 But it's great that she's being given that award. I don't think we have anything to do with it, but you never know. Let's see. A couple of other items. There's something called the housing navigator, which we have discussed in the past, and it's now live. It was a collaboration, I think, between Mass Housing Partnership, DHCD, and the Coon Foundation. And it's been in process for at least two, maybe three years, and apparently they've just gone live, and they do have list units for rent in this area, as well as elsewhere in the state. So that should be a big help to people who are searching for affordable housing because it's not just any rental units, it's restricted to affordable units that are available. And I think I sent people, some people, a notice about it. If you want to know more, you can either contact me or put the housing navigator into your Google search, and it should show right up. This isn't Amherst, but it's close enough. The appellant Zoning Board of Appeals last night unanimously approved a home city proposal to develop 34 affordable units in town. And for people who may not recall or may not know, home city is led by Tom Kegelman, who is a former member of the Housing Trust, and is actually attending this meeting. So congratulations to Tom and his staff on having that new development approved. They still obviously have plenty of work to do, but getting by the Pellum Zoning Board of Appeals is an important milestone, as we all know. And I think that's it for announcements that I have. Does anybody have anything they want to add? By the way, if any of the attendees have a point at which they want to enter the meeting, just raise your hand and then Nate or I will put you on into the panel. Let me just mention who's attending. Okay, we have a new UMass undergraduate, Ethan Salveson, who Pamela Schwartz referred to us. Kevin Nunin is in, which I didn't expect. I thought Kevin was going to be out of town. Linda Slakey of the Amherst Community Land Trust. Mary Beth Agulowicz, who is still the director of the senior center for another day or so, and she'll be joining us. And Mora Keane is on, who I have to mention. I appreciate all the coverage that she's given us in, I'm walking on the name of the publication. Amherst Indy. Amherst Indy, thank you, Pat. Okay, great. And Anna Devlin, Gaultier has also joined us. So, we have a good group of people and I guess we should start off. The first thing to start off with is minutes and I sent people minutes, oh wait a second, I said I would do introductions of the other folks who are on and I didn't do that. So, I'm John Hornick. I'm the chair of the housing trust. Nate Malloy. Sure. Hi, I'm Nate. Johnny, you also mentioned that State Rep Mindy Dom is here. And then also Tom Kegelman's here. Right. So, hi everyone. I'm Nate, a planner with the town and I help staff the trust. Carol. I'm Carol Lewis. I'm a member of the trust. You certainly are. Rob. I'm Rob Craver. I'm a member of the trust. I'm also a member of the Harris Community Land Trust. Allegra. Hi, I'm Alec Clark. I'm also a member of the trust. Great. Will. Will Van Eugelen. Also a member of the trust. And Erica just joined us. Erica Piedad. Sorry, I had a lot of technical difficulties and I'm also a member of the trust. You can blame it on the weather Erica. Our town council liaison. Pat. Thanks. And Rita. Rita Ferrell. I'm a consultant to the trust. Okay, so that's our group so far. Possibly Sid will join us and possibly Francis will join us. We'll see. Okay, so the first order of business is I sent out, I think, four different copies of minutes from four past meetings. July, two in June and one in May. I got a note from Carol about some minor corrections which I don't think we need to go over from, I think it was the May minutes and also the suggestion which I think I'll try to follow through with to add the letter that Allegra had asked us to endorse regarding evictions or no, sorry, regarding, tell me again, Allegra, sorry, I'm losing. The community safety working groups recommendations. Thank you. The heat's gotten to me. Okay, are there any other comments or suggestions for changes in those minutes? Okay, then following what we've done in the past, I'm going to assume that they're accepted with the exception of the few changes that Pat asked that we make and they will eventually appear on on the town website. Okay, Anna Devlin has asked to talk so I will allow her to talk. Sorry, I don't think I did if I raised my hand it was by accident but hi everybody happy to be here. Okay, thank you. Okay, so sorry, moving on to the next item on the agenda, minutes, moving along. Okay, the next item on our agenda, I'm going to call on Mary Beth to talk about planning for the future of the seasonal shelter and we can talk a bit about this. I'll also ask Kevin to join us, Kevin Noonan to brief us a little bit on what's happened with the actual seasonal shelter in the past season. So Mary Beth why don't you start and then Kevin can join us too. Great, well welcome and thank you, thank you for inviting me Pat. I am still here and I'm working to the very end and you know I mean I have a title and a little crown to be wearing in the senior center. I intend to stay involved and particularly around these issues because I think it matters so very much so I'm really thrilled to be with you all and you know I also would sort of call out that Allegra sits on the group that we have been charged which is the homelessness and rehousing working group and so if she has any comments or reflections that she'd like to add besides Kevin and myself to please join in but where we are right now that particular group the homelessness and rehousing working group had essentially two tasks as a charge, one that was short term and then one that was long term. The short term was to come up with a seasonal shelter plan and the long term was really looking at housing and rehousing within the town of Amherst and looking at is there any way in which we can reimagine or reinvent what we do already or leverage the resources that we have in a way that might be more service oriented or more successful. So our remarks tonight are really focused just on that first piece which is the the seasonal shelter plan and Allegra, Kevin and myself and other members of the group have been looking at a variety of options. We began with a review of town properties that were available so one of the important pieces of the charge for the group was to obtain a town inventory of potential sites and then review them. So we're looking at them for the short term the long term in review for the short term we didn't find that anywhere suitable for the fall. So we've sort of set them aside for now and we'll be looking at them again for a long term plan and what would be necessary. So then we began to look at religious spaces because of course that's a spot that Kevin and Craig Stores have certainly occupied within the community with different religious organizations and so at this point in time we are engaged in really promising conversations and negotiations with one group here in the town of Amherst which it really does look very hopeful. Kevin has done all of the groundwork and we had another meeting where the town was represented with Dave and Rob Mora as the building inspector to sort of walk through that space and check out its suitability and sort of like a guesstimate of modifications that would be necessary and and how that might work and so there's an architect who will be meeting up again with the building inspector and looking at a more intensive plan and so so far the leadership of this particular organization which I'm going to still at this point keep unidentified because there's a process that really needs to be respectful around the congregation and the worship community and making sure that this is something that they are part and parcel of and I'm sure Kevin can can talk about that and even what we did last year with the UU community about holding space and conversation with the entire congregation eventually. So it is hopeful, it looks to be an appropriate space, there seems to be some really firm commitment both sort of as a spiritual endeavor and also that it is a really good alignment of their mission and their work in the world and what the shelter represents and and the kind of work that they do in the world and we are we're waiting to hear more about that process once we get some more details and it goes to further conversation with a larger congregation piece but one thing that I would I would note from this is it would be an overnight shelter so the capacity is not yet determined you know maybe perhaps somewhere I think Kevin and Rob Moore were talking about somewhere in their realm of like 14 to 20 so what what we're looking at in terms of full capacities we still have the 20 rooms at the university motor lodge which those will continue through this shelter season and this would be an additional potential 14 to 20 in a congregate setting that is an overnight shelter venue and so what sort of like a walk-in mall when we solve one problem we still have a few more to pick up and so with the overnight shelter of course that leaves that question of a day warming site and also shelters I mean showers so those are pieces that we haven't yet I think really dived into or dove into we've spoken with Amherst survival center in terms of their capacity for that this year with COVID being unknown what is known is is at this time they are hopeful that they will be able to open for a short period of time from 12 to 3 and that that space that might be available will not be that large space that many of us are familiar with because that's still being used for packing food but it would be the former store area so that would be a smaller space but it would be available you know in the afternoon the showers remain available but you know there's also a grant which has been made available to Craig's doors for modification of their resource center trailer to create an ADA shower but also I think there's a there's a conversation that needs to be had around a shower trailer so that it is more widely accessible and one that is ADA compliant so I know that those are going to be pieces that will be unfolding and so so that's I'd add that and if Kevin or Allegra want to add more to that sure I don't know if I'm muted or not yeah we can hear you Kevin okay great and sorry John I did tell you I wouldn't be able to come because I'm in Germany actually so we we we got in very early this morning and then spent most of the day sleeping so I'm still on your schedule in terms of my circadian rhythms well thanks for joining us Kevin but it's 1 20 in the morning here so I don't know if I'll stay for the whole meeting but thank you Mary Beth for that excellent report and I'm so sorry that she is leaving because she was a really a wonderful person to work with and got a lot done with her we got a lot done with her this year and I will be very sad to see her go anyway we did close the congregate shelter at the UU on the 31st of July as Mary Beth said we're making very good progress on an alternate site I think the only concern I have is that if that site doesn't come through we don't really have plan B so I'm not sure what plan B would be there aren't that many congregations that are willing to because everyone's thinking right now about joining rejoining or reconvening their congregations in their spaces and when that happens the space that's left over for this type of activity is thinner or smaller so but we're optimistic we're optimistic and we still have the university lodge where we have 20 rooms and because people are vaccinated we've been able to double up those who are vaccinated except in one case where one individual is sort of waived that concern so we have 29 guests there and someone asked a question as to how many guests we had over 65 and there were seven apparently that we had I thought Jerry was going to Jerry Weiser is going to be here tonight but anyway so we are I know you you had it on your agenda too to talk about how can we figure out how to purchase this motel one of the problems is that it's in the gateway of UMass so the purchase price would be a little bit steep because of its potential resale value if the zoning were to change which I think perhaps the owner is optimistic about more so than I am but maybe maybe I'm just misguided about that in any case what we're doing right now de facto is sort of transitional supportive housing and we would like to turn that into permanent supportive housing and one of the things that's been a I'm happy to report is that no one in the neighborhood has raised any concerns about the population living there we've been there since November we knocked on all the doors and no one has raised any in fact some of the neighbors actually volunteered to help out in whatever way they could at Christmas so yeah that's it's been a very very positive thing I think we've proven that we can do this and and not disrupt a community we're sort of doing it backwards from the way it was done at 132 North Hampton Road not and the way they did it North Hampton Road is the correct way to do it but that ran into a buzz saw so but that's been approved and congratulations to everyone who supported that and congratulations to belly community development corporation for getting it done so I don't have anything else and but unless anyone has any question I'll stop talking okay thanks Kevin so basically where things stand you didn't say this but I think you had the most active shelter season in the history of Craig's doors in this last year you served many more people both in Amherst and also at a separate motel site in Hadley so congratulations on expanding your program and serving a lot more people in a time when that was even more critical than it has been in the past thank thank you we we did almost serve 60 people at one point at the you know as of February 16th we were able to open up at the at the Hadley Econolodge and we were able to keep that open through June 17th so we did have 60 people that we were serving there are some efforts to try and look at the possibility of purchasing that motel that's kind of beyond our reach but you know hopefully hopefully that you know Pamela Schwartz is involved in convening not only wayfinders but home city housing sorry not home city housing uh Valley CDC to see if there are some possibilities about acquiring that property and converting that into a mixed use the problem always occurs when it you know it's it's one thing to be able to put the development package together and it's another one to sustain it over 20 21 years with supportive services in case management how do you how do you mail that down where do you get the money but Mindy's on the call so maybe she can help us with that piece but thank you for that John appreciate it can I can I just add one thing because I think one of the the most important findings of the last year is not just the capacity that Kevin was able to shelter people but really was the incredible success of using this model of the hotels and I think it's such amazing proof and should really inspire our community to pursue those kinds of options rather than large congregate settings because what he demonstrated over and over again is that when you give somebody personal agency and autonomy and dignity through affording them a singular home with a door and their own room and privacy of how successful those individuals can be living in community and I think you know Kevin briefly mentioned that no neighbors were upset or you know there weren't issues but but I think you can't really underscore that enough about how that form of housing helps to stabilize an individual and bring them along the continuum in terms of readiness for rehousing or more as he suggests permanent supportive housing so I think that one of the big learnings from this last year nationwide and certainly within the Commonwealth is that the use of the hotels really is a preferential model and is one that is far more successful for individuals who even through congregate settings might have been unsuccessful they can be successful and we can do greater work with them to move them along in terms of achieving their own goals for whatever stability and wellness means for them and Kevin and his staff did an amazing job for that and I just think it was an experiment and few communities dove in like Kevin did right from the get-go in terms of going after that hotel model and it was extremely successful for the occupants and the guests so even though it's temporary it's consistent with the housing first model which has been very successful now for over 30 years in housing individuals who are formerly homeless okay are there other questions or comments that folks on the housing trust have for Mary Beth or Kevin is there anything you wanted to add no I mean I think they covered it all and I think that they've really been leading the charge and I think they have the support of the rest of the working group in their work but they've been really on the ground folks as far as I'm concerned I guess I have one question in terms of you know there's finding a site and then there's operational you know funding and how does that look you know in terms of you know next year and for the next few years that is a good question Nate when we ran the the motel in Hadley and in Amherst we were able to get 100 percent reimbursement from FEMA but with the governor removing the state of emergency we can no longer bill FEMA for the cost of those motels even though FEMA had extended through September 30th which is the end of the federal fiscal year so it's to us it's very frustrating to see money being left on the table we are able to continue the emergency the University Motor Lodge because of our ESG-CV funding which you're familiar with and that's good until June of 2022 but our fear is that we'll go back to the state budget the O2 line item which is very very good that we have it and thank you Mindy and others for making sure that that got preserved this year but it's only it's barely adequate to run an overnight shelter it's certainly not adequate to run a 24-hour shelter not that we have a space in mind for a 24-hour shelter at this point but it's going to be difficult as as the COVID well hopefully this delta there will not be long live but as COVID recedes I think we're going to go back to set us quo in terms of available resources for people who are homeless and that's a sad thing especially since our best not just us but across the country it's been proven the hotel model is which gives agency and a door which is why we named our agency Craig Stewart it's it's the model we should strive for did you say something else I can't hear you all of a sudden no I no that wasn't me oh sorry no I didn't hear some static too but that wasn't it wasn't me okay but hopefully that answered your question we're not 100 sure how it's going to play out but every year we would work with the O2 budget which last two digits of that line item and that's for single people who are homeless and by March we would be out of money we'd have to rely on donated funds so we probably will be heading back in that direction although with the Biden administration the ARPA funds maybe maybe there could be some funds available to purchase a place like the the university motor launch okay well thank you Mary Beth and thank you Kevin I appreciate you both participating and giving us these reports which are certainly valuable for us um I guess that means we move on to the next item I was actually going to skip down to legislative advocacy because Mindy is on the call and she might want to join us for this one of the things that Will and I were aware of is that we got a notice from Pamela Schwartz about eviction prevention legislation that is pending in the legislature in fact there was a three or four hour hearing on it today and people are looking for as many groups around the state as possible to chime in in support of this legislation so Mindy is there something that you want to say about this I guess you have to put her on the panel sure I'll uh you're being promoted to panelist Mindy if you're through there she is yeah I'm gonna take a second I assume everybody knows Mindy um hi everybody wonderful state representative I'm sitting here just listening in my uh family room so forgive me for just hanging out on my couch um so I guess I just want to make sure everyone knows that in the FY 22 budget um one of the things that this house and the senate did was we included a lot more money for raft in there specifically because when the governor lifted um the eviction moratorium in massachusetts there was this provision that said that if you had an application and process for raft that eviction notices um and notices to quit would be paused at that time he hadn't yet put in a lot of money for raft and assistance so the legislature stepped in and put money into it and then for FY 22 we increased it the bill that was being discussed today was also around sort of preventing evictions moving forward I don't know how fast that bill is going to move I'll be honest with you I'm not sure if and I don't know why it was scheduled for august if that was because the federal eviction moratorium was just lifted and so the committee wanted to deal with it very quickly or if it was because they didn't get to do it by july 31st and they just wanted to make sure they had it under their belts I'm not sure um but either way it's great that they had it because now we can kind of press them to advance the bill from the committee and move it to house ways and means I want to point out that there's another piece of legislation that has not yet had a hearing this session but will in the fall that I hope people will sort of think about and try to get involved with and that's the bill that creates a legal right to counsel in housing and eviction cases I see Erica nodding her head hi Erica um it's this is one of the most important things that we can do to prevent evictions is make sure that people who are facing an eviction notice have legal counsel right now they do not have the right to have that um when I went when I first got elected I went to the housing court in Hadley and I just sat in on a housing court that morning and I learned that for the most part the housing court judges actually end up doing like legal counsel for both landlords and tenants during legal proceedings sort of making sure that people know what their rights are understanding the law that takes up a lot of time and prevents people from actually having an adequate hearing so this particular bill and I'm happy to get you more information on this John if you want um it was introduced for a couple of sessions already the main filers are representatives Dave Rogers who I think is from Belmont and rep Michael Day who's from Stoughton who's also the chair of the judiciary committee and this is a great bill and it's one that we really need to get passed in terms of um eviction protections there's several kind of avenues that we have to sort of do a full core press on one is making sure that people have rental assistance and funds so that they can avoid eviction the second one is making sure they have counsel in case they get a notice of eviction um and the third one is we have to we have to make sure that eviction sort of histories are sealed and that they don't follow people for their whole lives this is another piece of legislation that's in the house that would seal eviction legal proceedings so that if somebody had an eviction when they were in their 20s or they were a child and their parents had an eviction notice it won't haunt them for their whole life and prevent them from accessing housing in the future um those two bills the one that's about right to counsel and sealing evictions um they'll both get hearings in the fall I'm happy to share that information with you when it comes down the pike and in terms of today's hearing John I sent you the um which you may have already received from Pamela um a letter that pretty much the entire western mass delegation um senators and representatives cosigned to the committee the joint committee on housing today in favor of that bill and urging a favorable um advancement so that was signed cosigned by myself as well as representatives from Berkshire Franklin Hampshire and Hampton counties and state senators including um senator cumberford I think I've spoken enough that's great I'll just add one other thing I think this is in the bill uh tom kegelman some years ago now pointed out to me the importance of legal counsel for small landlords yes um because they typically don't have it and that's in the bill and that's also important and that was actually a compromise in the bill I think last session that the filers put in to to help move the bill like they learned that um small landlords face this but they also heard that without landlord support it probably wasn't going to go anywhere and so they really wanted to try to make that bill so that both small landlords and tenants could access legal counsel it's also a way as I said to relieve the pressure on the housing court judges who get pulled into making sure that whether you're a tenant or a landlord you understand your rights when it's really you should have a lawyer be doing that and the judge should be doing the judicial piece not the legal counsel piece okay thanks mendia it's really helpful thanks john thank you for the opportunity to talk thank you everybody for your service thanks will is there anything you want to add about the particular bill that we should ask people if they're willing to support um I don't think so I mean that was a pretty comprehensive summary I felt I mean the housing equity bill which the hearing uh we're sort of hearing on today uh which you know seems pretty straightforward I assume that most members of the trust are or maybe that's something we should we should vote on is whether or not we want to go ahead and endorse that officially uh and sign on to the letter that Pamela was circulating um and then otherwise the the I think it's called the homes act the the eviction record ceiling um acts which Mindy already spoke about was something I was hoping to bring up but she already spoke to that yeah I think we may have voted on that earlier in the past uh but not obviously not this year where it's been reintroduced well let's focus on the uh aid or act to prevent COVID-19 evictions and foreclosures um I move that we uh send a letter in support and that we also join the statewide group uh in support of this bill so is there a second I second second and are there questions or comments before we look to vote I don't know if this is entirely related but um in terms of the CDC moratorium that's been extended to October it was my understanding that when it was issued Hampshire and Franklin were the only two counties in Massachusetts that did not qualify um because they did not they weren't in the highest risk levels and I just wasn't sure if since these numbers are a moving target if we eventually slide into it or not I saw the same thing I like so I think you're correct that we are not okay uh under the umbrella of the CDC moratorium extension and I believe the rationale is there were court decisions against the first moratorium because it was too blanket and so the CDC said okay we're going to be selective and only identify the counties around the country that are actually in crisis and as you point out I think correctly Hampshire and Franklin were excluded I know I don't know about the rest of the state but I know that Berkshire and Hamden counties are both excluded included so that makes this uh piece of legislation that we've just been discussing probably even more important okay are we ready to come to a vote okay I'm assuming we are um Erica yeah or nay yeah will yeah Allegra yeah Rob yes uh Carol yes and I'm in favor as well okay so that's looks like six to zero with three people absent okay thanks very much and thank you Mindy for going through the legislation that's before us as well as legislation that will come before us in the next few months okay moving along I'll go back to in our order and the next thing was the E Street Belcher town road RFP and I'm particularly curious now that you mentioned early that Anthony Delaney is leaving the town of Amherst service yeah the um I still think it's all sad I spoke with him the other day and um he said he was gonna try to get it ready so it'd be um um out next Wednesday or Thursday so um you know that was Tuesday so he said that was you know it's I think it's I'll thank the trust again you know what I think was a good job there are a few questions in the end um staff John Rita and myself I had some questions about the site visit in terms of how to structure it just to have it be accommodating to developers and so there's uh some nuances there that just need to be worked out and then you know in the in the request for proposal we mentioned interviews but interviews really weren't part of the review criteria and if you're going to use those to select a developer or any respond into a proposal you have to have comparative criteria so we're really that was never meant to be that so we need to remove that um the town's legal counsel looked at and had a few small changes um in terms of format I think I mentioned the big one was a letter of intent uh couldn't be used because um well they said it couldn't be I think it you know they said it could be it would just have to be um submitted at the same time as the final proposal so you know at first we're going to have this two-step submittal process and they said that really is in violation of 30b so um at this point the RFP in my mind is is really just the the site visit piece in terms of requiring to be mandatory and having some certain language around that um so Anthony said he told me it would be all set so um you know I'll check in with him again tomorrow um if not honestly I don't mind running with it I used to do procurement um before Anthony came um you know it was you know only because I did block grants and other grants so I used to do all the procurement for block grants and everything else so I'm pretty familiar with it okay thanks Nate and as long as you're speaking to us I'll go to the next item which is the status of evaluation of the strong street property that we're interested in oh sorry can I go back and ask a I mean I'm very relieved Nate to hear you say that you could run it because my concern isn't just getting it out but if the procurement officer leaves last time there was trouble with getting questions answered if there isn't even anybody there then what's going to happen with questions getting answered so I guess I want to know that even if it gets out will there be something in place so that questions and whatever else has to happen is dealt with properly and in a timely manner yeah I mean I spoke with Rob Moore the building commissioner and he said you know he could we could use his name or my name so one you know or both of us could be named in the document to you know have questions sent to so then we would be the ones who would you know field all the questions take in the proposals and everything accounting may differ on that right so the accounting office may want someone in their office to handle it but Rob you know with Rob the other day and he's like I don't he's like I can I don't mind doing it either so we haven't had that conversation yet but I think it's something because I'd like to keep moving it forward as well yeah just delay you want to have it fall off a cliff because of somebody who left that's all no I know I mean it's you know Anthony was for better or worse you know he was the you know he was involved in any procurement for the town whether it's the schools police fire everything and so I probably have like half a dozen maybe eight projects right now with him and so now it's like do are all of those stalled um it's just you know it's unfortunate that that position has relied on so heavily so but I think we can manage the east street one just especially because it's you know if we were just starting I would say that might be an issue but because we've already gone through and RFP is pretty much done I feel I feel pretty good about it thank you and for so it's for strong street like John mentioned you know there's the you know about 12 13 acres that the town owns you know it's essentially a paper subdivision right back in the early or late 80s I guess was never developed a few lots were purchased and so I reached out to DPW they didn't have too much you know they had some some helpful ideas and I did reach out to one firm to get quotes for everything from surveying to wetlands to utility assessment and they said they'd get back to me with an estimate um some of their members were on vacation last week but I have you know I asked for about four things and depending on their responses then we may have to formulate you know a formal request for proposal given the cost of you know how much those could be so you know I'm kind of excited to have that move forward a little bit okay great um I said that's that's always good news so hopefully we'll have another property to be in working on in another couple of months we'll see what the results of the analysis for that property are but that would be great and I think you know even before even as that's going on I think you know the trust Rob I think you had mentioned you know we talked about it a while ago and there were some ideas about could we sell off some of the lots or what's the right amount of development for that site and I think the trust you know that could be another future agenda item just you know we could I could send some maps around do a few things we could just you know um context maps and other things we could just talk about what we think is appropriate um you know we might hear 12 acres and think wow that's pretty big but in reality given topography and site constraints and its location on the you know I don't think it's necessarily the right place for incredibly high density um you know but I think you could hear the trust too. Thanks Nate and uh I think Kevin mentioned 132 Northampton Road or the Amherst Studio apartment so I talked briefly to Laura I guess a week or two ago and so I have an update on that since I think she's away right at the moment um as I believe everybody knows Valley Community Development has received funding from the State Department of Housing and Community Development so they're set to go ahead what they're in the process of doing now is developing the final detailed building plans and you may think you've seen those because there have already been a number of versions there was a rough version that went for the townwide discussion of whether they should get CPA funding then there was a more detailed version that went to the ZBA and then there was an even more detailed version that went as part of their proposal to DHCD and finally they're in the last iteration of building plans and once they have those then they'll go out to bid for a builder find somebody who actually will do the construction and Laura hopes that the construction will start next spring spring of 2022 and it probably will take a year or a bit over a year to actually do that construction so we may have tenants walking in the door by the fall of 2023 which would be great because that's a project we strongly supported and I'm so glad that with all the work particularly that Valley's put in they're going to be able to move forward with the project and they're really on track as I say to finish it within two years from now probably but like everything else with affordable housing it just seems to take a lot longer than you think it will any other comments okay about two weeks ago now we received a final report from Jana Tetro of community action Pioneer Valley in which she responded to some questions about who applied for housing and who got housing looking at racial and demographic characteristics are there any questions or comments about that report okay if not then then we'll move on we're doing pretty well I think on time we have two major things to talk about at this point oh just quickly I will um sorry the um on that one you know they accepted applications into June and so we actually just made payments for some households up and up through August so you know what you know we didn't because the program you know went to June you know community action approved a number of tenants and so they're not you know we processed payments that the town has in the last two months so you know although you know technically they're you know we're done looking at applicants a few months ago we did just make payments last week and then to me that's a good thing the other one is there's still money you know the trust voted a certain amount we didn't spend it all and you know whether or not in a year we see more you know a need for it again you know something the trust could you know um could offer or come up with another model for you know emergency assistance and I don't know yet but we are getting reimbursed or a fair amount of the funds were um are reimbursable from because of COVID so um you know I'm not sure what that means in in the end but you know a fair amount of the the money will come back to the trust so we'll have you know funds available for something in the future okay great thanks Nate okay the next item on our agenda is the American Rescue Plan Act that's what ARPA stands for I kept forgetting what the A stands for but it's the second A stands for ACT um basically is it I mean is an American Rescue Plan Act yes I believe that's right anybody want to correct me I'm willing to stand corrected I think that's correct okay the American Rescue Plan Act was something that Congress passed uh I think early this year and uh uh oh okay so share your your email right yeah um and the money is distributed to states in some cases it's also distributed to localities and there's some of it I think that the White House or the administration also controls in any event Amherst is large enough to have received its own allocation of ARPA funds I believe that it was going to be nine million dollars and I think that's what I wrote to you but as I now understand it it's actually going to be eleven million dollars I think I ran into the town manager and or somebody else and told me that it would be eleven million dollars so it's a significant amount of money to the town and uh I think there are many calls for how this money should be spent or there will be but I think it's important that some of the money be spent on housing and not just a small amount but a significant amount as you all may know the governor has said that if he has his way 20% of the state funding would be spent on housing so there are at least a couple of ideas that came up related to housing that I put before you I also attended a CHAPA event in which there was broad discussion of the ARPA funding and how it might be used and I included a table that was produced by Tori Berre of the National Low-Income Housing Coalition that showed examples of ways in which these funds are being used it's still early days to some extent both here and elsewhere but everywhere people are considering what the best use of these funds are likely to be because we did this program on climate change sustainability and housing one of the things that came up in that was subsidizing the costs of retrofitting rental housing in Amherst and so that's one idea that I put out and I've been doing some research on that Rita's been working with me and I think that's an interesting opportunity and I can answer questions about that as we go along the second idea that's come up which Kevin mentioned was potentially purchasing the university motor large with ARPA funds and then I didn't have a third idea again I just put this table in the note that I sent to everybody that had examples from I think it was four places in the country of how they were proposing to use these funds the one thing that I don't think will work honestly is just simply asking for a large chunk of ARPA funds to be put into the trust account it doesn't fit the program as best I understand it for a couple of reasons one is that the funds all have to be obligated by 20 December of 2024 and then spent by December of 2026 and so if we just have funds sitting there they have to be used and it would make more sense if we have a specific way of funding them the other thing is that whatever we propose is going to go through a town review process and I think the more specific the proposal and the more we're clear about how one or two ways of spending the funds is going to be helpful the more likely we'll be successful in having the town adopt that approach so I'm going to stop there and ask if there are questions at this point oh I should I should say one other thing I should have said the town manager has designated Sean Mangano who's the chief financial officer for the town to be the lead on bringing in proposals for how the funds should be used and the stage that Sean's at now is he's asked key people in town hall basically the leaders of various programs including Nate but others as well to come up with statements about how COVID has affected in our case housing as well as what additional problems or effects we might affect we might expect in the future and he's asked people to respond in a specific form which includes a description of what the impact of COVID has been on housing how we explain it what the severity of impact is and the justification for responding to those problem or problems so that's what we're being asked to do sorry for the long preamble what I hope to do now is to have a kind of general discussion or even a brainstorming about what everybody thinks our housing needs that could or should be addressed by the ARPA funds and I think it's fine if you have a product idea and then we can work backwards and say you know what was the impact from COVID that caused this and then you know fill out the table so Sean you know that what he's hoping for is to get you know this kind of assessment identification an assessment table that many departments will use and then from that extrapolate priorities and then try to find out projects so when we first heard about this I sent him a dozen product ideas and he said that's not what I want I said oh come on there's no way you want and he really wants this idea of like impact and justification and so I think you know I end up having to work backwards myself but if we have um so you know you can you know I think this is a good time as John said just a brainstorm for anything it doesn't have to you don't have to come up with an impact now but if you have ideas for how you think it could be spent that's helpful Carol I I totally like John the idea you came up with about retrofitting uh rental housing one thing I wondered about and I really don't know anything about it but it seems like a thing that always gets missed is are there people who are I know there are people who have trouble paying their rent or there are people who are having trouble making their mortgage payments homeowners or condo owners who are just having trouble staying continuing to be owners and not ending up getting foreclosed on and I don't know whether that's a problem really I seems hard to imagine that it wouldn't be but I don't have any evidence but it's just an area that usually we don't get to because we do we do the homeless things and we and we work on the rental things and so maybe this is an opportunity to do something there even if I can't say what it is or so this is really a brainstorm right this is my brainstorm yeah I'll answer you to some extent um the statewide program that isn't RAF but is a companion program called ERMA is intended exactly to address that so people who have mortgage problems as a consequence of comod can apply in this area to wayfinders for funds to um help them deal with their uh mortgage payment problems I believe it could include arrears and mortgage payments so just you know just as we talk about rental issues um or issues for renters the statewide program is intended to also do the same thing for homeowners I think John maybe uh sorry to interrupt but maybe um to Carol's point you know instead of just focusing on retro energy retrofits for renters it could be homeowners um you know block grant money can be used for either or two and so we don't run a housing we have program but you know maybe maybe it's both right it doesn't always have to be focused on landlords but also on homeowners um yeah that's a good idea yeah so we could have a essentially a parallel program or a piece of the program would be for homeowners right so my thought is the point of the renter program too is trying to get more money you know more more income staying with a tenant right and so there's some complexity with how that could be arranged with the landlord but you know if the homeowner if we are saving them money you know then that money is going to other things uh that they may need so yeah yeah I agree with John I mean the idea with the ARCA funds is that you know there's it's addressing an impact from COVID and that the money there's a few years to spend it out with the pro if we start a program the idea is that it could it should be sustainable beyond or without the ARCA funding um and it could be you know a term limited program but they kind of want you know they don't necessarily want a town to say develop a whole program and hire staff and then have it be something that couldn't be sustained so I think the the program that John mentioned as this first idea we could we could manage it in a way that you know I think you can meet the ARPA funding goals but you know saying like let's just do something completely new and radical and then we have to hire staff for it they that may not meet you know the parameters of funding um just so you know that's that's what I've heard yeah this is a program that the ECAC does want to do and that's Stephanie Chickarello who's the town's sustainability coordinator or officer uh is very interested in and what is the trust thing about purchasing a property though for a permanent shelter or some type of you know whether it's transitional housing or sheltering or something well I mean I think we have to think about immediate needs as well as other needs and so I mean that's the first thing I thought is that there seems to be an immediate need for Amherst and we have people who are homeless and who need a space the way Kevin talked about and Mary Beth and Allegra in terms of having a roof over the head and a door that they can close and that leads them to dignity and so I really feel strongly that we need a permanent place here in Amherst I think this group going from religious community to religious community and depending on goodwill is not the way to go and we've talked about from encampments to permanent space I'm not sure that we could use ARPA funds to purchase the University Motor Lodge as a shelter I think we'd have to use them to purchase the University Motor Lodge as affordable housing not that that's a bad alternative but I think that's what we'd have to do it would not be purchased as a shelter and I guess the other thing that the working group has kind of been floating is if there are these other identified town properties that were not you know able to be brought up to snuff for this shelter season but possibly could with some work be you know a permanent site starting next shelter season would retrofitting some of one of those buildings and maybe having like dropping space as well as shelter space would that be something that we could look at as possible use for the ARPA funds I don't know to answer you honestly Allegra there's a lot of murkiness about what is not a legitimate use and so what you proposed may be quite reasonable and we may find that there are other communities that are choosing to use their ARPA funding in that way I just don't know and there's nothing that prevents us from proposing that and then see what town hall and eventually town council do with that as well as other proposals and I think don't think we're stuck with a single proposal you know I do think as I said earlier we should have proposals that are fairly specific let's say you know here is what we think will be important to solving problems that related to housing that have been affected by COVID-19 even though some of them can be long-standing problems I mean when I go back to retrofit and you ask me what's the problem well again I can't speak specifically to rental developments in Amherst but I know in general there has been discussion about health issues and the health issues relate to the way in which apartments are heated you know if they're heated in a way particularly where it's under the control of the landlord there's a single heating system what that means is the there's maybe poor ventilation the apartments are closed up and particularly of COVID there's greater risk for health problems so I think that's one of the values of a retrofit program is we're talking about improving the ventilation of the places where people live we're talking about also making them more comfortable and also ideally bringing down the price which would help out the tenants as well. Donna Linda's raise your hand. Oh sure great. John it occurs to me to ask what the other 80 percent is for if the governor made a point of saying at least 20 percent should go for housing what are we supposing the other 80 percent is going people whose business ventures or livelihoods were impacted what are the other kinds of things what this is aimed toward is do we have to settle for 20 percent you know could we at least make the case that in Amherst this would be one of the more pressing issues just curious. I just used the 20 percent number because the governor did there's no reason why we're stuck with 20 percent you know why it can't be more and honestly I don't recall even reading what the governor said the remaining funds should be used for. I had a sort of specific thought if just very broadly if the other 80 percent is to assist where business was badly impacted by COVID then we should make clear that when we say housing we mean affordable housing. A developer with multiple units probably did suffer economically during COVID because the students stayed home if such a person can make a case that some correction would make a difference between their business being viable or not I don't think that should count as housing it should count as business. I think we want to frame the language that way. I think that's good I think if we're giving money to developers in in general if we can also get some new affordable units out of it that would be a very good outcome for us. So again to take your example if rental agents or building owners are coming to the town and saying we need to be made whole because we were only rented up to 50 percent or whatever it was during the period of COVID well we can say we'll help you out but we also want something else back from it and what that should be in my mind would be additional affordable units. I want to pick up on what was on this that about you know how much money there actually is available for housing. If it's a lot of money this is an opportunity to really expand a homebuyer program you know we've Amherst me land trust and Valley CDC have you know attempted to do it on a small scale two units at a time it seems it seems futile and the amount that is needed is so great because the cost of housing Amherst compared to costful affordable housing is you know the gap is just humongous. So if we could if we could spend a lot of money on on buying down the price of houses so that people can actually buy them and live in Amherst you know this is a chance to do you know 10 or 20 units at once. Yeah I hear you Rob and and you know it may be feasible the difficulty is that real estate costs are rising or prices are rising in Amherst right now and so the cost of buy down may be increasing and in any event you know we have a relatively short timeline to get this moving you know the the organization that's done the most in a sense in the in a buy down program is Valley Community Development and they have a problem doing more than two or three units in a year or even two years. So while in principle that's because they're spending $50,000 to buy down and that's not enough you can't you can't find enough units to buy down with $50,000 and we can put $150,000 into a unit or 200 and maybe we have that capacity with with you know $11 million or $5 million or whatever it is you know that it could be more aggressive. Yeah I hear you. So yeah so Rob I think you know so what I've heard like you know with that program I think Lucia and I after the meeting we can meet and talk about you know how we frame the impact like what's you know what's the impact COVID had and then figure out how we can make you know assistance to home buyers you know one you know what you know like that that group is say one row in the chart and then you know affordable renters and you know what's that impact there and so you know my thought is after this discussion we'd have maybe four or five impact categories related to housing you know you know I submitted one for housing was just housing in general but I think like John said the more specifically we can get to turn you know in terms of you know whether it's types of households or ownership renter you know whatever we're thinking about yeah the home buyer program is really interesting I feel like it's uh it is a difficult thing to break into and I think we could say there's a reason what with you know underemployment and a number of factors why ARPA funding could be eligible for this I you know I don't know enough about ARPA funding to be honest some of the details when we received error money the reinvestment we we have we recovery act um that's almost you know almost 10 years ago I helped with that and it was um there were more strings attached but it was almost clear here I feel like we're gonna have a lot of ideas and I think it's Sean is going to then have to vet them and figure out you know I think that you know the town will have to figure out what's eligible but when I read about ARPA funding um you know it's public money but then they say it's for housing and economic recovery and all these things and it's not clear that you have to use the money uh in a public way right so it can be given to private entities which is really seems really interesting um without having any strings attached so um I'm you know I'm I don't know enough so anyways I'm assuming if we did a whole by a program you know there'd be a a deferred payment or you know some write down or something we could have yeah I mean if we're looking at impacts um I believe it's reasonable to say that the problem has arisen because of the pandemic the cost of housing and Amherst like many other places where people from cities have retreated is rising astronomically and that makes it more and more difficult for people who need affordable housing to find something they can buy so that would be an example of an impact that we could offer at this first stage where Sean's asking for uh delineation of problems that at the next stage we would say okay we can solve that problem by expanding our affordable housing program. Linda you had your hand raised again. I just just a small follow on to the point that Rob made that um we have a pretty good handle actually on what the subsidy has to be in order to assist a family of an income level that can then subsequently be listed on the subsidized housing inventory to actually buy a home in Amherst it's pretty easy to track that and we're in the midst of a first time home buyer program that we had enough subsidy from CPA funds to fund two families and the first family very quick off the mark bought the last affordable house in Amherst literally. They made an offer a little over 250,000 it was accepted and the second family has made multiple offers now at 265 for homes that are offered in that range and find themselves in a market in which there are 15 offers well above asking price and cash so it's pretty easy to say pretty precisely what a program like that needs to be able to put on the table in order to support families that can be listed on the affordable housing inventory in fact it would probably be useful to actually work that out as an algorithm you could just say and then it could be tracked every year easily you know this this is the current average market this is the this year's AMI so these are the people that could be listed this is what they can afford pretty easy to figure out what the gap is right now it's about 150,000 dollars and that's to support a household that's at 30% AMI no that's that's at 80% AMI that's 80% AMI yeah it's it's not oh yeah people at 30% AMI can't buy an Amherst you can't come even close because the thing is you have to consider even even it let's let's imagine that one of our donors put enough money on the table to make the purchase price affordable such a family would have trouble managing the house paying the taxes and all the things that go with that I know habitat for humanity generally pegs their houses at 60% area median income they're they're subsidizing they're doing private fundraising they're the two houses we built in partnership with Amherst with habitat they sold those homes for 150,000 dollars each and they raised in addition to our having bought the land they had raised another 50,000 from private sources the houses cost 200,000 to build so it I mean it I know what some of the points are that you've made in other other conversations John that it's a lot of money for the town to invest for just one family it it really is a question of what what the how to frame what the value is to the town of not losing young families I mean the the point that you made several years ago 27% drop in school age children during a time when the county only lost 5% of the school age children that's what that's all about the impossibility of finding a house in Amherst that you can raise even people with substantial jobs a two income household each working at the 40 or 50,000 a year can't buy a market value house in Amherst and the consequence for Amherst is that we're simply losing that whole segment of the economy agree and I expect we'll see and I will try to update those estimates of the number of households with school age children that we've lost to Amherst as soon as the 2020 census data becomes available Erica you had your hand up well it's in terms of impact and sort of rationalizing it what's happened to a lot of families is opportunity costs where they had to take their savings and use it for you know making sure they can make it through COVID and so I think you know providing support around mortgage payments does help I think it's a real opportunity I think a lot of people have really been set back by COVID and they run a path to possibly home ownership but at least you know certainly more stability so I think there is something to be said around a rationale for supporting that in terms of recovery that's great are there other problems people want to identify that we should include in this initial pass to Sean Mangano about things that need to be addressed Carol I just want all right I'm going backwards I guess but you seem to say that you didn't think this money could be used to purchase a shelter that was going to help reduce homelessness or at least reduce give homeless people something to do and I don't know I just look back at my notes from that that same presentation and they're very sketchy I will agree but I thought homelessness was a possible a thing that could be you know that you could look at the impact on the homelessness situation as one of the impact you could look at so I guess I just I don't want to and maybe you know something I don't you know lots of things I don't but uh maybe maybe it's not I don't want to give that up quite yet at least without more uh understanding of it okay I just assumed maybe wrongly that a proposal for affordable housing for people who are homeless so they don't continue to be homeless or have to live in a congregate shelter would be better received and fit better with this program than a proposal to create a new congregate shelter or to purchase property that would be used as a congregate shelter but again that's my opinion well if you if you can show that one of the impacts of COVID is an incredible rise in homelessness which I think there's been then you can say that because of this impact one of the things we have to do is have this shelter which is the good kind of shelter that gives people doors in place as a kind of entrance into whatever the process is I guess I I can imagine making a case for that and maybe I'm there's just yeah that's all okay well again you make a good point from the point of view of problems and that is one of the things COVID has done is place many people many households at risk of eviction and you know we're just starting to see the numbers that have been evicted so those are problems that need to be addressed uh again from my personal point of view with more affordable housing okay other thoughts about problems that need to be addressed or ideas that we might eventually push related to the use of ARPA funds okay well after this discussion or based on this discussion uh Nate and Lucía are going to work together using the notes to create what is really a supplemental report to Sean Mangano about what the problems and issues are related to housing and so that's our next step and once that's in you can see what Nate submits to Sean you'll probably be able to see the full list of problems that Sean will have identified by talking to various people in Town Hall and then after that we'll you know we'll see how the next step is managed with respect to Sean seeking proposals to address the problems that have been submitted I also think at some point there'll be a public process I don't know whether that occurs before uh Town Hall submits a proposal to Town Council or whether it happens at the point at which a proposal for the use of the ARPA funds is submitted to Town Council do you know Nate? I don't I think the public process may involve um you know engage Amherst you know an online piece as well as you know whether it's meetings through Zoom or something so if if I hear anything I can send out you know an email but I I don't know either I know they've said there'd be a public process but I don't know the details um well uh again it may be early to do this or it may not uh and that is for us to at least take a an initial vote about what program ideas we think we will eventually propose for the Town the reason I say it looks early because right now they're asking for problem description on the other hand you know we have a meeting in a month who knows how quickly the process will have moved between now and then so I think what I wanted us to do is have uh at least a little bit of discussion about what proposals we think we could support and then at a later day maybe we can decide what we what we would most strongly support given that there may be choices to be made Erica I just have a question about the retrofitting you know I was at the forum which was excellent but I know a couple of um challenges came up and so the question is how would we ensure that these landlords just don't kick people out and and get higher rents uh and two the other piece was how do you work with um the tenants to ensure that they are optimizing um those benefits I think the example was is that um somebody kept on opening up windows and it set up the whole internal system whack um so I think you know I'd like to know more about that before you know either saying yay or nay on that okay well I can kind of answer to some extent both of those questions um most of the work related to this would be done by the center for eco technology and they would be using funds that come from the utilities either base state gas or northeast uh no sorry ever source northeast is gone they were taken over by ever source okay and that could cover a high percentage of the cost of retrofitting 65 to 90 percent and maybe 50 percent of the cost of purchasing new technology this would be available independent of the arpa program it's available now to building owners who want to pursue this so where does arpa come in where does the town come in and the answer is that as I've suggested CET does not have the money or cannot find the money to pay for 100 percent of these costs so the town comes in and says to a landlord who's interested will pay the difference so if it's going to cost you I don't know uh $60,000 per unit or I shouldn't say it's more like $6,000 per unit to do this uh sorry the total cost is $10,000 and CET can find $6,000 then the town can pony up another three or four thousand to make you whole now we wouldn't necessarily want to make them whole for all of the units our first priority would be those that are affordable units so if we take rolling green as an example there are 204 units at rolling green or 205 of which 41 are affordable so the town would say okay you know you're going to go into this program through CET and we'll give you enough money to make you whole at least for the 41 affordable units when we do that we signed a contract with the building owner and that contract would call for assuring that the tenants would not see an increase ideally would see a decrease because the cost of doing this uh or the result of doing this should mean a decrease in heating or other costs to the building owner so the tenants should see those we would want to sign a contract before we give them the money so that's one answer the other answer is how do tenants get involved and that's actually not on your agenda but I'm inserting an item in a minute that will help to answer that question other questions okay so maybe we don't need to have a formal vote because this isn't a final judgment but are people for example comfortable with the idea of doing a retrofit program that would be available both to uh landlords and potentially to homeowners who would income qualify okay is there anybody have strong reservations about that at this point I don't hear anybody okay then the next idea that we talked about is potentially spending a large chunk of funds on buying the university motor large which would probably be used for affordable housing I don't know if there's a plan going back to Carol's comment where some of those units could be set aside to be used temporarily as shelter units so my sense is people are comfortable with that idea and now I've lost track of other ideas that have come up uh so uh mortgage subsidies mortgage subsidies right for homeowners a very important idea expanding the availability of mortgage subsidies for homeowners and it looks like I see at least Rob and Carol are in favor of that uh Erica clearly okay so it looks like there's support for that as well again none of this is final but it means we're moving in a direction where we've got an idea of what ideas we would support and we can create problem statements for which those would likely be the solutions have I missed anything else we'll see you're taking notes did I miss anything no okay okay then let's move oh I know I promised one other item having to do with tenant involvement the ECAC is doing a proposal I can't remember to the state agency it's for about $25 or $30,000 to do a first step in organizing tenants to get involved in issues related to sustainability but also related to housing it's an idea that came up when they were going through their process of trying to figure out what recommendations to make to the town and Stephanie is just completed writing a grant proposal for this and Nate did you see my note asking you to put that on the screen oh it's in my email I was trying to download it just because it was only a yeah I mean yeah it was a single paragraph that I wanted to share with people I'm putting in a word document okay I can also read it while Nate's pulling it together it's not very long Amherst is in the early stages of developing a rental oh there it is a rental efficiency standards policy the town is partnering with CHD family outreach to apply for Massachusetts clean energy center and power grant funding the planning grant application seeks funding to organize community members in rental housing across Amherst to engage in the creation and dissemination of a brief housing survey that addresses the building efficiency and conditions of their respective housing funding will be utilized to compensate survey participants and to provide a stipend for building captains tenants who would lead discussions distribute flyers and serve as advocates for future stages of policy development information gathered from the community engagement process will greatly inform the draft rental efficiency standards policy I won't go into the draft rental efficiency standards policy that's something that was discussed in the housing forum that we did on sustainability and housing but in principle I certainly think this is a good idea and I told Stephanie that we would consider whether to send a letter of support that would go in with the grant application for this application and as I said I think this significantly responds to the question that you raised Erica about how do tenants get involved in all of this I think if ECAC is successful in getting these funds it provides a path to doing that questions I guess I'll make a motion that we send a letter supporting this grant application is there a second see a second from Carol thank you and I guess we'll do a roll call vote to see who's in favor uh Erica in favor will yes Allegra yes Rob yes Carol yes and I'm in favor otherwise I probably wouldn't have brought it before you okay so I think we've dispatched that and we are at our last item which is also an important item okay I had hoped Mary Beth might still be hanging out with us but it doesn't appear that she is the next item has to do with the use of the developable land that's part of the old Hickory Ridge golf course we've talked about this a little bit in the past and Rita and I have done a bit more research on this which I'll describe in in a minute the idea would be to propose using that developable land something like five to eight acres that's on west primary lane for a older adult probably rental housing development somebody I think it was Tom Kegelman recommended that I contact uh Amy Schechtman who is the president of an organization based in the eastern part of the state called two life communities and they've done a lot of development of these kinds of programs again in the eastern part of the state Nate also mentioned to me that beacon communities would be potentially interested in this as well and so I think we would we would not have difficulty funding developers if we can move forward with this I'm not quite sure when the town will close on the purchase of Hickory Ridge but if it happens in the next month or so I think we would be in a strong position to recommend this if indeed we are in favor of it I think there would be interest in town council I talked directly to uh to George Ryan and to Kathy Kathy Shane and they were both interested in this and I'm guessing that there might be support from other members of town council as well to make this a use of that developable land uh on West Primary Lane uh let me tell you a little bit about a conversation that uh Rita and I had with uh Elizabeth Hayer or higher who's the vice president for real estate and innovation at two life communities um so John just while you're talking I pulled up um you know Google Earth or Google this is you know 116 and um Pomeroy where the cursor is and Hickory Ridge is the you know the entire golf course that's 120 acres or so that the towns have been trying to purchase and the developable land you know here's the the clubhouse is here in the parking lot and then Taylor Davis landscape is here in between that along the frontage is kind of upland you know the river Fort River goes through the property so a lot of it does flood I can't can flood quite extensively but there you know is anywhere from five to nine acres along the street here that could be developed um I don't know you know and maybe you know some more up around here that could connect to Amherst office park but you know the street frontage is really kind of the highest uh part of the property so since I'm not really that familiar or with uh housing developments for older adults I I and you may not be either so I'm going to report on what I learned and um Rita can supplement that with other things that she heard uh as part of that conversation um basically two life communities and I think I sent you all a a link to their website uses what's called an aging and community model it's not assisted living they don't purport to do assisted living on the other hand it is intended to be housing where people can age in and where there will be a lot of supports available although not as much as you would have in a true assisted living development so it's not skilled nursing it's not assisted living but it is housing for older adults which allows them to age in so they don't have to leave if they become more disabled or have any number of difficulties that's not to say that someone would never leave but the idea is to prevent that um they talk about the major reasons why people leave or have difficulties is economic insecurity or loneliness on the economic insecurity what they do is they provide affordable housing if we wanted or the town wanted they could do a mixed development that included market rate housing but I think our primary goal would be to have a substantial amount of affordable housing on that site if not 100 percent affordable housing um let's see they would do mostly one bedroom and two bedroom unit probably one bedroom would be more than two bedroom they wouldn't be larger than two bedroom and they wouldn't be studio apartments because in their experience that's not satisfactory to older adults who may be downsizing but don't want to downsize quite that far in their communities they try to include at least two kinds of onsite staffing one is a resident coordinator and the other is an activities coordinator the resident coordinator um would help residents to navigate daily life they would coordinate healthcare services they would do whatever they could to allow services to come into the residence and so part of the design of the building would be to have locations inside the building where services could come in and so people could receive services there rather than having to go to another location um they would work to develop agreements with outside agencies for example Highland Valley Elder Services the Amherst Senior Center in order to arrange for activities that would be physically onsite one of the things they find is very popular in other developments are fitness services and that would be one of the kinds of activities that the activities coordinator would try to bring to the site and there would be other things as well their idea about building design is that the first floor would serve as a village hub but that's the language that the Spethire use and whatever they have might also be available to outsiders to come in where appropriate so it's not strictly limited to people who are resident here but other people could conceivably come in and participate um one of the key parts of the village hub idea is there'd be a large welcoming entry and so that would be a place where some activities might take place but also it would be a space where people could sit comfortably and clearly there should be other kinds of spaces like that perhaps performance spaces a place to show movies a place for clubs or games or whatever all was part of the first floor so that'd be both small and large rooms so that's a general idea about what I heard is important in the development of housing for older adults um the other thing that's significant is we talked to both Liz Beth about this and also another group in Long Meadow or East Long Meadow and it looks like there's actually financing available that would allow public support for this kind of development where housing would indeed be affordable Rita do you want to add to what I've said um no I think you pretty much covered it I think what was interesting to me was to hear that um especially to life at Elizabeth used to work at DHCD which provides uh tax credits and and other sources of funding to do affordable housing and so they've worked with them over the last few years to actually have DHCD revise their design standards so that they've they've moved from a kind of very traditional senior housing model into this type of senior housing model where you have a lot of community space which is atypical if you look back at how senior housing used to be funded so there there is funding there they're typically using a combination of a federal program called section 202 and then um and tax credits what you know we asked Elizabeth because they have to life has a lot of experience now I think they have something like 1500 units that they own and manage in a number of eastern mass communities and she said were they to be looking out here um responding say to an RFP if the the town was putting out an RFP the trust was doing it um for a minimum of like 100 to 120 units just because you need to achieve some economies of scale so that's a pretty big development and I think the other developers were doing smaller the the East Long Meadow group is actually does consulting and consults on financing and so they were looking more in the 60 unit range so just something to keep in mind and just to reinforce what um what John mentioned is that the only way that the this these types of units succeed is if you have agreements with outside agencies who do a lot of the the certain yeah some some money built into your operating budget for services say for the service coordinator and for the recreation but the actual service provision visiting nurse or home making services those kinds of things actually come from agencies that the developer has agreements with to provide those services on site so that's also another reason why having you know more units rather than fewer units to create some efficiencies if somebody's you know if an agency is coming in they'd rather have be helping a lot of people in one place so I think you know it was it was encouraging to see that this is working really well Elizabeth also said anybody who wanted to they'd be happy to give you know tourists of their some of their properties I think they're doing something at Devons if I don't I'm not mistaken maybe that was the closest place they're taking over an existing development at Devons and converting it to this model so I think that's the one that's closest to to Amherst but there's they have stuff again around Newton then up in the North Shore so she was very very anxious to to help us if they can so questions or comments I was just going to say and looking at their website a lot of them look like they're very closer to larger urban areas except for if they're out in Devons that's not very large and very urban but you know I would assume that some of the outside agencies would be transportation agencies because out where Pomeroy Lane is is just one bus that doesn't go that often so I assume that that's built in as part of the model yes and they don't provide it like they don't build it into their operating budget as you know where as some places assisted living typically have their own band that sort of thing but that's they don't have other comments or questions yeah I mean John I think the you know we've been fortunate as a trust to get priority per town owned land for housing but there is a disposition policy that was adopted and so I don't know and then you know there's been discussions that Hickory Ridge would go through a public process so you know I think we can have ideas ready but I'm not sure you know the trust would have you know the first kind of first shot at it I think there's going to be a number of competing needs for um or you know ideas for Hickory so I think this is a good one the 120 units kind of scares me a little bit Rita in terms of the number of units but um you know I will say the housing production plan looked just um east of here on the it's called the slobbery property it's just north of um or behind the valley transporter building and they you know they put 45 units in there and a concept design with uh kind of like cottage style two and a half story homes with multiple multiple buildings and it looked really nice and so my thought is you know you could probably do two of those you pretty easily on Hickory and get 90 units you know without having to be too tall or massive it's just you know would would a developer be willing to come out and do that many building envelopes you know to live community I feel it felt like it was really urban and so um you know and then I think of like Applewood or you know a number of different places around here but they're usually just one big building one big building envelope and so to me the character context of West Pomroy it isn't doesn't support something like that so I you know you know if depending on what kind of prescriptive design guidelines we'd have I feel like you know would they be willing to come out if if we said we don't want one big building that's six stories um you know I asked about that Nate and she said they didn't imagine or she didn't imagine uh the building that they would propose being any larger than three stories all right so I was a little surprised as if sure you are because how do you get that many units on that size property but again she said oh for us that's a big piece of property you know we don't generally have an opportunity to have five to eight acres in the area where we typically do development so maybe they have a good idea about how it would be used efficiently um you know without looking too out of place yeah I mean that would be a huge number of units uh to be able to provide yeah yeah and I think it doesn't have to be the exact two life community model so there are other adaptations yeah because they also do a lot of private fundraising um two life does to um enhance their programs well part of this discussion should be be is there another way you think we should promote the use of the developable land on Hickory Ridge other than older adult housing I mean I've kind of fastened on it but that doesn't mean that as a group we have to go with it you know if you think it would be better to do some other kind of housing there or some mixed housing then that is also something we could propose to the town and town council I was wondering how we started with this particular I mean I just was wondering how we got to this so it's it's nice to hear that this is something you thought of but we could think of we could think of something else not that I have in my pocket something else to think of exactly but maybe you go back to wondering about home ownership in some kind of way and wondering if there's a way to make some kind of at least condo project uh as a way as a way to perhaps I don't even know what that would be like affordable an affordable condominium project well instead of just being a rental you actually have some it's like a condo so you I don't know no I agree Carol that's what I'd like to see on strong street because it's not near public transportation and so I think that would be a good location for a home ownership project because people wouldn't be very low income they might be lower income or modest income which means you know if they were on strong street or off strong street they'd probably need a car to get to work or to do errands or do other things and so I you know when I think about the stuff and I don't expect everybody to agree or think of it the same way I say okay you know we just did an SRO project or helped to foster an SRO project in town um we're working on a project that is primarily for families on east street and belcher town road that's rental I'd like to see a home ownership project on strong street and then I sort of said to myself well maybe we should do a project focused on older adults as well and the place to do that would be hickory ridge so it's not like you know I didn't think about other kinds of groups that needed to be served uh it's just my thinking is okay we've trying to put projects in the pipeline that will serve other groups maybe we should have a project for older adults okay thanks I think I like that idea it's it is um housing for older adults has been mentioned for a long time in amherst it comes up often in housing plans and general planning but there's never a proposal there's never there's never like let's do it here it's always like it's something we should do and so I I like this idea seems like the right place for it so it looks like there's a demand for it because that would have been my question was the demand for affordable housing for older adults here in amherst um and that's that place in space I mean I I I often think more center because it's everything's more accessible but it might be very peaceful out there if there was transportation um but there was also a concept not enough was Wisconsin or Michigan and sort of an intergenerational mixed focus and I know that's probably very controversial because sometimes older adults and sometimes younger adults don't want to mix with each other but there are those models where they were actually helping each other out where younger families had older adults stepping in and you know then also stepping in to help older adults where their families weren't even nearby or on a different coast I know that's more challenging but I mean I think you know intergenerational support is so critical um and I think you know younger children often are not exposed to older people and older people could benefit as well as the younger children in terms of helping each other and if you're a single parent or even two parents who are struggling to raise children having an intergenerational support elder support is also important yeah I don't disagree with you Erica but from what Rita and I learned from talking particularly to the financing group in East Long Meadow is that people who finance these projects don't agree with you it looks like if you want money uh and depend on the source of the money it either has to be exclusively for people 55 and older or people 60 to an older uh did I hear that correctly yeah so unfortunately uh you know that that means we can't do the kind of mixed development you were talking about despite the value that it could very well ask so John one thing my thought is if we are going without having necessarily a priority in terms of housing type population to be served on Hickory Ridge I think you know if you talk to Paul or anyone I think you know one thing I'm hearing is that the types of housing we want there can't be zoned or can't wouldn't be allowed in the zoning that's there and so either it's going to ask me another comprehensive permit or we could recommend right now at this stage as the housing trust that the current zoning is doesn't provide enough density uh you know or the mix of housing types that you know we've discussed and so maybe the first thought is that you know we need to rezone rezone the you know portions of the property that could be developed you know whether and maybe that it maybe some of the zoning that would be down there isn't even sufficient it just it seems it would maybe and maybe a 40 b is fine it just seems strange that to get any of these ideas we're talking about would have to be a 40 b project currently and maybe that's the only way I would have to go because whatever we zone there couldn't be flexible enough to make some of these things work but it's just you know if we have an opportunity to promote something it could be a zone change just to you know make it easier but yeah I I agree um that would be something that we'd have to convince the planning board of right um and again I'm not opposed to taking a shot at that I think that's perfectly reasonable right you know even if we did you know like that Verdean Village you know beacon communities had proposed Verdean Village at Hampshire College you know uh number of years ago and I think that was I think it was over 100 units as well but it was on you know 50 acres and but it was larger you know they're actually pretty large units but um but the idea of having you know two to three story buildings that are you know a number of different building types to get you know a number of units like that you know I mean I like Carol's idea of having I mean I was cheating when Carol when you were speaking I was out of like co-housing it's almost like if this site could be a planned unit residential development occurred um that allows some flexibility in terms of how the units and sites configured um but you know I don't I don't know what you know what you know who would you know what exactly the end result would be but just the right now the you know if you look across the street the zoning is like you know every one home on half an acre or something right I mean that's like if you just mimicked what's in the neighborhood you would get six homes along the front of the property um right or maybe 10 I don't know 10 or right but it wouldn't be this other mix of housing we're talking about so I just think that you know I think that some of the residents might be shocked if we're thinking oh let's try to get 60 units there we'd have to really describe how it could fit in in terms of site planning and design even if there is a need for that type of housing in Amherst um you know I think there'd be some concern about what it would look like wherever we go that's going to be true but I certainly agree well I I mean I personally obviously would like to see the developable land in on Hickory Ridge go for affordable housing and I think there'll be some support for that on town council and so my inclination is to try to get our interest in as quickly as possible um so that people start to think oh yeah that's where the housing trust wants to do a or b or whatever it is that we can settle on um because I think the sooner we get in and again it's like with ARPA the more specifically we can describe what we hope would be there and I don't mean you have to describe a full development but you know enough information so people have a sense that that's something they would like to see so that you know this isn't just a technical uh exercise it's a political exercise as well and we need support from the community and from town council in order to move something like this ahead um which of course reminds me of one other thing um I everyone I believe knows that on Thursday September 2nd at 4 p.m. Amherst neighbors is sponsoring a forum which will focus primarily on housing for older adults as part of that forum I will do a general summary of what's happening with uh affordable housing in town but then we're going to move toward talking more about housing for older adults and uh other people who will be speaking will be uh Donna Hancock who serves as the nutrition coordinator for Highland Valley Elder Services which means she runs the luncheon program at the bank center um which is either meals people can pick up or meals that are delivered now since people are no longer coming to the bank center to eat together uh Donna also lives in Amherst housing authority building and she just talks to people all the time so she's very aware of what's available and what the shortcomings are and she's going to talk about that Jerry Weiss will talk a bit about the need for housing for older adults who are not housed or homeless and uh I will talk about envisioning a new project in Amherst as I've talked to you see about um that would provide affordable housing for older adults and then Mary Beth will be there and she'll kind of act as a discussant to talk about what she's heard and what she thinks the needs are based on her experiences as at that point the former director of the Amherst Senior Center but she's agreed to do that which I'm very pleased about the one thing I don't have for that event is a moderator if anybody is available at 4 p.m. on Thursday September 2nd and would like to serve as a moderator I can probably offer you that uh if not I'll continue to search for somebody to do that between now and September 2nd okay I think that is and we're we're about 10 after nine so I'm 10 minutes over time um I appreciate this meeting we've had a very good meeting and I think I would urge all of you to continue to think about what we should be doing or promoting for Hickory Ridge and if you're not familiar with the site you should go by it's on west Pomeroy Lane you can drive into the parking lot of the old clubhouse and you can see where the golf course was because in fact it still is there if you go on a very rainy day you can see why it's no longer going to be there because there'll be large ponds on the area most of it will become conservation land which means it will be a very pretty place for people to live okay I'll wrap up with that any other last minute comments or thoughts is there anybody who's not part of the panel who's participating Nate that has their hand up I don't see any hands up right now okay well then I think we're probably ready to adjourn I won't do a formal roll call all those in favor of adjourning just say aye I sounds like it's unanimous okay well thanks for allowing the meeting to go a bit longer I appreciate everybody's