 And just a quick reminder, if you don't want to be recorded, you can always turn off your video. So welcome everybody and thank you for joining us today. This is the first of five listening sessions and it's made possible through a collaboration with the Amherst Planning Department and Senior Services and the Pioneer Value Planning Commission. And of course, with this topic, the Amherst Housing Trust. So today we're going to talk about housing, as you all know, will be covering topics like transportation, social participation, public safety in upcoming sessions. All of which will happen on the fourth Monday of each month running from May through September to 30 and we'll end at about four o'clock today. So just want to also make a note that we're hoping to do the remaining sessions in person at the bank center. But if we do end up needing to change gears because of COVID, we'll update the Engage Amherst page on the town website. So thank you and take it away Becky. Okay. So welcome everyone. As Haley said, this is the first listening session for Agent Dementia Friendly Amherst. So today we're going to, we've asked you to put your name in the chat and if you're affiliated with any organization or just a resident of Amherst, then I'm going to do a quick poll. And then a presentation, which will be a project overview with a focus on housing for older adults and aging in place. And a little bit on what's currently in place for older adults and amherst both in terms of housing for older adults and what the zoning allows and Nate's going to help me out there with this presentation. And then we're going to, then we want to hear from you. So we're going to break into smaller groups. We'll talk from everyone and have a larger discussion. And then we will present some of the results that we've gotten from the Agent Dementia Friendly Amherst survey around housing needs. And then we'll have time for a little more discussion and talk about next steps. So I'm going to stop sharing for a minute and you will see a poll on your screen. So here's the first poll question. Just click on your age range. I'll leave it open for a couple minutes. Here's the results. Can you all see that. So we have a good representation from all age groups here, except for 90 plus. So that's great. And then I will launch the next poll. Here's the next one. So we might want a minute to think about this. What kind of housing do you think is most needed and amherst for older adults? And if you think, if you think we've got plenty of housing and Amherst, then you don't have to answer. That's not my problem. My problem is why do I have to pick one. Oh, yeah. You know, I mean, I could say something today and tomorrow I'd probably say something else. Yeah, that's fine. Well, that'll come out in our discussion groups. Here's what we have. So subsidized housing for older adults, mixed income mixed age rental units. So quite a mix. But that's good. I mean, generally you want to mix the housing. So you're absolutely right, Alyssa. I want to want more of a choice there. So, okay, and I'll go back to my slideshow. Okay, another we asked people also in the registration report. And so this is some of the answers we got there. So 20 people who registered live in single family nine condominium for and subsidized apartments and one in non subsidized apartment. Five said they were hoping to downsize in the next five to 10 years and 15 said maybe so that's quite a bit of the folks who signed up. And then are you or someone you know having difficulty finding support for aging in place and 15 people said yes. So that's, that's interesting. So this project is part of an agent dementia friendly pioneer valley project that the planning planning commission is doing through funding from the top health plan foundation now known as point 32 health. We're helping a number of communities become age and dementia friendly through community engagement processes and developing community assessments and action plans. The towns with the red hearts have already submitted reports for this work and the purple stars are dementia friendly communities, and the blue hearts are the communities that we have been working with on this project, or currently working with actually. So this forum is focused on housing for all of these. All the communities we're working with the community assessment is being organized around the domains of an agent dementia friendly community so this model was developed through the mass help the agent collaborative and it's a combination of the eight domains of the community that the World Health Organization developed and 10 to 10 sectors of a dementia friendly community so it combines all of those into considering agent dementia friendly work in all of these sectors. Just some data from the census and from the mass healthy agent collaborative community profiles. In 2025 years, five year estimates on say that 1010.7% of the population of Amherst is over 60 that's up from 10.1% that was just a few years ago in the mass healthy agent collaborative data. I believe their data was from 2016 so that's about, you know, four years or five years that it went up by a few percentages or by about point 6% from 7.3% from 7.3 to about for people over 65 so about 3300 people in Amherst river 65. And according to the census 25.7% of people over 65 live alone so that's down a little from what the mass healthy agent collaborative was, and a little less than in Massachusetts overall which is 30%. In total of 94, about 9500 households in Amherst, about one third of those have one or more people 60 and older in each house in those households, and 30% of total households, total householders live alone 9% or 65 or older. So about 853 households of 65 or older, who are living, who are living alone, and then some other data of interest 13% 13.4% of people over 65 or veterans and about 11.7% have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's or related dementias. So consider housing for an aging population we want housing that's affordable. So it could be smaller shared units accessory apartments, home sharing. You know any of the housing types that I mentioned before in the poll accessibility is important so first floor with a no step entry or elevator access and sometimes you might need wheelchair ramps to get into the house. assisted living and long term care options are are important as people start to need more help and and can't get help aging in place. Smart growth so housing that's located near close to retail services and parks and neighborhoods that are safe. So people can walk or roll where they need to go and so that they feel safe walking in their neighborhoods. Some considerations for aging in place. Home modification may be needed for accessibility and to bring false assistance with basic maintenance and repair is often important as as people find that they can do less. Assistance with other basic tasks such as yard work shoveling snow grocery shopping and transportation. Home care and home health care services when you start to need a little more help, even with cooking toileting medications, and then transportation services or the ability to walk or roll to stores or services. And as people need more help, possibly rides individual rides where people actually help help to get through the door of where you want to go. When we talk about people living with dementia. There's more mobility visual and hearing limitations. It's exacerbated by sensory loss. So again you want to make sure that there's barrier free design so no step entrances different counter heights first floor residences making sure that there's no trip hazards in the house. And even up to automatic timing on burners, you know, for stoves if people tend to leave the stove on clearing boundaries between the rooms. And including architectural variety, because sometimes, you know, there's developments that all, you know, all the units look the same it can be confusing with some for someone with dementia. In order to do this the town might want to consider building in incentives for homes that meet accessibility standards. Some of some housing assessment data from the census, the detached single family units in Amherst account for about 50% of the housing stock and 50% is multi family. And there's a little bit more renter occupied housing than owner occupied. And as of December 2020 12.6% of the housing is subset subsidized or meets their standards of the subsidized housing inventory by the state. It requires that all communities have at least 10% subsidized housing, or if they don't that means that developers can come in and with a little less control on the part of the town but but Amherst has enough housing stuff now. In terms of the subsidized housing inventory. There are some examples of housing authority properties that are mainly for older adults and Leyland apartments has 81 bedroom apartments for which our wheelchair accessible. This is located near the bank center and it has a community room and greenhouse. Chestnut court at 33 Kellogg have has 31 bedroom apartments and that's about a mile from the town center. They are also on the first, first floor they're not specifically for seniors, but the first floor is is a draw for older adults. And then the john gene elderhouse has three apartments for elderly or disabled and three others are rented out to social service agencies. The waiting list for housing authority properties is very long. This is from the housing authorities some numbers they gave me currently there's 13,000 people on the waiting list for Amherst housing authority properties. I should say this is a statewide waiting list so it's not. It's probably not all Amherst residents waiting. They choose their first, second and third choices so this is probably this this list is from a statewide application. So about 2700 are interested in elderly or handicapped housing. It's a lot so that's a very long, long wait, and just sort of emphasizes the need for more affordable housing in town. So in terms of independent assisted and long term care communities, Applewood at Amherst run by Linus communities has an independent living community greenlies has market rate independent living for older adults, both ownership and rental units. Arbor's is an assisted living community. And then there's the Center for extended care and rehabilitation, which is a nursing home and has a dementia care unit. So I'm going to turn it over to Nate to talk a little bit about what the zoning allows in Amherst. Thanks everyone. I'm Nate Malloy I'm a planner with the town. I help with some housing projects. You know so I think there is a few, you know zoning is a really powerful land use regulation tool that towns in Massachusetts municipalities can use. To allow different types of housing. You know we have a broad range, you know near from apartments to mix these buildings which can be multiple units, often their rental units in the town centers to single family homes and some other types of development and the outline residential areas. You know the issue there is zoning can tell you what to build but the market in terms of demand brings you know they're that force with it so right now we see a lot of development rental development for students or young professionals and not necessarily for other populations and so there's a lot of development development for single family homes for starter families for instance is not something that the market is is trending towards right now so we allow you know varying types of development in town it's just, you know we'd have to find ways to incentivize it if we see you know it becomes a priority if we see it as a priority. Accessory dwelling units ad use it's something that the town worked to change the bylaw last year and so you know those can be completely enclosed within a house it can be a whole separate apartment. It can be you know you can convert a garage you could build a new dwelling unit on the property and so these are intended to be smaller units. On one of the units the accessory dwelling unit or the single family home would have to be occupied by the owner, and one could be rented but it is something that you know we really worked on to make this process easier to get these accessory dwelling units permitted throughout town, so they are allowed in quite a few zoning districts in around town. Mornick is on this meeting he's the chair of the housing trust of Amherst housing trust has been around for a number of years now. And we're working to build a portfolio of projects and you know, facilitate projects, looking at town owned land and private land and so you know there are some opportunities in the near future to see if there's a chance for you know housing that the market isn't building right so if we're not providing housing for 55 and older or for you know smaller homes for families or you know just affordable rentals that something the housing trust can can work toward. There are grant programs, as we see on the slide, PVPC, you know, Becky works for the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission and Community Action offer grants. The town, sometimes if we do require, acquire certain grant funding we can participate in programs that allow it. For applications. We can always help people put people in touch with programs so you know although we may not offer it we can be a resource in town hall. And then there's Amherst neighbors so there are, you know, nonprofits are just, you know, coalitions in town are groups that can help people also find resources and put them in touch with services or people so Amherst neighbors is not affiliated with the town of Amherst but they're doing a great resource for people. They have an online presence in a website so that's you know, we try to have different mechanisms for people to reach out if they need assistance and I will say that the town is you know if people have questions you can always call the planning department, and we're willing to take down your name and number and also do some research for you and get back to you if you have any questions. Yeah, Amherst neighbors, I put down there is really a resource to help people aging in place, because they can help some of the volunteers can help with basic tasks. And it's also a great opportunity to volunteer for this organization for anyone who's looking to help people out who are who are aging in place. And also the Community Action Pioneer Valley has a grant home modification grant program. And I don't have information right here but definitely look on the Community Action Pioneer Valley or Pathfinder websites. They do provide grants for home modification. So, at this point we are going to go into breakout rooms. I'll show in my screen for a minute. So, let's see we have 24 people. So, I think we could do four breakout rooms. Yeah, so Haley, Maureen, John and Nate, I will break people into rooms. So let me just delete this one. Yeah. And so you'll see, let's see, this is just going to take me a minute. Does anyone have any questions right off on moving people into rooms? Feel free to unmute or raise your hand. How much time for the breakout rooms Becky? So the breakout rooms will be 20 minutes. So we'll come out at about 315. Becky, are there specific questions you want us to address? Yeah, so the facilitators will go around and ask each of you to list an asset and a challenge in terms of housing for older people in Amherst. And then you'll, in the last five minutes you'll talk about what you think are the biggest priorities. Sorry, this is just going to take me a little bit. So you should see. Hi, Claudia. Norma, did you see a room come up? You should be able to, you should see something that says join room and then you can click on it. You're muted. I'm Terry. Okay, Phyllis, do you see a room come up on your screen? You should see a button saying join room on the screen. And if not, you can unmute and I can try to help you. You know, Terry, do you see a room come up? Don, you froze for a minute there. You might want to just repeat your last couple of points. I think what I said was that our two biggest issues is the lack of places for people to move good options to move. They do want to move out of their single family house homes or wherever else they are, and the problem of affordability affordability and remaining where they are, and affordability and finding a place to move. So I think that summarizes a lot of the discussion we had without getting back into the detail. And Nate, I think that was the last group. Thanks. You know, John, John's challenge is really, you know, we have the same top two affordability and then limited choice. And I think the nuance with availability of housing is not just, you know, one type of housing but also having like a graduated facility. So you could have independent living to, you know, assist a living to full time care within one, you know, one institution right so right now maybe that you have to move out of Amherst could be an hour away it could be further away to find a place and then you know that becomes a challenge. And then, as John mentioned the affordability both of staying in town or then finding a place right so to move into a place that has care is really expensive. And so, you know, it, it may be that it really does. It becomes a really big financial burden. You know, you know, although that being said a lot of people said that, you know, they moved to Amherst because, you know, to to kind of equally weighted assets were the area in terms of both cultural and you know and cultural amenities and institutions right so there's lifetime learning there's events there's things to do it's an active small town so it's not, it's not too crowded like a city but it offers great amenities. It's also the surrounding area right so it's close to nature there's outdoor parks, state parks, and that was seen as an asset. That being said there is some you know limited options for accessible trails or if you really do need more accessible amenities. You know, to find even the sidewalks are in difficult condition so, you know, kind of overall picture, you know, like john said housing availability and price, but then there are a lot of assets right, both from the, you know, kind of cultural and support to just you know, being able to do things. I will say Haley you did mention public transportation but our group mentioned that that's also based, we actually saw it as a challenge. It's a tough bus service in terms of you know dedicated bus routes and stops and so it is difficult to get around without a vehicle in town. And so you know although there is kind of reduced fare public transportation it is limited in service and scope so it's something that was mentioned as you know could be improved but stop there. Thank you. And segue there will be a forum on transportation coming up this summer and we hope to have it in person so we hope everyone will be able to come to that as well. So I'm just going to move on. And we're going to present some of what the survey showed we had a really good responses survey. We had 875 responses which is amazing. So, and 85, almost 85% are 60 or older so that represents about 17.3% of the over 60 population of Amher so that's a really good, good turnout for the survey. Most people had lived in Amherst for more than 15 years so almost 77% of people who responded to the survey have lived in Amherst quite a while. In terms of race and ethnicity, the housing trust and senior center did a really good job and engage Amherst of really trying to engage all sectors of the population and get a good representation of people from people of color. So the race ethnicity of people over 65 or 91.9% white. So, in fact, we got a little more representation from people of color in the survey so 4.2% black and American 2.7% Hispanic Latinx 2.8% Asian and 0.9% American Indian or Pacific Islander so that was really good representation. In terms of who people live with, 28% of survey respondents said they lived alone, almost 63% live with a spouse or partner, and then a number with adult children or other children or family members. Some of them have been in a nursing home. One person or at least one person said a shelter, and several people put they live with their cats and dogs and that's that's an important consideration because they know a lot of people want to keep their pets when they move out so it's important for for new places to allow pets. So some of the main focus areas we asked people, you know, what were the top three focus areas that the town should focus on in the next five years to make the town better place for people as they age. In most picked housing is their first choice 29% 20% 20% said housing was the second highest priority. Health and community services came in second so that also plays into, you know, services that are needed for people who are aging in place, and even a lot of places that do provide assisted living. Sometimes you need more services than those those facilities will provide. So having available health services or people like Amherst neighbors is a really great resource for people to help with community services to help people age in place. And then 15% said transportation was the highest priority so those are the top three, and we see that in a lot of communities. So most people said that they want to stay in Amherst as they get older so almost 71% said it was either extremely important or very important to be able to remain in Amherst. So that's, that's a big one. I asked if people, if there are times when people don't feel safe, and so almost 18% said they don't feel safe at times in community. I just picked out there are 71 responses to that question. I picked a few out related to housing. But there were a lot of comments about sidewalks and being able to walk on the street. And one person said they live in a shelter so that that's, you know, a lot of stress, and especially for older people there just aren't the supports available in shelters if you don't have a home. Someone said they don't want they wouldn't want to be a cognitive cognitively confused person on the streets and a student party night. So that gets to the idea of a dementia friendly community which is really educating all sectors of the community including student population, you know, how to how to recognize people with dementia, and how to, you know, just be kind and supportive of people. So they, their home was broken into someone said they fear police stops and traffic stops and, and, you know, unfortunately, that's probably a person of color I didn't look at that survey, but some people are afraid of police. And then one person said I think to stay in Amherst I'll neither need to use all my retirement on housing or be homeless. It's a frightening. It's a really frightening situation for people. So, we asked if people do you want to stay in their homes, and most said it's either extremely important or very important so 83%. Again, as someone mentioned early on, you know, you might change it might, you know, you might need more supports where you can't stay in your home anymore and that's where it gets to the point of, you know, you might have to move. So this chart is, it's a little complicated but it's. So this was comparing where people that live now to preferred residents in five years. So currently 578 people said they lived in single family homes in five years only 314 said they wanted to live in a single family home. So again, the, you know, a lot of different options here apartments or condos senior independent living facilities assisted living group home or co housing, subsidized housing and a lot of people said a location close to services. So, john's going to talk a little bit about more about these numbers in the next slide so I'll turn it over to you john. I just going to focus on a piece of what Becky just reported. And what I want to focus on our people living in a single family home. As Becky said, a high proportion of people in our survey are currently living in a single family come and a pretty high proportion, close to 50% expect to move elsewhere in five years. And where do they expect to move again that was touched on by Becky, the most popular answer is see your independent living. People also said apartment building there's probably a lot of overlap between those two categories. Third important categories is assisted living and other people spoke about hoping for an accessory or in law unit. And again, as Becky mentioned, and again, this is going to overlap is many people want a location that's accessible to stores etc. So, a lot of people who live in single family homes now see themselves moving to live with or closer to others, then they might be in a single family house. So what are the implications of this oops sorry. Okay. I made took an initial stab at generalizing from the survey results to population needs I will tell you I need to do some more work on this, but at least this is a rough idea about where we are and it's pretty significant. There are over 6000 adults over the age of 55 on the Amherst street list as of November 2021. If we try to generalize from the survey results. Or well from the street list about 63% live in single family homes which is consistent with what we had from the survey data. And then generalizing if we assume about 50% of those that is the ones who currently living in a single family home, expect to move in the next five years. What does that mean for new housing and Amherst. It means that we need about 2000 new housing units for older adults. That's a huge number for a town of this size. It has currently less than 10,000 housing units in total. So if we were to try to add 2000 new housing units for older adults, that would be a huge change. It may well be an overestimate and I said I'll do some work to try to refine it, but even if we can serve to reduce it by half. That's still with we leave us with a projected need of 1000 new units. And it's not clear where we would get those. If you see all of those people moving out of their single family homes. Okay going on to the next slide. What are the barriers to people remaining where there are the the biggest one is affordability it appears by itself on this side, and then it appears again on the next slide, basically 84% or about 15% say their housing is not affordable. That's the biggest barrier to staying where you are. Other barriers here listed from top to bottom include concerns about paying for home repairs concerns about paying for home modifications to make it more age friendly or disability friendly concerns about paying for basic home maintenance. These things are things that would force people potentially out of their current homes. Those are things that I listed as major challenges. Then we have another slide with minor challenges. And this time the biggest categories at the bottom. These are basic tasks or errands is the largest category. Next is going upward, do not have a friend or neighbor relative within 10 minutes, who could give you assistance with a minor task or an errand issues with finding various services including yard work or snow shoveling. And then the financing comes up bill paying assistance, fuel assistance, and just getting housing application assistance for a very small number of people. But the biggest stuff is basic tasks or errands and the senior center and Amherst neighbors are both trying to position themselves to address those kinds of needs. I should have said earlier, but I'll just mention it now that I relied on Nicole Orient, who is an intern with Pioneer Reality Planning Commission to do this analysis and I am appreciative of the work that Nicole did. Yes. Thank you, Nicole. Nicole's right next to you on my screen here. She has done a huge amount of work on this project and for the other communities we're working with and has done a lot of the graphics as well as the survey analysis so we're really appreciate all Nicole's help. So at this point we have about 15 minutes for. So we have longer so we have time for more discussion so anything, any initial reaction that folks have to the survey results or the discussions you had in your breakout rooms. Dorothy, you have to unmute. I thought of another asset, which makes this even more important. I think it would be tired to Norfolk Connecticut and absolutely beautiful place in Northwest Connecticut. But if you want to go to a doctor that will take most of your day, just driving back and forth. After I found out moved to Amherst I realized I can't leave this town, even if I wanted to, because I can just on University Drive. I can go to four or five or six different medical needs just it's so convenient here. I think it's probably more convenient in Amherst than in many other towns and that's a big, big plus, because we could find our week with the eye doctor the skin doctor then the GP and then getting your shot. You can spend a lot of time doing medical things when you're a healthy adult in order to stay healthy so I just think that we that Amherst is really a good town to grow old in and we don't have the housing as John just was pointing out with it. And we need it at particularly at affordable levels. That's it. Lisa. Yeah, related to the affordability thing. I understand the points john was making about people who live in houses that they can no longer afford or can't afford to maintain. But I think I know I would not be able to find any place that would cost me less than where I live now. And even for people in single family houses who feel they can't afford to maintain them would probably find pretty much the same thing that that they can't, you know, can't afford to move either, given the given the shortage of housing etc. So affordable affordability and availability. Anyone else Dorothy your hands still up, but I assume you're all. Christine, Chris. Yeah, I just wanted to mention the fact that most housing in Amherst is built by the private sector. And, you know, they're looking for a return on their investment. And so they tend to build apartments that are kind of expensive and they build large single family houses so if we are serious about, you know, providing housing providing more housing. That's affordable we're going to have to think of some other mechanism and a few mechanisms have been used. I've got one thing going on that John is very familiar with which is the new housing on Belcher Town Road and the East Street School. So the town, you know, purchased the Belcher Town Road property, and they own the East Street School property and they were able to put out the need to attract developers to build mixed income housing there predominantly affordable, but the town had to invest in the property on Belcher Town Road in order to make that happen. I also encouraged Valley CDC to consider building a housing for very low income people, and that's currently under construction on North Hampton Road but that took a long time to get it going I think it was from the first time we had a housing forum which was in 2016. And now, you know that project is finally starting to be constructed so that took, you know, about six years to get it really going. So these things I guess what I'm getting to is it takes time, and it takes, you know, public investment, public willing money to make these things happen and it also takes effort to work with private developers who are willing to build affordable housing and, and they're kind of scarce. So it's going to take, it's going to take a big community effort to make this happen. Just wanted to mention those things. Thank you. Ricky. Ricky, I see your hand up. I'm going to zoom so I don't know how to use the chat. How do you, when we're asked to say our name and if you're, you know, representing group or anything how do you do the chat. I typed it in but I didn't know what to do after that. Just close it. Yeah. If you see the little talk bubble, do you see the chat window. No, I'm off of it. Okay, I. And I just hit return and that's all. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And the other thing was that future that it was mentioned that future meetings might be held in public for the public. I was wondering if it could also be held on zoom for those of us who can't get to the meeting. We talked about that. It's, yeah, we, we can look into it. It's, it's going to be difficult to get, you know, have people participate in person and on zoom, but we can certainly look into it. What do you think more. So we, we have reached out to Amherst media, and they will be recording the in person listening sessions. So while they, the recording will be live. They will be recorded and then broadcast on their channel, their cable channel and then on their website. A few days later, and we can certainly will certainly post those videos on the project page on on engage Amherst. So that that is a one way that you can, you can participate or view the, the meetings. So we hope that you find that helpful. Yeah, and stay tuned because we're still, you know, we're hoping to meet in person. You know, we'll continue to discuss to see how it goes if it turns out more people are able to participate on zoom, you know, maybe we do that for one of another future meeting. I will say the fifth meeting we're hoping to be all in Spanish, and that will cover all the topics so Maureen and Haley are working hard on finding someone to help facilitate the Spanish speaking meeting. Linda, you're muted. I'm sorry. In response to the issue that was just raised. The technology exists to have meetings be bimodal and run properly. The clock is not going to wind back from the pandemic on that having to work from home, just got the whole country to the point where they understand the upsides of that as well as the downsides. And Emerson cannot afford to get left behind. It's a very modest investment to get meeting rooms equipped with adequate sound pickup so that the people who are remote can hear to get one big screen in the front so that the people in the room can actually see at manageable size the people that are online. It should be a high priority. You know we're talking a few thousand dollars that get at least one room set up that way. And then every meeting room graduate should be set up that way. It's just not acceptable to not be able to handle remote as well as in person participation as well as in person participation. And particularly if we're talking about issues that affect older people who don't necessarily feel comfortable going out at night anymore, for example, whereas the younger people had day jobs and meetings have to be at night. You have to be prepared to support both. But what I really put my hand up for before was just responding to the three projects. Chris, you reported as in progress and having taken a lot of time, having common that town invested in the land or was left the land and or already had the land from another purpose and speaking from my experience in land trust as an approach to affordability, whether the land is held in trust by a private or communal venture or whether it belongs to the town. The absolute key feature to having things be affordable and still have developers be able to make a living on the contribution they make is for there to be common ownership of the land either by the town or by a nonprofit, or by the big enough development it can be held in common by the people in the development themselves. That's a great point. Yeah, that's another model that we should definitely include in there. And in terms of the hybrid meeting I will say we have been, we discussed it, there is that capability and the select board chamber. It just, there wouldn't be room there for breakout rooms and that kind of thing so we'll keep talking about it and hopefully we can come up with a solution that works well for everyone but I appreciate the fact that all of you do participate on zoom and that is easier for some people than with a plane, you know, take that into consideration to the breakout. The breakout problem is easily solved in one aspect, not so easily in another. If you break people up by topic. So everybody who wants to talk about X goes to one room and everybody who wants to talk about why goes to one room. That's trickier to manage if you're doing a bimodal meeting. But if you're breaking people up randomly you just create some zoom breakout rooms. You know, so the people who are in person go, you know, divide up however you want to divide them up, and you create a couple of zoom breakout rooms. That's easy to solve. Okay. Thanks. Okay, I have, I have two questions. First of all, how does Amherst's planning particularly around housing how does it interact with the planning in other towns, if there's going to be a future need for 1000 new units is Sunderland going to build 1000 new units plus some for Sunderland residents is there any kind of regional thinking about this I assume that there is. And several people somewhere in our breakout group and some other people have brought up the question of downtown businesses and how practical they really are for example if you need groceries or hardware shoes or something like that. One solution to that that I've known about a little bit in low income neighborhoods is actually to subsidize those kinds of businesses because grocery stores for example need a certain for the size of the constituency when they determine whether it's profitable to build a store and sometimes it isn't profitable to them to build it where you want it. So subsidy is sometimes the only solution is that something that's possible for the business community or the town. So those are my two questions thank you. Chris do you want to just Chris or Nate do you want to talk about regional or regional planning? Yeah, I mean it's a good question I think you know, Pioneer Valley planning has been sponsoring regional housing meetings and there is a regional housing plan. That being said a lot of the implementation comes down to you know town by town municipality to municipality so you know I think john and the housing trust has also done a good job of trying to have some more regional conversations I think it could be strengthened. I think there's I think that's a challenge actually is you know housing is a regional need but it often comes down to each municipality and how it's zoned or how it's permitted or how you know what kind of support or subsidy there is for it and so I think that's a really good point you know we often say whether it's for student housing or for other types of housing, you know, Amherst can't really build its way out of it if it's you know if other towns are not also increasing housing supply just you know the demand is so great in the area. So I think that is a good point. You know something to consider to I think maybe that's a takeaway as well from you know from from this process as you know another point of regional collaboration. That's something I've been thinking about to there's there's statewide studies on housing, you know, supported housing but as a region. I think it does make sense to kind of look at it regionally because a lot of, you know, a lot of the smaller towns don't have the infrastructure to build, you know, multiple multi unit housing. They finders out of Springfield they're a nonprofit developer and they do other things partnered with the Donahue Institute at UMass and they published two studies in the last year about housing in the, in the pioneer valley looking at countywide information, Hampton, Hampshire and Franklin County they didn't go too detailed into town specifics or demographics but it is interesting that they you know use that as you know a county as the study, to kind of get to the extent but you know then it's you know there was a meeting about how do you implement it and it's really then, you know, like I said town by town so studies can show that there's a regional need and then it's really difficult to coordinate kind of an approach and a regional approach to that. I hope you're muted. John you're muted. I got it. Keith Ferry who's the president and CEO of Wayfinders is trying to concede convene a regional group to address the issues that were identified in the study that Nate identified, and we'll see where it goes we've had one meeting and they'll be trying to schedule it. But as Nate noted the biggest barrier is the fact that these decisions are really made town by town. And I'll use that to segue into another point I want to make at least half the people on this call are aware of the fact that the town is now purchased Hickory Ridge. There are a variety of very important purposes for which the town made that purchase. There is a small part of that property that is probably buildable on West Pomeroy Lane. And as I have suggested on a number of public and private occasions, I would like to see that buildable area go for housing. It could be exclusively housing for people who are older older adults, or it could be mixed housing. But if we can squeeze out five to nine buildable acres there. We could do a nice job of adding to the units that we need in town. Thank you. We have a couple. So this question has to is kind of technical. Dorothy froze for a second. Linda, do you want to ask? It's just a quick. Okay, Dorothy, you're frozen. Okay, so it's the lack of housing senior housing for moderate income people, people who make the am I, for example, I was saying Sunderland just built some affordable senior housing. And we're building some affordable housing which is not senior housing but is housing for whatever. There's no problem in terms of getting grants and funding or even using town land. If you're building senior housing, which would include, which would be available to seniors of moderate average middle class income. Because people want to build stuff for the high end that's very expensive. But that's I don't think where the big need is. That's just a question for, for John really. And you needed. Nate can answer it as well. It depends on the source of funding. But yes, we can include housing for modest people. That's actually included in the Belcher town road. East street school site. We have a small number of units that are available for people with 200% I'm sorry 100% of area median income, which gets to a moderate level or modest level of income. It's not all for a low income. And those units could go to older adults. But as far as I know we have no mechanism for setting aside units for older adults. Yeah, I think the john's point typically a developer will create a 55 and older development because you can, you know, if it's categorizes that then there's certain subsidies or restrictions you can have in place but if it's just a general affordable development. Oftentimes, you know, it's, it's more difficult to then have, you know, a set aside a certain percentage of units for a certain age group or something so, you know, some of it might be that at conception of a project it might be that, you know, some, so many units should be set aside for say 55 plus whether it's home ownership or rental. Believe it or not I think you know developers specialize in that so, you know, we like I said we in our breakout group we did reach out to some it's really interesting it's become, you know, everything so specialized now in terms of what a developer who really wants to do senior living does it, and it might be different than someone who does this general affordable housing so I think it's something that, you know that we could like john mentioned on hickory ridge if that's what we want we put it in there as a parameter, and we see what kind of interest we get Linda and it is four o'clock I want to respect people's time if anyone asked to leave but I'm also, I think we're open to staying a few more minutes. This is by way of a response to the point that I think Patricia made about subsidizing businesses. There's a business model for groceries particularly that I've encountered in a couple of places in England, when I was there on sabbatical in Oxford particularly, which is very similar at Amherst in terms of the demographic the age demographic of the population that it serves and also a very desirable location to live, and, and much of it is walkable. The big supermarket chain, which has an enormous center that you have to take your car and drive to the very edge of Oxford to get to has a location in central Oxford that you can walk to from everywhere in central Oxford. And the square footage is tiny. There are a lot of shops in Amherst that have similar square footage, and they run most of their inventory through it, they must have a little bus that goes back and forth between that and the main section so you can walk into the downtown chain, Sainsbury's and get all the same produce, the fresh baked goods, all the stuff in the big store, minus some of the household stuff but simple cleaning stuff is there. And, and the line moves through it really fast. They're obviously making money on it. I don't think anybody subsidizing on but even if it took a subsidy. It would be interesting to see if, if stop and shop or, or pick why particularly which is a regional corporation may have a stake in being public spirited would operate a walkable location in central Amherst. Thank you. Yeah, I'd be surprised if Sainsbury was making money on it, but who knows maybe the situation is different there, but public service of public spirit and operation. Organization. Yeah, that's a really interesting idea I had. There are a lot of places that could use something like that. And is crystal on. Yeah, have you guys heard of anything like that or, you know, business subsidies, anything like that. I haven't people have talked about it. I think, you know, we would have to probably figure out how town council might feel about doing something like that. You know, every time you consider something where the town is spending money. You have to figure out, well, okay, we're going to spend more money here. So what do we not spend so much money on so it's kind of balancing act but it's certainly a conversation that we could have. I've also thought, you know, if, if you are looking for areas with new for new housing developments could you incorporate, you know, commercials, a little bit of commercial space for like a mom and pop type market or a small small grocery market. I guess it would depend on the zoning for that area, but something to consider. Again, I think it would be necessary to figure out some way of subsidizing it. There's quite a bit of commercial space downtown in Amherst that's not occupied. And I only imagine that it's because the rents are too high. So, you know, how do you make those places affordable to a mom and pop store. That's a question that I would have. There was a little food store in downtown Amherst. You know, in the, in the row of shops that are near what used to be Louis foods but which, you know, I don't know what the name of that row of shops is but between the CVS and the St. Bridgets, and it went out of business. Now, I don't know what all the issues were, but anytime I went in there the produce was pretty clearly old that they weren't getting enough customers it's hard to park. And they, you know, they tried and went out of business and there certainly are people in Amherst trying to get a food co-op going in Amherst and they keep talking about downtown but I'm sure they face all the same difficulties. You know, it's not easy when you can't park near the store. You have to have enough customers to go there. I don't, I'd be curious somebody could maybe do a survey is to where people in Clark House and Ann Whalen and Chestnut Court get their food now. You know, the people who do live downtown might give us some information. Yeah. That's a good point. Okay. So we're a little past four. Just in terms of next steps. There is the next forum. I'm just going to share the screen here. The next forum is on social participation and inclusion, communication and technology and civic engagement and we're planning to have that on June 27. Also at 230. And our plan was to have it at the bank center. Stay tuned. You know, we'll talk to talk about the hybrid option. If that's, if that's what we want to do it might not be able to be at the bank center. So we'll keep information posted on engage Amherst on the age friendly community. Facebook or website on engage Amherst. Is that right? Maureen, I just want to make sure. It's on the project page of the on engage Amherst. Okay. So, let your friends know about these forums. The next one will be on transportation in July and then health and community services and public safety in August. And then a Spanish speaking forum in September. And then once we have all this, all the feedback from folks and from all the public forums, we will be developing a community assessment and action plan, which we can submit to ARP and dimension friendly Massachusetts. And then the action plan will name, you know, different organizations in the community that that could implement these, the recommendations. And then the town may also want to consider appointing a committee or having an ad hoc committee to sort of oversee this, this work going forward. So appreciate you all for coming. Last minute thoughts or questions. Okay. Well, seeing none will. We'll post the slides on engage Amherst, and we will have a recording, except for the small section that I missed. But I did take notes, so we'll also have the notes available. And we'll incorporate those into the action plan. So, thank you everyone. Thank you. Bye bye.