 What? It's recording. So I just started recording the meeting. Okay, thanks. So I'm Carol, one of the two co-chairs of the Amherst Municipal Affording Howling Trust and on behalf of that trust, and with thanks to our co-sponsors, Wayfinders, Amherst League of Women Voters and the Amherst Affordable Housing Coalition. Welcome to everybody. We're glad you're here. I can tell you that there are, right this minute, 30 of you that you can't see and those of us that you can, but there are 30 people who have come and are attendees. And I know that Mindy Dom is among them and a few other members of the trust itself. Great to have you all here. I wanna also thank Nate, the town person who is also our Zoom host. So what else I wanna say is you will know, you can notice at the bottom, there's a Q and A function that's open. If you click that, you can ask a question that we will see, perhaps answer that way, perhaps answer verbally when we come to a question and answer period at the end. There's also a chat. What we would like to ask you to do with the chat, if you're willing, is to enter your contact information, a name and email address would be great. And that way we will be able to keep you informed and appraised of other things that the housing trust is doing and other things of a similar nature that you might be interested in. If you want to use it, closed captioning is available. You should see a little CC at the bottom of your screen. If you click that, you should either be able to click show subtitle, or if you get sick of them, you click it again, you should be able to click hide subtitle. Either one of those things will happen on your screen, not on anybody else's, but you should therefore be able to get a way to see what we're saying if you can't hear it, which actually sometimes is a problem for me, so I'm very glad that it exists. Also, this is being recorded by Amherst Media, who will make it available to the public. I'm not exactly sure when, but when it is available, they and we will try to let you know. As an attendee, you will remain anonymous, that won't be recorded, the attendees will not be recorded, unless you decide to ask a question, and then if you either come in, either your voice and or your picture will then be recorded when you ask the question. I think, and you can see a lot of people who haven't been introduced, however, most of them are connected to wayfinders, and when we get to that section of the program, wayfinders people will be introduced by Keith, and then you will know more about them all. And at this point, I am going to turn it over to Erica Piaudad, who will go through, let you know some of the things that Housing Trust has been and will be working on. So take it away, Erica, thank you all. Thank you very much for being here. I am the co-chair with Carol of the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust, and we also have on the panel, Ashley and in attendance, Rob, who are also trust members, and John, who was our prior chair, who has done phenomenal work in preparing us to continue the work of the trust. So I wanna thank everyone for being here for this forum, the new affordable housing development for families, and we're very excited to be partnering with Wayfinders to present this particular initiative. Next slide, please. So I wanted to start with two quotes, and I always think it's important to sort of set the tone. Inclusion is not a matter of political correctness, it's a key to growth. And I think that is so important in terms of thinking about Amherst and the community we live in. Strength lies in differences and not in similarities. And I think that's also very key to the work that we're trying to do as a community and as well as a trust, and as well as through collaboration across the different coalitions and different groups, town council, and to really envisioning a community that's inclusive. So the affordable housing increases opportunities for being and to continue being a diverse community. So affordable housing is the opportunity for us. And so we're gonna talk about the specific opportunity that we have before us. So next slide, please. So first, we just wanna give you an agenda. There was actually a question that asked, how long is this meeting? So here's the agenda that we're setting forth. Thank you, Carol, for welcoming everyone. And thank you definitely for our representative, Mindy Dom, who comes to all the meetings and lots of different events. So all of you are absolutely welcomed in this conversation. And this is what we wanna have, is we wanna have a conversation with you about this particular initiative. So welcome you all. We're gonna give you a little bit of a background for those of you who may not be familiar with the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust. Way funders will then continue to talk about who they are and what they propose, especially with regards to the East Street School of Regitown Road Initiative. We're then gonna have a few people who have asked and who we've asked to talk a little bit about their own view of this particular initiative. And then we're gonna open it up to community questions and comments. And this is not the end of a community conversation, but a beginning of a community conversation. So we're having it virtually to make it as accessible as possible, but we also hope to eventually also have in-person community-based meetings to continue this conversation. So next slide, please. So it's always important to sort of set up what's the challenge here in Amherst, specific to Amherst. So many of you probably have your own stories and your own experiences, but we thought it'd be important to sort of level set for everyone. We know that low-income families are priced out of the Amherst housing market. Around 57% of current renters in Amherst spend more than 30% of their income on housing. It may spend over 50% on housing. Since 2010, there's been a dramatic decline in the number of young families living in Amherst, as well as a significant drop in school-age children. So predominantly becoming a town of college students, young adults and much older people like myself. The Housing Production Plan of 2016 recommended the development of 225 housing units for low and extremely low-income households in the following five years, including 40 units of home ownership, 50 units for seniors, and 25 individuals with disabilities. Few of these units have been developed. COVID-19 has exacerbated existing disparities, causing many, especially low-income workers, to lose their income, resulting in increased housing instability, if not eviction. There are many, many more data points that we could share with you, but we thought we'll start with these and it's really, we wanna focus on what are some of the solutions. So we're gonna move to the next slide and talk a little bit about what the Amherst Affordable Housing Trust Mission is. The Trust Mission as an instrument of town government is to promote the town's affordable housing priorities as determined through the most recent town housing plan, particularly to create safe, decent, and affordable housing for most vulnerable populations. And so before you are some of our goals and what we're gonna do is we're gonna go through each one of these goals and give you some examples of some of our accomplishments. And we are only able to accomplish these through our partnership with all of you, with the community, with all the different coalitions, with the town council, with town hall, and we look forward to partnering with you to have this very successful project that we're gonna be talking about. So next slide, please. So highlights of our accomplishments. So one of the goals is fostering development of affordable housing and some of the accomplishments are the East Gables in partnership with the Pioneer Valley Community Development Corps, which are gonna have 28 studios. So hopefully you've passed by them, you've seen the groundbreaking, it's on Northampton Road. And so we're very proud of the development of that. The second one, which we'll be talking about this evening, East Street School in Belzertown Road in partnership with Wayfiners, which could be presented this evening. Strong Street, which we're hoping to actually have affordable home ownership. And then Hickory Ridge, which we're hoping we've presented to the town some of our recommendations for affordable housing for seniors. The second goal is to support homeless prevention initiatives. So we've presented proposals for permanent shelter funded by ARPA. And so it's still in recommendation form. And these are just some of our accomplishments. The third goal we've had is seek opportunities for both sustainable development. And for us, that's really very important in terms of sustainability. So in some of the requests for responses for some of our developments, we have made sure that we integrate and write into sustainable housing plans. We've recommended weatherization and retrofitting of affordable units through the use of ARPA funds. Climate change and sustainable housing was one of the three part housing series, the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust co-sponsored last year. Next slide, please. Enhanced local and regional collaboration. Without collaboration, none of us would really be successful. We really need to work together, vision together and ensure that we use resources in the best way. So some of the areas that we've been able to accomplish that is trust members participate in multiple housing and homeless prevention coalitions and work groups. We review and provide feedback to housing plans, 40-hour plans, revisioning of zoning bylaws and other town related plans that impact housing stock, affordable housing and housing security. And we also provide letters of support for either initiatives or for legislation. Thank you, Mindy and thank you, Joe Cumberford for all the wonderful legislation that really looks to ensure affordable housing and funding for affordable housing and to also address housing stability. The fifth goal for us is expand availability of direct housing assistance. And so during COVID, which still is in the process of, we created a COVID-19 emergency rental assistance program and then promote our region education. So a lot of the work that we do is talk to our communities, try to leverage stories to ensure that people know in terms of Amherst, what are the initiatives, what are the challenges and what are the opportunities and what are the successes in terms of our work together across coalitions, across communities, having open forum about what it is that we're doing around housing, housing stability and really looking from prevention of homelessness all the way to affordable rentals, all the way to affordable home ownership. And if you haven't visited our website, please do visit our town website. Next slide please. So what are some of the next steps for us and what are some of our priorities? So our major goal is to ensure affordable housing and that we have initiatives in the pipeline. We know how long it takes from proposal to planning to actually opening up either affordable rental homes or home ownership. So having pipelines is really critical for us in order to make sure that we're moving and that we have housing stock there, we're increasing the housing stock and that we're really reflecting back to that 2016 housing plan to ensure that we can meet some of those goals more successfully than we have in the past. So some of the areas that we're looking at are strong street for home ownership, Ball Lane. Some of you might have been at the Dona barbecue and they actually presented their plan or at our housing trust meeting last Thursday where the Pioneer Valley Community Development presented their plan for Ball Lane for home ownership, affordable home ownership. Hickory Ridge, as I said before, we presented recommendations for senior housing. We've proposed and support for permanent shelter for the unhoused and we're constantly looking to partner and identify new property to attain and to develop. So last slide, please. So how can you support affordable housing in Amherst? And I'm just gonna stop here and have you think about that. How can you support affordable housing in Amherst? You can support recommendations for local funding, CPA, the Community Development Block Grant through ARPA for affordable housing when they come before town council and town committees. You can send letters, you can come to community forum around these conversations. You certainly can talk to your representatives for in terms of where you live, your district representatives. There are many ways that you can support it in terms of local funding. You can support the developer for affordable housing project when plans are presented to this zoning board. That is a really, really important opportunity for us to speak up and to let the zoning board know that we want affordable housing and affordable housing opportunities be it rental property or be at home ownership that we're in favor of that. So for example, when Wayfinders goes in front of the ZBA that we go, we send a letter or we send emails in support. Become an advocate for expanding the availability of affordable housing in Amherst, starting off letting your town council and your legislative representatives know and asking for their support. And then as Carol said, put your name and email address which many of you already have done in the chat to sign up for the Amherst Affordable Housing Coalition's email list to keep informed about upcoming projects, initiatives and actions. And then look up Facebook in terms of what it is that we're doing. So now I'm going to turn it over to Wayfinders and they will continue the presentation. So thank you. Yeah. Good evening, everyone. I'm Keith Farron, the presidency of Wayfinders. I'm happy to be here with you all and my team to talk about our work at the East Street School on Belcham road sites. Before I get started, I wanted to thank the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust for all their work, not only on this project but all the work that Erica and others have been working on and what she just described. Amherst is a real leader here in our region. Where there is a great need for more affordable housing options at many income levels from low income to moderate to median income. We do not have enough housing supply in our region. And Amherst is as rise to occasion to meet the opportunity to create more solutions for people in Amherst. And I wanted to commend the trust for their work in doing that and leading, and being a leading town in doing so. As part of our presentation today, I'm going to introduce you a little bit to Wayfinders as an organization for those who are not familiar with us. Then my colleague, Faith Williams, our Senior Vice President of Property and Asset Management. We'll talk about our work in managing properties once they're developed and how we operate them as well as our resident services work to support our tenants who are living in our properties. Then Diane Smith, our Chief Real Estate Officer will talk to you specifically about the project that hand the street, school and Belftown road sites and what our plans are for that. And to give you a sense of that project and our friends and partners in this from the Narragate Architecture firm by Bob Wagner. We'll talk about the design as the final part of our presentation. And then we look forward to question and answer with all of you. So with that, I wanted to give you a little background on Wayfinders as an organization. Wayfinders was founded 50 years ago as the Housing Allowance Project. We were one of 10 demonstration projects for what became the Federal Section 8 program. And today we still actually facilitate and work with the state on Section 8 vouchers and Massachusetts rental vouchers for Hampton and Hampshire County. We manage over 5,500 of those vouchers. And over time we've grown as an organization. And today this is our mission about really building and navigating for thriving and equitable region by improving the stability and economic mobility of families and individuals. Together we're developing and managing a wide range of housing to support strong communities. We have all as described already seen what home has meant to us during the pandemic as a place to work, as a place to solace, as a place to get well and stay well and as an integral part of our economy and so we see our mission and our work ahead is providing more housing and then making sure that that housing meets the needs of all the communities in which we work and which we find ourselves as community members once we're there. And some of you will know that we are already here in Amherst as operating two projects. And we'll put it on that farm in Olympia Oaks. And so we are excited to work with the town and the trust to create more housing options. So if we go to the next slide. In terms of the organizational role we work across a range of different opportunities really across the housing continuum from homelessness to home ownership. And that means we're providing shelter for over 200 families who are unhoused today. That means providing as I mentioned rental assistance for over 5,500 households. And during the pandemic we rapidly scaled up and increased our ability to provide emergency financial assistance to help renters and homeowners remain housed during the pandemic. And the most recent fiscal year which just concluded, we have 14,000 households with $90 million in our region. Hundreds of thousands of dollars went to families in Amherst and so the need is here as well as across the region really to stabilize people coming out of the pandemic so that they can move forward with their lives. And so we were able to rise to meet their housing needs when they were in crisis. We also provide housing education and counseling services. So people come to us often for interested support in becoming homeowners or trying to understand what their rights are as renters when they're facing a difficult situation with the landlord. Landlords even come to us for assistance and understanding what their rights are and what the opportunities are for them to best work with tenants. We also provide people with housing search assistance which is critically important today. Some of you may know how tight the housing market is today. In fact, for ownership housing there's a 1% vacancy rate in the Pioneer Valley and for rental housing it's about 4%. So a very tight market today. We do not have enough housing supply and that's why we're so excited to work with the town on creating more housing options. In our projects we provide resident services and we'll talk more about that shortly. We also do community leadership and development training, community building projects with members of not only our people who live in our housing but other members of the community to strengthen community bonds, address other community issues that are complementary and supportive to our housing and other economic and social activities in communities. We provide workforce training and job training and other employment supports to help people find the incomes they need and opportunities they need for gainful employment to stay housed and achieve housing sustainability. And we also work on fair housing and then as needed and it is often needed as already mentioned, we also enter the conversation around advocating for economic and housing needs not only in cities and towns but at the state level as well and the federal level. I'm really telling the story of what our needs are here in the Pioneer Valley and making sure those needs are heard and working with our delegation trying to get those met. In addition, we're gonna hear from our property and asset management team today. We own and manage today over 800 units of affordable housing in the region. As I mentioned, two of those projects here in Amherst and we're an active real estate developer. Over our history, we've developed 1,300 units in 60 different rental projects and 14 home ownership projects. So we see that as an integral part of what we do, not only providing the program support but also meeting the supply needs of the region. In addition to that, we have a subsidiary common capital that is a community development financial institution and helps people start and grow small businesses. So that's who we are as an organization. That's the work that we do in communities every day and that's the work we do with people in Amherst every day. Providing these supports to keep people housed to create economic opportunity so that we can create these equitable and thriving communities and the region overall. Can we go to the next slide, please? These are just some of our results from our previous fiscal year to give you a sense of the scale and impact we work. We think about our work in terms of people and the people we work with, the communities in which we work and the systems that affect and sometimes support, sometimes hinder those people in communities. And so we are working to harmonize that across people community, our work across people community in the system so that we can create that equitable and thriving region. We talk about it on a mission. Last fiscal year, we helped over 46,000 households and these are just some of our results in another community not too far from here. Last year, we were able to open up a new housing development in Holyoke. What was interesting about that is that was 38 units. There were 1500 applicants for that. So it just again shows the evidence of great need in our region. But at the same time, we're also helping people who are become first time home buyers and again, helping people with emergency financial assistance. And at the systems level, we try to deeply understand what the housing needs are and look at the policies and regulations, the appropriations and try to make sure that those are meeting the needs of our region. For those who want to know more about that, one of the things that we've done over the last two years is create a housing study for the region, which we expect to repeat in future years to track our progress with the Greater Springfield Housing Study covering all of the Pioneer Valley. Another looks to describe the economic demographic and housing indicators, but also look at solutions and more deeply understand our affordability challenges in ways we can meet them together. So we look forward to continuing to work with the trust on this initiative and in all of you because it really is going to take all of us not only to move this project forward, but to really solve our challenges and create the communities I think we all want to live in where all of us can find the housing that we need, the great housing options, whether it be the people who make the town go, work for the town, work for our schools, who assist you in town businesses, who work for our universities. We need more options to make sure that people have those options to stay in town so that we can have not only thriving housing options, but thriving schools and thriving local economy. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Faith Williams, who's our senior against senior vice president of property and asset management to talk about our work and managing properties, our resident services work and also the process we go through when we market development. So Faith, it's all yours. Thank you, Keith. And I'd also like to thank everyone here. I'd like to thank you for the invitation to present tonight and thank everyone who's a member of the Amherst community for being here and being interested and hopefully supportive. It's a very exciting project. So a little bit about, Ben, next slide, please. A little bit about who we are and what we do. So the real estate division of Wayfinders really works to find great partners in the community to develop new housing. And once our real estate team has developed that housing, they turn it over to us in property and asset management. And we take it from there and responsibly manage a portfolio, as Keith said, of over 800 units of decent, safe, affordable housing that we work diligently to maintain and have worked diligently through COVID and all of its challenges to continue to maintain. And excuse me, I will say that Butternut Farm and Olympia Oaks are two of our best developments that we've done. They're all great, what's wonderful about both Butternut and Olympia is that I was there at the beginning of the leaseup efforts, really the development and leaseup efforts for both of them. And one of the ways I measure our success is that many of the original tenants that we moved into both Butternut and Olympia are still there. They're loving the properties. And even when we have difficulties managing a property, I had an email from a Butternut tenant yesterday and she was sharing an issue with hot water. And she ended it by saying, I just wanna let you know I'm an original tenant. I love living here. This is my home. You guys have done a great job of maintaining it. And we just wanna keep it that way. And the way we view our tenants is that they really are our partners and that we want to be providing them with a home to live in. We work where they live and we respect that. And we're working really to help our tenants sustain their current living situation or in some cases move on to the next level through first time home ownership classes or financial literacy classes to maybe buy a home. We've actually had several people move on from some of our developments in Amherst to become homeowners in Amherst. It's also our goal to work with them to sustain their housing through difficult times. I mentioned COVID a minute ago. During COVID there was an externally imposed moratorium on eviction. Wayfinders took it upon ourselves to extend that period. We brought on staff with the title of resident sustainability coordinator that worked with tenants to reach out to the financial resources in the communities to help sustain their tenancies. We're making referrals to employment services. So we really do see our tenants as our partners and a measure of our success. And hopefully we're a measure of their success as well by helping them sustain, maintain and perhaps grow in their housing opportunities. Next slide, Ben, please. So we have right now what looks like a rather the, this is some of the senior management within the department. And Zelladeth Tehada is the property manager for the Amherst portfolio. She has assisted by an assistant property manager and a maintenance technician. We're in the process of hiring additional maintenance technicians for the Amherst portfolio. Amanda Bubon is our senior vice president of property and asset manager. As our vice president, I just gave her a promotion. She is our vice president of property and asset management and moving forward, she will be focusing primarily on compliance. I am the senior vice president of property and asset management. I've been with Wayfinders since 2005. I came to Wayfinders with a history of property management at the town level. I worked, I started off in the town of Greenfield, went to the Franklin County Regional Housing Authority and worked for a mass housing partnership for a period. So this team right here has a lot of experience in affordable housing many, many years collectively. The other thing that's exciting about this team is that it is a growing team. And in the next few weeks, we will be bringing on a regional property manager that will be overseeing the Amherst portfolio along with an additional vice president of property and asset management who will be focusing on the operations part of the portfolio. Next slide, Ben, please. One of the things that we have really been able to focus on and develop over the past, I'm gonna say 10 years is our work within resident services. So in general, we really do work to identify resources in the community that will assist our residents. And that's, there's a wide variety. So we manage a portfolio that is very diverse. We have family housing, we house people who are formerly homeless, we house elderly and disabled individuals and families. All of those people need different types of resources. And luckily this region is rich in resources, specifically Amherst is incredibly rich in resources. And our work in resident engagement and resident services is really to identify the needs of the tenants living in our developments and either find a way to provide those services ourselves or make referrals to those services. We've also over the years, certainly pre-COVID and we've been coming out of COVID have had property-based community events where we have invited other partners, other neighbors that are adjacent to our properties but also have invited the fire department, the police department, the library and the rec department to come and share their resources with our tenants at our community and help us provide, help sponsor quite honestly and provide some really great events that we've had over the years. And it's really something that we're committed to. We're working to fund it more substantially and significantly so that we have more full-time staff that are dedicated to this. One of the things that we are doing this year is a real focus on working with our tenants to find out what they want and what they need so that those services and the partners that we partner with will be able to provide them more fully, provide greater service to the residents and tenants in our properties. Next slide, Ben, please. Some of these partners include Healthy Hampshire, Baby Burke, Amherst Recreation, the Survival Center and the Public Schools and also Amherst Library, Jones Library. They, as I said, have come to our events, they've tabled, they've done programming at our property. During COVID, they provided food, weekly deliveries of food to the properties, working in partnership with Zellie, who we kind of met earlier on that slide and Lori, her assistant property manager, to make certain that people had food sustainability and were really taking advantage of the resources that are available in the community. Next slide, Ben, please. So there was a slide earlier where you had sort of the process and how long the whole development process takes and it really does take a long time. During that process, tonight is a very good example of that. We've already begun the marketing effort for this property. The people who are here at the forum are learning about it and as we have public meetings about it, as we write articles in the newspaper, we begin the process of marketing this property. One of the things that we focus on is fair and affirmative marketing. We try to reach out to as many people in the larger community as we possibly can. The slide at the very beginning talked about diversity and that is exactly our commitment in our marketing effort to reach out to as diverse the population in this region as we possibly can and even sometimes beyond this region. What we do in this situation is we're required to hold a lottery to select the applications, the applicants who go onto the waiting list in the order that they're selected for the type of unit that they need. So not to go into too much detail but people will apply needing a three bedroom handicap accessible unit and their income is 50% a very immediate income or 30%. Everybody who's qualified to apply and submits a completed application enters the lottery. Everybody is selected in the lottery as long as they're a qualified applicant and then they're placed on the appropriate waiting list. So if they're 30% units, they go on that waiting list. If they're 50% applicants, they go on that waiting list. If they need the features of an adaptable unit both physical or hearing site impaired, we select them, place them on the appropriate waiting list for those units and then we work our way through all of those folks in the first lease up round to house everybody and then the people who don't are not placed in a unit at that time are then placed on our waiting list and the waiting list is maintained updated annually to make certain that we're following where people have moved to that we have their updated current information and when a unit becomes available we then go to that original wait list and fill those units. At the same time, we continue to market those properties and add to the waiting list because what sometimes we find is that the next person on the waiting list isn't, you know, they've found another place, they've moved out of town, they bought a home. So we continually keep our waiting lists refreshed and updated and we continually market our properties as we manage them. So the initial applicants typically come to us through the lottery process. Keith mentioned earlier that the Holyoke property that we had with 38 units, we had over 1500 applicants, all of those people, we held that lottery in 2020 and I would say that the majority of those people are still on the waiting list. We go to them when we have the vacancy and yet we've been adding to that waiting list as we've gone along. We will have information sessions mostly based in the community. So COVID did impact what we did. We went to 100% virtual, but in the past, what we've done is we've had public information sessions where we make certain that it's an accessible location, easy to get to via public transportation. We have them in English and in Spanish and we vary the times of day and days during the weeks. So we'll have a midday, weekday, we'll have an evening and typically a Saturday session. They're also recorded. So people understand the process of how to apply, how the lottery works. And we also typically distribute applications throughout the community, mail them to a number of other sister organizations to disperse them. And we also have often attached applications to the fencing around a new development. So that we're really working to market it very aggressively and really get a number of really highly qualified applicants into the lottery. And then we work to place people into the units once they come out of the lottery. The one thing I would say that is unique about Amherst is that because we have two similar properties that are not far from these locations, that typically what we would do is once we've had applicants apply and come out through the lottery, we would probably then market our butternut and Olympia units to the folks who weren't housed through this initial lottery. But they would stay on the waiting list and that that's fully communicated to them. Next slide, Ben, please. So I'm sure that there will be questions during the question and answer period that I'm gonna be here for and happy to answer. And I will now hand it over to Diane. Thank you, Faith. Good evening to echo my colleagues. I really appreciate the opportunity to present to you all tonight and to work with the Housing Trust, the town of Amherst to bring this project to fruition. We deeply respect your commitment to the creation of quality, affordable, sustainably designed housing that reflects your community's values of diversity, equity, inclusion, which are also clearly at the core of Wayfinder's mission as well. I'd like to take a minute to acknowledge Michelle McAdair and Ben Merker, who are the team leaders for this project at Wayfinder's going forward. And who are also in charge. Ben is in charge of the slideshow. Next slide, Ben, please. For this project, we focused really on the best practices in energy efficiency and we assembled a team with the expertise to meet the goals of the town's RFP, including those related to sustainable design and the requirements of the potential funders. The Narrow Gate is one of the most experienced designers in affordable housing in the state and their experience is suited to both the adaptive reuse of the school and to new construction. The Center for Eco-Technology is also a core member and in working with Wayfinder's and other projects, there have been fantastic resource to review our plans and to advise. And NEI was selected for its vast experience with affordable housing with over 80% of its deals, including some form of tax credit. So they've got a lot of experience in the work that we do. And strong experience with women and minority business enterprises in that participation and their work. And they also have experience with passive house design. So that's really important to what we're proposing going forward. We've worked with NEI on the redevelopment of the Kenwin and Quadrangle and Springfield and we look forward to working with them again. Next slide please. So Bob Wayfinder will be going over, he and his team are going with some of the details but I'm gonna kind of feature some of the early concepts with regard to both of the sites. On Southeast Street, the East Street School, we are proposing 29 units, nine one bedrooms, 15 two bedrooms and five three bedrooms on this site, which would include the reuse and redevelopment of the existing school. In addition, the property would feature elevator access and universal design. We're pursuing passive house and enterprise green community certifications and solar as well. So we really are pushing the energy efficiency and sustainable design as much as we possibly can on this site. There will be a management office on this site as well as the other. We will always, we do have property managers on site and provide support services as needed and available in the community. Next slide please. On the Belcher, the Belcher Town Road site, we are proposing a 41 unit property. This design we're still working with Narrowgate but we're very excited about how this is coming out. This too would have elevator access. We're pursuing passive house here as well and there would be a management and community room on site here on this property. This would, we're thinking are 41 units which would include nine one bedroom and 22 two bedrooms and 10 three bedrooms. We're looking at solar panels here in addition and universal design. So we're being very consistent across both of the sites in what we're looking for in terms of sustainability and accessibility. Next slide please. So they talked a little bit about the lottery selection in terms of who we're looking to serve and how we find those tenants and go through that application process. Over the two sites where our proposal was generally 70 units over the two sites and we're looking to serve 18 households at 30% of AMI, 27 households at 6% AMI 15 at workforce and tenant market. And what market really means is that it's unrestricted in terms of the income. While these are what we proposed at the, at this point where they're subject to change we will continue to work on the proposal to make sure that we're meeting all of the needs that we can possibly within the community. The next slide please. And what those range of incomes really look like you will see that from the 31 person household at 30% AMI to a four person household at 100% AMI from basically $20,000 to $95,000 in terms of a range of households. So it's really very important that we are paying attention to who we're serving and making sure we have the opportunity to serve folks at every benchmark. So just to remind you for, that 19 to 28,000 at 30% that'll be 18 households that will meet those income requirements. And for 60, that's 60% AMI that runs generally between 40,000 and 56,000 we'll have 27 households that houses that will meet that test. Just to kind of give you a sense of what that means you'll see that currently 60% of the air airy made income is $56,000 for a four person household but that means someone making $27 an hour if it's just a single earner in that household. So these are, it's really important for us to be able to find quality housing for folks at every level of income but particularly for those in the low and moderate income ranges. Next slide please. And what that means in rent for those who are making 30% or less in income we would be pairing them with vouchers both the Massachusetts vouchers and the section eight vouchers. And that commitment means that they would be paying 30% of their income no matter what that is as long as it's below 30% AMI. For the balance of the households generally the rents will be between 1,059 to about 2,300 when we get to the market level and we were actually looking today at apartments.com to try to understand how that relates to what's happening currently in the Amherst market and that the ranges now for between studios to a four bedroom range between 1,600 for a studio to 4,800 for a four bedroom. So again, it's really very important that we are providing this level of quality housing for folks at every income level because the properties that are available on the market are just very expensive. Next slide please. So this is our timeline. And if you see that little diamond at the very top we are there. So we're at the very beginning and we'll be spending the next 12 to 15 months primarily in the design and zoning and permitting phases but we're expecting over that period of time to complete the comp permit and to make our first submission to the DHCD to the Department of Housing and Community Development in its pre-application. The department does its application process in two stages. There's a pre-application generally in the fall and then a full application by invitation in the winter. And the way it would happen is we make our submission and if we're invited in we can do a full application in that following January. So we're very excited about this and we're trying to be as aggressive as possible in our planning. So that's where we're going. Assuming that all of that falls into place we'd be going through a construction a closing of construction somewhere in 2025 to have the property occupied in between 26 and 27. So that's again, that's our current preliminary timeline. Things are subject to change. If things happen earlier then everything feels smoothly about getting things done earlier but this is what we're thinking about at this point. Next slide. So we've invited our architectural team to join us. Bob Wedner and his team will go over the more specifics of each of the sites. Thanks Diane. Well, we're really grateful to Wayfinders to be working with Wayfinders and that you're all allowing us to be a part of building a stronger more inclusive community. So thanks very much. I'm gonna briefly walk through the goals and visions for each site and then my colleagues Andrew and Sarah are gonna present the design overview for each site. So the design of both of these sites is driven by the desire to have more barrier-free housing. And there's a huge gap right now in the existing rental market for barrier-free housing. So this is one of the goals that we've set out to achieve and also to balance the opportunity for a significant quantity of new housing with a neighborhood context and scale to it. Some of the other drivers that are in front of what we're trying to do here at this early stage we're dealing with wetland buffers. Both sites have wetlands and you're gonna see a little bit of that in the plans as we show them to you. And also Wayfinders as a strong goal to create a shared outdoor space. So that's another highlight of what we'll be looking at. So what you're looking at now is the East Street site, the perspective there. And our proposed design for this East Street site converts the former school into six apartments and weaves it into a three-story addition in the front part of the site there, which you're seeing. The repurposing of the school means maintaining a structure with real cultural and historic significance. And it also has a lot to do with reducing the carbon footprint by repurposing this building instead of demolishing it and replacing it. So you're gonna hear a lot about that, about sustainable and green design and how we can reduce our carbon footprint as we go through the design process. Additionally, at both sites, we're seeking passive house that you heard about earlier. And that's a building standard focused on deep energy conservation. So at this site, we envision the new structure to have more of a traditional kind of New England in style. And that responds well, we think, to the gracious surrounding homes in this neighborhood and the green space directly across the street from which this view is taken. You'll also notice the existing public access to the recreation field will be maintained for residents of the town as well. I'm not gonna transition to Andrew who will talk a little bit more about the design. Great. Thanks, Bob, and thanks, Ben. So you can see here that the main entrance to the entire building, right? Both the renovation and the new construction is off of V Street through a shared courtyard. It's that little gray patch there where the existing school and the new building will connect. The existing school is included in Amherst's East Village Center Historic District. So we're going to maintain the outward appearance of the school. And as Bob mentioned, preserving the building is inherently sustainable. You can see in the parking area, we've got 29 resident parking spaces for the 29 Udins. And there's also a bike room in the basement which will be accessed via elevator. If you can see in the orange spaces, a property management office and common spaces on the ground floor create a hub of activity around that lighter yellow long corridor that's vertical and locating the community room next to the courtyard enables larger events to like birthday parties can spill out outside in good weather. So once you go inside near the entry, an elevator is located right at the junction between the existing school and the new building so that it can bridge the differing floor elevations and make all of the units accessible. In the perspective, you can see that the school and maybe you all know about the school but it's up about five feet above grade whereas the new building will be right at grade. In addition to the entry doors from the common corridors, so you can see there it says hall, that yellow bar left to right and then we have those B units flanking that. All the units will have doors off of common corridors but in this case or on this site, all the ground floor units will also have private entries from the outside at grade. So you can see right off of Southeast Street. Yeah, exactly. Thanks Ben. You'll see these canopies and welcoming entries from the street. As discussed earlier, I believe that was Diane. Nice to meet you Diane. The property will have a mix of one, two and three bedrooms. For this site, the new building will have two and three bedrooms on the first two floors and then one bedroom units above. And with that, I'm going to turn it back to Bob. Okay, let's go to the other site, Belcher Town Road. Also known as route nine. And for this more spacious of the two sites, we looked at different options from townhouses to multiple buildings, but found that a single larger building could best accomplish the wayfinders and the town's goals for accessibility that we talked about. Energy performance as well is easier to achieve through a larger single building. And also wetlands preservation, which is a key part of this site in particular, really both sites, but this site probably even in some ways more challenging and more important. There's also the desire to create a common outdoor gathering space here too with real views to the wetlands, which are a real natural asset on this site. So this preliminary view of Belcher Town Road illustrates how our design concept was inspired by simple massing of kind of rural New England architecture. And a portion of the building is two stories, you can see there in the front, and it transitions to three stories in the rear, kind of similar to what's called a salt box structure that you're probably familiar with. And though the entry and the main entry in the canopy have evolved a bit since this original scheme, the simple massing of this New England barn-like architecture has remained a design inspiration for us for this particular site. We're proposing to use a change of colors that you see here in the siding and varying roof lines as well to create this ensemble of multiple smaller buildings. And it's our intent that this massing will respond well to the immediate context. So to learn a little bit more about the design, I'm gonna turn it over to Sarah. Okay, thanks. Yeah, so like Bob said, like we've mentioned before, we really think that the wetlands that you can see at the rear of the site here are a big asset. And so our strategy on this site is trying to prioritize that as an amenity for the community here. And so we're preserving this dense wooded area that's south here at the bottom, yeah, thanks Ben. Yeah, we're gonna preserve all of those trees, but then we're gonna take advantage of this existing clearing in the trees up at the top of the plan where you get a really nice view into that space. And we're taking advantage of that massing that Bob mentioned where the higher massing, the three-story portion on the rear side of the building to try to give more units that view of the wetlands. And then by locating the building right along Belcher Town Road in the front and tucking the parking behind the building, we're both trying to pursue Amherst's vision to have a sort of village feel in this neighborhood. But we're also sort of creating a more private outdoor space behind the building. So a lot like at East Street we have that community room that's adjacent to that outdoor space so that those spaces can interact in certain uses. And that space becomes shielded from all of the traffic on Belcher Town Road and instead faces that nice view of the wetlands in the rear. So we have that parking lot in the back. It has a designated drop-off lane and that's gonna bring a lot of residents in through the rear entry. But at the front entry, we will have bike storage and that will welcome cyclists as well as pedestrians off of the sidewalk. And we'll also have an office there, a staff office to sort of keep eyes on the street, keep that lobby space active and used throughout the time. We've also paid attention to locating the entry to that parking lot a little bit down the street from the entry to the colonial village apartments which are across the streets. So in order to avoid any kind of traffic conflicts there. And then we've already gone through the numbers. There's 41 units, like Diane mentioned, it's all one, two and three bedrooms. We have 50 parking spaces and we actually have a great solar orientation for photovoltaic units on the roof. So that's gonna be used to help us achieve our energy conservation goals that we mentioned we're really, really working towards with this. And I think that wraps up this other episode, everything. That does wrap us up. I know we had a few people, a couple of people who wanted to speak and supported the project. And so if it's okay with our friends from the trust we might let those folks come forward. The first is Marta Alvarez and Marta is a resident of Olympia Oaks which is one of the projects that Faye talked about that we have in Amherst. And Marta is also a member of the Wayfinders Board and I think that's important for you to understand that we value a resident perspective in every way that we talked about, but also we bring residents and community members onto our board so that we remain community informed and resident focused in all the work that we do. And so I'm really grateful for Marta for her work. And also her engagement at Olympia Oaks as a leader of that community and I'm gonna turn it over to her to talk about whatever she'd like to talk about relative to this project. Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity and the invitation. Again, my name is Marta Alvarez. I'm a tenant at Olympia Oaks apartment for eight years. And I'm very blessed to be living in this complex because I feel and the majority of my neighbors also come in and they feel very safe and very secure in this property, although we are a little high. But we are happy in here with the management and the actions that the activities that we had that they offered to us, they helped the assistant that always there, our property manager, Celia, and assistant manager, Laurie. I feel very blessed about everything in here. And especially because I raised my last child here which is a successfully graduated from Westfield. And we feel very comfortable regarding that. I can't tell you how blessed I am over and over again about being part of this organization. And also I wanna mention that I'm also a member of the Healthy Hampshire in our community, okay? Thank you, thank you, Marta. And I also wanted to open up to Florida. Aaron Castady from the Amherst Housing Authority who I believe is also here to talk on behalf of the project. So hi, this is Nate, I work with the town. If you could just raise your hand, Keith just mentioned a name. I'm not, there's about 40 attendees. So it's hard to scroll and find who should be speaking next. So if you just raise your hand, you can lie to speak or promote a panelist. I don't think Aaron is here but I do see Francine Rodriguez. Francine Rodriguez is the other person, thank you. So from family outreach of Amherst and CHD. So we welcome our Francine forward. Thank you though. Yeah, there we go. Hello everyone. First of all, I just wanna thank the Amherst Housing Trust for all of the amazing work they're doing in Amherst and also the Wayfinders. I collaborate with Wayfinders. I work at Family Outreach of Amherst, I should have started with that. And so I work helping residents of Amherst access emergency funds through Wayfinders. I help stop evictions for tenants in Amherst as well as housing searches. So everything that Wayfinders and the trust has mentioned is something I see firsthand and it is definitely getting worse year to year. So I'm very, very excited about these two projects that are being proposed because they are highly needed in Amherst. We as Erica mentioned in the beginning, the kids that the decline of children is because families are being moved out of Amherst. Families are basically being pushed out of Amherst because they can't afford to live here. And that's a very sad thing because it's a wonderful community to be a part of. And I think everyone should have access to live in a community such as Amherst with the resources are very rich and people care about their neighbors. So I really hope that people welcome these projects. And I'm so excited to be a part of getting tenants to participate and to apply for these projects. So in any way, it can be helpful. I'd love to do that. And I just want to really highlight that we really need these projects to come to fruition. So thank you to Wayfinders. Thank you to the Housing Trust for all of the work you guys do, very much appreciated. So thank you. Thank you, Francine. Okay. So I think now we'll move into other questions and answers. See what other questions there are. Some are in the Q and A, but also anyone, please raise your hand. I see that there's already a hand up from Sean Parent who has also asked the question in the Q and A, but Sean, if you would like to ask your question in person, Nate will bring you into the room. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. I don't know if you can see me. I can see four faces. I can't see you, but we hear you. I actually am a veteran. I work in the Veteran Center at the Bang Center, but I also have a daughter in the system. And I would like to thank Francine Rodriguez for all the help that she's given my daughter. My daughter is about to end up on my couch two days. This has been a very, very, very stressful experience for everybody, including my daughter. She came here three years ago after brain surgery at Brigham and Women's and eight strokes. She came into my house for care and I immediately, knowing the system, started with applications in the housing authority. I don't wanna be Debbie Downer. I've lived in the Amherst area for almost 40 years now. Everything that Francine is saying is true. We're three years into this and basically what I've got is documents being lost, documents being requested over and over again, documents being submitted and saying they weren't submitted. Being as I worked for VA for 10 years, I know how to work the system. I know how to fill out documents and get them submitted. But if this is the process that a vulnerable community of people are trying to get through to acquire housing, it's very discouraging and it's very stressful. I love hearing about all the up and coming projects that are on the table for Amherst to house people who are having a very difficult time. This young woman has a history with addiction. I'm like, please God, don't send her to whole you. There are all kinds of mitigating factors that are involved in housing someone. So right now I'm willing to accept her on my couch because that eviction notice has been in place now for I think at least three months. And she's leaving out of her apartment due to feeling unsafe and all kinds of situations. If these are the people that Amherst wants to help, these people are not gonna be able to wait until housing is built, affordable housing becomes available and the way to get to that affordable housing is like climbing a mountain of hell. And if someone can explain to me again and again and again, well, these are the papers you need. Yeah, but we submitted those papers. Well, where did they go? Well, I don't know, they sent them to the wrong. This is just a clustered shock of stressfulness. And I am comfortably housed. I can take care of my business but she can't take care of hers. So does she have to leave Amherst to have that happen? She has so much support from Francine Rodriguez. I can only say this woman is a major blessing. Let me just ask, thank you so much, Sean. And I'm sorry that it's such a difficult situation and I know you're not the only one who's in it. But I'm just gonna take this opportunity to see if there's any of our panelists here who has anything they might like to say about how long it takes and how hard it is to find affordable housing. Anybody? I'm happy to jump in here. Thank you. Unfortunately, what Sean describes is also often occurrence because of the lack of supply of affordable housing for many people at many income levels with many needs throughout our region, throughout our states, in fact, throughout our country. We have not been building enough. We have not been addressing affordability needs consistently for now many decades. The way we get out of this, unfortunately, there are no silver bullets, there are no light switches to flip. There's hard work, hard work that the trust has done, community by community that get us to create the right set of solutions. Sometimes it is building housing but as you see, building housing is a long process. Sometimes it is providing more vouchers and other supports to help people provide the resources they need to afford housing in the community. Sometimes it's education. Sometimes it's lawsuits working against folks who are discriminating against folks in community. But it's our all hands on deck set of resources, capacities and commitment that we all need to make to be able to eliminate the circumstances that Sean describes, unfortunately, that her daughter is facing and that she is facing and supportive of her daughter. But if we all commit to engage together and what I appreciated what Erica started about, what we can do, we can all do something about that. It's just advocating at the very local level, it's advocating at the state level, educating ourselves about what the federal government can do and advocating there as well because it's gonna require all of us to create more housing opportunity, more housing options to meet the needs of our most vulnerable. And today, that most vulnerable includes the circumstances that Sean described, but also for many other people at many income levels in our community who can't find a place to live that they can afford. And so if we're going to create an equitable and thriving region, we have to do that. So I implore all of us to get engaged and get educated. I think I thank you for that. I think that having lived in Amherst for, or the area for 40 years, I live in the Brook. I know the struggles of people who are around me. I think that in the conversations that we've had at our own committee meetings, the perception is new housing is going up in North Amherst. New housing is going up in South Amherst. New housing is going up in the center of Amherst. I basically was told by one person, well, this is for up and coming gentrified yuppies or whatever you want to call yourself, to be able to afford $2,700 a month is not something that common people can afford. And people who are on disability with a fixed check, it's either the Amherst Survival Center or giving up something. This is, I'm a veteran. This is not the way to leave people. Everybody would love to come into this meeting and hear about what all your, the plans are that are up and coming. But if you've been in this battle for four, five years to get housing, to be honest with you, if my daughter dies, she's 43. She's had eight strokes. If she dies before her housing comes, it wouldn't surprise me. Sean, can I interrupt so we can give some other people? I would like to say to you, however, that the town knows that this is a problem. There are things, there are people on the town council trying to figure out ways to change zoning or to find more money for affordable housing in other ways. The town knows it's a problem. There isn't enough affordable housing. How to fix it for one thing, it probably can't be solved. It needs so many things. So it's not that the problem's not known about. It's that the solution is hard to figure out and hard to get to happen quick. And I, there's some other people with some other questions and I so much appreciate your being here and saying what you've had to say, but I would like to give some other people a chance too. And I see that Ashley has her hand up. So it's okay, I'm gonna go to Ashley next. Oh, I was just saying that I really appreciate that person coming forward and I myself live in a tax credit apartment and I'm very willing to walk people through that process. It took about six months and that was without extraneous health concerns. So it is a very difficult process and I just, I kind of hope as a board, maybe we could put closer to the front burner in terms of quicker, less barriers, and then probably quite a bit cheaper, 30% and 10% and six months or less. I mean, which is, it's difficult, obviously, but let's make that just a little bit more front burner than back burner. Thank you, Ashley. I don't see any other hands raised, but we have some more time. And so I'm gonna go to some of the questions that have been asked. And first I will ask if simply Saturday, would you like to ask your question or I can read it if you would like to ask it, you could raise your hand. Actually, I have a bunch of hands. Okay, I'm gonna do simply Saturday first and then I'd see a couple other hands, but let's do simply Saturday first. Go ahead, Nate. Hi, my name is Moses for the Zoom name. I could not change it. I had a different account logged in, but anyway, yeah, so I have a very brief question. So if a local institution donated land for affordable housing development, would AMA HT, I hope I'm getting the acronym correct, welcome and support a proper proposal for affordable supportive housing development. And that includes an actual developer and with a sound plan and financial plan. Is the question, if somebody came forth with property, would the trust be wanting to develop affordable supportive housing on it? That in brief, that in very brief. I think the answer is resounding, yes. I mean, how to make it happen. Very other things I don't know, but let me say that one of the things that is difficult in Amherst is finding available properties that are developable. That's a problem. It has been a problem. It's been people, the developers that we work with, some of them have spent years trying to find an appropriate place to build a thing that they wanted to find. And the town jumped on the Belcher Town Road property and bought it before someone else did. So we could put the two properties together to come up with something we could try to get developed. But finding suitable land is a big problem. And if you or someone has a solution to it, like bringing something forward, it would absolutely certainly be considered. I don't think I have to ask anybody else if that's true or not. I think that's true. Excellent. Thank you so much for your answer. Joe Landers. Yeah, sorry. I had to take me a second to find the unmute button. That's okay. I did miss about 15 minutes of this presentation because I had to step off to take a phone call. But, and I don't own property in Amherst, but I'm a member of Mass Landlords and I try to stay abreast of things that are happening with Wayfinder since you are the main organization handling rental assistance and building low income housing in the area. Zoning as the prior speaker was mentioning is a huge problem. I don't know what impact Wayfinders can have on statewide initiatives to allow denser buildings or ADUs, but that seems to be something that Massachusetts has been struggling with for quite a while. The other thing I wanted to mention because I'm actually dealing with a raft application for a tenant right now is the fact that raft will give up to, I think it's $10,000 a year. Right now, but you have to wait until someone's on the verge of eviction or which can put a landlord on the verge of defaulting on their mortgage. And what I don't understand is why raft hasn't been treated almost as an extension of section eight since the section eight wait lists are a decade long unless you're a disabled bet and can get an expedited section eight placement through the HUD VASH program. People who clearly are income qualified, clearly are disabled, living in a wheelchair under a bridge type of thing can't get section eight housing because the wait list is so long. But I don't understand why the raft program hasn't been able to take as a for instance that maximum $10,000 payment. And instead of waiting until someone has an eviction notice and then like I said, because of the time they can take to process the application at that point, the landlord may have fallen behind on the mortgage as well. And now two people's credit histories are trashed. If there's any way to treat those almost like an extension of section eight and say, okay, you income qualify for up to whatever amount the 10,000 or less and we're going to pay it out monthly over the next 12 months as a rent subsidy. Yep. Does anybody want to try that? Sure, I'm happy to jump on both those things. So thanks for that. And I know raft is federal money and I don't know how much impact at the local level anybody has with what the rules offer ref. But it just seems like that would do a lot to alleviate things until we amend our zoning and get more housing available. Yeah. Well, thanks for raising the zoning issue. It really determines the shape of our towns and our zoning across the region and across the Commonwealth needs to be modernized or anything to think about. But we want our towns and communities to look like not what they were, not what they are today but how they meet the needs of the future of our communities. As Erica described, we have people living longer and aging in place in their homes. So they're not freeing up those homes in the way they used to. And we have another demographic bubble on millennials who are looking for housing options, rental and ownership and they simply don't exist because we haven't been developing with that demographic shift in mind. So as we look at our zoning and our communities and towns it is really incumbent upon all of us to demand of our towns, to get engaged in our towns and look at what do we want our towns to look like? What's the future for us? What's the future for our schools, for the people who live and work in our town? And that should then inform how we zone our towns for the future. Specific to RAF, RAF is the Residential Assistance for Families in Transition Program. It is a state program. It is a state appropriation. There is an emergency rental assistance program that was part of the American Rescue Plan Act and the prior COVID relief package that President Trump signed before he left office. Massachusetts received from those federal dollars about $800 million. Massachusetts, the RAF program or the Residential Assistance for Families in Transition from the state funding program predated the pandemic and it was about a $20 million a year program statewide pre-pandemic. So Massachusetts went from having a $20 million program to having an $800 plus million program because under the break of administration they increased RAF and then with the state legislature support to $100 million in the beginning of the pandemic. So those resources have been critical to keep people housed during the pandemic and with the federal program there were very liberal rules about people accessing those resources and they were quite significant. You get up to 18 months of rent and it was for households up to 80% of the area being an income who had a COVID crisis that was preventing them from paying their rent. You could get paid stipends going forward if you couldn't pay your rent and there was no dollar cap. Massachusetts because we had the preexisting infrastructure and the eviction diversion initiative that was put in place we've been very successful in getting those out. So we didn't no longer have those resources. RAF as Repdom is putting in the chat has significantly gone from that $20 million there was an appropriation for this fiscal year for $150 million in the past supplemental budget there was $60 million. So we have over $200 million to work within the state but the rules have been changed for the program as Joe was just describing and it requires a notice to quit which is the beginning of the eviction process. It is not an eviction an imminent eviction. It is what a landlord does when they're letting the tenant know that they no longer want them to pay their rent and they're gonna start eviction proceedings against them. The eviction process is a long and arduous process. We know this from both sides of it both providing RAF and being a landlord herself. And so that is something that many people would like to advocate the change so that people don't have to get to that point of getting the notice to quit. And as Joe was describing it affects not only the tenant but landlords. Most of our landlords are small what we call mom and pop folks, right? They own a few properties here and there and they're not big institutional players. They don't have lots of reserves and other dollars that can support them and they're part of our community, right? They're part of the economies in our community. In the beginning I mentioned that we helped last fiscal year 14,000 households with $90 million. The previous fiscal year it was 6,000 households with $32.7 million and these were all federal dollars that were really deploying in some state dollars. And so $120 million in our region is not anything to sneeze at. And that supported the local economy. Residents, yes tenants, landlords, utility companies, people who work for all those folks. And so when we think about the future and really kind of create real solutions Joe's idea about thinking about how we can create better solutions that don't get people into crisis situations is well taken. We are advocating with others who administer. We're actually studying right now with others who administer raft and other housing programs around the state voucher expanding our state voucher program to be an entitlement so that everyone's needs could be met. That doesn't mean the supply issue but it means the affordability issue. And so, and that's the state voucher program is called the Massachusetts rental voucher program. And it's similar to the section eight program and providing supports to people. So that's an opportunity rather than trying to meet people in an emergency way to meet people where their needs are before they get to emergencies so they can sustain their housing and landlords can sustain their housing. And again, we can have that thriving economy and equitable region I think we all want. And if something like that was tied to a financial literacy training program, then it would even, you know, that much more increase the value of the program. Absolutely. Okay, so I see, I think there was one hand left but I think I'm gonna go back and forth and go to the next person who asked a question in the Q&A and that would be Ruth Hazard. Ruth, if you would like to raise your hand and ask your own question or would you like, if you don't raise your hand, I'll read it. I think that she's still here at least. Yeah, I'm here. All right, go Ruth. Okay, well, this is, I mean, in a way it seems like window dressing given all the major structural issues around housing but I know that at the two way finders properties in Amherst there are small community gardens that have a lot of meaning to the people. That they have so much potential in a lot of different ways to offer a lot of positives to a community. And I really appreciate, I know the residents appreciate those at those properties that worked with them some around the gardens. I'm wondering if you designed a garden space into your property as you go from the word go you could think about a lot of different things about it being well-cited to be a good growing place but also how would, how do you design a space like that to best serve the needs of trying to grow some food, some flowers, whatever it is but it can really make a difference in people's lives. So I'm just wanted to see if that's something that is being included in your design process. I think as part of sustainability and community building it really has an important place. Somebody want to answer that one? I agree. It's a great opportunity not only to grow food but to build community. So you'll see in some of our slides and the initial kind of concepts for our design there is outdoor space and I welcome my colleagues, including Bob and the narrow-gate team to talk a little bit about what we're thinking about when we've talked about in terms of outdoor space and opportunity. Sure, I'd be happy to chime in Keith. One of the sites, the E Street site is quite a bit tighter than the other site. So not to say that it couldn't be done but I think it is more challenging at the E Street site and I say that as an avid raised bed gardener myself. I love it and people walk by my garden because it's in front of my house all the time. Kids stop, it's a way to engage and build community. So I see the value besides just the good nutrition and nourishment satisfaction. I think at the other site, Belcher Town, we actually, you might not have noticed it but on that back patio at the back, we had shown some garden plots back there. So we are thinking about that and we see the real value of that and it's a fairly economical addition. So I hope that it can happen and we are already thinking about it. So I agree with you and thank you for your input because I think those things really happen because they're people who wanna grow stuff. If you make it and there's nobody there to garden then well, it doesn't happen or it doesn't thrive. So it's great to see people who really wanna do it. The other thing, if I can just make one more comment. They're, both of these properties are within walking distance of a newly established community garden on townland at the Fort River Farm Conservation Area and one of the missions of that garden which is also supported by Healthy Hampshire is to make it available for people who might be in residences of affordable housing. And so you can market that if you want. It's gonna be, we hope it's gonna be there and by 2025, it'll still be there. But I think that for the site that doesn't have a good, when you don't have a good site for a garden there at your place, this could be a resource for your community. Perfect, thank you. The next hand I see in the attendees is Lydia Vernon Jones. Would you like to ask your question? Yes, sure. Unfortunately, I put it in the chat. I missed the Q&A spot, but whatever. I'm pleased to see the solar panels going up on the proposed new places. I'm wondering who is going to benefit from that solar besides the planet? Who's financially benefiting from that? Will the tenants, will wayfinders, will the trust, who? And then a second question is, has the trust or wayfinders considered applying for a CDBG grant funds to put solar on the buildings you've already constructed and are occupied? I'm sure you want to go ahead and answer that one. Yeah. Oh, Faith, did you want to take the, I was going to say for one of the Oaks does have solar on it. So we do have that. We do not have solar at but or not, correct? Correct. So, you know, in our buildings, we do not charge the tenants' utilities. All utilities are included. And so it does, this adding solar does benefit you. Great. So if I can just expand on what Michelle had to say. So she's absolutely right. We basically obtain revenue in two separate ways when we have solar panels on the roofs. So it ultimately lowers the electric bill that we pay every month to the electric utilities, which in turn reduces the operating expenses for the properties, which would then turn around so that we can, you know, expand our resident services or more fully support resident services with the revenue that's saved from, you know, spending it on electricity or other utilities. The other revenue from solar panels are solar credits that you sell on the market and then you, the owner, obtain quarterly revenue from that. That revenue depends on the size of the solar array that you have. I don't know that we've sized this one out to know what the projected revenue from that. The revenue from that also goes to the property and again underwrites the operating expenses for the property. So Michelle is absolutely right. All utilities are included, which means that our operating expenses at the property level tend to be high. So having something like solar panels reducing the monthly fee that we're paying for electricity, but also having the additional revenue from the credits come in really sustains the property in the long run. Great. Can I slip in my other question? Will there be places for charging electric vehicles, cars and bicycles on these news at these new sites? Maybe I can jump in here again. We're still early on and it's a good topic to bring up early on because you have to plan for it. So I think it's a reminder us that we should be thinking about that. I know in our work because we do nothing but affordable housing. Sometimes if nothing else, we put the conduit in so that it can be done later more economically. So that's been true of solar that's now happening for EV charging stations as well. And I think as the infrastructure increases there are also more rebates for EV charging stations. So that might be another way in which we can finance that kind of amenity. Yep. Great. Thanks. So let's see. I have a couple more questions in the... Mindy, you're the next in line with the question although it isn't exactly a question. Would you like to say something Mindy? Dom, our representative? Maybe she left already. I'm not sure. I think, no, she's here. Mindy, would you like to say something or not? If you would raise your hand. If not, I will read this. Thank you, Carol. I'm really just listening and feeling extremely proud of my community. I think really. And I'm including wayfinders because not only are they working in our community but Keith lives in our community. So I just want to shout him out completely. I really want people to appreciate that when a program like RAFT, I don't even know what the multiplier is in terms of how much bigger it got during COVID. But wayfinders was our go-to folks for people in Western Mass to make sure that people were getting the resources they need and they did it seamlessly, almost effortlessly although I'm sure it wasn't effortlessly. And I also, since you gave me the floor, Carol, I'm going to say, I really want to thank the members of the trust. I think you're doing incredible work. John, I'm so glad you're here tonight so that we can always shout you out as much as possible. But I remember when I first got elected which is now like four years ago, I think that was when we were having the visioning meetings in the community about East Street. So that gives me a good sense of how long things take. And I hope we all act with urgency but we all treat the organizations that are working so hard with a lot of patience and appreciation because I really thank you so much. I'm very grateful to each of you as a member of this community for your hard work and commitment. Thank you, Carol. Thank you. Thank you, Mindy, for showing up in so many wonderful places all the time. It's great. Let's see. There is again a question from Hilda Greenbaum. Hilda, would you like to ask your question? If you would please raise your hand. I said you can ask it. I'm sorry, what? You can ask it. Oh, okay. This says, I will read, regarding local preference, can I assume that the proportion of longer term residents at your Amherst property means that almost 70% of the residents lived or worked here. It seems that the more housing we provide, it is still not enough for our people. I was told when on the permitting panel for these two chapter 40 B projects that we need to fill the regional need while some of our abutting towns don't even have 10%. So, yeah, so in terms of there are regional needs, there are town needs in terms of preference that is something that we'll have to work through with as we go through the process here. Some of our projects we do have a 70% up to 70% local preference, but there are needs that we'll have to figure out how we want to meet together with the town in terms of local preference requirements or expectations. Some of that is within our control. There are some things with the way affordable housing is funded. There are lots of public subsidies and resources that also dictate the limit and limit the amount of local preference. There are some fair housing concerns also around local preference. It's a way of, yes, creating housing for people in the community, but also in the community as it can be exclusionary. So you have to be careful about how you apply and address local preference issues. But here are the need and the opportunity to come together with a solution that works for the Amherst community here. Okay. So I see two things that are left. Joe Landers has a hand up again and also I have something here from someone who in the questions is named anonymous attendee. So I presume that these are questions that I should read. This person hasn't had a chance to talk yet. So Jill, I'm gonna let this go first. The questions are one, Amherst's housing situation is complicated by the presence of thousands of college students looking for off-campus housing. How do you ensure that low income housing isn't taken by college students who may have low incomes but who seem different from low income families or workers? That's the first question. And the second one is, how would you characterize the need for low income versus moderate income workforce housing for cops and teachers, et cetera? It seems a lot of our town employees can't afford to live here. Is it even possible to build housing for moderate income households in Amherst? Yes. So Faith, do you wanna just talk about how we've done, how we've negotiated that first question with our existing projects? In terms of students, in terms of students. So one of the things that's interesting about the funding sources for these two sites, the low income housing tax credit program does restrict full-time students from being the only occupants of the units. So one, we don't market to the student population, but also there are restrictions. This is a program that was developed by the IRS or implemented by the IRS. And so they're very, one of the few restrictions for this type of housing is their student status. These units are not to be considered dormitories. So that's a very big part of our marketing effort and our screening effort as well. Great. And then the second part of that question was about the needs for low income housing, for us modern income housing, for us workforce and so on. I mentioned at the outset that we work with the UMass Donna humans to on a greater Springfield housing study. And what we found in working with them and other community stakeholders on that study was that there is a great need across inspection and income spectrum from low to median income in our communities. And what we, in our second phase of our study which was released last March, if you go to the way finders website and UMass Donna humans website and I'm happy to put it in the chat here if I can act fast enough or make it available to the trust to circulate the study. But we did look at where the real affordability needs are in a course to lower your income the greater the need is. And in our, when you look at it from an affordability standpoint, we have a significant need in the Pioneer Valley for extremely low income units. But there is a need at the moderate and the median income as well. There's just not enough housing options. So when I talk about 11,000 housing supply gap that's across the board. That's not just for low income folks that's across the board. We don't have enough housing options. And when you have that kind of market what you end up having in many cases folks who are more median or higher income occupying housing that would be occupied by lower income folks and then you drive up rents and then you have the dynamics that you talked about with student housing where people are renting the students or renting by the bedroom door or even someone told me yesterday by the bed. And it becomes a very difficult housing environment for anyone to afford. I know I moved to Amherst seven years ago looking to rents before I bought and was lucky to find some place but that place had a rent that is higher than my mortgage today. And that's because of the dynamics in our market that we all know very well. And so I've had good conversations with John and others about the need for UMass to build more housing on campus is a real need for advocacy from all of us. If you want to take action that's something to ask UMass to do because the way the housing needs are being met are definitely distorting the housing market here in our community. But there is a need and you'll see that this is a mixed income project. We have the 45 units that are low income or for very low income households but then we also have workforce units that will be around 70% of AMI, is that right Diane? And we're targeting there. There is often what they call the kind of missing middle there's not a lot of subsidy users for housing in that place and people really struggling that. And then we have a few market rate units as well to add to the market supply. So that's where we're doing more projects like that. And you talked about surrounding communities. Others talked about that. We have a project in our pipeline in South Hadley we're building a project in Agilom as well. And we're also building more in Holyoke. So we're really trying to create more housing opportunity in various communities around our region. And many of you know, we also have a big portfolio already existing in North Hampton with both older and newer projects there. Thank you Keith. So I think we still have an honor to see any other questions if Joe wants to ask one more question I think this will be our last question of the evening before we wrap up Joe, go ahead. So I just wanted to congratulate wayfinders on their current process for raft applications and the emails and communications that they're having with landlords because compared to the organization that the state is contracted with to handle some of these which is a company in California. They, I was on the phone with them today about the email templates that they're sending out that don't ask for direct deposit information don't ask for agent authorization don't ask for proof of ownership and tell you that you can fill out a W9 online state website which you can't. Compared to their communications you folks are very clear and concise. And I don't know what it looks like from the tenants end of thing. I know tenants were having problems with applications because a lot of them don't have computers and then we're trying to fill out things online. And I think that's gonna continue to be a challenge. I don't know how to address that but the communication that I've experienced with you folks has been very clear. And I greatly appreciate it. Well, thank you for that. I appreciate that those comments specific to the one issue you raised there's two issues you raised. There's in order to meet the overwhelming demand for emergency rental assistance the state has in addition to working with us and other administering agencies throughout the state has contracted with a third party to kind of take overflow applications today. We receive over a hundred applications a day for emergency financial assistance in our region. That's Hampton and Hampshire County. That hasn't abated. That's the people think the economy is better and people that hasn't abated for over a year. And so that's a real significant challenge for all of us to keep meeting that volume. So they have a third party who doesn't always have the best customer service. And so we try to keep as many of our applications as we can and process them here locally. And so we are really grateful to our team who's adapted and grown and developed our processes and tried to be really informed by what landlords and tenants need to move through the process. You also mentioned one other issue relative to RAF and I think it was specific to I'm lost my train of thought there. Maybe about the phone having to fill out applications. Oh, yes, in person, yeah. So one of the things that folks should know is yes, we have a virtual application which works for many people, but not for everyone. Wayfinders has three offices where you can come in and get assistance directly with applications and some people do that today. We're open for business Monday through Friday. We have our headquarters in Springfield but we also have an office in North Hampton at our Lumberyard project there on Pleasant Street. And then an office in Holyoke as well at our library commons housing development project there approximately public library. So there are opportunities to come in person as well as to call us on the phone and or to fill out the application online. So we're trying to create as many challenges as possible to meet the needs of people in the community. It's not perfect, but we're doing the best we can. Thank you, Keith. So I believe that's a wrap. We've sort of answered all the questions that we have. I'm sure there are more questions. I'm sure there will be more opportunities to ask them. You can remind people again, if you haven't yet to put your contact information in the chat and if you do that, we will get you on the mailing list that the trust has. We send out at least announcements about what's gonna be on the next agenda in time for you to come to our meetings if you want to and always the meetings have other information about things that are going on and announcements. And so if you're interested in being more involved or at least knowing more about what's going on, please be sure to put your name in that chat. Thanks again to everybody, Wayfinders for your great presentations, all of them and all of you for all of your work. The trust members here and present and not present and old members who have helped out in getting this together and getting it to work out. And also to the Amherst League of Women Voters for supporting us, the Amherst Affordable Housing Coalition for bringing together people. And we will, this will be available on Amherst media soon, I don't know exactly when soon is, but we'll keep it in mind, we'll let you know whenever we know when that is. Thank you very much for being here and this is the beginning of a conversation. Keep it up, let's go. Thank you all and good night.