 Let's see. We were just talking about hoping it will be a short meeting because of the January 6. Hearing strong. And it started eight. Oh, okay. Well, I, we might get done by eight. I wanted to offer a presentation. But I can cut it short to some extent. You'll just have to come to the next meeting forever. Yeah. Pretty single time, you know, what I really. Have an idea. Okay. So, let's see. I have only one announcement. And it's not exactly my announcement. It might be Allegra's announcement. I know that she has joined either. Her second or third town committee since becoming a member of the community safety and social justice committee. And is that what you wanted me to say? Exactly. Yeah. What else? Are you a member of other things too? Well, I mean, I think the housing. And there are the homeless and rehousing working group. As the liaison to this committee, but I wouldn't count that as a separate. Committee. Okay, cool. It is another responsibility that takes some time. So I wouldn't downplay it. And I appreciate it. I think that's great. Are you, are you promoting Risha? I just said, yes. Risha. Hi. So you're not off the Fiji yet. I am in Fiji. Oh, you are. It is, it is tomorrow. So tomorrow is looking good for all of you. What? What time? It is Friday at 11 a.m. Wow. I have friends who were married in Fiji. They went there intentionally to get to have a. A traditional Fiji in wedding. I didn't go, but they did send out some photographs, which I still have. Maybe you want to see them. It's pretty spectacular, but I am, I am in a city. And it's a normal city. Not, not particularly tropical. Okay. All right. And you're there for a month, right? Yeah, one more. Yeah, I've been here three weeks. Oh, you've already been there. Okay. Great. Continue. Does anybody else have any announcements? John, I have one, we're going to acknowledge your, your work on the trust in your, I don't know, 10 plus years. Volunteering for the town. And so. Tom Kegelman wrote to me and he wanted me to read this. I don't know if you're going to be here because there's another meeting. But here it goes, what he has written, and I think others may want to share some words. John has epitomized the leadership that is needed to advance the mission of providing very badly needed affordable housing to our community. He has shown an amazing ability to articulate those needs clearly and emphatically. To enlist the support of important stakeholders in the community and change the conversation and Amherst from one of ambivalent tolerance to emphatic. Amherst is a much better place for having someone like John Hornick leading the charge of the affordable housing trust. Thanks John for your extraordinary leadership. Somehow I don't think this will be your last role in the support of decent affordable housing for all, all the best, your friend Tom. Well, thanks for reading that. And I will send Tom a note off. I do appreciate that. Since as I think I mentioned that our last meeting, Tom was the person who talked me into doing this. I think he was really happy he did. Yeah. Okay. So my next piece of business. Is. Wait, wait. Right. Is this recognition at recognizing John time. Thank you. Certainly. Oh, certainly. Why not? We'd love it. So I do want to mention side. Thank you, John, for the years of service. But my first experience with John was before I even started the job. I came out in the summer of 2016 for a homelessness forum. That was in the town room that was jam packed and, you know, and it was really intense. And I had already accepted the job. It was an impressive. It was really engaged people who are experiencing homelessness at the time who came in and shared their feelings. And I'd never seen that before in such a. Great way where people could voices were being heard. And, you know, seeing the staff of Craig's doors, helping people articulate their feelings and everything. So it was really memorable. A really amazing exposure to the town of Amherst and the caring community that that is Amherst. And I think that's really epitomized by John. You know, the work at John, his presentations are always memorable. They're always dramatic. They are always a play in three acts. Whether it be a town meeting or the select board or the town meeting. And, you know, we all recognize your ability to encapsulate an issue articulated to people so that they understand it and they become believers. And I think that's why everybody on this call are here. Right. We are all here now because of your leadership. And I just want to thank you on behalf of the town. For all the work that you've done. Well, thanks, Paul. I do appreciate that. And that was a fun meeting. I wasn't absolutely sure that I was always in control of that. But yeah, it was. It was a roll of the dice. To some extent. I remember having difficulty. Talking to police chief into appearing. He was a little reluctant, but he eventually agreed. And it was an interesting and exciting night. And it did lead us to having a. Town homelessness committee, which Dave Zomek appointed within a month or so after that meeting. So it definitely had some good outcomes. And other people certainly contributed to it. It wasn't all mine. And that's generally been true of anything that I've done. It couldn't have been done without. Ideas and support. And participation of many other people along the way. And so. I guess I've been privileged to do all of that. And excited to. Both to have been deeply involved. And also honestly to see it coming to an end. Right at the moment I, I. It's been a busy week or spent a busy month. And so I'm feeling a little exhausted and I am. Looking forward to turning over. The housing trust to new leadership. I think that will be good for the housing trust. It needs to have new people to take over and. To take responsibility. It doesn't make sense for it to rest in the hands of one person, not that it has, but. I do appreciate the fact that Carol and Erica. Are, I believe, putting themselves forward. So I see Mindy Dom has raised her hand. To be recognized. Can you. Recognize Monday, please. Good evening. How are you? I know I'm a voice like a disembodied voice. I want to lend my appreciation to you, John. I put this on my calendar knowing that I think it was going to be one of your last, if not your final meeting as chair. And I want to let you know that I'll be coming by your home. With a citation from Joe and myself. To recognize your incredible work in the town. I know the size of the boulder that you've been pushing up the hill in terms of. Not only getting. Initial support for the city. But also getting. Initial support for affordable housing, but really sticking to it and addressing residents concerns. And like people have said, making the town a believer in affordable housing that people, I think for the most part are now very supportive of recognizing that our future means we need to produce more affordable housing. And a lot of that, but I think that we need to make sure that we have. Spokesperson and advocate and leader for the town in this regard. And I really hope that you continue to stay involved with this particular issue. If not as chair, but just as a supportive resident, because I think people love you. They respect you and you've made a big difference. And you've really moved the needle in Amherst in a big way. So I want to express my thank you to you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Wendy. I do appreciate that. And I do think we've made some progress. In the last few years. And there's plenty of opportunity ahead to continue to work on this. These issues. I did promise. Carol and Erica that I wouldn't disappear. I would at least be available to them in the near future. But I'm not sure what they might have. So I'm not disappearing into the sunset quite yet. Well, we all know where you live. So you're not going to totally disappear anyway, but I'm really glad to hear that you're going to continue to play a role because I know you'll be of great assistance to Eric and Carol, but you'll also be of bigger assistance. I think to the town as we sort of enter this, hopefully post COVID period where we've got, I think, we'll get something like 70 new units, I think, coming on in the next couple of years and to be able to add more. And do more when it comes to housing. So, and you know, you're not going to get rid of me so fast. Mr. Harnick. So, I understand that. And that's good. I appreciate that. I have no. Mindy for at least a decade. Going back to when she was a trainer, I can't remember for which substance abuse organization. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. That's true. My gosh, that's a ways ago. Erica knows that is goes back that far too. I think to some. Yeah. But, um, yeah, but, you know, John, you're, you're, you're so multi-talented and so devoted and so committed and so full of heart. So we look forward to working with you. And really, I was just wanting to pop in on this meeting and say, thank you. Thank you. As always. Thank you. And we'll be in touch. And Nate, I just wanted to say a couple of things. So I came to work for the trust as a consultant. Not because I had a consulting business, but because I was really interested in what Amherst was doing. And I wanted to follow through with some work I had started when I was at MHP. And it was really John's. You know, vision and leadership that drew me to come to work for the, for the trust. I was not looking for a job. And I think, you know, what I'd have to say about John is that. You know, I have worked, you know, I worked with communities throughout the, the Commonwealth. And he is a rare breed. And the town has been so incredibly. So I think that I've worked with the community. And I've worked with the community for a very, probably less than three people that I can think of that I've worked with statewide over. 30 plus years in the affordable housing. Field who were as passionate, committed, smart, curious. And hardworking as John. And I think, you know, what sticks with me in my mind is his, his, his role as a homeowner. I mean, he was a real fan of girls. When one thing was done, John always had a list of like, four more things that. That the trust and he just didn't sit back and say, well, that was a good job done. Let's take a break. You know, there was always another thing to be done. And I think that it's that kind of energy and vision and commitment. And real compassion for. that we wanna see housed, whether they be homeless or whether they be under housed. You know, John was always there and always thinking ahead. So it has been an immense, immense pleasure to an honor, really, to work with somebody who is as smart, committed, again, curious, determined as John. So I wanna thank you, John. And I wanna thank you for the opportunity to work with the trust. It's been great and it's been wonderful working with you. Well, thank you, Rita. I do appreciate that. I will say we sat down at the Black Sheep, probably at least three years ago, where my job was to talk you into becoming a consultant for the process. And I think what I promised at the time was that you handle the technical stuff for me and for the trust that I would handle the politics. And I think that's the way things have gone pretty well. But you learned a lot of the technical stuff too. I mean, that's the truth, yeah. Thanks. And you're now involved in the political stuff. Although you're not in it. In my hometown, yeah. All right. Erica, you had your hand raised. Yes, I wanna echo everything in terms of qualities that you embody, but I will repeat them because I think it's worth repeating, leader, navigator, advocate, facilitator, and convener, recruiter, because you've recruited all of us onto this vision of yours, and cheerleader. You really cheer us on. And also believer, you really believe that we can do better and that we can be a better community. And you've always created that vision, not just of housing homelessness, but really the continuum from homelessness to shelter, to temporary housing, to permanent housing, to home ownership, that vision where everyone can actually move through that continuum and that we can provide those supports and we can provide a community to allow people to access permanent home and be part of this community. And the other piece that I admire so much in terms of your work is that you are part of the community. You roll up your sleeves, you work with other coalitions, which of course scares me because I don't know how we're gonna do this, Carol, but you literally seem to have 24 hours in one hour. And then you're able to organize all of that and you're really able to engage and pull everybody in. So I am just honored to have been able to work with you and continue working with you. And hopefully, we'll continue with the vision that you have and the plans that you've had and we'll build on that. And so I just wanna thank you for being all and doing all and really believing us that we can do the same, but those are pretty big shoes that you've left behind for us to use to fit into, but I just wanna thank you. Well, thank you, Erica. And Carol, you had your hand raised as well. Yeah, I just wanted to add one thing which is everything everybody else said, but the other thing is that I have been really impressed by the way that you have run these meetings so that they almost always end on time and you are open to people's thoughts. And I mean, some people who have as much passion and vision and all the things that we've talked about as you are like, no, let's just do this this way. I wanna do it my, I mean, there is none of that. I feel like you have been open to all of us and still managed to make the meetings run pretty much on time and I'm impressed. And as Erica said, don't know how to quite follow in your footsteps, but here we go. Well, I expect the two of you to do a fine job. It won't be the job that I did, but it will be special in its own way. And I'm sure once you get your feet on the ground, it'll be at least as effective and helpful to the town. Well, Nate, I'm really glad you're recording this because I can play this for my children. So that's definitely helpful. So I guess it's time to move on to the business so that we can try to get through the meeting by eight o'clock or so. The next item of business, I guess, is minutes. George Ryan did minutes for us and I made a few edits to those and then sent them out. So I have read and reviewed them. And if people have comments on them, this is a good opportunity to raise them. I move to approve the minutes. Yeah, but before we approve them, I guess, is there any concerns that people have? Okay, if you see just minor errors, you can email me and I'll fix those up. I appreciate that. I think we don't have to formally approve them. Somewhere along the line, the attorney general said, if they've been sent out in advance and nobody raises any objections, we can consider them to be formally approved. I'll say George thought he was gonna type short minutes. And so before I talk to him, before the minutes, he's like, oh, I usually try to keep them to a few pages. So I think you gotta type a little bit more than he's used to. Yeah, I appreciate the fact that he did that. Yeah, I know they're nice. Yeah, and he may come back in July to do it again. He's away this month. Okay, so the next piece of business is the election of new leadership for the trust. And I guess the first step is for Carol and Erica to articulate what it is or how they see themselves working together to provide leadership. Because I'm assuming nobody else is gonna come forward and say, oh, wait a second, would be a big mistake to have them take this over and I'm here wanting to do it. Erica and Carol? Somebody could just say that might not be a mistake, but I'd like to do it anyway. It doesn't have to be like either or exactly, but I guess that I, when you first asked me and it was just me, I was like, I have no way I'm doing this. And so the only thing that makes it conceivable to me is to do it with Erica. And a couple of the things that we're thinking about is delegating more things to other people on the, whatever this is, committee, so that there's more people involved so that we're not trying to do everything that John did because we kind of figure that we can't. And we have talked about how to work together and we're kind of hoping that we will find a minute taker who will be able to get us the minutes within a week so we can meet together the two of us a week after this meeting in order to figure out what we need to do for the next meeting. And then we'll, I know exactly how we run meetings probably by taking turns or just kind of work in progress, but it's clear to us that we will meet with each other in between these two meetings in order to manage to figure out what's going on next. Also clear that we want to talk a lot to Nate, a lot to Rita, a lot to anybody else who's willing to talk to us sort of. So I'll pass it to Erica. Thank you. So my whole philosophy is collective leadership. And so, I mean, besides the fact that I have a job that really sometimes is 12, 14 hours a day, including weekends. So even thinking about trying to take this on, and I'm planning to retire this year, but it's almost impossible to take this on alone. And so, when John mentioned Carol, I said, oh, this is wonderful because I believe in collective leadership. And I often, I don't know how John has done this by himself, but I really believe that having two different people thinking about what's going on often helps and also having another person to have conversations with. I don't know if John ever got a little lonely in terms of leading this whole group. But I think also involving other members like Allegra, you being a liaison, and we had Will, who was our legislative person. I think that really creates engagement and it creates more ownership among all of us as members. And so I think it's really important that Carol and I may lead, but we're all leaders in this organization with vision and with the stake to really look at the plans and look at the foundation that John and the person before John has put together. I've been on this trust now almost two years and the vision each one of you have and also the experiences that you have really is what's gonna make us stronger. So we hope to continue having a space in a form the way John has created that everyone can contribute and to really make sure that we're moving forward and we're being as impactful as John has been. And I just wanna note that it's gonna take two of us to fill John's space. So we're absolutely excited to be working with Rita and with Nate. We also wanna understand more. We sort of let John take on what authority this fits into. We wanna understand the bylaws more. We wanna understand more how we work with the other entities in our town to make sure that we also have bi-directional, multi-directional communication and that we're really building off all of the energy in the town to really address homelessness and accessible and diverse community, accessible housing in a diverse community. So I'm excited to be working with all of you and especially with Carol. I had just one comment on that and that is years ago when I worked for the New York State Office of Mental Health as this director of planning, a woman whom I'd gotten to know there a bit came to my office one day and she was taking a new position and she asked kind of where do you fund the authority to do the things that you think need to be done. And I said, well, to be honest, Amy, it depends on what side of the bed I get up on in the morning. If I get up on the right side, I feel pretty strong and empowered to move ahead with what I think I'm right. But if I didn't get a good night's sleep or got up on the wrong side of the bed, then it's much more difficult. So a lot of it really is internal and it is finding the strength to trust your own judgment and to move things ahead and to share leadership to the extent that you can with other people. So I think that's great. Well, I guess I move that we accept the offer or offers of Erica and Carol to take over the leadership of the housing trust beginning after this meeting. And I think we just all need to agree to that. So I'll go first and say, yes, I'm in favor of that. Ashley. Yes, that's fine. That's good. Aresha, you must be muted. I can't find the microphone. Yes, I'm very excited. Allegra. Yes. Rob. Yes, thank you. Paul. Yes, Anne, thank you. And Carol. Yes. And Erica. Definitely, and I'm very excited. Thank you for the opportunity. Well, thank you. I look forward to seeing what you do and being of assistance where I can. So just to be clear, so, you know, there, John, right, we're voting on, that was a vote on the co-chair structure, right? So, you know, it was never said before the vote. So I just wanted to make sure that that's, it's clear to everyone. Yep. Yeah, it's not like, it's not like Carol and Erica said, well, okay, one of them is going to be the chair and the other one's co-chair. Their intention is to figure out their roles together and to work it out. So hopefully, you don't have a situation where one of them says, I thought you were calling town hall. Better than both of you called town hall. I can assure you Carol is very, very organized and we've got each other's numbers. So we will always be certain that somebody will follow through. Okay, thank you both. I do appreciate it. I wanted to make what may turn out to be a little longer report than you all want to sit through from the May 25th housing forum that was initiated by the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission specifically, Becky Vash, but also from Amherstown government, particularly Ailey Bolton and Marine Pollock. So Becky put together a presentation. A few of the slides were mine, but I thought I would kind of quickly move through some of them that are mine. I'm going to take a couple of extra minutes with, but basically this was the title slide and this is the first of four sessions, as you'll see, on age and dementia-friendly Amherstown. The first one was focused on housing and you'll see a little later that there are other presentations on transportation. I think that's the last one. Another one on health and social services and then one that will be done in Spanish that takes up all of the issues. Is your microphone bonking on something or something? It's a lot of noise. I think that's just my voice. No, oh no, I don't, anyway. Yeah, I didn't hear anything other than the fact that my throat was suddenly like a little hoarse or something. Okay, let's go on to the next slide. And I believe the next slide, yeah, kind of outlines what's meant by age and dementia-friendly. There's probably no surprises here, but there are in fact, in this presentation, is it nine or 10 separate issues that need to be attended to, to be sure that we have an age and dementia-friendly community and housing is certainly one. As I said, later forums will focus on some, but not all of the others. Next slide. Becky presented some community population data, which came from the American Community Survey. Five-year estimates, this is something done by the US Census Bureau. And basically, it gives the total population of Amherst to about 40,000, which has been at probably a few years, although we haven't known because we've lacked the census data to be able to feel certain about that. A significant percentage of our over the age of 65, I guess it's 8.3% in this presentation. I actually think it might be a little bit higher. We'll see later that, sorry, there's some variation in households, but most households have a person over the age 65 living with someone else who's a partner, but a significant percentage live alone. And then there are a smaller percentage of people who live with other people in their household. Again. Can I just ask something? Sure, Ashley. Is that, when you say 40,000, that is, is that the students of UMass 2 or not students? It does include students who live on campus, as well as students who live in the community off campus. So that's like about, so how many students would you say that there are, compared to that 40,000? A student population, I think is variously estimated about 50% of that 40,000 or even a little bit higher. So it could be closer to 20, 21,000. UMass enrollment in fact is larger than that, but that's because not everybody who is enrolled at the university lives in Amherst, either on or off campus. Right, okay. Okay, good. Yep. Let's see. Let's go on to the next slide. These are housing goals for an aging population. And they're important to keep in mind. We want housing to be affordable, to be accessible, to include what are called assisted living and long-term care options for people with some disability, to follow principles of smart growth, which means that housing for older adults is located near to retail services and parks and that people feel safe in the community and are able to walk or roll to where they need to go. Next slide. One of the interesting things that I learned about two or three years ago, actually, when I was making modifications to my own house is that the Parner Valley Planning Commission actually has a home modification program and people can apply for loans. Excuse me. To modify their homes. There are also some opportunities for assistance with basic home maintenance and repair. Some of that can be volunteer, for example, through Amherst neighbors. Similarly, people through Amherst labor neighbors can get assistance with basic tasks. There are home care and healthcare services that are available for people. Some of that can be arranged through the Amherst Senior Center or through the Department of Health. And there is increasing attention to transportation services. So all of these things, as they expand, make Amherst the more age and dementia-friendly community. Let's see, I'm not gonna go through too much of this, but there are good interventions that involve the design of structures for people who are older to live in. And some of the ideas are here. There are other ideas that I've encountered in thinking about the possibility of a community for older adults at Hickory Ridge. So that's something for us to look to as we move ahead. Next, Nate. Yeah, this again comes from the American Community Survey. It just may be helpful to know that 50% of the housing stock is single family in Amherst. And the other 50% is multifamily for anybody who's been in this community for any time. That's probably not a surprise. There's actually more owner or renter-occupied housing than there is owner-occupied. And the state has a floor of 10% of housing stock that should be considered affordable that are on something called the state subsidized housing inventory. And Amherst is above that 10%, significantly above it. And in fact, most communities in the state are not. So Amherst has done a somewhat better job of providing subsidized housing than other communities. Still, it's not enough. So moving along, I'll just mention briefly, people probably aware of this, that the Amherst Housing Authority has lengthy waiting lists for people. And it is the major provider of affordable housing for people who are older adults. Next slide. In addition to the Amherst Housing Authority, there are two opportunities for market rate units. People probably are aware of them. One is Applewood at Amherst and the other is Greenleaves. And Greenleaves is actually expanding. I don't think that Applewood is. There's also assisted living at the Arbor's in Amherst on University Drive. And similarly, there's a Center for Extended Care and Rehabilitation in Amherst. So there are a wide variety, although not a large number of housing options for older adults as they age and experience more disability. Next slide. Nate actually put this together. I think Nate put this together, right? Basically, there are a variety of elements of the zoning bylaw that allow us to continue to do things that improve the opportunities for housing of older adults, as well as others. People may already be familiar with some of that, so let's move on. You may recall that we actually did a survey. I think I mentioned it at our last meeting. We had gotten 875 responses as of about two weeks ago. Actually gotten half a dozen more since we closed out the survey. We had a box at the post office in Amherst. And that shut down, but I forwarded any new surveys to me and there have been half a dozen since we closed out the box. Most of the people who responded to the survey are in the age group 70 to 79. The next largest group is 60 to 69. And then there are also a significant number of people who are 80 to 89 and a few 90 plus who responded to the survey. So we got a pretty good representation of older adults to the survey. Most of them have lived in Amherst for quite a long time. If you look at the second figure there, 20% more than 45 years. Okay, moving along Nate. One of the things we struggled with was trying to expand the non-white or minority population participating. We didn't do too badly. We got over a little over 12% of people who were not white or Caucasian, which is a little higher than the proportion of that group for the town. Nonetheless, it would have been nicer if we'd had a little bit larger numbers. Part of the reason I say that is that if for example, only 4.2% of the people who responded to survey are black or identified themselves as black or African-American, that's not bad from one point of view or from another point of view. There aren't enough such people to really do much analysis of them as a separate group. And the same is true of the other groups. And it generally doesn't make sense to group all of the non-white groups together. So we didn't do too badly. They are in the sample, but at some point in the future, it would be nice to figure out how to do better. Moving along to the next slide. As I mentioned earlier, most people live with a spouse or a partner. It's almost 63%. 28% live alone. And then there are other people in various other categories, the third largest people who live with their adult children. So most households really consist of two older adults, or sorry, either two older adults, a spouse partner or someone living alone. Next slide. Okay, these were preferences that people had about what were the important topics or issues for the town to tackle in the next few years. And you can see that housing often rose to the top of the list for many of the respondents. So we'll go on to the next slide. Most people indicated that they really did want to stay in Amherst. You can see that almost the third said it was extremely important to stay in Amherst and close to 40% said it was very important. So people do want to stay in Amherst. They don't want to move for the most part to other communities. And so if we're going to respect that, we need to find places for them. Because as we move along in the next slide, I think I know what I'm going to get to. Yeah, most people also want to stay in their own home if they can. And again, you see, you've got 83% saying that was either extremely important or very important. Now that means that they're a 17% or maybe not quite that high, but people who are thinking that they probably are going to have to move at some place, some point and they, while they do want to stay in Amherst, the question is where are they going to go? So move on to the next slide. Yeah, we asked people where they might want to move if they do have to move sometime in the next five years. People could answer, give more than one answer. So these are not independent answers. Most people, as I said earlier, are living in single family, but that isn't necessarily, if you look at the orange bar right next to the blue bar, where people expect to be in the next five years. And you can see there's a variety of places where they think they might be some having to do with senior independent living or an apartment or condo or possibly multi-family housing. Others seem to think that they might wind up living with other people and a small proportion also indicate an interest in subsidized housing. Okay, go to the next slide. This kind of is duplicative of the slide we just looked at because Becky and I independently put together slides with this. So this gives you some idea again in a slightly different format about what people think they'll be moving to if they do move in the next five years. Next slide. This was interesting. Well, most people consider their current housing to be affordable. A significant percentage, 15% say that it's not that they really can't afford or don't anticipate being able to continue to afford living where they are now. So again, that's an issue for us to consider going forward. Next slide. We asked people, what were the challenges to aging in place? The biggest one, as I said, is housing is not affordable. So that runs around 15% and then the other ones having to do with really the cost or other kinds of costs that would be required if they're gonna stay where they are paying for home repairs, paying for home modifications, for basic maintenance, et cetera. So basically cost is a big issue for people. Although again, not an issue for everybody. Remember, these are people who identified these as challenges. And as you can see, it's not everybody. It's a relative minority that anticipate experiencing this. We also had a list of minor challenges that we asked people to look at. And again, these are kind of in reverse order. So the highest one here is at the bottom, 21%, which is help with basic tasks or errands. And the others also have to do with some kind of support for the most part that would help people remain where they are. And these are concerns of certainly Haley Bolton at the Senior Center and with the Amherst Neighbors Group that was formed about three years ago now in Amherst. And then this is the last slide. This is a slide that I began working on and honestly needs more work. Let's see, according to the last survey, not survey was done in town, but the street list, there were over 6,000 adults above the age of 55 on the street list. We actually didn't sample individuals, but we sampled households. And Marine Pollock actually took responsibility for that. So now we're looking at how we can generalize from what we understand about these households. 63% live in single family homes, which is a pretty high percentage of those households. A little under 2,000 or about 50% expect to move in the next five years based on the survey results that we have. So what does that mean for new housing in Amherst? Well, it suggests that as many as 2,000 new housing units may be needed for older adults. And even if it is an overestimate, even if we conservatively reduce it by half, it still would leave us with a need for 1,000 new units. And that's on top of other units that we know we need for people who are low income, but between say, well, young adults up to the age of 65, it doesn't include the needs of families. So this is a significant population that we haven't really been thinking about, that we haven't really addressed in the last few years. We have other projects now, more or less in the mill. Obviously we have the new development on Belcher Town Road and the Old East Street School. That'll give us about 70 units for a mix of families and maybe some couples, some individuals. We've got the soon to be completed East Gables on Belcher Town Road that would be entirely studio apartments. And Nate's been working hard with Rob Mora on trying to create a plan for home ownership on Strong Street on the town-owned property. That probably won't be a huge number of units, but it will help us with home ownership. At the same time, Valley Community Development is also working on a home ownership project that might mean as many as 35 to 40 new units there if Laura Baker can pull everything together that she's working on. So most of those are really for adults, families, but we really don't have a plan for trying to look forward to the housing needs of older adults. And honestly, that population here and elsewhere in the state is turning over significantly. If you look at the places where there are single family homes, where people moved in 30, 40, 50 years ago, like for example, Orchard Valley, you've got an aging population there and those houses are going to turn over. And if we don't want them to become student rentals, but we want them to become available for people, for families and for others in the community, that's gonna require some work. And part of the reason it's gonna require some work is because as those people are aging out of those homes, they're gonna need a place to go. And so for me, not that all the other needs have been satisfied, but that's why I look toward the opportunity for developing a rental community that would be affordable for older adults at Hickory Ridge. I think there will be enough property that is developable along West Palm summary lane. And I think we need to make that a priority for the town as the next thing to put into the pipeline. Again, we're not gonna get a thousand households in there, but the property is large enough so that we can make a significant contribution to the needs of older adults. So some of that is stuff that I thought about earlier and some of it is things that I learned in the process of working with Becky Bash, Haley Bolton and Marine Pollock on the housing forum and on working on the survey. So I appreciate your all giving me a little time to go over that. It is or would have been my next priority as the next thing to try to push into a pipeline for affordable housing in the town as we move ahead. Are there comments or questions about that? I was just kind of wondering, and I don't know if this is possible to call the data in this way, but like thinking about the 85% of people who said their housing was affordable and then kind of like overlaying it with the percentage of people who say they're planning on moving and figuring out if there is a way to do like targeted outreach to those households to say like, are you interested in somehow keeping your housing affordable for the next generation of people living here, whether it's through the land trust or through other means and is there some way to incentivize, okay, well, if you find a place to move, maybe there's funding that we can come up with to help with the moving costs or first-last security, something like that so that affordable housing is getting something on the one end, but they're also getting into affordable housing with a little bit of a cushion on the other end. I don't know if I articulated that well. I think what you say in general makes sense. We would really have to take it first and then you just did a leg rent to figure out, okay, how do we make that into a program? I will also say that the survey was anonymous so I can't identify the people who said A or B or C, but working certainly through the town and maybe particularly the senior center, we could offer programs that would assist people in making those changes one way or another, possibly by providing incentives for some kind of support for people making those changes. And it's not, as I said, it's not just an amorous that probably four or five years ago, I heard a presentation by Tim, somebody, I can't remember his last name, who works for the Massachusetts Area Planning Commission, which is located in the eastern part of the state and includes Boston and many of the communities surrounding Boston and he had identified exactly the same issue that there are many homes that are currently occupied by older adults that will come onto the market one way or another and that we need to be planning for that both in the eastern and the western part of the state. And I wonder if it's almost like worth doing the opposite outreach of some of the posters that you see that are like, we buy ugly houses, cash, sight unseen, we'll waive your inspection if we do like, no, don't do that, donate your house to the land trust. I mean, obviously I'm being somewhat facetious, but you're saying there's a neighborhood that we know that like a lot of older adults are living there and thinking about maybe transitioning out of that neighborhood is not a place where you go flyer and say, come learn about different ways to either preserve this neighborhood for young families who are coming into the market or come learn about the programs that we're making to make downsizing, doable, whatever that looks like. I think, I really think that's a great idea. There's so many things that people don't do because they don't have the faintest idea that they could or how they would go about it. And so somebody, if I'm trying to sell my house and somebody comes and says, you know, you could sell this to a family that will put their kids in school or whatever. I think there are a lot of people that would be interested if they had the faintest idea how to move forward. Well, I was just thinking that, you know, sometimes older adults have quite big houses. I mean, is there any way that even the town could own the house and make it into four apartments or three, you know, like a Victorian house can have three apartments on each floor. Can we make houses into now apartments? In theory, we could do that. I do know that there were two or three communities in the state that actually their housing trust went into the business of buying houses and refurbishing them, not necessarily breaking them into smaller units and then reselling them. And they got out of that business fairly quickly because they found they couldn't sustain it. It was all volunteer labor for people who were members of the housing trust and they just couldn't keep it going effectively. So I don't think that we as an organization could do that. On the other hand, we could figure out a way possibly of incentivizing developers to do something like that. Yeah, because I mean, you know, I guess we'll see, but I mean, I live in a neighborhood that is full of these very, very big Victorian houses and now they are rooming houses for students. So maybe at one point a big family with a farm had one house but now 10 people live there and there's a lot of parking. So it just seems like maybe that's probably a trend, a very long term Amherst trend because less people have farms now and less people have big families. There's probably several apartments in one of those big houses, you know? Yeah, there may well be opportunities like that. And the question is, how do we identify them and how do we incentivize developers to make whatever investments necessary in order to do what you're describing? Well, so people want to stay in Amherst but maybe they wanna sell their house. Maybe they, you know, get to the first of the line to the subsidized housing that is already, it's basically they're downsizing to an apartment, right? Especially when they're by themselves or there's just two instead of their children. Right. Maybe they're on the first of the list to get that subsidized housing. It's something to consider. You know, sometimes you have to be cautious about taking actions like that and whether they can be interpreted as discriminatory in some way, but in principle, the idea is something to consider. Other comments or questions? Are there any groups? I think the answer is no, but I know that in some of the research I was doing prior to coming back to the area, there were groups in like Northern New England who were working on co-housing for older adults so that, for instance, they would match and verify so that there was a risk sharing there, but either students or young families that would move into an older person's home help maintain it for them but at a incredibly reduced rate. So there was sort of a, particularly if those homes are owned and paid off, that they could stay in their home but they couldn't maintain it but that sort of was a win-win for some of those. Is there any group that works on that in our area? Not to my knowledge. There have been some conversations about that. There also are co-housing communities but they are just designed different purpose. But yeah, people have talked about creating some kind of program in conjunction possibly with the university's housing office that would place students who would be interested in providing that kind of support for very reasonable rent as you're mentioning, Risha. So all of that's possible. What it really requires like many other things is for someone to do some research and step forward and say, I think I understand how to make this program work because as you point out, programs like this do exist elsewhere and some extent they may have already existed in Amherst as well. John, is that what you're gonna be working on when you leave the trust? That wasn't part of my plan but I don't have a plan right now. So who knows? No, I mean, yeah. After the survey I was, we've had other housing studies done in the housing production plan in a comprehensive housing market study that is now over five years old but there was always a lot of housing need. It was just interesting here that, there is a desire from the survey that people would wanna stay in Amherst but have a different type of housing. So it's not as if, my thought is that we could create housing for those who wanna leave then we have their homes that could be open. So I do like what Allegra said is like, is it knowledge? Is it, are there incentive programs? But how do we let people know that they could, put a deed restriction or they could have their house become affordable or what are the programs that we could establish? Because really, we have a shortage of a certain type of housing, right? So they're looking for whether it's independent living that could have services. So we wanna have like a continuum of care type of place or more townhouses or multi-family units or something. So, it's both production but then also how do you transition those families into new housing? So I was surprised at the number. Honestly, if it's like you said, John, even if the extrapolation is high and you say, okay, let's cut it in half, there still could be 800 units or 800, right, 800 units that wanna move, stay in Amherst but move out of their current housing in the next few years, that's a lot. Yeah, it is a lot, but it wouldn't surprise me. Again, I've gotta find that study done by the Metropolitan Area Planning Commission and learn a little bit more about what they did and see if we can replicate it with some of the data that we have so that we can pin down the numbers a little bit better. Although again, I think whatever those numbers are gonna be, they're not easily reachable. So anything we can do in that direction is gonna definitely be helpful. Right, I mean, I think Hickory Ridge is an interesting idea and if the town can also then make a requirement that some of those units be affordable or we have some parameters there because the concern is that if you move into market rate, housing like Applewood, there's an entry cost that is very high. So you need to sell your home at market value to be able to afford to then to move in that place. So there really is no discount, right? So I think that if John, I know you and Rita have spoken with a few developers from Eastern Mass a while ago about what they would look for, right? And it's like over 100 units, there's economies of scale and then they specialize in 55 and older housing. And so, I think we need to then figure out what our parameters we could put on that in terms of affordability or range of affordability and how we incentivize that so they could get built. Yeah, I agree, I think it's doable. Yeah, I think it's definitely doable. Other comments? Okay, well, again, I think this has been a good conversation and something that I hope we'll all be following up on one way or another. It's getting kind of late to what I promised. I did mention that I had originally invited Jerry Weiss to talk about changes at Craig's Doors. People may have seen the news items that there has been a turnover in leadership at Craig's Doors. Kevin Noonan has resigned, two other of the senior administrators have also resigned. And at this point, the organization, specifically Jerry Weiss and other members of the board have announced a search for a new executive director. And they hope to resolve that, I guess, as soon as possible. Certainly they wanna resolve it before the next shelter season begins. But it's also important to point out that the organization has changed considerably since they used to run a seasonal shelter. In fact, there were two seasonal shelters. The last season, one was at the Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Amherst and the smaller one was at Unitarian Universalist Society. I can't remember what the numbers were, but between the two they might have had 35 to 40 individuals being housed on any night. A larger number, I believe, total have been housed at the University Motor Lodge and also at nights in Hadley. Those are basically motor lodges or hotels, small hotels, and people who are assigned to those units are essentially living in like a little studio apartment. There's no kitchen facility there, so they've got basically a bedroom and a bathroom in both places, but it's private. It's their own bedroom in their own bathroom and the state has expressed interest, certainly elsewhere geographically in trying to do conversions of places like this so that they eventually become new studio apartments or SROs for individuals who are homeless. In fact, Valley Community Development is working on a project like that in Hadley at I think it's Mountain Farms Mall. So Craig Stores still has and continues to run two of those, the University Motor Lodge and we're recently the nights in in Hadley. And I guess they'll continue to do that until the owners either decide they no longer want to do that or more likely have another use for those spaces. But as of now, Craig Stores probably serves upwards of 100 people during the shelter season and continues to serve them out of season, so to speak, so that some people effectively have not guaranteed but at least have year-round housing. So those are big changes for Craig Stores and they'll be looking for, the board will be looking for new leadership to be able to continue to sustain those programs and possibly expand them. Any comments or questions about that? Allegra? What does that mean for the whole like re, don't know the right word, but the whole RFP situation? A re-procurement. Thank you. At the same time that this is happening, the Department of Housing Community Development, which has been the primary source of funding for shelter programs, both seasonal and year-round programs in the state, those programs grew over a period of probably 15 to 20 years going back that long kind of one-by-one. A community would start a shelter and they'd go to DHCD and say, well, can you give us some sort of word for this? And some money would be forthcoming and the program would be supported and then another year would come along and another program would be supported. Sometimes these were, I always use the term member item, but the term of art in Massachusetts, it's different for our legislature, but essentially they're items that individual legislators attach to the budget to get passed. And so some communities got shelters that way. And in fact, the Amherst seasonal shelter has been funded as a member item for at least two or three years. Not quite sure. So at some point in the last year, the Department of Housing Community Development said, we can't keep doing this this way. It's too haphazard. It's too unsympathetic. We have to figure out from a policy point of view what it is we're doing and what it is we wanna support. And so they are now in the middle of what Allegra identified properly is a reprocurement process. So they're taking all the money, possibly some additional money that's been appropriated by the legislature and putting it all together and giving the existing organizations the opportunity to bid to keep their programs open. I think there's an assumption that for the most part, the existing programs will be able to continue, but that's a process that's now underway. I'm not sure quite what the timeline is, but I know that Amherst is applying for essentially its own funds in order to be able to continue to support the shelters that it's supported. So I assume that's what you were talking about Allegra. John, did you mean earmark? Earmark, yes. Earmark is the Massachusetts term. I worked in New York state and also followed federal legislation and member item was the term that I learned and somehow I can't wipe it out. But you're right, Allegra, thanks. Earmark is the right term. And so just to clarify, the town of Amherst is going to move forward with some sort of RFP process with that or? No, it's Craig's Doors. It's independent of the town. The town may support it with a letter of support. I don't know exactly where the town's role would be, but they do not have a primary role in applying for support for the shelter. Pretty sure of that. Yeah, no, it has to be a service provider. So we had met with Craig's Doors a while ago and then we were hoping to meet with them again and they're still applying without Kevin, but we were hoping to have, understand where they are. So like John said, they serve actually about 75 individuals and up to four sites. And so it has grown. And so some of those questions about applying for funds is securing the sites, having lease agreements, just kind of making sure there's a plan in place for everything. So I'm not sure exactly where everything is falling, but they were applying. And so they have at least a year's worth of data to support an application for more beds and services. So it's really just getting together an application. Yeah, there is a regional homeless systems data or data systems program that Amherst as well as the other shelters in the region participate in. It's actually, I think it's run by Community Action, Pioneer Valley, pretty sure. So everybody has their data, which they can contribute to supporting their applications, which is good because a decade ago, that kind of information was not generally available. Okay, I had a few other items. Nate, is there anything you wanna add to the process of trying to go through with something on Strong Street? Well, we have to hire a botanist to go out to the site. There's a rare and endangered plant on the site and also maybe a well-in-scientist. So the state, on the outset, we had some email discussions with Natural Heritage and they didn't really wanna impact the area that's designated as prime habitat on the site, which is like half the site. And so I asked if we could ground truth it and actually have a delineate it on the ground survey. And so that's the next step we're doing. So I have a recommendation for someone and getting a scope of services together. So if we can show that the area is smaller than what is mapped now, then it might be able to move forward. But unless we do that, then they said, really we have to stay outside the priority habitat. So yeah. Which even further limits the possibilities for development? Yeah, they were calling it a taking. So I guess it's a pretty... They really weren't gonna allow anything. So I was saying that we wouldn't put houses in there but we would cut down trees and do grading and drainage and they weren't too excited. So I think actually that if you have someone out on site, I think we'll find that the priority habitat doesn't go as far up the hill. So then it would be a site for 12 to 16 units, which we move forward with trying to see how that works. I will say the other one is the town owns two property, well, three properties on old farm road. And they were, they're not conservation land, it's just general municipal property. And with the wayfinders getting under agreement to develop Belcher Town Road, there's two existing homes there. There's an older Cape near the road and then there's a house from mid 90s on the further back. But we're investigating whether or not one or both of those houses could be moved to old farm road. And that's something that, it wouldn't be the developer doing it, it'd be the town then coordinating it. So we're, the old farm road properties have a fair amount of wetlands. So we're getting someone out there to look at that just to see if there's a possibility of a building lot or some upland on those properties. So. Okay, well, thank you for that. That's great. I mean, it turns out that sometimes it's one house or two houses at a time that allow us to move forward. Right, yeah. I mean, the, you know, the strong street is definitely a challenging site, but I think it could happen. I was a little bummed when the state said that and I was complaining to Rob Moore on either, well, let's just hire a botanist. I'm like, I know it's just, you know, it's never easy, right? So there's wetlands, there's random dangerous species, there's steep slope. And so, you know, we're also looking at just, you know, what other properties are available, right? Whether before it comes on the market or there's ways to help. So, you know, the, you know, I know everyone's like, oh, municipal properties low hanging fruit in some instances it is, but the town doesn't own, you know, some property that's just waiting. I mean, I think Hickory Ridge John you mentioned might be the best opportunity, you know, there's probably a lot of competing uses there, but I think housing is a, you know, it's one that could be viable on that site. So. Okay, well, thanks for your work on that and thank Rob as well for his contributions to that. Yeah, it's been great to have him along getting more involved in affordable housing development in the last couple of years. Okay. As far as I know, Valley Community Development continues to work on East Gables. They were taking down the existing house and I think gonna begin pretty soon building a new structure there. And it could be a year away or maybe a little bit more from actually seeing the first tenant walk in the door. I really don't have anything new on legislative advocacy. Carol? Don't we have a leftover thing from last time whether we were gonna support the lawyers for tenants rights thing? Right. And we were gonna, you sent us a link so we could find the legislation. Yeah, there were two pieces of legislation that were pending. I wasn't sure which was the one that was in the best position to pass but there was that and some other material around that. So yeah, I did send that out. You're reminding me of that. As far as I know, the legislature still hasn't acted on that. So there would be an opportunity for us to weigh in and say we would support that. I think I probably mentioned this last time. The nature of the legislation is that it not only would support representation of tenants but also would support representation of small landlords who typically don't have that opportunity. They may not be quite as badly off as tenants are but having that promise out there, certainly when I talked to Tom Cagle and means that they might be more willing to rent to tenants than they would be if they think that it's gonna get them into trouble. So is there a motion to send a letter? So moved. Seconded. Okay, and so I guess I'll go around and ask for people in favor, Carol. Yeah, she's in favor. I'm in favor. Ashley. Yep, I'm in favor. Paul. I'll abstain. Erica. Yes. Rob. Yes. Allegra. Yes. Risha. Yep. And I'll take this opportunity to recognize Sid who joined us probably an hour ago but I didn't know. So I'll go with it. Yes. Okay, thanks. Okay, so I'll probably try to draft something before I disappear and send to the appropriate legislative committee. So I think that's it for this evening unless there are public comments or anything else anybody wants to talk about. You know, could I put something just out there? It could be the next meeting or two because I'm a tenant in a tax credit apartment and then I'm not sure if this is like totally relevant but it's like there's a lot of ways to get affordable housing. There's tax credits, there's section eight, there's Massachusetts voucher system. There's apparently preg's door and then you get your own hotel room. Do you think at some point we could probably talk about all the ways people get into the system of affordable housing in Amherst et al and then what are pretty high barrier ones and how are really low barrier ones? In a way, preg's door seems like the least barrier because if you're homeless one hopes they take you and then tax credit apartments are really quite high. So is that something that we are interested in thinking about and also how do we get people to be in the very low barrier or how do people get into the higher barrier ones or have you guys talked about that in other years? Well, before you came onto the housing trust we did briefly, maybe not so briefly have a committee that was looking into what the barriers are for people getting into affordable housing and whether there was some way that we could help individuals or help case managers overcome those barriers. Maybe we could resurrect that committee and update it. Yep, that's a possibility. I think Erica was the chair of the committee or am I wrong about that? It was much more what we were doing is we were looking at all the resources so it's almost the same. We were trying to figure out and map all the resources that existed and all the supports that existed so we can get a better sense of who all the players were and what was happening so we can build off of it versus replicating any of it and then also using the synergy in terms of collaborating with them but I think that's probably the first step Ashley which is to really think about who all the players are in terms of supports and how to get in and then the second step is what are the barriers or what are the challenges or what are the opportunities and to ensure that everyone's linked together to ensure that they can match people to the lowest hanging fruit for whatever their situation is to move them in. Well, yeah, sure. Maybe we could put that on the next month if we could go over some of those things or even collaborate on email to do something next month so that we kind of get an overall grasp. I mean, this is only my third meeting so I don't know all those things and I would like to know them and maybe contribute to that particular area. One significant barrier that existed at the time we formed the committee but has now at least been partly addressed is information about what housing is available that would be considered affordable. The mass housing partnership, CHAPA and the Kune Foundation put together an initiative called the Housing Navigator which you can Google and basically to the extent that there is data available you can go to the Housing Navigator and say, where can I find affordable housing in my town or my neighborhood? For it to work, it means that landlords have to put data into the system but that's happened to some extent. So one way to improve that would be if we were to decide to work on or work with landlords getting more of that information into the system but it does already exist and it's something that didn't exist three years ago or even two years ago, I think. So that's been a big change. Okay, are we ready to next meeting? I think is July 14th. So we've got about a month to prepare for next meeting. Are we ready to adjourn? Yes, okay. I'll just take a voice vote. All those in favor of adjourning the meeting at this point, signify by saying aye. Aye.