 I can bring Amherst media into the room. So they need to be a panelist to record. That's why I don't know. I don't know why don't you bring him into the room just in case. I don't think it creates a problem. Thanks, John. Okay, we're up to. 35 participants. That's very good start. We'll give it a little bit longer. Yeah, we can have 500 on a webinar format. So I was hoping we really pushed that limit. People have done a lot of good work announcing this or. Letting their members members know about it. Yeah. No, I think it's been, there's been really good outreach. Yeah. I see a fair number of ACLT members. On the attendee list. I've got it. Okay. We're at the point where attendees outnumber panelists. Okay. Again, I'm going to ask all the panelists, either it's on mute now or on mute. Shortly before your opportunity to speak comes up. So that you can just move smoothly from the last speaker. To yourself. Okay, I will begin. And let's see. So I'm assuming people can see me and we'll be able to hear me. Okay. Whoever has a phone, please. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Welcome to everyone. I am John Hornick of the Amherst affordable housing advocacy coalition. And also chair of the Amherst municipal affordable housing trust. I want to thank those organizations. And the League of Women Voters of Amherst, as well as the town of Amherst for co-sponsoring this event. We've also had help from at least 20 other community organizations in publicizing. So thanks to all. I'm going to briefly orient you to the plan for this evening. And then we'll begin. John, can you switch to the agenda slide, please? Okay. That'll be up in a minute. It should be on screen. Okay. Let me just say, as you will hear this evening, the path to home ownership for low income households is not easy in Amherst. While the three organization that we'll be presenting tonight, Amherst community land trust, Pioneer Valley Habitat for Humanity and Valley Community Development are all doing their level best. Honestly, only two to three new households achieve home ownership. And then there are years when unfortunately that number is zero. Our goals for this evening are to understand what these three organizations are doing now, what the barriers are, and what we need to do to improve in the future. We will also hear from three homeowners who will talk about the benefits of home ownership for their households and how they were able to achieve this goal. Let me briefly introduce also the team working on this. In addition to the people you will hear from tonight, Francis Goye's floor will be moderating with me. Carol Lewis is racially volunteered to courteously but firmly keep our speaking to time limits that we have set. Nate Malloy, senior town planner will manage the webinar software. And John Page will be tracking questions in the chat. If you have questions, please post them in the chat and John will do his best to break in when appropriate to ask them on your behalf. If we don't get to them all tonight, we'll try to respond by email in the next few days. When we come to the open-ended part of the discussion, which is a little past midway, please raise your hand if you wish to speak. And Nate or John will unmute you. Before I turn things over to Francis to moderate the first panel, I do have one request. Please put your name and email address in the chat so that we have a record of who's attending. Thank you all for your assistance. All right. Well, I guess that's my turn. Thank you so much everybody for coming. We're very excited for this amazing group of people that have joined us and to hear more about what they're all doing to increase homeownership opportunities for folks all around the valley. At first, we'll hear from Linda Slaki from the Amherst Community Land Trust. So Linda, we'd just love to hear a little bit more about what you've done, what you hope to do, and just for folks that are familiar just about your organization at large. Thank you, Francis. And thank you, John, for offering us the opportunity to share the work of the Amherst Community Land Trust. I'm going to be showing a few slides. So Nate, I'll ask if you'll take this down so that I can share a screen. Thank you. There we go. So John asked us to address what we thought were the main obstacles to affordable home ownership. And the one that's really central to what the Amherst Community Land Trust does is simply the prohibitive cost of purchase. Over the last few decades, Amherst has gone from having homes that are affordable for our local workforce to having the least expensive homes on the market pay out of reach for families earning at the area median income of $77,000. And the, a recent home sale won a very few below $300,000 recently closed at $256,000. And to manage that by the usual criteria that you don't take on a home costing more than two and a half times your annual income, that would mean a household income of just over $100,000 a year. So it turns out that in Amherst, the land value is typically a third to a half of the value of the homes that go on the market. And the basic land trust model is one of share ownership, where the family owns the home and the trust owns the land. And in the current market, that's just enough to bring the cost of purchase back within the reach of area median income more a little bit lower. And then the relationship between ACLT and the home owner is laid out in a green, a ground lease. And the, the ground lease is for 99 years and renewable. And it specifies that the home must be owner occupied, which addresses a second part of our mission, which is to try to sustain the family character of Amherst neighborhood. And then the affordability is perpetual because the land always stays in the ownership of the trust. And the home owner agrees at the time they signed the ground lease that the resale value of the home, should they choose to leave it and sell it will be capped at what they paid rising only proportional to the rising area median income over the time they held the house might just hit the forward button. And for some reason it didn't advance the slide. Do I need to stop the share to do that? Maybe I do. Sorry. Practices at home didn't have this problem that changed. I'm just going to go back to the. This where I can change them manually. So the land trust model has actually been around for a long time. It started post civil war. And it's also in more current times been active in a number of university towns. But it's new to Amherst. We'll celebrate the seventh anniversary of our incorporation this coming summer. So it's actually been critical. To our success. That we have partners who are more experienced than we are. I went back to the one before. Sorry. Sorry about that, folks. I don't seem to be able to get out of using. The version that I can edit in and switch the slides. I hope everybody can see that. I'm a little bit afraid that. We can see your third slide. Okay. Okay. You're still looking at the first one. No, we're looking at the partnership has been. Okay. And you can see the whole slide. Yes. Okay. Okay. Fine. Thank you. So the art, the two projects that we've done, one completed the first one and the second one in progress. Depended crucially on the partnership of the town, which has been providing the major funding for us through the community preservation act funds. And then equally crucially on, especially the partnership of habitat for humanity and valley community development, who are much more experienced than we are managing this kind of project. So in the first project, we bought the land from the North Amherst community farm and habitat built the house and also manage the selection and mentoring of the homeowners. And you'll hear from one of those homeowners in a few minutes. In the second project, again, CPA funded. A first time home buyer subsidy project. An offer to families and we've worked with valley community development on that. To both to market the project and to select and mentor the home buyers. So one of those projects is complete. We have one family in their new home and the second family still looking. Okay. Linda, you're at about five minutes. Thank you. Then I'll just tell you a little bit more about where the resources come from for the, the homes. Now that we are working with, in addition to the, the funding that I called their attention to from the town, the interface housing corporations and individual donations have been important, but surprisingly to us and, and also to the national land trust meeting. And we're also working with the local land trust organization. Another major resource has been the willingness of a number of our members to donate their own properties. And the total value of the commitments we have in hand under that heading is slightly more than a million dollars. The first to be implemented is 14 best in street, which was the home of our founding president, Morianne Adams. And I want to end my own remarks by acknowledging that the first to be implemented is Linda. She is an outstanding, Visible Mark of her contribution to ACLT. Her level of commitment and her organizational skills were absolutely crucial for turning this from an idea into a going concern. Thank you. Thank you so much, Linda. Community land trusts that are an incredible model. And it's really awesome to see that be implemented here. It's one of the oldest land trusts in the country. So we are lucky to be in a state where it's put to use. Excellent. So quickly before moving forward, it looks like folks are trying to put their names and emails in the chat, but it doesn't seem like there is a chat option. So just it pointing that out. Yeah. I'm looking, I think this is Nate. I think the way this, the, the town's zoom format, I'm not, I'm not finding a chat based on their, on the zoom information. It should be available, but I'm not seeing it as an option. So I'm still looking. Right. Well, we'll think about what to do about that, but moving right along. I would love to hear from pioneer valley habitat for humanity, Megan McDonough. We are very excited to hear from you. Thank you. So pioneer valley habitat for humanity builds homes in both Franklin and Hampshire counties. We do, we're an affiliate of habitat for humanity, international, but we're a local nonprofit organization here in the valley. We see the work we do with tone ownership as breaking the cycle of poverty for people. It's a generational change that can be made by moving towards home ownership. There have been studies that show that home ownership leads to increases in graduation rates, better health for children, net family wealth. It also is something that's really this quote from back in 2007 about a safe affordable home being like a vaccine. I think is something that is very poignant today as we have been experiencing what it's like to shelter in place. So we have built 46 homes since 1989. And it's 12 of those have been in Amherst. Amherst, the town has been a great partner in that. And we really couldn't do it without all of these partnerships because the way that we build homes is with the community. These are old pictures. We don't have big crowds like that out there today. But there have been a lot of people that have been sheltered in Amherst. And we don't have a lot of people like that out there today. But there have been thousands of hours of sweat equity contributed it to our homes from community members from the future homeowners themselves. And that is something that just is unique. I think to the habitat model is that this is a picture of one of our home homeowners and they lift the hammers themselves. All of our homeowners must demonstrate that they have a good ability to shelter. And that's why we're looking for a housing need and ability to pay an affordable mortgage and a willingness to partner with us in the construction process. Right now we are finishing houses. In Schutzfairy and in North Hampton, two single family homes that should be finished later this on two houses in Pelham right near the Amherstown line. The application deadline for these two homes was just a couple of weeks ago. And we had over 50 applications for these two houses in Pelham. So there's a really strong desire to live in this area. And we, you know, it's pretty amazing to think of how many people took, our application's not simple. You have to, it's a mortgage application. You have to provide a lot of documentation, a lot of effort went into these applications. Sometimes people in the community think that we give away homes for free. And what we actually do is we sell newly constructed homes to people with low incomes. We work with them on accessing affordable mortgage products or we offer the mortgage ourselves. And that's part of that solution. That eligibility includes an ability to pay the affordable market mortgage, but they also do sweat equity and work on building the house. These were the income guidelines for our most recent project in Pelham. I think that when people talk about affordable home ownership, people don't know if it is this for me or is this for someone else? And I think that that's, it's a pretty narrow window of people we're looking for. It's people who have a stable income. So they have a minimum income of $29,000 a year, but they're under a maximum income, which is 60% of the area median income here, which for a family of four would be about 51,000. So in looking about who earns somewhere between 30 and $50,000 per year. A lot of our homeowners are single parents. I think that's an aspect of not having two incomes is really difficult to make that switch towards home ownership. The professions of our homeowners are across the board. They are in a variety of different fields. So they're your neighbors. Sometimes people get upset because we're not doing home ownership for people who are extremely low income. But when you're a homeowner and you have to deal with the repairs and taxes going up, there is a point where that's why we have a minimum income because we want to make sure there's a little bit of resiliency there. I mentioned earlier that we work with volunteers. All right. Well, we love our volunteers. We've been having to limit them due to COVID-19. So we have small groups right now, but we still need volunteers. These are old pictures from back when we had meetings in person, but pretty much everything's over Zoom now. So if there's people who want to get involved, be it for committees, then we're happy to work with them. So thank you, John, and everyone who helped organize tonight's forum. Appreciate being included. Mentioning that we have 50 applications for two houses means that we have a big problem here with access to affordable home ownership. There's at least 48 families that I know are still gonna be looking after we do our lottery. Megan, thank you so much. The work that you all do is incredible, both at the, of course, the national scale. I think Habitat for Humanities actually one of the greatest providers of new units in the country, which is incredible in the work you're doing locally. Also thinking about the challenges to home ownership and sustainable home ownership. So thank you again so much and we'll have a chance to talk more. Up next we have Jane. Jane, your name, your last name, I'm a butcher, Jane Wachler, from Valley Community Development. Please welcome. Thank you so much, Frances. Thank you, John, for organizing this event tonight. It's a great conversation and Valley is proud to be a part of it. I think Megan ended on a really good point there to have 50 people apply and to know that 48 of them are still gonna be looking. I think that, let me say a little bit about Valley. I could not get my PowerPoint up, so I'm just gonna speak. But Valley historically has developed both single family and multifamily homes. Currently we own and manage 80 affordable multifamily homes and partner with some projects that are in completion and operating another 136 units. But historically we've developed 280 units of single family and multifamily housing for low income, primarily low income families. Our homeowner program is Donna Cabana, is our homeowner program coordinator. She's fabulous. She's been doing this for a long time and she does a great job of connecting not only with her clients who come to us for services. Thank you, Megan. But also with our community partners and really just has her finger on the pulse of what's happening. And she has really great creative thinking about what needs to happen to really resolve the issues that we're talking about tonight. Because in this region, she just struggles to find the people who come to her who can have the income to support a mortgage and our income qualified and then cannot find the housing that in this market that they can afford. So programs like the Land Trust, what a boon that we've been able to place one family in one of those units and we'll be doing another. I would say that we also have down payment assistance programs that come through CDBG funds or CPA funds. One of the struggles that we see there is that we can have real estate agents who kind of dissuade people from using it. They kind of want easy transactions and we struggle with banks working with those programs as well. And so that's one area I just wanna throw out there that more education and just having friendly partners out there and teaching folks how to get over those hurdles is a big important part of us being able to be effective with the programming that we have available. And Donna does one-on-one down-to-earth, gritty work with our clients helping them to prepare to buy a home, to look for at the listings that are out there. She talks straight to folks about what their expectations should be, what they can accomplish. And I think that working with this clientele it's very important that we've got a good connection of understanding those realities. And watching Donna do her work since I arrived at Valley last year has just been amazing to me that she really is able to do that in a way that I think her clients love her for the help she's given and for the way that she's very down-to-earth about what the real issues and struggles are. So I think that right now Valley, we're looking to get more creative around the funding sources that we have. CPA funding, here's another example that we're talking about. CPA funding allows for a little bit higher ceiling of income which allows us to find more potential home buyers that will have a little bit more income to support a higher mortgage. And also we're just looking at a higher amount of subsidy or down payment assistance to help to really make it worthwhile for all the parties involved, for people to kind of see the value of having some additional money to help with down payment assistance or any other subsidies such as the land trust that helps to accomplish a purchase for low and moderate income folks. So that's us in a nutshell. I didn't give us the whole picture of Valley but we are developing affordable multi-family units. We have a pipeline that's active and we also do small business counseling assistance to low and moderate income. And our mission statement is to empower underserved populations in the region. And I don't know what can do that but providing some folks access to home ownership. It's a huge opportunity for people to build wealth and stability in their lives. So we look forward to this conversation and continuing to work with all of you. Wonderful, Jane. Thank you so much. Excellent. And I think if I'm not mistaken, we also have some folks from Wayfinders in the room. Ooh, and we have an echo. Okay. So we have Mel and Tuna and Zalee Tejada on assisting renters to become homeowners. So you guys have the floor now. Thank you, Francis. My name is Zalee. I am the property manager of Olympia Oaks and Buraná Farm, St. Amherst Mass. I have with us is Mel and Tuna. He's the vice president of property and asset management and Faith William, who is the senior vice president of property and asset management here with us. I want to thank you guys for the invitation. This is a great discussion. I do have a few families in our portfolio and Amherst that have purchased homes within the last 12 months. I have about six families, which is great. One of those families purchased in Amherst, the other ones have purchased in the surrounding areas. We have brought over to our community members programs to assist them on how to budget, financial literacy, and first some home buyers courses. And part of that is also the Wayfinders. Wayfinders has that line of business where we could bring them over to our community rooms and give our tenants that opportunity. While we have done that because of COVID, we have limited our usage of our community room, but we're looking to bring in those resources back to our tenants, maybe online. So they could have the opportunity to meet their goals. And it's very important to acknowledge that the reason why these tenants have been able to move forward and set their goals is because of their live on affordable housing. And this has given them the opportunity to be able to set budgets or set goals by being in properties where they are actually paying 60% of the area of medium income, or less. And I'm gonna pass it on to Mel and Tuna so he could talk more about the affordability. Thank you, Selly. Just to capitalize a little bit on what Selly was saying, you know, we've done a lot of work in the Pyreneur Valley, but I wanna focus on the affordability portion because I think it's important for us to highlight that the success of some of these folks in these communities has come for ways of the affordable rents that are provided to these apartments, which represent a safe, decent home that they can live and raise a family, while at the same time being able to meet their monthly obligations and also be able to save for a down payment to be able to save to maybe pay off some of those things that are in their credit reports that are obstacles to becoming bankable for them. So these are the things that a family living in some of the affordable housings that we own. We own and manage two in Olympia, one at 85 Olympia Drive called Olympia Oaks that's 42 units of affordable housing. And then we have 27 units on 12 momentum drive, also in Amherst called Butternut Farms. And so I won't mention some of the other stock of rental units in Amherst because I wanna play nice with our colleagues right in the community. But as I was looking online today in preparation for just this discussion, you know, that I picked three different sites and again, I won't mention them, but the rents range from 1750 to 1955 for a two bedroom unit on this particular site that I looked at. And on another one, it was from $3,000 to $3,100 for a two bedroom, again, in the city of Amherst. So you can see how that is maybe a barrier for folks to be able to afford a rent like that and also be able to make some savings and try to pay off some of the obligations and debts and things in their credit to be able to become bankable. You know, we're really happy to be able to share that an affordable rent in one of our sites in Amherst is less than $1,100 for a two bedroom unit. Again, Olympia Oaks is a property that was built about six to seven years ago and you're talking the envelopes are super tight, you know, triple pane windows, you know, 12 inches of installations is a beautiful property. I invite anybody that wants to pass by to look at it. But our contribution here to this panel which is a great discussion. And I think that every opportunity that a home buyer has to be able to leverage opportunities from all the service providers in this platform is truly important. And I think we see our mission as creating affordability to be able for folks to enter a city as beautiful as Amherst. And while it may not be an immediate way that they get into home ownership, they can enter our properties, live in a safe, decent home in the town of Amherst while long-term their savings to be able to overcome whatever obstacles are preventing them for home ownership at this time. So with that being said, thank you so much for the opportunity. Anyone that has any questions, you're welcome to reach us at wayfinders.org. There is a property management dropdown and they can look at all of our affordable properties throughout the Pioneer Valley. Thank you. Wonderful, thank you both so much. And I'm sorry we don't have the chat function as they're working for us right now, but we will definitely give a shout out to other organizations and their links in a different way. We will think about how to do that. And up next, we'll have a chance for folks to ask questions. But first, we also wanted to hear the perspective from the other side. So we are going to hear from three homeowners. So congratulations to you all as a renter one day. I hope to be a homeowner to hear about all your experiences. So we will start with Jeremiah Woolley. If you are around, yes, you're muted, wonderful. So I'd love to hear from you. All right, thanks, Francis. Again, my name is Jeremiah. I'm really glad to be here tonight. It's an honor. You know, a little bit about myself. I've been in Amherst for about 19 years now. I moved from Eastern part of the state to UMass, Amherst and I just haven't left. So I love the area. I do miss the ocean, but I love the mountains too. So, you know, and I work in public transit, Pioneer Valley Transit as a bus operator and a graduate from UMass. And, you know, part of... So I wouldn't be here today in my shoes if it wasn't for the generosity of Maureen Adams and Linda Slakey did mention her earlier. I almost were tearing up because I mean, we had about 14 year relationship. You know, I've been living in the studio apartment for about 14 years, you know, helping out. It started with just gardening and then it moved into sort of care, you know, shopping and helping and, you know, she did pass in October. So it's been challenging, you know. So now I do, I have a house and so Maureen did gift the house to ACLT and with the house came a person, which is me. So ACLT gets to have me part of their donation. And it's, you know, it's really been a blessing. So this is really all new to me. I learned about ACLT. I just knew, I just knew the four letters about five or six years ago when it was starting. Maureen mentioned him, you know, sorry, I remember in the pioneering days when it started. But now I'm in it and it's scary at the same time because it's all new, but ACLT has been terrific, you know. So let's see, part of my arrangement now is, as Linda mentioned, ACLT is part of land versus the house. So I have a life right to live in the home. And if I have a due, choose to leave when I do, you know, I can't resell at the value, you know, the house would be resold affordably. So right now I'm in the process of changing utilities into my name, you know, electric. So this again, this is all new. I've been living in the home, but you know, I haven't had to deal with the finances part. And that's a new thing for me. You know, so it's learning new skills of the financing part of ownership. You know, I do know the house pretty well, which is a good thing. So right now it's definitely in a big transition for me, you know. And part of the ACLT, you know, they're not really, at first I'm like, I really didn't know if I wanted to be part of this whole thing. But it turns out it's actually, it's a really neat, it's a neat process. You know, they're not really at the end of the street watching everything go around, you know. It's part of it is a quiet and enjoyment living. And I'm also an active member and a resident of the ACLT, which is, you know, we have a meeting once a month. So that's been new for me in the last few months. So I think that's about it. Oh yeah, one other thing. I will get a portion if I do decide to leave, there'll be a portion of the equity of the home that I will get. But essentially what I think my position in this home right now is being a steward, you know, for future generations. For future generations to come and sort of the caretaker for the property, you know, there'll be more people after me, you know. So I'm just feeling very grateful for Morianne, actually for leaving this home. And it's definitely a legacy. So I look forward to learning more as I go on too. I think the doors are opening, you know, for new adventures. So again, thank you for having me speak tonight. And that's it, I'll pass. Wonderful, thank you so much, Jeremiah. I can only imagine it's like half the struggle is getting the home and then you'd like have to maintain it and do all these things that as a renter you don't have to. So it's the learn by doing. Awesome, up next, Raheem Sadooni. We'd love to hear from you. I think you had experience both with Habitat and with ACLT. Flora is yours. Hello, everyone. My name is Raheem and thank you, Francis, for organizing this. And thank you, John, as well. And thank you all for attending this important meeting about home ownership, affordable home ownership. So my name again is Raheem Sadooni and I live in North Amherst in a Habitat house that built in ACLT land. So before entering an agreement with Habitat and ACLT, I would like to share with you my experience before that. So I was exploring the housing in the area, I mean, the valley and it was, I'm sorry, before I was exploring the housing in the area and discovered that it was nearly impossible to own a house in terms of the income and the possibilities and the jobs. I mean, so the expenses comparing, the expenses comparing to my income, it was like impossible to own a house. Here it comes to discover that there is ACLT and there is Habitat. First, I know about Habitat that they're offering that the opportunities for low income. So I applied and back in 2015 for the first time, then I was not selected at that time. Then applied again, 2018 and 2017 I was approved and my house was built by 2018. So the partnership here is between Habitat and ACLT. I'm really glad to represent both organizations tonight. So after the house built, we moved here with my wife and my two kids. And so this partnership made it possible for us to live in a house that we will own and made it easy for us to live a stable life. And so ACLT lent, leaves the land for me, but I own the house, but the terms are 99 years for a small fee, which is basically kind of nothing. So it made it possible still you live in a house for 99 years, who knows if even my kids will be here in 99 years. So it's basically you're owning the house and the land. So thank you for this partnership. We hope that we see more opportunities like this, that the partnership between the more organizations who knows ACLT, Habitat and Valley CDC and to create more opportunities for low income people to own their houses. I mean, to make that for them to, I don't know, I'm sorry, for the low incomeers to find opportunities to own their houses for a better life. So and ACLT also allow me to be a board member, which I am right now. And it's good for me that I can participate, I can be interacting in making decisions about the future of owners that owned by ACLT. And it's a lot of learning for me, but it's very exciting to be here that now I can help make decisions for who's gonna own the house and as well go back to Habitat. Before the house built, I was participating in building my own house and I know all small details around my house. I already started making some repairs and so it's really important that you learn throughout the process while you're owning the house in the near future. And I think that's it. And if I forget something, I apologize for that. And here I would like to thank all volunteers. It's very important that the community is built by volunteers. I don't mean the community but the houses are built by all the volunteers. So thank you all and thank you all for attending this meeting. Thank you so much for him. We really appreciate you being here. I'm sure you have many other things to do on a Tuesday night, but thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate you and your story. And last but certainly not least, we have Maxine Anderson here and Max. I think that you had experience with Valley Community Development, so we just love to hear what your path has been to homeownership. Yes, good afternoon everyone. I'm really glad to be a part of this and to share my story with Valley CDC. So I've owned my home now for about eight years and it's really, I can't believe that my dream has been a reality for the last eight years. So the way I've lived in Amherst for close to 20 years, I was a single mom of two young children. I was working at UMass. I graduated from UMass, been living here for a while. My kids were going to school. And there was no way that I thought I could own a home in Amherst. No way with my income. Even though I was making decent income, there was no way I could own a home. But the rent that I was paying was also market rent as well, which was not affordable. I wasn't paying affordable rent because it's pretty expensive to live in this area. And I was thinking to myself, I was like, my dream is to own my home. And so I was living at this, I was living at an apartment. I was like, the next time I moved, I'm moving into my house. And that was my dream. And I started saving. I've been always been a saver, but my credit wasn't that great. And I would start to working on my credit, but there was things that, I had no idea about how to work on my credit. And I started the process, kind of looking around trying to find a realtor and everything went to a bank and my credit wasn't that great. So of course they turned me down. They weren't able to help me. So I started doing my research and luckily I came across Valley CDC. And this incredible agency that really helped me. And that's when I met the incredible Donna Cabana, who pretty much took me by the hand and walked me through the process. She went over my budget. She pretty much told me about, all about Valley CDC and how they could help me to become a homeowner. And I just remember how discouraged I was. And I remember I was walking by and I saw her at one of the bank because I had just been, I was just turned down by one of the bank. They told me that I would not get the loan. And Donna was on the other side, I walked over and she was there with a flyer of affordable home in Amherst. And I was like, that home is gonna be mine. And so she gave me the flyer and I work with Donna and with all the grants and all the, and Donna was able to point me to the right bank and helped me to get all the grants. And I was helping me to get all my credits together and my budget and point me to all the, she pretty much held my hand and walked me through the whole process. She's incredible. So I was able to own my dream became my reality. And thank, I'm so grateful that I was able to, that Valley CDC is such an incredible agency that I was, they were able to help me to own my own home. And I'm so grateful that I've been in my home for eight. It's been tough, but it's been all worth it. So thank you so much for all the work that you do. Thank you so much, Bags. We appreciate you being here. We appreciate all three of you being here and sharing your stories, owning a home is both very personal and everything. You know, it's an emotional roller coaster, it's a financial insanity. So we can't appreciate you enough for sharing it with us. Thank you so much. And John, I think you're up next. I am Francis, thank you. I think since we've been unable to use the chat function, the sensible thing to do right now is to give people an opportunity to ask questions. So we'll do that next. If you're called upon, you can also talk about barriers or any of the issues that you've heard raised. But if you have questions, please raise your hand and we'll call on you. That means you'll have to unmute. And I hear, I see, sorry, Sayonara is the first person to ask questions. So John, actually I'm not here to ask questions, but I'd like to share that I'm also one of those people who have been helped by more than one organization who have attended here and like coming from completely being homeless and getting help from wayfinders who gave me a case manager, a wonderful case manager who helped me to save. And then I got acquainted with Megan and her amazing program and I was accepted. I filled in this application, it took me forever. The minute I gave my application to Megan, she remembers I bet I cried. And then it was so hard to let go of all the documents that I had prepared. And she advised me to take the first time homeowner workshop and that helped me because when Julie at the town of Amherst contacted me with the Flyer from Valley CDC that they have this house in Amherst, I took my, I mean, I like sadly let go of the habitat house and I applied and Donna Cabana helped me get this house in Amherst that I now live in since 2019. Going from completely a homeless person, right now I'm the adult and I'm going to cry. I'm the adult and youth education coordinator at Jewish Family Service of Western Mass. I'm also a PhD student at the University of Amherst at the College of Education. I have three kids and I'm a single mom and I'm now helping others. Had I not received this help from Megan, from Wayfinders, from Donna Cabana, I was not going to be where I am now. So I'd like to say thank you for all of you and thank you for allowing me to help others right now from my position. And I just, I don't know what to say but you've made my life and my kid's life a life. Thank you. Thank you, Sayonara, great to hear another story and it's also great to hear what a team effort. The various organizations that work in Amherst as well as outside of Amherst to assist people in achieving home ownership. So great story, thank you. And I see Chad, you look like you're here. Why don't you unmute and speak up please. Hi, thanks for the opportunity. This is a question that both Jane and John might not be able to answer. The people to answer it are not here. The answer is really about why we need more diversity in class and race in housing. So the question is, how can we convert land and existing buildings into affordable housing? Thank you. Well, I don't know if I have an answer to that Chad. Like I said. Yeah, I will say you give me an opportunity to briefly announce that on April 20th we will have our second forum, which will focus on racial equity and housing. So it'll be again, Tuesday, April 20th at 6.30 there'll be a more formal announcement. Does anybody else want to respond to Chad's question? Sorry Chad, the question was how do we create more housing in town? Yes, from existing buildings and existing land. Some of the land, I make the distinction because some is open and some is already built on. That which is built on should be converted. It's a lot cheaper way to make affordable housing than building a structure. Right, so I think that's, and I'm sure the CDCs can chime in here, but I think it does depend. For example, there's some structures that are either very old or have a lot of issues with them. That truthfully it makes more sense to tear them down and start over, but many times housing does get rebuilt, so to say, in existing structures. So there's a lot of schools, for example, that have been reused for housing. There's actually old armories all over the state and they've actually been reused, a lot of it for veterans housing or for single rooms. But we need to, a mixture of both because we have not necessarily more people, but we have smaller families now. So you have people that need more houses than before, basically. And so we need to both build and we need to keep what we have, which is why we have all these amazing organizations. And another thing is we need more money. We need more money from the government, from the state, from the federal level, from the local level, because all these things are costly and it costs basically the same to build an affordable unit than it does a market rate unit. So those are a few of the things. Then we need zoning that helps us build housing in places where it makes sense and reuse places that make sense. But that's all I'll say. If anybody else wants to say something. Well said. Well said. Okay, thanks, Francis. The next person who raised their hand. I agree with what Francis said. I just wanted to add that on the local level, Habitat has been able to build affordable homes on land that the town has identified. So we built two homes on the Hawthorne Farm property that was part of a larger project. And it took leadership from the various town departments to set aside some of that land for affordable housing. So I think that the work of the planning departments and the housing committee that John is on advocating for affordable housing in town to try and really with a fine-toothed comb look for where those parcels might be. When we're talking about small home ownership projects, we happily build and fill lots to fill in where we can with a couple more homes here and there throughout town. Okay, thanks, Megan. And I'll have a little bit more to say about the development of affordable housing at the very end of the program. Janet, Janet Keller. Hi, thank you for this opportunity to bring a message from my friend, Alyssa Rubenstein. She has been a 47-year resident of Amherst, migrating from Cosby Avenue and Fearing Street and now living at Greenleaves in Amherst. And she would like to comment on the need for affordable workforce housing. And she says, I began working at Amherst Regional Junior High in January, 1972. And during the 70s and 80s, my students were not only the children of college and university professors and staff, but of town firefighters, police officers, public school teachers, plumbers, locksmiths, postal workers, farmers, and small business owners downtown, or as she says, or uptown as it was known in those days. Many of them had relatives who had lived in Amherst for generations. Now, fast forward to June, 2002 when I retired after 40 years of teaching at Amherst Regional Mill School, same building, but different name. I'd noticed that the demographic of the school had changed. Many of the next generations of the children I had taught years ago no longer lived in Amherst. I also noticed that the houses where my former students once lived were now student rentals, or else had been upscaled to more expensive residences. In the almost 20 years since I've retired, this trend has not changed. So when the Amherst Community Land Trust was formed, my husband and I joined because we saw that here was one way to make home ownership possible for this missing cohort of working families. Thank you. Thanks, Janet. I appreciate that statement. I know I did work with Pioneer Valley Planning Commission a few years ago, and we saw that there was a huge drop from about the year 2000 to more or less the present of 700 families with children living in Amherst. And that seems to mirror the statement that you just read of her experience. So I appreciate you bringing that to us. The next person up I have is Julio Alves. Is that right? Yes. Hi, thank you. I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas about how to make home ownership possible for low-income people who make less than the $29,000 that you talked about. I mean, there might be programs, for example, where someone could have a co-signer in the way that many market rate homes get sold. And also I'm particularly concerned about making home ownership possible for single people or maybe families of two who may have an income below $29,000. I think that it's great that we are providing homes for families, but I would like to also see more opportunities for single people. And I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas. I remember a number of years ago, reading about this church in Detroit that was building tiny homes that were very affordable in which people paid very limited rents and were able to own it after a certain number of years. I'm just wondering if anyone has any ideas about how we can go about doing that. Thank you. Thank you, Julio. I appreciate that question. And I'm looking, I don't see any more people raising their hands. So I think we're gonna take this opportunity. I think, sorry, John. I think Megan wanted to respond. Oh, sorry, I didn't see that, Megan. No, I just, Pioneer Valley Habitat for Humanity built a one-bedroom house in Northampton a couple of years ago and sold it to a single individual. So we have been working on diversifying the types of homes we build so that they range from the one bedroom to the more typical three bedroom family house. And we, it's a real challenge to figure out how to get to those lower income groups. So even doing a one bedroom house, the infrastructure and land costs of bringing those things to the house are still significant. Zoning also plays a part in being able to find some place that's a good fit for a small house. We did that 650 square foot house on a, I think it was about an eighth or a 10th of an acre, a very small lot. But I'd love to see in the future something clusters of homes like that where you have more opportunity for shared resources. The challenge with that is you have to have a big enough site to be able to do something like that and zoning that supports it. And I would definitely lean towards wayfinders of Ally CDC for more experience providing supportive services. So the project like the one in Detroit that you mentioned, I think was paired with a agency that did supportive services for those people making that big transition. Habitat does a mentorship program, but we don't have ongoing support in place after the homeowners move in. And I think that that's, it needs some really more hands-on services to be able to help people through some of those challenges. John, you only have about a little less than a minute left for this section. Okay, thanks, Carol. Well, Kathleen, I see that you have your hand up. Kathleen Anderson, could you join us please? Kathleen, you disappeared from my screen. Are you there? I think she'll come back. Okay. Can you hear me? Yes, now I can hear you. Thank you. Okay. Yeah, so I was just going to reiterate and to piggyback on Julio's comment about tiny homes and Megan gave some good background on the challenges we need to overcome to make that happen. And so I'm looking to find out how and who we can get on board to work on zoning changes as well as cost efficiency in making a tiny home community possible. I know that the one in Detroit and there have been others. And I have sent lists around to John and some other people on the housing committee about the different communities around the country as well as in other places like Canada, for instance, that have built tiny homes that have made it possible. And so I'd like to see that happen. That's great, Kathleen. And maybe we'll find a place to be able to do that. Are you still there? Yep. Did I cut you off? Yes, yes. Right now there are really big homes that are around the Valley on big pieces of land that could have been multiple tiny homes on the same amount of land. So I want us to think about how to expand our thinking to include the possibility of tiny homes. Great. Well, I hope as the housing trust we can look for opportunities to do that. I'm gonna allow one more question before we move back to our original panel. I see Barbara Cooper has her hand up. Could you please speak, Barbara? Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, I couldn't see my picture so I wasn't even sure if I was on, but I could see yours. I think this is a zoning question. I think that was mentioned by the questioner. But until we have zoning support for tiny homes, I think it's gonna be pretty impossible to construct them. I don't think they have the sort of project that would fall easily under 40B. So I think that's a planning issue. Okay, I think you're probably right. I don't know whether you could do it under a special comprehensive permit, but lacking that the only route would be a change in zoning, I agree. Okay, let me turn it back to our original panel members and ask them what else they think we should be doing as a community where they would like additional support as an organization so that we can go beyond the relatively small number of new homeowners that we see in Amherst each year. So anyone can jump in from the original panel. John, I'll say something that continues to come up since the pandemic which is, and that I think our folks who spoke about their experience connecting with Donna at a bank, the persistence that it takes that for people to like find a path towards the opportunities that are out there, I think that the challenge is outreach to find the folks and connect with them and get enough information in enough people's hands that there really is a word of mouth, a chain of communication that's getting the word out. I think that some of the ways that we used to connect with people are gonna be quite reduced for a while. And a lot of folks who need this information are not gonna be necessarily plugged in to all of the communication channels where they're gonna learn about it. So I think that raising hopes and having stories be out there that this is possible, to have Maxine talk about her dream becoming a reality, there's a lot of people who feel very defeated when, and we've had a hard time attracting folks to the Land Trust Lottery. And that's one of the things I think we learned there is that people might not think that it's gonna happen for them. And so where there are opportunities, I think those connections are really important. I'd like to pick up on that a little bit and go at it from another side as well. And also tie in that communication piece and working through the neighborhood. And it also goes back to Chad's question about tapping into how do we work with existing infrastructure. So one of the things that Linda and Jeremiah pointed out in the stories about Amherst Community Land Trust is that we're actually discovering this wonderful opportunity, this wonderful resource in the community where Morianne and other individuals in the community are prepared to donate their home or some of the value in their homes to allow housing that currently is unaffordable to become a permanent affordable resource. And ACLT is on track to have at least four homes acquired that way. And the kind of networking and meeting people and telling stories that Jane's talking about that's really important for the incoming homeowners or the potential homeowners is equally important for us as we build this resource within our community. So just as Megan was describing how sort of working with the town on finding these infill lots, these pieces of land that can serve housing, we can also work with neighbors whether an individual may be able in the best case to donate their property to ACLT or another organization or maybe they can just donate their land or maybe they'll just won't donate but maybe do a bargain sale and give us first option on their house when they're ready to sell it. So just the fact of not having to compete on the market even if they can't discount their price is an opportunity. So this kind of networking that you're talking about, Jane this kind of getting the word out and letting people know what's possible and is a great way to capture resources that we have in our community. I can add to that, John. One of the ways that I've introduced people thinking about why to even think about something like the community land trust and a way to frame the problem in terms that makes sense to people who've been here a long time. There is a significant demographic in Amherst of people who've been here a long time. And in fact, I would count these days even 20 years as a long time but many have been here more like 40 or 50. If you ask someone who's been there that long to just reflect personally on what their economic circumstances were when they acquired a home in Amherst and then do they know what would be the case for someone who tried to come into town in the same circumstances could they do the same thing? And if you came here more than 20 years ago unless you came from substantial wealth the answer is no. If you came with a good job and could afford a house in Amherst 20 years ago it's almost certainly the case that somebody's starting in the same way you started couldn't afford a house in Amherst. And when I talk to people that way it often uncovers a sense of loyalty to the town itself as though the community has a point of view here and they actually have a stake. I know it's a struggle that sounds very idealistic. And if I hadn't already had the experience I might have joined the crowd who say oh people are gonna go for top dollar why should they not profit by the market rise? But in fact at least a significant number of our members are taking the opposite tack. They care more about the fact that the home that they started in as a young family will be started in by another young family who came in in roughly similar circumstances actually matters more to them than maximizing their dollar at exit. Thank you, Linda. Someone else wanna jump in next talk about what else we could do. John, I think that I'm just gonna put my development hat here on for a second but as we look at these challenges that we have it's all a domino effect. And right now the market is good we have a healthy market where prices are being driven up. And so what that creates is obviously a barrier for a level of folks that have a income that can't reach those prices. And so when things like this happen we have to think outside the box we have to start thinking of different innovative ways and how do we develop? Jane could be my witness here that as we develop affordable properties we're dictated by what the HED is funding, right? And there is no funding dollars for home ownership. So that makes me think of, okay this is the box in which we're confined to and I'm gonna think outside of it. And it's maybe the opportunity of partnering up with a developer that could see a piece of land and say, okay I'm gonna develop 37 houses and a portion of the proceeds of the equity that you're gonna make on those properties you could put a certain amount maybe six of those properties that you could put some money into them. So depending on what you build them for what you could sell them for then you could take some of that equity and build the six that are gonna become affordable. These are just examples that you really as a team we gotta look at what the regulations are what's out there for city ordinance and zoning and seeing who is that developer out there that's developing market rate housing and maybe not see them as a threat but given that the market is good right now how we could approach them and see if they wanna partner up with someone like Jane and Valley CDC or any other affordable housing developer in this area to create different ways of looking at opportunities. So that's my two cents from my development hat that I like to contribute and I'll leave you all with that. Thank you Mel. I just quickly chiming in there. There's half of the problem is that there is just not a lot of money out there to create home ownership opportunities that are subsidized. I do have to say and disclose that my employer does have a home ownership development program but it is the first time in more than 10 years that the state has put money aside but there are at least $60 million right now to develop first time home buyer opportunities but I think that there's a lot more needs to be done at every level to really show that there is a huge need for this and a huge interest in creating more opportunities but yeah, that's a huge barrier. I'm also, and sorry if I'm asking a question prematurely but I'd love to hear about sustaining home ownership so half the struggle is getting into a home but as we saw during the foreclosure crisis it doesn't really stop at getting a home. You have to make sure that the folks that you are helping continue to be able to pay and stay on time so that they're not in a worse situation so I'd love to hear a little bit about what you all do about that. Well, I can say that Donna's telling me some stories right now about people who are as they're aging and they're on fixed income and they're needing real advice and sometimes they're facing a decision that it's very, very tough for them to stay in their housing and a lot of times you might have adult kids living with an aging parent and even then if the aging parent passes away the adult kids aren't gonna be able to carry on the mortgage and so there's just a lot of different scenarios that require a lot of planning ahead so one of the things that we offer is post-purchase counseling to try to set people up to succeed. I think that Mel's ideas are really good to think outside of the box of what can make affordable home ownership possible is really good but there is a reality that it takes attendance, it takes attention along the years to really help people succeed and that's where there's not finding that funding to really make sure people are being supported as they go. It is a really key part of that success. I don't know that we've got a lot of magic answers but we are reaching out to banks to help anticipate the foreclosures that we think are gonna be coming in the wake of the pandemic and getting some interest there and hopefully we can come up with some help to at least equip people with the tools they need and to act quickly, act sooner rather than later. From ACLT's point of view, we're quite new as an organization and don't have the kind of technical experience that Jane's talking about and Donna has but one of the things that I think is really strong about the community land trust model is that we are a membership organization and Raheem pointed out earlier that in becoming a homeowner he simultaneously became a member and actually as part of our governance is on the board and so when you become a homeowner with ACLT you also become a member of an organization of a community organization that has both ACLT homeowners and other community members in it and again, we're young as an organization but elsewhere what the model has proven is you have a kind of support system and we intend to be there for each other to provide linkages to support, help finding the kinds of support people need when they need it and in that way, carry forward and although because we have just three homeowners currently all new but statistically nationally community land trusts have done much better with foreclosures than other types of housing similar price with serving similar income levels because of that model. Okay, we're getting close to completing the time that we allotted for this so I'll give our panelists one more opportunity to offer their thoughts before Frances and I wrap up. I would just echo the point that Jim made that building community, putting some of the labor into intentionally building a sense of community it's not just that you help people through a transaction and then say, well, good luck. People need to feel like they're part of a community and that perpetuates the stability both on keeping people in place as long as they want to be there and then when they choose to leave or when people vacate their properties for other reasons the more awareness there is of that strong sense of community the better the odds that people will feel supported and will be inclined to continue to support the effort. It's a great point, yeah. Okay, this is now our opportunity to wrap up and Frances, what do you wanna say to everybody at this point? Well, I think everything most of you has been said but just thank you again so much everybody we cannot say how much we appreciate your time your expertise and everything that you're doing to help provide more homes so that everybody that wants to can afford the opportunity to be in this very wealthy community both in terms of the knowledge and the resources it has so thank you all so much. As the trust we are excited and I think this is where I say that we are working on trying to put in our FPL for the development of two sites. So we're hoping to help create more housing and that's in the pipeline so we're excited for that. And John, I'll let you chime in now. Okay, thanks Frances, yeah. I did wanna mention a Valley Community Development Project which I know everybody was focused on up to oh, maybe about six months or so ago and that is the project at 132 North Hampton Road or Amherst studio apartment. So Jane, you can correct me if I'm wrong but my understanding is that back in November Valley received a comprehensive permit from the town or the zoning board of appeals to proceed with the project in December and January they submitted a request or probably requests for financing from the Department of Housing and Community Development and we're hoping that they hear about those requests hopefully by late summer, maybe not till fall and that those requests are approved so they can proceed with that project. If they are approved, I think Valley would begin to break ground in the spring and then it would be at least another year or so before the first tenants at 132 North Hampton Road are able to walk into the door. Frances also mentioned a housing trust initiative. Town council approved our receiving CPA funding to purchase property on Belcher Town Road just east of the center of East Amherst and we're in the process of combining a request for proposals for that piece of property and the property at the old East street school site into a single project. So we will be looking for a developer. We expect that the housing trust will complete its work on the proposal at its next meeting on April 8th and then we turn it over to Town Hall and the town attorneys and hopefully within a month or so we'll see the request for proposal go on to the street and again, hopefully we have identified a developer by fall and they can begin that same process that Valley just been through of developing a request for a comprehensive permit for both sites. Let's see, a couple of other things I wanted to say. I just kind of went over what I considered very good news. I wanna say that the town council community resources committee is drafting a comprehensive housing policy and I wanted to comment briefly on that. While it's still in draft, it has some important weaknesses when it comes to affordable housing. There are 51 strategies and I won't tell you what they are briefly described in the document thus far. 35 are labeled high priority, five medium priority and four low priority and seven are unlabeled. What do we find among the four lowest priority strategies? They are as three of them are as follows. Identifying and creating additional funding for the housing trust, affordable home ownership and affordable rentals. The community resources committee apparently wanna do something in these areas but as the lowest among 51 strategies they've identified these are clearly about to fall off the table. You can do something about this particularly now while the document is still draft. Please write to your individual town counselors or the entire town council at this email address town council single word at amherstma.gov and you can see that on the screen. So if you have something to say about wanting the town to have a comprehensive housing policy that includes having home ownership as a priority please let folks know that that's important to you all. I mentioned also let's see sorry. Additional things and again we'll update you on these possibility but when Pioneer Valley Habitat Valley Community Development or the Amherst Community Land Trust requests Community Preservation Act funding it should be approved. If town property is sitting unused it should be made available. If the town follows through on its planned acquisition of the Hickory Ridge golf course the land along West Palm Rory Lane which is dry should be allocated to affordable housing. We'll let you know about advocacy opportunities but please let town council know now that new housing policy should make affordable home ownership a high town priority. We need town council on board if we're gonna be able to give these organizations and the support they need and see more than a handful of new home ownership opportunities in Amherst every few years. This cannot be the lowest priority in the town's comprehensive housing plan. Okay, time to wrap up. Thank you all for attending tonight's forum. We look forward to seeing and hearing from you all again about Ellen from now on Tuesday, April 20th, 6.30 pm when we are sponsoring a second forum on racial equity and housing. I also wanna give a brief plug to our partners the League of Women Voters of Amherst. They have developed two workshops for persons interested in running for public office on the following to Tuesday evenings, Thursday evening, sorry, Thursday, April 8th and Thursday, April 15th. Please go to the league website to register. Good evening and thanks again for all of your support. Thank you, John. Thank you so much, John. Thank you all.