 Hello and welcome to Creating Affordable Housing, Ask the Experts. I'm Alex Bagnell, a member of Envision Arlington who, along with the Housing Corporation of Arlington, the Housing Plan Implementation Committee in the town of Arlington are hosting this evening's event. Moderating our panel will be Abby Curve, who is on the board of the Housing Corporation of Arlington, and Karen Kelleher of the Housing Plan Implementation Committee. This evening, we will hear from representatives of four different developers, sharing how they are developing and preserving affordable housing in the general Boston area. After they have presented their case studies, Abby and Karen are moderated discussion between the panelists, followed by an open Q&A period. A bit of Zoom housekeeping. We ask that all of you keep your audio muted until you are called upon in the Q&A. We will be using the raised hands feature to select questioners. Let's get around on why we wanted to have this discussion. Arlington is an economically diverse town. More than one in four households are low income and one in 10 are extremely low income. As housing costs rise faster than incomes that economic diversity is being threatened. High housing costs burden residents and create financial insecurity and a risk of displacement. This is especially true for our senior population. About 1.7% of Arlington's housing stock is considered affordable and we'll have further discussions about different levels of affordability. We are quite short of the state goal of 10% affordable housing and to meet that goal, we would have to add 850 new affordable housing units. This might seem like a large number but spread out over a 10 year time horizon that's just 85 units a year. Not only is that a state goal but many would argue a moral goal that we should have that, not merely as a way to address 40B. How could we get there? We have a number of tools, including the Arlington Housing Authority, our inclusionary zoning bylaw, CPA and CDBG funds, the Housing Corporation of Arlington, the newly created affordable housing trust fund, the possibility of a real estate transfer fee. The usage of our accessory dwelling unit and our fair housing action plan, which includes a number of steps that we as a town can take to eliminate housing discrimination and segregation. Federal ARPA funds can also play a role and will. So quickly looking at our current stock of affordable housing units, you can get a sense for how they were created. The vast majority of our existing affordable inventory is with the Arlington Housing Authority and dates from before 1983. Today's panel seeks to explore how today's affordable housing developers put together projects and what we as a town might change to encourage affordable development in town. With that, I'll turn it over to Abby and Karen. Thank you for coming. Thanks so much, Alex. Abby, you want to take the lead here. Hi, everyone. This is Abby Corvay. And I'm primarily a resident of Arlington, so I'm really excited to host this forum. I mean, I'm excited to introduce our speakers for the evening who will help us unravel the mystery surrounding affordable housing development and the funding and everything that goes into it. We will go from some very local experts to those working on a national level. With that, I want to, you know, get straight to it. Straight into it. Our first speaker is from Arlington to he is the principal architect from narrow gate architecture based in Boston, specializing in design of affordable community based architecture. He is also a long term board member of housing corporation of Arlington at CA, our local nonprofit CDC, and is he's here to present on the Downing Square Broadway initiative. Please welcome Neil Mongold. Thank you, Abby. I would just like to say a few words about the housing corporation of Arlington for those who may or may not be familiar with housing corporation, we are a nonprofit organization in Arlington founded in 1987. We are different from we are not the same entity as the housing authority. The housing authority is a, is a public authority, the housing corporation is a private nonprofit corporation with a board of volunteer directors, and the housing housing corporation Arlington. It also owns as you saw in the previous graphic we own 102 units of affordable housing spread throughout Arlington. We own and manage 102 units of rental housing, and we are just completing and many of you may have seen our, our buildings that are nearing completion the Downing Square Broadway, otherwise known as DSBI development, and that will add 48 units of affordable housing to our inventory to our stock. I just want to give a little background this graphic here is showing on the right side as a photo of one of the two sites so the Downing Square Downing Square is located over, I guess you'd say kind of in the heights it's it's at the kind of park and Lowell, and I'm not sure Westminster I think it's a it's the crazy intersection that folks call the intersection from hell sometimes. And then the other site is this one that's shown in the photo here on Broadway at 117 Broadway. So, the total of the projects again includes 48 units in the building that you see on the right here. 16 units of 14 units sorry. And there was also a commercial space on the ground floor, which is going to be occupied by the Arlington eats food pantry food market program. The other. There's two buildings at the other site, the Downing Square site, the larger building has 34 units smaller unit has six units. And through that intersection probably have more visual recognition of the six unit building which is right at the corner, the 32 unit building sits back, really fronting along the bicycle path, primarily looking across the bike path at the Arlington yard there, just to give some background on this project. And I first I want to, I want people to know that I'm an architect, I'm not actually a development expert in the sense that I'm not a developer and an architect who has been on the Arlington Corporation for a while, and we have done a lot of projects in Arlington so I'm very familiar with Arlington. But I'm kind of, I'm kind of playing a developer on TV here for tonight so the total development cost of the two combined project the two sites is a little over 25 and a half million dollars so 25 point, but 25.4 million dollars at this point. The direct construction cost of the two projects combined is about 16 and a half million dollars. The two different sites, the one on Broadway that you see here, we, that was purchased by the housing corporation in 2014 for about a million dollars $995,000 for the site. You may recall it on this site. Arlington food pantry operated until we just before we started construction. There was I think there was a diner on this site that was that was used. And on the other site, which was purchased for about 1.4 million. That site over again at Downing Square. That site was purchased by the housing corporation in 2016. It had some serious environmental contamination, which where it was remediated. The project that cost about $555,000 to remediate, I think it ended up costing somewhere around $720,000 to remediate some serious remediation that took place on that site. There was PCBs and lead and other chemicals that were remediated through a very thorough process of an environment department process of remediation, which if any of you in the audience are in the neighborhood live in the neighborhood over by Downing Square, you know that there were community meetings and there was a very thorough process around informing folks about the remediation there. Anyway, just to get back to a little bit about the project and who will live in these buildings. Total 48 units, 32 of the units are at or below 60% of the adjusted median income for the area, and just so you are aware of that what that means for. That I don't think I have. Oh yeah okay. For 60% the for a family of four, the maximum income is 76,700. Oh well let's see. And, but you don't have 60% fine and you have 50% but for 60% it's 776,740,000 maximum income for a family of four for a single person it's 53,760. For the 30%. According to my chart here. Oh this was as as of April 2020 that's why the numbers may be a little different, but family for 38,000. So, just to talk a little bit about the buildings they are highly energy efficient. They have all electric heating and cooling. They have the two larger buildings both have elevators. They have again very, very tight building envelopes mean for energy efficiency. And let's see what else they they obviously they have to meet all the building codes including the stretch energy code which is the most current energy requirements for all buildings in Massachusetts. The, as you can see from the listed special features we have island to needs food pantry on the ground floor as I mentioned we have the roofs are all designed for their solar ready the panels will likely be installed in coming months for solar panels on the roof. And I think it's worth really pointing out, especially on the Downing Square site, what tremendous level of contamination was remediated and particularly because that site is. Within the 100 foot and 50 foot wetlands buffer zone that runs along the bike path there there's an aquifer underground and so the remediation is really a key important thing both for the site as well as for the community. And I guess I'm just about out of time I think I'm running down time so I'd be happy to answer questions that after the others other folks have presented. If you want to take a minute to just talk about the financing sources and I know this isn't your expertise but it's it's cool to see how much leverage the town got for investment in this project. Right, so yeah, I am remiss in not mentioning the funders if there's any funders on on the call today. Well, I'm an architect so forgive me. But yes, there was, there was about $12 million. There was $10 million of federal low income housing tax credits. There was another about $7.6 million of state subsidies, including housing animation fund housing stabilization stabilization funds affordable housing trust funds from that's housing and and state low income housing tax credits. Also, a really big important thing that is the benefit of being in Arlington is that there was $600,000 of Community Preservation Act funds that went into the project, and about $250,000 of community development block grant CDBG funds that went into the to the project in terms of the state subsidies, leader bank is providing a $3.5 million mortgage, and there was also about $2.5 million of home funds or federal funds provided through the north suburban home consortium which Arlington is a part of its run out of the, out of the med. The Maldon redevelopment authority offices but we are a part of that consortium and and the consortium provided us with $2.47 million there. A lot of different sources of subsidy are required to make these things happen. You see all the different sections sectors of the pie of how to make the financing work. I'm sure you'll hear more and probably in better description from the other development folks here who are actual developers in that architects. Just want to say, though, again, how, how wonderful and thankful we are to be in Arlington because the town of Arlington has provided really a lot of support both in terms of planning. In terms of the zoning in terms of subsidy dollars and support to the housing corporation, and it's really it's a great town it's a great town as we all know who live here, but it's a great town to provide support for housing and there's of course a lot more to do so. Since Abby won't say it because she's also on the board I just want to appreciate the housing corporation of Arlington our town is very lucky to have a dedicated community development corporation that is producing additional affordable housing and maintaining the housing that they have so. Thank you to all of you who have been a part of it over the many years we're very lucky to have. I would just like to ask one thing, Neil to focus on, there were 48 units, could you speak to how many applications you receive. Oh yes. We, as I mentioned, we, we are just about finishing the and just about to open this project probably. Over at 99%. We're expecting to get our certificates of occupancy in the next two to three weeks. We had a lottery for potential new residents that income qualified. Over 500 applications. I don't remember the exact number of like 515 or something like that for the 48 units that we have available so obviously there's very strong demand for these user rental units I should be clear about that again their rental units and I know that the successful lottery winners we are now in a process of going through and doing income verification and all the hoops and hurdles that those future residents have to go through to actually become residents in our development. Thank you so much for that comprehensive overview and this is just the best example of what our town has helped create for its current and future residents and we look forward to the discussion. I am, I think I'm moving on Karen and in the interest of time. Yes, I think up next is Sean hope real estate enterprises has managed to find his way in Sean are you with us. And thank you Karen for having me and I'm excited to share a project in Cambridge. So I'm here to talk about frost terrace frost terrace is a 40 unit 100% affordable development which is a rental project in Cambridge. If you're familiar with the Porter Square area this is about two blocks from the Porter Square train. So it is indeed a transit oriented development and at the Porter Square train station there is grocery store pharmacy hardware store so all the things that families and individuals would really need to be able to have a sense of place. This is really what made this a special project. This is done in partnership with capstone communities. Any of you who are in the affordable housing world you know Jason Corb, he has done several projects and this is he and I second project together frost terrace just recently opened back in August of this year. So we fought through COVID through delays. And we are proud to say that we are fully leased up. So we have all of our apartments rented. And, you know, with COVID and all the things that we all go through to build this housing, when you actually see people occupying and families occupying the units, it actually all starts to make sense. Sometimes when you're dealing with all the minutiae. It can be challenging. So a little bit. So as I mentioned, there's 40 units. We have 32 units that are at 60% of the am I. We have four units that are below 50 and we have four others that are deeply affordable also at the 30% am I level. The right is comprised of four buildings. So, I'm not, I'm not actually looking at this picture so this front man start. This is a historic restoration. This originally sat about 40 feet back from the street, and there was a large parking area in front. We picked up the house moved it forward to the street. And then the building in the background that is a modern 28 unit attachment. So that was a marvel to create. And then I'm back behind these two buildings are two single family homes that we are also part of the development. And those are now three units each. So we took a bunch of single families that had, frankly, one person living in them. And thank you. And thanks to city Cambridge the affordable housing trust several agencies at the state mass housing and I will name them later on, we were able to also purchase those houses. So this was really now three parcels combined into one to create 40 units of affordable house. This was really a five year project. This was a 40 B project so we were by comprehensive permit. And one of the notable parts about this development is that we only have three accessible parking spaces. And that was intentional because oftentimes in development, you're trading units for parking. As we all know in the business underground parking is exponentially expensive. And when you're an urban area near transit. I think long term housing is much more valuable than parking spaces which can often sit empty. So that was a challenge in the neighborhood, but we were able to prevail. And the handicapped parking spaces are what were required by the state and by the building code. So essentially this is a truly transit oriented development. And they several of our families as I mentioned you walk to all the services they need. So in many ways this is a test case for the city of Cambridge, because people may know Cambridge talks a lot about being environmentally friendly and pushing the limits on non automobile transit transit. So this was really an opportunity for them to support something that we felt was in line with what they were promoting. So then I'll speak a little bit to the affordability of frost terrace. So frost terrace has a range of income as I mentioned 3050 and 60% of the am I and majority are 60% of the area median income. And so for a for a family for the ranges between income qualifies between 35,000 and 71,000. As of 2019 as of opening for a three bedroom the rents rents plus utilities would range from $924 to $1800. So even at the at the max $1800 the market rate three bedroom in this area is going for north of $5000 for new construction. So as you can see this is tremendously a discounted from what the market has. So again, most of our residents are working, working the same jobs frankly that are most hard to hit by COVID, the service jobs the high touch jobs. So really right now we're just really happy to be able to open this building at a time where folks in this income bracket really need the most. Thank you for the slide. Yep so this slide shows. And this is really an important slide because this is all the money in the sources behind us. You know oftentimes a developer people see us but without these agencies and the support, we wouldn't be able to do this. And you can see the city subsidy was tremendous. So Cambridge, frankly, the way we're able to get so many projects funded by the state is because the city oftentimes puts in significant money to buy the land and acquisition costs, even before a state applications even before there's any zoning in place. So in this case, essentially, there was a 1010 million dollar commitment. And it was closer to $8 million to buy by all the parcels but they did this at the very beginning, and then we spent the next three years trying to get this permitted and constructed. So in this case, in the end, it was about 12.8 million dollars from the city. The city subsidy is also tremendous. There's $4 million in state subsidy. This is a rental light tech deal. So, you know, mass housing was involved in the state subsidy. There was also assuming the federal subsidies is the light tech subsidy at $9.7 million. And then we have a host of other sources and uses. This particular deal didn't have home funds, but I did hear Neil talk about home funds. And again, to do these deals as most of the folks on this column know you have to really pass together several different sources. I also want to say that Rothman Trust provided $17.7 million in funding. 8.7 of that was in the construction loan and $9 million in low income housing tax credit equity that they were providing. Those tax credit equity were purchased by Stratford Capital and they have a permanent construction loan that will be in place once we're stabilized at $4.2 million. Again, several sources both state, federal and private funds were involved to be able to make this happen. At a total development cost of $31 million for 40 units, you can say that that is significant. And one of the challenges that we all face is that as construction prices continue to rise, we don't get to pass those prices on to our residents. And so we have to continue to be creative and look for ways to cut costs while maintaining high quality. And one of the ways we were able to do that was by eliminating parking and putting it into materials. Sean, you've alluded to how complex the financing is here and you talked about a bunch of things that people don't see on the page. I have a question for you about the financing of affordable housing and how is it different from market rate housing I see that there's a mortgage loan on here that the property is going to pay. I think that if this were market rate, you'd really maybe just have one source maybe that in your own equity and you'd need to have rents high enough to pay the entire $31 million somehow. Yeah. So, in general, I wish it was more different. We always say, you know, as a developer, we have the same guarantees, right? So we have to guarantee the same mortgage. It's a great deal, right? Then we'd have, we could charge more rents, we could be protected in a different way. We might even be able to exchange the property to somebody else easily if the property wasn't going well. So we don't have that option, right? So we have a covenant with the city of Cambridge that this has to be affordable and perpetuity. There's a mortgage payment on that. And so again, you know, we have to make that we have to make the mortgage payments, but we also have to show and trend negative trend that this that essentially the property will be able to finance itself out for 20 years. And so that's challenging, right? Because there's a lot of unknowns. We don't get to necessarily raise rents with the market. So if the market swings up, our rents are tied to a very different standard as we all know. So I would say from a developer standpoint, the risks are a lot of the same. The rewards are fixed based on a fee based on a development. And again, you know, this this mortgage payment, again, you know, we have a lot of debt, right? And that's intentional. These these these projects are loaded with debt. And I don't know people on this call have experienced this, but developers in affordable housing right checks. If you don't lease up, if you have a problem with construction, if you have a shortfall, there's nobody else. It's Jason and I that would come and write a check. So I often tell people that this, you know, there's a lot of there's so famous your point count. There's several different sources. There's separate different lenders that we have to contend with compliance is a huge piece. But at the same time, the risk are many ways just as great as a market rate development. So it's, it's not something that you do for the money. But these projects have impacts. And when you have great state and city resources to help make these projects happen. It really does give you the confidence that even through challenging times like COVID that you're still going to be able to make these projects work. We have to move on to the next one, but we didn't invite you to tell us a little bit about yourself. I think you're a hometown developer and I just want to invite you to say a few words about yourself and for everyone's reference the bios of all of our panelists are available on the event website. Thanks Karen. Yes, so I am a fourth generation cancer Bridgian, my, my grandparents emigrated from the Caribbean to Cambridge in the 40s but we already have some family here prior to that. And to do this work in a city that I live in is is. It's rewarding. I, and I, I'm honored to do it frankly, I'm a zoning attorney by trade so I only started speaking affordable housing about five six years ago. It's his own language and there's a culture around it. Jason has been a great partner. And the city of Cambridge has also been a great partner so I love seeing people who look like me return to a city that's really unaffordable for many people. So the income diversity is something that has really left Cambridge and so those are two things that are really rewarding for me, and I enjoyed doing English. Thank you for sharing that we can preserve what we love by creating spaces that help meet the need of the, of the town so thank you so much for that are our next speakers are a duo from the planning office for urban affairs. I'm a developer affiliated with the archdiocese of Boston, and we have the president and the development policy project manager. Please welcome will build broken and I'm a realist Rodriguez. Great. Thank you very much. I'll kick things off on our end. I'm Bill Grogan I'm the president of the planning office for urban affairs and excited to be with everyone this evening and share with you a couple of our recent affordable housing and mixed income developments that we're currently working on in Boston. I'm here with my colleague and more Ellis and I'll be briefly describe our board and station village development, which is located in the matapan neighborhood of Boston, and she'll describe our 41 Lagrange development which is in downtown Boston. I mentioned the planning office is a nonprofit housing developer affiliated with the archdiocese of Boston. Our mission is to serve as a catalyst for social justice through our work in housing development, affordable housing advocacy and neighborhood revitalization. And at the core of our mission is a belief that housing is a human right and affordable safe, stable housing has always been important but I think as we've seen during the current pandemic it's critical now more than ever. Since our inception we've developed 1969 we've developed about 10,000 units. We have an area of affordable and mixed income housing. We currently have about another 500 units under active development. And our housing work is really focused on responding to the needs of the communities that we're working in. And you know I think both the Morton station village and 41 Lagrange illustrate that and turning to Morton station village to helpful to I think go through a little bit of background and history of the property and the site. In 2016 the city of Boston issued an RFP for the site which had long been vacant and was a former home to Boston Police Department. But it was located adjacent to Morton station stop on the MBTA Fairmount line. And the city really was interested in converting this into a trend to oriented development that would provide mixed income housing. And the timing important part of it was the creation of a public park that could honor 13 year old boy who was the victim of a stray bullet just steps away from his home. I think understanding these objectives, you know we partnered with a new community based organization in Matapan to respond to the RFP. The response was initially a 38 unit mixed income rental development. And we were selected by the city. But as described, you know that has evolved a little bit over time. Following our selection throughout 2017 and 18. We worked with the community to refine and revise our original development plan and approach, and through the community process we undertook several highlights came out of it. We had a strong desire to incorporate home ownership housing into development. So we slightly increase the size to 40 units but we made nine of those units be home ownership, and ultimately increase that to 12. There was an interest in providing preference for artist housing so we work to incorporate that into development. And then it was important to include a large community room that could be connected to the public park and garden to allow both public indoor and outdoor space. And I think this slide highlights some of the key attribute to the development plan that really create a diverse range, you know affordable units for a diverse range of households from 30% to very median income up to 120% in a very median income. And so this work with the community was that we refined over this period of time led us to really have an efficient and in productive sort of zoning path we were able to secure permitting over about a five month period of time. And then the next part we worked on was securing the financing. And I think on the next slide will sort of break down the various sources that that we assembled over 2019 and 2020 with partnerships with the city of Boston mass housing finance and community and the department of housing community development. And I think there are a couple of highlights that are worth noting, you know, first given the, that this was a city lot the city made the land available phenomenal consideration that gave us more flexibility in terms of developing programming that could be responsive to community needs. And the city also made a significant financial contribution to the development. And the other item that's worth highlighting is really sort of the push and pull of the development process can have resource implications and impact feasibility. After we obtained all of our financing we were asked by the community to explore the feasibility of increasing the number of home ownership units from nine to 12. And this change, you know, created a financing gap for us because we had to reduce our rental housing subsidies, and the sales proceeds from the home ownership units weren't sufficient to cover that reduction. And so really, you know, frankly, you know, took a lot of flexibility on the part of our financing partners between the city of Boston between mass housing to work to to bring in additional resources to meet that community need. And that speaks to, you know, the need for this to be a partnership on on all levels. And then finally, you know, I'll just mention that if we have time later on we can talk about some of the complexities of trying to accommodate to the mixed 10 year approach with rental and home ownership housing that that that brings. But I'll stop there for for right now and turn it over to to Amarillo's to describe the 41 Lagrange Street development. Can I just ask one quick question before we go to 41 Lagrange. Just talk about the very low income units here and the vouchers because the numbers of units seem to be the same and I wonder if you could speak to that. Yeah, one of the, you know, certainly one of the challenges with with with underwriting, you know, extremely very low income units at 30% am I is the is the rent levels for those units. So we have historically tried to match those up with operating assistance and vouchers. So in this case the seven seven MR VP vouchers do line up with the seven units that we are providing at 30% of area median income. And those units are actually will be targeted through the city of Boston's homeless set aside. So those individuals and households will be coming you will be formerly homeless individuals will be coming off of the city's process and through the city's waiting list to accommodate them and helping them move in. And one of the other challenges in addition to that is that you know as they're coming in with limited rent resources is also having limited ability to, you know, things we take for granted being able to, you know, outfit their own, their own units. And so we're working with, you know, to bring in resources to help them make that transition and help them take that first step. Thanks. So I'm a realist. Sorry, I cut you off before you can go. No worries. Thank you to the organizers for having us and and to the audience we look forward to the discussion. So as Bill said I'm going to share a little bit about our 41 the grain street development. And to start, I'll just say that, you know, this isn't necessarily the kind of development that we would recommend or pursue for, you know, many Massachusetts towns like Arlington right this, this kind of development really makes sense for its location in an already built up dense area as an infill site. So with that said, 41 Lagrange will be a new construction 19 story 126 unit tower 100% affordable and all rental. And I made a little mistake in the categories when I sent this into the team so we actually have will have 37 of those 126 units are will be at 80% am I 17 at 60% am I to at 50% am I, and then the 70 at 30% am I or below. So you can see it where we have really deep affordability here. And those 70 units will also be targeted to households that have experienced in our transitioning from homelessness. We can certainly guarantee that all of those units will go to those households because of their housing regulations and the like. But we can work with those regulations and existing city processes as Bill mentioned, in order to support that preference. And part of that reason the reason for it for this targeting, besides our own mission as an organization is this is a, this development is the partnership between the planning office and St. Francis house which is the largest day shelter in the state I believe. It's actually located just half a block away across the street. And it's also this tower will represent the second phase of a two phase development. So the first phase, which we call the Union at 48 Boylston is located directly across the street from St. Francis house and that renovated the historic Victorian Gothic former home of the Boston young men's Christian Union, which many people knew and loved as their community gym, and it also was home to offices. So that development created 46 units of 100% affordable housing, 26 of which were targeted to households that have experienced homelessness. And part of that process, we demolished non historic portions of that building, I believe they were squash courts. And so 41 the range will is located directly behind the Union, which we that we call it and where those squash courts used to be. In a sense, you know we kind of went through the article 80 process twice in terms of permitting first for that demolition and then for the building itself so certainly an extensive review process. We also had challenges in terms of disagreements within a butter which has us go into arbitration unfortunately delaying us for more than a year, but we received a decision in our favor earlier this year. And we're currently in the process of finalizing plans for the tower. So, you know, one, one theme that you can pull out there is just how long these things take and you know this is a long term partnership between the planning office and St. That began before my time at the office and you know I would say that this is at least seven years in the making already so. And then, you know, in the total cost. Some of the drivers for this include the fact that it is a downtown development and there's kind of a premium associated with that in terms of some of the equipment like, you know, cranes and lists and the kind of methods that you have to use for construction to contribute to that. But we received, you know, significant support from the city both financially and in terms of their advocacy. And you can see, you know, significant low income housing tax credit. The Bank of Boston subsidy and and significant state subsidies as well. And in order to support this development we're going, you know, we're, as Bill mentioned, we also need to use section eight vouchers and MR VP vouchers to support those. You know, the 30% units and that also means providing significant service supports in order to support those tendencies and make sure that they're successful and you know transitioning from that experience into self sufficiency and you know live healthy and productive lives. So that's just the high overview but there's so many themes there that you know happy to review. It's really interesting how you guys have integrated multiple things like vouchers and you know affordable home ownership and the development into, you know, these two projects and thank you for sharing that it's it's really cool how you integrated all of those systems and thought from a very community perspective of, you know, what what it needs and gotten there so thank you for sharing that. I think we are going to move to regions beyond ours our final speaker is the managing director of preservation of affordable housing for a nonprofit developer owner and operator of more than 12,000 affordable homes across the country. Here to talk about milk apartments from South Dennis I'm happy to introduce Roger Brown. Thank you very much and thanks for being here tonight. It's really a pleasure to be with you. That's a tough act to follow the planning office does some really amazing work as as through the rest of the projects that are here tonight I'm, I'm going to talk to you about something that's a little bit different but in some ways the themes continue in our project as well. One of the things that poet does and in the planning office as well as we frequently partner with local nonprofits, and this project is a result of a partnership of kind of a long standing partners series of partnerships we have with the organization on cake called the Housing Assistance Corporation. And in this case and many cases, it's kind of a complimentary marriage, we bring kind of a knowledge of building buildings and Housing Assistance Corporation brings a service component that bring that we can bring to bear and any of our development so I'll tell you a little bit about this one. This might be the only site you hear from tonight. That was formally a an amusement park back in 1957. It was Frontier Valley and they had a real Western town built there that people in the town would come and enjoy it was kind of an unusual site 19 acres, had the frontier town, had a stable and and somehow it ended up having 12 units of public housing on one edge of the site. In 2001, the town of Dennis actually bought the site. The, the amusement park went away, and they took seven acres of that site or six acres of the site that contain the existing public housing units and gave it to the Housing Authority. And the Housing Authority ran it for a period of time, the buildings were not in great shape and 2013 in fact they demolished those buildings, put the site out to bed. And along with our partners Housing Assistance Corporation we applied to be the developer and won the right to develop it. The buildings, 27 units kind of at scale for that town of the 27 units, they are 100% affordable at 60% of the area median income so to give you a flavor of that. In Dennis, that's about $40,000 a year give or take so it's a relatively relative to Massachusetts and certainly to Arlington, it's a much lower income band, but the housing need is very great on the Cape as you can imagine. Getting full time housing for workers and people who want to live there full time and are not retirees is a tough thing to do and so that's what we attempted to the need we attempted to address with this project. Obviously the town was very supportive of that and you'll see when we get to the cat, talk about the funding that the town put in a little over a half million dollars probably $650,000. We'll talk about that for a minute of the of the 27 units so all of them are below are affordable to folks making $40,000 or less. Seven of them are affordable to folks that are making less than $20,000 a year and as Karen and our previous panelists talk about, we're able to get an allocation of vouchers from the state to support the incomes of those very low income folks and in those seven One of the other distinctive things about this project from is that it was posed first attempt at building extremely highly efficient from an energy perspective affordable housing. So our goal here was to create a net zero housing development. So we would basically not have any energy cost the idea there is keep the operating costs down to assure the long term stability stability financial stability of the project. So we did things like at the end of the day we built the buildings at about 50% more higher efficiency than the building code allowed so more insulation, a lot of attention to the details of construction so we could really minimize air infiltration. We utilize very high efficiency, HVAC equipment so we could make sure not only where we making sure that we have healthy buildings by having good air exchanges but also to make sure that that equipment operated extremely efficiently. We also put photovoltaic on on the roof we put pbs on the roof so we could generate our own electricity. And I think I'll stop there Karen. Wait, you have to talk about the financing. Oh, okay. Unlike some other projects because our incomes are so low we can't carry a lot of debt so you'll see here we've got a, you know, basically a million dollar mortgage on 27 units which is relatively low. We were helped out by a great deal of soft money from various pots from the from the state was about a little over $2 million of that. The town chipped in with their CPA funds to the tune of about $650,000 and all money. We left some money. We put some money in this deal which is a little unusual because we wanted to hit that extremely high efficiency, extremely high efficiency building envelope was a little more expensive and so we put some of our own money in. And of course we got a very healthy allocation of tax credits from the state, which allowed us to to really minimize the amount of hard debt that we carried going forward so we could be be assured we have a project that could last a long term, without having to depend on, you know, drastically raising rents to cover costs. All right. That was really cool, really interesting projects in very different communities, very different construction types, and somewhat different developers, but let's talk about developers a little bit, but you almost all talked about doing joint ventures and I just wonder, Roger you talked about the joint venture but what are the pros and cons of doing a joint venture how do you get more out of a deal. What kind of profit does an affordable housing developer make is it restricted in any way and you have to share it when you partner. Could, could some of you speak to that and you can sort of wave your hands or lean forward. There's about to make this chatty if we can, and probably jump in with your questions to one. There's about eight questions in there Karen but I'll take a bite at a couple of them. We partner actually with a lot of other nonprofits they typically those partnerships tend to work really well when when we're complimentary. And that is to say as in on the, as the case on the Cape where our, where our partner provides a social service package that that we can't share local. You know we have a very good marriage because it's complimentary. It gets a little more complicated when it's duplicative. And so, you know when we show up and we've got the same sets of skills and financial capabilities it's a little bit tougher negotiating what what the various responsibilities are. I think the finances is probably the easiest part of it because we typically look to split the finances in a way that that corresponds with the risk with the split of risk. So for example, if we're in many, in many cases, a developer will have to provide a guarantee of construction completion. And that is tied to, you know, our balance sheet. And if we're putting the balance sheet up, we would want to be assured that you know the financial split is probably going to be a little bit more in our favor because we're taking that risk and frequently there's some ongoing risk that Bill knows, as well as a tax credit developer the compliance risk and that's and that's fully recourse and you look to be compensated for for that as well and you know to the extent that those things are balanced out in the transaction then you'll look to balance the economics and otherwise you, in our cases we split the economics according to the risk. Yeah, and this is this is Bill I would echo what Roger said about finding complimentary partner that certainly is something that drives us I think as Emeril has described you know our partnership with St. Francis house, you know they're really you know providing social services you know they're an expert they know they can bring to the table the resident services and how we can meet the needs of individuals household to a transitioning out of homelessness. That's clearly a key piece of it. And you know interestingly I think though the other reason for partnership in our end is how can we look to you know we've been using it recently to try to address you know racial equity issues for example. So in more in station village you know we're partnering with Caribbean integration community development there are. There are minority based organization that they don't have a lot of development experience and so we're you know working with them to try to help generate neighborhood wealth and value through real estate for their organization so they can develop a balance sheet and become you know increase the services that they can provide within the neighborhood in the community, and then hopefully over time be able to take on development efforts in their own right. You know I think as you know one of the cons challenges of that situation as Roger mentioned is that typically in a partnership you have a sharing of, you know, of guarantees as you're sharing fees. You know in that situation it's a new organization that they don't have the assets or the balance sheet to provide guarantees so we're having to bear that bear that risk and liability but you know where. And we're also giving them a you know a significant percentage of developer fee to help them build their wealth so that's sort of the community trade offs with working with an organization like that but from our end. So it's really important to help develop those types of new organizations, especially in your community like mattapan. Can I ask the question about whether your fees are capped is a lot of subsidy in these deals. Is there a limit on what you can get paid as a developer. Anybody else wants to answer that. Sure, I'll start start that the Department of Housing Community Development does have developer fee guidelines and limitations that do limit the fee that you know that we can receive on a particular development. You know basically a tiered structure, depending upon the development costs. And again results in a limitation in terms of the overall fee that can be realized on a project. You know I think increasingly, you know, certainly in Boston and other communities with high cost areas we're having to defer or contribute back, you know, a significant portion of our fee. Not to have to have to do that but you know from our end if that's what it takes to sort of make some of these high mission deals work, then, then that's what we're what that's what we're willing to do. But yes, there are limitations, you know on the fees. You know, and I think we also have, you know, recognize that given that they're public resources that we're availing ourselves on that they need to be those types of limitations. I would say that the DHCD, the State Department of Housing Community Development, at least nominally, and I believe this number is still the same, has a TDC limit a total development cost limit of about 400, maybe they've gone up to $420,000 a unit, which in in many cases is not nearly the same and they often go beyond that the Arlington Development, the Downing Square Broadway was around 540, I think $540,000 total development cost per unit. From my understanding that is that fairly commonly happens, it's just because there is no way to build units at what has been the nominal limit that DHCD has has had for a long time. I don't know if that number has gone up in recent years but it's, it's still it's a very difficult challenge given, as you can see from the the acquisition cost of properties and and the construction cost in the last year has gone up dramatically. Oh, I was going to say, I mean, we could probably go into a little more precision about how that numbers calculated, but, but at a very, you know, high level, I generally think of the cat fee at like 10% of your total cost. And typically, as Bill said, we, you know, where we would probably expect to leave at least 25% of that fee in the deal to help us get feasibility, and to keep our friends in the state happy. I appreciate your elaborating on that and just kind of laying that out. Can we talk a little bit about income levels and how you set them for a deal like this is there a relationship between that and the kind of money you get. There's, there's a real range and I just wonder, who's deciding who the project benefits is that you is it the community is it a back and forth. I'm going to pick on Sean because we haven't heard from you in a little bit and I know you probably had a really interesting process in city Cambridge. Sorry. Can you repeat the question. Sorry, I'm just asking about income levels how do you determine what they are. Is that determined by the developer the community is it back and forth is it all, is it something else. So, and I think, as we know recently the area median income they just came up with a reassessment so some of our rents were increased based on when they do a pooling of the area median income, but it's definitely not set by the developer. It really set by our funding sources, from being honest and which of one of them is the city of Cambridge. And so, you know, generally they're the same across the board, but we really have to follow the direction of our lenders and our funding source, which are numerous. Anybody else want to chime in on how the income limits get set in your projects. Karen, you know I think for ours, they sort of differ from projects I think our two projects are examples of that, for example on Morton station. You know we really wanted to have sort of a you know a broad diversity of incomes going from 30% to 120% to really meet the neighborhood and community needs. And so, you know, in that instance we should have started from conversations with the community about about what you know housing needs were what diversity of the housing types that were in the neighborhood. And that sort of led to the events of going from there to sort of develop so what would be the ultimate mix between and to enable it to be feasible. And so, you know, maybe when the range, you know, given the partnership with st Francis house, again there there was a much stronger focus on our own and st Francis house's mission to have significant you know 70 units as Emeril is described, set aside for formerly homeless households. And that was really more from our collective mission and objectives of what, you know, trying to adjust a significant need within within the city itself. And then it was, you know, frankly then it's a matter of saying okay, given that level of units and what, what's the other mix, you know, to the push and pull I was mentioning in terms of other income levels to achieve a feasible development. And once again it was our, you know, our two organizations coming through and say okay we want to have, you know, 70 of the 126 units set aside for that purpose. In Madapin you had some units I think at 120% of area median and some at 100. What was driving that. Yeah, you know at the end of the day it was just, you know, trying to get a little bit more diversity having a there's an interest in the community of having some a little bit higher income. And, you know, I think that that was reflective of having a development that reflects the, you know, the needs of the community so that's what feedback we were getting from the community was to have you know to try to increase numbers up to that level. And frankly it was directly in response to the community. I was a little surprised not to see market rate unrestricted market rate units and any of your deals. Have you done deals that include different income mixes including some market rate and what drove that is it project feasibility is it income mixing, or something else. Well, I'll talk about one transaction we actually have a groundbreaking coming up next Tuesday on a 50 unit mixed income age restricted property in Roxbury. That contains a mix of public housing tax credit units and unrestricted market units, and it was really driven by a desire of the community to have senior housing built on the site that would allow seniors that live in the surrounding neighborhood in their own and have lived in the neighborhood for very long time but are now living in houses that are too big for them. They wanted to be able to have housing nearby that was unrestricted so those folks could move out of their houses into a senior community and free up those other housing families to move in. And so that kind of drove. It wasn't really a city requirement is really kind of a negotiation with the neighborhood about what they wanted to see in the mix that they wanted to see there. And we were fortunate enough to be able to link it in with our public housing redevelopment. And also to coordinate with the Boston Medical Center to be able to bring in supportive services for some of our other seniors. Really interesting. Sorry, I would just said that yes, you know what we, we do do a mixed income housing that includes market rate units. One example from the planning office is Roland Square, which has a real diverse income mix. You know, all the way from households that, you know, left the city shelter system to market rate. And, you know, we, we like to share kind of, you know, anecdotes from our experience there where, you know, some a lot of people can have concerns about developments that are deeply affordable. And, you know, what that might mean in terms of safety or activity and, you know, things like that. But, you know, we have found in our experience that a lot of, you know, market rate units have just as many issues as, you know, all affordable developments. And, you know, people dealing with, you know, mental health issues or substance use issues and things like that. So it runs a wide gamut in terms of the housing that we provide and why we might choose one mix or another and actually at 41 Lagrange, a previous iteration of the development did include market rate units. And, you know, a change was made there, you know, as Bill said, partly because of our connection with St. Francis House and in conversation with the community. But also it was the result of a change in the tax credit rules where, you know, before you wouldn't be able to count like the 80% units as and receive tax credits for them. But once that rule was changed, you know, we were able to generate tax credits from those units to be able to support greater affordability. So I just raised that to point out how, you know, if that hadn't been the case, then we would still be considering market rate units in that development partly for, you know, the social benefit of having a diverse population within the building and not isolating, you know, the households that are coming from the shelter system. And so that they could build, you know, greater social capital and the like, but also to cross subsidize those units. So there is a benefit to that. Yeah, thanks for that. We've got about five more minutes. So I just want to give you a chance to jump in if you have a question. Yeah, I just had a quick question. And starting with Sean about like the permitting process because the process was the only 40 v development and so how did that make a difference in like the development time or just overall in the process and you know similarly for I would just like to throw it out to other speakers as well like how did the permitting impact. That's a great question. So Cambridge is our has exceeded its 10% of his housing stock being affordable so every 40 B is discretionary for the zoning board to even hear the matter. And then also they are not bound by the same strictures under 40 and 40 B if they were under 10%. So basically, in Cambridge to do a comprehensive permit approval. There's a lot of community negotiation. You know, typically you're obviously providing affordable housing but oftentimes people just see the building the size and the dimensions. So in this case, there were probably exponential costs that we had to do to appease our neighbors because it was afforded for instance. In our building which should be five stories, we had to have half of the fifth story cut back because of light and air issues from our neighbors is some irony because we were the same height as them so if they're blocking us we'd be blocking them, but that's a concession. So there were lots of other design details that if we weren't doing a 40 B we probably could have avoided. But at the same time we got increased density. So when you're doing 100% affordable housing, there is a level of which as a developer people understand that you may need a little more density and hopefully they like the project a little bit more because it really is tapping into a need so that was my experience. I want to ask about existing buildings. It just so happens that all of these developments are mostly new construction I know Sean you have the renovation of some historic homes in yours as well but to can you speak to whether you also have done projects where you are either acquiring existing affordable housing using the same financing sources or and maybe there may be opportunities to do this in Arlington and it may be of particular interest to acquiring existing buildings that are not affordable and restricting them as affordable moving forward So what does that take. I deliberately was looking for a project amongst you guys that met that last description and it was hard to find. Why is that. So, let's see Karen I could, I could talk about Arlington. Kind of the history of the housing Corp of Arlington really started with us purchasing to family private to family homes that were not affordable we just we purchased them on the market with a variety of different subsidy sources. And we now we actually purchased through a period of, I guess probably about eight or nine years 14 to family new buildings that are all affordable. In a lot of ways it's a great solution. It's a great solution for affordable housing, because it's very much it avoids the concentration of a large number of lower income folks together and and the whole idea of income mixing and culture mixing and racial diversity and so on is it's really kind of wonderful in many cases of the 14 buildings that we have. Many people don't even know which, which house or which building is an affordable house or affordable residents live there. The one drawback to that is that it's very difficult to do the property on that kind of a setup that the scattered two families are extremely expensive to manage. We've also developed a number of bigger projects in fact that probably the most well known project is is our capital square project which is 32 units on Mass Ave in Arlington, which was an existing private apartment complex of three buildings I think it is, and was renovated, and it's now 100% affordable. And again, it's, it has some benefits in terms of fitting into a neighborhood, architecturally it's a history, they're historically kind of appropriate they were historic buildings, and they have a number of benefits to to fitting in and not having a stigma of coming in and either tearing a building down or taking an open space that that maybe you know a highly prized open space in the community so our Downing Square Broadway project is really the first new construction that we've done and, as I mentioned, we're, you know, we, a large part of it is on a site that was a environmental hazard, and so, you know, bringing that back to life, but the, there are, there are benefits to working with existing housing stock it's just that actually in the time like Arlington, it's so expensive now there, we to actually get a hold of development opportunities that we have a hard time, that's that's probably the biggest impediment right now is finding development opportunities that are not just astronomically expensive. Roger we got we leaning in there. Oh, I was, you know, we are I was going to say we're, we're, it's very difficult to acquire and bring, you know, unrestricted market unrestricted units into affordable portfolio prices one thing but the other thing that we find frequently is our funding sources are tied to the levels of the residents, and many times it's hard to ascertain what the income levels of the existing residents are and they're not used to providing the level of documentation and information that's required for example to do a tax credit execution where we need to make sure that someone's making less than 60% of a median income and they've been going along for years just paying the rent. And now they have to come and, you know, get interrogated about all their personal information. So that's, that's kind of difficult where we're attempting to do something like that on an existing asset in Chicago right now it happens to be right across the street or right up the street from the new Obama presidential library. The risk of being lost to the naturally occurring affordable stock. A bank owned it so we're trying to work with the bank and we'll probably end up with an execution that involves some level of tax credit and tax exempt financing on some number of units but we'll probably have to create a separate entity to hold the non tax credit and try to finance them on their own. It's just, you know it's a 300 unit property and the city's really concerned about having it lost that kind of scale lost to naturally occurring housing. Ultimately, it will probably also involve a big check coming from the city of Chicago to keep it affordable. This has been so great but we got to open this up to the audience. Happy do you have any last burning question before we do that. I know I think I think we are going to open it up to the audience before we do that I just want to quickly clarify that since we are short on time and we have speakers only, you know, up to 730 unless they agree to stay everyone. But so I'm going to keep the questions up to just one minute I really request all of you to keep the questions precise so we can, you know, get more information from the speakers. And so with that, please do raise your hands if you have a question. And I'm happy to. Yeah, Jennifer go ahead. Thank you. Thank you. So, I'm miss Rodriguez mentioned a project that she was involved in being delayed for a year because of a butter lawsuit. And I'm sure others have experienced delays and projects. And I was wondering what that does to the financing. Do you have to pare down the project in some way because I know every delay increases costs. Does that affect the amount of portability you can offer. Does it just affect your profit sort of. What has happened in projects that you've been involved with when there have been delays. So you want to take that. Sure, I'll jump in and I think, Jennifer, you raise a great point about the impact of delays. And I think they do fall in a couple of areas one is just sort of the cost, you know, the, the, as emeralds mentioned we're in, you know, spent a year in arbitration. You don't want to know what the legal costs are that we had to incur as a result of that. They're just, you know, you know, pretty significant. And so what does that mean that means that has to be rolled into our development budget so that increases our overall costs for the project. And the second piece is out to the delay, you know, unfortunately in the market that we're in with the delay construction costs have gone up over the past, you know, you know, 12 plus months that we've been, we're delayed by that arbitration so you factor that into construction costs have risen by, you know, 1520% over over that period of time. And then, you know, as a result of that, we end up having to go back with our lenders and try to, you know, we had commitments based upon one cost set of assumptions. A year and a half later when we're through with the, with the arbitration construction costs have increased we have to go back and request, you know, seek additional resources or look to restructure the deal. And maybe the, you know, the income mix that we were originally proposing isn't, isn't possible and have to look at something else in order to try to generate more sources to cover those increased costs. And the financing does have set timeframes, you know, for example on our 41 leg range, you know, we had a federal home loan bank affordable housing commitment. That's probably, it shouldn't admit how old that is right now but we've had to work with them to keep them updated to continue to roll that over. So that that is at risk, as part of that but you know, fortunately, you know, most of the lenders and the state agencies understand and are willing to work with you but it does have significant impact on cost resources and, you know, as we have sort of a limited supply of resources to cover affordable housing, it just reduces what can go around unfortunately. I would also just like to say that in the case of the housing corporation of Arlington which is a nonprofit. We, and like the other developers, to some extent we need to kind of live from project to project so we need to survive on the developer fee that may be generated from one project and hope that it's going to carry us through through the next project we also, as a nonprofit, is fundraising. And we have and the house, the, the residents of Arlington, and many other people some of the banks and so on have been very generous. There's this, this state tax credit color community investment tax credit, which nonprofits, CDCs, community development corporations can can take donations, and there's a 50% tax credit it's a very it's pretty remarkable what for for those who can make that kind of a donation and and the housing corporate of Arlington has for for many years and thanks, you know, very largely to our previous executive director Pam Hallett, we have taken in, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars of donations that have been matched through this CITC program and that that's one of many ways that we have been able to survive. For example, we on the on our downing square project we ran into very severe difficulties with our friends that ever source the utilities not being able to hook up the electric in time we basically lost about two months of time which includes two months of lost rent too much of impact on our income housing tax credits, two months worth of extra overhead that the contractor had to charge. It probably cost us $200,000 just in the delays because of the utility company and, you know, we, there's any number of delays that that affordable housing developers and all developers but affordable housing developers are on a shoestring that have to face these kind of delays it's it's it's pretty challenging to make to keep the continuity and make it work. And if I can add that two month delay is also a family not being able to live in that house but you know those two months. That's right. Probably most important thing, Abby. Yeah. I can move on to the next one, Rebecca grouper. Yes, thank you. This is very interesting. Um, I had one question, none of your presentations described the type of units you were making available one bedroom to bedroom family and I know that in Arlington affordable housing for families is a particular need that we have. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what choices you make in regard to the type of units you're making available in your developments. I can, I can just give you a quick rundown on the Arlington units. Well actually I probably can't because I have to add them up but we have 48 units in our new development. It's a mix of ones twos and threes. There are, I believe, 17 one bedrooms. Let's see, there's the sweet spot sweet spot is generally two bedrooms so there's, there's probably around 20 something two bedrooms and there's, I'm seeing about seven three bedrooms in in our development based on what we could fit and what we thought would be rentable and of those we also have at least 5% of the units are handicapped accessible all of the units in elevator buildings are considered handy handicapped, adaptable or group one units, and there's 5% at least and I believe it's more than that but are fully accessible units. Yeah, I think that's a good question Rebecca and I think that you know from our perspective a lot of it depends upon you know again what our goals are from a project we're going in to up front on our Morton station development. 75% of the units are two and three bedroom units so they're more targeted to you know two families, whereas on our 41 Lagrange development, you know, majority of those are studios and one bedrooms because we're targeting you know different household, you know for individuals coming out of out of homelessness so you know part of it depends upon the community that we're working in and really what the needs of the community are, and trying to develop a mix that is reflective of that. Thank you. We can now take a question from why now if I'm saying that right. Well, it's when L. Thank you. Thanks to all the presenters this is a really interesting evening. And I've learned a lot from this. I have a question for Neil. You talked about the breakdown of costs, the combined costs for the Broadway and the Downing Square projects. Is there a million unaccounted for in your, in your listing of costs between land acquisition construction and remediation. And I wonder if you could share with us how that $5 million is dispersed. And I apologize because I said I'm, I'm a board member. I'm an architect and I was not that I was not the person who put together the deal if I, if there is unaccounted for money, I'm happy to send you are a copy of our sources and uses to make sure that you can understand where, where all the money came to and went to. Sure. Yeah. So, I apologize. It could be also I think it's possible that in the information that was, that was sent to the organizers here that some of the, some of the funds some of the subsidies may may not have been fully categorized. So, again, I apologize. I'm others here are developers. I'm an architect and I don't have all the information, but I'm happy to find that information and share it with you. Answer your question. Thank you for that. Thank you. And we can certainly for any information we are happy to, you know, connect later on those specifics. Patricia Gordon, you want to go next. Thank you. I would like to thank Neil mongol for pointing out how important acquisition of existing properties have been in Arlington. We are very much afraid of 40 be taking over our lives here we have lost significant properties to those. We, these are not forties that you can do and a negotiation with. I think to that, I would like to say that as chair of the housing authority, we did the renovation of the houses that housing corporation of Arlington bought at cost so as to encourage that mode of acquiring affordable housing for some years we did that. I really thank Sean hope for the wonderful job he did moving the historic property to the front and Massachusetts Avenue I've been admiring it for a couple of years now. And would like to point out that we hope to do something similar not quite as ambitious in a house that that we had a planned to add an addition at the back to a very handsome house the actual tiles. Massachusetts Avenue but we've got no support whatsoever from town and the redevelopment board dropped the ball completely and allowed the. Also, because we are over one minute, could you get to the. Thank you and thank you Sean hope for that wonderful work. Thank you so much Patricia. Annie look or do you want to go. Sure, thank you. So one of the things I'm noticing in all of the performers that you guys are showing is that you are receiving federal subsidy state subsidy and municipal subsidy on any of these developments. Had you been unable to receive money from the municipality would you have been able to leverage the state and federal money anyways, or are you entirely dependent on having at least some dollars from the local municipality to make these projects work. Typically the state does look for a local match of local contribution of some amount and in the case of Arlington. I believe and this is again, don't quote me on this but I believe that there was CBG money or some other source of money that helped us with the original purchasing of some of the properties we also had a line of credit from I believe it was TV bank. Or, and or maybe leader bank that assisted with the acquisition of these properties we, unlike Cambridge which is amazing, absolutely amazing with its affordable housing trust fund that could put whatever it was Sean said $10 million into purchasing the properties in Arlington we, we, you know we absolutely depended on the community preservation acts funds, but it was basically pulling together what resources we could to make the acquisition once you have the acquisition then you can, or at least a commitment to the acquisition then you can start rolling the ball. We, one thing to know we, we applied to DHCD for funding in 2017 I 20 winter of 2016 2017 and as frequently happens, we didn't get funded on the first time in. In fact, we didn't even get, we didn't get invited back the next for the next round but they had, luckily they had a mini round, and we were finally granted the state. And they both the state and the federal long come housing tax credits in 2019. So there's talking about delays that someone Jennifer had asked earlier. There's these kind of delays that are just typical of how long it takes to actually fund a project and I know I'm going off off the subject you asked about the local subsidy but obviously for us in Arlington we depend a lot on both the local subsidy as well as private donations and, and the like so. Thank you, Neil. And we are running out of time so I'm going to, if the speakers are okay I'm going to allow one more question. Okay, go ahead Robin. Thank you all. Thank you very much for this interesting presentation. I'm particularly interested in and excited to see that there are possibilities for. Projects that are 100% for people who are completely infeasible and not. So I'm wondering if people will comment on that. And I also wanted to find out if you will make the recording of this available afterwards. Thanks. Yes, ACMI will be making a recording available afterwards. I think the question was that the speaker was encouraged to see a 100% affordable projects and could you speak to whether that's difficult to do or not. Is that correct Robin is that close to what you were asking I'm sorry your your audio is a little garbled. I'm sorry. It's a little better. Yes, I just wanted to know. We've always been told that 100% affordable isn't feasible that I see that it is so I was wondering if you have any thoughts about that and how to make that happen. If you want to chime in, I think it happened. So I think we've proved that it's feasible. It may or may not always be the right strategy for particular spot but certainly something that can happen. I would agree with that Karen I think certainly you know I think we've all demonstrated all have track records of showing that 100% affordable housing developments are feasible. So what's appropriate for the particular neighborhood or community in which the housing is being being provided. And I think that's sort of the, you know the ultimate, you know question anything. I think we've also shown that there can be a mix of affordable affordability from, you know, down to 30% up to 100% and somewhere within that range can hopefully achieve the goals of the of the community. I think we have to wrap this bill. I know we have to wrap it up here but we have a poll because we'd like to know what attendees would like to learn about in any future sessions or just what are the topics you're most interested in learning about the housing space. And we've got a bunch of them up here I'm going to let Alex tell you what he wants you to do and if I can assert a moderator's privilege I'd like to give our panelists a lightning round question at the very end, which is that you know we in Arlington don't have affordable housing. What is the one most important thing that we have to do to get you to come here and develop affordable housing. The lightning round so quick answers. So it's a multiple choice poll, check everything you would like to hear about. My poll just went away. Mine also I don't see it anymore. Let me relaunch it. In that I just want to express my gratitude to first the whole audience you all are here when you could be doing something else trying to learn about housing to make our community a better more inclusive community so thank you so much for that and to our panelists. We owe you a debt of gratitude for the time you spent preparing sharing information about your projects, bringing your expertise and your willingness to talk with our community about how to create more affordability in our community so I thank you so much and it's difficult to give you guys a hand in this medium but please consider yourselves applauded heartily. Thank you. It kind of looks like you guys want to hear learn about all of this stuff, which is great. Okay, wrap that up. Let's start our lightning round. I'm going to go in the reverse order that we went initially just to throw you a loop for the loop. And because I know Roger is seasoned and he can handle this as the first being the first one to answer this question so Roger Brown reservation of affordable housing what's the one thing a community needs to do to attract you to come and develop affordable provide the opportunity for entitlement of site. permitting. Thank you. permitting and permitting. I'll figure out the money. I'm going to go back to the realist. I go back, but I like the community engagement around it. You know, feeling that kind of sense of support or at least that there could be discussion about what a community wants to see there and seeing that as an opportunity for partnership rather than necessarily adversarial relationship. I'm going to go back to the realist here. Bill Grogan. I would say flexibility. I mean I think as we're trying to achieve some of these different objectives against of this push and pull about what can be, you know, whether it's reduced parking whether it's expanded affordability. I think we really need flexibility to be able to, you know, bring and be successful with some of these affordable and mixed income developments. And I think Sean had to leave Sean if you're here, let me know, but because I don't want to skip you but I think you had to leave because we're over and so Neil you get the last word. Well, thank you. You don't have to do anything to entice us to come to Arlington because we're already here. I'm the only one who can say that and but appreciate hearing from the other developers and certainly it's been in our mind as the housing corporation, the potential for partnership with other organizations you know the housing development plan for the town envisions doing something like 80 units of affordable housing a year up to maybe 100. Well the housing corpus we've in the 25 years that I've been on the board. We've done, we're coming up on 150 units total. We obviously don't have the capacity to do, you know, much larger scale so I would say we would welcome the housing corporation would welcome partnering with other skilled developers that have a shared mission of affordable housing. Plus, we just need to find the property and have a continued support from the town of Arlington. So, great. Last, I want to thank my co organizers the sponsoring organizations, as well as the individuals who helped put this together Alex bag now from a vision Arlington Abbey Corvette also from the housing corporation of Arlington and Jenny rate and Kelly line who are not here but are with our planning department. And with that, I will thank you very much and send you off into your evenings. We will be sharing this as Alex said on ACMI and we will take the results of this poll to be shared with all the sponsoring organizations, who all are engaged in housing topics in many ways so we'll all collectively try to figure out how to answer how to learn more about those topics. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Karen. Everybody. Stay safe.