 Good evening. I speak to you today as a 73 year old grandmother who just brought home her husband from the hospital with a new knee. Today we can still take out the trash, climb the stairs and mow the lawn, but this won't last. Someday we'll have to choose between joining a life care community or aging in place. We want to age in a community we know with neighbors of all ages with shops we can walk to with the town activities to keep us engaged. ADUs would empower people like me to downsize and age in place. Article 43 doesn't change any of the rules about the dimensions of what can be built in Arlington. We only say that homeowners can add an ADU within these rules. This proposal is vetted through inspectional services department, the redevelopment board, the select board, and the diversity task group have each endorsed it unanimously. Now, Joe Solomon, my son's age and an ardent native will discuss how ADUs have made a profound difference in his life. Thank you. I actually grew up in Arlington. My parents bought the house that we live in in 1981. I was born in 1982. And graduated from Arlington High Class of 2000, went away to college, moved back to East Boston. We talked to my mother about options of, you know, maybe moving back into the house that I grew up in and buying her a house in, you know, somewhere nearby or maybe a condo somewhere in Arlington. And when, you know, we sweet got into a bidding war out of condo in Arlington and just said, this is, this is ridiculous. That made us start thinking about, well, what are the options to actually just expand the house. And we're fortunate enough that we live right on the edge of an R2 zone district. We're close enough to Mass Ad that we're in that little band. And I reached out to the zoning department. They mentioned the name of some attorneys who work on things like this. And I started working with an attorney in town on August of 2017. So that was the beginning of working with drawings in hand on how to get the town to approve this to build an addition where my mother could live. And then my family could live in the existing house. And we had a handful of meetings with the ZBA, the Zoning Board of Appeals. And they gave us approval in June of 2018. So August 2017 to June of 2018 to get the approval to build. And at that point it was late enough in the construction season that we didn't start building until April of 2019. And if I think about it, right, you know, start to finish of the, the process was a little over a year and a half. And with ADU by right, that's something where, as I understand it, you know, you have the plans, you go out of the building office, and you say, here's my plans, I want to pull a permit and go. So it would cut a year and a half out just in terms of me getting to be with my kids and their grandmother in the same place. So that would have been a huge benefit at the time. In addition, going through this again, as I mentioned, you know, you have to hire a lawyer and then you get surveyors and you know you make sure the building's in the right place. And all of that has to be done before you actually get approval. And in our case that that's, you know, money at risk, right, we could invest it all and they could say no. And for our project that was almost $10,000. So, you know, in the current state of doing things, if somebody wants to be able to provide housing for their grandparents. And in my personal case, you know, you have to be willing to risk a significant amount of money and wait a significant amount of time before you even can, you know, get the shovel in the ground, so to speak. I work my wife works and this is what we're doing instead of buying a house so we're sort of on the upswing of investing in home ownership. The barber's point a lot of the people that may be considering this are people who are on the other side right there they're at a level where they have a fixed income. And they go to them and say well, you know, scrape together another 10 grand and maybe you'll be able to stay in your house and create this other unit for your family or someone like that. You know, that's a big ask of something, right. And, you know, I think having this sort of in between option of I can go buy a house in Arlington, or I can leave the community, because I just I don't understand the process and I don't want to risk that money having that in between option. It's all clear. It's aligned with the zoning practices. It's not building unsafe houses we have, you know, wonderful new resources about, you know, residential design guidelines that came out that can help you know your architect with stuff like that. It hits a sweet spot for a tremendous amount of people to remain in the community. And in my case to create this, you know, house of long ago where you have three generations under one roof. The impact the positive impact on us has been. I can't even explain it right, you know with with coven. My mother was a school teacher for part of her career. So I can wake up in the morning, I get my my kindergarten are all set with breakfast and his morning meeting, and he goes to my mother's from nine to 12. I have access to an onsite teacher essentially right you know it's my grandmother or his grandmother. And then on the flip side, you know, there's the cases where you know my, my three year old my daughter had a fever about a year and a half ago. My wife and I both wanted to go to the hospital with her. Now, I can't bring my five my five year old with us, but I can leave him with her. So both of us were able to go with her to the hospital be with her the whole time. My mother fell down a stair. I was literally in the kitchen and I could see it. So I was able to get to her within within seconds to help her out. Right and these are all these intangible things that aren't aren't in the legislation there they don't come up a lot when people have these discussions but these are the upsides of enabling people to create this type of a household. And to do it clearly in line with all the existing rules is just, it would really I think be a gift to people. And I just speak from my personal experience of this being, you know, obviously aside from the cost of building. It's been nothing but upside.