 All right, it looks like we have the members of the board here. So I'd like to go ahead and call this December 16th, 2021 meeting of the kind of Arlington Redevelopment Board to order. This open meeting of the Arlington Redevelopment Board is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12, 2020, due to the current state of emergency and the Commonwealth due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. For this meeting, the ARB is convening via Zoom as posted on the town's website, identifying how the public may join. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating via video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other people may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. So allow me to confirm that all members of the Redevelopment Board are present and can hear me. I'll take a roll call starting with Ken Lau. Present. Jean Venson. Present. Melissa Tentacolas. Present. Steve Revillac. Good evening, Madam Chair. Great. And then we have members of the Department of Planning and Community Development, we've Jenny Rae. Present. And Kelly Leidemann. Present. Great. Thank you very much. So we have one agenda item on our meeting this evening, which is to discuss the draft housing plan. We will ask the Department of Planning and Community Development to introduce the draft housing plan. I believe that one of the members of the consultant team who worked to prepare the plan is with us this evening. We will then take questions from the board member, followed by an opportunity for the public to ask any questions or make any comment that you would like, followed by any discussion on the list of priorities and recommendations by the board. And then if the board so chooses a vote to potentially recommend this report as it next will move to the select board for review. Jenny, is there any other action that you would request be considered by the redevelopment board at this meeting? No, it is the board, the redevelopment board and the select board each have to adopt the plan. Great. Thank you. But no, there is nothing else. Thank you. We'll hand it over to you at that point then. OK. Well, thank you for the introduction. I'm going to be very brief just to say this has been a process to update the housing production plan that was active for the past five years, which expired last month. We engaged in a process to hire a consultant. A consultant is there a planning group with Horsley Whitten Group. And we've been utilizing their services in order to have a pretty robust engagement process given the pandemic. We were able to reach a lot of individuals for their engagement on the planning process, both in the beginning when we were looking at the housing needs and housing issues, questions about affordable housing in Arlington, all kinds of things that emerged up to, of course, where we are now, which is engaging people in conversations about goals and strategies and recommendations. So tonight, what you have before you is the draft of the entire housing plan. It had been done, as I mentioned, in sections. There was an earlier iteration of it of a section of the plan that had been discussed. The Housing Plan Implementation Committee has been working with the department on this process. And I'm just enthusiastic to hear the board's comments. This evening, as well as the general public, we have also been receiving comments from the public directly to Kelly Linema and providing those comments directly to Barrett Planning Group once received. So I'm looking forward to hearing if there are any other ideas, particularly focused on the strategies and the recommendations. That's where we need to focus our attention because it's really a plan for the next five years. And in order to focus our time, we want to make sure that we're looking at the right strategies. If we aren't, then what else might be included in the mix? And then, of course, what are our priorities that we think that we can achieve together over the next five years? So the majority of the presentation tonight, though, will be by Judy Barrett, who is the principal of Barrett Planning Group and the owner. And I think if it's OK with you, Rachel, I will turn it over to Judy for her presentation. That sounds wonderful. Thank you, Jenny. And welcome, G. Thank you so much. I think rather than delay, I'll simply go ahead and start to screen share the slides. I have some slides to present to walk you through the plan. Kelly, are you going to run it for me? I have it running right now. You have it. Oh, this is wonderful. Thank you. So yes, thank you. This is a discussion tonight, a presentation about the complete draft of the housing plan. As Jenny mentioned, there's actually a team working on this. My firm is in the lead. We were thrilled to be joined by Horsey Whitten Group, which, as you may know, is a nationally known environmental planning firm, and we wanted them to assist us with the regulatory barriers review and also to kind of help us understand the natural resource constraints in Arlington that we should be aware of in trying to think about appropriate locations for future housing. So Jenny, you can go ahead. Next slide. I'm going to talk a little bit about the background on the project, give you sort of an overview of the structure of the plan. But really what I want to focus on is the kind of key problems that we encountered or discovered identified during the course of the research for the plan and then how the goals evolved in response to those needs and challenges and then how the strategies relate specifically to those goals, which for this presentation, we've kind of grouped together under three key themes. We can stop periodically for questions if you like and then perhaps just keep going and take more questions at the end if we don't get to everybody's questions in between. So I might stop periodically just to ask if there's any questions about the content up to that point. And then, of course, yes, I can actually request, I think if you could actually run through the presentation. Sure. I think some of the board members have already sent Erin several questions. So she's been compiling them and we'll throw them your way at the conclusion of your presentation. Oh, that's perfectly fine. I'm not actually that's better for me. I was just trying to get on the next one. So thank you so much. Forget the intermittent Q&A periods. And then we'll talk a bit about what the next steps are with the process. So next slide, please. So the background is we started working on this several months ago. This is an update to an existing plan, as I think you all know. You can go ahead and go to the next slide and I'll just keep going through this. A housing plan like this one, which is really designed to address regulations of the State Department of Housing and Community Development. It has three key parts. And the heart of every housing plan is the needs assessment. So that is where we always begin. And we attempt to develop that section by looking at demographic trends in the community, the housing stock in the community, and what kind of housing development trends are happening, both in your community and also contextually around you. Things don't necessarily happen in a vacuum. Communities are part of a regional system. And trying to understand what's happening in your part of the Boston area was another factor that we looked at. We also looked at what the sort of constraints are, some of which are natural, some of which may involve infrastructure, some of which involve, frankly, regulatory constraints. And also just, I think, educational needs within the community. From all of that, we developed a set of housing goals, which really, from DHCD's regulatory perspective, is two things. One is, what kind of housing do you want to see in your community as you continue to evolve? And the second part of it is, and so what are your production goals as you continue to work toward the 10% minimum under Chapter 40B? The implementation strategies involve potential zoning changes, potential sites for affordable housing, which may be owned or privately owned. What kind of development, again, you want to see, which relates back to the goals. And then whether there are any kind of regional partnerships that might make sense for a community like yours, again, recognizing that what happens really in the Boston area is a regional issue as much as a local one. And so every community kind of needs to look at both perhaps how regional partnerships might help it and what it also can do to contribute to its own contribution to the regional barriers that exist. So it's kind of a two-way street. Next slide, please. So the plan that we were prepared, it was directly in response to what the town asked us to do. A plan that would qualify for the Department of Housing and Community Development regulations for housing production plans. A plan that's realistic in your market area and helps to address the affordable housing needs in your community, as well as for people who would like to choose to live in Arlington and can't, because they cannot find affordable housing. It's equitable across all income levels and discourages concentrations of affordable housing in any particular area. So that's what the charge was to us. And we took that charge seriously and made every attempt to meet it. Next slide, please. This is kind of a picture of how the process worked. We had a kickoff meeting. We did an engagement plan to kind of lay out what we were going to do to reach out to the community, either on our own or in conjunction with the staff. And I would point out that your planning and community development department was absolutely invaluable throughout this process. We simply could not have done this project without Jenny and Kelly's help and the help of others. But in particular, your staff who are, I think you probably all know, recognized experts in this field. Anyway, it's always a little bit of an honor to get to work with Jenny. So we worked out an engagement plan. We did a tour of the community and there was a Google forum on the town website for people to be able to ask questions or make comments. We got a number of pieces of input from that about housing needs in the community or what people were seeing. We did a couple of rounds of pretty intensive small group interviews. At the end of May, there were like two or two and a half days of just constant talking to people. And then another round in the middle of August, we did a couple of rounds of what's called meeting in a box, which is a way of providing people with a set of questions and some materials to have a meeting on their own with their neighbors or with church groups or faith communities or their schools or whatever. And we did that in two rounds at two different points in the process. And so there was quite a bit of just, I would say homegrown community input as well. The town staff worked with the farmer's market and did outreach there a couple of times. We also had a mapping exercise that was available. We're so fortunate today to have technology like ArcGIS Pro where we can kind of put a map up and people can interact with it and maybe identify places where they think might be appropriate for in this case, future affordable housing development. And so that input also was considered. We had three major community forums in June, September and November and those were really around kind of the key milestones in the project. The needs assessment, developing goals and thinking about strategies and then kind of a presentation of what the strategies would be in the plan that we were going to recommend. The needs assessment is comprised of demographic and housing data as I think I mentioned. We look at market trends, we look at what is the actual affordable housing inventory in the community as that term is defined by DHCD and the barriers of course to affordable housing and the goals and strategies. So those are like the key pieces of the plan and that's just a little bit of a picture about how it was developed with community input and through quite a bit of research on our part. Next slide please. So there's gonna be an overview of the plan and I'm gonna break this down into types of needs we saw and what some of the issues were. So next slide please. I'm a planner and so I always think about what's my task and we always start these projects with trying to understand what the problem is. Why have we been hired? What is the issue here? And once having kind of come to understand what the dimensions of the problem are we try to understand what the causes are and what's contributed to it. What we think the options might be to address it. What solutions might be most effective? What kind of resources will a community need to pursue those solutions? And what's in the way and what can be done to overcome those barriers? So those are kind of like any planning project I don't care what it is. It's sort of like this is a structure but this is what you do. Next slide please. The way the plan came together we kind of determined through the needs assessment that there were sort of three overarching categories three overarching issues. And those are the shortage of affordable homes in the community, impediments to housing choice and limited capacity in the community for affordable housing. And I'll talk more about what that means when I get to that section of the presentation. But shortage of housing, housing choice and equity and then the capacity of the community and of the town's leadership to direct an agenda to create more affordable housing and preserve the housing it has. Goals of the plan are in response to those problems and the strategies as I said are completely tied to the goals that we addressed. Of course, they're also aligned with DHCD's review criteria because going back to my earlier slide we were asked to prepare a plan that would meet DHCD's requirements for approval. And that would be within your capacity to implement with the right leadership in place or with the training for leadership that would be needed to do what needs to be done. So that's kind of the organization here. Next slide. So looking first at the shortage of affordable homes these are kind of just findings that we concluded from working on the needs assessment. There's a significant shortage of safe and decent and affordable homes especially for extremely low and very low income renters. So we're talking about people with very low incomes and as you'll probably hear a little bit later in this presentation there's really very few choices for them in Arlington and in some cases really no choices. Arlington has few or no viable options for first-time home buyers to find a home they can afford to buy. And we kind of we concluded that just by looking at kind of what's happening with sale prices in the community and what's happening with the housing values in the town what are homes selling for and what can first-time home buyers really tackle. There are many older adults households in Arlington that are housing cost burdened. And by that I mean folks who are paying more than 30% of their monthly income for the cost of housing that they have. And of housing cost burden is a serious issue because when people have to make choices between their mortgage payment or their rent and food and other things that matter in life it just creates a continuum of instability in people's lives. The other thing we found was that the town doesn't have the regulatory or financial tools it needs to reverse those conditions under current circumstances. Next slide please. So it's probably worth just taking a look at what we're actually talking about when we talk about affordability because this is one of the things that I think we encountered some misunderstanding about along the way. So to a housing policy analyst affordability is around these income tiers that are established by HUD the US Department of Housing and Development and which DHCD adopts and uses as part of the Chapter 40B program. And so just to give these terms some meaning they're all tied to this concept of area median income. It is based on an area, excuse me, not the individual community because housing barriers are a regional problem that require regional solutions on the part of every town. So a moderate income household is a household with income at roughly 80% of the median income for the Boston metro area. It's not tied to your median income it's tied to the region. Low income is 50% or half of that median income and extremely low income is 30% or below. So many people who are extremely low income who are in your community may be living in, for example, public housing or have some other kind of arrangement perhaps with a section eight voucher. So these are just the income limits of households from one to four people. I just wanted to give you a sense of a low income household we'll just take the half the median for an example for a one person household that's $47,000 a year and what they can afford the maximum rent they can afford including utilities the maximum monthly housing cost is $1,170 a month. Extremely low income person can afford a $720 rent. Again, assuming that includes utilities and that's for a one person household. And I just pick on one person households only because so many people say well, we need more housing for young people starting out in their careers and we don't really have anything for them. And I just want to point out that when you're talking about a one person household it's not the mythical family of four that may have an income of just over $100,000. We're talking about a very different set of income tiers and housing costs that are affordable. Next slide, please. These are the kinds of jobs in your community that relate to those very low and extremely low income limits I showed on the previous slide. These are the average annual wages of people working in Arlington in these kinds of positions. So someone working in a bakery shop this assumes someone has a full-time job year round. The average annual income for that person is $25,700. Someone in retail, if they have a full-time job 41 one grocery store clerk, clerk 31 three someone in truck transportation 46 five childcare workers assuming a full-time job 43 five and people working in nursing or residential care 39 eight. So those are jobs in your employment base and those are the average annual wages for those positions. Next slide, please. These are the prevailing rents in Arlington and the income that's required to afford them. So I'm reporting to you an average median a lower percentile and a higher percentile. For a one bedroom unit, it's a sum of one person household the average is $1,600 a month. The median is $1,600 a month because the average is closer to 1,700 if you want to round it. The low percentiles 1450 and the high is 19 two. Those don't begin to touch $720 a month for rent. So you have a market that has some range of price although not much. And then you have people who are in income tiers living in your community who are struggling to be there because they can't find housing that can afford. And I just wanted to kind of lay that out for you so you can see what the housing affordability picture is in your community and then what the affordable housing gap is. Next slide, please. As a result of those findings we proposed some housing goals which of course involve increasing the rental and home ownership housing options in Arlington for extremely low to up to middle-income households creating, maintaining and preserving permanent supportive housing for people with disabilities. It's one of the things that we find a chronic shortage of in almost every town we work in. And we certainly think that for a town of Arlington size there is definitely an insufficiency of housing for people with disabilities. With I'm talking about lifelong disabilities people who need facilities like a group home or a longer-term supportive housing situation. Preserving and improving the existing supply of affordable homes to make sure that people have a healthy safe and stable living environment. So those are the kind of the three goals that address housing affordability. Next slide, please. Strategies to address them. I mean the good news is there's a lot of things you could do. You have a new affordable housing trust for which I think there's probably great promise. And they can consider strategies like providing enhanced home buyer assistance. There's an existing very affordable home ownership program that's offered by mass housing partnership called the One Mortgage Loan Program. And there are some communities in Massachusetts that have provided additional funding to make those already affordable loans even more affordable essentially by owning back a part of the purchase price that just sort of rides there on the deed. It's not a direct loan. Doesn't have to be repaid until someone sells the home. But what it does is it reduces what the owner has to buy or the home buyer has to buy. You also can do low interest loans or purchase price write downs. I mean, those are things a housing trust can do. Yes, they're allowed by statute to do that. And you certainly have the talent on that board to run that kind of program. The housing authority could consider doing more with the housing choice voucher program under section eight. There are some communities in Massachusetts that have had a lot of success with that. Making housing choice vouchers available to people who are using their housing choices section eight but to be able to use that as a step up to home ownership. Capital grants for the housing authority. I mean, we just think this is a significant issue and I was pleased to see that as part of the town's ARPA plan, there is an intent to make quite a bit of money available. I'm sure it's nowhere near enough, but I mean, it's a good chunk of money to help with housing renovations, rehabilitation upgrades and housing authority properties. Of course, there are other sources that could be considered, including your Community Preservation Act funds, which of course the housing authority would have to ask for, but that is an option available to them. And there's also the DHCD Preservation and Modernization Program, which is funding finally some modernization grants for housing authorities that desperately need to upgrade their units. We also recognize that while Arlington does have the short-term rental tax and it's not much money, that all of that really should go to the housing trust and be available to deal with housing needs that are in part connected to the short-term rental movement, I'll call it that. Next slide please. Using CPNA funds to acquire support and develop group homes for people with disabilities. This has been done in three towns that I know of where essentially the CPA resource was used to help a nonprofit provider of group home services to acquire a home in the community and then operate it as a group home. So that is an option that is available. It takes some outreach on the community's part, but again, I think between the talent and your staff and the talent on the housing trust, there's a way to perhaps pursue that kind of strategy. Providing architectural barrier removal grants for property owners who have disability needs. It's one of these hidden problems in housing, especially among homeowners that people just don't see the problem of architectural barriers in homeowner and owner occupied units where there is a person with a disability. Working with organizations like TASCAP, which is a regional entity that provides supportive housing for people in recovery. General obligation bonds have been used in some communities as a funding source. I know that doesn't always make taxpayers feel warm and fuzzy about spending more money, but it is a possibility. Nantucket comes to mind as a community that appropriated a total of $25 million from their tax levy to acquire property for home ownership development and rental development because there's such a need in that island. Providing financial support for multifamily development, perhaps through a set aside to fund rental housing as part of the housing trust efforts. So those are kind of strategies to relate to those goals about the shortage of affordable housing. Next slide, please. Impediments to housing choice. So we are, as housing policy analysts, keenly aware of the issues that go along with fair housing issues, especially around, right around the Boston area in communities where this has been a real challenge. So the things that we found that relate to this involve the existing inventory of affordable housing in Arlington tends to be concentrated in areas that unfortunately were once described as definitely declining. And there are areas near the town's border with Somerville and Medford and Lexington and in pockets along Massachusetts Avenue. Housing choice for lower income buyers or renters are kind of rare in your single family neighborhoods. So we've heard some people say they would really like to see more scattered site housing and that is always a noble goal, but the choices are not really there under existing conditions. Your existing zoning essentially freezes in place in equitable residential land use patterns that existed 50 years ago. It's always interesting to make a look at Arlington zoning map and kind of see in what way it's sort of between the map and the regulations, things are kind of frozen in place. And that makes it hard to address housing challenges in a community. Next slide, please. Your subsidized housing inventory does tend to be concentrated. I don't think this is any surprise to any of you who live in Arlington, but it's just worth kind of looking on a map and saying, there it is. Next slide, please. Impediments to housing choice, we looked at your zoning. And again, I don't think this is gonna be any big surprise to any of you, but we're looking at these areas where for example, you have larger lot zoning in two districts in the town and they are exclusively single family options. You do allow two family homes elsewhere in town, but where single family only housing is allowed, it's like 60% of the land area in the community. So it's a little bit hard to say, Arlington actually provides lots of opportunities to do housing diversity because when you look at it from a land area perspective, that's not really true. And then once you get outside the larger single family districts, you begin to see how the zoning pockets. And as a planner, when I see that kind of thing, what I'm pretty much seeing is, again, choices that were made to kind of contain or confine what existed at a certain point in time. So when you get to perhaps the apartment district, for example, it's almost impossible to create a good, developable site when you have land cut up like that. And so that's gonna relate to one of the strategies I'm gonna talk about in a little bit. So regulatory barriers are there and it's something that the town can choose to change. You don't need Chapter 40B to fix that problem. Next slide, please. Leadership for equity and affordable housing is not broadly recognized or well-received in the town we found. We heard a number of comments from people along the way that kind of made it pretty clear that there's a real disconnect, I think in the community between where the sort of leadership and knowledge is and what people perceive to be deficiencies and leadership and knowledge. I guess I'll leave it at that. Housing insecurity is not evenly distributed across the population. It disproportionately affects people of color and older people and generally people living on low incomes. You have a new Fair Housing Action Plan that points out, no surprise to me because I've heard this before, not about your town but others. Disability status is the most commonly reported basis for discrimination and the findings of that plan for Arlington, 11 out of 24 complaints. Disability is a significant issue in Fair Housing and it does lead to a lot of reactions from people that make it very difficult to provide housing to address those needs. High quality and stable housing is central to the health and well-being of families and children. It helps to foster relationships and opportunities in communities when it's integrated well, limits stress and reduces food insecurity. Next slide, please. So we looked at just kind of the distribution of income in the community and I will point out, I know someone had asked along the way, well, can we update the income map to Census 2020? And I just wanna make clear because I think there's still a lot of misinformation about this. In the old days, we used to get quite a bit of demographic information out of the decennial census, the every 10 year census. That is no longer the case. The American Community Survey has replaced that question set in the decennial census. So from the decennial census, we do get good, we will eventually get not only race data for the town and total population and total housing units, but we will get a little more information about housing types and we will get information significantly, I know the number everybody's waiting for is how many units in the communities are seasonal units so that we can then determine what is the year round unit base for your chapter 40B percent. And we don't have that number yet and we don't expect to have that number for several months. So the demographic data in the plan are based on the most recent American Community Survey which is 2014 to 2019. The updates that normally happen in December of the ACS are not happening yet. The Census Bureau is still working on that. We don't expect to see those data sets until March or April. Nonetheless, we worked with the data that are available. And I think it's pretty clear from the map that there's certainly some pockets in the community where there are higher income households than others and pockets in the community where you tend to have more of a concentration of lower income households. The breakdown by race is particularly I think instructive where the median income for some households clearly drops quite a bit in relation to perhaps the median income of white households which is the first dot on the left on that chart in the upper right. It drops down quite a bit for black householders that goes up again for Asian that goes down for other race which is often associated with Latino households. So there's really kind of a real variation here and yet you can also see from this chart that where the lower incomes fall so does the overall makeup of the households. So there aren't a lot of households by race in the community, the diversity is weak. And part of that I think what that chart shows is that people really can't afford on the incomes that they have to find housing in Arlington. The other way that income varies quite a bit is by age and I don't think this is any surprise to anybody. The highest earning households are in the sort of what we call child rearing years. And when you get to older adult households the income drops significantly. So I don't think it's really any surprise to see that we have older adult households in Arlington that are struggling to stay there. I would also note that younger households people under 25 also would be struggling to live in Arlington. They actually are the lowest household income by age group of the age groups reported by the Census Bureau. Next slide, please. Housing prices are out of sync with wage levels paid by local employers. That was kind of the point of the previous slide where I showed you what the annual earnings are of various jobs in your employment base and the difference between what those are and what it costs to actually rent and I used rental as an example to rent a unit in Arlington. Many people we spoke with kind of lament the town's loss gradual loss of diversity and income in class. And that is an accurate perception. It is really hard today for families of modest means to buy a house in Arlington or rent a place. As you become more affluent, your housing choices decline. People have expectations when they buy a home. And often, although people often think that teardowns are all because of developers coming in and buying up homes, it's also because people buy a home and they because they have the money to invest in Arlington they choose to increase the size of their home. They choose to make a number of modernizations and improvements that include a significant increase in the floor area of a home. So as your house, if your incomes go up the housing choices decline. And that's not Arlington. That's kind of a pretty common issue. The town really hasn't used tools like Chapter 40R. I mean, for a community that has been so averse to Chapter 40B it's kind of interesting to me as a planner that the town hasn't looked at tools or acted on tools like Chapter 40R to update your zoning to just deal with market reality and use the market to leverage the creation of affordable housing. Instead, there's been a lot of opposition to Chapter 40B that could increase supply. And I just want to make it clear. I don't think Chapter 40B is the be-all and end-all of housing production. It's just that when you don't provide choices that's what you get. And that's kind of an unfortunate outcome. Next slide, please. I'm sorry, I know we're trying to wait but I think that point is interesting to me. Rachel, do you mind if she explains that? Melissa, I really would prefer if we kept questions. I'm just trying to be respectful of everybody's time. So if you wouldn't mind, I'd love to return to that question. Yep, okay. I'll get there, Melissa. Then there's this sort of response. Well, so what are the fair housing goals of the plan in response to those limited choice issues? And one is to provide equitable access to home ownership and rental for a variety of households including seniors and families with children. There were plenty of comments we heard and received along the way about the town has, shouldn't be housing more families with kids. And I hate to tell you, but it's a fair housing issue. So there are needs at all levels. So we think the plan needs to acknowledge that. Integrating affordable homes in all neighborhoods through the use of existing structures and redevelopment of underutilized properties, especially within walking distance of schools and parks and services and so forth. Reviewing and update your zoning and other housing policies to encourage development that increases affordable housing and fair housing choice. There are a lot of people who say they know the town doesn't have enough affordable housing and they'd like to see more. But then when you get to, so how are you gonna do it, these barriers come up. Improving development opportunities along the major corridors to include a greater mix of housing options. I mean, there's already clearly a pattern there that at one time kind of sought a mix of multifamily and commercial space. So that pattern exists. It's a question now of how do you allow that to continue to thrive in our time? Which is a different market reality than it was when some of those structures were built. And then assuring that everybody has equitable access to green space and a healthy living environment as a priority for siding affordable homes. So those are our kind of fair housing goal statements that we're recommending. Next slide please. There are strategies that I think you should consider given the things that we heard and one is to conduct a racial impact study to evaluate whether your current rules disproportionately affect black people and people of color. Expanding subsidized housing information to include details about just more information or richer sense of the inventory which I think the department is working on but expanding the SHI data that you have so that you know more about, well, how big are the units? How many bedrooms do they offer? How many units are disability accessible? Which ones have age restrictions? So that there's a sense of really who are the populations that are most affected by conditions with even within the affordable housing inventory. We have an inventory in a certain number of units but how responsive is that unit mixed to the needs in the community? Making two family dwellings and allowed uses of right and all residential neighborhoods. I note that a couple of people said, well, we do that now because we've just passed a bylaw that says ADUs can be done in every neighborhood. And I would just point out as I think you probably know ADUs and two family homes are not really the same thing but you've already started down the path of providing more housing diversity. So it seems to me that a good next step would be to think about just allowing two family homes throughout the town wherever single family homes are allowed. I would also just point out and you probably are aware of this, the Zoning Act clearly recognizes single family and two family homes as enjoying the same protections from changes in zoning. So they're put on a level playing field in the Zoning Act and it would be great if Arlington also put the model of a playing field in your zoning bylaw. Changing the zoning map to consolidate districts and create realistic options for parcel assembly. So you can actually get some good multifamily redevelopment in places where it kind of makes sense. And then designating areas for missing middle housing kind of interspersed within the commercial centers. And you're probably all familiar with this concept but missing middle is basically this idea that somehow between single family neighborhoods and 40B, there's nothing. We either have these single family neighborhoods, we have these big developments and there's nothing in the middle. And the reason we don't have that kind of development pattern anymore, which we often had in our communities close to Boston is that the zoning doesn't allow it. I'm talking about three, four, six unit buildings. Just thinking about ways along the commercial centers that perhaps some of that missing middle could be permitted and create some additional housing in those areas which is of course good for business and also just good for taking advantage of the pedestrian infrastructure that exists there. Next slide, please. Removing regulatory barriers to multifamily development. I mean, a good way to start is really the, what I had just said about thinking about creating more opportunities for different types of multifamily housing including missing middle. Developing zoning for multifamily housing near existing and planned T stations. Your minimum multifamily development capacity under the housing choice bill is 5,150 units. That is as of yesterday when the housing choice guidelines came out. I'm not saying that you should strive for that goal. I'm saying that there is now a goal and every community that's an MBTA community is gonna need to make some decisions, potentially hard decisions, how they're going to address that legislation. We heard people say, well, we wanna get more affordable housing but we don't like the fact that developers are basically doing higher end housing for 75% of their projects and just making 20 or 25% affordable. And I think an obvious answer to that is look at what's happening in Cambridge with the 100% affordable housing overlay. And you could think of something similar to that where sort of designating areas where it makes sense to allow some higher density development and knows around Mass Ave or Broadway. I mean, that is just an obvious solution. Of course it has to make real, it has to make economic sense, which I think Cambridge has does and they've had a couple of projects done and I know that Cambridge Housing Authority is looking at doing some as well. So that's a tool that's available. It's just fine. We'll say you can have an expedited permitting process and not something that gets prolonged if you are doing a subsidized development and it's 100% affordable, boom. Here's your opportunity to do that. That's a regulatory strategy. Partnering with nonprofit faith-based and for-profit developers to site eligible developments in 100% overlay districts. I mean, there are developers you could work with that are doing that but you gotta reach out to them and you gotta let them know you're serious. Establishing a reserve account for the Housing Trust to acquire existing single-family homes and redevelop them. It's Duke family dwellings within affordable unit. I mean, that's certainly something that could be considered or making those kinds of funds available perhaps to the Housing Corporation of Arlington to continue doing those kinds of activities. Next slide, please. Preserving your existing parks and conservation lands throughout the town, especially in areas where you have existing concentrations of lower income or minority households and ensuring long-term access to recreation facilities. We all made kind of just a basic firm conclusion on this plan that we were not going to advocate making conservation and open space designated open spaces candidates for affordable housing development that that just didn't make sense. It was wrong. But there are concerns about making sure everybody has access to the green space that exists. And so, thinking about when you can't really do that because the sites are small or because there's just no economic way to accommodate it. How do you make sure that people have equitable access to nearby open space through better sidewalks or bike paths or trails to the nearest park or open space? Another thing to look at is auditing your current parking requirements and parking design standards. I think this is not a new issue in Arlington but we just find everywhere we work that the parking requirements are actually often the hidden reason that becomes a serious impediment to multifamily housing development, even where it's allowed. And then increasing the use of green infrastructure to minimize stormwater runoff and reduce flooding and heat island effect. So these are things that would be important to do for fair housing purposes. Next slide, please. Capacity. The advocacy for affordable housing development is fragmented and not well organized. I think this became pretty obvious to us early on and it stayed that way pretty much through the project. We have kind of heard a fair amount of misinformation about affordability and development, market conditions and so forth and local government's responsibility for affordability and housing justice. I think that there is an uneven understanding about kind of what that means and how to execute it. There doesn't appear to be a consistent or generally understood or respected policy framework for increasing the supply of affordable housing. Everybody's got ideas and many of them are noble and good. I'd say they're probably all noble and good to some extent, but then there's this reality of how are you gonna do this? And I think that's where it tends to fall apart sometimes. Next slide, please. Increasing capacity to produce housing through leadership development, advocacy, staffing, funding and relationships with non-profit for-profit developers. These are the two recommended goals for building capacity in the town. And the other is building awareness of affordable and fair housing needs within Arlington and the larger region. And Arlington's role in addressing the broader inequities that I think we're all aware of in the Boston area. So those are sort of the two goals that get at capacity. Next slide, please. Strategies to implement those goals involve building relationships with and encouraging more non-profit housing organizations and CDCs to build in Arlington. It's certainly not to displace the housing corporation of Arlington because they do a wonderful job. It's about having more capacity in the community to do what needs to be done. Considering looking at whether there's a value in establishing a community land trust, which I can talk about more if you want me to a little bit later, but a land trust, the concept with a land trust is there's an entity that owns the land and develops the housing and retains ownership of the land. So as housing sells or rebrents, the land is taken out of the economic equation. And I've worked in pretty much in different states around the country. And I can tell you, although in Massachusetts, the land trust model has not been particularly well used. It is widely used in other parts of the United States. And so I think this is a conversation that Massachusetts communities need to have where the land is such a driving factor in what's happening with the housing market because land is so scarce. How do you perhaps take land out of the equation? And a land trust is a kind of classic answer to that. A good model for a land trust, by the way, is the one that works on Martha's Vineyard. You can work with CDAC and LISC to organizations that's Community Economic Development Assistance Corporation and Local Initiative Support Corporation. They're both groups that work with nonprofits to financing on technical assistance and so forth, for affordable housing. Those are resources available to your town to find the right nonprofit partners to work with. And maybe supporting around table periodically for nonprofits or CDCs and for-profit developers as well to provide some public education about just what does it cost to develop and manage affordable housing? I think that sometimes that's just not clear to people and why would it be if it's not their field, they wouldn't necessarily know. Next slide, please. Supporting advocacy and tenant organizing efforts and the Housing Authority, HCA and other affordable housing developments. We're aware from the research that we did and the conversations we have that had that there are tenants really kind of struggling to be heard and to have their needs met. And so tenant organizing is a good tool to make sure that they have the agency in the decision-making process to effect change that affects where they live. Appointing affordable housing advocates to town boards and commissions. I'm gonna come back to that in a minute. Strengthening public education through your website and other online resources. And scheduling periodic and predictable meetings with you, the Redevelopment Board, the Housing Plan Implementation Committee, the Housing Trust and Select Board to set an annual housing implementation agenda consistent with your housing plan. People need to get together and get on the same page. And I would say now going back to this question about housing advocates on boards and commissions. I have never worked in a town where a select board put people on a conservation commission who opposed wetlands protection or didn't care about conservation land or open space. I've never worked in a town that put volunteers on a historical commission that didn't care deeply about the preservation of historic structures. I have worked in towns where people are appointed to an affordable housing committee because they oppose affordable housing. And I think if you want to to build a knowledgeable and persuasive conversation as a community about housing needs, housing responsibility of local government, fair housing and racial justice, you need to be thinking carefully about how you populate your housing committees and how you make serving on a housing committee as important and competitive as serving on highly visible committees, high prestige committees like yours, like the select board, like a finance committee. People want to be in those roles because they know that they can get something done or they believe they can. They hope they can. You need to make sure that there are voices throughout that process that understand affordable housing. It's the only way you're gonna be able to lead this conversation in a unified way as a unit of local government. Next slide please. Encouraging people to speak at public hearings and town meeting about the need for affordable housing, strengthening your education efforts, that little image you see there is from a program the town of Arlington has done where they're basically taking positions that are in their employment base as I did an earlier slide here and saying, here's what I make, here's what I can afford. And guess what? Only like 25% of the people in my income group could actually afford to live here. And so we just helped act and update some of those handouts. They're really just like one page sort of descriptions of here's a need and here's what these people can afford. And they're in your community and they're serving you at your restaurants and they can't live here. So just helping people make the connection that real life people have these needs and strip away all the arguments about what developers are making, what their profit is. That's an easy thing for people to latch onto. The harder thing for people to get is that there are people in your community who are in the workforce who are making very low wages and can't afford to choose to live in the community where they work. And then engaging town officials to confront and address just disinformation. I mean, just stuff that it really, it's sometimes kind of surprising to hear some of the things that you know are just wrong. So I think those kinds of things would be important. So those are the strategies to address capacity that we talk about in the plan. Next slide. Following this evening, we are scheduled to do a presentation with the select board in early January. That date has not been confirmed yet. We have a target date to submit to DHCD in early February. Next slide please. I guess that gets us, Rachel, to where you wanted to get to, which is the opportunity for people to ask questions, which I'll do my best to respond to. Thank you so much, Judy. Do you want me to leave you down? I'm sorry, I did mean to. You want me to leave this up or? Why don't you leave it up because we may want to go back to it. And I think it's easier just, you know, rather than switching back and forth between to leave it up. Okay. Great. So Judy, I'd love to thank you and the team at the Department of Planning and Community Development, as well as everyone on the housing production plan task force who worked so hard to put together this information and to so comprehensively engage the community in the discussion points during the process. I think I'd first like to ask Kelly to see if she could identify any of the questions that were submitted by any members of the Redevelopment Board. I know that you were looking for any themes or any other questions that we might want to push towards Judy as we start off the Q and A portion. Sure. So I didn't receive a lot of specific questions that I do think, you know, we did have a question about our inclusionary zoning by law and whether maybe perhaps how that could be addressed in this plan that it was noted that it wasn't seen in the plan. So I think that was one question. And I can just ask these one at a time if you want. That sounds great. Why don't we start with that one, Judy? Sure. So we didn't address that specifically because we were talking about other zoning techniques which includes, of course, affordable housing production when you're talking about chapter 40R and a 100% overlay district, just as examples, you're talking about affordable housing in a regulatory scheme that there's proof that it works. And it allows enough kind of development to happen that you can get affordability. So to me, that was, those were the more important things to speak to. It wasn't to not address the inclusionary zoning by law, it was to actually try to talk about things that would work in our experience. Thank you. We also had a question about trying to get at this idea of missing middle housing. You know, ways of, if you could maybe provide, I know you talked a little bit about it with the recommendation about two family homes, but if you could maybe elaborate on missing middle housing a little bit more and what that does in terms of affordability. So unless you are able to do a 100% subsidized development, I hate to say this because I know people don't want to hear it, but you kind of have to use the market to leverage affordability. And in order to do that, you have to kind of have enough units to be able to offset the affordable units. So, you know, being able to think about four, six, eight unit buildings, either in adjacent to the commercial areas or even along some of like the major corridor roads through the single family neighborhoods, you wouldn't necessarily go into the internal parts of those neighborhoods, but along major corridors, just be able to allow more of a housing mix in which you might be able to get an affordable unit here and there. These are not going to be big projects. They're not going to yield a ton of affordability unless they're 100% subsidized. But it's a way to do two things. First, to get a little bit of affordability into neighborhoods where there really isn't any, at least under the current regulatory scheme. But second, to just create more choice. Not everybody wants to live in a single family home with the yard. So being able to provide choice and frankly make it possible for a piece of land that has a very high value to have that value spread over multiple units instead of one, is a way to think about, you know, making it just more of a market kind of approach to creating some modest affordability. It's not going to create 30 and 50% AMI units. But there's really no reason why something, you know, in the six to eight unit range couldn't produce a couple of affordable units. Or perhaps even, you know, consider, well, maybe they can't do a couple of moderate income units, but they could pay a fee to the housing trust. Some people don't like that, but housing trusts love to have money to work with. And they may be in the best possible position to take some of those resources and actually create deeply affordable units. So those are the things to think about. Thank you. We did have a few questions from a couple of board members about maybe elaborating a little bit more on what a 100% affordable housing overlay means. I think we had some questions about whether that's like the appropriate, like, you know, when we talk about not concentrating affordable housing in one location, and then you recommend and like other, you know, we've seen other communities implement 100% affordable housing overlay. What does that actually mean when we talk about a 100% affordable housing overlay? And have you seen in other communities something that actually provides a little bit more mixed income, like a 50% affordable housing overlay or something sort of less than 100%? In the 1980s, the federal government walked away from subsidizing affordable housing. And we've been living ever since then with a system that relies on market rate development to create affordability, save for a few programs like low-income housing tax credits. That's the system we created, and it's the system that we now hate. So, you know, I think that, let me say this, absent subsidy, you are not going to get units affordable at 30% to 50%. Not that stay affordable. It takes money to do that. What you can possibly do is get an 80% or 100% income restricted unit that with some subsidy from the town is a little less expensive to buy down than something that you're trying to buy down from entirely market rate. But again, I wanna just point out that some of this is about housing choices, meaning settings, context, housing type, and some of it is about affordability, and they're both issues. So I don't wanna leave anybody with the impression that I think you can adopt a missing metal strategy and get deeply affordable housing, not unless there's a subsidy. I'm not gonna mislead anybody about that. It takes subsidy to do that. So I think it's a question of, do people understand that housing choice is also part of this? You know, as to how many communities have done it, I mean, let's be honest folks, Cambridge, Cambridge has done it. And I don't think you're gonna find a whole lot of examples. I mean, they're being watched nationally for what happens in that district. You don't have to create an overlay that concentrates if you spread out enough. I mean, that's what Cambridge did. It's not just one concentrated area. You can think about logical places in the community where there already is somewhat of a mix of housing or where there's opportunities perhaps for redevelopment and extend the district to enough of a geography to pick up some of those locations. And then say to developers, you're not taking away their underlying rights, they still will probably do whatever they want on the underlying zoning. But be able to say, look, if you bring us 100% affordable project, we're gonna give you, double the density that you can get now, we're gonna give you an expedited permitting system, we're gonna give you an incentive to bring us a 100% affordable development. So when people say to us, we don't want developers to be making a bunch of money on market rate units, my answer is then do something through your regulatory system about it. It's a choice you get to make. Thank you. Two more questions. Actually, one is actually I'm gonna answer it because we did have a question about the, about whether the recent approval of accessory dwelling units has resulted in any new accessory dwelling units in town. And to date, we have not had any building permits issued for accessory dwelling units. So I just wanted to mention that here. We did have two questions regarding the recommendation that was touched on in the plan about the industrial zones. And as you know, and as the board knows the town recently approved changes to the industrial amendments to the industrial zoning at town meeting. And just wanted you to explain a little bit more about that discussion in the plan. Well, I know you just did a zoning change there and I'm not advocating throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I think you need to see what works. You've got a zoning change, monitor it. And if it ends up producing some housing that is like artist live in space, which I think is what people were interested in, that would be great if it happens. And if it doesn't, then maybe you need to look at something else. You know, the great thing about zoning is you can change it. And sometimes you just need to see what's working, what's not working and how can you make something better? So all I'm saying is just keep an eye out on it. And if it's not really doing much or not doing as much as you had hoped to effect change and reuse of some of those assets, then go back and perhaps rethink the limitations that you put on housing in the industrial zone. I don't think it's, I don't think you have to do it now. I'm just saying keep an eye on it. Thank you. And I know just, I think we'll probably get back to the board in a little bit. So if there was anything I missed here, you know, there'll be a discussion later on, but I think I just wanted to also mention, Melissa had that question earlier. I believe it was about 40R and 40B. So Melissa, if you wanted to ask that right now, I just wanted to open that up to you. Yeah, I'm trying to remember what I, I thought it was an interesting point, Judy. And I just wanted to kind of pick up on your curiosity about it and understand your thinking behind it. And if you could explain to people who are listening the difference for 40R and 40B. Oh, sure. So 40R was this grand effort by the state to say, all right, folks, you don't like 40B. Here's this thing that you can do on your own. So it is a type of zoning that a town can adopt. It is an overlay district. So you're not disturbing the existing zoning. You're laying an additional opportunity over the existing zoning. And the district has to meet certain density targets based on the type of housing that it provides for. And so you can create a district to allow higher density single family, townhouse or multi-family units, ranging in density limits from eight to 20 units in an area in your community that's appropriate for higher density development, which clearly have some areas that are appropriate for that. Doing that invites a developer in to say, I'm not going to need chapter 40B to do a market-driven affordable housing development. I can use your 40R district, which you adopt as your choice as a community. It's an alternative to 40B. The units count on the subsidizing, subsidized housing inventory in exactly the same way as if it were chapter 40B development. And it just gives you another opportunity to perhaps use your own regulations to do what you say you don't want chapter 40B. You don't want chapter 40B. I'm here to tell you, you don't need it. If you make choices as a town to do something realistic about affordable housing, then you don't need 40B. And 40R is an example of something that was offered by the legislature to towns as a carrot to say, fine, try this instead. And it's been a mixed outcome, Melissa. I think some of our chapter 40R developments have produced housing and done a decent job. And others kind of hit, because of when the legislation passed, there was a lot of activity to create 40R districts and then the recession hit. So we had some projects that never actually went forward, even though the developers had every intention of doing them. And then some that picked up later and are really now just under construction. But the zoning is there. It's a by-right system. So if you have a multifamily 40R district that allows 20 units an acre as a right, the developers go into the ARB Precite Plan Approval and it's an as a right system. So there's no special permit. And it's kind of harder to file an appeal from someone who doesn't like the approval. So that's what it is. Thanks, Judy. And then maybe, I don't know if Jenny could help me. So has there been an initiative in town over the years to identify an area for 40R? Because I feel like that has a lot of potential as well. So I'm just curious if there's been stuff like that. I didn't pick up on one. I don't know if Jenny might be aware of it. We had investigated it over many years. Prior staff, current staff, during the last housing production plan process as well and had identified maybe some possibilities but didn't pursue it any further. It's in the current housing production plan. Thank you. Thanks both of you. You're welcome. Nice to see you again. Rachel, that's it for me and sorry, go ahead. No, I'm just gonna ask if you had any other questions before I ask the board for any questions that were not submitted prior to the meeting. No, that's it. Thank you. Great, thank you. So Melissa, I'll go back to you since I know you just posed a few questions. Did you have any other additional questions for Judy or Kelly and Jenny related to the presentation tonight? No, great job. Thank you, Judy. I think one thing that just comes to mind because from a planning perspective, it's easy to focus in the silo or the containment of what is Arlington and those boundaries. And so I'm wondering if there's a way to kind of compare us to other communities in terms of how we're doing and then understand that employment piece because it's one thing to, you know, that commuting factor of where people are coming and going for, even those jobs that were listed, just to acknowledge that that is a factor in the regional issues on housing. Yeah, so I think you're wearing your economic development hat right now. I don't blame you. You know, I'll answer you with a little bit more of an anecdote. We did Hingham's master plan recently and I was fascinated to go back and look at the old plan and see what the commuting patterns were. And that was 2001. And then when you looked at the commuting patterns in 2017, I think it was the most then recent update to the journey to work data, lots of people are coming into Hingham to work every day way more than 20 years ago. Not only that, but the geography of the area that is drawing employees to this community, my office is here, is much wider and their job base has grown significantly. But what we learned from that whole experience when you then looked at the economic base changes was that Hingham had become this retail mecca on the South Shore. And because it's an expensive town, all the people who work in those stores can't live here. So they're coming in from all over the place and leaving every day, whichever, whereas most of the town's own labor force is commuting into Boston because that's where the higher end jobs are. So there's real disconnect between the employment base, the job, what wages are paid by the local employment base and what it takes to actually have enough of a workforce to support those jobs. I share this because I think people have to understand at some point that when they have issues with traffic congestion, issues with why people are having to leave the community more to work. There's an answer to all of this and it has to do with the cost of housing and the abundance of housing. When people have to come into your community every day to work, they're putting cars on your streets, it's not their fault, they can't find a place to live in your town. So I think that it's just something that you ought to think about, like what kind of environment are you offering to people to live and work in your town? And to what extent does that create issues for employers that really depend on having access to a labor pool that is willing to take lower wage work? We have a situation throughout the Boston area where we have restaurants that can't staff their restaurants full time. I mean, they can't like fill the whole seating area because they don't have enough wait staff. So there's a big disconnect going on here between where people live and where they work. And to me, it's a fundamental economic development issue. I could bring it back to housing but I think it's a much bigger problem. And I don't know how many communities are successfully dealing with it. I don't know. Anything else, Melissa? Thanks, Judy. Yeah, I mean, it's just something I think about in terms of where people are moving and kind of that creating that mix. And for us, I think a lot of the thinking around sustainability kind of is, you know, job tells, smart growth, jobs and access. But I think sometimes that obviously is not limited to the boundaries of any one community. And so that's kind of why I feel like it's important to at least understand what's neighboring, obviously Cambridge, but you know, how we're doing in comparison with others too, at least to some degree, you know, even this effort is laudable. So thanks. You're welcome. Thank you. All right, I'll turn it over to Ken for any questions. Yeah, thank you. This is a really good report and some of the findings were really good reinforcement for us to use. I wanna go back to the overlay. Yes. Affordable housing overlay. Yeah. You're simply saying that's choice. Yes. And I know there's two, there's basically two factors. There's the public, which is, you know, all the housing trust or corporation that does affordable housing, they do all affordable. And that's something that's a public interview that does it and that's why it's 100% affordable. But then there's the private. And I'm a strong supporter of that because it doesn't cluster affordable housing in one building or one area. It makes it more diverse. And I think that's a much better way to live amongst a more diverse community. So I'm not exactly sure what you mean by adopt affordable housing overlay. That means every single house in that area, every single project over there, you have to make it 100% or is this that it's like a higher number that instead of, let's say instead of not 25%, you make it 30 or 40% will give you a bonus in density or height or whatever else to encourage in that area, because that's close to what you say earlier, like transportation or two areas that's, you know, maybe near a park, maybe we don't need to have open space right on that property, stuff like that that can be traded with the zoning that can actually meaningful to make it happen. Is that what I'm sort of hearing from you? So, you know, it's a good question. It's a policy choice. I mean, I do agree that certainly mixed income is a good approach for a whole lot of reasons. It's something that works in the market for social and other reasons, it's a good solution. The reason we brought this up is that we heard from people we're trying to respond to things we've heard, right? So we heard from people, some people in your community that they're not thrilled with the idea of developers providing a minimal amount of affordable housing and then basically using Forty B to create luxury housing or very expensive housing. And all I'm trying to say to you is if you wanna address that problem, then you need to think about it without Fort P. There is a regulatory solution that you can consider of yes, it does involve a concentration, it does, but you end up with 100% affordability. You know, the other reason this tends to come up is that when a community is relying entirely on chapter 40B to create its affordable housing, even with a rental development where I think you know 100% of the units count, if in fact only 25% are affordable, you've created some choice by creating those market units but you haven't really built a lot of affordability. So there's this trade-off involved, you know, if you wanna get a lot of affordability, you gotta really make it work because it's very difficult to do. It is not something a developer throws together overnight. And it has to be something where they know once they put all that investment in to try to get this thing designed and permitted that they're gonna be able to build it. So if you're more interested in mixed income approaches that also take advantage of the market, chapter 40R is a good option. That is a mixed income approach. I guess what we're saying is there's a couple of different ways you can go here. You can think about a mixed income approach that gives the developer the necessary economic ingredients to make it work or you can offer an overlay that's going to give you more affordability. It will give you more housing but it also might give you more affordability. The trade-off is concentration. The upside is you've created a real dent in your affordable housing needs. I'm not gonna tell you, I think that any one of these strategies is like the only thing you need to do. I'm telling you that these are options available to you as a community. Thank you. You're welcome. I'm pretty much good now, Rachel. I mean, this is a pretty good report and I really like some of their suggestions. Great, thank you, Ken. Jane, I'll turn to you next and then you submitted quite a bit of commentary which was great ahead of time. I'm sure that the department will pass that on to Judy. Any additional questions that you have that haven't been answered yet? Yes, and thank you. And, yeah, Judy, I'd like you when you have an opportunity to take a look at the comments that I submitted. Yes. I have a few things. One, on the industrial zones, I think Kelly sort of created a question out of what I said about the industrial zones in my comments and I very much appreciated your answer. But if you take a look at the report itself at the 304 pages near the end of the strategies, it lacks that nuance. So what people are going to do when they look at that report is they're gonna look at that chart at the end and it's gonna say allow residential industrial and it doesn't have what I think is the appropriate nuance. So that's one example, but there are many other examples like that in the report where what you've termed as options and I think that's right are more listed in the report are here are the strategies and my concern is that we adopt this, this goes in and they're no longer seen as options. They're seen as things that we need to do and I think there needs to be some more explanation about that in the report. I did, I was also asking the question about whether as Kim was asking whether it has to be 100% affordable overlay or as suggested or there could be a range and a range potentially allows for mixed income housing it allows for the higher end to subsidize the lower end. So I think that's another example where some more detail or nuance would have been helpful. I also asked the question about inclusion or zoning and I'm disappointed that your answer was well we're already doing it so this is looking at other things. I'd say it still needs to be part of the strategy because one of the things you said in one of the community meetings is you need a big suite of strategies to try to accomplish this. So I'm concerned that that strategy is not here and it doesn't take a look at what I understand is one of the nice ways to implement it with density or other bonuses in exchange for a higher level of inclusionary zoning. So I'm disappointed that's not there but since you think it still needs to be part of the package I think that needs to be put in here somewhere to make it clear that it's still part of the package. My question, and these are all statements now here's a question. The two family and one family zones and I'm not saying that I'm opposed to considering that but I don't really understand how that gets us at affordable or missing middle housing because at least what I'm told is what happens now let's say in the R2 districts is a house gets torn down maybe a single family house and it's replaced with a duplex or a two family condos each of them goes for a million plus. So I'm not clear how just allowing two families in a one family zone will get us affordable housing or missing middle housing unless we put some other requirements on it like limitations on square footage or affordability requirements. Can you discuss that? Sure. Not everything in this plan is directly about affordable. Bear in mind that some of this is about choice and just varieties of housing in a community which includes condominiums. So I'm perfectly happy to look at that, Gina. I don't mind. I'm just saying that that was not really my and I wasn't thinking that much about creating affordable housing out of a two family. I think that it takes subsidy to do that. I think something like what the HCA has done is a good way to think about doing two family affordability but right now you don't even allow it on 60% of the land in your town. So I think what we're saying is there's choice, there's affordability, there's leadership, there's like these different things going on here. And I don't think that allowing choice whether without the affordability component is such a bad thing as a housing policy analyst. I respect your comment and I'm happy to put more thought into it. Well, I think maybe just, and I say I'm not opposed necessarily to what you suggested. I just think that it might benefit by a little more clarity. Sure. In the report that that two family in the one family zones is not about affordability. It's not even about missing middle. It's about just giving people more choice. And if you wanted it to be about missing middle or if you wanted it to be about affordability or both, here's what we'll have to go along with that zoning change to allow it to happen. I sort of felt that piece was missing from the report. The thing I thought was interesting, this gets to your choice thing. And this was, I thought, one of the more interesting little factoids in the report was it was something like of the comparable communities, we have the third lowest percentage of single family homes. Something along that. And something like the third highest percentage of two family. What you're suggesting is moving us more toward one end than we even are now on that, which I thought was interesting way to think about it. The other thing, and you'll see this in my comments, there are a number of places where there were statements made in the report that are contrary to what the ARB has said about certain zoning issues. And one example is the FAR in the business districts. So I think that it's important to clean up that part or have a discussion about why you don't want to make those changes, because if they get into the report, the report's going to be contrary to the direction that the ARB is going on some of those issues. That's it. Other than that, my comments are in writing. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Gene. Steve, I will turn it over for you for any questions in addition to what you may have already submitted or questions we didn't get to in what you've already submitted. We'll see. Okay, there. Sorry about that. So I have two comments and two kind of short questions. First comment is the report mentions providing equitable access to green space. That's something I never really had considered in the context of housing production, but I think that's a very important consideration I would like to thank Ms. Barrett for including it. Regarding the mismatch between what people here can afford to pay for housing and wages. A few years ago, we had a debt exclusion in order to fund a new high school. And I did a bunch of campaigning and door knocking for this, including in a public housing development across the street from where I live. And I was a little surprised to find that is one of the residents of that was, she thanked me for knocking doors and she said, I'm a teacher in your public schools. So I, that sort of took me a little bit by surprise, but I think that it's just one point to show that yes, there is a mismatch. So on the two questions I had, so some place in the report, there's a reference, we mentioned that a lot of the affordable housing in Arlington is in formerly definitely declining areas. Does that refer to the homeowners loan corporations like C slash yellow districts? Yeah, that's the old hope maps. They were, it was definitely declining was the characterization of those areas. So those maps are, do some pretty dramatic language, but it's just interesting to look at those maps, Steve, in comparison to how the zoning lays today. And it kind of tells an interesting story that that's all. Well, no, I happen to live in one of those. I think I'm a C2 in Arlington's map, but one of, I mean, I think it's worth noting, I think it's worth actually coming out and saying that, it is a legacy or it is a way that the legacy of redlining lives on today in Arlington. And I mean, not that Arlington is unique in this, but it's, and the last thing, you mentioned, one of your slides mentioned a racial impact study. Could you tell me a little bit about what such a study typically does or recommends? So there are a couple of tools out there that are in use now. Mass housing is actually developed one or I think they're borrowing one from another agency looking at some of their programs and the city of Boston has adopted one as well. It's basically a way to look at, here's a potential zoning change in our community or here's a potential thing we're thinking about doing. Who is likely to benefit from this and who is likely to be harmed by it? Who, for whom will this provide the greatest cost versus the greatest benefit? And so when you think about the income differentials, for example, between households of different races, you can begin to see how some kinds of policies that promote or support the creation of additional housing or additional affordability might stand to benefit more from policies that deny more affordability or the production of more affordably more units. So that's really what I'm talking about is like, here's this policy and who benefits and who doesn't. And I'd be happy to provide in an appendix to the plan an example of one that has been developed and will be helpful to you folks. It's really kind of an inquiry that you go for when you're reviewing a policy, a potential zoning change. How's this gonna fit here? What properties are affected? How do the existing property owners feel? Those are all things we tend to ask when we're doing a zoning change. This is asking additional questions. Who is likely to benefit and who is likely to not benefit? And to what extent will race be a factor among those who will not benefit? Speaking for myself, I would find something like that helpful. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Steve. And thank you, Judy, for those questions. Answers to the questions, Rayleigh. Jenny, I think we could probably pull down the report. And at this time, what I'd like to do is go ahead and open the meeting up to public comments. I will remind everyone that you will have up to three minutes to address any questions regarding the plan or any commentary that you might have. What I would like to do is wait until you're finished with your time, collect those questions before asking, Judy, this won't be a back and forth, but I will collect questions at the end of each one. One of your three minutes and ask Judy to respond before moving to the next person. So if I could ask you to please use the raise hand function at the bottom of the screen. If you'd like to speak this evening, please make sure that you announce yourself by first, last name and address at the beginning of your time. And we're going to start this evening with Joanne Preston. I believe you took your hand down. Joanne, I know you've had it up and down a couple of times. Are you? I just put on the, I just opened, I thought, the microphone, can I speak now? Please, please go ahead. I'm Joanne Preston. I'm on the board of the Arlington Housing Authority. And I'd just like to make some comments that are specifically related to the Arlington Housing Authority and this report. First, I'd like to suggest that the report give a more complete description of the long-term contributions of the Arlington Housing Authority to affordable housing and the diversity in the town of Arlington. We're an organization that offers the largest number of low income housing. For instance, I saw with the interest that Judy presented that extreme low income housing was around $720 a month rent, where our average rent last year was $480 a month. So I guess we're in that category. I'd be glad to, somehow it may not be easy for her to get, I'd be glad to talk with her and offer her some of this. I'd also just say that these recommendations recognize that the current sites of the Arlington Housing Authority do not contain surplus land for large scale building projects. And these projects would be contrary to the health and wellbeing of the residents. First, housing experts have strongly recommended that family public housing be located in small two floor buildings with ready access to the outside, not eight and 10 story buildings. Nuber's studies have found large buildings to be unsuitable for family public housing. Second, seniors and high-rises buildings which are appropriate for them, they also need space for gardening, walking, socializing for their physical and mental health, right there by the building because they have mobility problems. And one of the greatest issues for senior citizens in public housing is isolation. All the sites need space for cars. The low, they're low wage workers who work at places and at times that aren't accessible to public education. Tearing down the buildings for larger buildings would result in displacement. It would remove seniors from their support systems, most critically medical for an extended period of time and children from their schools. Social and emotional impact is enormous. The case of the West End and the study that was done called Grieving from the Lost Home documents that. What recommendation should be included for increasing Arlington Housing Authority housing? We, current plans are financing permitting, including the purchase to more condominiums and small houses, which would be rehabilitated with a focus on providing housing for more victims of domestic violence and for developmentally challenged and group arms, and of course, more for low income families and seniors. These plans have an immediate, I'll just finish my sentence. Thank you. Availability of housing for those in need without engaging in longterm expensive construction projects. I have about two more pages that with things that have been said about that recommendations to housing authority, which I hope I'll be able to get to Judy. Thank you. We welcome anything that you would like to submit following this meeting tonight. So thank you very much. All right. The next person that I'd like to call on this evening is Jonathan Nyberg. Good evening. My name is Jonathan Nyberg. I live at 30 Lakeshore Drive. And I just want to say first of all, thank you, Judy, for doing such an incredible job. I think you're telling us the truth, whether we want to hear it or not. It's the truth of our community, who we are, what we've evolved to, and what some of our issues are. And I just wanted to say thank you for being honest. The next thing is, I think one of the challenges in Arlington is many of us think left, but we don't live left. We want to be all inclusive, all affordable, but the reality is we're an expensive community. We're getting more expensive. The average new built single family is two plus million. And for many people over 30 years of age, that's a reality shock. So I think, Judy, you're being honest with us and letting us know if we want to progress in the future, we need to accept some of the realities of what it presently is. The other thing is, like you said, we have a lot of land. 60% of our town is single family places with a lot of land. But the reality is we don't want to share our land. In the old days, two families were for rental housing, more or less. Nowadays, it's about condos. If we could knock down a small single family house, build two million to million five condos that creates housing for two families on what before was maybe a $800,000 single family. So affordability and housing, like you said, Judy, is about choice. It's a huge issue that we need to embrace. Also, I want to thank you for pointing out that we don't provide options in Arlington between 40R and 40B. So unfortunately, anybody wants to come into the town to create change, create housing, to create potential affordability, only has the option of 40B. And then all of a sudden you are the monger developer who is raping the town when in actuality, nobody else is putting up the money to do affordable housing. So I think we have to be honest as a community. If we want affordable housing, somebody's got to pay for it. And why not use the developers as a avenue or a stream for affordability housing instead of thinking of them as the bad person? The other thing is the reality is in all of our towns, change is scary. I don't see anybody in this conversation under the age of 30, and that's the future of Arlington. And those are the people that we also need to include in some of this conversation. So the thing is with Arlington, the less options you make, the more expensive it gets and more exclusive it gets. So I think as we talk about change about different things that Judy is being honest with us about, we need to embrace that and not miss this window of opportunity. If we're not growing an embracing change, we're actually dying. And that's my end thought. Thank you, Rachel. Thank you, Judy. I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you very much. All right, the next person to speak this evening will be Patricia Warden. Thank you, Madam Chair. Could I ask these for the favor of a few extra moments? I am the longest serving housing implementation, commission member housing plan implementation. I'm going to keep this to three minutes with the there are many people that are waiting to speak this evening. So if you could keep it to three minutes, I'd appreciate it. Thank you. You're welcome to submit any further comments in writing to the both the board and to Judy. Well, thank you. I guess that's what I get for my three years on the committee. And let me just say that- All right, you could please introduce yourself by first last name and address. Patricia Warden, Tracy Street. First of all, you should know that this housing plan has never been voted on or approved by the housing plan implementation commission. It has not been approved for sending to this board or to the select board. I do not approve of the plan as it is currently written. It was my hope that the plan would be a beneficial blueprint for Arlington's housing, especially affordable housing and the town's diversity, businesses and healthy environment. It is not such a blueprint. It is the opposite. It is a blueprint to attract developers, perhaps Mr. Norberg who's planning a 40B to maximize their profits in many ways while providing as few affordable units as possible. And meanwhile subsidizing 40B projects and drastically reducing our diversity. In fact, much of the plan shows a way to provide no housing. Yes, I'm in zero housing to those. Real housing help to those who need it most. The plan is an outright attack on our zoning bylaw and our diverse population seeking to displace many families in favor of our income residents. As our redevelopment board, you are the guardians of our zoning bylaws. You have the power to improve this plan. Please use it. There are three major ways in which the plan is designed to achieve massive density increase using false promises of affordability. First, it's recommendation for creating many 40B projects. These have no units for lowest income residents while greatly increasing density. 40B projects simply blow away our zoning laws. Secondly, multiple changes in our zoning bylaw to enable cramming more expensive residences throughout Trump, regardless of displacement of families, loss of diversity, climate damage, overburdened schools, traffic problems, loss of historical structures, and open space and tree canopy. Third, disregard for the Arlington Housing Authority and its need to acquire existing units for housing vulnerable populations such as low income victims of domestic violence. The plan is full of unsubstantiated claims and errors totally lacks necessary studies and competent cost benefit analysis of suggested initiatives. What it enthusiastically recommends is recycled, failed and unworthy initiatives from the past and some very dangerous concepts including introduction of two family, multi-family structures in single family zones which results in much more expensive units, large and small, simply displaces less wealthy families. Even in the first part of your time. So if you have additional comments that you'd like to make, I do encourage you to submit those in writing to the Redevelopment Board and to the department. Thank you. Just let me point out that in the initial pages that is in the state, Mr. Dickens is not. Thank you. Again, if you have any, if you have any comments here. Thank you very much. It's fun to talk to you. Thank you. Okay. The next speaker will be Jordan Weinstein. Yes, hi. Excuse me, I'm Jordan Weinstein on Linden Road in Arlington and I'm a town meeting member of Precinct 21. I have two questions. One is if someone could a bit more in detail explain what the MBTA region is, what that would require of the town. I've heard it talked about in bits and pieces at various meetings, but I don't quite understand what's being asked of communities that are near or part of MBTA stations, like LWIFE and what kind of impact, what's that going to require the town to do? And the second is in talking about affordable housing, I get the sense from this, from the whole discussion that we talk as if ownership and rental in terms of affordable housing are sort of the same thing. And to me, they seem like the very different ideas that when you start to, when you talk about affordable housing, changing your zoning to allow for the building of four to six units or something like that, that generally speaking, you're talking about developers who are interested in selling those units rather than renting them. I could be mistaken, but, and I wonder if in talking about affordable housing, should the focus rather be on development of rental property rather than individuals owning their units in terms of affordability? I'm a little concerned that if the focus is on ownership, then affordability would be much harder to achieve than it would be in rental terms. Those are my questions. Thank you. Great, thanks. Two excellent questions. I will defer the first question to Jennifer Rae with regard to the MBTA region. You're a great question, Jordan. Thank you. The MBTA community's requirement is now part of 40A, which is the Zoning Act. And actually the guidance was issued just yesterday, actually, I believe, December 15th. And there is going to be a long comment period. There will be a webinar by the state in January. So we're all just learning the details of what the guidance will entail. It's really in a draft form right now. We are an MBTA community just by definition. We're one of more than 100 communities who meet that definition. My read of what it might mean is that it will probably apply to not just the area around Ale Wife or the half mile from Ale Wife Station, but also the bus depot in Arlington Heights. But we are still learning about it, reading about it and trying to understand how it will apply or what it will apply to in Arlington. And when we actually have the real guidance and the real information, we will then engage as we've discussed with this board in prior meetings, we will engage in a community planning process to create the zoning that would need to be compliant with that requirement. So that's sort of a higher level answer to you, but we are one of those MBTA communities. Could I just ask a follow-up? Do you have any guesses of what it might entail? What it might mean? What kind of requirements Arlington might, zoning changes Arlington might be required to make? Well, the requirement is to have at least 15 units per acre by right for multifamily housing. But there are different approaches to achieving that requirement. And no, I cannot answer exactly what it will mean for Arlington just yet. The guidance was issued yesterday. The state has a website set up which is basically mass.gov slash MBTA communities. And there's the guidance there. There's a map, multiple maps on that website and information about Arlington, including some of the projected information about sort of capacity for development, but also some information about the sort of details that will be forthcoming. And as I said, there's also a webinar. So we're all learning together. Right, and there's going to be a lot more information about this coming forward at future ARB meetings. And then for the second question, Jenny, would you like to take that question about the difference when we speak about affordable housing between ownership and rental and how those are approached? Would you like me to pick that over to Judy? I'd be happy to, but also Judy's, these are recommendations in the draft plan. I think in brief as it's outlined, one of the strategies is that we can provide, we can utilize or leverage, for example, affordable housing trust fund dollars to enhance existing state programs that would then perhaps entice people who are first time home buyers to buy in Arlington. But we actually have to have the units available for them to buy. It's not just about the program and the opportunity. It's also about the creation of a more affordable home opportunity. So it's kind of the two paired together. And it is different than a rental housing opportunity in many ways, including one of the ways that you expressed, which is six units might end up being a condo and not necessarily rentals. But that's why this plan is about multiple options to do a lot of different things. And I think approaching both is important because we definitely have a lack of rental housing, but we also know that in the greater Boston region, there's a lack of home ownership opportunities and particularly for people of color, but also for those who are of lower incomes, which is also why the plan talks about potentially leveraging section eight to encourage home ownership. Great, thank you, Jenny. You're welcome. Let's see, let's move on to the next speaker this evening. So Don Seltzer, if you wanted to take your minutes for any commentary and or questions. Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to refer to the state guidelines for how to introduce yourself first, last, and address. I'm sorry, Don Seltzer Irving Street. Thank you. To refer you to the state guidelines for housing production plans. There is a requirement that at a minimum, the plan must examine the capacity of the infrastructure to accommodate future growth, including plans to ensure that the future needs are met. The analysis should evaluate the impact of future housing development. There are no such analyses in this plan. There isn't even an estimate of growth. All that we see under the headings for infrastructure are fillers describing what we have now, but there's no insight into what level of growth can be handled. This is not acceptable and could lead to the rejection of this plan by the state. Look at the entry for public schools in the report. It dismisses capacity as being of no concern based solely upon the 2015 McKibben forecast, which predicted that we would have reached our peak in student enrollment by this year. However, the report made no assumptions about housing growth, nor changing family demographics that would come from new housing. Last year's census showed that Arlington's population is growing far faster than McKibben predicted. We have already reached a level that the report predicted that we would not achieve until the 2030s. Consider this rule of thumb for every house, every house, 80 housing units that expect to fill up another classroom. The other point that I would like to address, a stated goal of this plan is to preserve and maintain Arlington's supply of affordable homes. Some of the suggested actions to actually do the opposite. One third of Arlington households have an income level of between 100 and 200K. For this middle third, smaller older single family homes that range from 600,000 to 800,000 are affordable. But this housing plan attacks that existing affordable housing base by encouraging tear down and replacement with duplex condos. It's an unrealistic picturing to expect that this will somehow generate any housing for low income households of under 80% AMI. There's plenty of hard data to show that this type of redevelopment development spurs excel gentrification and it produces housing affordable only by high income families making more than 200% AMI. The middle third of Arlington is slowly being squeezed out by eliminating the home ownership that is within their means. And some of the proposals in this plan will increase this problem. Thank you. Thank you. I didn't believe that there are any questions in there. It was mostly commentary. So we'll move on to the next speaker who is Jennifer Seuss. Thank you. Thank you. I got a wealth of information from the housing plan and I'm really excited about a lot of the proposals. Sorry, Jennifer. Could you please address? Jennifer Seuss 45 Teal Street. So when I talked to tons of people across town about housing issues and universally there is sadness. There's frustration about our current trends. And in our current trends, we are losing. We are losing economic diversity. We are losing people under the age of 35 over the age of 65. We're becoming a town that feels unaffordable to many. I think there's not as much understanding of how our current zoning is driving some of these changes. And that for example, you can only build a single or two family house by right. So I think that's a good idea. My favorite example where this doesn't work is on Broadway, where there are seven three family houses and a lot that's being built. And it's clearly a multifamily district, but you couldn't build a three family by right. So what I'd like to see out of this is I'd like to have a conversation about what our values are, what we want. And I'd like to see us develop. A lot more housing diversity by right. And I think that's, you know, the housing, the 40 a is a great, great, great part of that. When, when I talk to people where I think there's consensus is building up in the corridors. And there was some frustration when town meeting past the mixed use zoning that allowed for greater height. That nothing really happened with that. And I think not really an understanding of all the other things that were built in terms of far setbacks, et cetera, that made it really hard for anything to be built. So what I'd like to see us moving the direction of is, you know, some, some more housing diversity, especially on the quarters. I love the idea of an overlay. And this is one question I, what I understand Cambridge has done is that they have in the entire town, you're allowed to build. You're allowed to build a two family if it's 100% affordable. So we don't necessarily have to copy them, but I would love to see something like that where we provide some bonuses and some incentives to sort of leverage some of the, what the market is doing, right? To get the kind of things that we need. So, yeah. So that's what I'd like to see. I think there's more consensus than people might realize about developing, especially on the quarters and developing housing diversity, affordable housing. Yeah. Great. Thank you, Jennifer. What's your question? Are you looking for. Yeah. To provide additional information about what specifically the Cambridge. Overlay. Yeah. So that's a good question. Is that right? Is that what they do? Are they just saying if you build 100% affordable, you can double everything. That's what I understood it to be, but I'm not 100% sure. Great. Thank you. It is a doubling of density. And also a increase in height. It isn't the entire city. There's like, but big swaths of the city. There's actually a map on Cambridge's website. Of the overlay district. And it's, it's a pretty significant area, but it's not the entire city. So. But a lot of opportunity area. Great. Good. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Jennifer. Your question. The next speaker this evening will be Rebecca Peterson. My name is Rebecca Peterson. I live on Florida. I live on Florida. I live on Florida. I live on Florida. I live on Florida. I live on Florida. I live on Florida. I live on Florida. I live on Florida. I live on Florida. I live on Florida. I live on Florida. I live on Florida. My name is Rebecca Peterson. I live on Florence. I don't have any questions tonight. I just, my comments address the proposal to get rid of single family zoning in Arlington. I have to say I'm really tired of the obsession that residents have with increasing density in Arlington. It all is coming down on the backs of homeowners of single family homes. I'm not sure. I mean, I mean, I'm not sure. I'm not sure that there are any terms that. I believe. Don seltzer mentioned the traffic and the school system. Affordability is often stated as a goal, but allowing two families to be built by right. We'll do absolutely nothing to help affordability. I don't know if you've seen, have you seen the prices for renovated or new and renovated condos and two family homes? I'm not sure that that's anyone's definition of a missing middle slice of the ownership. Building truly affordable housing is one thing for the elderly for low income for disabled, et cetera, but squeezing two families onto every single grassy lot is another thing altogether. Arlington is popular for a lot of reasons. Among them the proximity to Boston and the schools, but one of its straws is a suburban field. You can have a, you're close to the city, but you can have a beautiful home with a yard and trees and you're 15 minutes to Boston. A two family house sold on my street recently. It's a very old house that as far as I know was converted to two units long before any of this zoning came about. But do you know who bought it? One family bought the house. They broke through the walls. They bought both units and converted the entire thing back to a single family. There's a lot of demand for single family homes here. As for my family, we bought a specific type of house in a specific type of neighborhood for a reason, meaning a single family home in an R1 zone. This is the free market at work. Had I had a different budget, I might have moved to Wellesley, but that's not my budget. If I wanted a denser living experience, I might never have left my two family in Watertown to come to Arlington. I don't know. I just feel that someone else should not be imposing their vision of the correct home size or the appropriate land use for my family, my home, my investment. And I'm urging you not to abolish single family zoning. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Winnell Evans. Good evening. Can you hear me okay? I can. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. First, last and address. Thank you. Yes. Winnell Evans orchard place town meeting member precinct 14. There are so many worthy goals in this plan. And I appreciate the outreach throughout its development. I do have a few quibbles though, which none of you who have seen me speak will be surprised about. The draft characterizes those who question aspects of redevelopment as fearful, fearing the unknown, et cetera. And I would like to acknowledge that concerns about loss of open space, strains on infrastructure, how to pay for the associated costs of an increasing population, especially school costs are not ungrounded fears. They are real concerns about real issues that really affect us all. For instance, our finance committee said in its most recent report to town meeting that the town is spending quote substantially beyond its capacity. We are facing a 20 million plus override. Roughly four times the size of our last. And Fincom has said that this is likely to be politically unacceptable. In other words, difficult to pass. But if it does and combined with the debt exclusion for the high school, this is going to mean the end of Arlington for many of our older residents or those on fixed or lower incomes. The strategy of allowing two families by right in all residential districts as a means to increase our supply of somewhat attainable housing has varied mixed evidence to support its efficacy. In fact, we can see what happens as Rebecca pointed out. When we look at single families in our two districts that are demolished and replaced by two condos in every single case, the sale price of each new unit is more than the sale price of the original single family. So we can see what happens. We can see what happens. We can see what happens. And finally, and this is this is very personal for me, allowing open space requirements in multifamily and mixed use projects to be fulfilled by roof gardens and balconies is essentially a privatization of open space. Our natural resources are under attack from development, climate change, many other stressors. We are sacrificing our tree canopy to development. We are also making a smaller tree cut off. We're also making a smaller cut off the tree. We are also making a smaller cutting of lots. This is absolutely misdefined to me because various recent studies say that mature trees can add up to almost 20% in residential sale prices. But we know that trees are critical to planetary and human health. We remove them to our huge detriment. We know that access to green space is related to better physical and mental health, lower crime rates, We have to look at the cost to our community of increased growth. We need to see numbers about what those costs will be. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Kristen Anderson. Thank you. Kristen Anderson. I live at 12 up on the road west and I am a town meeting member. It's wonderful to see so much consideration this evening focused on the shortage of affordable homes for low income and extremely low income people. There has been some discussion this evening about Cambridge's 100% affordable housing overlay. Perhaps the reason that Cambridge can afford to subsidize housing is that their tax base has a healthy ratio of commercial to residential property. The benefits of having a healthy amount of local commercial real estate is not just about tax revenue. It's also about valuing the use. The use provides local jobs to people. The benefits of being able to live and work in the same town are immense. Prior to moving my business from Malden in 2015, my partner and I spent approximately 415 hours per year combined in traffic on route 16, just commuting to work. 415 hours per year. And multiply that by the 11 years that we worked in Malden. It's an outrageous amount of time to spend commuting. Since moving our business to Arlington, I am now able to walk or ride my bike to work in the heights. Walking and bicycling promotes physical, mental and emotional wellbeing. It can dramatically improve the quality of life. I wish that more of my neighbors in Arlington could enjoy living and working in the same town. It's a better way to live. Yet only a very small percentage of residents, only 7% pre-pandemic live and work in town. Arlington desperately needs more businesses and more jobs. Arlington needs a better balance between living and working. And there does not need to be a battle between housing and business. People need both homes and work. And I think it's a great opportunity for all of us to work in the same town. Please do not change the use of commercial and industrial space for living as it will push more future job opportunities out of town, forcing a greater percentage of Arlington's residents to commute to neighboring cities to go to work. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker this evening will be Elizabeth String. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you. I'm wondering if Elizabeth String, Jason street. Sorry. I'm wondering, Judy, if you could put to rest this, this. Or help me understand, right? I hear from one. I hear that. Getting rid of single family zoning and building two family homes. And then I heard you say tonight that no, that that gives you more choice, right? Choice and housing, but. Does it also help affordable housing? Because that's sort of. An argument that I keep hearing. And if it's really just about mixed use and choice, that's fine. I just want to, I want to know what it's doing, right? I just want some clarification from. From somebody and then the other question I have is, I've heard you talk about, there's sort of these three buckets of choice, affordability and leadership. If what would be sort of the first three things that you would recommend or five things that the town leadership. Do in the next year. Regarding how to get to affordable housing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Two good questions. And Judy, I'll turn them over to you. You could first take the question about single family. Is that choice, affordability, or both? In my opinion, it's mainly about choice. In your kind of community. Does it create opportunities to. Produce a housing type that. You know, that might create. An opportunity for, for someone to, for an organization to perhaps buy some units and two family dwellings. And make them affordable or make them, you know, affordable at some tier, perhaps not 50% certainly, but something. Yeah, I'm sure that you increase supply, you create opportunities. But I think that we were really trying to look at. The variety of issues we found. And that in your single family neighborhoods where you don't want to make. You know, sort of significant land use changes. That a two family option is a relatively innocuous way to create choice. And the reality is that when you've got two units sharing the cost of land instead of one. You create a possibility of some affordability, but I am not going to deceive anybody here and tell you. I'm not going to deceive anybody here. I'm not going to deceive anybody here. I'm not going to deceive anybody here. Family homes are the ticket to affordable housing in Arlington. What I will say is that if you pick any one thing out of this plan. You don't have a strategy. It's when you put them all together. That you begin to kind of see a whole of. Affordability choice. Options for people. And of course, the community. And I will certainly acknowledge and I agree that Arlington compared to so-called comparison communities. Has quite a bit of multi unit structures. Um, The condition of those structures is not always. The best. And so there are just a lot of issues with the composition of area suburb. I was interested to hear an earlier speaker mention having moved to Arlington from Watertown. And I worked there several years ago on some zoning issues there because they were having real real challenges with older single family homes going to two family and two family districts. And then how some of the designs just didn't work. So this has been an ongoing pattern, I think in the suburbs right around Boston is sort of this, how do you get the maximum you can out of a lot? You know, what can you do? And so in some markets, you know, you're seeing a lot of two family conversion and other places sometimes as sometimes happen in Arlington, you are seeing people try to create single out of two. It's it does it does happen, but I just want to put that to bed. It's really to me about choice. And I think that a housing plan that doesn't look at that is really kind of missing an opportunity. So yes, this plan is mainly about affordability, but it's not the only thing it's about. Thank you. Your second question was help me because I'm the second question is about leadership. You know, I think the question was what are the top three to five things, you know, in order to hit that goal of exhibiting leadership that that you would recommend. Elizabeth, did I get that? Okay, perfect. I think that the redevelopment board and the select board, I really have a key boards at a policy level that can begin to lead a different conversation about housing in the community. This is not a comment about the existence of the performance of either board today. I'm simply saying that when you have elected boards with the prestige of the ARB and the select board, those are groups that that can begin to change the messaging about housing. And and I think that they're going to have a lot of work to do. I think that that making sure that when the select board sets annual goals, you know, every time I work in has some kind of goal setting process every year. Well, one of the discussions should be so what what are our departments or what are our boards and commissions going to do this year to implement something in the housing plan? Somebody asked me in a meeting on a housing plan in another community yesterday about about getting stuff implemented. And I said, really, in all the years I've been in this field, which is 35, I'm embarrassed to tell you I'm that old. People ask all the time, like, how do you keep? How do you get a plan? How do you keep a plan from from sitting on a shelf? And the answer is you have to implement it. But I think that sometimes the implementation falls short because the conversation stops. Those two boards are in a pivotal position to lead a re messaging about housing. And I would encourage that to happen. I think that the more that takes place, the more interesting it becomes to people to serve on a housing trust. Because there's a sense that I'm going to get some satisfaction as a person here volunteering my time in the community because this matters. This is not just some side issue that we have to do because we're in Massachusetts town and we have to deal with 40 B. This is because it matters in our town as a matter of social fairness. So to me, a lot of it is about messaging from the top. I would say the sort of implementation goal setting every year and making sure that happens, changing the messaging and then really sort of making the case for why the very best talents in the community are needed for this issue for housing. It is the third rail in planning. It is the only element that in every single town I work in on master plan or anything else. This is the one that sets people off for whatever reasons. And so I think that there needs to be a restatement of why this public service is so very important. And to make sure that we don't end up in a situation where we have people who actually don't want affordable housing, being the ones who are sitting in a position to make decisions about implementing a plan. Those are my I guess three thoughts. Great. Thank you, Judy. I appreciate it. Thank you for the questions. Yeah, thank you. Let's see. So I am going to we have a few more hands raised. I'm actually going to only at this point take the speakers who have not had a chance to speak. I do need to come back to the redevelopment board to have a discussion about whether or not we are in a position this evening to vote to adopt the plan. So for anyone who does have their hand raised was already spoken this evening, I would encourage you to please reach out to the redevelopment board or to the director of planning community development with any further questions or commentary you might have following the meeting. And thank you so much for your involvement this evening. So the next speaker will be Joyce. I'm not sure some Bob Rudelsha Columbia road. I always come up with Joyce. I don't know why whenever I log on to a meeting. I don't know if anybody else has had the same problem I had tonight with the audio. There's an awful lot of static and I really couldn't hear much of the dialogue at all, but I was able to sit through it. And the only question I have was early on, Judy, you mentioned something about undeveloped or underutilized properties. And I'd like to get an idea of how you would define an underutilized property if that's not a big deal. Great. Thank you so much for the question. Judy, would you answer that question about underutilized properties? Sure. I mean, it's a property that may have partial vacancy. It's a property that is not appreciating in value because it's obsolete for its, you know, market for the today's market. It's a property that might be put to more valuable use and therefore higher tax revenue use. If the choices available to the property owner were more plentiful than they are under the existing use regulations in the town. So, you know, it's sometimes property that the owner may be having trouble marketing because the options to use it are limited. So I have more than one meaning, but essentially something that could be put to a higher value use. Great. Thank you, Judy. Any further questions or are you, was that the question you wanted to have answered this evening? Are you asking me? Yes. Yes. Did you have any further questions or? I didn't hear the question clearly. That's fine. I think, I think we're all set. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Thank you. And let's see. We have one additional speaker who hasn't had a chance to speak this night. This evening matter, that's going to be Karen Kelleher. Thank you very much, Karen Kelleher, Beacon Street, and also a member of the Housing Plan Implementation Committee. I'll try to be brief, Judy. I want to thank you for all of the data and information in this plan that we can use as we try to identify the best strategies to create affordable housing in Arlington. You talk about choice, affordability and leadership, and I'm sure you would say it's wrapped into leadership, but I want to pull out one strain of that, which is money. Affordable housing is essentially a math problem that doesn't work because the cost to build and maintain housing affordable to work, I'm just going to say working people to be very concise right now is insufficient to support the cost of building and maintaining the housing and needs to be subsidized to make it happen. We're basically fighting against the market and the town of Arlington has had relatively limited resources, though we've made some very important investments and commitments in this space, but we are the town of Arlington and have somewhat limited options to raise revenue. So we will never be able to meet our affordable housing goals with just our own subsidy. We will only do unit by unit or small amounts of housing that way. And so in my experience creating affordable housing, there's two ways to use your local subsidy. One is to use it to incentivize the things that attracts federal and state subsidy, and that will get you relatively affordable housing. This is all going to be a below 60% of area median income with very few exceptions. The second is that you use the market that's creating the affordability problems to take market rate units, take the profits and cross subsidize. And I know nobody likes 40B, but what has just happened in our town is two projects have been permitted under 40B. You may not like those projects, but let's just look at the affordable housing impact. They include about 60 units of affordable housing that is costing the town zero. No subsidy whatsoever. And so that may not be our favorite strategy, but it's a strategy we could actually try to use to build what we want, where we want, and to solve that money problem. My question for you, Judy, is what advice you have for the town about how we can actually leverage enough dollars? Because while we have created an affordable housing trust fund, and I should be at the disclaimer that I am now the chair of said affordable housing trust fund, and it is very, very limited funding at this time. So what would your advice be to the town to adequately resource an aggressive affordable housing goal? Thank you. So I don't want to, you know, I guess I'll say this. I think that the Community Preservation Committee, which I know has invested in housing. So this isn't a criticism of their performance. But we have communities in Massachusetts that put a significant percentage of their CPA funds every year into affordable housing. Because the need is so great and and they need the money to leverage tax credits and, you know, the other sources of federal or state support that really are just going now to projects where the community has shown that it is willing to put its money where its mouth is as well. So CPA is a source. You know, I know it's not popular, but I can tell you that there are a few communities now that have that have made funds available through the tax levy. We have a couple of communities in Massachusetts that have exercised special legislation to essentially provide what amounts to a tax increment financing agreement for multi-family development. And one of those projects I'm very familiar with, that was the town's contribution and it leveraged low-income housing tax credit investment in a project. So there are things that you can do that are direct and indirect. The other thing that I would say is don't be afraid to think about using tools like inclusionary zoning to be a source of subsidy. This is a real controversy in the world of inclusionary zoning. Some people say we never should accept these in lieu and other communities say we should. And we have examples of towns and cities in towns in Massachusetts that have generously allowed inclusionary zoning to be the producer of revenue or income rather to a housing trust and not necessarily the thing that created the actual affordable units. And in those communities that have done that, we have housing trusts and other housing organizations that have been able to take that money and create deep affordability. There's an awful lot that a nonprofit developer can do with a couple of hundred thousand dollars. So it isn't always necessarily that the one unit the developer is offsetting produces one unit somewhere else. It actually can be used as an investment in a development that's going to create multiple units. So that's kind of another thing that I would say that the town can consider just off the top of my head. Thank you, Judy. All right. And then for our last public speaker this evening, it looks like John Warden, you're you're using Patricia's account, but it looks like you're a different speaker looking to to add some commentary. Thank you, Madam Chairman. John Warden, Jason Street. I have looked at this plan. And since my wife's on this committee, I've heard an awful lot about it. But in my opinion, if this plan were to be approved and implemented, it would destroy the town of Allington as we know it. There's just no question if you if you implement all these things and various people, various aspects about it would be an entirely different place. Suddenly would not be affordable. And I don't know who would like to have that on their conscience. I would hope that you members through the voting board who own property here, who are citizens here to vote here, pay taxes here would not want that in your conscience. And just like your former chairman, Mr. Vanel, you're going to sell your house and bail out and leave others to reap the whirlwind. So I hope that doesn't happen. And you you will reject or seriously amend this plan. So really makes some sense for our town. And that's for the development world or the outer world or where else Judy Bird operates. Thank you. And with that, we will close public comment for this evening. And I'm going to turn it back to members of the Re-development Board for any final commentary. And then we will discuss whether or not we are in a position this evening to vote to adopt the plan as either presented or as we would request that it be amended. And can I saw you raising your your hand? So we'll start with you first for your commentary. I just want to comment on a lot of people saying you can get CPA funding. Okay. And I like to comment that CPA has been funding affordable housing every year. But they fact that they only have by law can only fund so much. They have other areas they have to fund, which is open space and historic, which is the other two categories. They have funded fully for all CPA. So I don't want to think that they're people let people know that there is money out there for from the CPA for affordable housing. There's not any more. Everything's been funded and will be funded as they have been. So I'll leave that as a as a comment. And then my comment as far as adopting this, I would like to make a few more changes to it prior to adopting it. And I'm not sure if we can state all the changes right now to approve it as as noted. I don't think I'm in a position to do that right now. Can you have specific changes? I know that others have identified specific changes. You know, I have a couple submitted from Jean and some submitted by by Steve. Are there specific changes that that you would like to add to that? Or as a as a follow up to this meeting? Well, I'm I'm still having issues with. And I know we haven't really talked all the way through yet is that that overlay district adopting 100% affordable housing? I'm not an opponent for that. That is something that I would like to least modify somehow, such that you know, we're we're allowing that already with with the nonprofit developer, which is fine, because that's that's what their charter is. They not going to make market rate housing because they're they're there to build affordable housing. But I think as a policy, I think we should not push for that because I don't really want to do clustered affordable housing anywhere. That's that's the real open thing that I have that I really like to see if we can change that somehow. The other ones I can live with. Sure, can I suggest to that? I think when we when we decide to adopt the plan, it's not a commitment to implementing every single item in the plan, but rather to as Judy was suggesting review and identify those that we perhaps group together and decide which are the most impactful for us to implement as a as a package over time in in town. So I'm wondering if there is either a willingness to perhaps include that as an option to explore further or if there's some language around that that you would be willing to entertain in order to keep that as something to explore. Knowing that again, anything that we adopt is not set in stone as these are the things we will implement. That's my understanding. And Jenny, please correct me if I'm wrong as what we're looking to do as we adopt the plan is to adopt these as potential strategies to be explored further with all of our plans. They include many goals and strategies and recommendations over a number of years to implement them. Ideally, they are things that we all agree are important, but they might not happen all at once. They might happen over time. They might begin during the five year period, but not be completely implemented as with the current plan, the plan that we just completed. So you yes, everything that you said, Rachel. And again, Ken, you know, if we as a board feel strongly that that's not something we even want to consider moving forward. We can certainly request that that be removed. And if that's what you're suggesting, I'd love for others to weigh in on that. But if you're suggesting that we modify in that in some way, I think that's a different piece of feedback feedback for Judy. So I just want to make sure that I'm capturing your your your thoughts correctly. I want to be OK with it for now. Just I want to listen to what the rest of the board members have to say if they're fine with it, I'm not going to be the one saying that for now, knowing that we can make modifications this later on. OK, I'm less concerned about when is it going to be in time? I'm just about to change itself, but I'm OK with that. Yeah. OK, great. Thank you, Ken. Jean, I'll go to you for your thoughts. I would prefer not to vote on tonight. Ken raised an issue, which I also raised in my written comments about whether the overlay district had to be 100 percent in pros and cons. And there are a lot of other issues that I raised. And I think that my fear is that despite what, you know, Jenny said, which I don't disagree that once it's there and it's adopted, it's going to take on a life of its own. And I'd rather have it take a life on its own after we have another opportunity to read it with the changes that it's more nuanced in the ways that I suggested in part in my comments and that as Judy explained that I agreed that it needs to say more about these are these recommendations are more like suggestions and not something that we're going to automatically implement. So I would prefer to see another draft. And I would prefer if this can be done in a way where it's shared with the board and we have an opportunity to comment on the next draft and then get the draft that we're going to vote on. So that would be my preference. And so that I make sure that we're giving Judy the the feedback that she needs, I know that you submitted, you know, significant feedback both at this as well as the very preliminary draft, which I appreciate. It sounds like a some sort of an introduction to the section where where they are the report is getting into the specific strategies in terms of, you know, building building out the nuance of again, these are to be combined or or vetted. They're they're not specifically each identified for implementation is what you're well, I mean, that's one I mean, that's one piece of it. OK. Yeah. And, you know, again, I would refer Judy to my three and a half pages of comments. OK, thank you, Jean. Melissa, thoughts. Um, well, I mean, I think the overall kind of the plan and the implementation strategies are sound. I feel like they're well thought out. I feel, though, in terms of making a decision, I feel like I've heard from a lot of people tonight and I'd like to kind of absorb that digest, you know, what I've heard from the community through this public or this meeting tonight and. As well as give some thought because one thing that I think Judy said that is essential is like if you're picking and pulling at little pieces, that's really not a strategy. So my thinking right now is, you know, we can carte blanche this a plan with a bunch of strategies, but I want us to be thoughtful in how we're organizing and prioritizing the strategies that we do pull together so they do make sense and they do be then they are responsive to the things we're hearing yet make an impact because, you know, diversity and, you know, safe places to live for people are important to the residents in Arlington and that's, I know, my guide, one of my guiding principles. So I want to be thoughtful and on the next step, but I would appreciate not making a decision to adopt it tonight. OK, Steve, your thoughts. We can't hear you. Oh, yeah. Third time's a term. I think his microphone's too bad. All right, how about now? Perfect. OK, yeah, so straight, just sort of like one of the things I I've noticed is that the closed captioning then tends to make Zoom crash for me. And it just came back in a funny state after doing that. Anyway, before I wonder if I could just direct a quick question to Ms. Barrett regarding the Cambridge Cambridge's affordable housing overlay. My understanding was that, you know, the 100 percent requirement effectively means 100 percent of the units have some income restricted. At least 80 percent have to be restricted to 80 percent AMI or less. And the other, you know, the other 20 percent can be restricted to income levels at higher than 80 percent. Is that is that correct? Yes, sir. That's correct. OK. So, yeah, I I to Kin's just to Kin's point, you know, maybe we don't say a maybe we frame it the housing overlay idea in a more general term, just like affordable housing overlay rather than a 100 percent affordable housing overlay. And just explain that, you know, there will be density bonuses or, you know, I bought or it'll be a by right. Yeah, as a result. Overall, I really I like the plan. I think and I think there's been quite a quite a bit of research that's gone into it. I think the outreach effort was was rather good. I did it. I held a meeting in my meeting in a box myself, which was I got a lot of feedback or I thought a lot of good feedback came from it. I would like to see a little bit of refinement done like Mr. Benson. I also submitted a couple of pages of comments and they were more just, you know, along the lines of clarification. I do agree with him that it's, you know, there are some areas where a little more nuance would help. And, you know, I the one thing I didn't get a sense of when reading through the strategy section was that, you know, we said it a couple of times tonight that, you know, it's you can't just pick one or two things out and call it a strategy. You know, there's there's an important it's important to like use multiple elements. And I'd like to see that emphasize a little as well. So yeah, I guess I'm I'd like to see another draft before voting. Great. Thank you, Steve. So it sounds like we are going to to need to put an actual vote to adopt the plan on a future meeting. So I guess I'd like to turn it over to Judy and Jenny to discuss timing for when we think that a draft and a new draft that incorporates the feedback from the board this evening and from the commentary that was received might be available so the board can review it and be in a position to adopt this at a future meeting. I think I'd have to defer to Judy since the comments would be provided to her. And then the plan, you know, any edits would need to be done by Judy. So it's really about her time and availability and turnaround capacity. So I'm not going to be able to touch this again until Christmas week due to my extremely congested schedule because everybody wants a meeting before the holidays. I understand that worse this year than ever before. So I can work on a Christmas week when it's quiet, when a message goes on my email saying our office is closed for the week, but I will be here. I can work on it then. And I don't really see why I can't have it back to Jenny by say the fourth of January. I I'm sure that Monday coming back in here is going to be a nightmare. So I would say that, you know, say midweek, January 5th is probably when I can get this back to Jenny. I am more than happy and grateful for comments. I'll address the ones that I can. I may not incorporate all the comments I've heard. I will use my best professional judgment. OK, and I think that it would be helpful for this board if there are comments that you feel warrants additional discussion that perhaps we flag those those that because I think that the board members who have taken the time to to review and to provide that that commentary would would appreciate understanding where there may be a difference in approach that would be a productive conversation. Thanks, Jean, you had a comment you're on you. Thank you. Yeah, I just wanted to say I do think it's a really good report with a lot of good information. So my intention in asking for delay is not to end up saying no, but to end up saying yes. And also, at least I can say, Judy, if you leave my comments and have any questions about them or want to discuss them, please email me or call me. And, you know, we can work through them if that's going to be helpful. Sure. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Jean. So in that case, I think we'd be looking at the 24th. We have meetings in January, I believe, on the third and the 24th, if I'm not mistaken. So this would this would need to go on our in our meeting at that point. So that should give Judy, if you need a little more time beyond mid midweek the week of the third, it looks like we have some, but that would also give time for the board to review the next draft and, you know, perhaps if there's any any commentary that goes back between you and the board members before then we have time to do that before the 24th. Could I just put one thing out before I forget? I'm not going to steal Jenny and Kelly's thunder on this, but I guess I will. One of the great reasons that a town does a housing production plan is to be able to qualify for what's called safe harbor. So if you do enough production, you you become eligible for a stay, if you will, a sort of period in which you don't necessarily have to approve more comprehensive permits because you've met your regional fair share for a period of time. Arlington has met that and will be certified based on the decision that the Board of Appeals issued in I think it's 11 65 are Mass Ave. I believe Jenny and Kelly just got that information in the last 24 hours from DHCD. So if you ever question why these plans matter, aside from the fact that affordable housing matters in every town, it also matters because it allows you to to kind of manage how you're doing things and perhaps spend a little more time pursuing focus strategies in the interim and then perhaps to even maintain that certification period as it's known for more than two years. But that effort is directly attributable to the work of your Board of Appeals and the all the people who were interested in that project and your staff. And I think it's just important for the public to hear that. Great, thank you for bringing that up, Judy. Any other comments from from board members? I'll run through again. Ken. No, Jean. Melissa. No, no, and Steve. Nothing further. Great. And so at this point, I think we'll continue the discussion on the adoption of the Housing Production Plan to January 24th. And don't believe that we need to take up since it's not an official hearing, we don't need to take a vote to continue. You don't. I know Kelly. Kelly wants to mention something I think about timing. Oh, great. Thank you, Kelly. Sorry, I didn't see your memory. So no, thank you. Rachel, it would be helpful. So I have received comments from Jean and Steve. It would be helpful to set a deadline by which I will receive comments from the rest of the board, because, you know, if we are going to turn this around in a timely manner and we are going to ask Judy to revise the plan, I just want to make sure we're clear about when we're going to receive those comments and when I can get them to her. So. Can you suggest a day, Kelly, that would be. I would love to hear from everyone by Monday. We're heading into a holiday. It's fair. There are various people who are taking vacations and I'd like to make sure that we are able to vacation in the way we'd like to vacation. I think that's fair. So Monday. Yes, please. Have a super. You got it. Thank you. You are possible. Yes. Thank you so much. Great. Thank you. So with that, I'd like to see if there is a motion to adjourn. So I'm motioned. Second. Second. We'll take a roll call vote. Starting with Ken. Yes. Jean. Yes. Melissa. Yeah. Steve. Yes. I am a yes as well. Thank you all for joining us this evening. And we look forward to seeing you again on the 24th. Good night, everybody. Bye. Thanks for having us tonight. Thanks, Judy. Thank you.