 Unreached. I welcome everyone to this meeting of the Amherst Zoning Board of Appeal. My name is Steve Judge. As chair of the Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals, I call this meeting to order. Pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the Open Meeting Law, General Laws Chapter 38, Section 18, and the Governor's March 15, 2020 order imposing strict limitations on the number of people that may gather in one place. This public hearing of the town of Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals is being conducted via remote participation. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but the public can listen to the proceedings by clicking on a link in the town's webpage. In accordance with the provisions of Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 40a and Article 10, Special Permit Grinding Authority, or the Amherst Zoning By-law, this public meeting has been duly advertised and notice thereof has been posted and mailed to parties at interest. We'll begin with the roll call of the regular members of the ZVA who've been in panel for the consideration of items on tonight's agenda. I'm Steve Judge. I'm in attendance. Mr. Langsdale. Here. Ms. O'Meara. Here. Ms. Parts. Here. Mr. Maxfield. Here. And associate members, Ms. Waldman. Here. Mr. Barrick. Mr. Greenie. Mr. Meadows. Also in attendance is Marine Pollock Planner, Christine Brestup, Planning Director, Nate Malloy, Senior Planner, Dave Washevix, from the Building Commissioner's Office, Barbara Huggins-Carbonne of the K.P. Law Firm, who is serving as our outside council to the board on this matter. The Zoning Board of Appeals is a quasi-judicial body that operates under the authority of Chapter 48 of the General Laws of the Commonwealth for the purpose of promoting the health, safety, convenience, and general welfare of the inhabitants of the town of Amherst. One of the most important elements of the Amherst Zoning By-laws is Section 10.38. Specific findings from this section must be made for all of our decisions. All hearings and meetings are open to the public and are recorded by town staff. Each petition is heard by the board, is distinct, and is evaluated on its own merits, and the board is not ruled by precedent. The procedure is as follows. The petitioner presents the application to the board during the hearing, after which the board will ask questions for clarification or additional information. After the board has completed its questions, the board will seek public input. The public speaks with the permission of the chair. If a member of the public wishes to speak, they should so indicate by using the raise hand function on their screen. The chair with the assistance of the staff will call upon people wishing to speak. When you are recognized, please present your name and address to the board for the record. All questions and comments must be addressed to the board. I want to remind the applicant, my fellow board members, and the public to seek recognition from the chair before speaking. The board will normally hold public hearings for information about the project and input from the public as gathered, followed by a public meeting for each. The public meeting portion is when the board deliberates and is generally not an opportunity for public comment. Within 40 days from closing of the public hearing, the ZBA, in a comprehensive permit, the ZBA must render a decision, denial, approval, or approval with condition based on majority vote. Within 14 days of its decision, the ZBA must file a copy with a town clerk, and within 20 days from the date the ZBA decision is filed with a town clerk, the applicant at the application or public, the applicant or public can appear, appeal the ZBA decision. I want to review the ways in which the public can be informed and about and comment on this application in addition to these public hearings. One, residents can be notified of any additional information recorded by the town concerning this application through the notify me feature on the 132 Northampton page on the town website. That's the dedicated page to this application on the town website. Two, copies of all submissions can be found on the town website. Three, public comment can be submitted on the town website or email to marine pollock planner at polocm at amherstma.gov. This meeting will also be broadcast by Amherst media. And of course, tonight there will be public comment and there will be public comment at future hearings. One note, during due to a posting error regarding Thursday's August, Thursday's August 20, 2020 zoning board of appeals meeting, the ZBA chair and the staff liaison to the ZBA appeared on Zoom on Thursday, August 20, 2020 at 630 to continue the public hearing for the comprehensive permit application until tonight, Tuesday, August 25, starting at 630. Tonight's agenda is as follows, a public hearing to consider ZBA FY 2020-39, Valley Community Development Corporation, 132 Northampton Road, request a comprehensive permit under Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 40B to construct a new two-and-one-half-story residential multifamily building containing 28 small studio apartments and related common areas on an approximate 8.88 acre property located at 132 Northampton Road, map 14C parcel 8, General Residence RG and Educational ED zoning districts. This meeting is continued, this public hearing is continued from August 6, 2020. Items to be discussed tonight are as follows. First, finish discussion of the submitted supported services plan. Be the applicant's response to and discussion of questions from the August 6 public hearing. Discussions regarding local and regional need for a proposed project. Discussions regarding local preference for proposed project. Public comment on this project. The board to compile a list of questions, requests and possible conditions for consideration. Other items deemed appropriate. There's a general comment period for the public for items not the subject of tonight's hearing and other business not anticipated within the last 48 hours. We have a full agenda tonight and I intend to set aside ample time for public comment. If by 8.15 we have not finished discussion of the agenda items, I will suspend discussion and call for public comment. If time permits after public comment, we can resume discussion of the unfinished agenda items. Since the July 2 public hearing, the board has received the following documents. The applicant submitted answers to the questions posed by the board on August 6 and I think each of the board members has a copy of that PowerPoint. And we have also received three public comments. One from Mara Keane, a comment submitted via email, an anonymous comment submitted via the town website, and one from Amy Gilbert-Loynez, submitted via memo. Those are submitted on August 14th, 17th, and 18th respectively. So who is representing the applicant tonight? Would they please provide their name and address? This is Laura Baker, real estate project manager for Valley Community Development Corporation. Valley's address is 256 Pleasant Street, Suite A, Northampton, Massachusetts. Great. Jane Lechler also representing Valley Community Development. Great. Thank you. So at our last meeting, we began, you made your presentation on the Supportive Services Plan. And you, I think we completed the presentation, we began the questions when we had to suspend the meeting for later. So in the middle, we're in the question asking session section of this consideration. So I have a couple of questions that I would like, I have several questions I'd like to ask. I'm going to ask a few of them, then I'm going to turn it over to my fellow board members to ask some questions. And depending upon the questions asked and answers, I may have some more questions after that time. The first question I have is, this is stated as a draft Supportive Services Plan. When do you anticipate it being final or is there a step that I may be unfamiliar with where this plan has to be submitted and approved to become final? Correct. The plan needs to be submitted and approved by the state funding agency to become final. Up until that point, it is a draft plan. So if after the ZBA, so you anticipate, you submit it and the state has to approve the plan, they could make changes, require changes, correct? Correct. So if after the ZBA vote on this matter, and the plan has been altered, would you object or would you have any concern to coming back and describing that change to the board in a public meeting? I would have no concern coming back to the board. My presumption is any significant change that occurs following if the board decides to give a permit for this project would require a return to the board. The board would make the decision whether it's substantive or not. Right. I think and also in consultation with the town staff to advise you about whether it would be, but we would make the final decision on whether it's substantive or not, correct? Absolutely. Second question I have is on page two of the draft plan. At the end of the first bullet, you talk about those individuals who are at risk for being homeless. Yes. You mentioned or somebody awaiting foster care placement. Describe a situation where somebody who's older than 18 is awaiting foster care placement as a person not in the not receiving services from DMH, but from as a person at risk for being homeless. So I did listen to the session. I've known I was on vacation, I listened in and I know that you had that question. And I think Jane gave you the right answer, which is that we're providing a standard definition of homelessness and not every single item necessarily applies to this project that that aspect of the definition does not apply to this project. So that is not applicable to this project. Correct. All right, because you're not taking anybody under 18. Correct. Okay. On page three of your draft plan, you have a box that talks that lists all tenants and then each of the individual breakdowns for tenants, formerly homeless people with individuals with mental health disabilities and low and moderate income tenants. For all tenants, I'm assuming the service needs are provided principally are accessed and or referred to principally by the RSC, correct? The residential service counselor. Yes. For formerly homeless individuals, you talk about individual case management with an emphasis on primary and behavioral health needs. Who provides those services in that instance? Is it the local service providers? Is it DMH? Is it the residential service counselor? Please talk about that. Sure. Sure. I'm happy to talk about that. So it is not the residential service coordinator. It is typically the referring social service agency. So we do describe how when we have a homeless preference unit come available, we'll do outreach to a wide range of local agencies. They will refer people that are a good match for the property. They'll propose to deliver services during what's called the stabilization period, which is typically the first six to nine to 12 months of their tenancy. So they will provide those case management services during that time period. If a tenant comes to our awareness or comes to us directly who lacks an appropriate service provider, we'll try to do the matchmaking so that they have that service provider connected to them. Okay. So you have identified two service providers in the plan. Are there other service providers who you might work with that are not identified? The ACC and Elliott homeless services are the two that you've identified? Sure. There are others. So SBDH is one that there have been times when Craig Storey's shelters has had the capacity to do this service. I don't know if they have it right now, but they may again in the future. So yeah, there could be ones beyond the two that we named who would provide services. Okay. But they would be under the same constraints as the other as you've listed. They should be providing services on an ongoing basis for the first nine to 12 months. And right? Okay. Yeah. And then after that stabilization period, the ideas they have set up permanent ongoing connections for that tenant to the extent that they need them with community-based services. Okay. For individuals with mental health disabilities, does the state directly provide these services or do they contract out? They do not provide a service directly. They contract out and they annually or semi-annually bid for those services. Often ServiceNet has been the provider, but again, it's a bid situation, so it can change over time. Okay. And for low and moderate income tenants, I suspect the role, tell me if I'm wrong, but as I read this, the role of the residential service counselor or what's the exact title against RSC, right? Resident Services Coordinator. Coordinator. The Resident Services Coordinator would be the person that would try to coordinate or provide access, help that person get access to those services. Is that correct? Sure. That's correct. We have many tenants who don't need any services and that would be true at this property as well. So, but it is a nice safety net for anybody who lives there, has someone that they can turn to if they have any kind of challenge. Right. So, on page four, you talk about, I am not very familiar with DMH's procedure. So, it says DMH assigns a case manager to develop a plan. So, what I'm understanding from you is that the Department of Mental Health comes up with a plan. They provide that plan to the service provider. The service provider implements that plan. Is that right with the, and has regular consultations with DMH? Is that correct? That's my understanding. All right. And does the state pay the vendor or did that come out of your budget? Yeah. No. So, the state has, the state pays the vendor through regional network of DMH sites. So, we have a site in Northampton which is the Western Mass DMH office. So, they would be the conduit for payment to those service providers. We're going to be talking about referral of tenants later on, I think, in your answers to questions. So, I'll defer my questions about tenant referral until we come up with your answers from last week's meeting. Sure. And lastly, in the last couple of weeks, I've come across something called CSPEC, which is the Community Support for People with Experiencing Chronic Homelessness. Correct. Obviously, you're familiar with it. Is this something you use or is this something that's incorporated into the services plan? So, CSPEC is a source that a service provider will use. So, I believe that Elliott Services uses CSPEC, for example. As a, we're primarily a housing provider. So, we are not directly for those type of specialized service dollars, but they impact our programs because the service providers use those dollars. And we've talked a couple of times about the fact that our project is not limited to chronically homeless persons. There's a very specific definition for that, whereas the CSPEC program is really targeting those individuals. So, we may have some individuals who meet that criteria who live in our housing, but it wouldn't be everybody who has a homeless preference. Right. So, CSPEC is really the service provider's utility as opposed to something that you use as the developer, for lack of a better term, the developer. We're not, we wouldn't be qualified to deliver CSPEC services directly. Got it. And CSPEC is a state program? I don't know the answer to that. Okay. I can find out. That's not, actually that's not important. I was just curious. And the last question for now, and then you, we can, I'll turn this over to other people. You're 24 hour hotline. Who answers it and how does it, how does it run? I mean, one of the concerns that I have is I want to minimize police involvement and maximize more appropriate, I think we want to maximize more appropriate, less threatening responses, but when it's needed, the police should be called. So, tell me how this is handled by a, by really is the management company, as opposed to one of the service organizations that are working with either the people at risk for homelessness or the state for the people with mental and mental health disabilities or regular, regular people who they may have other relationships with. So I believe the slide that Jane covered had three different 24 seven call numbers. I think a hotline is a misnomer. It's really emergency services number. It's staffed by a third party answering service on behalf of our property management company. So they kind of triage probably for a number of different property managers calls that come in. They're the kind of frontline assessment. And then they would put the call out to property management. If someone were to call reporting heart symptoms, I would assume they would say, you know, you need to call 9-1-1. You don't have a property emergency. You have a health emergency. There are two other numbers that Jane listed. One is specifically for DMH clients that they do, in fact, have an emergency 24 hour service social worker kind of person who would respond. And then CSO, community sport options, which is a large mental health provider in our area, also has, they are kind of the repository for referrals for someone who's having a mental health crisis after hours or on the weekend. They're a 24 seven service that anyone can call if they're having a mental health issue. So if a person in crisis is not one of the two dedicated units for the DMH, they can have that is available for them. Absolutely. And all the tenants, one thing the resident service coordinator can do is, you know, make these kind of resources readily available for people. So even if they're not on site, everybody kind of knows where you look for the directory of things, and tenants will help each other as well. So there's that. We did do a study of the timing of 9-1-1 calls at several of our other single room occupancy properties over a period of several years. And we found the peak 9-1-1 call time was 1pm. It's not to say that no one calls at night, but it was not the case that there was this blossoming of calls after hours. We didn't show that at all. Okay. So I want to give my other board members a chance to ask questions. So we'll run through and then I might have a couple after they all get a chance. Mr. Langsdale, do you have questions about the supportive services plan? No, not at this time. Ms. O'Meara? No questions. Ms. Parks? No, I think you covered what I was thinking of. Mr. Maxfield? No, you pretty much hit at any of the ones I was thinking about. I did have one other. I think you've also talked about community engagement in the presentation. So I'll hold off on that question until that time. Okay. Let me just run through your plan to see if I had any other notes that I did not specifically have a question listed. So it occurs to me that one of the most important roles in making this housing successful, both for the tenants who receives a range of services, as well as for the broader community, is the role of the residential services coordinator. I'll get that right now, the coordinator, not counselor. And I think your job description does a good job of doing that. Is this, can we be assured that there will always be somebody 25 to 30 hours available, which I think is ample time, which is a good amount of time dedicated to this particular property? Number one, can we be sure that that will be the case forever unless you come back and change it with us? Number one. Number two, tell me about how this is a part-time job for a college grad with experience. And I anticipate that in today's market, there'd be a lot of people going for that. But historically, this would be, this may be a hard position to fill if you're searching for somebody with a skill set. There'd be lots of, especially in western Massachusetts, there'd be a lot of opportunities for them to get full-time work with this. So talk to me about your ability to get that person and then how you work with them to make sure that they work with the clients and the best way to make, and the community in the best way to make this successful. Sure. Yes, part of our proposal is to commit to have this position on site for this number of hours. Were we to make a significant deviation from that, and that was a condition of our permit, we would need to return to the zoning board to have that conversation forever is a long time. And so, you know, if we find this person is idle, then we would come back and talk about that. I don't think that's going to be the case. I think it's going to be a really important position to have. And we're relying primarily upon the operating revenue of the property to pay for that position. So that is about the best you can do in terms of securing that ongoing funding for the position. I think that we, the part of the reason we were trying to stretch to 30 hours is usually that's when positions get benefited. And so, I mean, that would be our goal, because I think we will attract a higher caliber of candidate with a benefited position. Change for good, we will subcontract with a service social service agency. And so, they may well have someone who is doing this and something else. So they may well have a, we may hire them and say, we need you to deliver these services 25 to 30 hours a week. And they may have a full time person who's also doing some other work for them. I mean, I suspect that's the way it's actually going to play out. We don't think we're the best candidate to supervise and train and manage this person because it's a service position. And we like the segregation between the role of the landlord and the property management and the service provider. I understand. So another possibility is grad students, people going for maybe, would that also be a possibility for filling this somebody pursuing a higher degree? Or is that not a likely candidate? I would hope for someone with a little more maturity and feeling of authority to them. I wouldn't, I wouldn't seek out a young person, just because many of our tenants will be older than that person. I think that creates a little bit, but with a phenomenal person it could work. So it depends on the person, but I'm picturing someone a little more seasoned than a graduate student. I think that helps. That helps me understand the role that you envision for the RCS. And could I just add one more comment to what Laura said? I think that your point about the Laura's point about the property management role in conjunction with the resident service coordinator role is very important. And currently with HMR we have a regularly scheduled meeting with service coordinators and property management staff so that we're discussing how the coordination of programs are going and any issues that are coming up so that we have, you know, really good fluid conversations about best practices and particular things that are happening at the site. So that keeps the owner informed of both voices. So that allows us to gauge what's happening at the site. So that's currently a practice and it would continue to be a practice with this site. Okay. Ms. O'Marrow, did you have your hand up? Go ahead. I do. Thank you. I'm just wondering the hiring of the RSC person, who's the backup for that person when they're not able to be on site, come down with an illness, COVID-19, whatever, whatever. That's the backup plan. Yeah. So again, if we are hiring a third-party agency, presumably they will have many social workers and therapists and other clinicians and they would need to provide a backup to that person, if that person was out for an extended period of time. So that would be within your contract? Sure. Yeah. I guess we could turn to our contract if they weren't fulfilling it and hire somebody else, but yeah, that's the nice thing about hiring not Joe Miller, but hiring CSO or CDH, an entity, is that you're not just linked necessarily to one individual, but they're supposed to provide the service whether staff come or go. Okay. Thank you. Good question. Thank you. I have no further questions on my social services plan. Did their comments raise any questions to any other member? I guess, Maureen, I'd like to consider that we should put on the items to consider for conditions, number one, that come back if they make a change in the hours or the significant change in the hours of the residential services coordinator and two, that their contract provides for backup, if the contract with the company, the agency that's provided had backup in case the residential services coordinator is not there, something of that effect. We can consider those, but I'd like to keep that as a back of our mind. All right. I just for the benefit of the board at the last meeting, I said that I was seriously contemplating the need for peer review of the social services plan. I mean that last month, I've done a lot of work talking to a lot of people both here in Massachusetts and in other places and this seems like this is a plan that is that meets, in my mind, meets the sort of best practices of the industry, the people that provide this kind of housing and management of that housing and services. And so I am, I've become more aware and I'm not as concerned about the plan being insufficient, at least not to the point where I think it needs additional peer review and we need to impose the additional cost on the applicant of that. Now, if other people feel differently than that, I think we should consider that we do have the ability to get peer reviews and that the cost of that is borne by the applicant. But I thought I was the one that raised that issue and I've been satisfied and I'm open to anybody, if they have a desire for a peer review on this, we can discuss it. If not, we'll move on to the response to our questions from last week. Okay. Not hearing any questions or comments in that regard. Let's move on to your responses to the questions we posed at last week and after we do that, we can go into the other items on the agenda. And one thing I'd like to do, so we keep this moving throughout the meeting, is let's deal with each question individually and provide the answer to the question. If there's any discussion about it, let's have it at that point and then move on. And for this one, as opposed to having all the questions done at once and then our questions and our comments about the whole packet, let's try to answer each one of these individually. So the first one you have, I think, is if I remember correctly, now I can't pull it up on my screen. But I'd like to run through this serially and so that we can do it the most efficient way without trying to cobble everything together at the end. Okay. I would add that we provided this PowerPoint presentation in advance to the board, not way in advance, but a little bit in advance so that hopefully you could read through it so that I could move through it quickly and we wouldn't have to spend a lot of time on it. And I would say both to the board and to the public that these things also get posted online. Some of my slides have a lot of words on them. If you miss all the words, it's always possible to go back later and review them again. So I'm going to go to share screen now if I'm authorized to do that, Maureen. Yes, you should be authorized. Have you tried it? Just doing it now. All right. Look away. I'm going to go way down. Don't get seasick. I think we've done that. So we did this. Yep. These are our responses to questions asked prior. The first was about the really clarification about the snow removal area. So I apologize. Last time it seemed there was some confusing information that was shared. So I think we've got a plan. The kind of orangeish parts you see are areas that we would need to clear of snow and ice. The blue areas are places where we would stockpile snow and push snow in the event of a snowstorm. Part of our discussion about deicing methods came from the fact that we are showing snow and being pushed against vegetation. And I think we've covered pretty thoroughly the different deicing products that we would use so that we would cause minimal harm to these vegetation here. We are proposing a new change in the site plan, which is to shift the bike rack. So instead of going this way, it's going this way. And that will allow more snow to be piled here. This area is for a large snow. If we ran out of all these other places to push snow and we consistently observed that there were empty parking spaces at this site, then we might stockpile snow in some parking areas. If the parking areas are fairly consistently used, that would not be the case. This is to explain the snow removal plan as it relates to the parking. So using any parking areas for snow storage is secondary to the other snow storage areas that we just looked at on the plan. On-site parking areas will only be used for snow storage if there's a consistent pattern of under usage of spaces. For example, if there are consistently six open spaces, then a portion of these can serve as backup snow storage. If most parking spaces are full most of the time, then no parking areas will be used for snow storage. If the designated areas are inadequate, likely during a very heavy snowfall, excess snow will be removed from the site. Pick it up and put it in a dump truck and take it off site. So that was snow. Are there any questions on snow? We've discussed this a lot. I'd like to put the snow to rest if we're done talking about this, unless there's any questions. Yes, I have a question about that, Mr. Chair. Yes. So you say underutilization. What counts as underutilization there? Because if you say maybe four days out of a month, you have only five available parking spaces. And that's six one, you know, being used, you wouldn't be able to put snow in that area. You know, that would mean that somebody is consistently parking there once a week. I guess I just want to know is what's really going to be your determination there? Because I'm a little, I'm a little weary of putting that into the, putting that final determination of what counts as underutilization into, this is sole determination to CDC because they have the, like anybody, you have the financial incentive to put where it is easiest. And then of course, you know, on the other hand, I also don't want to do the, be unnecessarily burdensome and say you have to remove snow off site when. But I guess the idea is, is there something we could do perhaps where we would say for something like a year, the first year that this is in place where all snow would have to be removed off site. And then we might say, or any additional snow would have to be removed off site and couldn't be put in that space. But then perhaps after a year, come back to the board and simply say this was the results of what we'd observed in that first year. And then the ZVA could make a decision on whether or not it wants to approve snow being put into. Here's what I would say is that, yes, there's a financial disincentive to take snow off site, but there's an even more immediate disincentive to not take parking that people need because they will complain and they will complain to us. So we are not all motivated to take away parking from tenants and staff and visitors who need it because we will hear about it. We have no that we don't want to do that. So we will be looking for if we're seeing that about half the spaces are open most of the time. I'm going to feel really comfortable taking the two spaces furthest from the property, for example, and pie and some snow there. If we see a scattering of parking patterns where, you know, at a given time, most of the spaces are occupied or even occasionally most of the spaces are occupied, we're just going to take it off the table that we're not going to put snow there. And it's a little bit of a, I feel like we do need some discretion to actually witness the actual conditions that are occurring on the site. But I would suggest to you that the disincentive is greater than the incentive. I would rather pay a bill for trucking snow outside than have tenants calling because they can't park. You know, I suppose, I suppose it's fair, I just know as a tenant myself, typically it's never, it's never a pleasant experience for me to have to call my landlord to ask him to do something that they should be doing in the first place is my only concern. And I wouldn't want to put that burden on the tenants. But again, this is, this isn't much of a sticking point for me. If the board feels one way or the other about it, you know, I'd like to hear what the other members' thoughts are on this. Is anybody else as concerned as I am about this? And what does anybody else think? Well, I think I, Mr. Maxwell, what I think is that you've raised the concerns. This should be listed as one of the areas, one of the conditions that we'll consider later on. And we can have a discussion about people's, I don't think we're going to get any more new information. So later on, when we do go through the conditions, and there'll be many of them we have to go through, we can discuss this one and make and discuss it and decide whether we want this to be a condition that as you just described, which is a one-year trial period, and then come back and come to the board, and we can make a decision. So I'd prefer not to, unless somebody has new questions, not to spend more time on this, but know that we can discuss it when we go and talk about conditions on the application. Is that fair? Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. So another way, another way to condition it might be, for example, you know, we run a log, we see that we can consistently have three spaces open, you know, we can use one for snow storage, make some kind of ratio. That would be another proposal because each year the snowfall is really different. So those are all good things we can discuss when we get to conditions for the project, the application. I think we've, I think we've run through the snow removal, unless anybody else has new questions, let's move on to the next question. Parking. So related to this is parking. So the chairman asked to see comparables, and so this chart actually was included in our zoning application. It's in the parking study section, and it takes you through a number of similar affordable properties, some of them valley-owned, some of them are owned by other entities, wayfinders, home city housing development. So we looked at the number of people, adults, people who might drive cars who live in them, the parking that's provided at these locations, and then the average daily parking that's used based on the observation of the management companies, and then we made a ratio. So a lot of properties simply have no parking. So the fact that no one's parking there isn't that meaningful because it doesn't have any parking. So of all the properties, it was a 0.22 per unit utilization. The average utilization for properties where there is parking provided was 0.49. And as people may recall, we're proposing a 0.57 ratio of parking spaces to units. I also just happened to be at one of our good comparables, the Sargent House. This is 10 a.m. this morning. We have 28 tenants who've already moved into this property. They're very similar, small studio apartment units. I was there, there were 14 spaces are provided, maximum for this site. This morning, seven spaces were in use, which is 0.25 spaces per unit. And this is just a snapshot. This is just a point in time. But we do see a consistent pattern with this type of housing that we're looking at between 0.25 and 0.5 cars per unit. Can you go back to the chart? Sure. It seems to me that the the applicable comparisons are the affordable single person studio apartments. And there doesn't, you know, there doesn't seem it's all over the place. You've got zero. You've got zero again. You've got not applicable because not yet occupied. You've got 57.57. And then you've got zero again. So it's really hard to see that there's a pattern out there. What you are, you've come in, but in the middle of that are as good as you're at, you're at 16 units for 28 people, 16 parking spots for 28 people. Is that residents? Is that correct? That's correct. Yeah. So I think it's hard to draw hard to draw a standard from the single person studio apartment that you you've shown here. So I guess it's my thinking is it's pretty much up to you to decide what is reasonable as long as it doesn't create problems for the neighbors. And it doesn't seem that anybody has more. Any single unit single person studio apartments has more than you have provided as a higher percentage of parking spaces to tenants than you have. Well, this this example down here, which is in Springfield has a lot of parking per unit, but they gave me their count count of how many cars they see. Right. And this is this is the kind of scenario that we would hope to avoid where, you know, we're putting down a lot of pavement that that isn't being used. Yeah. The utilization of that place is 34 utilization at the other single studio apartment is 50 Earl Street is 0.57. Yeah. There's some variants. Earl Street is located. It's a little over a mile to walk to the center of Northampton. It's a little further. It's more of an, you know, there are lots of factors in the parking study that we delivered. We gave these comparables and we cited data from a number of different studies, parking studies that you could look at. Okay. Well, you provided me the answer that I requested. Are there any questions? Go ahead. I would also add that when we went to the planning board, the chair made the comment that she thought that the parking provided was appropriate for the use at that point in time. We only had 14 parking spaces and I would notice that the town engineer when he reviewed the site plans said he did not have any issue with the traffic or parking studies that were provided. Any other any board member have questions regarding parking? I have one. Yes, Mr. Langsdale. I'm sorry. I'm a bit confused. The 16 spaces that you have are all, it includes one space for handicap parking. Two. Two. Sorry. So then you have 14 spaces left. Are those to be used by staff? Yes. And how many of those are on at one time? So I anticipate that there would be potentially one or two staff. But as we reviewed last time, there is a natural ebb and flow. Those tenants who are driving to work will tend to be going during the day. The staff that are there will tend to be there during the day. So it won't be everybody there at the same moment in time. So when I looked this morning at Sargent House, for example, I think two of these, one or two of these cars were actually property management staff. I think if I went back at night, those cars would be gone and there would probably be a few more tenant cars here. It's just a guess. But there is a coming and going and sharing of the use of spaces. Okay. Thank you. Sure. Further questions on parking? In a related, if not in a related matter, there's the loading area. Sure. So this is a broad look. I'm going to take you to a little bit of a close-up view. So we have two options for some, we're assuming a paratransit kind of van is coming to pick up someone who needs that service. What we imagine is that if this space is empty, which it could be, we might not have enough tenants who have stickers for this, or they might be out, that the van would pull in here, the person would exit. This is never going to be parked on. This is a loading area. Someone would load into the van this way. If these two spaces are filled, the van would pull up directly in front of the loading area. Person would exit and load this way. And then the van would make the same turnaround maneuver that the dumpster truck will make and go out this way. Question. I'm going to keep rolling unless people want to just shout them out. A typical kitchen elevation with the adjacent closet. We're providing that here. So in this plan, we have a kitchenette and it will have a full size, full capacity kind of refrigerator, a sink area, a 24 inch range. We'll have a microwave and a hood up here and then some cabinetry. We have a closet adjacent to it that's three feet, six inches wide. This is a suggestion, I think it's a good one, of how to divide that closet space with kind of taller hanging things here, shorter hanging things here, and then several shelves up above. In some units, we have more closet space than others. So this example is where we have the least amount of closet space based on the unit layout. We have several kinds of units that just happen to be configured differently because of the shape of the building. So you can see this unit, for example, has two closets. This unit has a longer closet and this unit over here has a triple closet. We're also noticing that we have a good opportunity. It's not drawn in here to have a linen closet that is between the shower unit and the vanity in the bathrooms. So that is something that we're going to try to incorporate into the plans as well that would provide some additional storage area. Let's make sure people get a chance to answer, because I know Mr. Linesville had a question about this. Any questions? Okay, smoking. We had a number of questions over a long period of time about the smoking bench. At this point, we're proposing to remove it from the site and both the building and the site would be smoke-free. If you are in agreement and concept, what we would do is revise the site plan. We'd still have a sidewalk that wraps around so that you can get to the patio from the front, but it would not have that bench and pavilion for smoking. We might shift the garden area a little bit when we make the shape of the sidewalk a little different, but it won't significantly change the site plan. No questions? Move on. Mr. Chair. Yes. I'd just like to point out that I think I might be a little in disagreement with the rest of some of the other CBA members here. I definitely want to see that parking or that smoking bench in the proposal. I appreciate an alternative. I think when it comes to conditions, we might differ on that. It may come to a vote, but I personally wouldn't like to be known that I do want to see a smoking area in the proposal, and I think the original proposal was a good place for that to be. I think you raised a good question, and the question that I would have is what percentage of, how likely is it that people will not, who are smokers, potential tenants who are smokers will not take advantage of the units because of that. And number two, if they are smokers, they will find their way to smoking someplace on the street or someplace else. Sure. So we've obviously had a thought about this. Yep. People who smoke will find a place to smoke. People will not, we do not find smokers declining affordable units because they're smoke-free. Pretty much they're all becoming smoke-free, and the need for affordable housing is desperate. So people don't turn it down for that reason. People will tend to gravitate toward the closest place where smoking is permitted. We see that consistently. So in Amherst, smoking is permitted on sidewalks, on streets, in downtown. It's permitted outdoors in all public areas, as far as I know. So that's probably the logical alternative. So we'll be smoking on the sidewalk out in front if the property is non-smoking. Well, that was our argument for providing a designated area on site because we wanted to take the burden onto the property itself for people smoking. But we've heard consistent feedback from neighbors that they want it to be a non-smoking property. Nobody wants this particular item to be adjacent to them. So it's fine. We can make it a smoke-free property. We have other ones that are smoke-free, so it won't be the first one. All right. Again, that's something we can discuss in conditions. And I would add, Mr. Langsdale, I heard your comment about five or six people smoking that we don't observe that. People are a little ashamed that they smoke, honestly, in today's culture. So it tends to be, one, maybe two people smoking at the same time. We do not witness groups of people getting together and smoking. Property and asset management plans, it just was a clarification that the plans have not changed. So the full plans are within the application itself, and then we were asked to provide summaries, which we did, but we didn't change the content of those plans. Written narrative about the tenant referral and selection process. This gets a little wordier, I'm afraid. This is an important thing, so I think it's good for us to understand it. As in any publicly supported development, we have to have selection and screening criteria that are consistent, that we apply consistently to applicants and that we administer fairly. An important part of our state funding packet will be called an Affirmative Fair Housing Marketing Plan. They also ask for a tenant selection plan. These documents can run up to 60 to 80 pages each, so they're very detailed looks at making sure that we're not creating any fair housing barriers to tenants and that we have a viable way to select tenants. So I give the ZBA assurance that the state looks at these very, very carefully before they fund a project, and they would not approve a plan that did not comply with fair housing laws. So the marketing time period when it begins and when it ends, the methods of outreach, the lottery process, and the tenant selection procedures all have to be vetted by the state agency. So we are required to not discourage or prevent members of any protected class from being evaluated equally as prospective tenants. And those protected classes are listed here, race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability, and familial status. We use affirmative, proactive marketing procedures and materials to ensure access to housing by vulnerable, underserved, and at-risk populations. This may mean where things are advertised, what languages they're translated into, the fact that someone with a disability has assistance in filling out an application, things of that nature. The screening criteria again must be applied equally, so applicants must demonstrate that they meet the criteria through the following methods. We do credit checks, we do query checks, we do landlord references. If someone has been homeless for a period of time and they don't have landlord references, we can accept service provider references in lieu of those landlord references. We interview all the tenants who are going to be living there. We do a determination of income eligibility that relies on third-party documentation, and for handicapped accessible units, someone must demonstrate that they need that type of adaptive unit in order to get that unit. There are some kind of hard and fast reasons for denial having to do with past criminal record. Sex offenders, anyone listed on the state registry for sex offenders is not included in our tenants. Someone with a history of production or distribution of methamphetamine, it's a federal requirement that we cannot take anyone with such a history. And criminal records of offenses that involve physical danger, violence to persons or property, or that adversely affect the health safety and welfare of other people. So someone who has a record of arson, for example, would not be allowed to live in this property. So we don't accept tenants we believe would pose a threat to any other tenants or to neighbors. And we also would assert that this level of screening and due diligence, in particular running query checks, is more comprehensive than is undertaken by most private landlords. So how are tenants referred to the property when they're in a special kind of category? So referrals from the Department of Mental Health are for persons who are clients who are receiving consistently receiving services from Department of Mental Health. We're proposing two units that have this priority. Referrals will be made from the Western Mass Department of Mental Health. These referred, once a tenant is referred from DMH, they go through the same screening process I described above. So if they don't meet muster in the screening process, Valley or our property management company will reject that referred tenant and DMH will propose a different client. Clients who are referred by DMH receive ongoing services provided directly by DMH such as case management and clinical services. But a lot of questions about who are homeless people and how are they prioritized and how do they enter the property. Most often referrals are made by service providers who are vouching for the prospective tenant, assess that the tenant is an appropriate candidate for independent living with supports. So there are a variety of models of housing people. Jane went over some of them last at the last hearing. So group homes, there's a safe haven model for homeless persons who need 24 hours support. Those wouldn't be viable candidates for this particular property. If a homeless applicant is not affiliated already with a service provider, we'll seek to make a match since we have pretty close working relationships with providers. If someone has a history of substance abuse, they need to demonstrate six months of sobriety before moving in. The service provider who's referring the tenant commits in writing to provide ongoing support services for the referred tenant for a period of time and typically it's really that first year that's so critical to help the person kind of transition and stabilize in the new housing and make community-based connections. The whole goal is for that provider then to step back and that the person will have made community-based supports and have them set up. If in the future a tenant faces challenges, it is very common that the original service provider will kind of re-enter the picture and work more intensively with the tenant again. So someone might be doing fine and then they have a trauma, you know, a family member dies, a friend overdoses, something happens and they need more help. Homeless tenants must also meet the screening criteria described above. So all the quarry and those other reference items that I described. The definition of homelessness relates to a person's housing status. It's their lack of housing and there are a lot of reasons some of which are listed here when where someone may not have housing or be threatened with not having housing. It is not a definition about a person's criminal history of criminal activity or substance abuse or mental illness and again this is a distinction between a general homeless population and a chronically homeless population where it's both. It's the long-term housing instability coupled with a serious disability that creates that definition of chronically homeless. I'm going to move to transportation so I guess I'll... Well don't do that yet. I appreciate you want to move through this but I think there's some there might be some questions on tenant referrals. First off what's quarry? For me I have one question. So quarry is a criminal records check. So the tenant signs their consent and it goes into a database and the database tells you whether someone has a criminal background. It's a criminal background check basically. All right. And then it's ACC and Elliot that provide you most of your... that you anticipate providing you most of your referrals. I think they will provide some... For the chronically homeless. Yep. Craig Stores may provide referrals, ServiceNet may provide referrals, CSO may provide referrals, CDH... I mean there's a number of players but we work a lot with Elliot and because this is in Amherst I anticipate we'll work also with Amherst Community Connections. And when they provide you those referrals have they done a similar check? And so this is in fact a second check for... Not necessarily. Not necessarily. Okay. So it's the real the most important check is done by your operation and is that done by the management company? Yes. So that what's the name of the management company again? It's HMR standing for Housing Management Resources. So the management company will do that? Yes. All right. And that's the landlord. They're also the landlord, correct? Well they would they're acting on behalf of the property owner. So Valley's in essence the managing property owner we hire on an annual contract HMR to do property management services. Okay. People have questions about the tenant referrals. Ms. Parks. I'm just wondering about local preference. When you're talking about service providers I was thinking that you would mainly be using Amherst service providers but that may not be true. And so I was hearing what you were saying about meeting to show that you're not discriminating against anyone. But so I just don't know where are we standing with local preference? Are we... You know we're gonna be... Yeah that's Ms. Parks. We had that on the agenda for the fourth item tonight to talk about local preference. Yep. I guess that's how that was here. Okay. Yep. We will get to it. We hope to get to it tonight. Other questions? Yes. I have one Mr. Chair. Yes. Mr. Maxfield. Yes. So the referrals are made by service providers. So is it you folks have a roster of service providers that you consult with or is this posted somewhere and anybody who's qualified as a service provider can see that there's a housing availability and speak you guys directly. How do you guys get in touch with these service providers? Yeah that's a great question. I have to my knowledge we have a pretty lengthy kind of listserv of local providers and we do a blast out to all of those people. There might be 30 or 40. So I don't know that there's any public posting. If it's a wheelchair accessible unit or required to post on a certain state website, with these units I think we just try to get a pretty broad outreach to service providers. But we do have tenants who are on our wait lists also who are coming in self-identifying that that they're homeless and so we would look at that pool of people as well. So if you're to have a homeless person say come to you folks directly you would potentially refer them to a service provider and then that would be the the processor. Yeah well we would try to do a little bit of matchmaking so that when they were coming into housing from a homeless situation they had the support. Got it. Thank you. Any other questions? Sure just as an aside on Valley's website you all could pull down an application, a pre-application for our housing and it does ask if you're homeless and so we maintain wait lists of folks who are looking for housing both whether they're looking for subsidized housing, market rate housing if they're homeless. So we have already on hand a pretty extensive wait list of people just to let you know. So the resident service coordinator how how would this person assist tenants with transportation options? We were wanting more detail about that. So within the supported services plan these things are enumerated activities, posting schedules in the common room, organizing shared rides, helping tenants procure bus and bike share passes as applicable, helping tenants access public transportation options such as the PV, oops PVPA, PVTA van service and the Amherst COA van service and providing rides as scheduled permits or in emergency. We will require the resident service coordinator to have a car and insurance will carry number of insurance policy. It is extremely helpful for that person to be able to give rides in a pinch or in an organized fashion. We do not expect that person to be riding people around all week all week long and one thing we're adding here because someone brought it up at another meeting we think it's a great idea is perching several of these grocery pull carts that we would just have at the property, people sign them in, sign them out when they bring them back, helps a little bit with that issue of you know getting groceries from the grocery stores to the property. What are the transportation options? So again this is an excerpt taken right from the draft supported services plan I've abbreviated a bit so there's a little more detail in the plan. So we believe this is a highly walkable location that there are stores and services in downtown Amherst within a half to eight tenths of a mile and major shopping centers on University Drive within six to eight tenths of a mile. Mass DOT plans and their plans are 100% design status currently to improve the sidewalks and crossings on North Hampton Road beginning in 2021. I think they'll have a two season cycle so they'll start in 2021 and finish in 2022. This includes widening the sidewalks on both sides of North Hampton Road all the way from University up to town center on the north and south sides. All of their sidewalks will meet ADA standards and they'll install two new crosswalks equipped with flashing lights at the intersections of Orchard and Hazel streets. These wider improved sidewalks will improve pedestrian safety and facilitate clearing snow in the winter because it is hard to walk on sidewalks if there's no one ice on them. We believe it's a bike friendly location and there's a well used and well maintained bike trail that's very close to this property. It's a 11 mile long trail connects Amherst to Belchutown, Hadley, North Hampton and East Hampton. There are two valley bike share stations within walking distance of 132 North Hampton Road. One's in town center and one's on University Drive. You can pay one for one time use or monthly or annually. These are electric assist bikes. There's a bike shop, the Hampshire Bicycle Exchange located on University Drive where you can buy, rent, get fixed, anything like that with a bike. Public bus service, there are about half a dozen PBTA bus stops located in around circling around 132 North Hampton Road ranging from four tents to six tents of a mile. You can walk downhill to get to a bus stop. You can walk flat across to get to a bus stop or you can walk uphill to get to a bus stop. During normal college openings, buses run daily except on major holidays. You can pay by the ride or get a monthly bus pass and you can get discounted bus passes at big wide. So transportation for special populations, those folks who might not have the ability to walk or bike places. So the town of Amherst offers van service for seniors and persons of any age with a disability that prevent them from using the typical bus service. And this is just some information about the cost depending on the distance and the fact that these vans will travel to any location within Hampshire and Hampton counties. You do need to provide notice and schedule this ahead of time. Similarly, the PBTA has its paratransit vans which are door-to-door transportation for people who are 60 or older. Again, you have to call and schedule it ahead and there are van tickets purchased through the Senior Center. PBTA also has ADA paratransit vans. So they're for persons with a disability of any age that prevent them from using a fixed bus route. They can be booked during the week and holidays and if you require PCA to travel with you, that person rides for free. The Resident Services Coordinator will be responsible for coordinating other transportation options for tenants. This may include tenants who do not have car sharing rides or giving rides to those who do, or coordinating community volunteers to provide rides. Since patrons can only use the access to Amherst Survival Center food pantry once a month, the RSC may coordinate, for example, a monthly ride to the pantry for several tenants. So that's kind of what I mean about the efficiency of driving people. So if you can take four people to the food pantry once a month, everybody loads up and comes back, that's a great use of that RSC time as opposed to individual trips. The RSC will help tenants access socialized fares as may be applicable for bus and valley bike share passes. As I mentioned, they're required to have vehicle and a license and valley will carry umbrella insurance for this purpose, for their, to cover their liability when they're driving folks around. Well, I'll go, I'll keep going and see if there's questions. Let's just see if there's any questions on the transportation before we get to the hill. Bops and downs. Okay. I don't see any hands up. So let's go to the hill. Okay. The hill. So when I was scouting properties for this development, I looked at many locations and almost all of them involved an uphill climb to get to the center of town. So down Main Street, down College Street, down North Hampton Road, somebody built Amherst on top of a hill. And so it's just there and we all need to kind of grapple with it. Um, although Mr. Langsdale and others have mentioned that it can be a barrier or a difficulty or a challenge navigating this hill, especially if you have a mobility issue, I just would like in no way to disagree with that, but simply to say at the same time, there are significant health benefits associated with walking and especially walking on an incline. And we're not talking about people having to walk miles and miles. This is this is a 10 to 12 minute walk. If you do it every day, it's going to be a benefit both for your physical and your mental health. So just pulled some some data from an article I found why walking is the most underrated exercise is the title of it. It improves fitness, cardiac, etc. When comparing the results of the most recent National Runners Health Study, I found that vigorous walking, moderate intensity walking such as you do on an incline and vigorous intensity running resulted in similar reductions in risk for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes and heart disease. Walking also has been shown to improve memory and prevent the deterioration of brain tissues we age. Studies indicate the exercise relieves anxiety and depression and suggest a 10 minute walk may be just as good as 45 minute workout when it comes to relieving the symptoms of anxiety and boosting mood. So we have a population that is has been through challenging times and maybe may be prone to experiencing anxiety and depression. So being in the outdoors and walking is a really, really positive thing. So the value of incline walking the higher you set the incline the more energy your body is forced to use. It can be a better option for those with injuries or pain. So adding an incline is a great way to increase the challenge for your heart and get the same kind of benefits that you can get from jogging or running without the same amount of wear and tear on your knees. So again not to take away from the fact that if it's bleeding out and you need two gallons of milk the hill is not your friend but 90% of the time the fact that there's a necessity to do some exercise walking on an incline we consider that a potential benefit from this location. So it's it's a mixed I just think it's a mixed bag. Also we have questions about the field. Yeah, I have a I have something to say. Yeah, Mr. Langsdale. I understand your desire to put the best face on this up and downhill. And the article speaks to the benefits of walking which I think is quite obvious to all of us. But what we're dealing with here is the situation of where you're going to be located and you're talking about people some with disabilities some with substance abuse problems walking uphill with groceries in hand or with the cart but pushing a cart up the hill is not easy if it's if you've got groceries in it. And it also doesn't take into account that there is a fair amount of rain in this part of the world. In the winter there can be a great deal of snow and ice. I think we've all been aware over the last couple of months or approximately that not only does it get hot here it gets very humid. So to say that you're not trying to take away from the problem possible problems by giving us this account of the health benefits of walking I think is a little bit disingenuous because you're not at all addressing the possible problems with those walks rather you're just giving us a general health benefit. So I don't know what's to be done about this but I just think it's important for everyone to understand that we're not talking about a walk in the woods here and we're not talking about a walk in the woods through a lot of different conditions during the year in this area. Thank you. So another thing that we wanted to just note for the committee is that the black sheep just got an award to transition to a grocery style marketplace and so the black sheep is located about a half a mile from the site and so if someone were to do their shopping there they would not need to be needing to pull groceries uphill they would be traveling downhill from that location. I do feel like the prior pages extensive information about the various transportation options speaks to the point of folks who might have challenges with walking because I think there are a lot of different options to get around in Amherst thankfully. Let's see integration with the neighborhood have there been problems between tenants and the neighbors or the community if so how did it how was it dealt with and do we have any examples to provide and so part of our supportive services plan includes a tenant engagement section that we'll review in brief. We just also note that we have tenants serving on Valley's community engagement committee which is a board committee and they plan events annually that bring together our tenants residents in the larger community we do ice cream socials we do block parties what we're thinking of for this site at 132 was to do a welcome event and then we have a number of ways that we thought people could ongoing ways that residents could connect with neighbors social events the jobs board shared gardening tutorials mentoring transportation similar to the coa ride programs or neighbor to neighbor ride shares tenants needing transportation could be assisted by neighbors so again another approach at accommodating people who might need special transportation. We provided four letters from direct neighbors to our single person occupancy properties in Northampton you can find these letters within the the project eligibility letter section on the website and these are the names of the authors of those letters I didn't want to reproduce the whole letters because they're lengthy so I just took some quotes so the first one reads at this time we've not had any issues or complaints from our customers the person who runs the a cafe that's located in the same building as a single room occupancy property regarding the residents and their actions any minor item that have come up regarding the tenants in our business space have been promptly taken care of through communication with the office staff at Valley at this time we are very happy sharing this building space with the residents. Another person who's saying in eight years not one of my professional tenants or any of their clients have ever received anything less than pleasantness from our studio apartment dwelling neighbors and the third one it describes an issue the one issue that has come up with the building is that a few I'm sorry I got something blocking months ago a very loud engine-like sound started coming out of the building as soon as I reached out to Valley CDC I was put in touch with the building manager and slowly we were able to identify the sound which is an issue with the new heating system and they were able to get the contractors out to fix the situation I felt that having an organization as a neighbor actually made that situation a bit easier because they were very motivated to make their neighbors satisfied that is not always the case with an individual homeowner I have I have only had pleasant interactions with any of the residents of the building but I must say I hardly see them the curse of our busy lives so again full letters are available through the town's website so last year we looked at I mentioned this before we did an analysis of 911 call data for Valley's four single room occupancy properties which house 53 individuals over a three-year period during this three years for these four properties there were two calls initiated by a neighbor they were both noise complaints there are zero calls initiated by neighbors that relate to harm or harm to people or property after owning single room occupancy properties for 30 years Valley has received only a handful of calls from neighbors the issue is being reported and here are a few examples tenants putting trash in the wrong place in a shared dumpster area here a shared landscaping or noise have been promptly addressed by property management Valley Post sits 24-7 emergency call number for property management of all its properties this number will be available also to neighbors in the event that they need to contact property management directly Valley staff myself Jane are readily available by email or phone our contact information is posted on Valley's website and we are committed to safe and well-cut conditions at our properties for the mutual benefit of residents and neighbors this is the last piece okay go ahead I don't think there's any questions on the that was my question and your answer just for clarification we had we have a recurring question about height because it's a little confusing as well as the number of floors these are excerpts directly from Amherst's zoning bylaw their definitions so in all districts the minimum maximum height of building shall be measured as the vertical distance from the average finished grade on the street side of the structure to the average height midpoint between the highest eaves and ridge of the main body of the roof so and then they show you a little illustration here this is how we're measuring the height of a building that has a gable roof and the next slide I'm going to show you our building minimum maximum floors a basement half story shall be any lawful habitat space with required means of access and egress in which a minimum seven foot floor to ceiling height exists in at least half of the habitable space but no less than one third of the habitable floor area of the full story above and where more than half of the habitable space is located above the average finished grade of the exterior of the building which meets the definition of our ground floor space so as opposed to being a basement which is zero floors because it's fully below grade our basement is defined as a half story because it has enough area that's above grade so when we describe it as a two and a half story building it's not an attempt to disguise it as something it's really just an attempt to accurately apply the definitions that are in the Amherst zoning bylaw so here is the same look at our particular building so showing you the the eep height 31 feet two inches the roof ridge height of 44 almost 45 feet and the mean height of 38 feet four inches bringing it in below the maximum height for the zone of 40 feet and this assumes basically the worst case scenario so in reality the grade on the front of the building is kind of sloping but we we took the most conservative look at height and took it from its lowest point we were asked to compare it to the existing house and tom our architect to try his best he could to give you a fair comparison of the existing house and how it looks compared with the height and the massing of the new building and that brings us to the conclusion of our responses miss Huggins or miss Carboney thank you um mr chairman um i just had a thought on that on building height and the applicant's presentation whenever is the appropriate time um for me to right now it's good sure so um i think this is an important issue and i might suggest that if the board has any questions about the building height under the zoning bylaw that it asked the building commissioner um for um comment on that um in that way the board will know what it's looking at under the bylaw and any relief needed can be requested by the applicant for the board's consideration thank you mr chairman thank you okay any other comments chairman yes mr langsville the existing house is that a three-story house the existing house is let's see i think the assessor's records call it a one and a half story house but that may not be consistent with actually the zoning bylaw definition i'm not sure it has it has finished space in the basement level it's a walkout basement with a bathroom and a bedroom downstairs has a full first floor and that has three bedrooms upstairs on the second floor but they're essentially in the in the attic space so tom do you do have an opinion on that i mean i think that would probably be called a two and a half story house because all the floor those bedrooms are habitable space they have so what constitutes a three-bedroom a three-story house i mean this has three stories each one of them with uh if the site if the site was completely level this would be a three-story house it's the fact that it slopes and part of that part of both buildings are buried in in the hillside mr langsville would it help if we asked the building commissioner to take a look at this and to describe to us the what practical differences it makes to be called three story or two and a half story and then we we could you know um make a decision on that you think that might be the best way to proceed because i'm not sure that i i don't know that i know what the difference is and what the significance is and perhaps an expert like the building commissioner could help us with this yeah my question comes from it even if this is a two and a half story house it's 27 feet high what they're proposing is 44 almost 45 feet high and it's a two and a half story building so i guess part of my question is why is it so much high it's like 18 feet higher yeah there there is a full other living floor on our building so in our attic this is the attic right there's no living area there whereas in this house the attic has living area this house has one basically full story above grade we have two full stories above grade so you have a whole other floor um added to this building so it is a taller building that just the existing house has that floor tucked under the roof line as opposed to the roof sitting up above that top so why is it not then possible to have your building have that top floor tucked under the roof like the because we couldn't we wouldn't have the area when you do that you lose at least a third half of the area to to the well what's what's in that you've got the from the eve height which is 31 you go up basically 14 feet to the roof ridge height what's in that 14 feet well that's if you look if you can see the elevations that's just the pitch of the roof if you start out at the eve and you have a certain width building a certain slope to the roof by the time you cross all that area you end up at that height so there are roof trusses in that space there's probably about two feet of insulation in that space and there are so probably some mechanicals electrical and what on the ground below on the lowest level yeah they know mechanics there's nothing in the roof area except insulation and sprinklers insulation and what sprinkler piping there sprinkler heads are required within the within the addicts okay so let's do this let's um we'll refer the question to the commissioner and then when we deal with aesthetics and a later point in our discussion we have a topic on on how it fits with the neighborhood for lack of a better term physical amenities layout and etc in another time we can talk about it at that point Keith how's that thank you you bet um I think that's the end of the questions is that right yes okay any other questions from the board members before we move to the next item on the agenda uh mr commission oh sorry uh to judge uh both both gavits and rachel uh lack here sorry rachel i don't know i said your last name have raised their hands oh i didn't see that okay mr last hi um so what was presented does meet zoning um the question of why it's so high is more of a design question um that can be addressed by a different pitch in the roof like it was mentioned by the architect that's the width of the structure so you're comparing a smaller house with a larger structure um we I don't know what the original building looks like in terms of a full basement full walkout or if it's a crawl space so all these factors come into play but um I think ultimately it does meet the zoning requirements of the three stories is the maximum and the height is met by what has been shown with the average of the overall height height of the roof so um I'm not sure what else you would like to know about so I think that but I I think these are all things to have when we talk about the physical amenities and the layout of the property as opposed to discussions that um that were that's the right time for this discussion is when we're talking about designing and physical layout and amenities and not today so let's have that discussion at that point in one of that meeting when we do that and I think it's in two meetings we'll be talking about that okay okay that was good um was there another somebody else have a question uh Rachel who's the landscape architect um Rachel can you I was I was just I was going to make a similar point that Miss Brett Brestrup had pointed out in a previous meeting that the um the height that's three stories was allowed by zoning um and we were meeting all those terms so but I understand it's a later discussion okay good all right thank you um the next topic we want to deal with is local and regional need and I think we have a presentation from um town staff on the local and regional need for this type of housing and I expect that they will talk about um the need for single occupancy single use single person use units so Nate are you going to present that sure yeah I don't have a presentation per se I'll just be giving a little talk and uh maybe 45 minutes if that works yeah so you know with a comprehensive permit uh the ZBA is asked to weigh you know the the local and regional need of affordable housing to any possible impacts from a project and so you know the regional need and local need is great for affordable housing in Amherst especially for studio apartments the you know valley has information in their application and their PEL there is no comparable housing in Amherst and so um you know it's hard to say exactly what's the need um but it's great and I think the you know I'll just give a little background Dave Zomac did as well but the town has worked for years to find this type of project and so whether or not we're working specifically with valley you know 10 years ago the town was interested in finding housing for homeless individuals uh housing for extremely low income so 30 percent AMI or less and you know there's been different housing studies different working groups to look at this uh specifically we've been looking at housing for um you know studios or smaller apartments and transitional housing for you know five years in earnest putting money in for studies you know valley um has received block grant funding and CPA funding to further this project you know we held the housing trust has held a few forums on this type of housing so having different providers and developers discuss why uh single room occupancies are needed as both housing for professionals for people transitioning out of homelessness and so you know it's a you know it's not just one user it's different users that can occupy studio apartments and so you know we've really been working on this type of project for four or five years and the fruition of that is this application and you know the town supported it through different zoning changes through monetary um funds and so you know I think you know from our perspective it's something that is needed um just to give a perspective you know the master plan in 2000 the master plan was done in 2009 and 10 and there's previous work done on it and even back then it identified expanding infill and density in the downtown and village centers with smaller units and so even then the town's vacancy rate was uh less than two percent so you know the average vacancy rate in the state may be six percent or higher and there that allows for turnover but namers you know the students drive the market the housing production plan in 2013 the 2015 housing market study really said that students drive the market and they put pressure on uh both you know homeowners and renters to find housing in town and so you know uh even in the master plan they said that you know the vacancy rate was less than two percent they found that over half the renters were cost burden that means they're spending over 30 of their income for housing and more recent studies have found similar information so that you know the housing market study and the housing production plan found that those numbers have even increased that you know over half the renters are spending 30 of their income many are spending over 50 of their income on housing um the 2015 housing market study looked at studios um a little bit more in depth and they found that you know they looked at off-campus listings um from UMass and different sources and just to give you an idea only 0.4 percent of listings for apartments in Amherst were studio apartments in a complex so the rest are for you know one two or three bedrooms but there are very few studio apartments Amherst had more studio apartments you know rooming houses SROs you know whatever you want to call them but they've been converted or changed so really right now there's maybe only two actual studio apartment buildings in town that are strictly studio apartments uh the housing market study found also that the rents for studios in one bedrooms are the highest in cost per bedroom and so they're they're effectively two or three times more than what someone earning you know an affordable income can afford so when we've done more work with Beacon looking at prices and justifying local preference we found that on the newer developments One East Pleasant or Kendrick Place or some of the newer developments that have small one bedrooms or studio apartments the market rate units are almost three times as expensive as what someone could afford so university drive for instance their their market rate two bedroom was over two times with some what the affordable unit is rented at so that just gives you a sense for the need of of the housing you know the cost of housing is so great in Amherst that it's very difficult to afford to live there in terms of numbers you know just a few years ago in 2018 the waiting list for one bedroom units for affordable units in town so for instance at Watson farms there's 54 people on the wait list you know there's over 100 at Olympia Oaks for the one bedroom units and there's six there were 67 for the one bedroom units at butternut farms and you know these can overlap with different size units but it just shows you that for you know the smaller units there is ample waiting list the housing authority in Amherst you know say that it's a four-year waiting list to get to be eligible to get on you know they're section eight get a section eight unit to get a voucher and sometimes it's six or seven years depending on how you keep track of when you apply so the need to find housing is great and the cost is high the housing production plan found that there was you know an unmet need of almost 2000 units for extremely low income that's earning 30 percent AMI or less in Amherst they found that there was over 500 units for low income or very low income which is 30 to 50 percent and you know another 600 for low income which is 50 to 80 percent so you know it's thousands of units and there's unmet you know that are unmet so the demand is there the need is there the units aren't available and both the housing production plan and the market study found that the biggest problem with Amherst was the lack of production and so what's dominated the Amherst housing market in recent years is the production of single-family homes so there's been more apartment complexes that have been developed but by and large between 2000 and 2010 the greatest amount of residential permits our issue was for single-family homes building permits so single-family expensive single-family homes has been dominated the market in recent years we're seeing more you know multi-family mixed-use buildings being developed that I mentioned like one is pleasant or kind of place but they are so expensive that they price out you know most most tenants especially anyone looking for an affordable unit you know these these developments do not have any affordable units you know Valley CDC mentioned a few things in there in their PEL I was just going to reference it again it's you know they're really in terms of housing for homeless individuals there is no housing in Amherst we have a seasonal shelter craigs doors you know they operate craigs place a seasonal shelter you know they can see anywhere from you know 100 to 160 unique individuals during a shelter season there's a point in time count in January for the number of homeless individuals in a community and that can range from 15 to 20 or slightly more in Amherst it's hard to say exactly you know how many homeless are live in Amherst you know because of the nature of the population but even so we don't have any comparable housing in Amherst for homeless individuals or extremely low individuals extremely low income individuals and the I think the big one too is the cost that cost of housing in Amherst so like I said being cost burden so the housing trust has been working on you know ways to increase the type of housing and renters in Amherst are disproportionately affected by the student the demand for housing so students you know are able to pay more per unit because they pay you know basically per bedroom or by student so you know like I said that you know a studio apartment at some of these places may be running from 1500 to 1800 dollars a month which I mean that's for a studio apartment that's not even a one bedroom or two bedroom and that is much more than an affordable unit would be capped at so you know whether or not how much demand there is there just isn't housing at all to meet any demand um but that's you know I think there is you know tremendous demand um the Amherst housing authority also reported that on their waiting list they have thousands a few thousand people to get into units so it's not just you know 20 or 30 it's it's thousands of people wanting to live in Amherst and you know and that that you know think so when a tenant wants to apply to a unit depending on their household size they can specify a one or two bedroom or a studio so there can be some overlap so it's really hard to drill down and say how many you know unrepeated people want just a studio apartment it would take a little more digging but um in any event you know it's you know a few thousand people are waiting to get into housing in Amherst um and I think I think that's it for now in terms of the regional and local need there's any questions board members have any questions Nate it seems to me that you said there's a deficit of 2000 units 2000 units for single individuals at either low extremely low low low low income very low income or extremely low income is that right I was just for all households it's not just for individuals that the difficulty is you know how do you define um just individual so you know with in the housing production plan they they found you know at least 15 or 20 beds are needed for homeless individuals and they found a few you know 200 units for um for extremely low income which is typically a single individual so they found you know a few hundred units were needed uh for that population for single individuals yes you know but that's at the very low income level and so you know Valley is doing a mixed income uh project so it's both you know extremely low income up to 80 so the housing market study really looked at the different types of um of people who'd want to live in Amherst both affordable and market rate and they found that you know many young professionals visiting professors um you know professional individuals retirees want to live in Amherst and they may want studio apartments and so they you know what they were saying is that because students out price um individuals because they the way they they live together it's you know they said that there's you know they said well in New England they said there's over a million people based on their characteristics their marketing stuff strategies but they found that again there was hundreds of of individuals who would want to live in Amherst in smaller apartments that can't and um you know that's both affordable and market rate so the housing 2015 housing market study you know just said that there is a great demand for you know smaller units um and some of that was also based on the price right if they're being priced high that shows that there's high demand for them so you know developers who are developing new units know that those you know that they can get that price if they didn't they wouldn't be priced that high and so clearly there's a demand for studios in small one bedrooms that's kind of the trend right now we're seeing in mixed use developments and new developments is the new affordable prices there's none being no there's no nothing being developed without subsidy or without support at affordable prices right right that's the issue miss miss O'Mara thank you just uh I need a few points of clarification so I understood originally that each unit was 265 thousand dollars times 28 units which adds to the total of 7.4 2 million dollars is that correct yes and with inflation with recent prices of materials that have escalated with COVID-19 etc etc what is the new price tag um we tried to price it the original pricing was done on a square foot basis and we tried to build in a little bit of contingency in it because until you have an actual firm complete design you can't really go on out into the marketplace and test it so we did build a little bit of cushion and we also have a contingency built into the construction cost my point again is how is this affordable housing at 265 thousand dollars a unit for the square footage we're proposing and I appreciate the need for it but how is this affordable so I think I'll just mention that the cost of the development can relate to the affordability if a developer passes on costs through you know through rent but here valley is subsidizing the rent essentially so that they're capped at a certain amount so that's what makes it affordable whether or not it's affordable to develop we're looking at what is affordable for someone to pay on a monthly basis and so you know a valley is going for an energy efficient building um you know that could meet passive health standards they may be willing to spend more upfront because in the long run it reduces energy costs for tenants and users and so the cost of the development isn't necessarily what we're looking at when it looks and when we're talking about affordable it's about what does a tenant pay to live there and so the units themselves are going to have um you know a reduced rate and that's what makes it affordable so it's affordable to someone earning different income levels so they're spending less than 30% of their monthly income on housing that's that's how you know that's how the town and the state look at affordability not necessarily you know they'll you know they'll look at the cost of the development on a per square foot basis to see if it's competitive but they're not going to say well that's not an affordable housing development other questions on local and regional need miss parks um so is it um so will valley be trying to give local preference is that something that's okay to do so our um comprehensive permit application um speaks a little bit to the issue of local preference we as the developer can't impose local preference um according to the state which is the big kind of funder of all this stuff that request would need to come from the municipality and we could assist with that what we've said in our comprehensive permit application is that we don't necessarily our first choice would not necessarily be local preference but there are pros and cons either way with local preference we think housing is a regional need and a regional resource and what we see as applications in our other properties is primarily from western mass it's the kind of corridor the franklin hampton county is where we tend to get applicants from so it depends how you define local it that's our region from we don't get people from out of state typically trying to apply and this this is a really important question um as parks and message something that is number four on the agenda oh okay i'm so yep yep i know you're and i promise you we will get to local preference here um but one of the things i want to close this out and then i want to get to public comments because we didn't have public comment last time and then we'll get to local preference if there's time tonight or first thing at our next meeting but i wanted to i want to finish out the the establishment of need and make sure the members have all the information they need to decide if this is the appropriate response to that need the existing need yeah can i add a little data so at the sergeant house property that just opened um we had uh about 25 open units because we had some returning tenants we had 250 applicants for those units in the lottery so it's about 10 applicants for every unit that was available and that's a pretty steady number at at lumberyard which is family housing we had 55 units we had 450 applications so that's a nine to one so really you're looking at about eight nine ten times the number of people wanting a unit then the number of units that you have on our waiting list for other single room occupancy properties we tend to run between about 80 to 100 people waiting for units and they don't turn over that often so it's it's again there's just a lot more demand than there are units i sense that we've exhausted our questions on local and regional need not on local preference and that we'll get to uh so i think we can so i'd like to get to public comments at the last meeting we did not have time for public comments and i do want to give time for the public to comment on this application so if you if you would raise your hand use the feature on on zoom that allows you to raise your hand staff will help to identify people who wish to speak when you do speak give your name and address talk you have about three minutes make it and to provide your point you want to make sure that everybody that's wants to speak can speak and um and we want to hear your opinions and your views so i would ask that um if you are interested raise your hand moraine will identify that person and we will um it looks like pat de angeles um has a comment go ahead name and address can you hear me yes yes um i want to um i live at 21 ward street here in amherst i also need to say that i'm a member of the town council from a representing district two i am not here on behalf of the council i'm here as a private citizen um so let me see so i moved to amherst with my wife carol and our son jesse 27 years ago for two very important reasons one was the quality of the amherst public schools and the other was our desire to live in a diverse and collaborative community the pomeroy lane co-operative which was a newly created community developed by the organization called abode whose members were parents of adult children with cognitive and physical challenges in january 1993 our family along with 24 other families some like us who had come to amherst from neighboring towns and cities moved into the pomeroy lane co-op we were intentionally diverse we were households labeled low income section eight and market rate we were asian latinx black and white we were gay and straight we were individuals with diverse cognitive physical and emotional needs and we were all at varying levels of understanding about issues of racism social economic and environmental justice living in the community challenged the assumptions we held about each other living together we started to see the strength and creativity inherent in the diversity of our community we learned to see and acknowledge difference and to find ways to collaboratively solve the problems that arose this experience this community showed me what amherst could be this experience is one of the many reasons i support valley cdc 132 north hampton road project and wholeheartedly welcome the people who will live there today i have friends who are personal care attendants who work at stop and shop who are recovering from cancer who are cognitively disabled who are writers and former teachers all of whom need a home a real home one which this project can provide so i am left asking you the members of the zba will you and the rest of our community make it feasible for low income and extremely low income residents to live productively in our community will we make it possible for people healing from racism classism homelessness illness or addiction to move into our community and flourish will we welcome their energy creativity and experiences and allow them to challenge our assumptions and enrich our lives and our community with their presence please support this project thank you very much thank you moraine who's next um we have let's see here uh kathy kathy shone shone there you go kathy can you hear us can you hear me yes now we can yep okay um i'm kathy shane i'm at 519 monogue road and as pat de angeles just said i'm on the council but i'm representing myself not the council um i to support this project and i have basically two questions as you read get to the physical design of the building and the space um and i believe i asked at least one of them when this went through the council these are being designed as very small units for one person efficiencies which has the point has been made several times if a person gets married or if a person has a child that would mean they have to move out and one of my questions was could a few of these units in the way the house the building is designed share a wall that doesn't have uh utilities and wires in it so if in the future there was a decision that you really need a few one bedroom units that you could convert two efficiencies and turn it into one it's similar to what you see sometimes in hotels where there's an adjoining room and it wouldn't be go ahead and do that so it doesn't have to have a door in it but would it be possible because it may be that you don't want to ask people to move um when they end up being more than one person and they may want to stay having formed the community so that's a question on what is possible in the structure and the second is when you when um we were just shown the pictures of what the units will look like in closet space um the ones seem to have a very small closet for clothing as part of the kitchen and so my question on that is uh is is there or they're built-in dressers is there room for clothing if it's not in the unit is their storage space so people can put their winter sweater someplace and take out their summer raincoats or something because it it looked very small even if people are not expected to have much in belongings they might have uh seasonal changes of clothing includes in coats those are my uh their their questions rather than comments I would I have been and continue to be a strong supporter of this project thank you thank you um Susan yep hello can you see me we can hear you oh do I have to do the cameras well no you don't you don't have to just go ahead and um begin your name and address please oh okay um yes I spoke on July 2nd I'm Susan DeGrav I live at rolling green apartments in Amherst and um I think that the presentation was outstanding that the housing looks great the form of the building is perfectly in keeping with the neighborhood it meets the zoning as was mentioned and I just wanted to mention on July 2nd there was a gentleman who talked about the fact that the homeless have to camp out um when the the shelters closed for the season all summer and I had an experience with my family where we were camping and long story short I was having my car repaired and I stayed over and I was looking at the stars out of my tent and then all of a sudden at four in the morning there was this beautiful spring shower but I hadn't put the fly up on the tent because of course I hadn't gone camping in 30 years and I got soaked and I had also foolishly been sitting out at my campfire after my kids left and I hadn't secured my belongings so I was lucky I had a change of clothes I went to the ranger station but I was really soaked to the skin and I before I did that I was lying there in the tent just thinking about what it must be like if you literally at that point I didn't have my car it was in the shop I was going to have to wait for my son to get me at noon I was at Tully Lake campground if you know it and I just lay there thinking about what must it be like to be there in the rain in a tent I know I've been at Puffer pond and I've seen tents there with people trying to be discreet and tent out and to be soaking wet and have nowhere to go it's just it's just not right so when Mr. Langsdale was talking about you know the walking and so for it it just seems to me that tenting out and being out in homeless and not having a place to go and having soaking wet clothing and things like that no human being should live like that and I think in terms of the walking the other story I would tell briefly is that my daughter and I were exploring some of the gates to the Qualiman and we went down a gate and you have to go all the way down you may know it the one at the end of Amherst Road and Route 202 gate 22 well it's a mile and a half down and then you come up and you realize wow I'm really out of shape and there was a woman who did it easily and she was older than me and it made me realize that you know this is something that's very important and I I think it's Barbara who talked about you know the need for walking and a lot of these people are not going to be handicapped and the walking is good and I believe it is safe the final thing I would say is their comments submitted by some of the butters on August 21st and I really found the citation of all these various acts to be quite disingenuous because she cited the McKinney Act the Olmstead Act the Americans with Disabilities Act as if the concern was that you know disabled people wouldn't be able to apply I don't think they would want a person who is opposing this development to be their lawyer they want someone to say that they are grown-ups and that they need housing and that they don't want to be out in a tent in the elements and this is enough when I hear that since April 2019 the butters were invited they've had a chance to weigh in I've listened tonight for for all this time and I really applaud you know the the ZBA for doing this but when I hear that there's more discussion coming I would urge you to approve this I think it's absolutely essential and I don't think people should have to be out there and homeless when this is a very reasonable project and the final thing I would say as far as this 53g review I try to look it up that Miss Loisanne is asking for and it pertains I think to saying that the developer has a conflict of interest or is not qualified that's clearly not the case here there's complete transparency there's complete competence and professionalism and I understand people who live in the neighborhood don't want this new development but like my daughter said who's a teenager mom they can't choose their neighbors those people didn't do anything wrong did they she's right thank you thank you um Barbara Wilbur hi yeah and um I'm not speaking for or against Barbara Graven Wilbur 126 Northampton road and the media the butter um I just had a couple questions or clarifying statements one was um Laura you mentioned that you have smoke-free units the question was whether it is labeled smoke-free do you still have smokers or is it no longer an issue because you say it's smoke-free so I mentioned that we have smoke-free properties um we don't in a in a given property we don't have like an apartment that's smoke-free versus another line sorry that was my misspeak I meant you've had smoke-free yeah buildings yeah they'll smoke so um yeah Laura let's do this let's let's let the the public hear the question you will respond later so just just state your question miss Wilbur please okay so the question was that if in the smoke-free buildings do the people still smoke and if they do where do they go there was some discussion about out in the street or whatever um you talked about the new market the uh black sheep I think that's going to be pretty expensive I don't think that they're going to be um very many affordable items there but that's just a guess the letters that you shared worked were very nice seem to be discussing daytime um I mean one's a professional building and another was a cafe so it almost seems like during the day there may be less interaction or less need less instances of issues then the last thing was it's a little disconcerting that if this need is in Amherst that either the housing committee or the zoning board or whomever isn't perhaps more strict in their zoning requiring more affordable housing in these things and sort of regulating what is affordable and what is not so that's it thanks much thank you very much um let's see here uh Jim old ham uh can you hear me yes yes we can this is Jim Oldham from 17 Columbia Drive and I am speaking to strongly support this proposal and encourage the zba to give it full approval um I want to echo a few things that were said and add a particular perspective of my own Nate spoke I think very well to the the clear need in our community for this type of housing I uh served for a period of time on the comprehensive planning committee that developed our master plan that Nate made reference to uh so again going back more than a decade we've been aware of and people in town have been talking about it I think the previous speaker is absolutely correct that there's much more that we need to do in this town in many ways and how we do zoning and and other things uh but uh anything other than approving this project would would be a move in the wrong direction this is a project that addresses a long awaited need um I am very impressed by the high quality of the original proposal and the high quality of the responses that you've been getting to your many questions and uh responses to community concerns the professional care and thought that's gone into this I've lived on main street in Amherst as a renter surrounded by other rental units I've lived on east Hadley road uh fairly close to large apartment units now I live on Columbia Drive still near those large apartment units in a neighborhood surrounded by single family homes I would say that if if our private um rental properties were given half the care that this you this development is being given if our uh commercial apartment buildings were given half the care if our private homes were were uh managed as well as this is clearly going to be managed we would be better off as a town it's remarkable to me uh just listening today and having read the materials just how thoughtful and careful Valley has been with all of this um I want to speak to the site briefly when I first heard about the site and when it saw it I thought wow how did they they must have been trying to get this site for such a long time it's not a perfect site people have mentioned the slope or something but it's about the best site you could possibly hope for for the the need that's being met it is walking distance I've lived in town I've walked to the supermarkets in in my early years in town I've lived without a car it's a great site for somebody who doesn't have a car it's all the all the things that have been said about the different types of transportation that are available yes it's imperfect in some ways that there's a hill but uh what are you going to do if you want to get to Amherst you're going to go up a hill um I ride my bike up the hill to get there from from my home or or walk sometimes so um so that's sort of my final point that I want to make is I appreciate the due diligence of the board I know that's what your job is I know that's what you're supposed to do and and so I really appreciate your care and thought as you think about smoking on the property and snow removal and access to transportation and the size and shape of the building and so on and so forth but I hope that that work will lead ultimately to the approval of a project that will serve the full number of people that Valley has set out to serve that will not make the project impossible for them to carry forward that will not make it too expensive as it is it's been noted that it is quite expensive and a lot of resources are going into it I hope that this due diligence will will serve to ultimately deliver uh help Valley deliver the excellent um vision they have for serving the need that Amherst has been aware of for such a long time and and I hope all right let me start old and can you wrap it up please yep I I just hope that again that this this care um doesn't turn into wearing the developers down wearing the organization that is bringing us such a good opportunity down or or the narrowing of of the opportunity because as as Pat d'Angelo said earlier uh this is this is what our community should this these are people our community should be served thank you thank you very much next is Amy Gilbert uh Laura Lawrence thank you my name is Amy Gilbert Loinez and I live at 14 Orchard Street and I'm in a butter to the proposed project I just want to raise the issue of the tenant selection process and ask for Valley CDC to provide more details about how tenants are selected beyond the quarry check and a few disqualifiers determined by law were the rule requiring six months of sobriety sobriety what is the criteria for assessing readiness for independent living and is this consistent across service providers previously Valley CDC said that they work with service providers with whom they have pre-arranged memorandums of understanding tonight for the first time they said they advertise broadly to a large listserv of service providers I think they mentioned 30 providers or something something like that uh presumably they don't have mo use with most of the agencies on the listserv I think mr chairman you pointed out that they provided two in the proposal uh do they give preference to the few select agencies with with whom they have mo use or do they have a process that gives every applicant applicant equal chance of achieving tenancy can they describe an instance when a tenant came to them independently were connected with a service provider as they mentioned they would do and then subsequently given a room or are these individuals always placed on the waiting list in deference to people who are clients of their preferred providers as I wrote in my letter of august 18th I have many questions and concerns about the tenant selection process and the supportive services plan I strongly believe we need more details valley cdc says their plan is so comprehensive I believe they said 60 pages plus that they will be thoroughly vetted by dhcd it would be great to be able to see these details ahead of time and to get a guarantee around the areas of the hours of the resident service services coordinator um transportation services not just ad hoc as in you know if if four residents pull together and want to go to the grocery store those things do happen and that's great but what really is this transportation services plan and the actual program linkages to longer term services one of the things that was presented last week was the idea that the resident services coordinate coordinator just provides linkages to services and now they're proposing the idea of hiring someone who's actually a social service professional does that change the scope of the work of this this person are they going to be providing services on site um you know I I don't have an opinion either way on that I just want to understand what is actually going to be provided um in this area thank you thank you very much Susan uh degraded so um I just want to say I you know I yesterday last night I read Ms. Loinez's letter from August 18th and she's basically just reiterated it and I want to remain respectful she's a citizen I'm a citizen but these are red herrings um essentially you know it's sort of like when Irving Younger when he talks about evidence and someone gets on the witness stand and the only question he asks is what's your relationship to the defendant well you're his mother aren't you no more questions she's in a butter she has a particular position and I personally find it very unfortunate that she's trying to act as if she's concerned about discrimination toward the handicapped the disabled who's going to get in you know the presenter I I think I might have gotten her name wrong the head of the valley um Barbara or uh yes anyway she clearly went through this in detail anticipated things out of this letter and this has just been been you know debunked this is not these are not rational um objections the transportation has been described the selection process has been described and you know I just I just have to call her out on this I you know I respect her as a person as a citizen and I understand she has her property rights but that's what her objections are about they are not about defending people who uh can't get into the selection process I'm sorry thank you okay um let's also let's go to people who have I realized you had already spoken once let's give everybody a chance first before we have anybody speak a second time from now on but that was that was my fault to not recognize your name right away I'm sorry for that um Maureen who's next uh Laura and Lawrence Laura hi it's Laura Fitch 120 Pulpethill Road um I just really want to um voice my support of the project Susan de Grave really spoke my mind um I'm a former foster uh mother well I guess I am a foster mother um from my foster child um was homeless um when she was 19 and pregnant and um she had a really wonderful she was no she had been my foster child when she was very young and um she had a really good experience in uh homeless shelter where they provided um her ability to get a GED um and she's now independent and has her own business that is was thriving up until the point of COVID and is sort of surviving the COVID experience and her daughter is like my granddaughter and um you know I think homeless uh uh I think her program was called housing first but anyway that's the idea is that you house people first and then you can work on their other issues like um getting a GED so that's my that's all I really have to say thank you thank you very much for your input Jerry Weiss hi I'm Jerry Weiss 277 Middle Street in Amherst of course and um I am the president of the board of directors of craig stores and a former select board member um I've heard many good questions and concerns um that are worthy of exploration tonight and I appreciate appreciate the uh thorough job that the zoning board has done to date um at the same time I've heard nothing in these concerns that would constitute such an egregious drawback uh requiring that this project be scuttled stopping this well thought out and well thought out is doesn't even touch how how really well thought out it is stopping this uh project on the basis of these small in my mind for imperfections suggests that homeless people and low income people would be better served to not have this project come to fruition that these units not be made available to them which is as you think about it an absurd idea that that the questions and concerns are on their behalf on the potential um renters behalf I would advise people to go out and interview uh low income and people and homeless people to see how they feel about this project and whether they too would be appalled to have it uh come to fruition because of slope or distance to stop and shop or whatever the concerns are thank you very much thank you thank you um carol louis uh louis uh this is carol louis can you hear me yes we can but you got an echo I'm thinking echo is now gone is that correct you just fixed it yes thank you um 21 ward street in amherst obviously I I think I've been impressed by the level of details that everyone has gone into about this project but what I feel is really important is I would like to remind you all of the really the big picture here this is a project that will address well documented needs for affordable studio apartments in amherst a need amherst is asked to have developers address and it will be the first and so far the only such housing in amherst and as jerry just said I can't imagine anyone who will say oh I don't want that housing because the closet closet is too small or any of the other kinds of details amherst is also as amherst also has requested these units will be in a mixed income setting it will house some people who are currently homeless or immediately in danger of becoming homeless it will be the kind of mixed income setting also that is part of what amherst has asked to have done it will be located in a reasonable proximity um services are and and there will be services in this which in my mind is above and beyond what is required to provide housing studio housing for people studio apartment housing for people but there will be services some people will take advantage of them and some people won't and that's just fine um and I guess the last thing I want to say is that there couldn't be a better developer to be working with with a proven track record of successful similar projects all over the place has been a strong and much needed partner to amherst has developed what has has worked to develop what has been asked for has put themselves out there in front of this in order to try to make it happen as amherst has requested and I just amherst must be able to follow through on the things that it has said in the master plan and things that have been in process for years this is an opportunity to do something so I just want to urge you not to lose sight of that overarching need for this housing at this time now in amherst do the right thing approve this project without any kinds of modifications that would possibly increase its cost thank you very much thank you um uh mr kegel uh kegelman mr kegelman can you unmute yourself hello can you hear me now now we can yes thank you sorry so um i um submitted some written name and mr kegelman just identify yourself in your address please my name is tom kegelman and I live at 649 east pleasant street in amherst and I had submitted some written comments and I um just wanted to briefly uh summarize some of them I hope you have a chance to read them I think there's a lot of thoughtful comments that have been submitted and I am impressed with all the work that has been done by this committee and by the applicants I have been living in this community in Pioneer Valley for over 40 years and I've witnessed the developments that valley has done in north hampton east hampton and now in amherst and in all of them I've been very impressed and so um I would like to say that well the need that they're addressing is one that's very apparent to me that I see almost every day just yesterday a couple of friends were about to be evicted and the last moment they happened to call a landlord as another applicant withdrew and for that bit of luck but for that bit of luck they would have been homeless they're college educated professional musicians and individually they would have been eligible for the apartments being proposed and next door to us there's a single family homeless when converted to a rental uh they just dug up a bunch of the front yard to put in new parking and it's happening all over town and especially in our neighborhood and as these developers skirt the few laws that constrain them their lacks management does little to control and experience renters and the overwhelming demand is oppressing the ability of young homeowners to come into the community as a member of the municipal affordable housing trust um I am bound to promote the town's affordable housing priorities as determined through the most recent town housing plan um as a fellow town official I would encourage you to join with us in fulfilling our promise to provide housing for low-income households uh the plan was received by the local officials town government on every level it received significant support from both them and the residents at large and as far as I'm concerned it um is a promise to the town that we will build uh the very badly needed affordable housing and I hope that uh the zba will join with the AMHT as fellow town officials to make sure that happens thirdly as a professional housing developer I have over 40 years of experience working with the homeless managing their housing and developing properties designed built and managed to support them as a resident I have seen all the work that belly's done and I've been impressed and I in fact have found a number of things in this project that I might want to borrow from my own projects um I wanted to specifically address the amount of support of staff time that they have committed to serve these residents I find it an extraordinary amount I recall partnering with one of the nation's largest affordable housing developers a few years ago and their service budget for over 200 units was less than 30 000 dollars at the time that would have paid for three quarters fde which comes out to about four thousands of an fde per household um that's not atypical that's probably pretty uh uh routine for developers in this field in our own properties we have um about double that maybe a little more um and we have received a lot of compliments for the work that we do with our residents many of whom are not homeless but some are and many are low income and I would say that the um the valley cdc's commitment of a three-quarter fde for a 28 unit project is um several times more per unit than what we would typically provide and 10 times more than your typical developer I should note that the homeless are all around us mobile vouchers provided by the agencies prioritize people who've been homeless and they're they're everywhere and I would want to just point out that those who look at this project as housing people who need constant care I just want to confirm working with the homeless for most of my life that they're just like your neighbors they can be a bit untidy at times a bit quarrelsome at times but they are mostly homeless due to the tight rental market job loss health emergency or domestic violence and not because they need extensive services what is being like not a nursing home or group home and so I would just encourage you to see these people as um as your neighbors and they will be extremely grateful to have the opportunity to have a decent safe and affordable place to live and I very much hope that you give them this well-deserved chance thank you thank you um we have a 401 telephone that ends at 5138 or your back marina sorry 5138 hello hello we can hear you yes please identify yourself yes um my name is Demetrius Shabazz I live at 29 Chapel Road um thank you uh for allowing me to speak and holding this hearing on the project first off housing is a human right and I'm one of the founders of the racial equity task force group of Amherst however I'm speaking as a resident I wholeheartedly support this proposal new research from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development finds that since 2007 Massachusetts has been experiencing the highest increase by percentage in family homelessness out of all the states in the country as of 2020 there are currently 3400 families experiencing homelessness just in Massachusetts and the toll of homelessness in the state falls unequally a while about 30 of state residents are people of color they make up nearly 50 of the total homeless population according to the latest federal numbers it's already been expressed by Nate the the serious problem in terms of affordability that we encounter here in Amherst just for regular affordable housing much less folks who are unhoused it's important for our community to grow and diversify and deepen our understanding of one another the Valley CDC project meets all the zoning requirements and it's a very well designed project that would complement any community that it will potentially add to the diversity regarding class race and ability is a plus it should be approved without question because it is a good project that will house the unhoused in a respectful manner add to our community and provide persons with unique needs a place of their own with dignity thank you I certainly hope you all will approve this project thank you very much um we have anybody else morning yes we have a couple more um hold on a second let's see here um whoop I just sorry Jay hello can you hear me yes you can please identify yourself it's Jay Levy I'm with Elliott Homeless Services and I live at 34 Logtown Road in Amherst I kind of have a dual role in connection with the project just wanted to state that I've worked with Valley CDC for many years now on some of their other properties that they manage HMR actually does the management but that they developed out in in Northampton in particular go we go west and King Street properties and what's been very impressive is they've been as as folks that are primarily trying to establish affordable housing for the community they've really gone out of their way to connect with the social service network out in Northampton and they've done the same in terms of connecting over time around this project in Amherst and I think you know the proof is in the pudding as we say that we've done some really great work out out in Northampton in terms of getting people housed and supporting them we've done monthly uh meetings where we've uh gone over uh issues that may arise from time to time and having a social service response to be helpful on those properties um I know you mentioned C-spec and had some questions on that earlier so I just thought I'd give a quick answer to that that C-spec is something that is available through uh mass health and uh it's it's you have to have a clinical license in order to provide that service so some of the uh non-profits in the area like LEHCHS homeless services uh provide some C-spec housing stabilization services for people who are chronically homeless so just to say I look forward to uh working with Valley CDC in the future we've housed many many people through their properties have been very successful with long durable tendencies and people have been very happy they've seen a incredible difference in the quality of their lives moving forward as they've gone from homeless to being housed so with that I just want to thank you for your time and just know that myself as well as many other community members that are connected with the social services see this as an incredible need and Amherst has done such a a fine job in in the sheltering of people who are homeless but we really need to step up more on the housing front so this is a great opportunity thank you thank you very much other um public comments yes my name is Charles Fuller I'm at 22 Chestnut Court coming through for you sir yes okay go ahead yep it's been 40 years uh since I've been on a zoning board or a zba and you know as a organization of a town we did not ask for instance one of our wanted to expand uh what the janitor's resume was we did not micromanage services I noticed this board has had two hearings based on things that have to do with staffing patterns I wanted to remind people that that is a function of the state board of licensure or the Commonwealth's board of licensure and program managers I'd like to say that you know that's what the professional staff there is for we don't ask our neighbors how much they drink uh when they move into town these are people these are neighbors in many towns neighbors actually volunteer at places like this come across the street shake hands and meet welcome people to the community that's basically it thanks for the opportunity to speak thank you I don't see anyone else raising their hand I see no one else either hold on I see Hilda uh one second Hilda um where is it we oh didn't then she lowered her hand Hilda do you want to talk I guess not can you hear me yes I did want to talk I put my hand up at the very minute of 8 15 um first of all I want to say that this project is a very beautiful I call it a Victorian mansion and a park and it puts all that architecture and downtown Amherst is shame first the set of qualities um the other thing I would like to say is that I really hope that you will push as hard as you can for local preference local preference really is only good for 70 percent of the slots on the first lottery which is not very many housing and Amherst already does have well above its quota last I heard 12.7 percent of affordable units here where the towns all around us have none or one or two percent if that and it really bothers me that without the local preference will even or I say even with the local preference and given 70 percent of the first lottery to local people was still behind the eight ball and providing the number of units that we need and I often feel that it's not fair for us to subsidize other towns that don't want to do their share and have read for years and years and years about western and finally conquered gave in and built affordable housing but many towns don't want it and we've gone out of web away to do it and was still behind the eight ball so I'm pushing hard for the for the local preference as I have on all I think I did six projects when I was on CBA and and tried to get that for all of them and the last thing I would like to ask about is given the number of these units are for people who have been homeless or of low circumstances will any of the units be furnished or will there be opportunities for them to get help getting the furniture pots and pans a knife and a fork and a dish that they need in order to live in these units or will they be like camping out on the floor I sure hope that there would be a way that they could get a for either help with a furnished apartment or perhaps get a furnished apartment so that's that's my my question and my comments thank you thank you very much from green bomb thank you anybody else other comments from the public okay um so I think the best way to proceed is for us to just review the questions we don't expect you to be able to to respond to those tonight you can respond to those at the next meeting I think that makes the most sense we've already up we're past our our time already but um let's just I want to just run through the questions as I have them and then work with the staff they'll provide a list of questions to you that you can then respond to for the next meeting great thank you and if you can get that to us you know in advance so that we can put the response available to the public so it's it's available as quickly as possible the questions that I heard that you that we we need a response from the applicant on um what first regards the wall going to be designed such a way to permit a combination of units and I think that'll take some time talking with your architect the second question is can the closet you know around closets is generally can there be can it be bigger what can we do with closets that was the second question um I think the responsibility for just describe the peer review process comes from the town and we can provide put something on the website for that and we have information about what the peer review is um there was a question about where do people go when if you have a smokesfree building and a smokesfree space where do people go I think you you address that but you might be able to address that again um on the tenant selection process there was a question about what is the criteria for independence is for independent living for being ready for independent living is that a common among service providers um so I think a reasonable question is to describe what how you made the determination that a person is ready for um independent living let's see oh example of when I can't I'm sorry I had a hard time reading my own writing here example of when a person comes oh so if a person comes from an independent without being associated with a service provider do you have any experience of providing them housing did they match them up successfully and do they get housing or do they where they put on my waiting list and the last question was will units be furnished and is there a way to provide help for basic outfitting of a of a unit pots pans and essentials sheets blankets I would suspect were there any other questions that board members or staff felt were asked that I did not list okay um so it's 9 12 we like to end these at nine o'clock at night we do have one more topic that I hope we can get to but I put Ms. Parks I think we're not going to get to it tonight but local preference did come up we'll be well prepared to deal with that at our next meeting as a first order of business for our consideration um what I'd like to do is before we go to um the public comment on any item not before the board tonight I'd just like to review that we have like review future meetings and Maureen I know you sent it out let's just review when our the meetings upcoming meetings for the zva we have one on September 3rd is that correct correct and that's for matters that are not related to the company department application so that's kind of a regular meeting and we have a meeting on September 10th correct and that is for this application and what's the next meeting after that September 24th um there is one on the 24th I believe everyone indicated on the doodle poll that they were available to continue this public hearing after the 10th also on the 17th um here well no uh yes I believe we can continue um this this specific application on the 10th and then on the 17th well I thought you said the 24th that is when we have a regular scheduled meeting okay um well let's you and I describe look through that doodle poll so that we um I'm clear about it but I I thought the 17th wasn't oh didn't we didn't have a meeting but let's let's we will get out to the members exactly when they will be let's let's go over that tomorrow morning make sure that we we've got this right okay yeah I might be mistaken no yeah according to my doodle poll the 17th everyone is available okay all right so we have coming up we need to talk about local preference density of housing um financial need look at a pro forma physical amenities and layouts and waiver requests those are the topics that I see over the next several meetings and I think if we have three more meetings perhaps or four I'd love to do this in three we should be able to get to start getting to close of um our consideration on this matter um so we are at um we're on our next meeting on this will be on the night on the 10th of september on 40b the green bomb is raising your hands I don't know if you want to call on oh now she she did by accident yep okay all right um so I think that concludes the business I'm lowering it oh okay oh oh you're not you oh color is raised uh I actually don't have the that button feature see do you have that uh Tim I guess the reason you didn't call on me because I had the wrong color well it might have it might have been it but we're um we don't have any uh miss parks I just have a quick question so I just wrote down what you said and it looks like we don't have a meeting this we don't have a meeting thursday but we have a meeting september 3rd 10 17 and 24 yes okay so every thursday in september well I I can re-send out a new doodle poll if people feel that they need a uh if they want to change their mind I'm just indicating what was okay submitted via a doodle poll all right I just I was just surprised I'm just double checking I'm okay if any members want to change their mind either uh send me email and let's just let's discuss this in the morning and we'll decide about sending out a poll and maybe even choosing yeah I think that let's do an organized poll as opposed to just ad hoc so that we really got it right now we have uh uh um christine breast rep is raising your hand uh Chris I just wanted to remind you that you need to continue this public hearing to a date certain so that um particular date would not be up for discussion tomorrow the the 10th will not be up for discussion tomorrow and mr chairman um I just texted with john witton and he is available for the meeting on the 10th I'm not I have another 40 b but uh uh john witton is available on the 10th okay so we know the 10th will be we will have a meeting on this subject on the 10th we're looking at I guess the 17th is the one that's up in the air all right um so what we need to do is move to suspend close this the closest hearing for tonight and to continue mr chairman yeah to continue it until september 10th right is there a second second any discussion uh this is the roll call vote I vote aye mr langsdale hi mr mira hi miss parks hi mr maxfield hi motion carries unanimous we will meet on this on the 10th of september um the last order of business is on tonight's agenda is the um opportunity for a member of the public to speak on any subject that is not any matter that is not the subject of tonight's hearing so anything other than the application of 40 b that is uh before us tonight seeing no hands raised I think we are done I do I have a motion to adjourn this meeting this hearing this parks moves it is there a second second I hear a second from mr max from mr langsdale I think this is a any discussion roll call is required chair votes aye mr langsdale hi hi mr mira hi miss parks hi mr maxfield hi thank you all very much um I appreciate both thanks to the public for their comments thanks to all of you for your hard work thanks as always to the town staff we appreciate what you do and how you help us thank you very much have a good evening everybody we'll see you on the on the 10th