 Or is anybody there? This meeting is being recorded. Oh, hey, look at that. It says it now. Did you hear that? Yeah. Yep. Yeah, I don't. It's the first time I heard that. John is here. Hi, John's out there. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I haven't heard from anyone. I'm assuming everyone will make it for. Yeah, Paul. Only Paul said he wouldn't make it. But I haven't heard anyone else say they couldn't. And actually sent that article around. It was interesting. Yeah, we're trying something. Yeah, it was. It's what's interesting about it was I looked at watch the video and I read an article to I mean, it's actually like building a real house. I mean, it had a foundation and they probably ran, you know, utilities and sewer and water to those homes. And so, you know, it sounds like the developer, you know, husband wife want to do it. But I don't know what kind of incentives they'd have, you know, like what are I don't know if they'd have tax breaks from the town. It's kind of interesting to know like what what's motivating them. I feel like in Amherst, people would be like, well, I can just build. I'm not going to spend the money on that site development costs and then put in these small homes rather than put in, you know, something else, whether it's an apartment building or bigger home. So I think the thing is, I think there are people out there who want to do it. Remember that when I first joined the trust, I can't find their name, but I will again, there's a group around here who is building tiny houses who says they can build them affordably and who built one that I walk by every day. And when I went to work for a while up in up in Greenfield and it's there, it's small, I think that the amount of money that they that they did it for. It's like it's energy efficient and it's solar ready. It isn't actually got the panels on it yet. That would be another investment for somebody. But it's it's cited correctly and it could be and then it would be net zero or something if they did that. So hi, Ashley. Hey. Hey, we were just talking about your article that you sent, which is pretty interesting. Oh, good. It had the little video. I thought it was very informative. Yeah. And then I found some articles. I mean, I will say that this was proposed maybe because of COVID was stalled, but the husband wife proposed this like in nineteen two thousand nineteen and they went through permitting and it was like in twenty twenty. And I guess it's taken this long to get built. Yeah, so that's quick as any other thing is built around here quicker. So hell, that's no. Yeah, I'm assuming I didn't go into the details, but I'm assuming maybe with covid there are some delays because it seemed like they were ready to go. There's an article like in twenty twenty and it sounded like they were and then in twenty one and it sounded like they really wanted to get started. But there must have been some issue or something. Maybe financing or. Well, maybe we'll ask her next month. I mean, if she can turn, you know. Yeah, that'd be great. We don't know what else is joining us as of yet. We have a minute or two. Yeah, we have George Ryan, our note taker and Philip Avila, who said he would come from the Human Rights Commission and. More. Yeah, but our trust of members we could use some more of. Yeah, I know a number here. What's happening? Here's Rob. Here's Rob. I told Ashley she called to ask if she could send out that information about the county homes and I said there's actually one I don't know how far along it is, but there's one in Worcester, too. Yeah, hi, Rob, I think they're moving on. I will get one. I think we have a. Yep, I think so, too. There are five of more than five. One, two, three, four, five, six. All right, we have a quorum. I think we can start. All right, we're going to start our meeting. It is February 9th in the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust is now starting its meeting. We're going to start. Welcome, everybody, and I hope you're having a good evening and welcome all the attendees as well as long as well as the panelists. We're going to start with a review of the minutes. So I'm going to open it up to see if anyone has any corrections, additions, any omissions that we want to ensure that gets into the minutes. And again, I want to thank George Ryan for doing the minutes. Who's going to be doing them this evening as well? All right, hearing no comments, I think we have all agreed that we will accept the minutes from January's meeting. Thank you. All right, we're going to move next to our next topic, which Allegra is going to lead us in in a discussion of a proposal for a joint listening session with the Commission on Safety and Social Justice Committee, Community Safety and Social Justice Committee and the Human Rights Commission. So go ahead, Allegra. Hello, everybody. I, in addition to being a member of this housing trust and a co-chair of the Community Safety and Social Justice Committee and we, a few meetings ago, had gotten a comment from a member of the public asking about hosting some listening sessions. And so I think our ultimate goal would be to have some collaboration with other groups in town that do kind of similar work or work around issues that could be considered pertinent to social justice. So I naturally thought that housing would be a good place to partner, especially with the affordability crisis I think our town is facing. So that was kind of where the proposal had originated. And since our last meeting, some things have changed a little bit. So I know that we plan to do a public listening session probably around the end of March in conjunction with Cress and one of the things that Cress has been working a lot on is with people who are unhoused. So there is, again, some intersectionality there with the housing trust work in terms of getting more affordable units online. So I do think that that would be an area that, again, trust participation could be helpful in. But there in addition to kind of the Community Safety and Social Justice Committee, I know that the Human Rights Committee Commission had actually reached out to me separately stating that they'd been seeing a lot of complaints around housing and housing rights. So I do see Philip Avila is an attendee and he's one of the co-chairs of the Human Rights Commission and then Elizabeth Heygood is also in the audience who is a commissioner. So I don't know if if we can see if either of them have anything that they want to add on that. Can we let Elizabeth and Philip in as panelists? Yeah. Well, welcome. I see Philip and I assume Elizabeth is here as well. Yes. Philip, did you want to add anything to Allegra's comments and presentation? I don't think I have too much to add. I think I will just highlight that the Commission does see a lot of complaints around housing and we do get a lot of kind of with people with their hands up in the air, like, what do we do? What can we do? They don't want to be priced out of Amherst. Unfortunately, that is a reality that is happening to a lot of people and a lot of families, in particular in a lot of families, BIPOC families that are being kind of priced out of this town. So I can't speak too much for the Commission as a whole as much as I am just individual, just trying to figure out how we can do this. But the Commission is open up to listening sessions. Of course, we'd have to go and vote on it as well as our committee. But that's kind of where we're at right now. I don't know if, Liz, you have anything else to add? I do not. I just know that there's a number of BIPOC members of our community who were born here, raised here, work here, do community service here and can't afford to live here in this struggling right now. And so I am a planner with the town. I guess I had a question when they the complaint to here. I mean, you said that it's about getting priced out. But are there specific issues or anything? I mean, we often tell people to contact the town and maybe if it's something with health or safety, we could have a building inspector or health inspector go out there. I just wasn't sure if they're along those lines or if it's more things like the pricing or it's mainly pricing. I think very few we've heard of any like landlord tenant type situations, but it's mainly pricing that families are either working multiple jobs, working, do what they can to pay rent. But it's just not cutting it for them. And like Liz said, they're families that have grown up here that have give back to this community and they're very unfortunately having to move away. Philip and both you and Liz at one point, I was a member of the of the Human Rights Commission when I was also there, there was also some sometimes, you know, complaints around Section 8 where, you know, some people felt that they really be mistreated or they were not getting access. Are you guys still getting those complaints? And if you do, you know, how are they being resolved? Right. So we have gotten one or two this past year and they're being resolved with now Pamela, our new director. She is heading them and sending them in the direction to where they need to go to. Yeah. And I know of a situation which may be familiar to other people as well of an individual who is older, who the taxes literally have put them in a very difficult position. And literally lots of sort of unfortunate consequences in terms of medical issues and illness and literally almost losing their housing. And so I think the other thing to think about is safety nets. I think sometimes, you know, Nate, you said, well, you can contact the town. But how many people know that they can actually contact the town and who can they contact and who's going to call them back? So I mean, I think there's a range of issues that I think would be worth listening to in terms of people's lived experiences and see how we can support that or how we can work together to make sure that we have these safety nets. Yeah, right. I mean, I think the town, you know, right, if it's health safety or some other things, that's something we can work on. You know, sometimes you try to work, talk to landlords. I mean, I will say the price increases are really, really interesting. You know, how do we deal with that? I was just talking to the finance director today about that. Like what strategies could the town have? You know, creative solutions. It's something that, you know, it's hard to get a handle on as a municipality. And I agree that the prices are going up. So, you know, I receive calls too. And so someone I was telling the finance director that someone called and said, you know, my landlord told me my rent's going up two or three hundred dollars. You know, my lease ends next month or two months. And, you know, sorry, that's it. And I'm like, well, you know, I'm like, yeah, I don't know. It's really interesting. Like there's no rent cap, right? There's no rent control in Massachusetts. I'm like, I'm not sure. I thought maybe there was a limit on how much they could increase the rent. But I don't think legally there is. I think they could increase it as much as they want. Someone said, oh, it's five percent. I think maybe it used to be, but not anymore. And so, yeah, it was almost at a loss of how do you, you know, maybe we could just the town could try to facilitate something. But, you know, I'm like, oh, did they make any improvements to the unit? You know, maybe a new kitchen or something? No, nothing. You know, they just it's just going up and it's like, wow, three hundred dollars a month for, you know, they might just say it's cost of living. But that is, you know, incredible and probably not justified. And so, yeah, I, you know, I really feel for this person. I'm not sure what's going to happen. And so, you know, we're trying to come up with ideas. And so, yeah, it'd be great to hear more and maybe I guess I was wondering, yeah, so the listening session could be, you know, then the trust could figure out what strategies or action items could come out of this working with, you know, different commissions or committees or, you know, we could brainstorm for things. And I guess that, you know, I'd like to have a framework for it, right? So people kind of understand what's the expectation if they, if they attend and they provide information, you know, maybe it takes a meeting or two, but we come up with ideas or maybe a presentation to, you know, the planning board or to, you know, town manager or council. I mean, I don't know, I don't want to go too far. But, you know, we could try to figure out what's kind of the expectation and what would we do with the information. Thank you for that comment, Nate. I think that's helpful to like kind of frame how we're thinking because I like action myself and Carol, I saw you had your hand up. So I don't want to. Oh, I was just wondering what you, what Allegra, what exactly I still feel kind of vague about what you're actually proposing that we should do. So I'm wondering. I mean, I think there are a few different directions that could be gone in. And I think one is really just listening and hearing from people in the community about what housing is like and what affordability is like and or isn't. Like, I guess, really would be in the. Like one way of looking at just kind of listening and holding that space. And the the only other thing I thought of in kind of hearing about Section 8 being brought up is would it be worthwhile to maybe put together some sort of more formal presentation about kind of these are your rights as a renter from, you know, whether or not you have a voucher to like what happens if, you know, if you do get an eviction of this kind of what are what are your rights is that some sort of house like some sort of housing rights workshop we could put together for the community or, you know, borrow from other agencies and the I know Holyoke I think just had a presentation last week about knowing your rights as a renter. So perhaps reaching out to the broader community network to see if if they're a similar workshop could be presented in Amherst. That was the only other thought I had that might feel a little bit more concrete. But. But so I'm just wondering if you if your landlord in Amherst just plain raises your rent, there's nothing you can do about it. Is that true? Like they raise it hundreds of dollars. Exactly. But yeah, I mean, if they have to, you know, provide that notice at the end of a lease term, so they can't, you know, if you're in a, you know, in a lease, they can't they can't just do it, you know, you know, on any given month, they have to provide a notice. And if there's been complaints about something and there's, say, ongoing issues with, say, the town's involved or the housing authority would be involved and they can't necessarily raise rent, that could be considered retaliation, you know, say, for instance, you complain that there's, you know, the faucet doesn't work correctly, right? Or your hot water is not getting hot. And then your lease ends, they can't then raise rent or they can. And then, you know, it could be considered retaliation. But typically, if everything's going, you know, say smoothly and they give you a 30 day notice or whatever, two months notice and they say, you know, when your lease ends, you know, and at the end of June, your rent's going to go up $200 a month. There's really not much recourse. Hmm. Well, maybe we need to address that specifically. I mean, I don't know. Can I mean, can even the town make a guideline that there is a rent percentage cap? Is that possible? Yeah, so. Isn't it a Massachusetts law that is there isn't rent control? I thought there was a Massachusetts law anyway. I could be wrong, but. Yeah, I think some communities have been trying to actually get that back. There's a bill right now, I think. Yeah, well, I know some of the kind of tenant organizing groups that I worked with out in Boston have been doing a lot of push around that. And there's a tenants rights bill trying to get passed too, so that people would couldn't couldn't give you some kind of a notice without making sure that you have what your rights are about getting and a right to a lawyer. And there are a bunch of tenant rights bills trying to make their way through things also. So I want to recognize that one of our attendees has his hands up, John. But before John speaks, I just want to say. I think we have to think very carefully about a listening session or a resource opportunity to do a workshop or combining it. I think if we do a listening session, the individuals who come to speak have to understand that we're going to be listening, because I think it can be very frustrating if they come and they feel that we can do something right away and we can't. So if we. Yes, so if we want to just do a listening session or if we want to do a listening session and invite people who do have other knowledge and resources available, there could be an opportunity where there might be resource tables around where people can talk to them but have the listening session first. Because I just remember, you know, when we did the presentation around the wayfinders, Belcher Town Road and Southeast Street, there were a couple of people who had some pretty serious situations. And it was very hard not to be able to provide resources. So I think we just have to really be clear on what we want to do and what we can do and let the attendees know what it is, what the purpose of that session is, so they're not frustrated. There's nothing worse than thinking that you're going to get help. And all we can say is we're listening to you. Good point. All right. So John has his hand up. Thanks, Erica. I think that you need to invite specific people to speak at this. Otherwise, there's a possibility that almost no one speaks or people aren't really prepared to speak. And in particular, the kinds of people I'm thinking of would be family outreach of Amherst, either Laura or her deputy, Wei Ling, other people who work directly with tenants. Another possibility, since the issue of legal services has come up, you could invite Jen Derringer, who is the, I think she's kind of the person in charge of the Northampton office of legal services, and the Northampton office covers Amherst as well as others. So I think you can invite other people to talk about the problem in addition to people who are simply tenants of these various things. I think if you do that, then you're sure you're going to hear from people and you may hear from people who say, well, what would be really helpful under these circumstances is if the town of Amherst could do A, B or C. And so you can encourage that. Although I agree with Erica, this is a listening session and you have to emphasize that and say that there'll be a follow-up session in which there'll be discussion of potential directions that the Housing Trust and the Human Rights Commission could take. Thank you, John. Sid, I think you have your hand up. Yeah. I hate to put Nate on the spot here, but do we know if the town collective collects all of these complaints that comes from different areas, some of the areas that John has just mentioned, and we have data that shows how many complaints a year do we collect, what it is, how is it focused? How is it focused? Is it focused on rent? Is it focused on discrimination? Is it focused on this, that and that? Do we have kind of a central depository for these complaints for lack of a better word? Yeah, I'm not sure we do. It's a good question. I think I can ask around. I think enforcement would have it if it's health and safety, code violations, but say, Phillip, you were hearing Pamela might have a few if they're directed to her to say, you know, someone else, but, you know, I'm not sure they go, you know, I'm not sure where I don't think there is a central database. Because we keep hearing these anecdotal evidences, right? But we don't have anything that we can point on to go to, you know, the town council and say, hey, you know, this is actually data that we've gotten for the past three to four years. And we have a problem here, right? And we have this that proves that we have a problem. So let's address it from that perspective. Yeah, I think we'd have to hopefully, you know, community legal aid in Northampton would have records, you know, was it, I don't know if it was Keith at Wayfinders. I think at one point it had said how much emergency aid they had given out to Amherst during the pandemic. And I don't know if that action may have that too. So it's not, yeah, I mean, I think if the town doesn't have it, we might have to ask, you know, some service providers or organizations that, you know, administer, whether it's like raft or other things and see if they could provide data for Amherst. But, you know, in terms of other complaints, I'll have to ask, right? I don't know. Maybe the health department gets some too. I mean, I'm assuming it's going to be dispersed. And, you know, I might have some emails or something in Pamela, you know, and no one's been putting it in the database. Sometimes it's also sensitive, but we could create, you know, like a generic database where you said, Sid, right? So it's just, you know, discrimination, you know, rent increase or like, you know, there could be categories and we don't need anything more. We don't need any sensitive information from someone just other than just knowing that. Yeah. Okay. Hi. So A, I think a listening session is great because I think we have a lot to learn. So with all the caveats that everyone else has said about wanting to make sure it's clear and we're not setting people up for frustration, I would like to listen. The other thing just to Sid's point is, you know, complaints are one data point and there's flaws with that data point because people might not know they can complain or that, you know, and so there's other ways we could think about it. If we wanted to, and I don't know if others have already done it and it's not worth recreating the wheel, but I mean, looking at average income versus rent, you know, just data points, I mean, there's ways to show it's unaffordable even if people aren't complaining. Yeah. Okay. So I think Allegra, you're asking us if we can agree to be part of this listening session. Is that what you're asking us? Yeah, I mean, I think, and I think that there is still some stuff to flush out, but I think that there are a lot of good ideas that have been floated here and I certainly would support any or all of a combination of what's been discussed in terms of if CFSJC is also still going to be a component in the process as well. And I just want to remind people, I think it was raised maybe in a couple of meetings ago wanting to go and do some listening sessions or going to events so we can talk to people in the community. So I think this fits right into that proposal that was made a while back. I think, I mean, I would certainly would love to have an opportunity to work with other, you know, the Human Rights Commission as well as your group to put something like this on. I think it is worthwhile listening to members in the community and I think it's also really important for them to feel that they have access to us as well as your committee and the Human Rights Committee and that they're being heard and, you know, in terms of their lived experiences and their struggles. So I'd like to propose if we want to take a vote on it. Okay. Go ahead, Carol. I'm still not quite sure what we're voting on. Well, I guess we're voting on doing something jointly with these other two groups that will be a listening session. So if that's it, yeah, then just I would like to attach to the proposal somebody who's going to actually work on making it happen from amongst us. That's all because just saying we're going to do it theoretically, generically, what a nice idea. I would like some attachment of who's going to work on it. That would make me happier about voting for it. I certainly would put myself forward as a person to work on it as it was an idea that I brought to the group. Fantastic. Yeah, I would work with you on that. All right. All right. So Leger and I are from the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust agree to work with the SSJC and the Human Rights Committee. SSJC and the Human Rights Commission, possibly to get other joint committees to do listening sessions. And so we'll put something together and present the specifics. So the proposal is, does the trust want to participate in these listening sessions? Do you have to do, do we have to do, maybe we should do a vote vote a vote where we actually want to have it be foremost someone has to, you know, have a really great motion. So then we just need a second and a vote. I second. I did it. It looks like he also. So yes, second. Thank you. So is there any other discussion? Yeah, I mean, I was going to say keep me in the loop because, you know, I, as we were talking, it's like, I don't want to necessarily have a survey or something, but you know, I'm not sure if I'm going to be doing that. Yeah. And I think that Amherst does have engage Amherst and we, we're trying different outreach methods, you know, with the community, uh, participation officers. And so, you know, maybe there's ways the town could help too. I mean, I'm hoping we can, but, you know, just keep me in the loop. I, you know, same thing. I was thinking like, oh, what if we offer a few different ways to collect information? And even though it's anecdotal, I agree. I think it's, I'd be great to hear about it because. You know, maybe some of the strategies are, can we help facilitate conversations in a way that, you know, and families and different, you know, just different people living in town. And so, and maybe that'll help, right? I mean, I feel like when we had the forum with the landlords through the rental registration, you know, afterwards some landlords, you know, it called me and said, you know, I'll rent to voucher holders now. I never really considered it, but I feel a lot more comfortable. And it was like, you know, even if that was just like four or five that actually went through with it, you know, I had more than half a dozen calls and I was like, wow, that's great. So people were listening. And so, you know, yeah, just anyways, I feel like we could have some ways to help, you know, get the word out and maybe collect information. So, you know, some people might not feel comfortable in, you know, speaking to someone or publicly. And so if we offer something anonymously online, and that's the way they prefer to provide information, then we can do that. Great idea. So multiple ways for people to provide information and their experiences. All right. Anything else before we take a final vote? Okay. So I vote yes. Carol? Yes. Ashley? Yes. Sid? Yes. Alecra? Yes. Rob? Yes. Risha? Yes. The motion passes. Thank you very much. Thank you, Phillip, and thank you, Elizabeth, for joining us. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for inviting us and thank you so much for this and looking forward to working with you all. We are too. I can go. Thank you. Okay, Carol, I'm passing it on to you. Okay, so the next thing that is up is we have, I don't know if anybody had a chance to look at it in the middle of the afternoon sometime, Nate sent out an initial draft from that he, I guess he and Dave, I don't think Dave is going to be here, is he? I think it's just you, Nate, to get to present this to us. I don't at least don't see Dave here. There's a few other meetings tonight. That's where he and Paul are. Yeah, I know. So we have a, we talked last time about maybe having a job description. So Nate maybe wants to make an initial presentation. I'll just say at the outset, I at least I'm certainly not ready to vote on this. Among other things, there's no budget, which was the other piece of what we wanted to see. And we haven't had very much time to look at it, but I would love to hear whatever Nate has to say as just a presentation of this, how it's going, what he thought and anyone else's input on what they think of this as a possibility. So go, Nate. Sure. Yeah, I mean, I sent it around was a little late. The Chris Prestre playing director also worked on it. So really the way we had hired people before we would have a contract and one or two lines about scope of work and then some bullet points. And really it has to be a town employee, the way it's meant to be now. And the way we'd hire, say someone like Rita now could no longer be necessarily contract, but an employee. So we wrote this as an employee job description with a few different parts. Carol and Erica did forward a number of bullet points that were incorporated into the responsibilities. Yeah, I mean, there's some questions about how many hours per week. And right now I think we said 20 to 25, non-benefited for up to three years. So the idea would be that it could be, it might be more, maybe it's 30 hours a week. Depending on funding, there could be some discussion about whether or not we'd want to be benefited. CPA voted $100,000 for three years. So about 30,000 a year for a total of three years. And Dave and I, we met with Erica and Carol and we said, oh, well, if Rita's not under contract with the trust, could some of that money be used to support this position? In part because I asked Rita and I reached out to a few other consultants in the area and with just the CPA money alone, it's almost hard to get someone who has that time in their schedule, who can almost be full-time or part-time, but not really. And it's still a lot of hours, but if we want it to be so many hours every day, it just might not fit into a schedule. And so the hope would be that we could make the position as close to full-time or substantial enough that there'd be interest from someone. When I hired Rita, we had to see quotes and I asked a few other people in the area and in Eastern Mass and no one was, no one really, but what we're asking for Rita to do, no one was too interested just because of the, it wasn't quite a part-time job. So anyways, the descriptions are really, I didn't be one of the supervisors. We'd work through the trust and so any direction the trust would have, they would attend trust meetings and under the responsibilities, we list about 13 items and it's a number of things anywhere from doing research to helping set up forums, taking minutes, working with developers, helping with permitting on projects, looking at sites for possible housing, researching housing strategies. I mean, we throw a lot in there and then we say anything else as assigned. And so it's kind of like, here's a list of a lot of things and if there's other things we think of, that can be your responsibility. We'd love to have someone who has some experience with planning or housing and is familiar with it. Really it's to try to get projects going, right? So, for instance, like Strong Street, either help get projects going and see projects through. The trust has also talked about, could there be a local voucher program or could we have some other programs and maybe this position can really then run with that and research it and present that. Could we get information online, whether it's through multimedia or having educational pamphlets or guidance documents and even coordinating with UMass or other organizations and so just kind of pulling it all together. You know, the list is not a priority list, it's not in rank order. And so really, trust members, when you review it, if you have comments, you can send it to myself and I can make changes to the document and send it back out and we can discuss it next month. And so, like I said, it's not a priority list. If you think something's missing, just throw a comment on it and send it to me. The job description, my job description, for instance, has like everything in there like I could be doing and anything really, actually that I'm told to do, staff 20 boards and more. And then it's really whatever is assigned to me. So I don't want to overwhelm or make this position seem like more than it is. And so yeah, I mean, just I guess have an eye for that too. Like is this, are we being accurate in our description? Is there something else we really want to focus on? If there is, right? So if there is something we really want to focus on, maybe we highlight it as well. So, you know, I feel like it's pretty good. I mean, we asked for some experience. Like I said, we list a lot of things. We did capture most everything, I think Carol and Erica, that you had recommended. Yeah, I looked at those things. I have a question. You said you would like, I mean, this says 20 to 25 hours. And then you said, well, we'd really like to get it up to 30 or almost full time. And is it, oh, can the town hire people for however many hours they want and still have it be non-benefited? Or is there some threshold when if you hire somebody for X, if this is an employee who's going to work 30 hours, they have to be, I mean, isn't there something like that that happens at some threshold point? Yeah, I don't know actually, it's a really good question. So, you know, I said, I don't know how many hours it is. You know, we know CPA is 30,000 a year. And if the trust say, for instance, was willing to put in 15 or 20,000. So then we could say, okay, well, we have say 50,000 if it's 20,000 a year. What, you know, what do we think that is in terms of an hourly rate or hours per week? And so that could become a discussion. So if we say, okay, the trust is willing to put in 20,000, what is 50,000 a year? And then if the, you know, and then it is, it'll become a discussion with HR about how this is classified. So we have to, to make it a town employee, we have to put it on a classification plan and, you know, get it approved through human resource, human resources. And so, you know, the first step would be to refine this position description and then meet with HR to determine where it, you know, how we can get it into the town's kind of classification plan. So yeah, I mean, you know, if we get to 50,000 is 30 hours a week and if we want it to be benefited, you know, I don't know, I mean, that's the discussion to have. Like, is it, you know, we, when we presented to CPA, we were thinking 30,000 a year, maybe it wouldn't even be that much. And so then we said non-benefited because it was, you know, it was actually gonna be like 20 hours a week at most. My question is just how much discretion over whether it's benefited or not, do we really have? Because at least in any place I've ever worked, there's some point, if you work more than X hours a week, you must be benefited. If you work more than, so I would just, it would seem like it'd be helpful to know, maybe I'm wrong, maybe that's not true, but it's been true most any place I've been. And so it'd be helpful to know if there's that kind of a requirement as we try to figure this out. It doesn't really matter, except for the money, I guess, but it seems like it'd be a useful thing to know and you can figure it out when you're figuring out your next draft. Yeah, no, it matters because, you know, the cost of health insurance and other things, you know, is a pretty big percentage of what the salary is, right? So it's like, if all the benefits is, you know, 35, 40% of what your salary is. So it's like, you know, if we have 50,000 a year and you know, you figure out the math and really you only have, you know, 30,000 for salary because 20,000 is going to benefit, so. Yeah, that's why it would probably be good for us to know something about that as we try to define it better if there's a requirement. Erica, you look like you're about to talk. Yes, so this is sort of the root of how some people who work in towns can't afford to live in towns. And so I'm a little concerned about, you know, what we're assuming is probably somebody who might have benefits through someone else and may be able to not have benefits, which limits your pool. But I really think that I get the tension between wanting to find somebody and the available resources, but I don't wanna be part of continuing a process of not paying people enough to be able to actually live in the town that they wanna create housing, affordable housing for. So I think we really should consider possibly maybe even getting other monies to make it a well-paid position, you know, maybe there's some ARPA money, maybe there's some place else that we could have money. I know ARPA is only for a certain number of years, but I just really don't wanna be part of underballing someone's, you know, living wage to then not even be able to live in the town that they're working for affordable housing. Yes, good point, all. Thank you. Nate, did I understand you said at the beginning that this could no longer be a consulting position? Yeah, the way we're writing it, it really, in the way the, I don't know if there's been a new ruling or something the auditors and the state have, there's, yeah, there's a kind of a threshold test and this wouldn't really pass it. So it needs to be considered a town employee. Yeah, the attorney general has made a ruling about contractors. And so there are three points of that ruling because we're dealing with a lot of other municipalities around contract versus full-time employees. So if it's the direct supervision of the town and the tasks are specific, you know, very specific to what the town wants, then they have to be an employee, not a contractor. Okay. Yeah, I think a lot of towns, you know, I don't know if there wasn't just guidance, but everyone was doing it differently, you know, just a year or two ago. So this could have been a consultant or a contractor and then it changed pretty dramatically. I mean, maybe it should always have been, but my understanding was that there was clarification like a year and a half ago. Ashley. Can I just, and maybe it's already in there, but to the part where they research different models of affordable housing that are things that we're not doing, I think is very important because we need some new ideas and some new ways of doing things that are also cheaper. And so hopefully they will do the research part quite a bit. That's all I'm saying. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, well, does anybody have anything else to say? I mean, we're all, we're sort of looking at this for the first time. It's going to go back to Nate and Dave and any of us can provide any, go ahead, Sid. I wanted to second Erica's point around, you know, having a salary and maybe, you know, also, you know, benefits, because then that also would attract more of a diverse school, right, of folks and also maybe even single parents who may not have that partner that has the insurance. So if you look at something that can pay folks away, just like Erica said, to live in town, but also to provide them with, you know, the health insurance and all this other stuff, I think then we can attract more of a diverse school of people that we can choose from. So I just wanted to re-emphasize the point because I thought it was a great point. Rob. Could, in order to raise enough money to fund this, could health side sources contribute? Could we fundraise? Or I'm specifically thinking of their community land trust. We contribute to the pool of money that funds this position in exchange for, you know, some duties. Yeah. Let me say there's one hand in our audience who seems to have something I might want to say about this. I'd like to, I'd like to let, it's Laura. I'd like to let Laura Baker say what she wants to say and then we'll see where we go from there. Laura. I'm just going to answer Rob's question. I think this would be a town employee, so I'm not sure we'd have fold-in responsibilities to Amherst Cooney Land Trust. I think there could be donations through the trust to help fund this. I do think, right, as if there were to become a full-time salary position, it would be more than what we have. So I think sometimes, you know, the town doesn't have a budget for this right now. So it really is just the CPA money and we thought there's synergy working with the trust. And so, you know, if this were to have benefits and increase the position, it does, it could change the, you know, the kind of the scale of this. And so we'd have to, you know, I'd have to talk to Dave and see what he was thinking. You know, but I understand what you're all saying. I just, you know, right now, there may not be the budget for it. This isn't like a, this wasn't something, but this isn't part of the town budget. This is something we're kind of creating, using, you know, CPA and trust funds. And if there are other fund-raising, but I'll let Laura say whatever she wants to say. Hi, I basically wanted to say what Erica said. I think that, you know, when you find yourselves trying to create an unbenefited position in your role as the affordable housing trust, there's something, there's a disconnect happening. And I would strongly encourage folks to think about that and look at a way to add responsibilities or combine this. I know there's some vacancies in the planning department, you know, just to make it a livable wage for someone, you will get more value for your money. If you have a dedicated staff member, then you will with a consultant. And if you have a livable wage and benefits, then you'll have a much greater selection of candidates. So I'm echoing what other people are saying. Thank you. Thank you, Laura. Well, I think I'm maybe, go ahead, Ashley, and then I'll say what it's gonna say. Well, I know I keep forgetting the details of this, but CPA money, that is not our $300,000 that maybe we could take just from our fund and we could give like $50,000. What if we took some of the money and gave more money? Is that possible? There's nothing that says we can't. I mean, that's what we're exploring is what do we wanna do? How do we get what we wanna get? And I guess one of the things I'm hearing is we don't wanna participate in making low wage jobs so people can't live here. That's not what we wanna do. So I think we're saying, one of the things we're saying to Nate, who just disappeared or anyway, oh no, they're in the middle. I can't see anyone. One of the things we're saying to Nate and Dave is make this a full-fledged benefit position. What do you need to do that? Make it that and bring it back. But that's what we want it to be and we'll figure out what to do. But we wanna see what that looks like. I think that's true. How much it costs and how much money we need. Each person needs to give us, maybe the environmental people, maybe we need to pool our resources, right? I don't even know how we can get there exactly because as she said, if it's a town position, it has to be part of a town budget. I don't know how we get there, but we ought to at least know what we're trying to get to. That's what I'm saying, Risha. So I have a slightly different perspective and we're doing some hiring in my other job and people are really looking for flexibility right now. And so I'm not 100% on that this needs to be a full-time job. If there's a way to have a living wage either, that's why I asked about consultant because you can just make the wage a lot bigger so they can pay for benefits out of that or a part-time person with benefits. And so I don't know what the flexibility around that is but not everyone's looking for full-time jobs, particularly with everything that's happened in childcare and COVID. So I don't necessarily think we need to make it a full-time job if we're forcing that and if that's gonna be a problem for our budget. I would just like that it's a real livable wage with either benefits included or that the wage goes up so much so that the benefits are part of that daily wage. Okay, is that Laura, have you still got something else to say? Your hand is still up. I'm not sure. Our hand is down. Okay. Is there anything? I think there's nothing really I don't think to vote on here exactly. We're just trying to provide feedback to Nate and to Dave who are trying to create this description of a position. They have money from CPAC to youth and they're hoping that we will use some of the money that we have to put together. We don't quite really yet know what we're looking at. So we're gonna keep trying to look at it. And I think Nate, then do you have some idea of what kinds of things where to go from here? Some of the things that we have thought about not that we've all thought the same thing even, but... Yeah, no, I mean, like I said, if you have any comments about specific responsibilities or priorities for the job, send them to me. Yeah, no, I think it's been a good discussion. It's interesting, right? Like how do we frame this? And so, yeah, I think that's, I think I'll need to talk to Dave and HR too about that. So can we, if we have the description and it says part-time or full-time, can we have that flexibility in terms of how we advertise it or how do we go about the hiring process? So if it were, if we're going out for a consulting contract, it would be different. But as an employee, I don't know if we can have that range in terms of how we hire someone. And I understand what you were saying and whatever else is saying. So I don't know, I'm curious to talk to HR and see what they think too. Yeah, so no, I think, yeah, next meeting, if you have comments, we can come back and I can have some more information too about, say cost of benefits and everything else. Okay, great. Well, then if no one objects, I would like to move on. We have a couple of updates that we're gonna try to do in the next 10-ish minutes because we told Mandy Joe, I see that Mandy Joe and Patricia are both here and we told them that they could come on at about eight. So we have about 10 minutes for an update from Laura on East Gables. And then I have a very brief update just from an email that would send to me about from Wayfinders about Belcher Town Road. But Laura, since you're live, why don't you go first? Hi everybody, thanks for having me. Yeah, I can give you an update on our progress at East Gables. I hope that folks have had a chance to drive by and see the property. I know many people are desperately avoiding the road work in that section of town, but we think it's turning out to be a very attractive and kind of handsome building that's gonna fit well in its environment. We're moving along very well given the construction environment around us. We're at a stage where we're doing rough mechanicals on the interior, be moving to drywall shortly. We'd love to do a tour for the trust. Caroline and I went back and forth about timing and thought that maybe when the weather's a little milder and things are a little further along it would be a more fun tour to do. So we'd like to have you come on site and take a look around. So generally good progress. We are spending a lot of care and time and discussion around the passive house requirements which is an energy efficiency code. We're doing things that are new to us to get, we have about a 10 or 12 inch thick building envelope. We have 10 inch thick doors. It's pretty crazy, but we're excited about that aspect. It's also our first all electric utility building. So there's a big learning curve for all of us and interesting in a wonky technical kind of way. Could you send a picture? Sorry, of the 10 inch thick door. I'm kind of curious. Yeah, when it comes on site, it's just amazing. But I'm like, wow, it's partly a function of it's a relatively small multifamily building. And so it is highly sensitive to fluctuations in temperature, so to be very precise. The other thing we're thinking a lot about is the upcoming marketing and lottery process. So our schedule calls for us to begin that lottery advertising the affirmative fair marketing at the end of February, moving into March. So you will be hearing more about that aspect which is exciting of people actually having the opportunity to fill out applications and hopefully move in. One of the decisions that we made that I feel good about is we're doing a very simple pre-application for people to participate in the lottery. So it's kind of a two-pager, trying to make it intentionally a very low threshold for folks to apply. People may recall we have 10 units that have a homeless preference for tenants in this building. And if you've ever tried to fill out an affordable housing application before, they're pretty onerous. I mean, many 10, 12, 14 pages of documentation and it really is a barrier in my view for people to apply. So the process that we're gonna use is people put in something that's fairly simple. We give them a preliminary screening look to see if they seem to be eligible. They go in the lottery, if they pop up toward the top of the lottery, then we're gonna dig deeper in terms of all the things that we're gonna look for in terms of income eligibility and screening for tenants. A reminder that we have a local preference requirement put upon this project as part of the permitting. And so there will be a preference for Amherst residents as part of this marketing and selection process. Another kind of just interesting point of information I was approached last week by several professors from Amherst College who are doing a course on kind of climate justice, basically climate change, the intersection of climate change with social justice. And so we'll be doing a tour for their class in March to come and look at the building and talk about some of the issues around how climate impacts are felt disproportionately by some groups and just looking, again, the wonky technical aspects of this particular construction. So I'm excited about that. I think it's kind of a cool learning opportunity. We are bright against, smack dab against the campus. And so I'm also meeting with someone from the school to think of other ways that we might integrate into the curriculum at Amherst College, which is something we had always hoped would be possible. So it's all good. It all sounds great. Hey, do you guys have questions for me? What do you think about Murphy beds? Thumbs up or thumbs down? Yeah. Do you have them in those units? I didn't think you did. Are you just asking or? I'm asking. So the units are pretty small. And so as I walk around them, I'm thinking a little bit more about modular furniture. So I'm kind of half joking, but... Yeah, the new market rate development on Spring Street behind the police station, they, a number of them have Murphy beds. Yeah. Okay. Well, without getting too into Murphy beds, Laura, did anybody have anything else to say to Laura? I'm looking forward to our tour, Laura. So we're going to hold you to having it sometime in the spring. I'm really psyched. I'm really psyched to see the place, including the 10-inch doors. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you for participating in our meeting earlier and giving us your input on the position as well. Sure. So let me just say the couple of sentences I have about, can say about Belcher Town Road. I can tell you that they have done a bunch of things. I'm not going to read the whole list. I'll forward the email if people want to see it. They got $400,000 in the CPA round, as long as the town council approves that piece of it. They are still looking at 72 units, 29 at Southeast Street, 43 at Belcher Town Road. They are doing all the civil, all the things that they're supposed to do. And the bottom line being, because they are working so hard, they still anticipate submitting the project eligibility letter to DHCD in the spring, so that the project will move forward on the expected or hoped for timeline. They had something or other, they were kind of planning to be here tonight, but something came up and they couldn't. And so I can, I'll send this out. I'll forward this email that who would it go to? It went to Eric, went to me, I guess, and then anyway, and also to Erica. So I will forward this so anybody who wants to see the kind of details of what they've done, but the main thing is they're on track as they should be. There isn't really anything to see yet. They're just still checking out the soil and the wetlands and all that kind of stuff that they have to do, but they're on track. So that's the good news. If anybody has any questions, probably I can't answer them, but you can try asking and I can pass them on if somebody has a question. Okay, well then I think we are coming out really close to right on time. We are now gonna hear from Mandy, Joe and Patricia and invite them into the room to tell us what they're planning to do for affordable housing by changing some zoning laws. Mandy, Joe and Pat. As we join, I wanna say thank you for having us and for inviting us to do this. Wow. There's Pat. I think I'm gonna do the bulk of the presenting today, but Pat will be here to say a couple of words too. I don't know whether Pat, you wanna start? A few words. You have the presentation that I gave to the planning board. I'm gonna share my screen if I can, but I'm not gonna go through, you're gonna see a lot of swipes quickly across stuff because it takes about a half an hour to go through the whole thing and I'm gonna trust that you've read it all, but it helps to see some visuals as we talk about some of this. So let's see if I can share my screen to, is there a way it can, it said it was disabled, so. Nate's gonna have to give you the ability to do that, I'm sure. Okay. Can you do that, Nate? No, it's done, okay. Okay. So now you can all see the front side and I'm gonna spend a little bit more time on our goals and then go through some of the changes quickly because it goes through that. Let's see. Different program. Okay, so what did we, what are we trying to accomplish? We're trying to accomplish a couple of different things, equity and housing. And this is one where right now we have some sections of town or many of our residential sections have only one type of housing that is allowed to be built fully as of right. And I say fully meaning by submitting your building plans to the building commissioner and the building commissioner granting a building permit without any public hearings or any other requirements other than the zoning bylaw itself and meeting the bylaw. And we would like to eliminate that policy that our bylaw has adopted sort of and say, we want to allow more types of buildings particularly duplexes and two types of the three duplexes that are mentioned in our bylaw to be permitted in the same way a single family home is which is just going to the building commissioner and saying, here are my plans. It meets the zoning bylaw, grant me a building permit so that I can start building it. We believe this would help eliminate, won't eliminate it fully, but it's a pathway towards addressing our economic and social segregation. And it would also, because of the ones we've chosen particularly the home owner occupied duplexes create multiple places for home ownership opportunities that might not be there right now. We want to address the housing crisis, right? We have a lack of housing in town for the demand that we see in town not just from those young individuals that are attending our colleges and universities but from others that want to work and live and create a life here beyond their schooling life and not doing anything isn't going to fix that problem. So we have to look at what can we do? That doesn't mean what we've proposed will fully do anything, right? This is just one spoke in many different ways we can address this crisis but this is a way to we hope encourage more housing opportunities through these changes encourage the building of more duplexes encourage the building of more triplexes you look at some stats from the mass housing partnership and we have many less duplexes than most communities in the state. That is one area where we don't really meet the median of the state duplexes. We have a lot more apartments than most places in the states we have a lot more five to nine unit buildings than in state, but we don't have duplexes and many other places have a lot more duplexes on a percentage basis than we do. We're trying to create that those opportunities and make it that pathway easier to create those opportunities. We want to improve sustainability. We know that the more units that are within a building the more sustainable the building is not just within the heating but as you do infill development and all you have a more sustainable system. And then we're also trying to create some sort of logic to the use table. We tried to take some logic and say, if this is a more intense use than some other use then the permitting pathway should potentially be more intense. But I can't swipe like I always intend to I gotta remember this. So I'm gonna not spend a lot of time on this but one of our defining thoughts and questions as we went through this is we have four types of permits in town one of which isn't really a permit on our use table in the zoning bylaw and no means you can't build it. You can't put it in town. So I wouldn't really call that a permit but that's one of the four options. A yes as I talked about is you just go to the building commissioner and you can build it as long as it meets zoning requirements. We have exactly four types of yeses in the bylaw single family homes fall under that category and then the other three are forestry orchards and conservation. So no other building types other than single family home get a yes in the bylaw. We're trying to eliminate that by adding some duplexes into that. Then we have site plan review and special permit. And what we as sponsors thought about was what's the difference between them and why do we want to preference site plan review? Well, special permits are discretionary. That means that when you put down that you need a special permit what you're saying to the rest of the world and the developers and the community is, well in that zone whether that be the residential general or the residential village center or the commercial zone we're not sure that the use that that use is appropriate for that zone. It may be in some areas it may not be in other areas. So we wanna be able to say no. We wanna be able to say no, you can't build that because it's not that that parcel you wanted to build it on is not an appropriate parcel. We want to say no in some instances and yes in some instances. It's discretionary, it doesn't have to be there's a lot more restrictions to that. The hearing notices come the same with the two but with a site plan review what we're saying is, you know what? In that zone, in that commercial zone say that commercial use is always appropriate in that zone that we've zoned that area for a commercial use. And so we want a little bit of control over what it looks like. We wanna be able to have some say we wanna have a review of it but we know it's appropriate in that zone. So what we're saying if we choose between special permit and site plan review for certain residential developments and building uses is saying, right now we have special permits for many of our duplexes particularly non owner occupied duplexes but what we're saying when we've chosen special permit is those duplexes aren't always appropriate in that zone. So you have to look at the zoning map and compare what you're permitting pathway is to where that zone lives in town. And that's where I'm gonna go through a lot of these slides quickly. We have five basic residential zones low density to high density. Most of our density is controlled by our dimensional table, not our use table in terms of residential density because our dimensional table by default says you have to have so many square feet to even start building one resident, residents one unit of residential housing. And for each of the zones then you have to have a certain number of square feet to go beyond that. And so this slide just says where we are just on that no matter the type of housing use you can't put more than certain numbers of buildings units in these zones and that's what that shows. So we've created that quote medium or high density or low density through the dimensional table not necessarily through the use table. I'm gonna skip through some of these. I talked about that one. So let's talk about what we're trying to do. So with duplexes these are some pictures from duplexes in town. They're two units they each have separate entrances at the ground floor. They're either one on top of the other or one next to each other. And we are trying to say in the business zones if they're appropriate for owner occupied and affordable a non owner occupied is also appropriate. It's that question of is it always appropriate or suitable to build that use in that zone or do we wanna be able to say no to that use in that zone? This is where we're trying to eliminate that exclusionary zoning that single family only zoning. We are proposing owner occupied and affordable duplexes to be yeses in the five residential zones that we basically have excluding the fraternity zone. We wanna say and we believe as sponsors that an owner occupied duplex and an affordable duplex are always appropriate in all of our residential zones just like a one family is always appropriate. Those duplexes should not have to go through public hearings to be built that as long as they satisfy and meet the zoning requirements of our zoning bylaw they can be built without public hearings. Non owner occupied duplexes were again saying are suitable in all areas but we want some say over the look the some of those requirements the lighting some of these things we want to be able to have some review of that. So we would propose moving them from that special permit where you can say no we don't wanna duplex there to we just wanna look at it and have some control over it. The conditions here are some of the conditions that we've proposed for them many of them match the ADU conditions that we recently enacted for additional accessory dwelling units. So triplexes this is an interesting thing. Right now triplexes if you wanna build a three family unit you either build a town home one next to each other or you build an apartment building. And so if you want a three family what we would typically call a triplex a up down vertical sort of building of a three family it's technically an apartment building. And so you have to comply with all of the apartment building language. What we're trying to do is separate that out from apartment buildings and say triplexes are kind of close to duplexes they shouldn't be considered apartment buildings on the same scale as a 24 unit building or a 10 unit building they should be their own category they're a typical type of use. So we have a definition and all of that and since it would be a new use you have to put them in all in this one matches the commercial districts matches everyone else the rest of the business districts were matching with duplexes because we believe they're closer to duplexes than to others. And so we would only allow them to be built in this proposal in the BN district just like the duplexes. In the residential areas again what we're saying is they're appropriate in all residential areas that a three family is appropriate but we want some review. This chart shows some of the minimum lot sizes to get to that third again talking about well is this going to create huge amounts of density in some of our low dense areas? Well to get to build a three family in our lowest density area you need two and a half acres which is one of the reasons I believe it is always appropriate is because you need two and a half acres and that still seems very low density to us. The conditions match basically all of the duplex conditions that we've proposed match that mostly the ADU conditions and all of that. Because it's a new use and a new use category it comes with changes to these other sections to add triplexes as permitted uses similar to duplexes. So basically we said where are duplexes mentioned and we added triplexes into that mention. Townhouses these can be three to 10 they're next to each other and they always have separate entrances on the ground level for each of the units. We're proposing a couple of different changes in the BN the business areas one is to actually make it harder to permit and that's in our general business general to match the apartment we want to in our densest business area we want to actually encourage commercial retail a little less of the housing unless it's a mixed use building and so we thought we'd match what we did with apartments recently on the council on all the other areas we want to say you know a townhouse that's eight, nine, 10 units is actually really appropriate for our business neighborhood district that's really tiny it's really appropriate for the BVC and so we want to allow it with that site plan review again public hearing and all of that. In the residents neighborhoods this is where I split some out in our densest the medium and medium to high the ones closest to the village centers closest to our downtown areas we believe it's entirely appropriate to build a have a townhouse and so we're proposing moving from special permit where they could be denied to site plan review where we still have some control but are saying that they're suitable. The residents neighborhood zone which is a little farther outlying still only medium density right now they're not allowed at all and what we're saying here by changing it from a no to a special permit is you know in some parts of that RN they probably are appropriate you know the RN despite the fact that you see that apartments aren't allowed the RN is where puffed in is located it's where branding wine is located it's where townhouse is located it's where all of those East Hadley road apartments are located and so when looking at it from that point of view of what is already in RN if we've already got all these apartment complexes and we already have a lot of single family homes we believe townhouses in certain parts of that district should be allowed and right now they're not allowed anywhere and so changing to special permit doesn't mean we're going to find townhouses everywhere because it's still discretionary but we think we should allow them. Similarly in the RO and RLD we're proposing a special permit not because we think necessarily that the RLD category should have 10 unit townhouses in it potentially but because some of the RO categories are near some of that RO zone is near a village center I put a picture on here from the Long Meadow Drive area the Glendale Road Orchard Valley right next to our Pomeroy Village Center and maybe and I'm just saying maybe that area could house some townhouses that we might be able to say it's appropriate in some of those areas in other areas of the RO and RLD probably not appropriate but we don't want to eliminate the possibility in some areas that are already close to village centers and so while this area might be even more limited in where a townhouse should go and we would be relying on the ZBA to make those determinations and trusting them that they would we need to look at and say but there are some areas so let's not eliminate the possibility completely. The conditions we're not proposing changes to converted dwellings are an interesting thing and so I just want to talk about what they are these are reuses these are buildings that already exist and already have a residential unit in it that a person that owns it wants to add more residential units to that building there are strict limits already in the bylaw about how much of the new construction there can be there are strict limits that say no new dwelling unit can be of new construction alone and there are even dwelling unit number restrictions in the residential zones you can only convert up to four units in the converted dwelling in the business zones you can only have six so in some sense these are less intense uses than townhouses even because you can't go above four in a residence and a six in there and you've already got the building there so what do they do? They really promote that infill development that reuse of historic buildings or non-historic buildings just buildings in general that might be too big for one residence right now that we want to maybe divide up and make a little more affordable for everyone else it promotes that diversity of housing types and bringing in that economic diversity into neighborhoods that might have lots of large buildings or a lot of lots of that. So we're again proposing to make mostly take these to site plan review in all of the districts because of those reasons this talks a little bit more about what RN is even though I talked about it in the townhouse sections conditions, let me go back to conditions conditions this just talks about what we're retaining adding or deleting I can talk more about it the management plans would not actually be deleted they would be deleted from these sets of conditions because they would be covered under other conditions because one of the things we're saying is converting a dwelling is more of a development type versus an end use if you go from one to two in a building that has two separate entrances at ground floor well, once you're done that conversion it's really a duplex. So let's require the duplex conditions for that building if you actually go from one to four units and those four units have one entrance and then from that ground floor entrance you have four interior entrances well, you're really building an apartment complex well, let's require the apartment complex conditions and most of those conditions all require management plans and so we're not deleting those management plan requirements at all we're just moving how we refer to them. So this is an interesting district and this is one we haven't changed too much this is to protect our aquifer in the Lawrence swamp and so this is when you look at the zoning use table and you see all these parentheses, what does it mean? Well, that means anything in the right recharge protection district and so this is where we're saying townhouses are probably not appropriate in those districts because a townhouse might be too intensive of a use especially if you're on sewer when we're trying to make sure we don't harm our water supply converted dwellings depending on the size we need to make sure they're on sewer that they're not on septic and so if they're only two or three there might be appropriate but maybe if they're four and they're really close to that swamp or that drainage maybe we don't want them there and so we're proposing special permits but for duplexes and triplexes we're saying they're still appropriate we can manage that within the aquifer recharge protection districts so they'd be site plan review in those districts subdividable dwellings is all I have to say is this is the building commissioner recommended we delete it so we're proposing deletion it's been used once and I believe that is all for my presentation I hope I kept it somewhat shorter than normal and that we're happy to answer any questions and Pat may want to say a few words I don't know No, I'm recovering from some surgeries so I'm here because I so support your work and Mandy's work she's really lifted this and carried it and I appreciate it if something comes up I will that I think I have something really important to say I will say it but thank you for inviting us I have at least one question probably more than one question but my question of greatest curiosity is to get this passed does it take three quarters or half of the town council because I thought I read that the governor did something so that various kinds of zoning laws now had to had only to have a regular majority to pass and so I'm very curious about that We won't know until we get an actual legal opinion but in reading some and it's a new law and you are correct there are certain types of zoning changes that now only need a majority so on the council that would be seven and there are other types that still remain needing the nine, the two thirds which is nine on our body the types of zoning changes that only need seven have to be, they need to be increasing the ability to add units on any parcel and nearly all of our changes do that there's that one, not add units but increasing the ease of adding units so moving up that one permitting pathway going from no to special permit or going from special permit to site plan review only one of our proposed changes does not meet that requirement and that is that one business general town homes moving I think it was town homes moving from site plan review to special permit so that one would definitely need nine because it doesn't meet that initial requirement the next requirement is that they be in a qualified zone and this is where you need the attorney opinion more than I can say as to whether it meets that qualified zone those zones are generally already multifamily zones or zones so they already allow some multifamily housing but places where the infrastructure and I could look it up if you give me about a minute but I don't have those languages right available but it's infrastructure it's places where there's already multifamily housing on major through fares, on bus routes on other transportation routes and all of that and so what I don't know is whether certain of our zones qualify or not we believe that some of the changes will qualify for seven votes we just don't know where that will come down for example, the mixed use building changes that we made as a council a couple of years ago were was a seven vote voting requirement not a nine vote and so I think it we just need to wait and see but we believe at least some of the changes will require just seven Thank you. Other people have other questions? I have a question and sorry, Ashley had your hand up. Well, oh, I was just gonna say if I'm not mistaken this is actually kind of what the state of California did it basically just made no single family housing zones period and so maybe we could also just check at some point if the governor could do it I mean, if that's maybe part of the plan it would be really helpful if it was statewide that there was no necessary to be single family zoning just that way. Thanks, Allegra. I wanted to say thank you for kind of thinking creatively about different ways to get different types of housing in. I'm just wondering if you could speak a little bit more to how affordable housing will be preserved in this because my concern is that we'll just see a bunch of triple deckers popping around that now there are 12 beds that will be going for like $2,000 a pop at this point and I understand that students are a population that also need housing. I just worry that there will be the affordability piece will be lost and I just wanted to hear a little bit more about that. We obviously can't guarantee if these changes go through that anything gets built, right? As I stated, we're trying to encourage more building and create more opportunities. The one thing I would point to is the fact that we have put for that affordable duplexes as well as the homeowner occupied ones that we've made them the yeses. Those are the ones we want to make the easiest to build meaning no public hearings just you comply with the bylaw you get your building permit just like a single family home. And so the one thing I could say is with that change we are hopeful that more people would build the affordable duplex or the owner occupied duplex. And if it's an owner occupied duplex, the hope is that we've heard stories. I don't know if there's research out there or any statistics out there, but we have heard that those who own a duplex and tend to live in one side and potentially rent the other side tend to sort of have lower rents than those that are renting both and really have it as an investment opportunity. We don't know, right? But that's sort of where this proposal is hoping to really encourage that affordable side. Triplexes we haven't put in different categories of triplexes it was something we talked about Pat and I in terms of meeting, doing the same thing that duplexes have done with triplexes, we could consider that where you've got an owner occupied one that has an easier permitting pathway and an affordable one that has an easier permitting pathway than a non owner occupied one to also help encourage that. If that is something that people would be interested in we could certainly consider something like that. I mean, just to follow up, I think that would be a good idea. I mean, I just kind of anecdotally in some of the areas that I worked in in Boston it was very typical of like multi-generational families living on the various floors in a triple decker and that could be a way to, you know you're not hopefully gonna charge your grandma a lot of friends. It's also clearly cheaper to buy land to build a duplex and what we're seeing with younger people and also some older friends of ours that are more our age who have bought property together and build a duplex and they're smaller than the single family home might have been, but they're more sustainable in terms of energy usage, et cetera. But what we're seeing is a desire for younger people to be raising families together and then aging in place. And that's a trend nationally, not just in Massachusetts. It's an important trend. Rob, you're muted, Rob. How about that? I agree with Allegra's concern about what this does to affordability. I don't, I agree affordable duplexes and owner-occupied duplexes should be yeses, that makes a lot of sense. I don't think that you promote affordable housing by promoting non-overoccupied duplexes. It's a fantasy to think that people will build them and rent them both sides to families. I just don't think that's gonna happen. So I don't see any need to promote that now. Let's take it one step first and make affordable and owner-occupied easier to do. I also like the idea of making triplexes a thing, a thing that is possible. I would like to see that also separated into affordable and unoccupied and non-overoccupied as two different permitting paths. I don't see any problem in keeping those non-overoccupied uses as site-by-interview or as a special permit. It's good that they are more expensive and harder to get through. I want last concern about the BN district. You mentioned that it's where they exist, they're tiny. And I don't see, I believe those districts are meant to encourage businesses to coexist with housing. But if you make housing too easy in those districts, then they're gonna crowd out any business opportunity. So I would not lessen the permitting earn in housing in those districts. Thank you. Any other comments or questions or concerns? Erica. I was more curious about timelines and how we can support you. Yeah, so the next steps, sort of the next formal steps are the public hearings at both the planning board and the community resources committee. They're the mandated state public hearings. The planning board public hearing will begin at 635 on March 1st. And the CRC public hearing will be 435. So 430 and 630 are when the meetings start. So 430 on March 2nd for the community resources committee public hearing. We suspect that neither hearing will be closed at its first date because we know there's a lot of concern. We know there's a lot of work to be done and potentially compromise, including some of the stuff you've said here about changes to make it right for Amherst. But so thoughts to both of those committees on the stuff that you've and some of the concerns but also some of the supports you've indicated tonight to those committees in advance of those hearings or at those hearings is the first step of doing it. And then when it finally moves out of the committees back to the council in whatever manner it looks like at that time, then communication with the council would certainly be helpful. Thank you. Any other comments or I don't know if there's anything to take a vote on but I'd like at least kind of a straw. Do the people on the trust think that this is generally given some here and there we have to tweak things but does this seem like it's going in the right direction? I'm just liking for, I don't know, a general idea. Not I guess nobody, you can't record sums but I just like to hear anybody's like, are they headed in the right direction? Are we headed in the right direction here, Ashley? Well, I just have a question probably for Nate but the way that an apartment complex like North Square apartments, they're the incentive for that developer to have 10% or more low income units. Is that applied to just about, could be applied to anybody? So like if you have a house and you wanna make units in it or you want to build a three-plex and you agree to have, well, maybe it's 10% and maybe it's 20% maybe more you get less on your taxes. Does that apply? It doesn't. So the town has a local tax incentive but you have to have 10 units or more. And then so for a smaller development at the tax incentive wouldn't. However, if someone has an affordable unit that's deed restricted it gets assessed differently by the town so it would get, it'd be taxed less. And so, wouldn't have any incentive but it would still be, it would have less taxes on it. So. Okay. Just because if so it only applies to 10 or more units could maybe it could apply to less units at some point. Yeah, that's an interesting idea. Probably not would not be in the realm of what disowning thing is trying to do. It's a whole different ball of wax but it's an interesting thought. So keep it in mind. So does anybody have any, any, I mean, I said, I'll say for myself, I think that working to break the hold of single family big lot development is great. And I love the attention to detail that's involved in what you're doing because it seems like it's the way that it has to happen. And so I personally at least feel very supportive and just interested to hear what the other people on the trust feel also. I mean, my two cents is yes, absolutely. When I get rid of single family zoning generally the duplex and true triplex, is that the word? Brightens me in Amherst because of how, how it seems like that's just a perfect setup for university housing. And so I would love to see actually more apartments and more multi-unit townhouses where it is 10 or more and then we get affordable units as part of those and versus a bunch of small duplexes that very quickly get rented out to students and don't really improve the housing for most of us. And I don't have the answer. If I did, I'd suggest it. And I think you're getting, you're going in the right direction, but just that's my concern. Anybody else want to say anything? Well, go ahead, Rob. You started it, you can go ahead. I'm sorry, I forgot to mention townhouses, your work on townhouses. Is that, I'm interested in that concept of allowing townhouses to spread to more zoning districts. I haven't thought fully about what sort of the permitting path should be, but that is also an interesting idea. So I did work at least thinking about that. Yeah, I was just going to say, I agree with Risa. I think there's a certain level of tension you hear the more stock than there often will be more affordability, but there's no guarantee. And so I think some of the combination what Rob was saying in terms of owner occupied is really important because it does give individuals opportunity to actually have housing and create to some extent capital. And if it's correct that if it's owner occupied and it's less, it's more affordable and less higher rents, then that's an opportunity. But there is this tension with duplex, triplex to ensure that families who need affordable housing and who wanna live in Amherst and you want that diversity, actually have access to it. Not to say that students who wanna create families and wanna stay in Amherst shouldn't have that. If that's the opportunity, that's the pipeline that's fine too. But too often a lot of the apartments and homes that you see around here absolutely are filled with students. And I just had a quick question because I did see in there where it talked about I believe the number of people within one of these duplexes or triplexes, I believe it said four, but I was just wondering does the town have any limit in terms of person per square footage? So I don't know about a person per square footage. I actually think I read somewhere, Nate might be able to answer that that somewhere in the building code there might be a minimum square footage per occupant somewhere and that's how they determine occupancy limits. But Nate might know that better. What the town has in is for unrelated individuals a maximum of four per dwelling unit no matter the size of the unit no matter how many building bedrooms but they have to be unrelated. Yeah, the unrelated thing is tricky to enforce and actually measure but in terms of building code it's a I think it's also the plumbing code is stricter in terms of minimum square feet. And then if you're on septic it's bedrooms and with the septic design of septic system. So, but there's really not any... The unrelated is the only one, right? So in terms of how a dwelling unit could be occupied, if it's overcrowded the town could do something. But really it's like you could double up bedrooms families do where I have siblings and partners in bedroom. So there really isn't unless you have a lot of people I think the code is really small like the square foot per person is really small. I mean, the plumbing code might be like 150 square feet per person or something based on then fixtures or whatever. So it can actually be pretty dense and I don't think we're there. Anything else? I was gonna say quickly the planning board is having kind of a corollary conversation. I think it's in two weeks on Tuesday or next week on Tuesday. Gosh, I should know this. I think it's the 21st, 22nd, 21st, 21st, Tuesday the 21st. It's an off cycle meeting for them but to talk about where in town there could be denser housing. Specifically say, as Risha mentioned let's say just student housing, right? Where can we put thousands of beds for students I mean, that's really what we need. The housing study said it in 2015 and people were really angry at it and the consultant was kind of unapologetic with how they presented information. But they really did say that there's a demand of thousands of beds for off-campus housing. And I feel like what we're seeing now is especially with the over enrollment just recently but there is a really kind of unsaturated demand for student housing. And so I don't know if the chair, the planning board is really saying student housing he's saying denser housing, right? Where is it appropriate to village centers or town center? But the UTAC report and the housing studies have said maybe around the university kind of what's happening on MassApp can we allow for denser housing to try to get some of that demand, that student demand for housing in appropriate locations that can then allow others to have get into the housing market. And so it's something to share I wanted to do for a while but there is this meeting on the 21st that will be a public meeting and it actually will be in person and it's going to be a hybrid meeting we're thinking maybe in the town room and over Zoom but I think it's the planning boards trying to have this conversation about right where can we allow density of housing? And I think both these proposals are the same side a different side of the same coin, right? Like we need to have do both we need to have a number of strategies and avenues and I agree I feel like we need to allow housing for all different types of people but definitely students I mean, I think that that's something that hasn't been addressed either very well in the zoning we say apartments downtown and then it's students and maybe people think it won't be but that's what's a driving force in the Amherst market Amherst is really particular so I feel like you go two towns over and it's a different housing market just because of the dynamics of who lives in Amherst and who wants to live in Amherst but yeah, so I encourage people to attend that too as well and it'll be recorded so you can always watch later you don't wanna attend that night. I wish the town could find some way to have some leverage over the university to get them to house more of their students themselves and somewhere instead of having them all sort of fall into Amherst and then not even in Amherst I mean, I know stories of students who can't find anywhere to live either and they have to live a zillion miles from where they're trying to go to school just not enough housing at all period. Anyway, anything else about this particular proposal that we've been hearing about? I guess I would then just say thank you to Mandy Jo and Pat and will keep us in your loop so if there's a time when it's clear that there'd be something that you want from us that we haven't done or that we could do, let us know and we'll try to keep up with how you're moving it forward. Thank you very much. Thank you for having us and for the suggestions and comments you made they're really helpful. Take care. Great. Let's see, so we have one other thing I want to introduce or bring or let me see what Ashley had to say first. I was just, I just wanted to reiterate and maybe just check. So unless something has 10 units or more we have no control or even influence over who lives there. A 10 and over has to have low income housing at some percent, 10% or ideally more. Under 10, we have nothing. We have no influence. Is that true? Correct. I think that's right. I think that's the inclusionary zoning saying that we have it for over 10 and I don't think until the inclusionary zoning change happened. Well, so it's not helping us to do less than 10 units. I mean, it's not helping us have some influence on 10% or more income like it needs to be way more than 10% of low income units. A person with nine units can do whatever they want. They can just build it. Yes. Well, there are still other zoning requirements that they have to go through that don't include affordability. I don't really know exactly what they are but from what all Mandy Jo and them just said it's like they have special permits and different things that they have to, Nate could talk about it better than I can. Right, no, yeah. I mean, this one can go through a permitting process but there's no requirement for affordable units. I mean, they barely include them. They often don't. And 10 was decided on because there's a cost, there's a, say loss revenue for affordable units but then there's cost to build and often that was said that's a good ratio or number to start at 10. It could be something that is reexamined. And so, Rob to your comments, right, if you wanna have triplexes or what if we even say there's a quadplex, four units and then five and above's an apartment. There's different ways to think about it but having a requirement that one of those units be affordable or owner occupied and that might be site plan review and the rest of special permit, then we could try that. There's nothing saying we can't. We just, when we had done the inclusionary zoning or when we've done the housing studies previously the consultants would say don't have a requirement for affordable units if it's less than 10 because it becomes burdensome or a financial hardship on the developer and it could actually deter the development of them but I think it's something that is still worth exploring. So we haven't, I kind of agree that if we put it in there maybe it'll develop some housing, maybe we'll use it. It just feels to me like we want affordable owner occupied on one end and then 10 or more. Like everything in between sort of doesn't get to what we're trying to, it meets different needs. And at some point, yes, we just need supply and the theory is that eventually that balances everything out and we just don't have enough right now but from a strictly affordable that middle space is not all that attractive to us. But I don't think we should assume it's gonna ever balance out. If you live in one floor and you've got two other places that you own you might as well fill it with pretty wealthy students and pay for your home market. There's no incentive for the homeowner to not build that three and then fill it with just totally unaffordable for almost everybody except for like a wealthy student, kids. There's no incentive. I don't know if that's true. If it's my house, I want people that I like and people that I get along with and people that are gonna be there for a while and people that I want neighbors. I want neighbors in my house. I don't know. So I hear what you're saying but I don't think it's quite that simple either. Yeah, I think it's nuance but I do think that a lot of, I think a lot more bedrooms would be rented by bedroom for students or someone who could afford, whether it's students, but someone who could afford a higher rent. And so there probably are some unintended consequences of that. Yeah, it's interesting that one to 10. I mean, it's also, Valley CDC years ago did a strategic visioning for their plan, like five year plan or whatever plan it was. And a lot of communities and representatives from different communities in the area said, yeah, we'd love to see 10 to 20 unit developments that are affordable. And they said, well, tax credit programs and the subsidies don't fund those smaller developments. So it's gonna be 40 or more for rental or in home ownership is hard. But it's interesting that everyone really likes that idea of smaller developments. They can fit in with the scale, especially out in Western Mass, but there really isn't a good mechanism to incentivize those or subsidize those. And so maybe the state, maybe more of Healy's housing plan can help address that. I agree, there is this kind of this missing piece or few missing pieces maybe. And it is odd that we have, someone could do eight units and there's no really incentive or mechanism to try to get either lower case or capital A affordable, right? It's just really not, it's actually at their discretion. Does the developer wanna just have different people living there and they artificially keep the rent low because they're nice? I don't know. Well, one of the things that we agree that we need in order to do more affordable housing is more money to do it with. And that leads me to wanna ask us to support again. We did last year to support the efforts of the, it's called local options for affordable housing that whole coalition around the state that's trying to put through a state law that would allow municipalities to put a transfer fee on high-end real estate and have that money go to affordable housing. We already went through this with the one, Amherst has one that they're proposing. The Amherst proposal, the main difference is that the Amherst proposal would allow the money that is collected in this way to be in some way divided up between the housing trust and other needs of the town. What this huge coalition of people is trying to put through as a state law would allow any municipality or town that has an affordable housing trust to create within these guidelines a similar kind of law. And it would let all the towns that want to be able to do it, there's a lot of towns already, there's what is there Arlington, Boston, Brookline, Concord, Nantucket, Promise Town, Turo, Cambridge, Chatham, Wellfleet and Somerville all have transfer fee home rule petitions like the one Amherst is trying to propose. This would make it really easier for any other town to do a similar kind of thing and get more money into the pots of all the towns in the state that are trying to create more affordable housing. And so I don't know, I just wanna make us aware of this, hope that we will support it again. It's being sponsored by Joe. Joe Cumberford is behind it. Lindy Sambadosa, we have, we are asking, we could ask as the trust, if you're willing, we could ask Mindy Dom, our representative. I think she's in favor of it, she hasn't cosponsored, she hasn't cosponsored it yet or hasn't said she would. So I would like to see us agree to again support this. And basically we've heard what it is because we heard about it from Amherst and this is the same thing but makes it possible for any town to do it. And the main difference is that in the general one, all of the money that's collected would go for affordable housing. Do any trust members have any comments or questions before I ask John, whose hand is up to speak? Go John. I sent a note earlier today to Joe Cumberford and Mindy Dom and their staffs and also to Carol and Erica in which basically I asked them to support both the statewide effort, which is what Carol's just been talking about as well as the Amherst effort. Now the Amherst special legislation is different in a number of respects from what the statewide legislation would be. So it's like, well, do we have to support one and not the other? Do we have to stick with Amherst? And I think the answer to that is no. And that's what I said to both Mindy and Joe. We don't know actually what's gonna happen. And it would be great if both the Amherst special provisions pass and the statewide provisions pass because then that would have an impact potentially in many other towns. So we really want both to happen, but I'd be happy with at least one because either give us a path to get revenues for affordable housing that we don't now have. So I wrote my note. I obviously wasn't speaking on behalf of the housing trust, but I am endorsing what Carol proposes, which is that she or Erica, both of them send a communication to our state senator and our state rep saying to Joe, thanks for initiating this and sponsoring it. And to Mindy, it would be great if you would come on board as well. So I don't know if people have any questions about that or that's basically what my thinking has been. Yeah, mine too. Is there anybody who disagrees? I mean, I kind of almost feel like an old brainer to me, which may be not a fair thing to say because somebody may have a disagreement and I'm not paying attention, so are there questions? Are there concerns? Are we ready to say, yes, let's do this? We're doing a thumbs up thing again because all we're doing is saying if everybody's thumb is up, then we're writing the letter. I think I saw Rob's earlier, but he put it back down. All right. So I believe that ends my part of the running the meeting and I'll turn it back over to Erica. Thank you. All right, the last sort of item, but we don't have Paul here was again, just asking about the trust vacancy. So my understanding is, is that Carol, Paul and I are gonna have a conversation and the update was that supposedly they're not too many applicants, but I think what we should look at is, do we have any applicants? And if they're interested, why not go ahead and start interviewing them? At the same time, I would absolutely encourage everybody and anybody that is interested to please apply, ask individuals that you know of here and EMHERS that would be interested in being part of the trust to go ahead and apply, but we wanna fill this vacancy. I think it would be very important to have a full trust membership. And then I wanna ensure, or Carol and I wanna ensure that if there are any other vacancies that we have an expedited process, this is really such an important issue in such important work. And the more of us that they're here, the more we have thought partners and provide diverse opinions on things and really have an opportunity to have conversations about really, really critical issues of having sustainable affordable housing across from sheltering all the way to home ownership. So more to come. So Carol and I will meet with Paul and if Paul can't make it, then we'll provide an update. So the next item is just announcements. I have two and I'll open up for any others. Reimagining sheltering, they're gonna have a meeting tomorrow at 10 o'clock in the morning. If you need the link, we can certainly give you that link. And then on Monday, the three County Individual Services Committee is meeting from two to three o'clock. Are there any other announcements that people would like to share? Okay. I don't see any hands up from our attendees either. So public comments, any public comments that haven't been included yet? Okay. Then items not anticipated within 48 hours. Anything that someone wants to raise? All right. So for the upcoming meetings, the next meeting is going to be on March 9th. And I was just gonna say and Ashley was going to, maybe you're gonna say the same thing, but I was gonna say an item for March 9th. And if Ashley wanna speak more to it, Ashley has recommended that we possibly invite Maggie Randolph from the GSD studies to talk about tiny homes, but go ahead, Ashley. Yeah. I was just gonna say that I just, well, I sent an article and a news story to Carol and Erica and Nate. And maybe you guys could just forward that to everybody else so that we know who she is. And it is a tiny home village that is in Dover and it's in the process of being made. I'm not sure they're process with the town per se, but I guess we can ask her about those things too. And then apparently there's another one, Nate, didn't you say that there was something in Worcester? Maybe we could just find like an article about that or see who the developer of that one was. And so that we just, I mean, this next time for sure, but maybe in general, we start getting some presentations just of new developers that kind of just want to introduce themselves and their model to us. Not like a commitment kind of thing, but just so that we know what we're working with because I think that we could be meeting some new developers and new models a little more consistently. Thank you, Ashley. The other item is Nate, we're gonna be giving you feedback on the position. And so you're gonna come back with hopefully on March 9th, sort of another rendition of the position. Any other items to put on? Go ahead, Allegra. I pressed the wrong button. I was wondering if it would be helpful. And I guess I'm also maybe volunteering myself if people would be interested. I do think that there were some interesting bills that came around in the communication from the Western mass network. I myself am particularly interested in the rent control one. So I don't know if people would be interested in hearing a little bit more about those bills and then if so, I will look into them. Yeah, Allegra. Go. Great, Allegra. That'd be absolutely wonderful. So definitely. All right. Oh, actually I want us to have a finance report next time, which I'm gonna talk to Nate about between now and next time also. I guess, yeah, I was gonna say, Ashley, sorry. I thought you, Ashley sent right an article about this tiny home development in New Hampshire. And I thought I went to the whole trust. I'm sorry, I didn't realize, I'll afford it. But it's great. I think it's 44 units, it's under construction. And it's a couple that's doing it. It sounds like all for the right reasons and they don't have to be affordable. And so they're actually permanent homes. Sometimes people think tiny homes, like just things on a trailer, but these are actually foundations. And I think they're 384 square feet and they're really trying to address the affordability problem with them. It's really interesting that it's being built. It's moving forward. So yeah, I'll send that along and then Worcester, there's also one too, so. All right. And hopefully Allegra and I will meet beforehand and have some more details about the listening session. And I think that's it. If you have any other items that you wanna put on the agenda, please let Carol and myself know and we will try to fit on the agenda or set it up for the next meeting. So last minute comments, insights, otherwise we're going to end our meeting at 8.59 and wishing everybody a wonderful evening. Thank you. See y'all next month. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.