 Sometimes they great. Okay. Thank you. Thank you everyone for attending the Amherst municipal affordable housing trust meeting on December 14th. We are going to call our meeting to order. We have a quorum so we will actually go ahead and begin. I'm going to start first before introducing our new member. I'm going to ask for us to review the November meeting minutes. And is there anyone who would like to raise any emissions or any edits that are necessary for the November meeting minutes? Yes. Go ahead, Grover. So in the meeting minutes it said, it said that I mentioned something about during when I was homeless at the University of Massachusetts in college and I met and I did not go to the University of Massachusetts. So I did mention that I was homeless in college but not at UMass. So I just don't want that in the public record because it's incorrect. Thank you. Thank you, Grover. Thank you. That's very important. Okay, so we will edit the minutes. Are there any other emissions or corrections that are necessary? Okay. We will edit the minutes and then we will send them out again and then we'll vote for them in January. Thank you, Grover. Thank you, Grover, and I'm sorry that I know I reviewed them. Okay, Rob's here too. Okay. I know I reviewed them so I did not catch that. So I apologize. So now I have the pleasure of introducing our new trust member, Gaston, and maybe Gaston, if you could just give us a little bit of, you know, a brief introduction about yourself and yes, what you think would be great for us to know. Thank you. So I live in Amherst with my wife and two boys who are in high school. We moved in 2018 from D.C. but we had lived in the area back in 04-07 when my older son was born. I was practicing law then and then went to practice in New York City before going to do a PhD in business ethics and then teach business ethics in D.C., move back up to Amherst for our kids to finish school and be closer to family in Boston. And I'm now teaching at Northeastern in the business school and I've also been serving the town through the license commission and I'm, you know, very pleased to be able to support the work of the trust. On behalf of the whole trust, I want to welcome you and we're very excited to have you. So thank you so very, very much. Thank you. We have one more vacancy and we're hoping that that vacancy will also be filled pretty soon. So we're hoping that that vacancy by our January 11th meeting will be filled and then we will have a full nine member trust. So very exciting. And it's, you know, both Carol and I had the opportunity to interview Gaston. And we're very, very excited in terms of what you bring to the trust and to us in this group. And at a wonderful time as well since we're heading into a strategic planning process, which we'll learn more about this evening. So Grover, you still have your hand up. So I'm not sure if you want to say something or it's just a thing. I don't know why it's not putting my hand down. Sorry. No problem. I just want to make sure I want to pay attention. It looks like it's now down. And I think, yes, it's down. Okay, great. Thank you. I just want to make a, if I don't see someone's hand, if someone can just let me know. Just don't want to make, I want to make sure I don't miss anything, anyone. All right, so we're now going to move. I'm going to ask if Jamie Grover can join us. Jamie is the project manager for the Wayfinders project for Belcher Town Road and South East Street. I always have those two a little bit wrong. So I hope I have that correctly. He actually shared and we shared the slides, but we would like to invite Jamie to present on the project. And we also want to have a conversation about how we can work together to update the community and possibly do some community outreach, just in terms of the status as well. So thank you, Jamie, for joining us. And we're going to try to put up your slides. I can share my screen. If that's, that's, that's probably the best. Jamie, is that giving you the option to share? Yep. Hold on. Let's see. Can you see my, can you see my screen? Yes. Thank you, Jamie. We can. Okay. Is it the full slide? Great. Um, would you be able to invite Michelle McInder and Bruce Ehrlich to the panelists board as well? If they're at the meeting. Looks like Bruce was invited and Michelle's invited. Okay, great. Thank you. Perfect. All right. Well, well, good evening. First, I'd like to thank you, the members of the trust for having us here this evening to talk about our new development in Amherst. As you mentioned, I'm Jamie Gruber, a project manager at Wayfinders. And here with me tonight is our senior project manager, Michelle McInder, who I've been working very closely with, along with our senior vice president, Bruce Ehrlich. Wayfinders builds and advocates for a thriving and equitable region improving the stability and economic mobility of families and individuals together with developing and managing a wide range of housing to support strong communities. Is our mission statement in our organization provides services in the housing arena from homelessness through homeownership. We are members of the real estate development team with the creation of preservation of affordable housing as our goal. Wayfinders currently owns and manages approximately 800 rental units in Western Massachusetts across multiple sites, primarily up and down the 91 corridor. Some of our developments include butternut farm and Olympia Oaks and Amherst. North Hampton we have live 155 and the lumberyard on Pleasant Street along with Sergeant House on Bridge Street. One of our comments is also one of our Holy Oak developments. These are just some of our local developments that have been recently completed. Our proposed development in Amherst includes two sites just east of downtown 31 Southeast Street, which will create 31 units and 70 Belcher Town Road, which will add 47 units. To maximize the housing we we looked at the most efficiently using the buildable area at each site. Our plans include buildings that will provide barrier free housing and elevator access to all floors and units. The buildings will be designed and built with sustainability as a core goal and we will incorporate energy efficiency measures consistent with passive house and enterprise green communities. The buildings will be all electric and we will seek to install solar PV arrays and for onsite renewable energy. Our development will have onsite property management allowing for a meaningful meaningful presence as well. Here's a rendering of the South East Southeast Street School site, and this will create 31 units with a mix ranging from studios, a studio to three bedrooms. The site will include the adaptive reuse of the existing school into six new apartments, provide a common laundry room and indoor bike storage. The new construction addition will create 25 units that will include the onsite office and community room for residents. Here is the Southeast Street site plan. The footprint of the existing school building is shown in red and the new construction portion is shown in the tan on the front portion of the lot aligned with the road. The onsite parking area will be located generally in the same area that the existing schools parking lot is. There will be a pedestrian path along the southern side of the parking or left side of the screen that will allow for access to the town on field. Although it's not shown, it would be on the upper left hand portion of the screen. There will also be a patio courtyard area for residents between the school and the new construction and the community room will open up directly onto this area. Now the Belcher Town Road site will be entirely new construction. This three story building will create 47 units with a mix also ranging from studios to three bedrooms. Similar to the East Street School site, the elevator access will be provided to all levels and we will also have an indoor bike storage, laundry room and community room for the residents in addition to a management office at this site as well. Here is the Belcher Town Road site plan. The site will have parking and drop off pickup area in the rear of the building and the U shaped footprint allows for a common patio courtyard area for residents that will also connect directly to the community room within the building. The apartment income mix across both sites is shown here. Some of these numbers may change, but this is generally where the numbers will fall. So 23 of the units will be for families and individuals making 30% of the area mean median income or less. Seven of the units will be reserved for families and individuals making 50% of the area median income or less. 19 will be for families and individuals making 60% of the AMI or less. And 19 of the units will be for families and individuals who make up to 80% of the area median income. Approximately 68 of the 78 units will be income restricted while the remaining 10 will be reserved for market rate. Being these income limits you may be familiar to a lot of you, but I want to provide a few examples of the income limits for the various household sizes. The income limits are updated by HUD each year and these are the calculated limits for 2023. So currently 60% of the area median income for a family of four in our region is around $59,760 per year. The same four person household at 60% AMI with an annual income of up to $59,760 a year could expect to pay around $1554 a month including all the utilities for a three bedroom unit. All rents will include utilities, electricity, heat, air conditioning and hot water and this will be the same across all income levels. These rents are up, the LIGHTEC rents are updated each year and subject to change. And here is a schedule of the development. It is currently in the design and due diligence phase with permitting starting in 2024. Following the permitting with the town we will pursue our financing and funding applications for the development. At the state, due to the competitive funding round process we expect the financing to be completed to be complete leading to the development to construction into 2027. And then we could further expect the 18 month construction period wrapping up and being fully released in 2028. Thank you very much that concludes the presentation on the on the development. And I'd like to open it up for any questions that you might have or discussion. Thank you, Jamie. I'll Allegra you have your hand up. A few questions about income and then a question about site. Question number one, the market rate housing that has to be at. Is it the Southeast Street site. That's correct. Yes. And then I just wanted to clarify on the slide that said preliminary rents. There will be some sort of subsidy attached to the unit and the residents will pay 30% of their income. It won't be like a, you know, this is a less a less expensive unit, but you still will pay x rate. Does that make sense. I'm not sure that I understand the question is there a specific income level. Okay, I'll just slide back up for once. This is helpful. Allegra. Yes, I think I might have figured it out. So, is it saying that anybody who is at 30% of am I will receive some sort of subsidy so that their rent will only be 30% of their income at that tier level. So, if somebody comes in at 30% and all the 30% units are occupied. They would need to be able to afford another unit, either at a 50 or 60, which they probably could not. So, because Jamie how many units again do we have a 30. I believe there's around 23. Yeah, 23. All of the 23 units will have a rental subsidy. No, but Legger are you asking for instance I'm just gonna cut in that if say someone is actually earning 25% am I, they qualify for the 30. When the rent listed whether say it's 900 is more than 30% of their income, will the rent be adjusted to be no more than 30%. So instead of saving 872 for or whatever it is for a studio would be 850. Is that is that kind of what you're asking Allegra. That is what I was asking but from looking at the chart with preliminary rents it looks like across the 30% am I. That would have a rental subsidy whereas at 50% of am I it would be a fixed rental price for the type of unit that it is, rather than I was reading I read, I understand my question now but I think I've caused more confusion. So I originally read it like, like, I'm pointing at things but so I read, I thought at first that the, I didn't realize that the 30% of resident income was at the 30% am I I thought it was underneath like each unit so at first I was like wait all of these are subsidized that's lovely but even having 23 with a subsidy is lovely. And I mean a subsidy based on the person's income not for the development itself. But I have clarified my question and I apologize if I have caused confusion for others. Bruce did you want to respond to Allegra or is it something different. It's just another clarification on this important point, which is so we have 23 units that will be set aside purely for individuals at 30% or below, and all of those will be rent subsidized, we agree on that, and those residents will pay no more than 30% of their income will pay exactly 30%. For the, if another resident, if another prospective tenant, who is very low income, extremely low income 30% of am I, if they have a mobile section eight voucher or certificate. They can occupy any of the other units and use their mobile voucher in the other units, which is actually quite common. So, when we set aside 23 30% units. It is often the case that there are also other residents at that income level, occupying higher income units, but they're affording them with a rent subsidy if they're if they don't have a rent subsidy. And they're coming out of pocket they won't really be able to afford those 50 60s, you know, percent tiers. But there's many residents with housing subsidies and they would love to move here so they'll get some of the other units we we can predict how many but at least one and probably significantly more than one. Thank you Bruce I think that's very helpful. Carol. Hi. Thanks for all of this. And I have a couple of questions and they're mostly related to what's changed from when you suggested this in the first place. Two of which are I am looking at the thing that we got earlier, and I don't seem to remember that there are quite this many different AMI levels it looked like there was 30 and 60. And now there's 30 50 60 and workforce. So maybe workforce is 80. I don't know, maybe 30. Anyway, 50 seems like a new one. And I wondered why that happened and I would say also. Surprisingly, but kind of wonderfully, I guess, unless there's some downside to it, there are more units here there's 78 units and you thought there would only be 70. Three of them are studios you didn't think there were studios at all before. I'm just curious if there's any, any thing you can say about why these changes happened. I know things happen so maybe there isn't but I'm curious if there is an answer. Yeah. Yeah, I'd be happy to speak to that. We've been working with our design team to try to find efficiencies in the design and keeping the buildings within the same footprint that they were originally. So we worked a lot with the architect to work within the roof lines to get in those those additional units. I believe there's maybe six additional units at the belcher town road site. And there were three or four additional units that we were able to, you know, get into kind of various areas with to in, within the existing footprint of the building. So that was how we were able to, you know, get a few additional units and we saw that, you know, the benefit of adding a studio here or there was, if there was room for it that. That's how that came to be. And the, the different income tiers worked out with a financing option where it's, it's the average income approach that we're using and what that, and what that does is it, it, it's sort of a weighted average of all the years of income across, across it in the 80% am I is is we're showing it as the 80% am I that was previously possibly shown as as workforce in our, in our, in our, in our slides so those those are the those are probably the major changes. So let me tell you my paranoid worry is that there's actually more units here, because you couldn't afford to make the same work without more units and therefore everything is smaller and tighter and people don't have as much room. Is that the case I hope not but I thought I'd say it in so many words so you could tell me how wrong I am. Nope, that's not the case at all. Good. Okay. Nothing one other question I had actually are way maybe Bruce or Rob wants to say something like, should I ask my other question or do you want to go ahead. Um, the other thing I noticed different from when we first looked at it was the, the timeline which seems to have come to be a year longer than it was last time when we looked at it it looked like. Rent up was going to be in 2027 and now it's like rent up is going to be in 2028. And I wonder if you could speak to that. Yeah, some of her due diligence items and the way that they, they worked out with the funding round applications will be going in for the funding round next year. Once the permitting with the town is completed. And then once we're on that track. It should, it should follow that and that's that would be the reason for that. Bruce, did you honor? Sorry, Carol. Bruce, did you also want to add something to that? Yeah, Jamie, could you just go to that slide for a second? The timeline. These are all really good questions and they deserve complete answers. So, you know, the financing. It looks like it's the longest time thing here. You know, what's that about? And, and you know, Jamie said, but I'll just elaborate on it. The project we hope is going to be permitted by the end of next year early 2025. We can't apply for state financing. You know, the state is providing most of the flexible financing here. We can't apply for state financing until we are through zoning. We need zoning approval in order to submit our first application to the state. And then there's a line out the door of other affordable housing developers around the state who are looking for funds. And, you know, there's a shortage of funds. You know, there's a state bond bill of what $4 billion that's going to be going into the legislature this year or it's already gone in. But we, it can take a year and a half or two years easily, unfortunately, to secure the state financing. And that that's why that green bar is as long as it is. But somehow you had a better shot at maybe the timing of the permitting pushed the financing out a year or something. I just, because you did a timeline before that was shorter. And the financing wasn't really very much different. So I'm, I don't know. I think the early due diligence took a little longer just working things out with everyone and getting everything signed and took longer than anticipated. Okay, thank you. I think I do remember that. Rob, go ahead. So could you speak a little bit about the onsite management and sports services? Is it 247 is it business hours? What sort of services are going to be offered? Michelle, would you. So we have management. There will be somebody onsite during regular business hours. We do have a 24 hour emergency number for tenants or, you know, anybody to contact our management office. They are only there during business hours. We haven't put together our service plan, but we will have a service plan. We do have resident engagement that will also be at these sites. So the resident engagement staff will ensure that anybody who's living here who needs assistance, maybe with child care or, you know, just wants to go back to school, they'll be there for that. They'll be there to, you know, direct them and which two agencies who can help them. Some of the agencies may be, it may be waybinders that we're directing to if they're behind on their rent or something like that. But the service plan has not been crafted yet. But we will have a resident engagement person along with property management at this site. Great. I know Carol and I actually were very heavily involved in writing the RFR. So that's very good to hear because that was very was a really important point for us, especially in terms of we want to ensure with affordable housing that there is way before anyone is even close to an eviction process that there is engagement and prevention that happens in the properties that we're involved in. So that's really important. I have a question which is, when you talked about, you know, you're, you're going to go through the permitting process. And that has to happen before you can even get state financing. I know the permitting process sometimes if community members haven't been engaged with beforehand. And they may not be on board with this. They might be, you know, some, some resistance to this. So I'm wondering what kind of community outreach have you been doing? I know we did a community forum almost over a year ago. But what kind of community outreach have you done in terms of the butters and the areas? And are you planning anything? And how do you see our role in helping you educate the community and getting people on board for this wonderful project? Yeah, so I've been in contact with some of the butters that have returned my calls and spoke to them to kind of keep them in the loop as to the, you know, what the development is going to look like and how it's shaping up. And just internally as a team, we were thinking that it would be a good time to probably have another public forum type meeting similar to the one that we had, I think it was last September. And, you know, would look to the trust to help out as you did with that to engage the community and then possibly, you know, we were thinking that that could be a virtual one maybe, you know, late January and February, possibly into, you know, maybe even into March with an in-person one, you know, closer as we get to starting the zoning board of the appeals process in, say, May or so. That was kind of the schedule that we had talked about as a team. I'm not sure if the trust would agree with that or has anything to add or would suggest. I'll open it up to others. Nate, if you have your hand up. Yeah, I was going to say that I think the trust should have a meeting, you know, sooner, especially if they submit their PEL, that starts, you know, the kind of the public process for this. You know, it's kind of the pre-permitting phase. And so, you know, I think sooner and January would be better just to stay ahead of it, you know, and have it out there. And I think, you know, this is public, this presentation, but we could, you know, typically we start a webpage. We have, you know, an online forum to receive comments, especially when the PEL is received. And so then we'll set that all up, but it'd be great to have, you know, a landing spot, typically through the zoning board, because that's where the permit goes through, but we can link to it from the trust page. I think we could start putting information up there, and then, you know, maybe, if not, if not tonight, then sometime, it'd be great, maybe tonight to figure out when, you know, what kind of, you know, is it the last two weeks in January, do we have a few ideas of dates and it could get finalized later, but I think that would be a great time to do it just to, you know, not wait too long. Because the original timeline was to submit the project eligibility soon and then enter permitting in the summer and have that be concluded in the fall so they could submit to the preliminary funding round then. And so, you know, really, I think if the trust, I think, if we waited until March to have our first meeting, it's, I think it's probably too long. I think it'd be nice to have it sooner. And, you know, if there are any concerns of a butters or anyone, we can try to address it or, you know, explain things. Yeah, I think planning planning wise, the sooner the better, but I can't just because we're going into a strategic planning process. I'm just wondering January. So maybe early February would be best for us, but you know, both Carol and I are available, Jamie, if you, you know, want to reach out to us about thinking about how to plan this together. Certainly, you know, we're available to do that. I agree. I think, you know, having another community forum would be really important. And I think in an in-person one would also be important as well. I know the construction piece is way in the future, but I know I travel through those roads often and just thinking about construction and so having a pre-plan to help people reduce their anxiety. There's a school there. I know there's lots of parents that go through there to get to, you know, get the kids to school, get the kids out of school. A lot of people travel into Amherst to, you know, either go to UMass or work in Amherst. So I think, you know, alleviating some of the concerns that people may have about both Route 9 as well as East Street, the sooner the better. So we're absolutely available to start planning with you on having a community forum. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And that's great. And we're working with our construction manager or contractor now and, you know, we can definitely follow up with them to find out, you know, as to what they anticipate for if there's going to be any disruption to the road or minimal, you know, with most of the people taking place on site and that sort of thing. So we can definitely confirm a lot of that information to help alleviate, you know, any sort of unknowns and, you know, stresses or anything like that that you mentioned. So, yeah, we'd be happy to do that. Thank you, Jamie. Grover, you have your hand up before we move on. I'm just noting that the timeline for the new school site building, which will be across the street from South Street is it's scheduled currently to be finished before you begin construction, but if the school project gets pushed back. There's a possibility that two giant construction projects would be happening right across the street from each other. And so I'm just noting in advance that a higher level of collaboration so that that's not happening might be my head off concerns. Thanks. Well, I want to thank you Jamie Bruce Michelle for taking the time to talk with us and to brainstorm with us. This is really such an important project and being partners with you on this. As I said before, Carol and I are available. And I think, you know, creating a community forum sooner than later in terms of what Nate suggested would be really important. So we can get the support we need through the permitting process or at least not any any stalling of the permitting process so we can make sure that this project moves forward with the timelines you have currently that we can be successful with these timelines. That sounds great. Thank you. Thank you very, very much. And so we're probably going to put you back into attendees. I'm going to turn it over to Carol now. Okay, thanks. We have, we have a couple of town ish updates that we were hoping to do before eight o'clock when we expect that shelly glaring from from mhp will come and share the strategic planning project plan with us plan plan plan. Okay. I think what we what we would like to hear about I don't know actually whether I think it's going to be from Nate, but it might be from Greg, I'm not sure. We wanted to know something about what support of rental what rental support, the town has recently provided and how and we also wanted to know something about what the town's use of the housing ARPA funds has been. So I will turn it over to whichever of you want to turn it over to. Yeah, I can take this one and I'll throw softballs to Greg if he's if he wants to answer. No, the. Yeah, the, you know, currently the town is using ARPA money for rental assistance it's there was an initial allocation of 150,000 and then another 100,000. So it's spending that down, you know, in previous years, you know, I mean, we can go back say back five years, seven years, the town's allocated CPA money, you know, CDBG funds for direct assistance for rental subsidy and so through different organizations is provided that assistance and so, you know, over, you know, from, and I'd say in the past seven years the town's provided over half a million dollars in direct subsidy wayfinders and other agencies like Community Action also administered rental subsidy, you know, through the pandemic, and afterward the housing trusted as well right and so I think that was, you know, I think if you added all the sources there it's again over half a million. Actually, I think I might be closer to a million. And then there's other ARPA money that's being provided for family outreach to do kind of wrap around services for households looking for housing so it's not a subsidy for housing but it's also providing services for people to help apply for applications or do paper work. So the town does offer those services. You know, it is tricky with funding so Block Grant can come and is used almost every year to fund family outreach or other similar organizations CPA is voted on on a project specific basis so for a bit it was giving money through Amherst Community Connections as a direct subsidy, kind of similar to maybe what's happening with Craig's doors and the trust funding and so it was kind of an application based response. We've done it before with town funds there's, it's tricky because of anti aid amendment and other regulations financial, you know, regulations that it's difficult for local funds to be used that way grant funds though can be. And so, you know, I think there's always, there's usually some type of service that's happening for direct rental subsidy. In it, you know, I think it's, you know, for the trust I think it you know actually isn't here and so we're going to postpone that that her discussion and we can wait to have that. You know, I think it's, you know, the short term and long term strategies for housing and so subsidies one of them and I think that can be a discussion of how we want to look at that going forward. In terms of ARPA funding, you know, there was a million dollars for housing, a million dollars for homelessness or addressing homelessness, and then there was, like I mentioned other funding for services and so of the million for housing. Most of that was used. I was great Greg you're going to share your screen yet. This is not as up to date but the way finders will be receiving 600,000 and ARPA funding for housing. And then there's been another 100,000 in due diligence and so there is about 300,000 or a little more than 300,000 in the affordable housing pot. For the homelessness fund a million dollars. Most of it has been toward the BFW so the town purchased the property for 775,000 and has put, you know, another 50,000 or more into, you know, material cleanup it'll be for demolition, and then for you know conceptual planning for the site. So there's about 150,000 left in the homelessness pot. And, you know, ostensibly that 150,000 will be used for the BFW site for further engineering studies or whatever needs to be done on that site. In terms of the housing funding. We had been thinking there might, you know, there could be a proposal or two that would come in. You know the town has to spend so much or allocate so much by 2024 and spend it all by 2026. So we're on track to do that. The, you know, the remaining housing money. You know the town had put in a CPA proposal. I don't know if Carolina airport the CPA committee meeting tonight for BFW for strong street or for South Amherst campus there's an old elementary school on the South Common. And so the ARPA money could also be used to study those to for those projects. And it might be to wait and see what happens with some of the current projects in the pipeline in case costs increase. We have flexibility there with some funding if necessary and so, you know, it's just being a little judicious in terms of how that gets spent, just because of how, you know, interest rates and costs of construction are just really unpredictable and so, you know, we haven't allocated it yet, but it's, it's, you know, we have ideas of how we could. Do people have questions for Nate about this. About what he just said, I would say that because Greg pointed it out to me. I looked at that sheet that he just had on on hit that he shared on his screen. And it's on the town website. And so if you need to know how to find it. I had trouble. I don't know how to find it so I would. Yeah, it's actually, it's actually kind of hard to find you almost have to keyword search if you just type in ARPA as a keyword in the town website it's in the finance department but it's somewhat buried through links so if you just searched ARPA reports. That's probably the quickest way to get to it. I was actually trying to do that at meeting this meeting to just saying how you can get how easy is it to get there. Yeah, so, so if somebody wants to study it more, it's, it's there to look at and I just so, but are there questions of Nate? Erica. Thank you. I just wanted to clarify. I think Nate, if I heard this correctly, there is a million dollars designated for housing for affordable housing through ARPA and 600,000 has already been designated are given to wayfinders. And somewhere along the way, there was 100,000 here and there somewhere, but you still have about 300,000 left of ARPA funding that would be designated for affordable housing. Is that correct? Right. Yeah, I think it's actually a little bit more than 300,000. That's good to know. Thank you. The wayfinders, they're not on the call. We have an agreement. It's going through approval right now. There's just some details to work out. That's 600,000 that agreement that's going through. Yes, yeah. Yeah, I mean it's for the project we just heard about. It is. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it'll happen. It just has to, you know, there's some legal details that need to be worked out in terms of how we categorize ARPA money. And so we're just working that out, but it's not, you know, it's not like the money will go somewhere else. It's really just has to get through that process. The reason why I raise this, so you actually mentioned Carol and I, we've been at CPA Carol actually did a phenomenal job at last time presenting the proposal. And then we've both done public comments and then today, the town in collaboration with us we all looked at our asks ours was for 500,000 we were asked to think about it because it's a huge shortfall. And there are a lot of really important projects that CPA wants to fund and thinks it's important to fund. We actually agreed to reduce our request by 40%. So from 500,000 to 300,000 in the town reduce there's about 125,000. But I think, you know, it's really important to know that one we work together. And so, you know, if the town requires a little bit more money for some of the projects like FW or the south and her school becomes, you know, viable property for us or strong street becomes even more viable than it, you know, has been for a few years, then we might support you. But knowing that you have $300,000 in ARPA for affordable housing is good to know. So thank you for giving us that information. Our administrator said it was kind of spoken for but I don't, I don't think it is. I think originally thought it, Greg did you confirm that? You're shaking your head. That internal email was my bad. And she did not say that. Okay, so yeah, that was an incorrect read of her email by me. So your numbers are correct. So correct it. The other money is. No, it's not, it's not. There was one email that said that we had spent all, but like, you know, 70,000 of the million for housing, but it's really, you know, we spent. You know, 300, 650,000 and we have 350 left or whatever the number is. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, it could go to VFW site to 350 for construction. You know, I think, you know, that process hopefully we'll start in 24 really trying to look at how to program that site and get, you know, a request for proposals going. It'll be probably a pretty big project. We probably can't wait that long with our money, but you know, I think there's some discussion about, you know, what do we, how do we fund the pre development costs there. And, you know, is how much do, does the town invest in that and so hopefully in the next few months we kind of start working on that a little bit more, you know, with the trust and have others involved and kind of move that along. If you have any other questions or comments, or actually seeing that we have, Shelly isn't here yet. I don't think she said she wanted to be on at eight, and it's not quite eight. We have 11 minutes. If anyone has any questions for Nate or Greg of any of the other projects that we've been kind of following along or Nate, if you have any other updates on any of the town stuff about housing that's going on that you feel like sharing with us. Now would be a good time. I feel like Allegra had her hand raised or was going to raise your hand. I had my actual hand raised not my zoom hand. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't notice. Because then I put it down, but I, I just wanted to clarify that ARPA funds have to be spent by 2026. Is that correct? Yes, my understanding that. Yeah, I think, I think all the funds have to be allocated or encumbered in contracts by the end of 24 spend by 20, the end of 26. So in terms of if there were other projects, so the projects that we have that are actually kind of inviables planning stages would be with Valley CDC. And the Amherst community homes, the one on that we just heard about, and then the VFW those would be projects that are for all intents and purposes already in the planning phase that Right. Yeah, I mean internally we've talked about the town acting as the developer say for strong street hiring someone to do a design we bring it through permitting and say, I mean I'm just gonna say like what if we permitted for six duplexes. I haven't even been studied but you know doing something like that, and then having a phase construction but at least getting it permitted or something and so, you know that's not as high a priority as the ones that you mentioned but you know there's a few I don't know if Amherst school has actually been, you know, I think the town's going to put some money in there and just study that to to see it's a few acres, you know what's kind of feasible and appropriate there. And so that's something that, you know may use a little bit of the ARPA money but yeah I think we have to, you know, see what happens with those projects that you mentioned. Yeah, I mean because if the protective plant on strong street is is not going to put a damper on everything like it does seem like that's in the qualified census tract as well. So in terms of it we were looking at a similar thing to what's happening in North Amherst that might open the door from word funding from other sources because I think there was that one source that Laura had cited about. I can't remember what it's called right now but just, you know, thinking of like strategically. Speaking of Laura Laura is in the audience and has her hand up I mean she's an attendee whatever it is anyways Laura. Greg can you let Laura come in and speak. Hi everyone, can you hear me. Hi, I just thought if you had a little time to kill, I would fill you in on some of the projects that we're working on. So just wanted to let the trust know that 20 of oops, sorry. Laura you, we just lost you or something. I just tried to make a little panelist she should be back. Sorry Laura. There she is. I'm not camera ready at all. Sorry. I'm joining with my face. So, East Gables 20 of those apartments are occupied, we expect the balance the remaining eight will be occupied, probably by the end of this month or early January. We're kind of psyched about that we have been doing a program with incoming tenants where we're giving everybody kind of an allowance to buy furnishings because the units are small and so people have been using talent furniture in town as well as Ikea and furnishing the apartment so it's been a lot of work for everybody but I think it's, it's a kind of a cool thing. So, community homes, I will let you know that we've been in the zoning hearings now I think there have been three or four already. There's one next week on the 21st with the ZBA and it is the one that might interest people on this committee the most. So it's about affordability restrictions it's about local preference. It's about condo docs it's about financials. So, you know they've been plugging away at different aspects like last time it was just storm water. Which drew no one. Next week I think could be really interesting interesting discussion and especially on the issue of local preference. That's a really juicy one in terms of, you know, do you do a local preference in a white majority town for a program where you're trying to encourage people of color to buy housing. It's a really interesting kind of pickle. So, it might be a good one to tune into if you have the time I think they start at seven it'll be on the town calendar. And then I would mention also that we, it doesn't, it's not Amherst but in Hadley, we had purchased the conelage property. We went for 40 be permit we were denied we appealed to the housing appeals committee at the state level, and they gave us a favorable ruling just last month so we're, we're excited about that. Craig stores is leasing that property currently they will continue there until we're ready to renovate. And I think it'll be 18 to 24 months before all the financing is in place and we can renovate but we're really happy that it's having a good use in the interim seems to be working out really well for folks who are staying there. I happened to go to the Pellum hearing last night. I'm sorry not Leverett hearing on the Kittridge property and I would just throw that out there because they're looking at building a lot of units, some of which will be an Amherst. So that property kind of straddles. Most of it's in Leverett some of it's in Amherst. Who knows it's very early in the in the conceptual stage, but it has potential to have a big impact and the perspective developers are talking about mixed income housing at least at this point in time. But on East Gables I just also wanted to mention that it was it was in the paper but 20 of our incoming tenants, we had set aside 10 units for people who have who are homeless wait a homeless preference for 10 of the 28 units. The fact of the people moving in 20 of them are coming from some kind of unhoused situation, even folks at 50% and 80% AMI, some of them are unhoused couch surfing living in cars, whatever so this problem that is associated with people being, you know, very very poor has broadened to people at different income levels. And I will also mention that we have quite a few people who are working locally. We have someone who's employed at Amherst College, I think we have two people who work at big why one person who works at the Cumbies, you know, it's really nice to see that because I think that was one of the goals, including serving people around house but also providing some kind of housing for people who are, you know, low wage earners who are trying to work in Amherst who want to live in Amherst. So that's it for me. I just want to give Laura some big kudos for the win about the Econolodge because at least my understanding is that it was you who did a lot of the work so yay Laura, you know, it was a group effort, including including mostly the people in Hadley. So just to be aware that, you know, had they not made choices that they made, we would not have won. So it's an interesting it was very interesting process. All right, cool. Thank you. Thanks for your time. Allegra and then Nate. I think Nate was first. Nate and then Allegra. Sure. Thanks. Yeah, thanks Laura. The, I was going to have just a few things. The ZBA probably will start at six next week. It would be good to go. There are some ZBA members who really want a high local preference. They've actually asked that they could do 100% of the units, which isn't possible. And I think Jessica has written Alan from Valley wrote a really clear memo. I mean, staff totally gets it. You know, the common builders program is has first priority in terms of preference and then local preference would be second. You could have a combined application pool. But it could be good if a trust member was there to speak in favor of the project or talk about this. And then we can also reduce the local preference percentage to say 50% instead of 70% is the maximum. So for a home ownership project, you know, local preference would be that a certain percentage of units would be set aside to people who like live work have school age children in Amherst, and it would be for the initial purchase and so you know it could be 50% of the units are set aside for this. So I think that conflict with the common builder pool, but I think that's, you know, something that is it could be a big discussion. I will say that, you know, the town is already thinking that, you know, what the conditions are for this project. And so the ZBA has been doing a really good job. I haven't been attending actually I get follow up so I look at it watch it after but they are doing a thorough job but you know really there is. There is a process that takes a number of meetings but you know I think that's just the process that goes through. And then lastly the leverage piece there's an article in the Gazette was it was online this evening it'll probably be in the paper, physical paper tomorrow but it, it describes the project and so, you know it is a pretty big project up on the water. And so that's yeah so if you want to read about it is it's out there now. Resumably, if it goes through it will be using Amherst water and sewer because there's nothing else up there to pull from so. The article said that the water and sewer were a mile and a half away I thought it was closer. It's a pretty long way to bring water and sewer but Allegra. I was just wondering about the current guests at a conelodge if when the project renovation starts if there would be any attempt for them to become permanent residents of the units or how that if there would be any continuity for that group of people. It brings up this question about local preference yet again, which I'm sure we'll be talking about more in Hadley but it won't be seamless. We've spoken a lot with Craig stores about the transition they do not recommend that we try to renovate while people are living there. So they want to kind of wholesale relocate once we're ready to renovate and then of course we would be looking for some people who could apply to live there permanently who want to. And you know, hopefully down the road the VFW site could be another potential location for Craig stores to kind of plant its flag. But yeah, we're looking at a number of steps to permanence both for, you know people who live at a conelodge and for Craig stores I think as an organization, but we're, we're working really closely with them we have a very good working relationship. They're actually expanding their use of the conelodge they were using the first floor, they're going to set up an emergency overflow shelter on the second floor. They also have some COVID isolation rooms that are on the second floor. So they'll have they have 38 people living there now. It may go as high as 50 or 60 people over the winter so it's fulfilling a really critical need in its, its current use so. And will that property once it's complete have any similar ish kind of like set aside units as ease gables. Yeah, so the model that we're working on for for a conelodge there 63 double occupancy hotel rooms we would reduce the density we'd have 50 apartments most studios someone bedrooms. And we're looking at 25 having a homeless preference so and that's really contingent upon us being able to raise 25 project based vouchers. It's kind of one of the bigger challenges of that but that's what we're going to try to do. Because that was one of the intense when we purchased it it was like ease gables trying to fulfill a need for people who don't have housing, as well as kind of workforce housing, especially for people are working. You know the malls and right there on the root nine corridor there's, there's a huge workforce. I'm sure most of whom don't live locally so. Thank you. Thank you very much Laura. Thank you for the update that we didn't plan on but we're so grateful to have. Yes, really fantastic. I see that now Shelly is here. So maybe we can bring Shelly in and discover more about our strategic the program that we're going to go through for strategic planning. Greg or Nate or one of you. Yes. I see something just happened so here she is. All right. So, Shelly welcome. Glad to see you. Looking forward to hearing what you're going to tell us about the strategic planning process we are about to embark upon. Yeah, thank you so I am with MHP mass housing partnership and just to make sure that we all are on the same page. We chose Amherst as one of the communities that we're going to focus on with more intensive TA as a housing trust in the next several months. And a small group of us met to kind of talk this out about what this might look like and so I think what we're wanting to do tonight is propose that timeline. I don't know if it was put in the information that was sent out I think it was. So the proposed timeline just based on the application that you submitted is tonight to go through this timeline and I don't know if we want to do more kind of introductions if that's helpful to know more about me or MHP but then the one thing that we'd like to do is just go through this timeline and then try to schedule an in person session for the second half of January to really dig into your kind of brainstorming around goals that kinds of things that you'd like to accomplish to help get us started because our work together is really to help you create a bit of a roadmap for the next at least couple years of identifying a few key goals measurable goals to focus on and create some strategies to just help to focus you for the next couple years. So tonight we'll go through this timeline. Try to schedule an in person for the second half of January, and then we'll really kick things off in January. So the timeline shows us is proposing that on January your meeting. Yep. So I just wondering if somebody Greg or can someone maybe put the timeline up for us to look at that might seem like it would be helpful while you're talking about it does that sound good showy. Sure. Keep going we'll see if it gets there. If someone wants to share the screen and put up to January 11 the proposal is to use that meeting your standing meeting for a. Thank you Greg for an affordable housing trust one on one virtual session. And so this would be for you but you could also invite others in the community if they're interested in just learning more. And then the second half of January to have an in person session in Amherst that we really dig into looking at past goals of the trust what was accomplished from those what wasn't a little bit of analysis of why and then to consider what would you like to accomplish moving forward and do some brainstorming. And then through between February and April, hopefully a smaller group perhaps three of you would meet to dig into those. Those brainstorm goals and really help to narrow and refine those proposed goals, including to start working on drafting strategies of ways to accomplish those goals. And then may and June to bring those that proposal back to the full board to do a bit of to get some feedback and to do some fine tuning and then June and July the possibility of facilitating a joint board meeting between the trust and partners that you find critical in your work to discuss the trust goals and strategies and to begin coordinating across different boards. So I don't know if they're from a few of you that were in the initial meeting if you want to add to that, maybe Erica. And I'm sorry, I didn't see before we sent out this that something sort of dropped off in June, July. One of the things that I think will be really important not only meeting with other relevant town committees about our draft goals. I think it's going to be really important to get resident feedback community feedback. So that's us is going to be really, really important, especially based on the June 20 listening session that we had really to get community members feedback where they think we should be focusing our priorities would be really important. So along the way, maybe even, you know, beginning of June before we get too far as well so we could have their input. Definitely this is, you know, you, you, one would think that this might be a long timeline it isn't. There's a lot of work that needs to happen. There's a lot of consensus building among ourselves. We discussed how broad affordable housing is all the way from, you know, focusing on the unhoused, all the way rental, you know, subsidies, creating affordable rentals, creating affordable homes, home ownership. You know, subsidizing even vouchers here in Amherst because they don't go very far. There's just so many things, you know, focusing on alternative dwelling units. There's just so many aspects of affordable housing that we could focus on. We really need to figure out where we can have the most impact and then to also coordinate our work with the CRC, the town. Also the advocates to make sure that we're really maximizing our efforts and our resources since our resources are very limited and so are theirs. So I think this is such an important process and having, you know, that's done our new member and then our last vacancy field. It'll really be a good opportunity to also solidify how we want to see ourselves and where we want to see ourselves move forward. So thank you Shelly for helping us to do that. From an AHP's perspective, we work in a lot of communities and we've seen a lot of trust really struggle about how to move forward because the housing needs are so significant in every community and the resources are really limited. So the work that we've been doing the last few years in particular is really trying to encourage and push trust to really narrow in on the work that they're going to focus on to help them be more effective. So housing production plans, they can have a lot of goals and they can be really broad and it's a great starting place, but then we really are encouraging trust to go a little deeper to create goals that are more measurable and to really focus on two or three things that you can do well, instead of being really overwhelmed by trying to do 10 things and struggling with that. So part of this process is hopefully to help you identify what are the key things that you're going to be focusing on in the next couple of years. And part of that may be, unless you're really rehearsed going into this, understanding what other groups are already doing so that you're not duplicating anything, but really trying to create kind of a niche for your trust. And we don't have to be quite this aggressive. We were kind of trying to just to keep things moving, but there is some flexibility if it feels like at some point that we need to slow down a little bit. And then obviously just understanding that the further we get in the summer than the less that will probably happen. Yeah. Well, thanks. Thanks very much for your words and looks like maybe Nate has a question or comment. Yeah, sure. No, thanks, Shelley and Erica. I think, you know, it's important for the trust is, you know, we've had a few funding requests in the last year and so I think it's going to continue that, you know, different projects or organizations ask, you know, you know, things of the trust, whether it's time or resources and so, you know, we could spend down the remaining balance pretty quickly. And then, you know, so some of this would be for me what, you know, what actions can the trust do with or without funding, you know, and so is it policies as a recommendations is advocacy. And there can be, you know, broad topics that then, you know, get more defined in terms of, as Shelley said, measurable actions or strategies and so I think it could be a few bigger ideas and topics that then we really refine and so, you know, I agree. I don't, you know, we could put a lot in there. So the town's comprehensive housing policy is really new has so many strategies and things, you know, it's really a hard document to say, okay, we're going to do all that in two years or four years. And so I think we can look at that there is some framework with a few documents and ideas. So I, you know, I think that's one thing. The other one would be, there was, you know, a few trust members who wanted to form a subcommittee and you know, so the difference between a subcommittee and an ad hoc committee would be a subcommittee would be one that has to, you know, post an agenda take minutes and it's kind of, you know, appointed or voted on by the trust. And that would be fine you know that's something that Greg and I can help manage in terms of meetings it could just be zoom meetings it could be in person but you know I think for the next meeting, it'd be great for members to, you know, to ask themselves, you know, would they have the time and are they interested in having a subcommittee of a few members. And that way working it done between meetings. And I think it will really help with the process. You know, we can staff can help with that in terms of, I mean, maybe even Shelley to but you know if we have ideas you know where do we look for resources are opportunities we research a little bit more. Are there things that are happening. And that way it just it can move the process along, because some of it will take a little bit of research and work. And so that those are the things I was mentioned. And so Nate and then an ad hoc, an ad hoc group would be where it's not formal like that. Is that right. Yeah, yeah, I mean you know for this purpose to me for the planning process, you know an ad hoc would be like oh a few members say I'll get together and we'll do this but if they're gonna be meeting pretty consistently I'm okay with saying let's have a subcommittee for six months just you know that way there's some documentation of it as opposed to like, oh maybe it's the same two members for a few months but then maybe someone else's added and I don't mind formalizing it. Like I said it just means minutes and agenda is being posted and things like that. The group that we've had working so far has been ad hoc, which has been Erica and I and Grover who've gotten us who mainly got shelly here it's our main accomplishment so but it's something going forward could certainly be different I'm just trying to say we this is what we have done. So far doesn't have to say this way at all. So but we can figure all that out as we go on. But so I think Nate suggestion is when we meet on January 11, we're going to start with the first thing is kind of going to be, I think sort of a housing one on one thing at our entire next meeting will kind of be devoted to. And at that point, we can try to decide on the time we're going to meet in person in January and we can also decide on what kind of subcommittee or whatever we want to have. And I see that we have a hand up from our from guest on. Thank you. Just actually on that last point Carol I my understanding of the open meeting laws that if it's more than two than you better have a committee is better since your co chairs is that make a change. Yeah, okay. The question I or comment I had about the strategy is just certainly being new here. I'd be very curious to try to get a big picture of you about the successes in the past to understand at some level the relationship between bandwidth and money and and units created or people housed. And so I don't know to what extent that data exists or can be kind of reconstructed but certainly that would be very helpful to thinking about the future. And then if I may just kind of put in one idea that's that has been on my mind. And that is the huge returns that would come to the town by increasing the number of children, because we get more children in town then we've we've increased the budget of the schools for free. And so it's just such a huge potential to create some of those positive reinforcement loops, because I know the schools are, you know, we all know that they're struggling for budgets and our kids are can't believe what what other towns have and our, and our schools So, just before Erica, I just wanted to respond that Greg has is going to be helping me do some of that research and compiling like pass going through the past trust plan and kind of putting together some analysis of what's been accomplished what hasn't so we can reflect on that at the in person in January. Yeah. I was going to say quickly. Unfortunately, some of it's kind of in different groups right so the planning board might work on some zoning measures there's a community resources committee a subcommittee of the council. There's the trust there's town had been doing, you know, applying for CPA. I don't speak to it but you know, I, you know, I think what, you know, we had a joint meeting with the trust and CRC earlier this year, and we said, Oh, it'd be nice to have these periodically you say it's twice a year because there is so much that happens, you know, with different departments or different boards or committees in town and so I think gets on your point I think, you know, part of what this process for me is also like you know how do we coordinate efforts, you know and we talk about that how do we. We keep things kind of, you know, relevant for everyone and so you know Dave and I meet with Carol Erica, at least once a month and we're trying to you know some of it just might be having more, more meetings or more things but, you know, for instance that the planning committee is zoning e-samers or certain areas right university drive or looking at certain things and, you know, is the trust, if say a point is advocacy or regulations or regulatory thing, you know what how involved with the trust get with some of those those conversations you know we set a framework in the trust attends meetings or writes a memo but I think, yeah I think there's a you know I think there's probably a lot of successes and things that need to be improved but you know I can help Shelly and Greg pull it together I just think it comes from a lot of different places. I was thinking of the action plan the trust action plan specifically just as kind of a starting point to see what did they, what did the trust expect to or want to, and to help with kind of what were maybe some goals that didn't end up being and why as we kind of think about what to do moving forward what to focus on moving forward, but I think knowing what others are doing is part of not wanting to duplicate and kind of finding the trust niche that's not overlapping with other other entities that's really important. Erica, thank you. I was just going to add. So, I've asked John Hornick, who is our prior chair to work with me to literally and Carol as well to look at our prior strategic plan and actually come up with what we've accomplished and what areas we didn't get accomplished and this conversation is really good because it'll help us frame to the why I didn't really think about the why. So, we will, I've actually gone through all of that I can I only started I think in 2019. So, prior to 2019 I wasn't here so that's why it'd be really important to have john part of this. So, I'm going to get my thoughts to john this weekend and then hopefully we'll make a meeting and definitely have that available at the meeting where we're going to review past. It is important to know where we've come from in order to know where we're heading so that is really important. And I just also wanted to say is that with the meeting the CRC. I believe Nate and Dave actually did put a lot of data together for us. So those documents might be useful for everybody to have before we have those conversations. Great. Any last comments or questions before we move on. And thank shelly. So I would just say that it because I have to schedule childcare for the January in person meeting that the sooner that we get that in our calendars the better for me. So it doesn't have to be done tonight but waiting until January 11 would actually be really hard for me. Okay, we'll try to we'll do it somehow. Thank you. Thanks for saying that. Yeah, so I don't know. I mean, I could put together a poll or someone could put together a poll to try to get that in our calendars and I think another thing we're going to bring up tonight is just to ask the group how early in the evening. Could you start a meeting. Realistically. If you start as early as 5 or 530 doesn't need to be 6 or 630 what what are people schedules like on a typical week night. I was talking about our regular meetings are you talking about the in person thing the in person meeting. Maybe we can put out some kind of questionnaire or you you can or we do you want to and are you dear do you want us to. I can I just don't have everybody's email from here but I could send it to you or you and Erica and you could send it to the group. That sounds good. And we can also ask the question of how of what time what starting time can work. If it's a questionnaire that if it's a poll, then it would be I would put in the time so I just need to kind of know how how early is realistic or or what's the timeframe that you typically prefer. Um, if it's in person and Amherst. I'm trying to think of a way to do that besides just taking the time in this meeting, but maybe everyone who's on the trust, if you have a time that is when is the earliest time you could start. If we just go around and you say that and if you don't know, then we'll figure out something else, but let's see, I would say. I could do 5 if I knew far enough in advance Erica. I'm flexible. Allegra. You said 5 right. Yes. Rob. I could do 5. Grover. I could do 5 with planning ahead. Yeah. Gaston. Yeah, 5, 5 is fine or possibly earlier, but yeah, 5 no problem. Okay. Does that work then? Yes. Thank you so much. Okay, great. Thanks for asking. I'll send Carol and Erica. The link and then you can send it to everyone else. We'll try to get a date for the second half of January in our calendars soon. Great. Thank you very much. Yeah. Thanks for coming. Just quickly I'm assuming that we could, and it'll be in town hall. Or could be the banks and I guess, right? I mean, I think those are probably the two. Easiest locations. Yeah, we have to find a place too. Okay. Okay. Another benefit to getting the date earlier. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Thank you so much. And thank you. Good night, Shelly. Thanks for coming. Good night. Okay. So where are we? Oh, we're I'm turning it back over to Erica for funding proposals. Thank you, Carol. So we've had a little bit of change of plans. Ashley couldn't make it this evening. So she asked us to postpone the conversation about her proposal regarding rental support or eviction prevention. But we do have someone here from the Amherst Community and Trust. I believe Jim Oltim. I believe you're going to present the proposal. So Jim has his hand up. Can we make him a panelist? I think also Linda is laky unless she doesn't want to come into the room, but she's also from ACLT. I'm going to recrease myself from this discussion of the benefit of Gaston and anyone else. I'm on the board of the Amherst Community of Land Trust. Thank you, Rob. Okay. So we have Jim here. Jim, do we do you want us to also include Linda? Please. Yes. We'll bring Linda in as well. Looks like Linda has been made into a panelist. Let's see if Linda has arrived. And if I can share my screen, I can. I believe you should be able to. Yep. Okay. I'm going to interrupt for a second. I'm technically a member of ACLT and that perhaps means that I should also recuse myself. If I recuse myself, am I supposed to entirely leave? I don't know that I understand this all very well. Well, I'm recusing yourself from voting if we were to take a vote. I think being here and listening, I think is not an issue, but I think if we were to take a vote this evening about the proposal, then both you and Rob would probably have to recuse yourself. But Nate, you can. Rob just recudes himself by leaving, didn't he? He's not even here anymore, is he? Rob was on the board. So if Rob recused himself totally, it's maybe because he felt being on the board. Being a member, I think is very different. My comment, my question, comment to that is if Kara leaves and Rob is left and Ashley's not here, would we have enough quorum to have a vote? Well, you know what? I think we probably don't, but I think it'd be important to go ahead and allow Jim and Linda to present the proposal. I think, yeah, why don't we start with that? But I think that's a very good point, Grover. Yeah, I was just going to jump in and say that, you know, Rob's on the board of directors. So I think that makes sense for Carol. I think just that your disclosure and you could say that, you know, being a member doesn't impact your ability to hear the proposal and discussion is all that really needs to happen. You know, I think it's different if you're on, you know, like an executive, you know, board or committee for something. So. Okay. Go. Jim. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. And I certainly hope you find a way to vote on this proposal hopefully tonight, but I'll try to be compelling. So I know you've had or many of you have had an introduction to ACLT. So I will keep it brief, but I will do a little bit of background because I know you have new members and so on. So we're a nonprofit organization serving the town of Amherst. We've been around coming up on 10 years. We're volunteer led and we work to create affordable home ownership. So we that's the space of the housing space that we occupy and are really focused on making home ownership possible for folks who otherwise wouldn't have access to housing because of income, access to ownership and promoting and by doing that, we're promoting diverse, more diverse family neighborhoods. Let's see. Oh, sorry. When I'm looking at your screen, I can't see my I'm sorry. I'm having trouble with my slides. Hang on one second. So the basic practice of the Amherst community land trust as a community land trust, we use a particular ownership model of shared equity ownership in which the homeowner owns home, the home on land owned by the land trust. So we acquire land. We store the land and hold it for community benefit, primarily making the land making the homes affordable for low and moderate income homeowners. So the goals are to remove the land from the remove the homes from the speculative market and create home ownership opportunities for again, for those who wouldn't otherwise have it. And the price of the home is less because we've taken the land or some fraction of the total value out of the picture and we use a lease to the land as the regulatory method for ensuring certain restrictions are are abided by particularly is to promote owner occupancy. These aren't for rental units. These are to be lived in by the people who own them and we restrict the sale price so that they'll remain affordable for subsequent home buyers. And our work is although there's been an important exceptions, we primarily focus on existing housing stocks. So what we're working to do is this transition existing housing stock into affordable housing stock and the range of benefits we're creating a home ownership for people who otherwise are priced out and that really is facilitating wealth building for people at the lower end of the economic ladder. So there's we have this perpetuation in our in our society wealth is perpetuated by more wealth and home ownership is one of the biggest tools for that as you know so by helping people at the lower end of the perspective at the lower end of the spectrum acquire homes in an ownership position where we're helping them build wealth. The model works for a range of income levels. We've primarily worked with home buyers between 50 and 80 percent AMI but we can also provide housing for people in the 80 to 100 percent AMI which are no longer who are no longer able to afford homes and we can even go lower when we can get a subsidy sufficient. As I'll show later the cost of the subsidy for this model is relatively low compared to other approaches like new build housing and the affordability is preserved long term and at the same level. So we can make a home affordable for someone 70 percent AMI today when they sell it. The model allows us to perpetuate that affordability at that same level and we've built our program in a way that that we're back stopping ourselves. We're a 10 year old now or nonprofit organization but all of our ACLT homes have deed restrictions that are either granted to the town or held by the state with the town having enforcement rights. So it's our intention to remain in business and continue to store these homes and oversee their transition but but the homes are permanently protected whatever happens with our organization. To date we've acquired five properties which have a total of six homes on them. This the first one was a duplex and all all providing affordable homeownership. I won't go through the whole list here but just say that we've come at these projects from a variety of different ways working partnering with Habitat for Humanity. That's the one new build project we did using CPA money to acquire a house in the open market homes either bequeathed to us or where the land was donated to us make up the rest of the portfolio and so this has all happened over six years really since 2018 when we did our first project and it's been funded the majority through private donations. We've made a little more than as you can see here a little more than 25% of ACLT's homes the direct subsidy for acquisition and the direct funding for acquisition and providing the subsidy almost three quarters of that has come from donated land donated cash and the balances come from from CPA money as the note on the slide says omitted from this calculation is money is some of the funding that Habitat brought in for the build of the first project but as you can see that's so this is about 1.2 million a little higher when you add in the additional Habitat money for six units of permanently affordable housing so we're looking at about 250,000 200 to $250,000 a unit is achieved in that which again I think compared to other types of projects is a pretty good pretty good cost to benefit ratio. However you know we do need to get enough to make this project happen so so what I want to share now is where we are now we have a project that was actually funded back in 2019 is the CPA program provided a CLT with two subsidies of $125,000 each plus a small amount of funds for management that we're paying to Valley CDC to help us with home buyer selection and advertising marketing they've done most of that work but anyway two subsidies of $125,000 that were received in basically year 2019 took a while to set up the program because it was new for us and new for the state and then got started just at the as the pandemic came started. One family was able to acquire a home and 70% AMI which is what we targeted the program to depending on family size they can bring 150 to $180,000 to to to the table for a home so that plus our $125,000 subsidy allowed one family in 2021 to purchase a home for $285,000. Now today there are no homes in Amherst anywhere near $285,000. So in fact the prices in Amherst have risen 50% in the past five years exactly the period where we were caring have been carrying out our projects. So we've done our work in that environment. So we had a second subsidy to use. I'm sorry. I thought I heard the question. We had a second subsidy and the written I won't repeat what's in the write up that we sent to you ahead of time but there was we had several candidates selected for homes one withdrew when they weren't able to find a home a second went into a different program and we were able to get them housed with the donated property. We still have this subsidy we realize $125,000 wasn't close to getting anyone into a home so we raised privately $75,000 so we now have a $200,000 subsidy which brings a potential purchase price to somewhere between $350,000 and $380,000 again this is insufficient to buy any home in Amherst really there's virtually nothing in on the market for for $380,000 we're closer there are homes being advertised in the low four hundreds but three three six three fifty to three eighty just doesn't do it. And so where we are now is we actually have a home buyer who was selected income qualified selected the application and lottery process overseen by Valley CDC. They happen to be a single parent they happen to be a current resident in Amherst and their school employee they're unable to they've been making offers. But the offers are they're they're not even able to meet asking price or even get close to asking price. We're looking to complement the fundraising that we've done from within our own organization and our broader networks we're looking to AMHT for an additional $25,000 which we think will complete enough of a package to get us where we can where the joint purchase request between ACLT and the home buyer can get to the very bottom of the Amherst market just enough to get them into a home. So we're we're this is a minimal request to get us at the very bottom and we believe that if AMHT would approve this we can get these this family to become homeowners by early 2024 and add another permanently affordable owner occupied home to the Amherst housing stock. It's urgent they've they are looking currently they're seeing houses that they are hoping to be able to make offers on their houses that are sitting on the market and may be getting to come down in price so we could meet those home buyers if we had them I mean those home sellers if we had the money but it is time sensitive and it's a small amount to supplement a lot of money that's been raised again privately and the earlier CPA funds that are earmarked so I'll stop there and take questions and I'll stop my share so you can see. Questions from the trust members Grover. Yeah, thanks for your presentation and I really appreciate the effort and that you're trying to get things together to make it work. My question is you raise an extra 75,000 and then if we were to grant this request are you also recruiting funds elsewhere and I ask that because because the home needs to be a single family home that's not part of a condo already condo eyes unit it looks to me like even this amount of money might not succeed in the goal and so then my concern would be that we would allocate $25,000 that might not get spent might not be used to house a family for many more years. It so we it was a tough choice how much to ask for honestly perhaps we should have asked for more but we were not certain we know the trust is trying to support a lot of things and I'm not sure so certainly a little bit higher would give us some more certainty. We do have other funds that we use slightly differently. So we have what we call a last mile fund that we've raised $11,000 in that would could come. So if we came up if we got 25,000 from the trust and we're still somewhere up to $11,000 short, we could use this last mile fund, which we would not use as a permanent subsidy. It's intended to be a rotating money, but it would work as a second mortgage and no interest second mortgage that people could either pay off and therefore gain more equity or could leave and pay off at the time they sell the house. So so we we are building in some flexibility and we're constantly looking, you know, we're not stopping fundraising. We actually have an open campaign going on right now. Just we're we're we don't have any other prospects outside of the housing trust for where we could get a chunk of money of this magnitude in the time frame that we're talking. Any other questions from the trust members? We have a question from one of the attendees. Let me just ask first. Trust members any other questions from trust members? Grover. Do you still have a question? Nope. Okay. Greg, can we allow John to ask his question? Yes. I'm Carol too. Oh, sorry. I didn't see Carol. I had my this this hand, which is sorry. Can't see it. Yeah, I get it. I get it. I mean, I have it's not a question. It's a comment and it's not about this proposal and this proposal is compelling enough that I'm having a hard time even making my comment. But part of me thinks that we should not that we should go through our strategic planning process that we're just beginning before we spend any more of our money is not because I'm not what you just said almost convinced me to not say this at all. But I feel like we're we are don't have a lot of money now. We have just reduced our ask to the CPA funds. We don't really know what we're going to come up with as our priorities that we're just entering into this process to try to figure out. And so to me, it feels like a hard time for the trust to to make another award. That's my comment. Thank you, Carol. Could we ask Allegra? Go ahead, Allegra. See, I'm the opposite of Carol. I'm over here on Zilla looking at the 419 on Longtown Road. I'm like 11,000 plus 400 and they are saying a 5k credit to the seller. That's almost there. Like, let's do this. But anyway, I probably shouldn't have dropped that little gem into the public realm. I just I will say, even if we decide to postpone the vote today, that this is a really cool proposal. I feel like the past couple of months, we've had a lot of different things in front of us. And, you know, we've given some money to fund building or development stuff for a home ownership opportunity. We've given money for subsidies for, you know, 30% AMI and lower folks for a whole year to keep them housed. And I think this proposal that has like a really human piece to it, it's, you know, it might seem like a big amount of money for one family to get housed. But at the same time, it it's one family that we're getting more information about. So we can kind of like picture. This is a family that lives here already works in the school system. Maybe the kids are in the school system. So I think I think that it's really nice to hear kind of the human side of things. Whereas sometimes when we're giving funds to the development of a building, you know, it's a nice thing to see a pretty picture of what the building is going to look like, but it doesn't feel as real as thinking like, oh, wow, like this one family has had a struggle in this market. And I can picture that because, you know, I'm a family who has looked at different houses before and understands that process. So I appreciate that piece of this proposal being brought in front of us. Thank you, Allegra. Looks like Linda, you would like to respond. Just I can't resist hearing that it is in fact a one-on-one long-town road that our current client is looking at. And we've done exactly the calculation that you just did. $25,000 would make that home. She could make a viable offer with that. Their original ask was 435, and they've been languishing on the market, partly because, of course, as you all know, interest rates have also risen sharply and therefore buyers are hanging back. And that lends some of the time urgency. You know, every time I see the interest rates come down even a tiny bit, I think, oh, who's going to jump on Longtown Road before we can get it together. Thank you, Linda. It looks like we have no questions from our trust members, so we can go ahead and ask John to join us and ask his question or make a comment. Yeah, I have a comment. It's not a question. Most of what the trust does is make affordable rental housing available. If we look at the East Street or Belchartown Road project, those are rental projects. The Ball Lane project is really the first affordable housing ownership project that we have funded except for very small projects taken on by the Amherst Community Land Trust. And two other organizations and they happen in very, very occasional, almost random fashion. You know, there's an opportunity this year to do one. There's an opportunity next year or two years from now to do another one. Ball Lane is some years away. So the fact is that this is a relatively unique opportunity to allow home ownership, which we rarely get an opportunity to do. So if you hold off, as Carol suggests, we could lose this opportunity, which is important. And I think the fact that it's a home ownership project is something that people need to think about. It's not another big rental project. It's home ownership. It's something we generally are able to do one project at a time and it's one every year or every two years. So my recommendation would be not to let this one get away. Thank you, John. Very much appreciated. Allegra. I am wondering if there's a way that we could write, we could move to propose some sort of contingent, like upon getting agreement accepted type language in recommending funding. I'm not clear what you're recommending. Sorry. I think it, can I try to say it? It's like, we'll give you the money when you have a house to spend it on. Yeah, it's unnecessary. Yeah, the town will not pay out the money unless there is a contractual agreement to purchase the house. Okay. So I understand your thought Allegra, but it's not necessary to create special language. That's the way the town ordinarily operates. Well, can we get confirmation that that's true because the request is from ACLT, not from the home whatever. So yeah, sorry. Yeah, no, John's right. We would have a, you know, a grand agreement with the land trust and it would say that, you know, for instance, an accepted offer or a first and sale agreement or something and then we provide funding. So typically we'd have a condition or two, you know, to ensure that something that was moving forward. So it's kind of like, you know, the way it works is the trust votes the money, it allocates it and it only gets spent if it's necessary. So, you know, if town council or town meeting before that would allocate funding for a project, it's not like the money's out the door. It only gets spent when it's needed. And so, you know, if it never gets spent and never gets spent, yeah. And I'll just note that, I mean, this money, we will have to do that for the 125,000 that that town is holding for us anyway. So we would be coming for the into town hall for two checks instead of one, I guess, or one bigger check or Gaston, go ahead. I guess two comments. One just on that question of contingency, I would, I would guess that one could just be a date, you know, put a time limit. Um, and then the other point is just that as somebody new here, I'm getting my bearings about value. And so, you know, I'm thinking, um, at, you know, at the rate of $25,000 per housing, that means, you know, the mill, a million dollar trust would go up in 40, it would serve 40 families and I just don't have a sense of proportion yet as to the, the mission and scope of the trust as to whether that's a good return on, on the investment or not. I mean, so I just have ignorance at this point, lack of sense of proportion about the money, uh, relative to the impact. Um, but as far as the point about, um, will the money make the difference? I would, I would, I guess propose that there be a time limit on the, on the, on the grand, if that's the way the trust is going to vote. Thank you, Gaston. So, um, we don't have a quorum, so we cannot vote tonight. Um, so, uh, to Grover's point, um, we need a quorum in order to be able to vote. Um, we have about $200,000 left that, um, even if we do get funding from the CPA won't even be until, I believe after July 2024, correct, Nate? Yes. Okay. Um, and, um, I think, you know, between what Gaston just said and what Carol said, um, you know, we're, we're struggling with wanting to make as, um, impactful decisions as possible. I think, you know, I would agree with Carol and with Allegra that a personal story always pulls at, you know, at your consciousness and your, um, you know, it, it's really hard to not see this single mom who is working in town, trying to get a house in town. I myself, I know how, how hard it was to, to get a house, but at the same time, we're also struggling with really wanting to be very, very judicious in how we spend our money. And that's one of the reasons why we've decided to go into this process of, of, of planning. Um, but the bottom line is, is that at this point we can't, um, vote. Um, and I'm, I know Jim, uh, and Linda, you said that time is of the essence. Um, we are not going to have another meeting until January. Um, so I'm not sure, um, if that is even helpful, um, waiting until January to, to have this vote, but without a quorum, we can't vote. Um, and it looks like Nate may have a response to that. I see five members, um, you know, uh, that stone Erica, you, Allegra, Grover and Carol. So Carol could vote. Yeah. I mean, I looked up the membership is it's not, you know, um, I think it's, I think if she, you know, discloses it, that's fine. It's not like it's a, um, she's not a voting member of any, you know, she's not on the board of directors. So there could be hundreds of members of the Amherst Community Land Trust. I mean, I don't know how many, I don't want the membership is, but it's a, it's a kind of a low threshold membership. It's not like an exclusive thing. So I don't, I think a disclosure is all that's necessary to allow Carol to vote. It, you know, it. Okay. Um, so what I'll do is I'll allow Jim to make one comment and then I'll open up to the trust members to make a decision about if somebody wants to put forth a vote. I also, I don't want to get involved in the technical stuff, but I believe when someone removes themselves, recruses themselves, but you had a quorum when they came, I don't believe they stopped counting for quorum just because he left the meeting for the purpose of this. So I defer to Nate or others on that. The comment I want to make is I appreciate you all considering this. I do want to and I appreciate your noting the strength of the personal argument, but I do want to call your attention again to some of the information that was in the slides. I believe that we're, um, although we do our projects one at a time, as John noted, they're adding up and they're going to continue to add up if we can get the funding. And I think you'll see that there is taking less public money on a per unit basis than say home ownership on ball lane, uh, in terms of so, so just think about the personal thing and we can tell you about the people, but also look at how much the public money is being leveraged and if you put this money in $75,000 of donated money will help make this house permanently affordable, not just for this family, but for the people who come after it. So, so I don't want just because I can tell a good story about the person. I don't want the effectiveness of our program to be lost. Thank you, Jim. That's very helpful. Okay, um, due to time, I'm going to go ahead and ask a trust member to go ahead. And does anyone want to make a motion? Sure, I will make a motion. I move that we, um, we grant $25,000 of our funding to the Amherst Community Land Trust to make home ownership a possibility for this family. Is there a second? All right. I'm not hearing a second. I second it even though I said we shouldn't do it. I changed my mind. Carol's seconded. Okay. So now it's open for discussion. Is there any discussion about the motion? Okay. I guess it's in relation to the motion to just to review the disposable budget of the trust at this time is, is, is what number? You said 250,000? No, 200,000. 200,000. Um, okay. Thank you. That was my question. Could you hear that? I could just barely hear you. I was looking at, so I, the last big, the biggest amount we've given recently was 375,000 to the ball lane development. Correct. That's 15 duplexes that we'll have to, so 30 homes all together. So that comes out to 12, five per, I guess per unit that we are, that we just provided in that sense. So half of what this ask is yet, if we look at how much that money was in the grand budget of that whole project, it's a lot less in terms of like 25,000 to 400,000. I don't even know what the main, I can't, my math is not my thing. So I apologize and it's getting late. So I'm, my brain doesn't really functional, but I, I guess kinds of opportunities in front of us. So I think that this, while it might seem like a lot of money for one house, it might not be that much in the scheme of things, although I, yeah, that's my thought. Gaston. I wonder if, if John would offer his perspective on, on the, the, the budget issue, given that he spoke strongly in support of granting the funds. Greg, could you bring John back? And I just want to, before John speaks, I just want to note it is 903. I'm fine with continuing a little, little bit longer. I just want to make sure no one has to leave. None of the trust members have to leave because if you leave, we can't vote. Okay. John, go ahead. I can't remember a time when the trust was asked for less money than $25,000. In general, we're talking about amounts that run anywhere from a hundred thousand to half a million. So this is a very small ask and granted, we don't know exactly what we're going to get. We're probably going to get something from the Community Preservation Act committee. You're probably going to get something from the town council will approve. I can't believe that $25,000 is going to be make the difference between being able or not being able to do some future project. So again, I feel like the amount is small enough. The project is important enough that you should consider it very seriously. Thank you, John Grover. Yeah, I just want to say, I appreciate this, this conversation. It's successfully shifting me away from my initial response. And I am noting that we've allocated a number of thousands of dollars just to keep the light on in the parking lot of the VFW parcel while we're waiting on it to be developed. And so for me, if I vote yes on this project, it will in part be because I know that it means that a family will be housed at an affordable rate within the year, which is also not something we're often seeing. We're often giving money that's going to be used to house somebody for years from now. And so that's valuable. Thank you, Grover. So I'm going to go ahead. Allegro, go ahead. Sorry, just to belabor the point even more, looking at our most recent allocation of funding to Craigsdor's, it was about 15,000 per individual. So again, this is a little bit higher than that per individual. But as Grover just said, it's hopefully a more immediate return on an investment in terms of if this identified property does work. Um, that could be a matter of months as opposed to like a matter of 2028 when we will see the Southeast Street buildings come to fruition. Thank you. Custom. I mean, I'll just say that I'm I'm also now being feeling inclined to to vote in support. One, I think I appreciate the perspective from John to the group is about to go into a strategic planning process and feeling the spending of money now will serve us well, even if we come to think that there were issues with the decision. And so I appreciate the fact that this could work if we move quickly and we can second guess ourselves later. But if we don't approve it now, the window will slide away. Thank you, Gaston. All right, I think we're ready to vote. So I'm going to go ahead unless there's any compelling comments anyone wants to make. That's seeing any hands. All right, Allegra. Yes, Carol. Yes, Grover. Yes, Gaston. Yes. Hi, and I will vote a yes. So we have five yeses. So I think we have all decided that this is a worthwhile opportunity. I do believe that I think Nate, you are the expert in creating whatever contract and timelines. It would be really important for us to find out Jim and Linda. Hopefully it'll be successful, but if you could report back to us in terms of the success of this partnership that we just had with you, even though it was a small amount, it hopefully will have a huge meaningful impact on this family. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Can I just say, will you share the information about fundraising efforts that you are doing just in case anybody else listening is compelled to give additional funds? They can find us at Amherst Community Land Trust. I don't recommend that you Google on ACLT. That acronym is common. It will be several pages down, but if you Google on Amherst Community Land Trust, you will find a lot more about us, including the address to which contributions can be sent. We're actually having our own strategic planning, a mini version that we do annually at this time. So our January board meeting will be devoted to reassessing priorities we set last year and establishing really an action plan for 2024, but we do have on the table now $31,000 toward a $50,000 ask that is primarily about being able to help our existing homeowners meet unexpected expenses. One of our long-term goals, if anyone listening is so moved to help us, we, as Jim pointed out, are a totally volunteer organization. Everything we do is done by volunteers and we really, again, as the number of residents family grows, we need to plan for somebody to mind the store. So we're looking toward establishing an amount of money that would let us make a commitment to for at least half-time employment for someone to be supporting the effort and helping to manage the volunteer efforts. Thank you, Linda. And if you want to send us the direct link, we could also share with everyone as well, but we've also shared the slides. So if that link is on the slides, we can make sure thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, I'm going to go ahead and wrap up our meeting announcements. Nate had sent out a copy of the application form for 11 East Street, three affordable housing projects, units, three affordable housing units there. The application is due in February 7th, so there's a really tight deadline and is also an info session January 11th at 6 p.m. So I've just sent it out to an individual who's looking desperately for some affordable housing, but please share it as much as possible. Three units are going to be tough and I'm sure there can be a lot of people asking and applying for that. Also, Valley CDC, Carol, did you want to say something? I'm sorry. I thought there were more than three, but anyway, I don't know. Go ahead. Okay, there's two separate one is at center East Commons and I think that has three and it's a combination of studio and one bedroom and then 11 has 11 East pleasant has a few more. I don't remember exactly how many, but it's a mix of studio one and two bedrooms. I think it may have been nine units. Oh, thank you. Thank you for that correction nine units. Okay. Okay, but you all got the email from Nate. So please pass it along, share it with everyone. Then Valley CDC is doing their first time homeowner. This is a, you know, they have these series multiple times, but the first one in January starting January 10th and they're very, very beneficial. This one is three meetings. I've actually attended one that I think was about 10 meetings and it's so very beneficial for people who have never bought a home before it really walked you through all of the different processes and it is a complex process and if you're a full time working and have a family and managing other things, it's really so important to go through something like this to help you navigate buying your first home. So please share that as well. So now I we actually have the decision not to include public comments when it's late. I think we've included public comments throughout the period, so I think it's okay unless I see a hand that really wants to say something. I'm going to move to just ask if there any major non-anticipated items. I know Gaston sent us two articles that I shared with everyone on alternative dwelling units, which I think is really important to read for our strategic planning process. We've talked about diversity of our strategies. So, you know, from rentals from supporting alternative dwelling units, from zoning, etc. So I think it'd be very pertinent to, you know, read these articles and be ready to have a real, you know, in-depth conversation about where we see our efforts making the most impact. But unless, you know, there's anything else, I'm going to move on that. Okay, and then you have on the agenda possible future agenda items. So it was noted that January 11th, our meeting is going to specifically focus on affordable housing development 101. And the idea for that was to have all trust members be on the same page around, you know, what are the different initiatives, options. Shelly is going to talk about some of the different initiatives across the state that trusts have been involved in. So it gives us really sort of a base to work off of when we start thinking about where we think our goals should be for the next few years. And we've also talked about having the African Heritage Reparation Assembly come and speak. We have not yet been able to do that, but something that we'll have in the future. So it is now 9 14 unless there is anything else. I'm going to adjourn this meeting. Okay. I think everyone's ready to have the meeting adjourned. Thank you very much. This was a really important conversation. Thank you for your engagement and participation. And keep on sending articles and sharing them. And I look forward to seeing all of you January 11th, where we're going to talk about the full aspect of what affordable housing trusts do and start our process for making a decision about what we're going to do and how we're going to impact affordable housing in Amherst. Thank you and good night. Thank you. Good night. Thank you. Good job. Thanks, Erica. Thank you. I'm sorry it was took longer, but it's okay. It happens at times. All right. Yeah, it wasn't a pretty question. All right. Good to see you.