 All right. It is being recorded now. Okay. Probably everybody knows this, but a new town council has been elected. And at least tentatively. Evan Ross may no longer be a town councilor, although he lost by three votes. I don't know whether there's a. A recount or anything that might be involved there since it's only three votes. But George Ryan definitely lost by a larger margin. And of course a brewer and Sarah Swartz both of the both did not. Pursue continuing. And I count them all as advocates for affordable housing. So hopefully others will take their place. Since we always need advocates for affordable housing. Let's see the second thing I wanted to mention, and I actually sent people a copy of this. There was a legislative hearing on the transfer fee. The transfer fee, if you recall, is essentially. Something that localities or towns could elect. To implement and it would be a transfer fee. Of a certain percentage to be decided by the town. That would be applied to higher end real estate transactions. So that's, that's before the legislature. And. It's been around for at least two years before this. So it's uncertain exactly what its future will be, but hopefully it get passed. I think in a, the town council and also the housing trust had endorsed earlier versions of it. So I felt comfortable. Offering testimony in support. And the third thing that I wanted to mention. Is I was on a call. That Pamela Schwartz organizes. She's. The coordinator executive director. Of affordable housing in the Pioneer Valley. It's a. Basically Hampshire, Hampton, Franklin and Berkshire counties. Anyway, there was a report there. That said that the number of requests for funds. For people who threatened by eviction. Are increasing statewide. And I think those are requests for. Raft and also Irma funds. There was no data offered for Western Massachusetts, although I'd be surprised if it wasn't an issue for us here as well. So those are the three. Announcements I wanted to make. Let's see. I got a note from. From Linda Slakey saying that she's attending. Just so people know Laura Baker is also in attendance as is Nina while. And Linda seemed to think that Pam Rooney might be joining us as well. So we're still waiting for a quorum. Let's see. We can't really review minutes until we have a quorum. Because we have to agree to those. And then beyond that, the next item has to do with ARPA funding, which I won't go into until we have a quorum since it's. An important issue when there are a number of votes, we need to take there. Just to review the rest of the agenda. As Nate mentioned earlier, we'll be. Looking at the housing authority proposal to replace what is called the building envelope for the, it's John nutting building. And we'll also do a quick review of the trust proposals. And the town of Amherst proposals and decide whether we want to send a letter off to the community preservation act committee endorsing those. See, we don't necessarily need a quorum for this. Lucia and I did a draft proposal for Hickory Ridge. It's intended to be a first draft with the expectation that. We will have comments and we'll probably go through. Potentially. One or two other drafts on that before we go forward with something that we want to formally propose to the town. So. I guess I could skip down to that item. And see if people had a chance to look at that draft. And if there are comments on it. I know there's a lot of homework this week. So if people didn't get a chance, I certainly understand, but if anybody does have comments related to that. Obviously we'll be interested. I looked at it, but I can't say that I thought, wow, they did a lot of work. This looks good. That was kind of my. I don't know. Well. Thanks Carol. I appreciate that. Yeah, there's still things left to do. I noticed Dave Zomek is on the call and I know Dave had some. Reservations about my distributing it. But let me see if Dave, Dave had any comments on the proposal. Or the draft. Thanks John. Yeah, I too have had kind of a busy week and, and didn't have a whole lot of time to review it. I did, I did read through it. You know, nothing really jumped out at me. I appreciate you and others. Kind of getting, getting on top of this. You know, our planning process for Hickman. Jump started with our three public events. A couple of weeks ago on a Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and we had over 230 people there. And again, I, I think it's early. We don't own the property yet. We hope to close in the next 45 to 60 days. So I think any input from the trust for staff would be great. I do know I'm meeting with staff. Next week, I believe Nate. We have a planning staff meeting on Hickory. So yeah, we, we would kind of take under advisement. Any, any recommendations that the trust has. With regard to the, to the use of the property. I think John, your, your proposal does call out that. We don't know. A lot because we haven't, we don't own it. And we haven't spent a lot of time or, or any money on further investigating the developable land. So that will, you know, how much land is, is developable there will be, will be, you know, critical to some of the decisions we make down the road. So any recommendations that trust have would be great. I think I would, I think John, would like to move that forward. If I, if I move that forward, And you know, this is a long drive. The, this is a long drive. We've got a big plan for that. We're, we're, we're doing this all the way down the road. So any recommendations, the trust have would be great. I think I will ask Nate and Rob, Maura and Chris breast, and others to kind of come up with some scenarios. And, and they may be informed by what the trust recommends. So we appreciate it. Well, we're not recommending anything yet, of course. But it does strike me that one of the issues that's raised in the draft is whether we would have a development. development that would be all older adults, whether it would be mixed for any age, and I think as I thought about it as we were writing this up, it struck me that it would be harder to do a multi-age development if we only had five acres. If there's nine acres to play with there, then I think that's a little bit more likely. But it's hard for me to see how we would have enough property to have places for kids to have the kind of play equipment and other things that you'd want in a development that was for families if we only had five acres. So I'd be curious to see what you and your staff also think about that issue, Dave. No, it's a great question, John, and I think, you know, I don't want to speculate at this point. I would be very surprised if there's nine contiguous acres there that are available. The frontage on, and for those of you who haven't seen some of the maps of Hickory, the land along West Bromroy Lane is very, it's narrow. It's not a, I guess it's a long, narrow rectangle, you might say. It is not a square. It has got some intermittent streams and some wetlands. So yeah, we haven't done due diligence on that to look at the facts and stream protection and whatnot. And then of course, you know, I'm sure some of you have weighed in on Engage, Amherst, Hickory, and I know there's been a lot of support there for affordable housing on the site. And we also have to think what are the compatible, what are the other compatible uses on the frontage that is developable? So we'll want to retain some areas for parking for public parking, public access, those kinds of things. But it's a great opportunity. As I've said before, I think I've been working on the project, I think for over four years. And we're getting near the finish line, which is to own the property. And now I guess the hard work begins, which is to kind of create a vision for what we want the property to look like moving forward. So we look forward to your input and recommendations in the months ahead. Great. Great. I noticed Erica and Sid have joined us before we leave this topic, which I picked up because we really didn't need a quorum to talk about it. The either of you have any comments on the draft about the potential uses of Hickory Ridge for affordable housing? No, I see Sid. I was going to say I've liked all of the ones that have to do with affordable housing on the website. And I was also very happily surprised to see how many people really thought affordable housing was a really important, that would be an opportunity to create that there. Okay, thank you. I saw your chat message. So if you need to leave now. No, I left my husband at his family's house and said I had to go to this meeting. So I may be the odd one out in the family, but it is. Okay. Well, thanks for doing that, Erica. Yes. Okay. Let's go back to the beginning, more or less, of the agenda. I did kind of briefly go over the few announcements about the changes in town council, testimony, supporting the transfer fee and the fact that eviction support requests seemed to be increasing statewide. So our next issue is to review the minutes from the October meeting. And as usual, if there are comments on those, then we can make changes. If not, then we assume that the minutes are accepted as presented. Carol, you almost always have comments on minutes. I read them, but no, I didn't have any. I don't know. They look good. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Well, then, let's see. I think we should move on to the question of ARPA funding since it's a big issue. And there are a fair number of things for us to discuss. And as I said, we do now have a good quorum. So that's great. I just wanted to say that the state funding picture is still a bit uncertain. The House passed recommendations totaling $600 million. The Senate ways and means have made recommendations totaling $600 million. For those who don't know, the governor had originally proposed a billion dollars in ARPA funds. So the House and Senate are on a path to have $400 million less than what the governor had planned or proposed for the ARPA budget, which is a bit disappointing. Although the sense that I get from advocates, the few advocates that I talk to is they're all feeling pretty good about the $600 million. I'm not sure I feel that good about it, but that's what they feel. I'd like to have the other $400 million. Let's see. Both of the Senate and the House budgets do have money for creating permanent supported housing, for some for home ownership assistance, some for production and preservation of affordable housing, and some for public housing maintenance, which is interesting. So we won't know where they are until we have Senate action and whether that's going to be agreeable to the governor or not. I also want to note that at the federal level, there is something like $5 billion in ARPA funds available through the home program. I have to confess that I'm not familiar with the home program. You may be late, so maybe you can explain better than I can what it is, but it will support a variety of different housing initiatives. Most of the money in the home program seems to go directly to states, but some of it also goes to local governments. So I guess I have a couple of questions, Nate. First of all, are we getting any of the ARPA money that's targeted to the home program for local governments? And if so, what can we do with it beyond the other ARPA money that we have? I'm not aware that we are. Yeah, I think Amherst receives its block grant money through the state. We're in many entitlements. We get money administered through the state, so we don't get HUD funding directly from the federal government. So my thought is we won't be getting the home money either directly from HUD or the federal government. So it would have to be through the state or sometimes regional agencies have money that we could work with them. Okay, so there's no expectation that we would get that money directly. Anything we'll get would become likely through the state or maybe through, I guess, wayfinders, which is the regional agency that administers some of the state housing funds. Right. Okay, thanks. Nonetheless, it looks like the state is going to have a lot of money. Some of it is what the legislature is currently appropriating. And I'm assuming that DHCD would get additional funds through the home program, which could have a variety of uses. Theoretically, those funds were allocated back in September, although again, I really don't know any of the details. I think all I want to say is for the kinds of projects that we have in mind for our local ARPA funds, it looks like those same kinds of initiatives should be eligible for state ARPA funds. Does that make sense to you, Nate? It does. And I'm just making a note to myself to research it a little bit more, too, just to... Yeah, I think I know the town manager's office and other town officials. I've met with some state officials. And so I think there may be some other ARPA and home funds available for the town. I don't know how... It hasn't been a formal application process announced or anything, so I'm not sure exactly how you go about requesting it, but I know there's me there. It's murky. It is. It is a little bit. Even the town ARPA funds is a little... I feel like they're trying to make it easy, but it's almost like we're so used to regulation that we don't know how to accept money easily. It's like, what are the strings attached? How do you go about it? And so I feel like it's just... It's strange when they allocate funding without a lot of guidance. And so Sean and Gano, the finance director, is really working in terms of the town's ARPA funding, but it is. It's an odd way. It seems like how the money's getting out. Okay. Well, then I think we'll turn our attention to the four ARPA proposals that we have before us. And we'll start with the biggest one. But before we do that, I just want to say that for each proposal, I think we need to decide three things. First, whether we do want to recommend it to Sean and Gano, or it's a town hall. Second, before it goes over, are there any changes we want to make in the drafts that you all have seen? And third, how much money do we want to recommend for each of the individual proposals? So without any further conversation on that. I just want to say, Laura wrote in the chat that DHCD often disperses home funds. And then she said it is treated like soft debt, but it is federal, so it triggers prevailing wage, and sometimes it has different rent caps or income limits. So there is typically right home funds have their own set of regulations that would have to be followed, even if it is ARPA funding. Okay. Thanks for that, Laura. Which means we still don't really know what we'll get into access to ARPA funds or what we'll be able to do with it. So the first proposal that was on our agenda was one that Allegra put together. And I do want to say for each of the proposals, as they're introduced, I'd like people to say who they talk to in preparing the proposal, particularly for people who are not part of the housing trust. I just want the record to be clear that maybe all of us talk to somebody outside of the housing trust to get some advice on preparing the proposal. And I think we want to be transparent about that, at least among ourselves. So I think Allegra is the first up and maybe, Nate, could you share that proposal on the screen so everybody can see it if you don't mind? Is the permanent location for a shelter? Yes. Okay. I have just the one with the markup version, if that's all right, John. You had to provide it a few comments. Oh, well, that's okay. All right. You have comments I provided to Allegra. I guess that's okay, because I'd say them anyway if they were an apparent. And Allegra's certainly aware of them. Yeah, right. So, Allegra, do you want to talk about that? Is that visible for everyone? Everyone good? Allegra, if you need to turn your video off, even though you're speaking, just because I know you said you were dropping off a little bit. Let me try that. So I did speak with Kevin Noonan primarily over at Craig's Doors. I also spoke with a few members of the board of directors and there was an email with the special working group that we were on. And right now I can't remember the acronym. I'm sorry. There's so many things in my brain. And in speaking with Kevin, although my original kind of assignment was to think about both either a proposal for a permanent location for the shelter and also the purchase of University Motor Lodge, it seemed like the purchase of University Motor Lodge both for financial reasons and for some negotiation reasons probably wasn't going to be feasible at this point. So we did kind of focus on the idea of a permanent location for emergency shelter. And there was a possibility identified that the board of Craig's Doors had toured and some members I believe from the town had toured separately and there were conversations about whether that could be converted into either a shelter or possibly some sort of permanent supported housing program. And so in terms of the shelter, they do have the University Motor Lodge operating through June of next year and the congregate shelter did just open yesterday at its seasonal location, from my understanding. And there are some concerns about how that will operate and why they would still want to find a permanent location for the shelter. So they did kind of say that although the non-congregate, the hotel model has seemed to be more successful, especially in getting people housed from there, the option that we have identified for now wouldn't necessarily be feasible. So they would still like to focus on trying to find a permanent place to be. And so some of the numbers in terms of capacity that were provided were provided from a report that I believe an intern had been doing so it looked like about 40 guests was what the congregate capacity should be. And I believe there are about 28 to 30 people at University Motor Lodge at this point, but those rooms are basically offline because it is there. That's the room that they're staying in, is my understanding of how it's operating. So it's not like those are spaces where people can come every night and try and get a space there was my understanding. And so in terms of what the money would actually go towards, it would be towards purchasing a property that seems to be in relatively good shape with a commercial kitchen, pretty large square footage. It would not have any of the operating costs in terms of services provided included in that number. So that's kind of clear. No, I mean, I think just to reiterate, when we spoke about ARPA funding and Sean presented it, I think they're presenting the town staff is going to present it to the council. They need to approve it or make a recommendation on the plan, I think early by early next month. And they have about a million dollars set aside for homelessness and other money for housing. And I think at this point, the idea is to keep the recommendations broad for the council vote just so that we're not having one housing piece for a million dollars. I think the idea would be that the housing trust recommendations would be used to help guide how that money is allocated. But I don't think the council is going to vote anything specific. So even if, for instance, the trust vote at all has put 950,000 towards the purchase of a property, the council may not be that specific in their vote just so that there's some flexibility in the funding. Just so we're not, we're clear on the process. Yeah, I have two comments on this. One is my sense is that, well, first of all, in the material that Sean gave us, there were really two ideas for what should be done to address homelessness. Finding a permanent location for the seasonal shelter was one, which is represented here. And the second was developing a transitional residential program place unspecified. And in addition to that being present in the ARPA presentation for town council last month, the town has also asked the Community Preservation Act Committee for half a million dollars for support of transitional residential programs. So it seems to me that both of those ideas are competing for this program. And the second comment I'll make is that, personally, I keep going back and forth whether we should do or support a transitional residential program or support money for a permanent shelter. Generally, I kind of like the idea of a transitional residential program, because I think that's necessary. I think the success of the UML program demonstrates that. And so from that point of view, that would be the way to go. My only hesitancy about this is this may be the last best opportunity of the town to find money for a permanent seasonal shelter program or a permanent shelter. And the Emmanuel Lutheran Church, which is where the seasonal shelter is beginning, I guess yesterday or today, is the third church location for that shelter in the last three years. So it hasn't been easy for Craig's Doors to find a place, and there's no reason to think it will continue to get any easier. Maybe they'll go back to Emmanuel Lutheran next year, maybe another church will step forward, or maybe there'll be no location. So I have a vague feeling, well it's more than a vague feeling that if an actual seasonal shelter location isn't found in the near future, Amherst may no longer have a seasonal shelter within the next one to two years. And so I'm not really eager for the money to be spent this way. On the other hand, I don't think the need for congregate shelter is going to go away. And if Amherst doesn't have a congregate shelter, then that's a significant loss to the shelter system in the Pioneer Valley. So that's the one reason I would have for supporting the program as Allegra has described it. So now I'll stop what I have to say and ask other people what they think. Can I ask you a question, John? Could you say a little bit more about why you feel that this and the other one are in competition? Well, yes. If you have a transitional residential program, that's likely to be eligible for funding from DHCD. If the town takes some of its ARPA money and takes money from the Community Preservation Act, then that's fine. It means that the likelihood of creating the transitional residential program is pretty good. On the other hand, if the ARPA money and the CPAC money can't go to shelter, so if the ARPA money doesn't go to the shelter, then where's it going to come from at some point in the future? And so it's in that sense that I see that there's a competition, that the town is going to have to choose whether to use its ARPA money for the transitional residential program, which makes good sense, or whether it's going to say this is our last best chance to find a secure, stable location for our homeless shelter and let's use the money for that. Was that answer your question, Carol? Partly that seems to turn on the fact that CPAC can't be used to fund this, because that's what makes this thing a one-time opportunity. Okay, thank you. I didn't mention before, which I should mention, Allegra may not be aware of it, but I talked to Jerry Weiss, he gave me a call, I think it was earlier today, although I was tracked, there's been some conversation about this with, and I'm blocking on his last name, Gordy So-and-So at DHCD, and he told Jerry, if the town wants to put up money for a shelter, DHC would probably find additional money to support this development, because they think it is important for the town to continue to have a congregate shelter. So there's a chance of getting additional money from DHCD for going forward with this, but I think the town has to put some money in in order to make that happen. So that's my understanding. I don't know if anybody else has other information or additional information beyond what I've just said. I guess going back to me for a second, because I tend to agree philosophically with you, John, is that I would prefer to have permanent supported housing for people than a congregate shelter personally, because I think that's moving more towards housing than it is instability. I believe I read something recently that there was going to be some introduction of some legislation that was actually moving away from providing congregate shelter and moving towards more of like the motel sheltering model. So I guess I don't know, I mean, I don't know where it is in the stage of things, but if you get a point at this point, or if this is still something to follow through with, and I just I also just think like knowing what building, at least they, you know, I'm conceptualizing in this, it seems like it could have the opportunity to be redeveloped into a more, you know, there are multiple large spaces within the building that possibly could be parceled out in different ways. I don't I don't know. And again, it could be temporarily a congregate shelter. And then after a few years of congregate shelters go away, the building is flexible enough so that it could be converted into some form of permanent supported housing, if I understand you correctly. That's kind of how I see it and envision it, just having seen at least pictures of the space and having been in it previously as a previous establishment in town. But yeah, I'll mention one other thing, which is consistent with what you've said, there was also a conversation about this idea that congregate shelters might be going away at the Pioneer Valley, whatever it is for homelessness that Pamela Schwartz runs this morning. And everybody seemed to agree that in principle, we'd be much better off if we could do transitional housing programs like the University Motor Lodge rather than congregate sheltering. The problem is those transitional programs cost much more per unit. And so nobody knew where the additional money would come from, which sort of suggested that congregate shelters would still be with us for a while. So I hope I've said everything that I have to say about the proposal, what Allegra brought before us. Any other comments? Looks like Dave has his hand up. Great. Thanks, John. No, this has been a great conversation. I think a lot of very good points raised. And to me, as I've listened to everybody, it really kind of represents this conundrum. And John, I think you and Allegra kind of captured it, which is we all would like to move away. I mean, the data and the research and the outcomes really suggest that we need to move away from congregate shelters. The experiences we've had across the state and probably across the region during the pandemic of using hotels and motels suggest exactly that. And in fact, John, I was on that call with John this morning. And Kevin Noonan really was quite effusive in describing how positive using the University Motor Lodge was. So we're kind of faced with this conundrum of what do we do? Are we continuing with the Band-Aid, which is a necessary Band-Aid, which is keeping people safe and alive during the cold New England winter? Or do we begin to put more resources toward permanent supportive housing? And I always struggle, too. Personally, I think professionally, when people say, we need a permanent shelter in Amherst. And this just might be a permanent congregate shelter in Amherst. And it might just be a thing that I'm stuck on. And boy, I hope we don't need a permanent congregate shelter in Amherst. I really hope we don't. I hope we make every effort to make sure that doesn't happen. We need to... So I guess in closing my one concern, and I think Nate alluded to it here, is that if the trust does make a recommendation to the council with regard to the ARPA funds, I would definitely not link it to one property. I think that's just not a good way to move forward. I think I would leave it broad, because there's a lot that can happen with real estate. I know that there's... Laura Baker is on this call, and Laura has looked at real estate in Amherst for many years, as I have, as Nate have, as many of you have. So I think the danger is putting all your eggs in one basket. So we may not move forward on a property that's being looked at right now. I think I would recommend you keep it broad, to look for a site for a shelter that might be versatile enough that someday could be converted to or redeveloped into permanent supportive housing, something like that. So those are my recommendations and thoughts. Thanks. Yeah, I have just one other comment, Dave. I agree with you. I wouldn't like to see a permanent shelter in Amherst. On the other hand, I'm reminded of a conversation I had 35 years ago. I was newly working as Director of Planning for the New York State Office of Mental Health, and a friend of mine, Joe Morrissey, who's sociologist who I'd known for a number of years, was there at the time. And I said, Joe, when's this homeless problem going to start to abate or disappear? And he looked at me and said, are you kidding? It's not going away. The way society is set up, there are structural constraints that will mean that we continue to have a homelessness problem in this society. Now, we were mostly talking about big cities like New York City at the time, but I think it also applies to Western Massachusetts and Amherst. So the problem isn't going away anytime soon. That's a conversation I said that I had 35 years ago. Yeah, I absolutely agree, John, and I'm not saying it is going to go away, but I do think there's an argument to be made that if we look at the hundreds of thousands of dollars that we've put into sheltering over the last 10 years in Amherst, if we look at that data and we say, well, how much money have we put into permanent supportive housing? I think that'll be a pretty stark comparison. So we're not meeting the housing need. And I think, again, kudos to Valley CDC for the work they're doing with 132 Northampton Road in providing some units there that will be in that category. But I just don't think we've done enough. We have not moved in that direction. And I know that Mary Beth Ogelevitz, before she left, was working on this with Allegra and other folks and really trying to wrestle with that conundrum of how do we flip this dynamic a little bit and say, let's produce more housing. Let's move toward that model of converting, say, the UML to permanent supportive housing, something like that. And I know there's challenges with the UML. I'm just, I guess I'm advocating for both that we need the short term congregate housing. But boy, we've got to move toward the permanent supportive housing too. We just, we can no longer just do what we've been doing for 10 years. So thanks. Okay, well, let me come back to everybody, particularly Allegra. What would you like to do with this proposal? Do you want to send it on to Shawn Mangano as it is? Or do you want to modify it in some way and then send it along? I mean, I kind of like the phrasing that Dave just gave about kind of, you know, we have this temporary need for, you know, safe place for people to be, but we also have this longer term need. So if there was a location that we could find that could possibly serve in the short term as congregate in the longer term, perhaps, you know, be more supportive housing that's permanent for people. I mean, that would be my ideal. I think that would be where I would feel good about it, I guess. Okay, thanks. Yeah, my thought, John, is, you know, for each proposal, if we, if the trust votes it, my thought is, you know, you and I and we see it after it could maybe write just a summary paragraph or extract something from each document. And, you know, so what it would be could be, you know, a one, a one document sent to Shawn that has, you know, say five paragraphs and each paragraph or paragraph or two is describing the separate recommendations. You know, I spoke with him, he said at this point, we don't need to have, you know, pages upon pages. So I think if we just had a summary of of what we discussed here, if we think, you know, you know, in terms of if we say, you know, whether we call it sheltering or transitional housing, but we have then a summary paragraph or two, I think that would be sufficient for now. I don't think we have to have as much detail as, you know, of, you know, a budget or financing or possible partners or anything. I think it's really just a summary of kind of the program. You know, I think that would be easier too. I know if that's, if as opposed to having someone rework this to make it kind of a formal proposal, I think just a, you know, Okay, so let me go. Are we all comfortable with submitting a proposal that's along the lines of what Allegra just described? Can I just clarify too, there are two separate slides on the slide deck that Sean had shown us, correct? And one was specific to housing and one was specific to homeless and supportive. There were two separate line items, so to speak. Am I right in thinking that? Yes, you're right. But the homeless one included the transitional residential program. So I guess what I'm saying is in other words, none of the other proposals that we are talking about tonight would fall under that category. They would possibly fall under the housing category. Yes, exactly. Right. No, I agree too. I think that this, if we recommend this, this would go under the homelessness category, you know, slice of the pie that Sean had presented. I guess the only thing I would say is I kind of agreed with Dave that it should be, it makes sense to make it really clear that there's one possibility of a property, but not to tie the whole thing to a particular property. I agree. Okay. Well, is everybody comfortable then with sending a proposal to Sean for either a permanent location for emergency shelter or a transitional residential program or some combination if that becomes possible? That I think is what we're moving toward, because I'm about to ask for a vote. So okay, I guess I'm going to make a motion then that we change this proposal so that it reflects either a permanent location for emergency shelter or a transitional residential program or some combination of the two to the extent that possible. Is there a second to that motion? Was the motion unclear? Yeah, can you repeat it again? Yes. And Allegra, tell me if this is not consistent with what you were saying, that we would propose either a permanent location for emergency shelter or a transitional residential program or some combination of the two to the extent that that's possible. Do you want to modify that in any way, Allegra? I don't think so. Okay, thanks. Okay, so Rob seconded. Are we ready to take a vote? Okay, then let's see. I'll start with Sid. Yes. Allegra. Yes. Erica. Yes. Rob. Yes. And I'm a yes. And Carol. Yes. Okay, so it's six to zero in favor of that recommendation. Okay, great. Then we'll move on to the next proposal, which is the one I think that I've offered, which is to put roughly $400,000 to a program that would prove the health efficiency and so forth of the heating systems in affordable housing. Yes, housing that is more affordable, healthier, climate resilient, and fossil fuel fee. Thank you, Nate. Okay, I've talked about this in the past, so I'm not going to go over it unless somebody has specific questions. Are there questions? I'm going to say one other thing about this, but it also applies to the three other proposals that we have before us or two other proposals that we have before us. And that is that personally, I would like to see the town include all of them in its recommendations to town council for the simple reason that I think we should get our foot in the door with each of these initiatives so that when the time comes, and I think the time will come when we have an opportunity to apply for state ARPA funds or perhaps federal funds or whatever, if we have created a bit of a record in each of these areas, then we'll be able to expand the program. Yeah, John, I know you attended a seminar on this or a workshop and has there been any follow-up in terms of implementation? Because I do think that this is one of a more complex program that we're looking at in terms of how does it benefit the tenant? We talked about does the landlord have to property owner need to sign a type of deed restriction or some type of note or something and how do we make sure that the benefit is to the tenant not necessarily only the property owner, right? Yep, actually I forgot to say one other thing and then I'll answer your question, Nate. I did consult with Laura Drucker, who's the chair of the ECAC and with Stephanie Ciccarello, who's the town sustainability officer on the preparation of this proposal. To answer your question, if you look down, one of the things that I learned in the webinar that I attended which is referenced in this is that the town of Chelsea and possibly one or two other towns have already begun implementing this kind of program and if people may not know, the town of Chelsea was particularly hard hit by COVID-19 and health problems because of the density of housing in that community and so there is a model if you like for how to go about this and what's interesting is that part of it had to do with relationships with landlords and getting them to accept the program, but part of it also had to do with outreach to tenants as well. Basically tenants need to be on board with this and that's something that actually both Stephanie and Laura are concerned about and they've already initiated work on a program of tenant outreach or what they hope will be a program for tenant outreach through Amherst family outreach. So part of it is working with landlords which is something we can expect from the Center for Ecotechnology to do, that's something that they currently are doing and part of it is working with tenants and the reason why tenants are important is because they either have to say to landlords I really want this or in fact in some cases it's the other way around that is tenants can say I want this in my unit and get the landlord's permission to do it but the tenants themselves would benefit directly because they pay the freight for heating costs and again that's been part of the Chelsea program so yeah there are program models at least in Chelsea I can't tell you where else but my impression is that there are at least one or two other Massachusetts towns who have been who started up this kind of program so we're not entirely working in the dark. Other questions? Okay well I think we need to come to a vote then so we can move on to the next proposal and I move that we recommend this program at a level of $400,000 to Sean Mangano for inclusion in the town's ARPA spending plan. Is there a second? Can I ask a question? Maybe it's a clarifying question? Where are we in the like Nate made a suggestion that instead of sending all of these whole things forward that we make it into a paragraph, a paragraph four or however many paragraphs so when we're voting on these are we what does the vote we're taking have to do with that suggestion I'm not quite sure whether I'm by saying yes am I voting that I think that's a bad idea because I don't know that yet I mean so I'm just a little not clear about that part. Did the question make sense? The question kind of made sense I think what we're voting on is the one page proposal we may eventually decide with each of these proposals to reduce the size and package them in something that may be more digestible for Sean but I think the first thing for us to vote on is whether we're in favor of moving head with this kind of program recommendation. Okay so the vote is really on the kind this program as described here even though the way it gets described when it goes forward may be slightly different than this. I believe so yeah. Okay thank you. Everybody comfortable with that? Okay so Sid seconded it so now we're at the point of taking a vote and let's see. Okay I'll start out with Rob. Yes. I'm a yes. Carol. Yes. Erica. Yes. Sid. Yes. Allegra. Yes. Okay so I think that's six votes in favor and basically that's everybody we have because Paul and Will aren't here and we don't have a ninth member. Okay moving on to the next proposal. The next proposal is probably the one about developing subsidies for home ownership programs where we purchase property for a homeowner that would be existing properties opposed to development and Rob and Erica developed that proposal. Okay I can speak to it. So this proposal is based on the experience of the Amherst community land trust running a similar program or identical program that is ongoing right now. It has already connected one new home buyer with a new home and we're hoping for a second one soon. I'm a member of I'm a board member of the Amherst community land trust so this is based on you know several years of developing the program and trying to implement the program. We work with Valley Community Development. They provide our technical assistance. They do the outreach. They help us do the outreach. They help us on intake for applicants for homes. They run the lottery that selects the people who will actually be able to take these subsidies and go out and find a home. So there's no way that we could have done it without Valley and so the problem is that homes in Amherst are just too expensive for someone who is a low income person to buy into. A low income person can buy according to the calculations if you take only 30% of your income towards housing can only afford to buy something in the range of $250,000 home and there just aren't that many homes on the market at $250,000 in Amherst. There's a few a year and the competition for those homes is fierce and it's not just from permanent resident potential home buyers. It's from entrepreneurs looking to acquire student housing and it's also from people who are looking for a home that's out of the city. New York, Boston, they're coming to Amherst and there's just a lot of competition and those other competitors are often able to outbid or not often almost always are able to outbid in terms of a mouth that they can bring and how quickly they can bring financing to the table to acquire these homes. So the Amherst Community Land Trust program is proposing to guarantee a certain amount of subsidy towards the purchase of a home. So that a home buyer is able to just bring the amount that they would need to get a $250,000 home but if you add the subsidy that is being offered they can actually compete for homes in the $350 or possibly even $400,000 range which is the actual median for Amherst. So it opens up more homes that could become affordable. The difference between this program and a, I think this is my, this is an old version of the proposal that I had. There's another, there's an updated version that is more clear. Doesn't have some of this extraneous stuff. Anyway, yeah that's, all that stuff, forget that. All right. Our model is that the home becomes permanently affordable. Subsidy that would be brought to the purchase of the home would stay in the home permanently. It would remove the land from the market and leaving just the home on the market. The home would be owned by the homeowner. They would have all the rights and responsibilities of home ownership and but our agreement with the homeowner would be that when the home goes back on the market it goes back on the market at an affordable price the same level that the home buyer acquired it. So this is a permanent program. This makes homes permanently affordable. It's a great program. And it's very expensive. Unquestionably, the amount of subsidy that is needed in order to make a home affordable for a low-income person Amherst is well over $100,000, approaching $200,000 for each home. And so that would be the ask. How many homes are we, are we willing and able to make affordable? Any questions for Rob or comments? Okay, I have only one comment which I think Rob is at least aware of. And my only concern is that this proposal only identifies the Amherst community land trust. Valley community development and Pioneer Valley Habitat for Humanity both also have home ownership programs. They work somewhat similarly, although there are some what I would describe as relatively minor differences between their programs and this program. This program is probably the most generous in the sense that it allocates the most money to assisting with home purchase. But the others also rely on a fair amount of money in order to subsidize the purchase of home ownership for existing real estate and Amherst. And so I'm a little uncomfortable with their being left out. And I also don't think it's appropriate to see the housing trust as a purchaser of this property or a holder of this property, because that's something that we're not set up to do. So those are my two comments. Other than that, I like the proposal and I think that we should support it. Can I respond to that? Sure. So yeah, I completely agree. What Valley does, what Habitat does, those are also extremely important and valuable. And I don't mean just to suggest that this is preferable to those. When we talked about this a couple of months ago, I'm sorry I missed the last meeting. I wanted to suggest this model because the ARPA funds were a chance for a huge investment to really get the ball rolling, to really make a dent or start to make a dent in the problem of unaffordable home ownership. I think the other programs are also worthy of funding. And I don't, and just to suggest or to think that, that you could put a, that you could combine them into one program doesn't make any sense. We could easily have submitted three proposals for this money and maybe we should. I didn't realize that that was expected since I had proposed this two months ago. And I also, another point that I wanted to make is that since the Community Land Trust has started operations, we have sought funding to enter into these partnership arrangements with home buyers to buy homes. But that has since inspired residents of Amherst to consider actually donating their homes, donating their homes to the Land Trust so that they can be used for affordable housing. Our founder donated her home upon her death. And so we have, we have one home that is given to the Land Trust that we hope to make affordable in the near future. And it has inspired another one that we're working on bringing into the Land Trust soon. And there's at least three others who have talked about and are starting to make steps towards donating their houses. So I think part of the goal of ramping up this program in the way that I'm talking about is hopefully to let people know about this model of preserving land in Amherst for the purpose of affordable housing so that people can think, oh, maybe I should do that too. Maybe I should consider donating my home or donating part of my home or making it easier for the Land Trust to enter into a partnership with a new home buyer to buy my home at a lower price. And so that's, you know, I talked about five to eight homes. We hope this leverages more than that. Long-term process. So Rob and I did talk. Rob did the Yeoman's work of putting this together and I looked at it. I didn't have a chance to talk to Donna Cabana, but I did look at the Valley Community Development Corporation's own proposal. There's, was 50,000 times four houses in terms of support, but the average that they put out was 234,208, an average home versus I think what you shared, John, with us, that listing, which was an average over $300,000 for homes here in Amherst, which is closer to what's out there in terms of market. I think the difference also that, you know, Rob and I discussed too is that the Valley Community Development Corp actually has an educational component, which I think is really critical for first-time homeowners. But, you know, we don't see this as competition, but as added value. And I think this is what Rob's talking about, is that there are other entities that are doing first-time homeowners. I think what's important is that a first-time homeowner knows all the different resources and all the different options. You know, one of the concerns for me was that as a first-time home owner, if you have a huge subsidy, it keeps your mortgage low, but if your property taxes go up, you're going to be taxed out of that property. So, you know, that was one of the things that, you know, Rob talked about, well, if the land belongs to the land trust, then that's not going to happen. But, you know, those are some of the, you know, the questions that I had. The other piece that I think is different is that Valley also proposes the possibility of doing condos or multi-families. If you look at mass housing mortgages where they provide assistance, Amherst, I think there's about $15,000 assistance. If you're in large cities, it actually goes up to $25,000. And you can actually earn up to $157,000, which is a lot of money in terms of being a first-time homeowner. So, you know, we did look at different options, but I think what's really, really important is that we have options for first-time homeowners so they can make a decision about what the best option is for him or herself or family. Other comments or questions? Well, when the trust votes, I mean, the recommendation would be for a land trust model of ownership as opposed to like a buy-down right of the asking price, which, you know, is kind of a different type of home, first-time home buyer program. So, it's really would be the, you know, we could call it like the land trust model. Is that accurate? So, I just wondered why I didn't understand, John, your comment about the housing trust owning something in this model. It seems like it's the land trust that owns something, right? Not the housing. Yeah, but something in the language that Rob had included the housing trust as a potential partner or owner in this. So, that's what, so, could you say more about that, Rob? Yeah, I guess I, sorry, I'm sorry. I thought, I guess I don't really understand the land trust or the housing trust not being able to acquire property, but I thought I thought that was part of the purpose of it. I just wanted to not suggest that it has to be the Amherst Community Land Trust. If there is another stewardship entity out there, whether it's a housing trust or some other entity, that's fine. I want the property to become permanently affordable under some stewardship organization. ACLT is one option. If there's another option, fine. So, the issue was separating the home, so the land would be owned by something, the land trust or the housing trust or and the house on top of it would be owned by the, okay, I get it. So, just to open up the possibility so it's not only the community land trust that could do this is your point. Okay, thank you. Yeah, I will say that there are other housing trusts in the state, not many, maybe one or two that acquired property, purchased houses with the land and then done some renovation and then turned it over and they found they really didn't have the capacity to manage that model. So, that's why I don't see the housing trust as a manager of a program like this. On the other hand, I did see Valley Community Development having a similar model, not exactly the same because they don't hold stewardship over the land and perpetuity like the community land trust or similarly Pioneer Valley Habitat for Humanity that has helped build houses with the future owner and again they don't hold on to the property forever. So, it's a little bit different model but given the partnership between ACLT and the other organizations, I kind of thought that we might look to any of them potentially depending upon who comes up with opportunities for home buyers first to move ahead. John, Linda has her hand raised in the audience. Sure, please add Linda to the panel so we can hear from her. Thank you. Thank you, John. Just a few things came up as we were listening to comments. With respect to the tax burden, we have just enough properties that we've sorted that out with the sector and our existing property is actually recorded on the property card that the Amherst Community Land Trust owns the land and the named homeowner owns the home. We are a non-profit so there's no tax paid on the land and it's further recorded on the property card that the homeowner has entered into a restrictive arrangement that caps the resale price at the proportional rise to the early median income over the time of their home ownership and that similarly prevents their tax burden from rising beyond what's affordable in the status that they entered into the purchase in the first place. So it's only a few cases that we have so far but the assessor's office seems happy with that arrangement and then the education, the concern for educating first-time home buyers is definitely one that we share and in our first projects we've partnered with Valley Community Development as Rob mentioned so that our home buyers have the same requirements that Valley CD has for participating in home ownership education and we've also partnered with Habitat. Habitat mostly builds new houses and our original sense of our mission was to preserve family housing that already exists in Amherst in the affordable situation but our first opportunity was actually to purchase a piece of land and partner that did not have a home on it and we saw our first set of home owners are the ones up in North Amherst. I don't know if you noticed Habitat put up a duplex right where the Simple Gifts Farm Market is that we own that land that was our first project. So Habitat is very open to continuing to partner with us with the land trust owning the land and then the final thing that I'll say about the land trust model is that we make every effort to form our residents into a community. Our bylaws require that a third of the board be residents of our properties and we carry out a very modest social program like an annual potluck in the summer but it's definitely part of the intention that people feel part of the community and gain leadership opportunities by their participation in managing the trust itself. Thank you. Okay any other comments or questions? Well then I'm going to propose we go to a vote. I will move that the proposal that Rob presented is one that we should forward to Town Hall with our recommendation. Is there a second? Second. Second. That was quick. Okay are we ready to come to a vote? No further discussion? Okay Rob. Yes. I'm a yes. Carol. Yes. Erica. Yes. Allegra. Yes. Sid. Yes. Okay then we have we'll include that and Rob was there a recommendation for how much money you thought we should be requesting? Yeah so I thought the town was eligible for 11 million dollars or something total for ARPA and so I thought well why not ask for a million dollars or two million dollars for each project? So I put a million dollars on the proposal but you know any amount from 125,000 to two million dollars you know would help you know the more you fund the more houses you can save. Right understood which is why I suggested that we wanted all of these to be funded so that as future opportunities for additional sources of funding come down the pike we've gotten a start on each one. Okay we'll go on to the third proposal or actually the fourth proposal and Carol you are the trust owner of that proposal? Yes although I so who did I talk to? I talked to Laura Baker who did most of the work did pretty much all of the work really so that's just the truth of the matter. I think it's great that's my contribution maybe. The thing about this is that it that makes it that's different than the other ones that we've been talking about is it actually has the town with the ARPA funds involved in creating additional affordable home ownership opportunities not just finding a way to you know make the one the housing that's already here be more affordable but actually create create units that can be affordable and and partly because of and so there are a couple of there are a couple of possibilities and one of them which we've been talking about a lot is the the land at Strong Street that hopefully can become some kind of home ownership opportunity maybe maybe it would be a home smaller homes maybe it would be condos maybe it would be separate houses but it would be home ownership of some sort that the that the town could manage to do kind of like we've done with some of the other things do the maybe the some of the upfront costs would probably be what the ARPA money might be used for and as it turns out there is also another possibility that I really don't know much about but I think Laura does there's some property in North Amherst that might be helped also by having having some funds for some of this upfront stuff obviously the development would be undertaken by a developer at the point that we got to that an RFP would go out kind of it seems to me like how East Street happened so the town did the town put money in and did a variety of things to kind of find do some of the groundwork some of the legwork so that the developer would know things that were necessary to know in order to go forward and come up with a good proposal so that's that's what I got okay um the Laura have her hand up I can't tell not yet not yet okay so so Carol just to clarify I mean are you is this funding recommended for land purchase as opposed to construction costs those are like all is it all pre-development costs if we summarize it that way so it could be uh assessment of property acquisition and even um architectural stuff but it's not going to be um actual construction so it could be any yeah it's not going to I don't think it's going to be actual construction both because it would take too much money and because the construction would never be done in time for the money to be used up by the time it has to be anyway I think those are the two reasons so it's finding something and being able to get it off the ground kind of yeah Laura has Laura Carol has three prospective projects that are listed about halfway down into the proposal and I assume all those are there at least the first two so that they could accomplish before uh 2026 at which point the money has to be spent right yeah so I mean I think I would categorize this as like affordable housing pre-development money um in the broad sense uh for home ownership development yeah and I'm in support of this I think if I look at the prospective projects it would be kind of first come first serve I would want town to set aside ARPA money for this and if the strong street property became available first we would use the money for that if the north average property that Laura's negotiating for came available for first then we'd go to that or if some other opportunity came up that would be similar to the first two in some way then that's what we would want to go to but in any event the point is all of these are to support eventual home ownership in town yeah and I agree about the first sort of the first part of the reason for saying the prospective projects here was so this isn't some completely pie in the sky thing there really are possibilities and that's important because of the timeline of needing to spend the money so there are some possibilities that this actually could be used for even though it doesn't have to be one of these it would be whatever happens first like John just said questions or comments okay are we ready to come to a vote then I'm going to make a motion that we also adopt this fourth proposal that Carol has put forward is there a second to that motion second okay and any questions before we come to a vote okay then I'll ask people to either vote in favor or against Rob yes I'm a yes Carol yes Erica yes Sid yes Allegra yes okay and actually there was a price tag associated with this am I right Carol um perhaps $750,000 is that right yes that's what I recall yep that's right okay so we would pass that along as well uh okay I think we're pretty much done with these there's only one other thing I'll ask you and we don't necessarily have to take a formal vote on this but I did send you a a draft note that I would send transmitting this to Sean Mangano and basically it says we've endorsed all four proposals they're generally consistent with what he had presented to town council although the title total price tag is higher and we recommend that all of these be included again for the reasons that I suggested earlier as we get started on these as additional state or federal money becomes available then we're in a better position to compete for those funds as well any is there any concern about making that the focus of a letter of transmittal no but I just want to say that it's really interesting that all four proposals are really interlocking in terms of a multiple prong approach to homelessness and affordable housing so I think all four together are really strong and should all be supported and all funded great thank you Erica yeah I think Rob sent in a note to me something similar that all of these are really deserving of support they're all important initiatives okay well we've taken a lot of time on this but I personally expected to take a lot of time I think it's worthwhile for all of us to understand it and I think as things go along and there's a presentation made to town council we may want to advocate for these ideas in addition to sending them along to the town finance director any other comments or questions okay then I'm going to move along to the next item on our agenda with this discussion of the what is it it's a 2023 CPA proposals which we've four of which we've already discussed the fifth one uh Nate and I or maybe I'll let Nate present it since I've been doing a lot of talking already this evening and that's the proposal from the Amherst Housing Authority. Jerry the Amherst Housing Authority couldn't make it tonight I'm you know Nate Maloya planner with the town for those in attendance you know they're they have a project that you know they're requesting about $80,000 it's half the project cost or a little less than product the half the project cost for residing units at John Nutting Apartments and so they're apartments that are off of let's say Cottage Street and East Pleasant they're the siding is about almost 50 years old so you know they've been maintaining it and now it's become a capital need to replace it and so they're you know they they have this in their their action plan with DHCD so they have to make a request for their a five year capital plan so this is a project they identified and they need to have a full budget and so you know with the money that they're allocated from the state and other sources they couldn't get a full budget so they're making requests to CPA to have matching funds and so it'd be a housing project to reside units there you know we'll say that the CPA committee asked whether this was eligible as a housing project they thought because it was old enough it could be a historic preservation project and they thought that it wasn't quite a capital project at last week's meeting there's some discussion about it I think they I think in the end it was clarified but if the trust were to recommend this I think we could reiterate that it's an eligible CPA project and that it's you know that the housing authority is leveraging state and their funds with CPA funds to make it happen so you know Chad Howard presented to the CPA committee he works for the housing authority last week and he said that if it's not funded the CPA funds they'd probably just sit on it for a year or two and then you know either try to get more money from DHCD or come back to CPA so you know they really don't get a large allocation of funding for capital projects for property for their properties so you know they often apply for CPA or block grant money for for similar projects did you say the amount Nate I thought it was around $87,000 is that right yeah he said around $80,000 but right it might be a little bit more yeah okay um which is I think a quarter of the cost of the project well I think I was like yeah I guess not quite half I think it was a $200,000 project I was I'm just gonna go I say maybe it's more like a third then yeah third yeah um I it I heard Chad also present this and I thought it made sense to me um it uh improves not only the siding but the quality of insulation in the buildings it makes everything more sustainable so there are a variety of reasons to support this it's consistent with other things that CPA funds have been used for in the past so I see no reason why we shouldn't endorse this other questions or comments okay then I'm going to make a motion that we uh send a memo to the community preservation act committee saying that the housing trust endorses or recommends this proposal for funding um is there a second okay then we'll come to a vote unless there are other questions or comments before we go forward I just want to mention it is available on the CPA committee's web page and for under FY 23 proposals and you know one thing that's nice about this development it's 18 units they call it like a 669 it's a you know it's a federally funded development but most of the units that are leased up I think all of them are also um you know connect the residents to services so the development that you know um it's something we've discussed in terms of you know it's a difficult thing to connect residents with services so this development has been doing that and it's permanently affordable so it's deed restricted to be affordable so I think you know this is just helping preserve the units uh that's also you know I just a little background yeah I think in a note I sent out a couple of days ago or Monday uh I did provide a link to the proposal you did yeah okay so I guess we'll come to a vote then Allegra yes you're looking tired uh Sid yes Erica yes Carol yes uh Rob yes okay and I'm a yes so that passes six to zero and then we can move on to the four other CPA proposals um I'm going to dispense with the housing trust blends first uh we asked for 30 000 dollars to continue to get uh funds for a consultant uh and I think everybody knows who that is and the value of that to us um so that's one of our proposals um I don't know if we have to recommend it I think the fact that we proposed it is an awful recommendation uh so I'm not going to ask for a vote on that one the uh the other recommendation was half a million dollars in affordable housing program funds I want to say a little bit about that right now when I spoke to the community preservation act committee I was obviously aware of the fact which I wasn't when we proposed this that the town had asked for half a million dollars for support of a transitional residence um recognizing that the two were kind of competition with each other what I told uh the community preservation act committee which was my opinion is that they should definitely fund at least one of the two that we needed affordable housing in Amherst and both were reasonable investments and if they ended up choosing the town investment I personally wouldn't have a problem with it I just said if they intended to do that then it would be uh ideal from my point of view if they gave at least a hundred thousand dollars for the trust to continue to have money to do due diligence for our affordable housing program the other thing I'll say which I realized is that um we're probably never going to get half a million dollars from the community preservation act committee for an unspecified affordable housing program I've asked for the last few years and it seems to me that if they're going to give that amount of money they're going to want it to be for a specific problem project and moreover they're going to want to bond that project or at least recommend to town council that it be bonded so honestly I'm not optimistic they would give us a half a million dollars anyway so that's my uh two cents worth on both of the proposals that we submitted any questions or comments before I go on to the town proposals is that what they did before I mean you asked for five hundred thousand dollars and they gave some something but not that much isn't that what happened before it yes they gave us two hundred thousand dollars I think a year ago right um but actually I shouldn't say we also asked for originally eight hundred thousand dollars to purchase the property of belcher town road but that was a an ask for a specific project and they ultimately did approve it uh recommended to town council that it be approved town council did approve it and it was approved and bonded uh the ultimate amount wasn't quite eight hundred thousand dollars it was a bit less that was consistent with the actual purchase price of the property was so uh that is our experience Carol I do think though you know I mean as in years past but I think as I mentioned to that this year there's a lot of large requests of the cpa committee so there there's three and a half million dollars requested and they have about 1.2 million available so there's also a fair number of proposals that came in um you know under you know um under the housing one there was um you know five in historic preservation there's six or seven and in recreation there's like seven or eight there was no open space proposals this year but so you know I think the cpa committee in years past they do allocate almost all of the funding but usually there's not this many proposals or this much funding requested so they're really going to have to make a decision this year about what to recommend for funding you know they're really going to have to probably not you know not fund some proposals just because of the amount of funding asked ask a question sure okay um just structurally we there are sort of um housing arm in terms of implementing housing initiatives affordable housing initiatives and because I remember just reading Cambridge's um proposal in terms of their their own housing trust and it was the cpa that provided funding to them um do we not have that link I thought when we when I read the original document in terms of how we're organized that we are their housing arm and shouldn't we be getting annual amounts we do not um our strategic planning consultant Jen uh blocking on her last name at Goldson yeah Jen Goldson recommended that that's the relationship that we should have um but cpa c has never accepted that um you're right Erica I think both Cambridge and Somerville have that relationship with their community preservation act committee but this committee prefers to not have a standard allocation to at the housing trust but to deal with project proposals one by one and that has not changed since the housing trust came into business or since we presented our strategic plan and it's not likely to change other questions or comments okay then we'll go on to the town proposal the town had two proposals one proposal is for a part-time affordable housing assistant in the planning department to work underneath supervision to be funded at I think a hundred thousand dollars over a period of three years that's my quick summary like I say we did talk about this are there questions or comments about that okay um are there concerns any concerns about our recommending or not recommending that proposal okay then I think I'll move on to make a motion that we recommend the town's proposal uh I do make that motion is there a second second okay if there was no second then we would not move on to voting okay uh then we'll can vote uh Allegra yes Sid yes uh Erica yes Carol yes Bob yes okay and I'm a yes so that recommendation passes six to zero and then the second recommendation was and correct me if I get this wrong Nate for half a million dollars to support the development of a transitional residence in town the proposal did not specify a particular site but said that the town had I don't know if it even formally said the town had something in mind either you were they may have suggested that but there is no specific site mentioned it just said the town is working on finding a site and if a site is found then obviously having the half a million dollars would be quite helpful right yeah so the cpa committee just to say you know like what Erica when you asked as you know about how the trust gets its funding right the cpa committee doesn't give the trust an allocation every year similarly it likes to have a specific project so um you know if the town can't name a property in the next few months this this proposal may may not be recommended by them ironically the housing trust is named in the cpa statute as one of like two legal entities that can bankroll cpa money without a specific project so it's almost like in that instance I'd I'd rather the cpa committee fund uh the trust proposal so you know to john's point fund one or the other or maybe a good way to phrase it because you know um I think Dave you know we discussed putting this in as a cpa uh request because the money really doesn't become available until next July and knowing that there's ARPA funding and maybe other state funding available that it could just be a really opportune time to combine funding to buy a property or something but there really isn't you know we don't have any more than that right now and it may not be enough for cpa committee to recommend it granted like I said the funding you know they're they started their budget process early they're gonna recommend this to town council to vote on their budget town council may vote on this in march maybe april and then the funding is available next July so we're just trying to you know plan ahead on the other hand if there isn't a specific problem project identified by the time town council votes on it then there may be no vote right which gets back to your point Nate maybe we're better off asking for half a million dollars without an unidentified project because if the town does find a site then the housing trust could put the money toward that or I think like john said you said you said you know I like the way you phrase it recommend one or both but at least fund one uh you know fully just so that you but unless I'm missing something I'd rather have them fund the housing trust because that will stay there even if there's no project if there's no project and they funded the other one nobody gets anything I agree in principle carol but I think in practice this particular cpa committee is not likely to fund a project or fund uh half a million dollars without an identified project okay so while I may have suggested that realistically I don't think they turn to us and say we'll give you the half a million dollars how about this they fund the town if the town can't find a place within three months it goes to us again that goes back I I mean I'm not opposed to that don't misunderstand I know you're talking about reality yes right I just think it's unlikely do you your comment on that Nate yeah I mean I think they wouldn't probably make a condition like that I think for now the recommendation might be I like you know like I said try to fund both pick one or you know recommend both at this point and maybe the trust has to review this come February just to make another recommendation as it goes to council because it just seems really premature sometimes to try to make a decision now you know just seems really almost too soon to say yes or no to either one of them but okay well I can come back and say what I said it's consistent with what I propose that is um they fund at least one if not both but also that requires us then as a group to approve the town's proposal for half a million dollars so I'm gonna make a motion that we approve that proposal is there a second I second it I do have a question Nate I'm curious if the town does find a property and does receive the CPA funding approved by town council what would be the role of the trust in that development good question yeah we may ask the trust to help with you know either facilitating different outreach or even asking the trust for some money for pre-development costs you know the trust could also help solicit or procure services so you know I don't think that has really been discussed we just you know like I said we we you know we thought it was a good time to try to get money to buy a property for transitional housing just because of the importance of it but the logistics of any of that you know as far as I'm concerned I as far as I know I haven't been discussed okay any other comments or questions okay then we'll go to a vote Erica yes Sid yes Allegra yes Rob yes Carol yes and I'm a yes okay so we have agreed by a vote of six to zero to recommend the town's proposal as well okay so we're pretty far along on our agenda we did a little bit of not much discussion of the draft for the hipery ridge so there's nothing more I don't think to say about that unless somebody else has something else to add so the next thing I'll move to is the draft of the survey of older adults which the town is working on in collaboration with the council on aging and I guess at this point potentially in collaboration with the housing trust as well this is part of an initiative I may have said this at an earlier meeting for the town to become or work on becoming a dementia friendly community and if you read the housing survey actually that's not the housing survey I'm sorry the survey that they plan to do I'm not quite sure who's developed it but I think it's a standard survey that's being used around the state and in our area the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission has taken responsibility for working with towns to promote the survey so the survey covers a little over six pages it includes a range of issues including housing and actually I wasn't necessarily optimistic about what would be in there with respect to housing until I read it and then I felt well they seem to ask all the kinds of questions that at least I personally are interested related to looking at the needs of older adults for housing and so while I'd gone into it kind of thinking we might consider modifying it at some point at this point I'm perfectly happy with it I didn't feel a need to add items we probably couldn't change items because as I said it's something that communities around the state are using but I don't even see a need to add items so that's my first comment about the survey did I I know I sent the detailed survey around did anybody else have any questions or concerns about it I just thought it was amazingly long for a survey that you're going to ask old people and it's about dementia nobody's going to get through page one let alone page six or whatever it is me included and I don't think I quite have dementia but it just seemed like I don't know I thought it was too long I don't know what I'd cut out exactly but it's like it takes a lot of stamina to get through it that's all and so how many people are going to actually answer it how many people are going to get to the housing questions I don't know and I still don't know John how many residents will be asked you know if it's going to be mailed directly to them you know and if so how many is it going to be available online and then you know so I think there's I know there was a few different methods that have been discussed in terms of distribution but I don't I'm not sure so maybe part of the trust recommendation or or you know to you know to the staff are working on this is just you know we could we like I think in your email Don you suggested a certain number but maybe we just recommend you know at least say you know if you're doing you know at least 500 or you know try to get a certain amount of send it to a certain number of residents just to ensure a good response okay let me go back and say a couple of things about that first of all Carol to go to your point about the length of the survey I consulted a someone who has a lot of experience with surveys my brother and one of his comments was well it's too long he said you should limit the survey if you're interested in housing just to the housing items on the other hand I looked at a study that he sent me and it had and this is a survey of cancer patients and things about their experiences with their doctors communication issues and his survey was actually a page or two longer on the other hand it wasn't older adults although some of them may have been older adults for sure that were in this sample so he did raise with me the issue that it should be shorter the other issue that we talked about more extensively has to do with sampling the way other communities have gone about this is to do what is conveniently labeled a convenient sample which means that you make your best efforts to collect as much information as you can but doing it in a way that is most convenient so as an example you might hand the survey out at the bang center when people come in to pick up meals to take home you know people are probably aware that there is such a program similarly there are a number of residences some affordable some not necessarily affordable around town talking about buildings where you know older people live that could be like the Amherst housing authority facilities that are downtown so one thing would be to put a survey under everybody's door and they could fill out the survey and bring it back somewhere or there might also be the instruction which is actually embedded in the current survey that allows you to do one online so those are examples of things that you could do for a convenient sample another thing Mora Keynes said she'd be glad to help and that's occurred to me well gee the Amherst Indy could publish the link to the survey online and ask people who are over the age of 55 to go to the link and to fill it out so all of those are examples of a convenient sample the advantage of a convenient sample is in general it doesn't cost you anything to collect the data or it costs you very little and your goal is to get as much data as you can or from as many individuals as possible but you don't go out systematically to try to uh collect the data and get what people would call a representative random sample so the problem with the convenient sample is at the end of the day after you collect the data you don't necessarily know what you have you know who's filled it out but you don't know who hasn't filled it out and one concern in that area for me would be people who currently live independently in single family houses in Amherst which is probably the largest number of older adults in town those are the people or some of the people whom we're very interested in we want to know if they want to stay in their own homes and there are questions about that in the survey we want to know if they see themselves downsizing and want to move to affordable housing or whatever so I have a concern about leaving those people out not that I'm not concerned about people who live in existing housing you know that's pondering or apartment buildings I want to be sure that those people are included as well so I haven't talked to the people who would be directly involved yet and that includes Becky Bash of the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission and Maureen blocking out her last name right yeah Maureen Pollock a planner Maureen Pollock right who's the town planning department the two of them seem to be the most likely to take taking the lead on this along with the council on aging and I don't know what they intend to do with respect to a convenience sample or what we might advise them if we have the opportunity so what I would like to do if we can do this and expect a reasonable return at a cost that isn't too high is to collect data survey data from a representative random sample of adults older adults in the Amherst community and I'm not absolutely sure how to do that the most straightforward way to do it honestly is a mailed survey but that assumes that we have a list of all people who are over the age of 55 and live in Amherst and we may or may not have that when I talked to Mary Beth Agulowicz about this back in the summer she said that she had did have such a list and it was drawn from what are the street lists everybody here filled out a street list at some point voting list you know I mean there isn't a town clerk says out an annual survey right that is asked to be returned I mean I think that's the way they collect the data all right yeah I filled that right that's a treat list okay so Carol filled it out I filled it out looks like Erica that I know what it is yes you filled it out you may have sent it Allegra shaking her head yes Sid yes probably Rob yes so people who are older tend to fill it out if you're 22 and you're living in rental housing in Amherst you probably don't and Nate has told me in the past the town doesn't get a great return rate but I expect it gets a good return rate from people over the age of 55 and that's what constitutes the list that Mary Beth compiled so I'm guessing that a high percentage of people over the age of 55 are represented on the street list and we could use it as a sampling frame so that's what I'd like to be able to do and if that seems reasonable what I'd like to do is send out a mailed survey to at least 500 people maybe some more maybe an additional 500 I'm not quite sure my guess is it would cost about a dollar and a quarter between printing and postage maybe $1.50 per survey sent out because you'd also have to include a self-address stamped envelope inside so the survey could come back that way unless the person elected to do it online so I'm thinking we could definitely spend $1,000 maybe $2,000 trying to collect data from a representative random sample of residents of Amherst and if we're going to spend $2,000 then we as a body need to approve that expenditure for this purpose so I'll stop there and ask for questions what makes it random or what makes it representative and what what does that mean if we're trying to think about equity and inclusion of people who don't usually get included in things which is what comes up for me anytime we talk about this stuff I mean how how does that I don't know exactly what random means or how it's figured out and I don't really know how it intersects with with inclusion and making sure that the people who usually don't get asked do get asked so that's my realm of questions even though I don't quite even know what my question is well I understand your question and I have two answers one is yes there's a way to do it the second question is I don't know and can't assure you that people who always who often may not get included will be included the way to do it is you take the street list and you make a subset of people over the age of 65 let's say there are 5000 people on that list and you want to send out 500 surveys as an example you would choose every 10th person on the list and send a survey to them and that makes it a random sample and it makes it a representative sample because you've gone from a list that you think reasonably represents the population of the town of Amherst and chosen your random sample from that now the next question is well what about persons of color which assumes what you have in mind when you raise this Carol and among people over the age of 55 I don't know what the percentage of persons of color is but I can tell you that the street list will not tell me who they are right so if I wanted to be sure of representing persons of color if the street list had that information I would over sample those people to be sure that there were a 50 or 100 of them out of the 500 but the street list does not include race ethnicity so I have no way of doing that and since we're not a very segregated town I also don't have a way of saying well as far as I know we'll choose certain blocks to sample from that will assure us of including persons of color who are over the age of 55 so the answer to your question Carol is yes I can figure out how to do a representative random sample on the other hand I can't figure out unless somebody else has a good idea about how to assure that we get a reasonable number of people of persons of color assuming that you know 10 percent of the people over the age of 55 in town are not persons of color I think most of the people who are if you look at the census list who are persons of color are probably people who are younger because they're much more substantially represented in the population of university students both undergraduate and graduate and said shaking his hand I think he thinks I'm right and he would know better than I would probably yeah you're right yeah that's where you get it yeah yeah well one way the university does a better job than the town of pulling in people of color well I was gonna say one way of doing it is is directing or reaching out to either faith-based organizations or organizations that you know generally have a relationship with communities of color and asking their population to fill it out that it is 55 plus in those communities and so it may not be random but it might might help with overseeing well like I said there are going to be two problems to collecting data one is the convenience sample and there's no reason why we can't propose that to the town for the convenience sample I just don't know a way to do it for the random sample so I think we should be doing both yeah I was just looking online I don't have the street list and I don't know if it asked demographic information I think the John I think what you suggested is you know for the trust I think the the consideration is would we would the trust be willing to spend money to do a more in-depth sampling you know we'd have to work with the the senior center and Pioneer Value Planning Commission who are who's administering the survey you know they have their purposes for an age-friendly community but I think you know I think it's beneficial we can make the case that it's also beneficial to gather this information for housing purposes as well and so you know we'd be augmenting possibly their service or their survey and so you know I think that's yeah I mean if the trust is willing I think it's a good idea I think John that you and I could work with Maureen and Becky and I think there's probably a few other staff and see you know how they would want to go about it okay further questions or discussion well I'm going to move that the trust allocate up to $2,000 for purposes of collecting data from a representative random sample of older adults I think it will help the town's general interest in this as well as the housing trust's interest in knowing more about the housing needs of the over 55 population so is there a second to my motion I'll second it okay then since it's late we'll come to a vote uh Rob yes I'm a yes Carol yes Allegra yes Sid yes and Erica yes thank you I'm getting tired too okay I think that's the last piece of business we'll try to do tonight there are other pieces of business that we'll put off till our December meeting we may want to put some time in at that point in discussing the university's role in housing in town given the newspaper article that Nate circulated to us earlier any other last minute comments I was going to say just two quick updates you know we have a contract going for the strong street assessment oh great thank you yeah I'm hoping they get the consultant seem eager to get out there but um they're Lebeck associates they do you know they the proposal is for them to do a wetland delineation on the entire property and then do a concept development on the on it with utilities and then also do soil borings on areas where they think there could be development just to determine if there's any you know what type of what type of soil there is um they did find a survey at the registry of deeds that they felt was accurate so that they don't have to survey the property so that's good news um the other one is the the proposals for the belcher town road east street school requests for proposals are due November 19th um we did have a number of questions asked it seems like you know a few developers are serious about it so I'm hoping we'll have at least two responses um and it may be that you know one or two members of the trust is asked to be on the review committee um so you know just putting it out there if there's someone who's really interested in that um you know you could let John or I know I mean my thought is John would be on the review committee but there may you know if there's anyone else who is the idea is we adopt to review the proposals there's a bunch of you know comparative criteria that we had it also would involve interviews and possible you know a second round of meetings with the with the proposers but I'm hoping that at the next meeting we can report that we have some proposals to review great thank you Nate I'd forgotten that and thanks for the update on strong street um is there anybody right now while we're sitting here who would like to be part of the review process maybe maybe okay okay thanks Carol sorry I said me too okay great said thank you okay well um we'll do our best to get at least uh one or two other people as part of that process so thanks everybody I'm sorry the meeting has run a little bit over I appreciate everybody's participation I think it's been a very effective meeting somebody has their hand up I just noticed yeah Nina and you can unmute yourself um yeah Nina Nina while um so yeah I I think it's pretty exciting all the proposals that you guys are working with I'm I'm learning about them this is wonderful and I just had one thought this had to do with the first proposal you spoke about which is the either the permanent um shelter or the transitional shelter and I mean I really it just the the idea popped into my mind and it's kind of stuck there and I was just wondering about our survival center and um I think it has a commercial kitchen doesn't it they serve meals yes it does and they have wonderful services and a beautiful new building and I don't know I just suddenly thought maybe there's some way to expand their campus to include some overnight housing that could be flexible for future use in another way or anyway I just thought maybe it might be something that could be um expanded working with it's an interesting idea Nina I suspect you should talk to Lev or their board about that to see if their interest is their interest there and then it could be pursued thanks yeah I mean I will say when you know they are they are actually having shelter guests go to the survival center for this season for showering and laundry and maybe for a meal um when they did expand and build the new uh at the new location the town asked that they would be willing to accept or have you know um transitional housing there and they said you know their focus really is on food security and that housing is just such another you know such a complex piece in addition to it they just didn't you know at the time they weren't looking to have both of those kind of programs being run because it is you know a much different thing to have you know tenant management or property management but um you know it is something I guess could be brought up again yeah it's almost a decade ago right new executive director new board maybe there have been changes she's a decade ago John I remember that it seems like it was just this the other day right wasn't Mindy Dom the executive director then uh actually no when the building occurred it was uh for that Cheryl uh for Cheryl's last name I see yeah she's the executive director of uh uh the equivalent of Planned Parenthood I can't remember I'm sorry it's too late oh Cheryl's all tapestry thank you Cheryl's all right uh tapestries tapestry exactly thank you yeah and it was I'm sorry representative Mindy Dom or rep down this people okay well thanks everyone and uh again I appreciate everybody