 I mean, you have value CDC is in attendance. They're the only attendees right now. Okay. Okay, so we should get started. I don't have any announcements. You know, Nate when I don't have the language for this but every other meeting starts with an explanation how either the governor or the attorney general or both allow us to meet via zoom during this emergency. And we've never said that. I don't know if that's an issue. Presumably it isn't since we haven't been doing it. So another planning board has a script and. Yeah, I think it's okay. I mean it's kind of the. Everyone see the agenda. I'm having some issues in my screen. Yeah, I think we're fine. I mean if we're, you know, we do roll call votes. People know that it's on zoom so I feel like we haven't had any issues. Okay. Fine. Okay, I don't have any announcements. Does anybody else have any announcements. No. Okay, well then we got through announcements pretty quickly. I'm going to skip review minutes from October, which I think I sent out at least a week or so ago. I don't have them in front of me. Does anybody have any comments. These minutes exclude the executive session. I wasn't quite sure whether we can share them. We can share them in the public part of the meeting, but I'm still not even sure whether we can share them in an executive session either. I think an executive session we can then they remain part of the executive session. Okay, so we won't share, you know, we don't have those minutes to review now. Only the public meeting portion of the last time. Okay, so are there any comments on the minutes from October meeting. Okay, we don't have any John. Okay. Has Kevin noon and joined us. There's no, not yet yet. I'm going to email him or he knows about it right. Well, yes, but it might be a reminder would be helpful. Right. So we'll see if Kevin comes to us if not. Well in the meantime anyway, we'll skip down to the progress report on emerge the emergency rental assistance program. Okay. Jana couldn't be with us tonight because she has a conflict. With the east town. East housing. Fair housing group. It's not fair housing it's. What's the name of that. Community action. No, no, it's a housing group. The same as North Hampton's group. East Hampton housing partnership. Yeah, thank you. That's it Rita. Okay, so Jana has a conflict. There's a couple of things I wanted to talk about. But the first one really is. What do people think, or do you have any questions about the report that Jana sent us. I'm not going to read it. It's about a page one. It provides a summary of round one on indication of where we are so far on round two. And a brief outline of the changes that we made that make round two different than round one. So does anybody have any questions about this. A possible question was Jenna's. Feedback that people thought it was unfair that. Students I guess sharing a household. We're being treated as a household. And not individually. And I. I know that's the way it's done in every other housing program. I don't have any feeling that we need to change anything, but I just wondered if anybody else did. Yeah, thanks Tom. That was a right. That's one point of discussion is that, you know, we. Don't allow roommates if they're covered under one lease. And so there's been a few. Applications where, you know, one roommate is claiming to have a hardship. The others are not. And then. You know, the other roommates aren't willing to share. You know, the other roommates aren't willing to share. Financial information. And then it's ineligible anyways, if there's, you know, they're probably over income, but. You know, I agree, Tom, we've kept, you know, the definition of household to be, you know, for instance, if someone had a different lease for each bedroom in a unit. Then individually, they, you know, they could apply. But this isn't the case if there's, you know, one lease with four different tenants. So it's possible that there's some sort of sub lease, even if it's not formal. And if there was some documentation that in fact, the lease was not collectively shared, but oftentimes those leases name everyone in the house on the, on the lease. And so if one person fails to pay the rent, the rest are obligated to pay. So it's a little bit hard to tease that apart. Yeah. I was talking. Somebody else wanted to speak. I was just going to guess that a lot of times the agreement between the roommates is more informal than being part of the lease. They have some who is going to pay how, what part of it, but it's probably not part of the lease written down somewhere. So yeah. There's a lot of different forms, but, you know, a lot of the landlords have gotten pretty sophisticated these days and they require everybody who lives there to be obligated to pay the rent regardless of, you know, how they choose to divide it up. Right. Yeah, I'll talk a little bit more about this in a minute or two, but I was talking to Ellen shactor. I think it was earlier this week, I guess, or lately, I think it was earlier this week. Ellen shactor is the director of housing stability. For the city of Somerville. And I'd heard Ellen speak about the things that. The city has done in order to try to ameliorate the eviction crisis. In Somerville. And one of the things she mentioned offhand, which I need to get back to her about is that they found a way in Somerville to allow households to be eligible. If there is no lease. Or if no one who's living in the household is on the lease. Apparently it's not unheard of. It's not unheard of. It's not unheard of for the name on the lease to be someone who has since left the unit. To move someplace else. And the people who remain on the lease. Or who remain in the unit. Are not on the lease. And yet they may need. Assistance. So that's one of a number of issues that I'd like to. Get back to Ellen about. Nate and I also spent some time talking to. Janet and also Donna Bowden who works with her. On the Amherst emergency rental assistance project. This was partly stimulated by a call that the town manager's office received. Saying that they were slow to respond. Where to get in touch with people. And yet the whole distribution had been sent in. So far, there's only been one complaint like that. And it sounded as if they were able to get to the person. In a little over a week. Nonetheless, it seemed a little long. But. In general, when Nate and I were talking about this, we were not able to get in touch with people. Approve for payment. At this point in time and round two. Then, then we were seeing. I mean, the good news is. That over 80 people or households had applied. So we're approaching the hundred who applied in round one. There may be a little bit of overlap there. But the process of working with people. You know, when you have a specific application. With whatever documentation is necessary. And then have them approved. Seems to be taking a long time. And. You know, as. Nate and I talked to Jana and Donna. It appeared that every case. Or maybe not every case, but. It's not uncommon for cases to prevent. Present special circumstances. And so we have to consider a lot of things. And so we have to consider a lot of things. And so we have to consider a lot of things. In order consideration. That make it difficult to. Process the case. And again, I, I mean, one example we talked about was. Two men, not students. Who are on the same lease. Sharing a place. And. One of them does have a financial problem. And so we have to consider a lot of things. And so we have to consider a lot of things. And so we have to consider a lot of things. And so we have to consider a lot of things. And so we have to consider a lot of rules. They are now excluded. And there were other examples like that. They didn't necessarily result in the household. Being excluded. But. It just seemed like. There were at least half a dozen different cases. That Donna or Jenna presented to us. And so we have to consider a lot of things. And so we have to consider a lot of things. And so we have to consider a lot of things going into each of these cases. Do you want to add anything to what I'm saying, Nate? No, I mean, I think, you know, the, you know, Jana did say that. You know, the, with round two, there's a pre-application, which does try to, you know, screen applicants in terms of. Basic eligibility and then a case worker. From community action or respond to them to set, you know, a schedule and then it's a few days out. And then she's finding that. You know, it's taking, you know, more than one call. And the first call will be over an hour. And then it often takes two or three calls. To get all the paperwork and everything together. Yeah, I guess, you know, it's interesting. I just, you know, I'm also working with the micro enterprise assistance grants and some businesses have been complaining about that. We have to do income documentation for that. And we're like, well, it's block grant money. So we do. And then they're like, well, you know, I'm like, you know, I know the tenants maybe are feeling the same way, but it's like, we have, there's, you know, we ask for as little as we can with the housing program. You know, we only ask for a bank statement and, you know, copy of the lease. And not a lot of other information. So I don't know. Yeah. John, it is interesting. Community action seemed like every case as something unique, whether it's a roommate or, you know, a relative of a family member. I think it's a lot of work. Working age children who are now at home and are they part of the income? And. You know, You know, I think eventually though, it does take four to six weeks to get someone approved and have a payment being processed, which. Isn't, you know, I think that's pretty. Pretty standard for a lot of these programs. So I think it is a lot of upfront work. In the end it does, they do get approved. You know, they're not going to have a payment. So they're not going to have a payment. So they're going to have to get a payment. And so I think some of the households in round two right now are behind on their rent. So for whatever reason, the tenants that are applying aren't. You know, they're, they've been able to make payments. So I don't know if. You know, in the next month, we're going to see many more households because of the addiction more params ended. And. You know, I don't know. I mean, it's just odd that. We haven't had a, I was, I was thinking we'd see. More applicants and more be being approved. Right. I mean, I would think that people could just. I would say, here's my COVID loss. I've lost my job. Here's my household information. And then it's like a week later, they're getting processed, but it doesn't seem to work that way. I was wondering what, one of the things in the report said that one of the other things that was hard was demonstrating the COVID. Relatedness of any income laws. And I just wondered what, how does somebody demonstrate that? I lost my job. How do I, I mean, I don't know. I don't know what the hoop is that you have to jump through, but maybe it's not. Maybe it's too hard or maybe that's something that we could look at again. I don't know. My recollection is that occurred with households in which the adults were being paid under the table. You know, they were working in a restaurant and they were receiving income. And then they lost their jobs. But in fact, they don't have any pay stubs because they're. Illegal immigrants. And so it's hard to demonstrate that. You know, I, it's like Nate and I were both saying, every case seemed to have some kind of an issue with it. And we, with the loss of income too, we've, we've. You know, we've also, you know, told community action that if there's a story and it's possible, then they can self-declare. And if there's a form, you know, they can essentially. Assign something saying that it, you know, that's that, that's it. You know, except they don't have a bank statement or some, you know, some, some households don't have bank accounts. And so then they, it is really difficult to show a loss, but if they have a story and it seems consistent, you know, community action can use their discretion to allow them. But. Yeah, I mean, I don't. You know, we weren't asking for more than just a proof of loss of income or something or some hardship. And. I guess some households are having difficulty even providing that, you know, what some type of documentation on that. It is surprising. Yeah, especially given the numbers that I read somewhere of how many expected evictions there are in the next short amount of time. Yeah. Yeah. The same seems these things just don't seem consistent with each other somehow. Well, this got me to thinking about how we are using our resources. And I'm not going to propose a change to our existing program tonight. My sense is that we should at least follow into December. And then start to think about whether there's something else we should do. Yeah. Yeah. Again, coming back to the city of Somerville. One of the things they've done is to focus on getting people into the raft program. Rather than into. Their own rental assistance program. They have a separate rental assistance program, which uses. Money from the city of Somerville exclusively. For the city of Somerville. So that's pretty flexible in how they can use it. We wouldn't have that option. But just to going back. The reason they prioritize raft, I believe. Is that. Frankly, there's more money in it for the tenants. Raft now has a. Maximum payment that goes up to $10,000. Is that right, Nate? Rita. Yeah, 3300. 3300. And so. All I started to think about is if community action is going to do all this work. Maybe it would be better if they were helping people get into the raft program. Then our rental assistance program. And again, I want to let the program run a little bit more. And I also want to understand better how Somerville manages all of this. I helped to set up a conference call with Jenna and Donna and Nate and I possibly Rita. To talk about how Somerville is doing things. The variety of things that they're doing to try to. Amirate the problem. Of evictions. And there are other things, not necessarily the things that the housing trust could do. But things that the town could do. Which I also want to mention. I mean, I actually did send out an email. To a lot of people, including I believe a review. About things that the town could do. Based primarily on what Somerville is currently doing. And actually Boston and Cambridge are both doing similar things as well. So again, I don't regret that we started this emergency rental assistance program. We started it. We started thinking about it. I believe last March. It made perfect sense. But as things are starting to change. I'm not so sure that this is the best way for us to use the resources we have available. John, I would just say that I think, you know, generally. You know, these types of programs are incredibly complicated and require a whole lot of layers of. Review and. Revision over time. And it's often. Years. After you roll out a program before you get it right. You know, you know, you know, you know, you can be back onto an existing program with existing staff with existing rules with a track record and, and have figured it out that, you know, that's, that's usually the best course because reinventing the wheel. Although that's an oversimplification. Can be. Problematic. No. There are a huge number of raft. Applications that are backlog statewide. At least that's my understanding. And the raft agencies in this area. Primarily wayfounders, but also the Franklin County group. Don't have enough staff. To process all the applications that they're receiving. Efficiently or effectively. Now, what I did learn is that. Summerville has. A kind of separate relationship. With metropolitan Boston agency that administers raft. That agency set up a sort of a separate application line. For summerville and other towns and metropolitan. Boston. So their clients don't have to go through the regular route. They can do their applications with the town supporting them. And I made Jana aware of this and she has an appointment scheduled with wayfinders. To see whether there's something. That. They could do to make it easier for. Community action to support people who are applying for raft. As Tom said, nothing is easy when it comes to this. And it's kind of. I just want to point out that as of Monday, wayfinders will have a new administrator running the raft program. And I happen to know her personally. She's amazingly effective and hardworking. And. And if anybody can turn that around, it will be, it will be she. Yeah. That's great news. But again, if. If she doesn't have the staff. Well, I heard they took the whole wing of that new building down in Springfield that was supposed to go to their development team. And they. Told the development team they couldn't come because they needed. 20 offices for the emergency assistance team. So I don't know how many people you need to run that program, but it sounds like they've got. A pretty hefty group there. Well, that's good. That's good. And maybe Jenna can work out a relationship. And others in Hampshire and then counties can work out a. A relationship with raft where it would help. The way find your staff. And enable more people to get into that program more quickly. I mean, again, we'll know more about how our program is going. And what, if anything, Jenna is able to work out with raft by the time we meet in December. But I didn't want to let people know that. At that point we may need to be considering changes to the program that we have or trying to figure out what it is. That we can do to best help households. Who are having difficulty meeting the rent payments. I mean, I will say too that, you know, the housing course can be meeting every day. And they're trying to hear three cases an hour. And I know they're behind, but you know, most of the cases they're hoping to refer to local programs, like the one we've set up or other resources. So it may be that. You know, in December and January, the program actually gets busier because we're getting, you know, the court is referring tenants and landlords to mediation or to find other solutions than eviction. So, you know, I don't know if we consider emergency assistance then, or if we, right, we change it, but you may end up getting more, you know, tenants who are actually in the eviction process who are returning to the program as opposed to, you know, you know, applying beforehand. Not that it makes a difference, but you know, we may want to have different criteria if someone is in the eviction process. So how does, you know, how does that happen? But yeah, I agree. I think we're checking in monthly with community action and we can let the trust know if there's changes or ideas we could present. Yeah, I also mentioned that there are a few other things that maybe we should be recommending to town council. Legal services attorneys around the state, at least this is my impression, are recommending that tenants notify landlords that they want to take advantage of what is called the CDC moratorium. I don't know if people have heard about that. The federal centers for disease control basically set up a program in which if people inform their landlords that they can't pay their rent and are at risk of being homeless, then they can't be evicted. They literally cannot be thrown out of their apartment. That's the good news. The bad news is that it sunsets as of right now on December 31st, 2020. Nonetheless, again, legal services attorneys have been recommending that people do this as a way of trying to hold off to get a little bit more time for people to get into other programs if they're in trouble with their rent. Also, as Nate said, the housing courts have a big backlog of cases. There were something like 900 cases waiting in the wing, so to speak, for the state eviction moratorium to end. And it's going to take a while for those 900 cases to be processed in Western Massachusetts. And that doesn't include the new cases that will undoubtedly start to flow as well. So the housing courts can't move too quickly because they don't have the capacity either. So anything that, again, we can do ought to be helpful. The city Somerville has done a few other things that I will mention. One of the things they did is ask Somerville landlords to sign the pledge. Francis, you may know more about the pledge than I do because I know mass housing finance was working with landlords around the state to try to get them to sign the pledge. And I'm going to share it with you. Basically, it's a pledge to work with tenants and not try to think of evicting them as the first line of what to do. The pledge has a few elements which I'm not recalling off the top of my head. Can you recall what they are, Francis? Yes, and I'm going to share it. We have it online, too, but basically it's the same as the Boston, the city of Boston put out their own pledge. So it's basically a copy of that one, but statewide, but also includes an addition for mediation. Let me pull it up. Okay. Well, Francis is doing that honestly. The details are not what's important. But what's important is that the town asks landlords, perhaps particularly the major landlords, to sign the pledge. And again, who knows whether they'll sign it. The city of Boston, the city of Cambridge, and I believe mass housing finance has had a lot of success in the city of Cambridge. And I think it's important for landlords in Massachusetts to sign the pledge. So maybe we could have some success here. And that would also help to stave off some evictions. Again, that's not something the housing trust could do. It would really be something that town council would need to do. And I think what happened was most of the. Mass housing. So for instance, an Amherst beacon signed on to that. And, and the larger property owners. Property managers, Trinity, PVD. Others. Of course, we signed on all the other nonprofits around the state signed on. It was spearheaded by the massachusetts association of CDC is together with mass housing and DHCD. and there was a press release just today that went out. I guess you have that, Frances? I don't have the press release, but yeah, so mass housing, the owners was to start with our largest partners because they of course have the most units, but since then primarily CHAPA, so the Citizen Housing Planning and Advocacy Group have been in charge of sort of spreading it out. Basically it promises, it asks the landlords and managers to abide by and support the current CDC eviction moratorium, engage with residents and create payment plans, support and accept rental assistant payments, promote rented adjustments for qualified households that either have Section 8 or the mobile vouchers and encourage mediation. So, I've been just encouraging people to share it with other folks, so it can be from city council, but I think it can also be if anybody knows landlords that have a share of units, that we can also share it, I think. I just forwarded to Nate, if you wanna send it out to everybody, Nate. Yeah, thanks, Bob. Just gonna say it would be helpful if I could get a copy of that, Frances. Yes, and Nate, I'll share, Tom, did you share the Google Doc or the Word doc? This is an email I got from Mass Housing's press spike guy, Tom, Tom Farmer. Okay, I'll share what I have too, just in case, Nate. Oh, great, yeah, thanks. Yeah, I mean, some landlords, both for renters and business owners and some seem pretty willing to work with their tenants and some of the larger ones in town, I think are frustrated because not only is it tenants and there's also some students, I know some of them are feeling pressure because they've lost rent from different types of renters. And so it is interesting in Amherst with so many student rentals, would we modify this? What's the, would a landlord, some of the larger ones in Amherst be wary of signing it because they may have student renters who have kind of abandoned their leases, whereas smaller renters may be fine because they actually wanna help their tenants. I just, is there a way to nuance it to fit the tailored to Amherst if we need to? But no, I think it's a good idea. With the rental program, we have asked landlords to sign on actually saying that they would, originally it was kind of almost similar to this, but now it's just to work with the agreement. And Janna said that all but one landlord has been really willing to work with the rental assistance program. I guess one was hesitant for whatever reason to sign an agreement with the town. So. Okay, moving on. I'll mention two other things quickly that Somerville has done. They created a program called the Housing Stability Notification Act. And essentially what it means is that when landlords send a notice to quit to a household, they also have to send them information about resources that can be used to try to prevent eviction for potential sources of funding that would enable them to pay their rent or pay the arrears. And so landlords are actually required to do this in Somerville when they send out a notice to quit to households. So that's something in principle, the town could do. I do wanna say that when we start getting into things the town can do, we do have to recognize there are limitations on the number and availability of staff in town hall to implement something like this. Somerville has an entire office of housing stability that's separate from other housing offices that they have. So they're a slightly larger locality than Amherst is. And it's easier for them to do things like this. Nonetheless, they may be things that we wanna consider. The last thing that I think would be more difficult to implement in Amherst is an eviction moratorium. The city of Somerville actually has an eviction moratorium that I believe came into place before the state's eviction moratorium and continues even though the state's eviction moratorium has ended. While I, on the one hand, I could say I would like to see town council adopt something like that. I mean, Somerville adopted that back in March or April after a lot of consideration. And so I'm not sure that it makes sense at this point to ask town council to adopt something like that. Although it may. So there are a number of things that Somerville, Cambridge, and Boston have done, possibly other localities that Amherst could consider. And Pat, I'll resend the memo of things that, of these ideas that I did send to town council. Actually, I think I resend it to both Lynn and Paul as well. But it just adds something else to a group that has a lot on its plate, as you suggested earlier before we were recording. Yeah, but this is important too, so. Yeah, okay. Well, let me go on to the agenda item that we skipped. I see Kevin Nuna is here. So, Nate, if you could add Kevin in and that'll give us a chance to hear from him about what's happening with the seasonal shelter or shelters in Amherst as of November one. Kevin, you're a panelist now, so you can unmute yourself and start your video if you have that. Okay, I think there it is. Hi, how are you? Thanks for joining us, Kevin. I just had this Twilight Zone experience. I went to your email, John. I clicked on the link and I ended up in the CPA meeting. And I kept saying, where are they? Oh, I don't know why. What's it? I do know why because I went to the CPA meeting earlier today and I may have given you the wrong link. It's okay. They seem like nice people. I do know Sarah Marshall, but I don't know what else there's no idea what these people are talking about. It was all about money. So thank you for the invitation. So you had asked me to talk about Craig's doors, the changes that have gone. Is that, can you see me? Is it okay? Yes. Okay. So the Baptist church with COVID-19, the Baptist church wasn't big enough. And we just didn't have the space. So we shopped around and talked about Twilight Zone experiences. I was negotiating with the Emmanuel Lutheran in the middle of it. The pastor asked me to meet with the Executive Committee and he never sent the link. And I kept texting him asking when the poor man died at the age of 48 or 47. I don't know. It was just like, wow, this can't get any worse. But finally the Unitarian Society of Amherst did come forward and say that unanimously the board voted to do it. And it's a beautiful room. I've never been in it. It's where we have the community of breakfast every Wednesday. But we can only fit about 14 beds in there. We were hoping for 16, but there just isn't enough space there either. With the six foot separation. And then we were able to rent the University Lodge, the University Motor Lodge, I think it was formerly called. And owned by Kurt Shumway in the Hampshire Hospitality Group. And that's up on 345 North Pleasant Street, right? Sort of where North Pleasant Triangle and East Pleasant all converge at that rotary. And that's going pretty well. I got a text from Kurt the other day saying, how's it going? And it seems quiet from my perspective. And we said, yeah, it looks like a busy hotel. That's all a motel. People tell me that they haven't slept in a bed in five years or are just so honored to be in there. One guy had been homeless about a year. He's out breaking. I said, they have a company that comes to do that. The hotel does that. And he just wanted to show his appreciation. So far, so good. So the motel was also useful because the Health Department wanted us to have a negative COVID-19 test result before we let people into the congregate site. But they did make a concession on the motel. So because if someone were positive, where would you send them back out to the streets? Or can you get them to Everett? I hope you saw the article today in the paper, that the only quarantine site is in Everett. It's about 100 miles away. Probably not far from Somerville. Anyway, so we have an assistant climbing up here with me. She'll probably get into the picture pretty soon. Anyway, we, there you go. We, what was I talking about? Totally distracted by this cat. We are grateful that we have this motel. And so far, so good. We are prioritizing women and elderly in the motel or those with special needs. And some mental health problems or something like that. And then everybody else is down at the Unitarian Meeting House. There we have 14 beds. We've prioritized nine for men and five for women. And then of all the women's beds are now filled. We conditionally allocate those to men. So there's only about two women down there that either didn't want to go to the motel or we didn't want to bring them there because of past behaviors. So it's just now the two. And then tonight I was told that we're full all together there. And we've got one room left at the motel. I don't know what we're going to do when we're full all over. But that's a problem because in the middle of the winter, especially in the middle of the pandemic, this is a blessing to have a motel in the middle of the pandemic. But it's also going to be a real frustration when there isn't any more space. And there's no resolution yet with North Hampton as to what they're doing with their... They can't use the high school like they did last year. So they're finding some other hotel, I guess, or some church maybe. They haven't announced it yet. They're hoping to find some space that they can use. How many spaces are there? How many spaces are there in the motel? 20 rooms. And so if there was an existing relationship, we allowed people to double up. So we have a father and a son and two couples. So that adds three more. Yeah. And I don't think there are any others. Oh, there's one potentially the son of one of the women that lives there might join her. So that would be 24 then. But we don't want to create really. We don't want people to say, oh, yeah, yeah, we're a couple. No, we're not doing that. Because we would be then unsure of what we're creating and who's behind that door and what's going on there, you know? So, yeah. And John, you had a question? No, Carol asked my question. Oh, there you go. So do you also use the motel then as if someone tests positive and they're in the UU social hall to move? No, they can't get into the UU without a negative test result. Oh, okay. So that's solid, you can't do that. But they will agree to let us put people in the motel if they've just had a test because they're individual rooms and they can shut the door and have their own bathroom. And so, but if anybody tests positive in either site, they're, we would contact MIMA through the command center, the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency and they would be offered a ride to Everett to this motel in Everett. And they would remain there for, I think it's 10 or 14. I think it's 10. I think quarantine is 14, but 10 is whatever, until they produce a negative test result. They would stay there. And also if someone needs quarantining once we're full, they can also go to Everett provided they've had a test. The problem with that is that the results come back in 24 to 48 hours. So you could be shipped down 100 miles down the third bike and then the day after tomorrow, okay, you're done, see you and they'll send you back. But it's better than nothing. And the quality in Northampton was the MIMA site, but they wouldn't, at that time, they wouldn't let anybody in except COVID positive cases. And that was a real frustration as we could have sent a whole bunch of people over there just to be sheltered. So the motel over in Northampton sat there for a better part of the summer with nobody there. So MIMA decided to close the one there and to close the one in Pitchfield and Lexington I think was the other one. And now they only have the Everett facility. You guys all know that during Boston, then there's Boston, there's 495 in a specific ocean. Anything in between is flyover country. It's hard to get Boston's attention, but we do really need a regional place for people to quarantine and isolate. A year ago, you had some space at Hampshire College, I believe. I guess that's changed. It's not possible now that the college. Well, yeah, you're right. They were not open when they sent everybody home. And so the town managers and alum and the president is doing what he can to cooperate with the town. And it wasn't needed because we tested everybody on April 29th and there were no staff, no guests, and thank God, there was no one who tested positive. So we of course immediately asked, can we have that site anyway? And the answer was no. And then we asked for a Wildwood school and the answer was no. But now all of those, they're not in the play right now because Wildwood's resuming I believe and Hampshire's resumed already. Now whether there's gonna be any wiggle room over the period of time when they leave because I think most schools are cutting short or curtailing their semester. So that people leave around Thanksgiving and don't come back till February, that'd be great. But I don't know that there's any plan to do that. The Lincoln apartments also on Lincoln Avenue, I think are being used by UMass for quarantine and isolation. But they're not extending that to anyone from the community that we serve. It's only people from the UMass student body and faculty I believe, I don't even know if that's faculty. Maybe you may know that, I don't know, do you know? No, I don't. Can I do a question? Are you at capacity right now between the two sites? We're at capacity at the UU tonight for the first time since November 1st. And we have one room left at the motel which will probably get filled tomorrow. So that's gonna be a problem as we move forward because there's nothing, I mean, where else do you put them? Well, Kevin, I wanna say congratulations on opening two sites. Thank you. Yes, it's been a little nerve-wracking but we got it done. I think that's great. There were some doubt in my mind at various points in this process, especially when we hadn't ramped it up with the negotiations with the UU. They had a beautiful congregational conversation or whatever you wanna call it. And like 99% of the people who were there were speaking in favor of it. And it was very, very moving. I've also been a member there for 29 years but in this case, I was the petitioner. But people who are associated with the UU and the community breakfast really value it and want to expand the role. So we really appreciate their stepping up. That's great. Do you have staffing issues with having to maintain two sites? Any of you guys wanna work the overnight shift? We're looking for overnight people. Yeah, we're ramping up. It just takes a while to get it done because we're a seasonal shelter or have been up till now. We have to rehire new people each season. The other thing to note is that the UU is only closed through May. So once they reopen, there's no room for a shelter program in their social hall. So we're going to have, and I think Pat and I have had some conversations around this, we need to find a more permanent site because we all agree that church spaces or congregation spaces aren't really appropriate for shelters anymore, especially with COVID. So we need to find a more permanent site. Where that's gonna be, I have no idea. What funds can we get? If you're having trouble spending all your money, can you reallocate it to help us with this particular issue? Yeah. We'd like to spend the money on finding places for your folks to live permanently, Kevin. That'd be perfect. But right now that your program doesn't extend to people who are homeless, right? Or have you changed that? No, I mean, we don't control any housing right now, but we do our best to support people who are developing housing, you know, like... No, but I thought that the program that you set up recently only applies to people who are in danger of losing their housing. You and I conversed about that. Oh, yeah, the Emergency Rental Assistance Program, right? It's limited to people who are at risk of losing their housing. But do you think that might change with you folks at some point if it's not, if you're not able to spend all the money you've got? Not immediately. Again, I think Wei Ling has applied through Amherst Community Connections to the Community Preservation Act Committee for funds to continue to provide rental assistance that she has in the past. Right. And we supported that. So I don't know, maybe we'll, at some point, find a way to make that kind of program more permanent than Amherst. Well, we have 14 rapid rehousing subsidies that we're gonna try and get people out of these places and we have space. Wow. But again, we're ramping up, trying to hire the people we need to do that. So maybe I need to get together with Tom to find out how Raft is doing. If they've got 20 people down there, maybe we can tap into that as well. 20 offices or 20 people? I had heard 20 new staff, but I had just met with their new executive director about a month ago and he was talking, he was taking me on a tour of his new facility that he inherited when he came in. Yeah, it's beautiful space. He pointed to all these offices that were supposedly originally going to be used to house his development team. And he said, of course, they can't move in there now because we need it all for our emergency assistance folks. Hey, I've got a question, Kevin. Yes, sir. Number one, I know you were kind of joking, but I for one would be willing to volunteer for a night. I don't know how often, but I think if we could get the word out that you need that. Yeah, it's something, I don't know how often I could do it, but you know, they do require all us, they also do require us to have a COVID test first. So, but yeah, that's not hard. We can send you over to the clinic for that. And if, yeah, if they can give you the test results within less than a week. No, I think we get them like within 48 hours. That's great. That's great. Kevin, if you can send me a call for volunteers, I'd be absolutely willing to send it out to my own mailing list. I dropped my pen just before that question came up so now, but I will, I know how to get a hold of John and you can forward it to Tom as well. That'd be great. No, send it out to the whole, you know, I think... Well, yeah. I'm obviously not gonna fulfill the whole need, but you can get it broadly distributed. I bet there's a lot of people in the community who would be willing to give up a night a month or... Well, that's the way it always was at the cop shelter over in Northampton. And we had that same thing going on at the Baptist church in the earlier days. But when COVID came, we lost a ton of volunteers. We also lost all the food that we used to get from UMass. Students ran this thing called the Food Recovery Network. Well, first of all, there's not that many students. And then second of all, UMass dining commons isn't permitting any food to go out anymore. You're talking about prepared food, right? Yeah, food that they didn't like in the blue wall or the Berkshire dining comet that they didn't serve. We used to get that and it was damn good. Very nice stuff. In fact, I think UMass has a good reputation for campus food. So we used to be the beneficiaries of that. Well, now there's nothing. We have nothing anymore. And we've asked Amherst College and no luck there and Hampshire College, I think they just take your order and make it that day since there's so few people. So they don't have a lot of waste. But yeah, it's unfortunate. There's a group nationally you must have heard of run by this internationally famous chef who... Oh yeah, the Spanish guy? Jose Andres. Yes, the guy from Spain. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I should probably try to get next to him and say, no, we're not next to him. Well, I don't know. Contact him and find out. I don't know if there's any local branch of that work, but you're right. I know Rachel's table. I mean, I was down at one of our properties today and they were handing out these big boxes of food, but it's not prepared. You know, it's a gallon of milk and a bag of potatoes and probably not what you were exactly looking for. No, that doesn't hurt. But yeah, we used the food bank too, for stuff like that for the boat. But there's a danger of the USDA food now is being cut as of December 31st. So that's gonna hurt. Yeah. In fact, the food bank is asking people to send letters to their legislators. So just one other question. It's sort of a policy question, Kevin. If you could use the money to develop permanent supportive housing or support shelters, right? Yeah. Where would you prefer? Well, permanent supportive housing is always better. Housing is always better. Hotels are better than shelters. Permanent housing is better than a motel. So yeah, that's the best. But there's a couple of problems in Amherst. One is available land. But maybe we can use the football field behind 132, Northampton, I don't know. They don't seem to be using it. But yeah, land is a problem and cost in a town like this. It's very expensive, very expensive. And most developers don't wanna do affordable housing. And we've had examples of all up and down in North Pleasant Street where I don't think one single unit of affordable housing is in any of those units. I don't know how that happened, but it did. But if you added up all the visits to the emergency rooms and all the other social costs associated with taking care of the homeless, I think you'd find that it's cost effective. Yeah, absolutely. Permanent supportive housing, yeah. Absolutely. It's far better. But unfortunately in the Moingland winters when there's no option for that thing, and it's gonna get worse. It's gonna get worse with the eviction moratorium ending on October 17th. So it's gonna be, you know, we're just starting to see new people that we've never heard of before, but we don't know if that's because of the eviction moratorium. We haven't really had a chance to do the intake and find out how they got there. But it's gonna get worse before it gets better. Kevin, in addition to putting out a call for volunteers, is there something else that the housing trust could do to try to support the work that you're doing with Craig's doors? Well, keep us posted on whether or not you changed the regs because maybe if we could get first lesson security out of you folks, that would be a start for Tom's point. We can get people into an apartment, maybe have. And one of the things that's hard to do with the government sources, it's hard to get shared living arrangements, but we might be able to do that with some people, not all, but, you know, to make it more affordable. Treat them as though they were student housing. I mean, up to four people can stay in an unrelated, can stay in a unit. So maybe that would help, but we have to be careful about who. And the other problem is with our population, we're a low threshold shelter. So we're taking people who are addicted or mentally ill in some cases. So you can't just give them a key to an apartment necessarily and say, I hope you all get along. I think Wayling did try that on Route 9 there, Amherst Road or whatever it's called, Belchertown Road. Yeah. And then it closed because, you know, she didn't have the supervision. And I think one guy led a chair on fire and went out to do some shopping somewhere and practically burned the place down. And another guy got in a knife fight with somebody else. So you really do need supervision. And I don't mean to disparage the people we serve. They're all very nice, but they do need to have somebody kind of watching the store. That's our covenant with them. You sleep, we watch, so. But yeah, but if you're dealing with sober housing, you know, like, I don't know if you're familiar with the Oxford House model, if you have a group of people who are staying sober and want to live together, that would be ideal for the kind of thing I'm proposing. Yeah. You might consider, I have some experience with the house in North Carolina that this eight guys live together and they're exempt under the ADA. So they can have more people. And it's people who are staying sober. And if they show up, not sober, then they're asked to leave immediately and they can come back, but they have to get sober again. But, you know, not tomorrow, but, you know, let's go to a program or whatever. Kevin, that would help. Kevin, you mentioned you have some rapid rehousing. Is it vouchers or do you find that you can house people in Amherst or is it usually outside? Well, we haven't actually filled one yet, but we tried to use the fair market rental rate and we put it into the budget. But the other concern, but they keep reassuring us is the state has not actually finalized our contract because in the middle of all this contract negotiation came the decision to pursue funding from FEMA. So they're now gonna ask us to also get reimbursed for the shelter expenses and the motel expenses by FEMA so they can conserve their ESG dollars for other things. The upshot of that is that we still don't have a contract and we called them the other day and said, you know, we're gonna run out of money soon. So can you send us a cash advance or something? And they're working on it, but it's a real concern. So we don't actually have those subsidies yet in place because we don't have a finalized contract with them. But they were based on the fair market rate in Amherst for one bedroom or two bedroom. We weren't gonna have that many two bedrooms, but a studio or one bedroom, we could have that. Does anybody else have any questions or comments for Kevin? Or the cat, if you like. Or the cat. She's, it's like when my kids were small, they saw me with a newspaper, they would just jump in my lap. This cat, she sees me sitting in a chair. There she is. Kevin, it almost looks like a skunk when you first picked it up. It does, I was gonna say. She's about 15, that's right. She, speaking of affordable housing, she was, I worked on a project when I worked at Open Pantry called the 32 Buyer Street. And that's where we got her. She was hanging around, right next to where the sprinkler armory is. And there's a lot of open space there. And she was hanging around that housing project that we built. Well, thanks very much for joining us, Kevin. And my apologies for sending you the wrong link. No, it was just, it's been a bad week for that for me. And then I didn't know how to ask the question. Like, am I in the right room? But anyway, and I don't even know if they noticed I was there. So I finally left. That's where I got Nate's message saying, hey, where are you? Okay. All right, well, thank you all. I appreciate the work you do. Thank you, Kevin, for all the work that you're doing. And Rita, I haven't seen you since town meeting. Didn't we used to sit next to each other and tell me that you and your husband? I think so. Good to see you. Take care. Bye. Thanks very much. Okay. So now we're gonna move on to the third major item on our agenda, which is reviewing and updating the housing trust strategic plan. I do wanna be sure that we leave time to go into executive session. So I think we'll take this conversation as far as we can. It may require some more thought on us, on our parts. And so we may not be able to finish it this evening, but nonetheless, let's get started. And Erica and Rita, do you wanna go over the major points? I do appreciate your sending out the information in advance. And actually, I think it's pretty accessible, but I'll let you both talk about this. Or Erica, do you wanna start? Would you rather have me start? Well, my question is more of a process question because we do have the one pager, which I believe was sort of compiled and we went over it last time. But the process question is, Rita did a great job. She actually bought a converter from PDF to Word. So she could put the information in there so you could see it exactly where it exists and it's much more concrete than having a one pager. So I don't know if you wanna go through the pages or you just wanna do an overview. So that's the question. I mean, if people have had an opportunity to read it, I think we could go through it and see what people think in terms of our additions. I think there aren't that many pages. No. I think that the main substance of what you're recommending is really stretched out across about two pages. Exactly. So I think we should talk about what you've got kind of line by line or goal by goal or something like that. Sure. Because the things that are at the back of the document. Really are, well, I won't say irrelevant, but creating a new long range budget for the housing trust would depend in part on what we decide about these goals. Right. There's no point in jumping there tonight. Okay. All right, well, if you wanna go straight to page four, we decided or we decided to recommend. So these are all just recommendations and it's up to the group to make a decision. But to add goal number four, identify and secure funding resources. And I think I can just tell you from my point of view in reading this and also looking actually looked at Cambridge where they actually had quote unquote an endowment. And obviously we're in a different place than Cambridge and Harvard was the one that provided the endowment. We also have Amherst College. I know Hamturas is financially in a bind, but looking at how to create enough funding where we have our own independence and we can think about how to utilize that funding. So goal number seven, we thought was important to add and to think about that. What are the different ways that we can actually create a larger fund and not be so dependent on the CPC or other more restrictive funding. Rita, did you wanna add anything to that? Yeah, no, I think it's really about recognizing that without funding and a secure source of funding either through an endowment or routine awards of CPA money, the trust just survives from year to year about financially. So this is to try to think long-term longer range about how to capitalize the trust so it can do more. Rita, have you sent me that quickly? I'm having trouble finding it. I don't know if then I could share it on Zoom if you want. Yes, I can't find it either. I thought I had it, but it's just the clean PDF. I think, Nate, you sent it to us. That would be great, because I can't find it either. So do you want me to send the current one or the marked one? It has the additions to it. Yeah, the one they're talking about. Right, Nate, you sent it out because I had to find it too. So I believe it was in your email, Nate. But I thought you had made changes. I can't find the something that what you do. Yeah, there was a red line version. Yeah, let me see if I can find it. I'm operating off of a laptop. I'd have to switch computers. Nate, I sent you something earlier today, which were my detailed plan for the meeting. And that included a page or slightly over a page, maybe two pages that summarize this material. It was a red line version, John. Remember you had asked me to do a red line version of the... And so... Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, I have what I have. Because I pulled out what you did. And let me see if I can find it. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, I had emailed Jen and I never heard back from her. So I just did a conversion on the PDF to a Word document and then I did a red line version. I mean, I can go, I just have to... No, that's fine. I think Jen uses like InDesign or something. And so... Yeah, it was easy enough to do. I got it into Word document and then I did, you know, I edited within the Word document. Right, I don't have a... I just found it. I found it, it's an email from John from Friday, November 6th. And it has, it's the trust action plan with edits. Right. And that has the red line. Okay. You want to send it to Nate and you can send it out. Yes, fine. I look to my, yeah, I'm not finding it in my email. I don't... What I notice is if I go into my email, I'm going to have to get out of Zoom. Francis, were you able to send it to Nate? Thanks. Yeah, John, I was trying to search by keyword too and nothing was coming up. I don't know. It was one of four attachments that I sent. Yep. A week or so ago to everybody. On November 6th, did you say... Yeah. Something like that. There were a lot of emails from you, John. Well, there's a lot going on, Erica. What can I say? And let me tell you, every email I appreciate, but I actually did want to piggyback on the fact that goal number seven, if we don't have an independent to some extent endowment, we have to depend on someone as dynamic as John to go in front of the CPAC and to constantly advocate for money. And so, if we lose a leader like John, that's the other piece. So, is to try to create enough of stability for us that if we go through a transition where we either don't have the CPAC that is very generous for others, we'll have lean years. Well, I appreciate that, Erica, and it's not that I disagree. I think adding that goal is a great idea. On the other hand, I think I see it as something we need to do in addition to relying on Community Preservation Act money. I mean, right now we're probably getting something in the neighborhood of half a million dollars a year in CPA money between, and I don't mean the trust is, I mean money that they're spending on community housing. Our strategic planning consultant, Jen Goldson, said that we should try to negotiate an agreement with CPAC in which they give us the authority to determine all community housing spending under a fixed budget. But even if we had that authority, it even was as much as a half a million dollars a year, honestly, that would be sufficient for the goals that at least I personally would like to see. It would be about 50%. So we need, as you say, to have additional sources of funding that go beyond what we can get from Community Preservation Act funds. I absolutely agree with that. Where we get that, how we go about it is not something that I have any immediate ideas about though. So one of the things that is in the strategic plan that I saw is that there's a proposal of an annual, all of us getting together and really thinking through and strategizing. So it's something to consider. This is just our recommendation in adding this to the strategic plan, but it also, there's a existing recommendation that yearly that we come together and really think about those goals and have they changed? Do we need to do more strategizing regarding the specificity of the goals? So just as a reminder. Okay, so next, before you turn to that page, actually at the bottom of page four, one of the other areas that we thought was important was right there was to update because there's a lot in the strategic plan that has been addressed. And so to give ourselves that credit and updating those areas, I think it'd be worth considering making those updates. So go ahead, you can go to the next page. Let me just stop for a minute, Erica, and just ask if anybody disagrees with the idea that we should make it a priority to identify other sources of funding. Yeah, I think I was on a call or a workshop and people, I forget which one, but people were talking about how to get money, but then people were talking about land donation or other possibilities for resources. And I just think that, John, you do a lot of outreach with other communities, but it would be good if we did meet periodically to discuss that and had other ideas because just as we are witnessing with the CPA now, if we were making a big request, but then the CPA also is becoming more competitive, we may not be able to rely on that as a funding source when it's needed. It's hard to bankroll a lot of money. Even if we have local banks that we're willing to lend. I mean, at some point, the trust can incur debt or other things. So is there other programs that we could use or ways to leverage things if we needed to outside of traditional bonding about the town? Those are things that we haven't explored as a trust yet. Yeah, well, we can certainly consult with Shelly Gurring of MHP. She would be familiar with what other town trusts, housing trusts have done around the state. I'm not sure I've had that conversation with her, but if I haven't, I'm certainly willing to do that now. Yeah. Okay, great. So FY 2022 was pretty much trying to reflect some of the things that we have discussed and we've incorporated. So number seven, just adding, establishing new or expanding existing rental and ownership housing assistant, research how to improve access to existing programs. So that sort of reflects some of the work that we're currently doing. And so just to make it more specific and reflective. I don't know if it's useful for me to read all of these. You can read them yourself. Well, let's take them one by one, Eric, and see if people have comments on them. Yeah, so number seven. Sorry for number 11, explore opportunities for conservation-based development. What do we mean by conservation-based development? Rita, do you wanna address that? Yeah, basically, Amherst has been pretty ambitious about acquiring open space and using CPA funds and sometimes a combination of CPA and other funds. And when the town is doing that, can we look at, such as with, I think it's Hickory Ridge, can a part of that parcel of whatever's acquired then be dedicated for housing so that you're combining. And it has been done in the past in Amherst. I, way back in the early days, I believe it was Misty Meadows, which was a home ownership development. It was part of a larger conservation acquisition and then a piece of property over there was dedicated for first-time home buyers. So that's what we mean by conservation-based development. Yeah, you're looking at a piece of property that has some frontage on a road. And hopefully it's a road that is a major road in town or one that might have access to buses or whatever public transportation we have. The city of Northampton has done this. I know I've talked occasionally to Dave Zomac about it and he is interested in principal, but I'm not sure he's identified a property yet of which we could do this with the exception of Hickory Ridge, as Rita just mentioned. I think the other thing I'd like to say is that it seems like landowners are excited to put land in conservation. I think there's been a lot written about that in terms of benefits and maybe tax write-offs. And I feel like there hasn't been as much of a promotion about you can get some of the same benefits if you partner and put it into affordable housing as well. So I think it's a win-win and I think it's something that just needs more promotion, whether it's a policy directive or if it's just something that needs more education and outreach to landowners, is it something that we did it with Hawthorne too on a much smaller scale as a habitat in two homes. But I agree, I feel like there could be opportunities where landowners have land where a lot of it could be conservation, but a fair amount could also be for housing. And is there a way to have, even create a small subdivision, John, on land, not just having frontage, but even if there's enough to have a road in. I mean, so yeah, I think that's a one interesting opportunity. So if you look from seven to 11, there probably are strongest recommendations. So like research how to improve access to existing programs as our subcommittees doing some of that work. And then John, you just also talked today about possibly using the money that we had for our program to help and assist people to get into existing programs. So it's just reflective of what we've actually been talking about. The number eight, and I might just recommend to just state pandemics or disasters versus specifically COVID because there's gonna be another disaster pandemic that we're going to probably have to deal with in the future. But it's to really reflect the fact that, we also recognize that there's an opportunity to develop and support programmatically legislative in policy housing to mitigate effects of a disaster or a pandemic on low and moderate income households. And that's exactly what the program is that we've developed to do. Explore new existing revenues. We just talked about that. Erica, let's stop with number eight and ask people have comments on it. Sorry. It's okay. I mean, I have a comment. I like the way that you're broadening it because I felt like just talking about COVID-19 which hopefully won't be with us for more than another year or so was too narrow. Yeah. So if we're talking about dealing with emergencies or disasters, that actually makes better sense to me in terms of how to formulate a goal like this. Yeah. Yeah, Matt. And I like it. It goes hand in hand with the conversation we had tonight about are there like the pledge to not evict from landlords and are there, would we have a suite of tools that we could implement if something were to happen? So if it's familiar, if it can be outreached easily then it could be more effective. So some of these are, what we're doing with the rental assistance program is kind of the town's first time doing it and same with business relief programs we're kind of reinventing things or trying it again for the first time in 15 years. But if it becomes something that we have documented well and we can go back to it pretty easily that would be really helpful. Okay. Number nine we just talked about. So I'm not going to read it. It's just really more stability in terms of our funding and thinking about financial stability for the next five years and looking at other resources. So number 10, it was actually written throughout here but just to more focus on the zoning bylaws because it seems like the zoning bylaws could have a huge impact on creating more affordable housing. So to impact that in the next two years trying to have an impact on that. And I think we were going to research. There's, Rita helped me with this. There was a woman who actually did some research on it in terms of zoning bylaws and we were going to look into what she found. She did an analysis of it. Amy, I think it's Amy Dain study, right? That was someone else, Judy Barrett. Oh, okay. So Judy Barrett had done some work for the town and I think what Eric and I talked about with this one is as Erica pointed out, the zoning has a big impact on the production of affordable units in town and there is inclusionary zoning but it hasn't seemed to, because of the way it's written a lot of new development has not had any affordable units included. And so it's something that the trust shouldn't be taking on itself. Obviously it's within the purview of the planning board but to work cooperatively and maybe Rob has some ideas but to revisit this with town staff and the planning board about what the trust's interests are. I would wonder if people who have more experience, Pat or Carol or John, Nate, I remember all the struggles we went through trying to get zoning changes through the town meeting. Does anybody think it's going to be easier with town council? Oh, a lot easier. No, I think the... Well, it can't get harder, but... Yeah, I mean... Good job. One of the previous trust meetings, I think I had said I would work with Rob to write a letter to the planning board about different zoning measures and it's still on my list. And I agree, I think zoning is a really powerful tool. It's not just inclusionary zoning, it's also how the town defines apartments right now and how it's permitted makes it really limited for different multifamily types of development of where and how it can be developed. So, and there's other ones too. So I think it could be, I mean, it's interesting. Not that the trust wouldn't write the zoning, but I think the trust would have to be a big proponent of it to encourage the planning board to investigate it. So, with this whole 40R, for instance, it's been a year and a half or two years of 40R, granted it was extended because of COVID, but just recently the planning board, after the last presentation, now some planning board members are saying, I think 40R might actually be worthwhile to pursue, but it took a year and a half to get there. And so I think, for the next few years, it may be that the trust can help outline priorities in terms of zoning changes. So, staff had done that a few years ago and I think that we could revisit it and strengthen it. So I do think that is really important. If there's a citizen petition, for instance, to change inclusionary zoning, what does the trust, the planning board might say, what does the trust think about that? And if we've already outlined a position, then we're ready to go. Even if we have some ideas about how we think inclusionary zoning could work better, I just, once it gets into the petition or something happens, it's like, we're almost retroactive trying to work with it, but it'd be great if we got something out there first. Yeah. What I would say is that, you know, for some folks, it'd be a fairly sharp learning curve. And, you know, perhaps if there was a, not the entire trust, but if there was a subcommittee, you know, a few people, trust members who are willing to work on this and perhaps have some of your time. And I know Rob has a lot of expertise. So maybe he's willing to step up, but to kind of shape some policy suggestions about how the zoning might be friendlier or multi-family production. I'm also happy to help with that. I've done my fair share of looking at different zoning and how it helps her does not help creation of housing. I also think that there's a little bit of an impetus now with Cambridge finally being able to pass the affordable housing overlay district that basically covers the entire city. I know that Somerville's starting to do it now too because Cambridge is doing it. So I also think that there's potential possibility and it of course takes a lot of time to change zoning, but once you change it, it takes a long time, but I think the change can happen there. I remember it was enormously frustrating watching that process with the planning board going to the town meeting and getting shot down because they didn't have the super majority and it just people felt like it was, you know, almost, you know, not worth the effort to try to get any changes to the zoning. But if there's really is a perception that there'll be an easier path now, I think it'd be great. 40B is not enforceable here, right? You can't override the ZBA. So if there was a real concerted intentional plan to make affordable housing as of right, that would be awesome. Just to come back to 40R for a minute, it was Rita and I with the support of the housing trust that wrote the grant proposal with assistance from Nate to Mass Housing Finance to get support for consultants to come in and work with the town on 40R. As Nate suggested, it has not been an easy process. And part of the reason it hasn't been an easy process is to be honest, it's not clear who's on first. It's not clear to me that the planning board remains in charge of our zoning bylaws. I believe at some point the town council said, oh, we want the community resources committee to do the work on developing zoning bylaws, not the planning board. Now, Pat, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but to me at the moment, there's some confusion about who's in charge or who's really tasked with the development of changes to the zoning bylaws at this point in time. There's a lot of confusion right now. We have a retreat on Saturday and one of the agenda items is council committees versus committees, council committee versus the planning board and the zoning board and who should be doing that work. And so right now, and I was gonna bring up CRC, which is called Community Resource Committee. And I feel like it interfered also with the affordable housing proposals for affordable housing plans that you had generated. And so if you wanted to participate in that meeting, it's an open meeting that might be very helpful to talk about some of the kind of chaos that's been created by a council committee taking the responsibility from the committee that is really charged with the work. Well, since I've already butted heads with some of the people who are responsible for that, I'm not sure I wanted to participate, but I appreciate the invitation, Pat. Anything that you can send me around what you're thinking, John, would be helpful and I could use it on Saturday when we're having this conversation. Okay, thank you. Okay, so paying attention to time, page 21. It's an update, first paragraph is just to really update. We saw that, you know, just updated to ensure that it's clear that there was a merger that took place with the trust and that now operates with a nine board. It was just sort of clarification. So it's just on top of page 21, just on top right there where the green is. And so we don't have this in here, but it is one of our recommendations on the one page or which is the subcommittees or work groups to really sort of define some of the subcommittees and work groups and also the responsibility that if you make a decision to be part of the Amherst Municipal Housing Trust that you actually agree to volunteer to work on a committee. So that's sort of solidified. So when you start off, you can read it right there what your commitment is as a member to participate in that and to maybe even identify some committees that, you know, we might want to have a standing committees. Any comments? Getting with the financing committee. Yes, absolutely. I like that. I did it for a second. I do like that because it's kind of the expectation. So we're not, you know, we're not catching people off guard thinking that, oh, you know, I can join the trust and I can attend a monthly meeting, but that there is some expectation of additional work. So, you know, we just, for instance, we just have three new members on the block grant committee and, you know, some of the members are saying, oh, well, it looks like you just kind of do work in the fall to get proposals ready. And then that's it. I'm like, well, no, actually, you know, we have a public hearing in May and we may have to meet and we allocate funding and, you know, this and that. And they're like, oh, okay. But I think that if they just looked recently out, you know, the calendar, they think it's only, you know, a three or four month commitment. I mean, it is busy during those times. So same thing with the trust. I mean, I think everyone knows it's a standing board or committee, but it'd be nice to think that, you know, there could be three or four working groups that they put their effort into. I do like that. There was something else that I read in here that I thought was really important that could also possibly be a committee. And that is to create a communication strategy and package and toolkit. I think, you know, a lot of us depend on John to get the information out. And then he lets us know about the hearings. And then we write, you know, are either our letters or we go to a hearing, but to actually have a strategy to keep affordable housing on the radar constantly and tool kits and possible, you know, the quick messages that can be sent out or press releases or editorials. So, you know, that could be, you know, a committee as well. Just to constantly keep it on the radar for Amherst residents, how important this is. Okay, so the last one is the next page. And this is just to update the five year budget. So that was sort of our last recommendation for updating the strategic plan. And I agree or be interesting to look at how we've actually spent money over the last five years or three or four years, whatever it is that we could look at because this was Jen Goldson's idea about what we should strive for. And quite honestly, I don't think that housing trust as it was assembled then ever really looked carefully into this. I mean, Tom, you were around then, obviously Nate was around. I don't know if anybody else was, but I don't think we really tried to pick apart what Jen proposed. We just said, okay, looks good. Let's leave it in the plan. Rita, did I miss anything? No, I don't think so. That covers it. Well, I do want to move on to talking about property acquisition for which we need to move into executive session. I appreciate the work that Erica, you and Rita have done on this. Do you want to vote on it, John, or is what will happen with the proposed revisions now? Well, I do want to do that at the next meeting. I think we should do it at the next meeting. There's, again, I think it was number eight, which we talked about broadening not to make it so narrow, but it just reflects on COVID. And now that we've had a little bit of discussion, people may be in a better position to vote on it if we bring it back to the next meeting. That's what I would feel comfortable doing at this point. And just like, you know, trust members know, you can also email comments to me and then I can, you know, shepherd them through to Rita and Erica. So, you know, if you have any other comments on this, you can always send me an email and then we can look at it again one more time. Okay, so thanks again for your work on this. I think that what you propose are not really dramatic changes, but things we've been kind of moving in this direction, but it makes sense to try to codify it as part of our public strategy for letting people know what the housing trust is wanting to do. So thank you. Okay, so now we need to move into executive session. We have two attendees. Well, I think I sent a link out to another, so I think like last time, John, the trust voted in public to go into executive session and then we closed this meeting and then I started the next meeting. And I'm going to leave and not participate in the executive session. And I'll add you to the trust group email just to make sure I'm not sure I have yet, but... Thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah, I've been sending things to you because I sent it to everybody on town council. Yeah, I just want to make sure I'm sending you a question. Okay, so I move that we end our regular meeting at this point in time, which is about 35 minutes after eight and move into executive session for the purpose of talking about the acquisition of property for affordable housing. And as I think I said last time, we're doing this because the information that we're talking about is confidential and it would affect the town's negotiating position or the trust negotiating position with respect to the seller or the property that we have in mind. So it's necessary that we end the public part of the meeting now. Is there a second? I second it. So I guess we need to do a roll call vote. So I vote yes, Tom. Yes, and I'm going to recuse myself. Right, thank you. Carol? Yes. Erica? Yes. Rob? Yes. Francis? Yes. And I think I've got everybody who's here. Did I leave anybody out? No. Okay, you know, we don't have any more attendees now. Yeah, I think though the... We should do it anyway. Okay. As soon as that someone could join and then, you know. Okay, so everybody, Nate did send out an email maybe an hour or two hours before we're meeting now. So we need to switch to that Zoom link. All right, thanks everyone. You know, I need to stop the recording and just do a few things. All right.