does anybody on the trust have another question or otherwise I will go back. Hi. Hi again. So, I mean, I just want to, this is not a question. This is just a general comment, which is it feels like we've started off. Like at odd somehow. And I just wanted to state that while there's clearly tension between the ability to house all the students and the ability to how the amount of housing we have an Amherst, I think we're all trying to do the same thing, which is how is everybody here, including the students in affordable ways. And we don't want the students to have lack of housing lack of affordable housing. We know that there's homelessness or houselessness out on campus. Or for people who attend. And so I just wanted to sort of try to reset the tone because it were, were really curious about how we can align to get housing to all of these people in the best way. And it's, it does feel sometimes that, you know, oh my God, there's all these students and they're really skewing all the graphics and it's a problem, right? Our school enrollments are down and I will disagree with what Tony said. And when I looked at the household size over time of the last 30, 40 years, it hasn't changed that much. What we're really seeing is a dearth of the 20 to 45 year olds and all the children they bring with them. So it, I don't think there's any easy answers, but I'm really glad to be starting or restarting. It sounds like you've had a conversation 20 some years ago and try to figure out how we can get to these goals. If I can just. Risha, I, you know, I don't think that we feel today that there was, you know, I mean, I know that there's tension within the community for sure around this issue. I don't think that we felt that today in this meeting. I think this has been, you know, just really, you know, this has been a really good conversation and I hope. I hope our tone reflected that. You know, I think there. There are always conversations around this, you know, there, you know, Nancy and I meet regularly with Paul, who's, who's I think here, at least his name is. And, you know, and we also meet with Dave's own back at the same time. Hey, Paul, you know, it's not that we resolve these, these questions because there are such hard things to try to get a resolution to and they are longer term answers than they are, of course. You know, we can't remedy them unfortunately just by doing, you know, a quick Shazam type of thing, but, but you know, I do, I do think that one of the, the things that we are a victim of is not only the university's strength and its growth over time, but also that there, this place is a really wonderful place to live and people want to live here. And that has created, you know, a lot of, you know, I think points of, I don't want to say attention, but it has put pressures on the market, right? And you know, I mean, I think the, I promised I wouldn't do this, but I'm going to bring it up. The RKG study that goes back to 2015 that I think Rob Crowner probably was, was working on it at that time as part of the planning board. The, you know, that is still a very relevant report. And I think that we're also adding into that report now, but it's not a mass influx of professionals coming from elsewhere, but we are, we're seeing competition for units that might go to students in the past by professionals that are leaving cities and able to work remotely because this is a great place to live. So, you know, there's a lot of things here and it's really complex. And I think this conversation is a great start in my mind. And, you know, one that we're, you know, having with the town regularly and you know, it is good to have with you all. Thank you very much. Go ahead. Two that I was having conversation with a colleague this afternoon who came from, I think one of the SUNY schools that he said was sort of in the middle of nowhere and they were having the same kinds of issues. So we, you know, we're keeping an eye on the national conversation. I think, I think it's going to require some out of the box creative solutions that are collaborative in nature. So, you know, we, I think we have to obviously be in partnership about this, but I welcome your comments about collaborations, probably the only way to get there. So thank you. Well, we're very, we're really grateful for you being here and coming and speaking with us. And I'm, I see two hands and I'm not sure that they, Risha, your hand is back down again. John, do you have another question before we start with our guest? Yeah, I do. I know that Risha briefly mentioned the problem of students who simply can't afford to live on campus or even off campus very often or students who are actually homeless, even as they try to attend the university. And I was wondering whether you have information about those problems and whether there's something the university does to try to address it. Now that our Dean of students office works individually with a number of students who may be housing insecure otherwise. We have supply closets, case managers, and I'm sure working also with financial aid. But that, you know, that, that we have had students who live on campus. And that we do whatever we can to support their success at UMass. Thank you. Well, I don't see any other hands anywhere. Ashley, you have some last comment. Just to reiterate or just question. Like, even if you have to estimate that 900 to 1000 is per person and that person could share a room with two, with another person or two other people. So that one room. Generates 1800 or $3,000 more or less. Even in a two bedroom apartment where there's four people or maybe six. Each person is paying 900 to 1000. True. Around $900 is a shared room. So that's a standard double residence hall room. That's not. Okay, so that two bedroom is, is more or less $4,000. Or $6,000. Our, our room, our shared rooms house two students. I think we're talking about two different things. And Ashley, we don't have, you know, we have some data that's on the off campus student life, you know, rental search. But I can't speak to the data around what rentals are off campus. I mean, that is anecdotal to me. I understand what you're saying. I just, I don't think that we have the answers to that. No, I'm talking about on campus. When you rent a room with like, even as a freshman, you're each person is paying that 900. So even like, if it's two bedrooms, it's approximately $4,000 for those four people. Or maybe $6,000 for the six people. And then we have a room in the apartment. That is on campus. So our normal residential life experience is a one room kind of dormitory style. Housing unit. The other units that Betsy was talking about that were in North apartments or apartment style living that that's a little bit different. The dormitory, you know, that set up that Betsy was talking about. You know, this is looked at as, you know, per bed. You know, and that's what the costs are, but I'm not sure. You know, I'm getting the gist of it other than the math. So. Well, yeah, I think. Yeah, I get it. Okay. Okay. All right. Then I. I really want to thank you for coming. I hope that this is a beginning and not, and not an end. It's as I said before, it's a problem that's bigger than all of us. And so let's hope that by all trying to. See what we can do to help each other. Maybe we'll think of something that nobody thought of before that will help. Maybe we won't, but let's keep trying. And thanks very much for being here. If you have any last comment. Please do. Thank you. Yeah, we just appreciate you having us here and. You know, perhaps see you again. Great. Thank you very much. Let's see. Where are we? I think that means that I am turning it back over to Erica to bring us up to speed on our. Joint listening session. With housing and. Human rights. And the health department, the MS health department. Oh, sorry. I forgot something. So I would ask Allegra and Ashley to also join me if I miss anything. We have been working diligently. We've been meeting every week to plan the joint listening session. And oh, it's going to be on June 20th, the day after Juneteenth. The flyer was in the packet of information that Nate sent out with the agenda and the minutes. If you could share the flyers with all your contacts. Jennifer Moistens actually creating the flyer to distribute and we have a whole strategy of where we're distributing it. Right now we're going to do a wave of the flyer in English because that's what we have. And we're going to do a second wave of the flyer. And we're going to translate that minimally in Spanish and then we'll do a second wave where we're also going to be distributing that as well. We are probably going to be asking maybe some of you to help us. We're expecting. We're very, I think very ambitious where we're expecting at least 80 people. This is in person meeting at the bank center. And we're going to have a lot of people at the table. We're going to have a lot of tables of eight people at each of the tables where on the flyer you'll see, you can ask for childcare or and or interpreter services. And so we're hoping that we will have a good showing of individuals who are interested in having us listen. It's a listening session. So the focus really is for us to invite other town, towns, organizations and members, representatives to listen. And we really want individuals to come and speak freely about their experience of either trying to find affordable housing here in Amherst, their experience in living in Amherst and dealing with affordability, rental or permanent in terms of housing. So we're going to flyer far and wide and try to ask as many of the organizations that we're connecting with to try to distribute the information and get people to come. I think it's a great opportunity to listen and hear from community members, those who live outside of Amherst or want to live in Amherst and those who do live in Amherst and are struggling. And it will give us an opportunity to also then think about what our strategies and what our priorities should be. So I'll just ask Ashley and Legger if there's anything else that I've missed from that. Well, I mean, I'm definitely hoping that everybody comes and in fact, like all the town councillors and all the different committees and maybe the land conservation people who have a lot of land and maybe we could get some and anybody that wants to, and then we have to write a report and, you know, that's like a big deal that, you know, if you go, you can certainly chime in on the report. I mean, let's discuss eventually the report that we're going to collectively write. Is Legger still here? Oops. Looks like she might have dropped off. Yeah, I just noticed that right. Okay. And I think that is a very good point, Ashley. So we want to collect the information. We want to actually very quickly turn around the summary of what we heard and then distribute it, put it on our website. There might be also an opportunity to, if we have resources that we can connect with the different aspects of the report, we'll do that as well. But we really want to turn around and give it to our community organizations, to town council, to the CRC and to ourselves to take a look at what comes out of it and then think about action steps. So as we're thinking about, you know, redoing our own strategic plan in our own work with the CRC, this is a great opportunity to, you know, to listen to community members. Nate has also put the flyer on our trust website. There's a QR code. So if people want to submit comments, there are three major questions that they want to submit comments and can't show up or don't want to show up, want to submit comments they can, or they can submit comments and still come and either participate in listening or just also participate there. We're hoping that in terms of the breakdown of the plan, we're hoping that there will be a lot of discussion and tables across the room that we can generate conversations. And we as the planning committee in possibly asking you as well, just be note takers and just listen, but to keep the conversation going by just prompting questions. That's it. Any questions? Oh, Nate. Have a question, maybe. Yeah. No, I was going to say that this will be a posted trust meeting as well as the other boards and it will, you know, we are the report. We'll have minutes and we'll have an agenda. You know, I do think that, you know, other boards and committee members will also be there from the other sponsoring ones, but we will need some, some members to probably help out. I mean, if it, you know, optimistic, right? 80 would be great. You know, it is in person. We are getting the fires out on email every board and committee chair person. It's going to go home through the school newsletter. Through other organizations. So it could be that there's a really big turnout. And the idea would be that there could be a follow-up meeting or two. So this would be maybe the first in a series of a few. So really this isn't, you know, this is a chance just to, I just want to reiterate what Eric said. We're not responding to, you know, we're hoping that, you know, there's not a panel. Really there's, you know, tables with discussion points that we're going to report out on and really hear what people are saying. And then we can synthesize that data and use it to figure out, you know, help figure out priorities. And action steps. And so it kind of aligns with the trust in the CRC meeting. We have funding to update the housing production plan, which will happen in the fall when the census numbers are finally available. So, you know, I feel like all these pieces can come together and really help, you know, create actionable items. And, you know, by the end of the year. And so this is something we haven't done in a long time. Really just try to hear from different members of the community. I just wanted to thank all the people who've been involved in trying to organize it. Eric, Ashley and Allegra from our group, but I know there's people from various other town committees. I'm really grateful for the work that's going into putting this together. So if I can just then mention who they are, because I think it's important. So we have Nancy Gilbert from the health department. We have Phillip Avila and Liz Heygood from the Human Rights Commission. Jennifer Moisten. Who's the, I believe the DEI. Officer here for Amherst. And Nate has also been very supportive of us as well. Who's from CSJC? Allegra. Allegra. Okay. So she's got two hats on. Go Allegra. Okay. That's it. Back to you, Carol. Oh, okay. Yeah. So the next thing is this proposal that I would like to make that got tabled last time because there wasn't time. The proposal is in my hand somewhere here. It went out. I think it's sort of simple and straightforward. I would like to propose that the trust. Authorize its chairs to endorse projects and programs or write letters to support. As long as the action is consistent with votes already taken on the subject by the trust. And I, this didn't come out of thin air. It came out of twice. Once when the town was trying to, uh, had a, I think it was a grant proposal they wanted to put in to get money for the, for the. The project that they're working on. They asked us to write a letter of support. And it was between meetings and they needed it. And so we decided that looked back. Yes. We supported the project. The trust has voted to support the project based on that. I'm going to write the letter, but I felt a little bit like I'm. I would love to officially know that that's okay. And the other time was we were asked to write to sign on to something to extend. Uh, the eviction moratorium, which we'd also been in support of before and had a, had even a vote that I could go find in a minute. That was in support of it. And so I felt like we as chairs could do that. So I would just feel more comfortable as a chair. Being able to do these things that it seems like you would want done, but I would be grateful if we could pass it. Proposal through me and any other chair, whoever is the next chair. Just feel like, yeah, this is, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. So that's my pitch. Comments, questions. Can we just vote on it and say it's fine. And then go to the next thing, please. Yes, do that. Yeah, we can. That's fine with me. I'm proposed. Have questions. Yeah, go home. Good. So I'm assuming that the reason that we can't, you can't just send around an email and say, this is the letter of everyone. Okay. With it is an open meeting. Problem. Yes. Right. It feels like the spirit of the open meeting is not. It feels against the spirit of the open meeting. Because what it means is you guys are taking decisions for the whole council. We don't get to say in it. And that's the only option we have because. We meet once a month instead of, why can't we meet twice a month. And then we'll twice the conversation. I would just still be something that happened in between. I'm, I think that would make there be fewer things. But I think that would be a good idea. I think that would be a good idea. I mean, I'm not going to say something that happened in between. I mean, I think that would make there be fewer things. But the way that I'm proposing it is only can we do this. If it's something that trust has already voted in support of. Like you'll be like, yeah, it's close. It's sort of like this. I mean, it would just to me a lot more comfortable to say, here's the letter we'd like to write if everyone could just write back individually, you know, as long as you get a quorum, you're good, right? Paul. Yeah. So that would break the open meeting law. And we don't want to break the open meeting law because that's called sequential. Deliberation. So you can't, and so in the town has been very strict about complying with the open meeting law, which is a good thing. And the open meeting law is to make sure the public sees all the actions that the trust takes. This is to say we delegate to the co-chairs, some of them out of responsibility. Now, if there's something really urgent, we don't have to have scheduled twice a month meetings. We can, the co-chairs can say with 48 hours notice, we need a meeting. We really need to act. We were scheduling a meeting in, you know, with 48 hours notice. And so they can, they can call meeting whenever they feel. What I think the point on this is that there are a lot of things like this. And I think that the co-chairs, I think this would be nice to have a letter of support from the trust to get a grant, you know, to support affordable housing. It's, it's usually not to involve like taking controversial positions on a bylaws that's being proposed. And, you know, I think that that's, I think the co-chairs wouldn't be like, do you support this bylaw or not. I think that's something the trust should talk about. But in terms of like grant applications or things like that, that's my sense of what you're talking about. And if that's the case, I'm comfortable with it. I'm comfortable with it. I'm comfortable with it. I'm comfortable with it. I'm comfortable with it. By taking positions on sort of town policy things. That's really something that should be a discussion for the trust. Oh yeah. Absolutely. And what, what is a quorum? How many people are in a quorum? So if you. If you post something with 48 hours notice who need five of us to show up. Take a vote. Three or more. Say yes. And you're done. It doesn't like you. It's like a 10 minute thing. It's like a 10 minute thing. It's like a 10 minute thing. It's like a 10 minute thing. It's like a 10 minute thing. It's like a 10 minute thing. It's like a 10 minute thing. So if it's important. Post it. Five people show up. Take a vote immediately. Three people say yes, we're done. Like, right. It was sort of, I mean, if you have to, if it's a letter, you have to write, you have to write. I. We could do that. We could do that. It means we have to call more meetings than we maybe. Want to call. We could do that. We could do that. We could do that. We could do that. We could do that for a minute and hear what Rob has to say. Yeah, I'd like to support this too. And I think I probably would, but. But my concern is that it's open-ended. And it implies that it could be a vote taken years ago. With a completely different. Membership. So, so. Which, you know, It's likely that the membership would continue to support whatever is being asked. But, but, but you'd be speaking for. For people who are no longer. You know, who no longer made the statement. And it just, so I think. I would feel a little bit better if. If there was. Some sort of time limit on, on how far back you could look. For a vote. Or how many members of the current. Trust. Or part of that vote, something like that. But. That's my concern. Just thinking of each of possibility of doing it, I'd rather have a time limit than have to try to figure out who the trust numbers were. Happen. That would, that's. I'm curious that the concerns raised could be addressed. As Rob was getting out by just a more specific motion, like. You know, We'll, like we will approve sign on letters and letters of support for projects. The committee has already. Discussed and voted in support of. Within a two year timeframe or some, you know, something like that. Would that assuage people's concerns. Well, I mean, for instance, you're totally new. We're all new to the. We're all new to the website. So if you want to be on it. That's the thing is like, maybe it needs to be really. Very soon. Like you have two months. Like either way, we voted on something in the last two months and we're all, we only need a quorum. Like, so we only need three out of five people to say yes. And then if you know that happened. You go ahead. Grover, do you still have your hand up or is that leftover? Well, I would just say like, for example, if if everyone six months ago voted in support of a project and then I came on and was new and we're going to go vote again. I assume I would lose the vote but we would still go forward. For example, so it would still be okay with me. I just want to say it's weird to me to think that that's something that a different body of people did as a trust somehow doesn't count because now it's a different body of people than it used to be the trust has some. I don't know I mean so I don't want to go back forever I agree having a two year time limit or something is fine but if it's not exactly the same people it's still the trust. That's the point they're trying we try to, you can only be on the trust for so many years because we want to keep different people being involved in it so it's, it has a, it is a an entity and it's not just the people. It's the entity that's doing something, and I will stop there and Nate. Yeah thanks I mean I see this as an administrative thing that the chair should be able to do because they're not taking a vote on anything. It really is, you know, reiterating what trust has already done through their votes in action so I think a time frame is fine but so for instance, the trust has already supported and voted money for East Gables you know 132 Hampton Road the trust has done a few things for that. And it could be that next year, Valley is applying for a grant to do something and they said, will the trust, write a letter of support, we need it next week. And, although actually it seems like it could be easy, for whatever reason it's really hard to get a quorum when you need it. And so I'm not going to, I don't want to place it on let's try to get five people to meet Thursday morning at 10am, just so the chairs can then preview a letter, and then submit it on Friday and so to me it's the co chairs could say the trust has done these are the actions the trust has done in support of this project, and we're in support of this application and it's not. They're not taking any, they're making any decisions about what the trust is saying now the reporting on past actions in support of the project and so if we needed a new vote if they really like the trust. We'd like to say that say valley came back and said we'd like to add units or change the affordability requirements to me that's something that I want the trust to vote on. We're applying for a grant to help subsidize the units to for a deeper affordability. We love the trust to sign in on that. I would say well the trust is already taken like three votes on this project, the co chairs can submit a letter saying here's what we've done. And if we want to put a timeframe I think that's fine but to try to, every time to do this. It's difficult so even like with the bfw site. You know we're looking at sheltering transitional housing, the trust will be looking at that but at some point we may be like wow. There's a great opportunity. Sometimes they come pretty quickly in the trust right a letter and so the coach is right a letter if the trust hasn't taken any action we won't ask that of the trust. But if there's been action on it, then we'd ask I mean I'm not going to ask the co chairs to write a letter if the trust hasn't even discussed something. I don't know how we move forward on this I would like I would happily accept something like what Grover suggested as friendly amendments to my proposal at a two year sometimes projects take so long maybe two or three years, whatever amount of years would make people be able to say yes. Because I like to get people to say yes. Yeah. Yeah, why don't you actually make a motion that we can vote yes or no on. I move that we agree to have the co chairs be able to endorse projects or programs or write letters of support. And support of projects that the trust has given has voted its support of within the last three years. Thank you. Okay, yes. Okay, let's I think we have a fat Grover has a question and I I have a friendly amendment because if we're writing it out and that becomes the rule. You said projects I would say projects and policies, because like the eviction moratorium is a policy. Thank you. I accept your friendly amendment. And I would only like, I would like to ask George, because he's taking notes. If he would like to try to read back whatever it is that we're voting on. He can't read it back at the moment, because you need to restate it at least one more time a little bit more slowly. It's changed a few times in the last 3040 seconds. So take your time, and I will try to write it down and then I will read it back, and hopefully we'll get it right but at the moment I can't do it. Okay. The Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust authorizes its chairs to endorse projects or policies or to write letters of support as slow, slow, slow, slow, slow. I'm not, I'm not a professional. This is, please. So, start again. I'm sorry. I'm just if I don't keep going I'll forget what I'm saying, but I can't go that fast. I got it. So tell me where you are. Start again at the beginning, please. The Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust authorizes its chairs keep going great to endorse projects or policies or write letters of support. Good. So long as such action is consistent with votes taken by the trust within the last three years. Yeah, I just put I put chair and then with the parentheses after it because I don't know there will always be co chairs there might go back some time to when there's only a chair. So it should work for either a chair or co chairs. So, that's why. All right, I think we got it. I mean, I would. So. We should take a fit. It's been seconded. I believe. All still is. Yeah. I just put I put chair and then with the parentheses after it because I don't know there will always be co chairs there might go back some time to when there's only a chair. So it should work for either a chair or co chairs. I believe all still is seconding it with the he said he accepted the friendly amendment. We're all good. We should. Erica, how do you vote. I accept a proof. Rob. Yes. Ashley. Yes. Risha. Did you hear me? Yes. I didn't. I'm sorry. Thank you. Yes. Yes. Who did I forgot myself? Yes. Me. Sid, where did she go? Oh, she had to leave. Sid told us he had to leave at a certain time. And so he has left. Okay, I think that's that. Did you write the letter already to the. Do you mass about the, like that you were going last month weren't you writing a letter already. Did that go out very soon after it did that is the result of that letter is them coming today. Oh, okay. We asked in the letter in the letter besides saying, you know, this seems upsetting that there are so many people who don't which said, you know, let's let's begin to have a conversation about this. If you come to a meeting, we offer this meeting and that chapter. Okay. Well, one other thing is that once you write the letter, can we just get made to have the whole letter sent to everybody. So it says, we wrote this letter. Here's your notice that we just sent it. That's, that's not a violation. Is it Paul, that's okay. Perfect. That's perfectly fine. Yeah. As long as there's no discussion about it afterwards. Okay, just can't talk about it then right. You can't talk about it unless you have something to say about it will have to wait till the next meeting to say it but we can put out what we did. Good point. Thank you very much. That's, yes, I did. I never know if the letter was sent and then I didn't actually see it so that doesn't mean that it wasn't there but I'm just saying like, once the letter is sent this is the letter we sent. Here it is. Yeah, you're right. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Um, anything else on this topic. If not, I will pass it back to Erica for something updates on projects updates. All right. Thank you very much. And thank you Ashley for reminding us that we should have caught. We should have sent the letter to everyone else as well. So we still could do that. Okay, updates. The first item is if there is any update on the housing planner position. Nate, would you like to give us an update on that? If you have one. I guess I have an update. You know that the human resources department lost to staff recently so we're a bit understaffed but the position description everything is all set. It's under review right now I think I just talked to Dave Zomac and my supervisor about just, you know, reviewing it one more time if I have to go. I don't know if it's going to happen again, but it's, you know, after the last meeting everything was finalized and so it's really just, you know, it's going to work. It has to work its way through town process to become, you know, a position but then it's ready to be advertised. So the planning department is still looking for another planner we're hoping to advertise soon and we probably put both of those out together and hopefully have, you know, a good response with that. Thank you, Nate. Do you think we would have somebody by July 1. We can have, well at least have responses. I feel like we can, yeah. Okay, thanks. Alright, then East Gable. So Laura Baker is away until Monday. So we're pursuing setting up a schedule for tour of East Gable. They've offered that they want to give us a tour so we're going to follow up and try to find a time where we can all tour East Gable. I've passed by it a couple of times. Looks really wonderful. And if you look on their website, you can also see the inside of East Gable as well. Ball Lane, both Carol and I went to the open house and we got a tour. They brought again with them the model which they brought to Mill River when they actually came to I think it was the district one barbecue and they gave us a tour and went through the whole process. Right now they're working on a development plan for permitting which they're hoping that they will submit a comprehensive 40B permit to the town by the summer. And then they also shared which they shared at the open house as well the frequently asked questions which Nate put into the packet and everyone should have that. And it also gives you a little bit of a design of the project. A lot of people came to the open house and I believe that there was a lot of conversation about the support in the community. I actually live right up the street from where it's going to be planned. There are a lot of individuals who came from the community who were really excited about it. There really I think there was only one conversation one person who might not be so excited in terms of being in a butter but there seems to be a lot of support for that. So that's pretty exciting. Belcher Town Road and East Street. I have a long update from James. So I'll try to condense it a little bit. It says we discussed in our working with the town on receiving up to an additional $600,000 of ARPA funds from the town to supplement the CPA funds. That's wonderful news. The LDA is nearly complete. Wayfinder submitted a signed document in the fall and has been working with legal in the town for a greeble ground lease language. Additionally, we're working through some title issues with the attorneys on the sites but continue to move in the right direction. Belcher Town Road sites have been combined by the town into one parcel which we sort of knew. Architectural design continues to be developed and we're wrapping up the schematic design phase and looking to go into design development. Phase one is an environmental site assessment that was completed. The hazmat environmental reports are underway. The traffic studies geotechnical reports have been received. We anticipate soil evaluation test pits will occur in the next few months. You can see how much goes into the development. Our architect envelope consultant structural engineer and geotechnical engineer performed an onsite review of the school and will incorporate the findings into their designs. We received a cost estimate from our construction manager. It appears we're not alone in seeing cost escalation where we'll continue to move forward with the development and working on funding scenarios that will help mitigate the uptaken costs. With the due diligence work and designs well underway we anticipate submitting the project eligibility letter application to DHCD this summer to move the 40B process forward with the town and hopefully beginning the meetings in the fall and winter of this year. I just want to say to George, George, we'll forward you the email that that's all in so you don't have to say it right now. Sorry, I should have said that. And I will do that right. I will do that after the meeting. Then our next is strong street Nate any any updates on strong street. No, it's still there. You know, we had, we had followed up with the state, you know, a long time ago about wetlands and and rare and endangered species and habitat and so we're, we met with the neighbors Dave and I met with the neighbors and late winter. We haven't touched base with them. It's pretty slow. We're still trying to figure out the best way to move forward with that in terms of how to get some units up there. So, we've been busy with the other projects that you've mentioned. And so strong streets still there I mean I think it's not going to yield a lot of units, necessarily, given, you know, the site constraints so we, you know, we have some ideas about it, the town may actually act as the developer which we rarely do but bring a site plan through permitting, just so that it's, it's permittable, and it's something that, you know, we think if we put it at request for proposal out we may not get many responses just given that it's so few units. And so, you know, it had been in a qualified census tract and Valley had looked at it for something that they then turn their attention to ball lane just because it's a much easier site. And so it's no longer in a qualified census tract. It's across the street so you know there's been some discussion about could we have a waiver or something to say it's just north of the strong street and make that eligible for some home ownership funding. But, you know, there hasn't been any, you know, any, any other progress other than some, you know, conversations with different stakeholders and organizations seeing how best to move it forward. Thank you, Nate. The other next item is ARPA funding and how the town is any update on how the town's using ARPA specifically for housing which of course we just found out that there's going to be some support for the Belcher Town Road and East Street. Yeah, I think that was, you know, so when, when way finders requested Community Preservation Act funding they also said they would need, or there was a requested amount in the discussion during that process and the winter was, you know, if it wasn't some CPA funding that ARPA money could be used to support that project. And so that's something that they've submitted a request to the town that's under review so 600,000 in the town has committed a million dollars for sheltering and you know, transitional housing. So there's ARPA money going into the VFW site and pre development work there. So there's, you know, it's definitely there's projects that are, you know, they're big ticket items that used ARPA money there's still some available. I don't know exactly how much but you know a fair amount of it has been, you know, it could be allocated to housing projects so between the VFW site and way finders. There's quite a bit of funding there that would be committed to housing. If you have a plan for that, you said it could be. I know we submitted the trust. I mean, I guess the idea would be, you know, if the town we haven't finalized a contract or anything with way finders but we do that 600,000 for that site and then for the VFW site there's a fair amount that would go into, you know, pre development, maybe design or other things and so again that's something that staff is working on but it hasn't been finalized in terms of numbers. I thought I heard you say that there was still funding available that's designated for housing after the way finder has 600,000 in the million for VFW. There could be. I mean, if someone would be, you know, how much, you know, we'd have to run some numbers right there was some money that was made available for family outreach to do some support services that could have been from another part of money. So someone would be checking with the finance director to say okay, if all these projects are, you know, supported with ARPA what's the remaining balance and I could do that if you'd like. Yes, if you could do that for the next meeting that'd be great. And so you mentioned VFW anything that any other updates and any timelines. So we're working on, you know, the next step would be doing some property assessment which is underway and then actually we're developing a plan for demolition. Right now the site is being used to support the construction across the street of the new development there's, you know, a new project going on across the street, new apartments mix use building. We're doing that for parking and so right now the site is, you know, is being used to support that and once that's over, we're looking at, you know, cleaning it up and possibly removing the building. Okay. Any update on Hickory Ridge in terms of its use. We again made recommendations about possible affordable housing for elders. The plan is still working with Dotson and Flinker or Dotson Associates maybe to come up with a master plan for that. Our focus has been we have funding to do an accessible trail on part of it and we also block grant money to do another trail connecting Mill Valley through the road neighborhoods through the property to Pomory Village intersection. So that's been our focus right now the town's focus, just the money is has timeline so there's still a process going through to have conceptual ideas for housing or other uses of the site that will be incorporated into a master plan that is still in progress. So you know there hasn't really been anything decided on the site, other than some of these trail, trail connections. So most of the existing car paths bridges and trying to formalize those into, you know, actually connecting people across the site. Is there a plan for once there's sort of a decision made with regard to the next steps, how are you going to engage the community because there was a huge initiative which was wonderful and in terms of everyone submitting their ideas and we all got to see what ideas were the biggest ideas, but there was really no I think response in terms of prioritizing those ideas. Yeah, you know I think we had planned some more public outreach I'm not sure how that decision making process will occur though. I think, you know, the solar is being installed right now to so the town has been really busy monitoring that that's been taking up a lot of conservation staff time. So, you know, between the two trails and the solar that's what we've been focusing on just to make sure it's all, all done correctly. And then, you know that that should be wrapping up by July one some of these things and then I think the report would become more, more polished and you know available later for public discussion. Any questions from trust members about any one of these items we just discussed as updates. I'm not seeing any hands up. John Hornick has his hand up. Thanks Erica. I wanted to go back to strong street for a moment. When I was chair of the trust as well as a member. I thought that was an important opportunity for the trust. And it looked like we could have at least 3035 units maybe even more that would be built there. So, a best case scenario is probably, I don't know 1415 units whatever you think Nate, and the cost per unit is going to be really high. There's a lot of competition or focus on other housing projects. And I'm, again, this is not a criticism of the work that's been done I do appreciate the work that you and Rob have done. I'm wondering whether it's no longer worth your time or our time to stay focused on this. I mean, yeah, I'll say, you know, some point, I was somewhat pessimistic myself, given the number of units but you know speaking with other staff, you know it still is a town owned property and so, you know there's not a lot of other competing uses that are available now for it so knowing that it could still be available for housing even if we permit it as, you know, a six unit, a six parcel subdivision, just to be able to move through that could be important right so you know it may be something that is a slow build out, it could be, you know, a habitat for humanity site if we can get utilities, you know at one point Rob crown or I'd mentioned well could we sell some of the existing infrastructure upon other trust activities and so you know some of it is still really, you know, staff has been busy but the land isn't going away and so we're still keeping it on the back burner right we're still slowly proceeding with it coming up with ideas and so actually just the other week. Rob more was like, we're joking around about playing developer and he's like well there is strong street and after the last trust meeting talking about the cost per unit of development and we're saying well what could you know what would it take to fund units there on strong street and so you know I agree. I feel like there could be other priorities and so but it is something that we're you know we're going to keep chipping away at you know, I tell the neighbors to email me every few months with an update as well just because you know they're curious to know what's happening in their you know in their neighborhood so you know if if other projects, we're not it's not like we're recruiting ourselves from researching other other properties or things right so if another property seems like it become available and we could act on it or it's more favorable we would still, you know we pursue that but I think you know, unless the town wants to dispose of it for some other purpose which I am not aware of it, you know we're still thinking of it for housing, even if it's not a big yield, right it could be a small home ownership project that you know could offer you know subsidized housing or you know something for you know 10 to 12 households. Ashley. Pickery Ridge is 10 acres, and that is two tiny house villages of 88 units. We know that those 10 acres are buildable because they have the golf they actually go golf course on it and a parking lot. Why don't we put our energy where we could get 88 units. If we wanted. We have to get the right developer who almost takes no cut, but that person exists. And they could do 88 units on 10 acres. Why aren't we doing that. Am I supposed to respond. Why aren't we moving forward with what we can do if we find the right developer with all the 10 acres that we know is buildable, like, why spend time and energy doing stuff like for months and months and months of no. There's nothing happening on strong street. Like I said though I'm not spending, you know, so much of my time that it's a drain on on, you know, my, my, you know, my capacity so you know this will be. Let's look at it well so we are working on hickory like I said there's been just other priorities on the property and so I think when, like I said some of the trail work in solar is moving along then with the, you know with the master plan with all the ideas that were, you know, assembled through the engage Amherst process that then that will pick up again. You know I think the trust still can discuss how housing can be a priority for that site so I'm not saying it won't be I just think that's, you know, the town isn't there yet in that conversation to have that one, you know that decision making point about what is happening on that property. Well, can we take votes like if something isn't really fruitful in six months or a year. Can we vote to drop it and pick up something that could be fruitful and put it on the front burner like do we have some idea that we could put some things away. You're not selling it and and starting on something that could be useful. We could take a vote like that right now. I think Paul wants to say something and john had his hand up and it looks like it's down again but go ahead john. I mean Paul. So I mean I think what the town has been doing is keeping lots of irons in the fire and that's an okay thing to do like strong street isn't taking any time at all we bring it up every month, even though there's nothing that's been done on the previous month but that's not a bad thing that you keep it on your because something might happen at some point it's good to identify that the VFW site is going to take a long it's going to take years to develop if you say let's drop it after a year. We'll never get the support of housing and shelter done because that's a multi year project just to get funding secured because it's a pretty it's a very big project. So on Hickory Ridge, that's not been decided as to what that that land will be used for. That is a pretty big council discussion to be had. There are many competing demands for that for affordable housing tax pay you know, modern income housing for a fire station for a community center for a senior center, all types of things so how that land is to be disposed as a pretty big action that hasn't really been put forward yet. So, I mean the trust should certainly weigh in when that when that discussion begins. But I'm just saying that there isn't like let's go build there. That's not an option right now. Well, why isn't it an option. And if we put it on the front burner and took some votes in terms of like, there's a huge need for affordable housing. We'll start building on what we have and we know is buildable, and we take some votes about what to prioritize. And we know something isn't happening on strong street. So we take a vote to de prioritize it. If we're talking about Hickory, it's not the trust property. No, it's, it's no decisions been made on what that property is going to be used for that's what the planning process is being is being done right now. So I think the trust should be advocating for using it for affordable housing is that's what the trust wants to do. But, you know, there's nothing, there's nothing that trust doesn't control that property at this point in time. So the trust have any property we could prioritize over the property that isn't happening. Do we have any land. We don't own the trust doesn't own any land at all. The trust doesn't own any buildings at all the trust doesn't own anything. We have influence, hopefully. But we don't own anything and so the decision making process for any of these things are are we are most usually kind of the niggling thing in your side that or or if the project gets far enough along. We're the the advocates, we're the ones who go to the meetings and argue for why this should happen, the thing that we want to happen but it's just, it's not up to us it's not our decision so all we can do is keep asking about it in hopes that that keeps the town who owns it and has to decide about it interested in considering housing as a possibility there. And I think if I can jump in. I think it's like a pipeline you know we've got some projects that are that are moving forward at different stages, you know, like beltertown road and East Street school or are there already awarded there's there's contractors. You know, the different strategies is ball lane is moving forward 132 Northampton road is nearing completion so if some nearing completion, some in the planning stages some in the permitting stages summit early in the stage. And we always we want to keep a, that pipeline blowing and strong streets available there. But we're, you know, the thing staff is always looking at what's the next project what's the next project and where can that be. And, you know, a lot of, a lot of effort and we put in right now to looking at zoning and rent and different things like that that will encourage the private sector to be doing more inclusionary housing as well. So I think votes on what we think our priorities and what we don't think our priorities, especially like, like, could we have like a hierarchy of what we think is useful. And what is it. We could have that. Actually, are the joint of the next thing on the agenda perhaps here is this very important announcement I think we're having a joint meeting, the trust us and the CRC committee. Next Thursday, May 18 at seven, it will be a joint meeting, and our goal there is to consider with them what priorities might want to be. So what will be at least for us a conversation about priorities and I'm, it's especially important to know it's coming because we are putting together. It's kind of a big packet of material that will be great for everyone to read and think about, not talk to each other about, but think about before we have the meeting on the 18th, which Mandy, Joe, panicky of the CRC has agreed to facilitate the meeting. We spent some time a little bit together trying to figure out what the agenda should be but the but it's, it will be kind of for us up. What are the priorities and not just ours because if we just discovered it has to be a conjunction between what's the town's priorities, and what's the trust priorities were part of the town and we want. We want to help the town do affordable housing as best as it can. And so, so stay tuned for May 18. And I'm not sure who's sharing anymore Erica, I kind of jumped in but Grover has their hand up. Grover good. Can you please say what the acronym CRC stands for. Community resource committee, I think. Yes, and I'm sorry I hate when people do that so thank you for asking and I apologize for not saying it all the way out. And they're the, they're part of town council so this actually a thank you Ashley for raising how are we all working together and thinking about affordable housing and when you think about affordable housing and our own mission. It's really very expansive from preventing homelessness to looking at housing insecurity insecurity, looking at rental properties it's looking at home ownership it's looking at creating more of that. It's really very expansive and so we have to some extent some overlapping mission and goals with the CRC and the town council and the town. It's an opportunity to really look at all the documentation the data, the comprehensive plan, and think about what is the CRC's role, what is our role, where can we fill in gaps at the CRC cannot focus on what's the town priorities and really think about our own strategy for the future so as you said Ashley, it's an opportunity for us to reflect on and to identify what our priorities should be and what we should be focusing on and maximizing all of the resources and all of the focus that exists in the town, not duplicating it but that we build off of each other, ensuring that you know we can move forward and having an impact on our very large mission which is to create affordable and secure housing for especially the most vulnerable. I think it's also a place to advocate for the town to take affordable housing much more seriously and to put it on the front burner to prioritize it over many things that it's not it's not really on the priority like I think we need to like get affordable housing way up on the list of things to think about so that when there's 10 acres we do something with it. Like, we know we're going to do something with it. It's not even like I don't know who's it's just open 10 acres like it's not even a. No one's voting on that tomorrow or Monday. I'm going to let Paul speak and I just want to also recognize that Eliza's had Eliza's had the hand up for a while, but before Paul speaks, just let me state just in terms of my experience with working with the Amherst affordable housing trust and the town, and also being a state worker in terms of, you know, working within the context of the resources you have, just from the statement from an update from James, all of the different pieces that have to go into it. So I think you know we also have to think about that it would be great if any of us could just pivot, buy and build, but they're just so many different pieces of it and so I just also want to be thoughtful about the fact that they're having resources and just from my experience working with Paul and Nate that they're they they are trying as much as possible to do their best so let me let Paul speak. Yeah, I want to I just want to push back on actually because I think it's unfair actually and inaccurate to say the town hasn't prioritized affordable housing, the town has done an enormous amount and putting an enormous amount of money into affordable housing. The need is limitless. There is not enough. It's not we don't have enough of it that any or that any level of affordable housing. The town council has identified affordable housing as one of its top priorities. It hasn't listed a whole bunch of priorities but it's one of them, along with racial equity and sustainability. So, and I think in just to be totally fair with staff, you know, our staff puts as much time on affordable housing as it does for any other project. It's on par with sustainability in terms of the Nate's office. So I, you know, I hear you saying that often actually and I think it's I think it's a it's a disservice to the people who are advocates for affordable housing it feels like it's the work that's being done. And, and so I think that I feel disrespected by that quite honestly, and, and I think we're always welcoming to be goaded and I didn't begin to say hey we should be doing more because I think we need that sometimes especially as public officials but I also think it's okay to say Nate you're going well on these things and good good for you so thank you. I need to say that to you because I see lots of emails coming from you, and it feels like, you know, it's, I just don't feel as I think you're hitting a lot of really good points when you write the emails I think you really are identifying key issues, which you know, it has really shaped the public discussion that's happening so I'm not discouraging you I want you to keep, you know, not discouraging you know from that. I also think it's fair to say that town, you know, you know, over the course of decades, you know, when John Hornick was leading and with our co-chairs now and with the staff, and with the council, that there's always been a pretty strong priority in town meeting. So I just think it's okay to recognize that we're doing good work, there's so much more work to be done. Has affordable housing ever been a capital campaign? Have you had a capital campaign? Certainly, you know, I've only been here like a few years but is affordable housing ever been part of the capital campaign? Yes, every year. Oh, I mean, oh, okay, I didn't realize that they're like these capital campaign projects. Well, I guess maybe I don't know what you mean by capital campaign. Well, I thought there was like a specific project that was like the library and the, you know, the second, the North Amherst additional unit, I thought there was a specific thing that was a capital campaign that was like a project. I didn't exactly see that affordable housing was its own capital campaign, like a project. So, yeah, so the town is putting money into Belcher Town Road. The town put money into 132 Northampton Road. The town put tax increment financing into North Square, millions, more over a million dollars for that project to make that affordable. So, they probably knows more what all the projects have been to the town has invested heavily into affordable housing to ensure that they would be affordable. And that is called the capital campaign. That's when you call. Yeah, we don't we don't do capital campaigns. So I'm not sure what that really means. I thought the library, like, I thought the library was a capital campaign, like, I thought that's a private entity as a nonprofit that's doing that. So, Ashley, I'm going to ask Grover to speak because we're starting to run out of time. So I'm going to recognize Grover and the Nate, but I would really like to also open up for Eliza. Eliza's had their hand up for a while. Go ahead, Grover. The conversation that's happening here makes me wonder, I know in previous meetings I've heard discussion about an ask or proposal for the trust to have a, I forget what the word is, but like basically like an outlined sense of priorities and goals that we have to first say like a five year plan. And so it just makes me wonder if that is on a future calendar for us to talk about the timing is getting that completed I'm assuming actually that this meeting we're having next week is part of that process and it just makes me think that, you know, this brings up things like it sounds like we don't have like a public land policy where affordable housing gets the first right of refusal which is something that is available and happens in other cities or a proposal for a state bond measure in five years right like there's tactics we could take and support that are outside of building guidance but it would require us to make those decisions and then we would have to pass them through council right. Yeah. Thank you, Grover. Nate. Yeah, you know, as part of the meeting next week there is a, you know, some information that I'll go out in terms of town support for housing and different things. So that can help me answer some questions and it's not also just about building units it's about preserving units it's about changing zoning and regulation so there's many things that town does to support affordable housing so with inclusionary zoning, you know there's already been 30 or 40 units created through that in the last two years and so, you know zoning and land use would also be in support of housing. Housing students is a corollary to affordable housing right so the town is engaging in that so I think the conversation tonight with you mass is also helping with affordable housing I feel like it's, it is somewhat, you know, it's misleading when we say well we haven't produced a lot of units that there's so many different pieces that help makes housing affordable and accessible. Yeah, the trust is strategic plan was extended for a year. And I think with the meeting coming up and with you know hopefully new data with the census coming out. You know there can be a new five year plan for the trust so previously there had been discussions about having you know like a subcommittee or two, identifying priorities short and long term goals and so that's available and needs to be updated and so I agree it would be great as part of this conversation. You know over the next few months, we have priority so the planning board is also talking about, you know how could it rezone village centers what does it mean for density there's a zoning proposal right now in terms of certain housing types. I think there's a lot of discussion right now that can help the trust. You know say in the next by the end of the year have a new plan for the next five years right to have. Okay, how are we working. I was going to say one other thing actually right this trust doesn't own land and it's actually better if the town and the trust is part of the town doesn't own land, because once we own it, it's a big process to get rid of it to dispose of it and so, as Carol mentioned I think the can be facilitators can help pre development and other things help identify and move projects forward, but to own a project. When you say capital campaign, for instance the town doesn't own affordable housing. So through CPA through CDBG I mean we the town supports housing with, you know hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to preserve or create or, you know, even services for housing so but the town doesn't own housing. So if we owned, you know an apartment building of 100 units. Yeah we might have a campaign or we might have a budget line item to support that every year but the town isn't a landlord. We're not the housing authority and so you know if we see like something about the library or the schools or public works. Those are town facilities but the town isn't really a landlord and that respect in terms of housing so it's a little it is a little different. Thank you, Nate. And just a reminder there's also the listening session will help us develop this five year strategic plan which I think if we can commit to having it done by December 2023. It will really be very helpful and give us some sort of guidance of where we want to go to and list priorities, which would respond to some of the issues that actually raised as well as we're over. So I'd like to recognize Eliza. It's actually a Lisa, but you can't tell by looking at the spelling. Sorry, Lisa. Okay. Anyway, I raised my hand about a totally different source of funding and that's ARPA, because it suddenly occurred to me to wonder whether that's part of the unallocate I'm making air quotes and you can't see it anyway, the unallocated COVID funds that the Republicans in Congress are trying to take back. Is it? Do we know? Yeah, so the town has allocated. I don't know exactly a significant amount of funds, ARPA funds for affordable housing. Right. And we are, we are very protective of it and we're making sure we're paying close attention so that they don't claw back the unspent funds. So, right. So, yeah, we're alert to that and yeah, that strategy available to us if that seems to be moving. I figured that you would try to prevent them from clawing it back. I just don't know. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Carol, do you want to move towards announcements beyond I think we already started with the joint CRC meeting. And we did talk about, I did talk about that, but only I have a couple of three other announcements. One is coming up in June, Wednesday, the 14th and Thursday, the 15th Mass Housing Partnership MHP is having its housing institute. One of the days is by this virtual and the other day is in Zoom, Nate sent out a email with registration information. So it will be a really great chance to discover more about what kinds of supports are out there for whatever kind of housing we want to try to do. There is a round, I don't, I don't really know. Mindy Dom is bringing the, the house chair of the joint how committee on housing to a round table. Next, next Friday from 10 to 12 that various of us have been invited to Erica and I have been invited. I don't, it came at, I don't know who's invited because that wasn't part of the information but I know that there will be some town council members there. I know we will be there. So I guess if anyone has something that they would like that they would like us to consider or having our head or in our back pocket Erica and I when we go to this meeting which will be about housing. You can email us what you, what you have I don't have any idea whether it's how open or how close it is. I don't know the answer to that. What else the others though the one other thing is we're coming up on the time when Eric and I have been doing this for a year. We, it's our year anniversary or something so anyway we get to read up. We appoint re choose coach a chair or co chairs, either. So if somebody else is interested in stepping into this role. Now's your chance or within the next couple of months anyway. So, we'll have that the officialness of it will be on a future agenda but it's something to think about at the moment. And I think we have successfully done, as we usually do. Public comments as we have gone along. I don't think we have anything that wasn't anticipated in 48 hours isn't still unanticipated at least by me I don't know of anything else. So, our next meeting is Thursday June 8 our next regular meeting although it is also housing trust meetings the one that's a joint trust and CRC meeting that's next Thursday at our usual time. I just wanted I have two suggestions for future guests and I had emailed one but I didn't get a response that said, Yes, we'll ask them or so I don't know if I should bring them up the meeting. So one I did not talk about and that is, I'd be interested in hearing from the groups that are organizing for affordable housing at UMass the student groups and the advocates. So, we heard from the administration but I'd also like to hear how we could ally with them. And then the second is in the spirit of thinking about new ideas and the tiny houses of last month. And long thinking about sort of senior co housing is not the right word but how shares and facilitating how shares to put people in houses that seniors are in but need help maintaining either financially or otherwise. And there's a lot of versions of that around the country and I'm wondering if someone if people are interested I'm happy to try to reach out and make an invite I don't know them but I am happy to make that connection. Yeah, that's great but also tree house in East Hampton is a kind of that and that's way finders. And that is independent people who are oftentimes fostering kids but then also have their own place. It's a version of that but I don't know I mean there's lots of versions but wayfinders does one version of that. Okay. So, I would be interested in hearing from somebody about that thing where seniors are maybe a college student maybe put those two things together or something or other so seniors get help financially and maybe with other things that they need and the person gets someplace to live I'd be interested in that I could we just have a quick. We have our other people interested in that hearing about that. Just a thumbs thing. I got at least one to. I got three some for, I can't tell her for some up. So, I think that that's not exactly a quorum but somehow I think you could find out a little more if you want to reach out would be great. I may get the quorum so sure. Great. And I really want to also just agree that any innovative and informative presentations that give us ideas about where we should go to and think about, you know, new initiatives is for me very welcomed. I started talking to other towns for instance that give a incentive in mortgages like holy oak and also chickpea. And while Mindy Dom has brand B I don't I'm not sure what they do but they give $5,000. You live in their town for 10 years like there's lots of towns doing innovative things to help people buy. And many are doing innovative things to help people rent. Let's start looking around and seeing why, like what we can do to help people rent and help people buy with town money. Nate. Sure. Yeah, sorry, I wasn't sure. I was going to say that the senior center is also doing the agent dementia friendly project with pvpc I read out to Haley Bolton, the director of senior services, you know housing was identified as a one of the highest priorities. In terms of aging in place or transitional housing for seniors and so I know that they're wrapping up that project but housing was a really big piece they that was, you know, identified and so they may have already looked into that in terms of their that that project that initiative so if you reached out to to Haley she might be able to let you know. And then just quickly for Ashley's point we, the town does support homeownership and rental quite a bit. There's, you know, the anti aid amendment through the state so it's difficult in terms of giving money directly to the individuals, but through CPA CDBG and other funding we have, you'll see it so when one of the documents that we sent out for next week you'll see certain programs that will be funded so we've funded first time home buyer programs we've put in probably $1 million in the last five years into rental subsidy programs and so there's a lot of money that goes into it already. There could be other programs I think what Valley CDC has identified is that the cost of homeownership is something that $5,000 may not be sufficient so when they look for homeownership. And since I mean it's in the range of $50,000, you know the Amherst Community Land Trust is doing it with, they look for even more money to help someone actually, you know, be able to afford to get into a home in Amherst so there are programs that are available there is, you know, first time home buyer programs right now looking for people that, you know there's money available for that. And so that's been ongoing pretty consistently for the last five or six years through different organizations at the town. You know the town may not be running it but we help support them and so it may not be known right people may not know that we're supporting Valley and their homeownership program. And you know maybe we have to do a better job advertising that but you know we're we're behind that, you know we're helping with that you know we're so it's not as if you know if someone comes to the town and has these ideas. I think it's great so it's something that then it could become a proposal for funding or something in the future but Okay, it just it just looks like when I see Mississippi government, like the website it says like more or less a $5,000 help for your mortgage. So somewhere, somewhere they got funding for that. And so I would like to, I would like to find a way to move on. Yes, we should be looking to try to find any innovative things that we can find I agree. And that's an interesting one. Oh I'd like to add to a list of a guest that I would like to invite. I would like to invite Rob. It doesn't have to be you Rob, I would like to sometime hear more about Amherst Community Land Trust as a as a home ownership I know it's like one home at a time but I also know that it gets people into homes and I, I'd love it if we heard more about it sometime so I'd be happy to talk about it for a while. Great. So, beside to meetings coming up we have now also got some things to put on our list of things that we'd like to hear about. Is there anything else anybody wants to say any before we go. I would then is there any objection to adjourning that's probably not the right way to do that but can we adjourn to have a thumbs up thingy for adjourning all in favor signify by doing something like this. Thank you all very much for being here, and I'll see you hopefully next week on the 18th after reading lots of stuff. Thank you everyone. Thank you Grover and welcome. Yeah.