 So welcome everyone. My name is Erin Zwerko. I'm the assistant director for planning community development. Welcome to the informational forum on real estate transfer fees. The housing plan implementation committee has through the select board has submitted a warrant article article number 27 to to propose a homeral petition for real estate transfer fee. I am joined tonight by Frank Rich Thiele, who is the Concord Housing Foundation president. He is also a retired faculty member at the Boston University School of Public Health. He has lived in Concord for over 20 years and is the president of the Concord Housing Foundation. The foundation is a private organization that works to raise awareness of affordable housing issues. And over the last 20 years it has raised approximately a million dollars in private funding that has been used for affordable housing projects in Concord. We are also joined by Hannah Carrillo. Hannah is the sustainable neighborhoods coordinator for the city of Somerville, Somerville's housing division and has been involved in transfer fee policy work since her arrival nearly four years ago to the area. She has been heavily involved in Somerville's transfer fee homeral petition process, which results in a unanimous city council approval in 2018 and is now leading the transfer fee coalition, a statewide group advocating for transfer fee, enabling legislation in addition to the several homeral petitions that are now pending approval. Lastly, we are joined by Ellen Schachter, who currently serves as the director of the city of Somerville's Housing and Office of Housing Stability. OHS's mission is both to assist tenants facing displacement and to pursue legislative administrative and programmatic policies aimed to promote housing stability in Somerville by increasing the supply of affordable housing and strengthening tenants rights. Prior to coming to OHS, Ellen worked for 28 years as an attorney at the Cambridge and Somerville Legal Services, representing low income families, tenant associations and grassroots community organizations in housing and public benefits matters. She taught, of course, a housing clinic course at the BC School of Law and is a frequent trainer in the local and state forums on housing and tenant rights issues. And so we're, we're very lucky to have this group of panelists. And I will also mention that we are joined by a number of the Housing Plan Implementation Committee members, members of the finance committee, the select board, and how meeting members and others. Thank you all for taking some time out tonight to join us and learn a little bit about Article 27. So for the agenda tonight, I'm going to talk about the article a bit and give you an introduction to real estate transfer fees. We'll provide the perspective from Concord and their experience and Hannah and Ellen will talk about Somerville's experience and legislation that's pending in the State House. At the end of the evening we'll do Q&A that will be moderated by me. So what is a real estate transfer fee? It's a small fee assessed on the purchase price of residential and commercial real estate transactions. It creates a renewing and sustainable funding source for affordable housing. This type of tool is used by 37 states, either statewide by counties and or by other jurisdictions within those states and the District of Columbia. It has been submitted to establish a local option, but that does not exist as of today. And a number of home rule petitions have been submitted by Boston, Brookline, Concord, Nantucket, Somerville, among others. The article 27 was originally submitted to the 2020 annual town meeting warrant. It was deferred when the pandemic hit and there was a goal to streamline that annual town meeting. So at this point we've, the housing plan limitation committee has resubmitted article 27, which seeks town meeting approval to submit a home rule petition to establish a real estate transfer fee. It also seeks authorization to establish a fee on purchases that exceed the statewide median single family home sales price, which in 2020 was 445,500. It seeks authorization to establish a fee that ranges between 0.05% and 2%. Seeks authorization to establish a number of exemptions and all revenue that would be collected would be transferred to the Arlington affordable housing trust fund, which was adopted by the special town meeting this past November. So the home rule petition because the local option does not exist as of yet. So the home rule petition process is that town meeting will consider, consider approval to submit a home rule petition. If town meeting does approve that the town would request the legislative delegation to file the home rule petition. Then if the legislature approves during the current two-year legislative session, the town would then be able to develop a bylaw. The bylaw would have to be adopted by town meeting and ultimately approved by the voters. So this, this can be a lengthy process. The current legislative session is two years. And then of course we'd have to have it on a ballot for an upcoming election in Arlington. So, so this is just the first step in a long process. And we see that there's opportunities throughout this process for public input. So the relationship to the affordable housing trust fund is that it will create a sustainable and renewing funding source for the trust fund. The funding could support the average cost of developing affordable housing, which often exceeds the local and state funding sources. The trust fund board of trustees would develop a five-year action plan through a public process that identifies goals and priorities and funding sources, which could include community development block grant funds, community preservation act funds, other funds and revenue sources that come into the town, such as through short-term rentals or marijuana establishments. But the funding potential through a real estate transfer fee would enable a holistic and well-capitalized effort for the town to consider. And with that, I'm going to stop the share. And ask Rich to provide a little bit of background about the Concord experience. Concord in the recent years passed both a trust fund by law and the real estate transfer fee petition as companion pieces. So it is quite similar to what Arlington and what the housing plan implementation committee is looking forward to do. So with that, Rich, I'd welcome you to the conversation. Thank you very much, Aaron. It's an honor to be here. This story starts about five years ago, although Concord has a long commitment to affordable housing, going back, I think, to Thorough's cabin on Walden Park. But we do have a public housing authority. We have used PRD legislation and tax credits to try and get other affordable housing built in the town. But starting about five years ago, we all became concerned, or at least all the housing foundation about the rate of tear downs of what had been the affordable housing stock in the market. The smaller homes, mostly post-reward. And with no available land, these were being bought up, torn down, and sold, you know, as 5,000 square foot houses for over a million dollars. One study that was recently done by the building department showed that of 188 new homes in the study period, 110 were teared out. So we started out saying what can we do to keep some of these in the stock so that people can afford to live in Concord without an IPO or a trust fund. And we started with the idea of the surcharge on building permit fee. And that came to town meeting in 2017 was somewhat controversial and lost by two votes. But the select board substituted an amendment that said, okay, we will appoint a committee to study a sustainable source for affordable housing. The committee met for over a year, and they came back and they basically said, you know, the only thing that's really going to give us a sustainable stream of real money is a transfer fee. And they are fully aware that transfer fees already exist, not only in other jurisdictions, as Aaron said, but here in Massachusetts in Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard and Barnstable for preserving open space. So the idea of taxing real estate transactions for public good is, I think, established. So the select board actually came back with a recommendation to tax at 1% of value in excess of $600,000, which at that point was the median roughly how sale price houses and condos together in Concord. That passed. And our estimate of revenue or my estimate is that that would generate somewhere around a million dollars a year. If you want to compare that with other possible sources, 1% on everything would have generated without that $600,000 for generated about three and a half million. So, you know, it's a lot of money and as prices go up, it becomes more. That passed and we have now submitted our home rule petition two years in a row, and it's gone nowhere. But I think the significant thing in Concord is that the select board took it seriously appointed a committee that included affordable housing advocates but real estate people as well. And they looked at a variety of ways to do it and they said, you know, if we're going to have a sustainable source of funding for affordable housing, the transfer fee is the way to go. They also, by the way, did recommend that the permit surcharge go ahead as well. But the big source of money would be the transfer fee. And that's kind of our history. We're now, I mean, our legislators Senator Barrett, Rebecca they are supportive. But, you know, the problem, as you might imagine, in the general court is going to be the real estate industry. But I the more I work on this and I've been working with Ellen and Anna on the transfer fee coalition. The more convinced I am a that there has to be a regular source. This can't be, you know, something that comes out of real estate taxes at the local level, or state income and property taxes. And it has to come out of a source that is related to the problem. And frankly, the escalation and real estate prices is part of the reason that we have such expensive housing and have such a high burden of housing costs. We're looking at a Boston Foundation study and in Suffolk County alone, I said 2019 study, over 50% of the households were paying more than 30% of income for housing. So, you know, if you think we've got a problem, the statistics proven. So, that's where Concord is. Not yet been assaulted in the supermarket parking lot for advocating this. And I'm hopeful if we can get support in the legislature, we will implement it and I think it'll be used in a variety of ways. We use it to help modernize the Concord Housing Authority properties. We'll use it to buy down units and new developments as they come up. And we'll also use it to try and buy some of these older smaller houses before the developers get them, modernize them, and then, you know, sell them back at what a nurse or a fireman or a policeman could afford. So that means that we don't have to subsidize the whole thing. And overall, I think the current proposal would generate money to give us an additional three to five units a year in the sustainable affordable housing. So, Ellen, thank Aaron. Thank you very much for the time. And when time is right, I'm happy to answer questions. Thanks so much, Rich. You bring up some good points about what the Concord affordable housing trust in your organization is looking to do. As I had mentioned in the beginning of this presentation, the Arlington affordable housing trust was adopted by town meeting this past fall. And it that when that Board of Trustees is appointed, they'll undertake a planning process relative to what their priorities and goals would be for, you know, a five year horizon and they're able to consider a range of opportunities because it's well capitalized will be a benefit to that trust fund and the board and the Arlington community. So now I'd like to turn the presentation over to Ellen and Hannah, to talk a little bit about the city of Summerville experiences relative to this and then. I believe Hannah will give a preview of the coalition efforts to bring a local option or to establish a local option for Massachusetts cities and towns to accept. It creates a simpler process than a homeroom petition. So thanks, Ellen and Hannah, I'll turn it over to you. Thank you, Erin and I wanted to just take one moment first to thank Pam Hallett, who's been a part of our coalition from the beginning, even before you guys have gotten to this point and I want to thank Leonard and Erin now. I'm hoping not forgetting anybody for being a part of the coalition. I just want to start by saying that you know I'm optimistic about this and I'm optimistic about this because of cities and towns like Arlington, who are identified to identify the real estate transfer fee is one of the best, one of the best ways to support local development of affordable housing and as the number of cities and towns grow. I think that really will help us with our statewide enabling legislation and really will push together as a, you know, coalesce as a force of municipalities together telling the legislature that this is something that's really important. So, there's some similarities to in the summerville story and some differences from what you heard about Concord. We started out, I myself sat on a group called the sustainable neighborhoods working group that was looking at a variety of options it sounds a little bit like the housing plan implementation committee but we were looking at ways to achieve affordability and sustainability and summerville. Hannah would know better than me she's the now coordinated but about 10 main suggestions and the transfer fee being identified as one of the most important policy initiatives to come out recommendations to come out of that group. And then in 2000 December 2016 the mayor formed a task force specifically on the transfer fee. It had representatives on it from the board of alderman land owners for the housing advocates representative from the Chamber of Commerce, etc. And I think one of the significant things that that group decided to do was to engage a consultant. We hired our key RKG consultants to do a study for us to really look at first, how much money could we raise from the transfer fee. How much money could we raise if we had different assumptions with different exemptions and different applicability right so what do each of those policy options cost in terms of revenue. And I think really importantly to look at what impact would this be have if passed on the volume of real estate transactions right because that's sort of the fear is that somehow fees will inhibit the growth and the development and the commerce in our cities and I think they did a whole series of interviews with real estate professionals looked at 10 years of data to determine this and in the end really decided that they did not believe that a 1% at that time it was a 1% real estate transfer fee would have much impact at all. And I think that's really important on the scope and the scale of the speed of development within the city and I think that that was a really important conclusion. So some of the specific issues and I'm sure this will come up with with all of you. Commercial and residential sales should all of that money go into the trust fund for a period of time there was some discussion about whether some of the commercial revenue should go into small business fund. We opted against that in the end in part because the affordable housing trust fund was an established mechanism for utilizing the money effectively and because housing was the number one priority. We looked at exemptions for instance at the beginning instead of identifying a threshold sale price like Arlington is now doing at least with the minimum of the median sale price we look at different kinds of exemptions. What would happen if we exempted long time homeowners so people that had owned their property for 10 years or more 20 years or more. We looked at exemptions for senior citizens. We looked at exemptions. There's a lot about what happens in a down market if you have a real estate transfer fee right so and as this process developed to this report helped us to sort out what the benefits and the costs were of the different kinds of exemptions that we might have. In the end, in January of 2018, we had about a six month process with 10 hearings not all with public testimony, but 10 hearings to get from our beginning petition to where we ended up and they were substantially different. The initial petition that we was filed before the city council and the Board of Aldermen was essentially a one person, the pretty much across the board, but it tried to print and say, we're not going to decide what the exemptions are now. If the home rule legislation gets passed and we get authorization from the state to do this, then we're going to come back and deal with the sort of the more sticky issues around what exemptions should be from this policy. But there was a lot of testimony that that came up and in the end, we adopted, we went from adopting a 1% across the board with no threshold to something a little different which essentially ended up exempting all owner occupants and leaving the fee on investors but double the amount of the fee from 1% to 2% with 1% being borne by the seller and 1% being borne by the buyer. So in the end, through this, we were able to generate almost the same amount of revenue exempting owner occupants but having but having twice the level of a fee. And we estimated a generation of between six and $10 million a year and I do think it's important to say obviously that those seed funds can be used to leverage other funds, whether that's through bonding or whether that's as matching funds for state, federal and other sources of funding for affordable housing. So it's a really significant amount of money and we anticipate that being generated into a really significant amount of affordable housing in the end. We did pass this unanimously and I will say as you might expect there was a fair amount of opposition from small property owners and I think there was a fair amount of distorted information that was being told to property owners about what this would mean. So we did look at what the costs would be and you know there was at least at that time at 10% year over year sales price increase so looking at 1% coming out of that was really a tenth of the profit that was being generated each year in that market. So we really did see this as an equitable form of raising money for, you know, for affordable housing. So now there is there is this our petition is pending the State House we had it once for a short period prior session we had it last year in session. And I think what I would say Hannah's going to talk about the enabling legislation because I think that's really critical building a statewide coalition and she's going to talk about that. But I do think that this year as more and more cities and towns file home rule petitions that it is easier for us as a group to lobby around passage of home rule petitions whether or not enabling legislation is passed. So I will just say that I strongly supported and I'm really excited to see Arlington engaging in this process. Rich, I'm happy to answer any questions that might come up. Thanks so much. I mean, you know, you're speaking really really well to the process that the whole petition is. And that's a big part of why we really are advocating for the enabling legislation. Obviously it's not surprised anybody here that you know the housing crisis is not just in one city or town it's across the whole Commonwealth country world, what have you. Part of why we really think it's critical to have this enable legislation is because we do recognize that different cities and towns across the Commonwealth are in different positions, but this is a tool, and this is a tool that, you know, as Ellen and Richard spoke into that can generate a lot of money on a regular basis that can be used to preserve and create affordable housing that's really meaningful and purposeful. So, you know, in keeping that in mind and keeping the purpose of this tool in mind we want to make it as accessible as possible. And frankly there are a lot of cities and towns that don't have necessarily the capacity for whatever reason to go through the home roll petition process, but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be able to take advantage of this tool. And, you know, for that reason we do, you know, all of the home roll petitions really just add to the argument but at the end of the day the enabling legislation is really what's going to allow the change that needs to happen on a broader level right it's, you know, if just Boston does this, yes that would be great for Boston don't generate a lot of money in Boston but it's bigger than that. And it's just really critical that you know we do have the support from across the Commonwealth and we also think that you know it's getting harder and harder past home roll petitions but if all of our voices are united in this coalition we have a much stronger position because it is you know a variety of cities and towns right now that need this, but there are also a lot of cities and towns that may not need it today, but you know in five years as prices rise we all missed the being able to take advantage of the flipping boom that happened and being able to capture some of that profit but you know places like Lynn where they're kind of on the cusp of those increases still have a chance to potentially capitalize on that and use those funds to shore up their, you know, their their community and that's really what our goal is so as Eleanor spoke to the coalition is actively growing we've been working on this for quite some time and it's been really great to have Arlington be so involved it's it's definitely been really really helpful to have Erin and Len and Pam, you know, help us in making this argument because we really do believe that this is, you know, a really powerful piece of legislation and we also believe that the power is with the municipalities your municipalities know what is best and know what your communities need and this requires a community process, and it's really important that this tool matches the needs of that community and that's why the legislation allows for municipalities to, first of all they have to go through a public process but they also can determine their own exemptions so they have to go through that process with the community of figuring out how it will work for them. And the enabling legislation is set up in a way that all of the homo petitions that are currently pending would absolutely be acceptable under the enabling legislation. So it's flexible it's adaptable, and it is it's purposeful and it's a tool that we see is having you know short term, really high need in obviously the place that have already filed homo petitions but also the need is going to continue to grow and this is a long long school that we really see as you know being able to kind of prevent a lot of the gentrification that we've already, you know, seen that has had a huge impact on our communities and the folks that can live there and who can actually buy property so enabling legislation and the coalition itself is just our way of trying to make this as accessible as possible to any municipality that, you know, has the political will to take advantage of it and not only that there are, you know a few tangential benefits to having enabling legislation for example, you know, Worcester does not have an affordable housing trust fund and we had a great conversation with folks from Worcester and, you know, we kind of made the point that if this enabling legislation passed, maybe it would then be easier for a place like Worcester to get an affordable housing trust also set up, because there's a source of funding for also allows, you know, for, you know, it can be leveraged for further advancement in terms of housing so there's a lot of ways of this can be utilized and you know that just allowing any municipality to participate when and if they choose is really the crux of this and it's why it really can make a huge difference in municipalities in all different kinds of market situations. Sorry that was a laugh but it's really, it's really critical and I'm really happy to be part of this work and you know it's been really great to grow the coalition and I'm really excited to continue to do so. Thanks so much Hannah and Ellen for the perspective from summer bill and the information about the local option enabling legislation. If you if you are interested materials relative to the current home rule petition that would be ultimately provided to town meeting are available on the town's website. And links to the local option bills that were filed in the Senate and in the house are also linked there as well. So, I'll, I'll note that the homeral petition that will be forwarded to town meeting does track very closely to the local option as a way to do tackle these these topics that are meaningful to Arlington or some of the threshold concerns that Arlington may need to consider should the homeral petition be passed. It's it ensures that if the homeral petition is is not passed and the local option is passed. The work is consistent, and we are still on track to consider adoption of a real estate transfer fee. We'll also note that the select board and the finance committee, of course, have to review this article in advance of town meeting and they will be giving recommendations to town meeting. So, I know the finance committee meeting is scheduled for March 17. So if folks want to join us that evening and hear a little bit more. I think that that is the night of our hearing. And I have the select board meeting has yet to be scheduled at this point. So with that, I am going to thank our panelists for the time being, but also open it to questions and answers. If everyone would use the raise hand feature. I'll, I'll go with that but also try to watch people if they are waving their hand at me. So the first hand I see is when I'll Evans. Hi, good evening, when elephants orchard place. Thank you all so much this is this is really interesting and I'm so excited that we're going to get this underway in Arlington, and I have two questions the first is just a clarification for me. I think about instituting a fee on home sales above $44500,000. Is it only on the percent, the portion of the sale above that amount, or is it on the entire amount of the sale for homes that sell for more than that amount. That's question number one. So when I can answer that easily it's the total sale price of sales that exceed that threshold. Yep. So the first 44500,000 is exempted in other words. I know that's. Sorry, I must. I'm not being clear. It would be applicable to any sales that are equal to or greater than the 445500 sales that are at a price point lower than that threshold would be exempt from the fee. Right. Yep. Okay. Okay. And then my other question is, and this is, this is a little bit aside from this. But last year, there was money in the Community Preservation Act. There was a portion of it that is that is required to go to affordable housing for which there were no proposals made so that money was not allocated. And I believe that that happened again this year. And I'm wondering if we could possibly as a as an addendum to this amendment or a substitute motion or something. I think that's something in place so that if we have that leftover money in the CPA fund, it's just sort of automatically put into the trust fund. Would that be possible. I think that could be possible. I don't think this is the right vehicle. This article would be the vehicle for that. Okay. As we mentioned, or I've mentioned a few times is the homeral petition process is a long process. So in the interim, certainly, the trust fund, the Board of Trustees could apply for funding through the CPA committee, particularly if they have reserves relative to affordable housing development. Okay, thank you. Thank you, and I'll Next, I have Nancy. I have a question on the CPA and and why it's kind of falling short in terms of providing for affordable housing. I mean, when surcharge has gone into place. Why aren't those funds sufficient for affordable housing so we're, we're, you're, you're proposing real estate tech transfer tax, because the CPA surcharge isn't working or it's falling short. I am, if I might be the real estate transfer fee is proposed to provide dedicated funding to the affordable housing trust fund, enabling the affordable housing trust fund to not compete for funding through the CPA committee or through the Community Development Block Grant funding sources that are available locally in town. I can't speak to the CPA committee and their goals, as I'm not a member of that. But perhaps, perhaps our panelists might have some insight on to how these different funding sources of the fee CPA CDBG can all sort of contribute towards the development of affordable housing as well as the preservation of affordable housing. I take that for a for a second. Aaron, we have used CPA funding here, but you need a continuing organization with projects. So, one of the, the two things I can speak of we've done recently, the Concord housing authority came in for money to build a small house on the fringe of land that the town have just bought for a park replacing a small house that has been within the park so we had the housing authority there saying after they had been pushed by affordable housing here to use some of that land. So you had an organization to do it similarly we have a housing development corporation that has sought CPA funding over the years to provide the town match on a large affordable housing facility that's about to move forward. But part of the reason to have the money go into this trust fund is that many of these opportunities come up very quickly. We had one just recently where a owner was willing to sell at a reasonable price but wanted to sell. As a result, the town with some of its affordable housing funds that had been specifically appropriated in anticipation of ultimately getting the transfer fee. The town's money some money from the Concord housing foundation were used to buy the unit which will become to affordable owner occupied units developed by habitat, but lead process that you need for the CPA doesn't work very well unless you've got an ongoing organization that has a lot of projects. Whereas we like to think that hopefully there will be a pipeline, but the affordable housing trust fund can use money from the transfer fee, when other opportunities like the habitat property that I just described become available. And Erin is, is, thank you for that explanation Frank is, is Arlington considering other exemptions outside of the median home price, as summer bill has done, or is that really the only exemption you're considering. So, there are a number of exemptions in the war and article, they range from exempting transfers between family members to transfers between, you know, town and Commonwealth jurisdictions. It also includes an exemption on transfers of permanently restricted affordable housing. So that that is not also contributing to the fee. So there's a range of exemptions. But, but overall all arms length transactions would be subject to the fee. And I think Ellen had something else to jump in on. If that's okay Nancy. Yeah, just very quickly I just did want to remind everybody that we did get to a place where we have this owner occupant exemption but we have no threshold right we did that instead of and I think that we decided for us that instead of picking a dollar figure we wanted to look at who is it impacting and why and I think that there's lots of different ways to look at these exemptions but having a threshold is one that most cities and towns have looked at is what they've opted to do. And again as we started with no exemptions whatsoever we ended up switching I will say though that the RKG report did show just just to throw this out that we did that when we looked at implementing an exemption for people that owned property over 10 years and it would have reduced the income that comes in by 50%. So just know that whenever you're talking about exemptions you really have to think about does it got the provision it's so much that you end up not having enough income generated to really make this multi year process do what we need what we need to do. And I just wanted to also address very quickly on the last question. I think the board of bill has both CPA and an affordable housing trust fund and like rich, I would say that the money that's in the trust, you know, go is really flexible as rich was saying about able to be used really quickly we have a program called the hundred where we buy up units that come up for sale on the market to try to keep tenants in their homes to try to match affordable housing and anti displacement as measures and that affordable housing trust fund and the income, you know that comes into that is so critical you know we just don't have enough money to continue to buy these units and so we've generated 100 of these units over time but we have an ambitious plan to try to do another. Well the mayor just put out another hundred units a year but that's probably very unrealistic but you know really really know that we need a lot more money that generated than what is produced by CPA to have that kind of significant impact on the housing stock in our city. If I could just jump in really quick back to the exemption question. Our final decision on our exemptions was really born out of the public process. So, you know I just think it's really important to keep in mind that whatever exemptions you're thinking of now might change as you go through that process and that's really a critical part of determining that and getting the approval. So it's just really critical to keep that in mind and keep it open mind about what is exempted and how it's a good example of why, you know, each town is different. You couldn't have an owner occupied exemption in Concord or they'd be no money in the fund. Essentially, there's almost no rental housing here, except in existing affordable units or Concord housing authority units. So, you know, we couldn't exempt. Thanks. Thanks so much. So at the end, could you would you mind putting up the screens again. The intro screens on just the basic structure as it is now. Yeah. Yeah. And for sure. And if anyone did miss it at the beginning I did announce that this is being recorded. We working with ACMI will make this available. This recording available through the town meeting process. It will get posted on the town's website. And those couple of slides that I had shown at the very beginning I will post on the town's website as well. So thank you so much. Patricia Warden, member of the housing plan implementation committee. And I find what Frank Fee said very interesting. When I was chair of the Irish and housing authority. There were times when we wanted to purchase something but we couldn't move enough we couldn't get the money fast enough because of a lot of governmental restraints. So our solution was a fairly good solution but not ideal. One of the things we didn't have an affordable housing trust under any kind to to drawn for money was to help reestablish a defunct nonprofit called the housing corporation of Arlington, and we help them get established by providing a cost to the corporations for properties that they bought and renovated as affordable and use for affordable housing that has worked reasonably well because the housing corporation was hard on it. I can't emphasize enough how much affordable housing trust fund would mean for Arlington and the homeroom petition that we have is ideal for funding such a trust. I would like to ask this Frank Philly on what kind of eligibility constraints guidance they have for their affordable housing trust fund because we do not really have an affordable housing trust fund. We have a housing trust fund, but our eligibility criteria are allowed people with some families with six little incomes, 100% of am I to access affordable housing trust fund so that if, in fact, the homeroom petition was successful and we were to file a bylaw a term meeting for approval, we should first of all make sure that we amend I think our affordable housing trust fund. What do you think Mr Philly, what do you think about eligibility criteria for access, if in fact we have a very handsome, we would have an extremely handsome flow of money, if in fact the homeroom petition gets anywhere. So what do you think about eligibility criteria, can you give us some advice from your experience in Congress. Well, we have the committee but it hasn't been appointed yet. So, obviously, there are the state criteria and I'm not an expert on those. You know what constitutes affordability until we actually get the committee appointed there are some rules in place about what the select, you know, what they can do and the select board approval of certain kinds of purchases, but the kind of policy that you're talking about what will we spend money on and who can, who can live there who can buy there. That we haven't gotten to yet. My personal feeling is that we not only need to deal with the more conventional definition of affordability, but we're going to have to in Concord deal with workforce housing, and some form of subsidy for that, probably with an income limitation on the budget. But frankly, I, you know, I don't. It's not just a question of whether the nurses in Emerson can buy in town I doubt a young doctor and down can buy now. But those are policies that will have to be set after the committees, what committees appointed. We don't have a committee yet. Thank you. Do you have something to add just something quickly to add from the experience in Somerville just to know so by states that by state statute it's limited rental housing for 100% of area median income and then the local decisions are do you want to further target it below below that. What I did want to just say interestingly is we did develop in it for inclusionary housing policy, higher tiers to meet what was perceived as the middle income need that went up as high as 110% for area median income. What we've actually found is that the demand for units that that really high level in the, in the affordability program just is not there anywhere to the extent relative to what programs that are targeted at, ideally 80% or less or at least no more than 100% or less, because we're really finding a very little demand at that amount that was looking to be middle what we would call middle income housing. So, just wanted to share that that from our perspective 80 or 90 being the top at the rental housing seems to be what generally works out in terms of the market to have significant demand. And just to wrap up, of course, the Board of Trustees would develop that action plan the. There's the flexibility for a wide range of household sizes and household incomes in the bylaw and to be through a public process the Board of Trustees once they're appointed in Arlington could narrow in on specific needs that are grounded in the community. Jonathan Nyberg also a member of the housing plan implementation committee. First of all, I want to say thank you so much for joining us tonight, Ellen rich and Hannah really appreciate the input. And also your willingness to share your expertise and your time. Thank you Ellen we've been focusing primarily on sellers. And I really like the concept of including buyers. Including a community who's possibly made them a lot of equity, and the other ones entering a community to create a better community so I think it's actually genius to split that and have both parties contribute. One is a thank you we're leaving and the other one is, you know, hello we're coming so I think that's genius. And my only thing which I've said before. I think it's imperative, especially as much as we want to protect people maybe have houses less than a certain price point. I think it's imperative not to create a potentially negative bias. I think it's more important to unify the community. Everybody participated in everybody participated out. I think it creates a better sense of inclusion, then wealthy versus poor bias or something so if everybody participates, we've all contributed, whether you're selling it for 200,000 or 2.5 million. So I try to make no assumptions of other people's money. And I think it makes for a better community from my perspective so thank you again for joining us and sharing your expertise it's really valuable thanks. Thank you Jonathan. Karen Kelleher, another member of our housing plan implementation committee and tell meeting member. Thank you so much and I echo Jonathan's gratitude to all of our speakers. My question for you as we try to sort of get our arms around what where our attention should be focused as we enact a trust fund and try to fund it is how much per has the per unit subsidy cost been for you for a variety of years and realize there's a range there's no one answered to this but could you give folks a sense for how much subsidy you've needed to provide or raise with your local funds or other funds for each unit that you produce and does that vary across unit types and who you're serving. There's a lot of interest in, in creating very low income housing in Arlington and it would be I think really helpful if you could speak to some of the strategies and and resources you brought to the table to be able to create that because I think we need to start thinking about the resources that would help us to achieve those goals. Thank you. Richard Ellen. No. Well, I wish I could answer that. You know it obviously depends on square footage it depends on the, the density you can build on the land you acquire. And, you know, I can give you a couple of examples. Here, the small house that's being built for the country housing authority. We have 300,000 for that from the Community Preservation Act. I think it's going to cost a little bit more. I'm not quite sure where this how, you know, how the two houses coming out of the building that was bought with habitat will work. I mean that one's an interesting one because those people are going to be owner occupiers and paying a mortgage. And so some money will come back from that. I think there are just so many variables. It's hard to say. Concord certainly has built over the last 20 years a number of units. I'm not sure how much the construction cost of those is predictive of what the cost now. So I think the answer is I wish I could give you more guidance but I can't. Oh, so I go ahead Ellen. I. Okay, so the staff on another matter did some research on development costs, total development costs in the greater Boston area. It's obviously largely determined by market forces. But in recent years it's averaged about $205 per square foot nationally. In the greater Boston cost ranged from about $219 per square foot for for profit housing developers to about $255 per square foot for nonprofit housing developers. So you can see that there's a difference of about. $35 I think that needs that it just shows that it's that much more expensive to to create and build and construct affordable housing. So, so that information is out there. And, but of course it depends year over year with market costs, yeah market driven costs and, and certainly COVID has been changing supply chains and construction costs in over the last year or so. It's also inevitable that smaller units that are affordable will have higher per square foot costs because you're amortizing all of the infrastructure over fewer square feet. I mean there's a reason that the developers want to build these 5,000 square foot monsters, because they're more profitable. So I, my question a little bit I think that's all really interesting I was trying to get at how much subsidy is needed because some portion of that cost can be covered by the rent paid or the purchase price paid by the buyer or the renter but it varies depending on income levels so as we think about how much money do we need to raise and how many units are we going to get from that there's a lot of variables but there's a range and it'd be helpful to hear some real just some actual experiences from these adjacent communities. I was going to, I had something slightly different to say but neither Hannah or I are the ones that actually do the housing development so I know those numbers are available and if it would be helpful we can talk to Mike Loney as the director of the housing division and try to get some of that those numbers for you. I will say though that that you know, obviously many deals cannot be done without a number of different funding sources you all know that tax credits other funding sources and what we have found is that we have not the units we have developed for the most part through these dollars have been at 60% of area median income or higher. And to the extent as you were saying that people are really interested in targeting at that lowest income right now we're looking at things like can we convince the housing authority to project based more of those subsidies into the new development so that we can reach further down in the eligibility scale right so I think that it's a big challenge all around to try to get some of those units to the depth of affordability that we want them that don't have permanent long term subsidy subsidies, but there are creative there are creative means and we'd be happy to try to get some information on the subsidy numbers for you. That's great thank you. Thank you Karen. Steven, Steven B. Thank you. A couple of comments okay. Yes, absolutely. The house is worth what it's worth. So, whatever the percentage is it's going to come out of the seller, regardless of how you distributed it's less money gone to the seller of the house. And over time, regardless of where it starts, the amount will go to 2%. Sometimes you'll say well, now that we can increase the rate in bad times we will now we need the money or it's a good opportunity to buy. And then that 1% for the developers, if they're operating on a 20% margin, 1% fee is 5% of their profit, if they operate on 10% and it's 10% of their profit. There should be tighter language on what it can be used for. For example, the article says supporting affordable housing. What does support mean. For example rent subsidies become lost money that could otherwise be used for purchasing property. And I was looking at the proposed state home rule language, and it allows personnel and other costs. So then, because it's not strict language, the town could load other personnel costs into the trust. So just be aware of, I call fudgy language. If the units become town owned, then it's a growing maintenance costs, and the maintenance costs could end up overwhelming the amount of money coming in and each year's is less and less available for purchase. And those are my comments. Thank you. Thank you. They are. They are good points. Again, the, the board of trustees and working with the select board would be putting together the, the action plan for the affordable housing trust. The affordable housing trust doesn't have any funding as of yet. So, I, that will be a public process as well the development of, you know, should the home rule petition be approved by the legislature there will be a public process or additional public process related to that. So I think that there'll be a lot of time over the next, you know, year or so to be able to narrow in on these details, you know, that that have community support. Topher, I'm going to, I'm just going to stop there. Thank you. Thank you for having this. My question is just coming back to the amounts. Why the range of 0.05% to 2%. That's a 40 X range. Yep. So the range is established to give some flexibility. As part of the conversations with the select board and the finance committee, there might be the opportunity to narrow in on that. The range, as you point out does provide quite a difference of funding on the, on the lower end. And it is, it could be about $225,000 based on the 2020 sales data that I received from the assessing office, upwards of $9 million on the higher end. So I think that that number can be refined through the process, but at the time at this time, we are proposing the range to give that flexibility. I also tracks pretty closely to the local option and other home rule petitions. Maybe Hannah or Ellen can speak to why that range is also included in the local option legislation. So I'm hoping to add, but I, you know, it's part of our thinking behind the way that the enabling legislation has been crafted is to allow for municipalities to figure out what works for them best. So in some of all that was one percent on each side, but we recognize that, you know, in different markets. So like in Nantucket, for example, half a percent in Nantucket is going to go a long way when their average sale prices in a water $2 million. And it is just another way to allow municipalities to tailor this, this tool to their actual market and, you know, it is also, there's an element of working with property owners and making sure that people are comfortable with what you're proposing and, you know, we did get a lot of pushback on the higher end of 2%. So, you know, there's it's another way to compromise and to make sure that everybody's kind of on board. Karen, just a point of clarification, the statewide language is one half of 1% to 2%, not 0.05%. So it's a four to one range in the state language. I don't know what you've got in your town draft, but that's the state language. Yep, but the Warren article does go down to 0.05. So it's a little bit lower than the enabling legislation. So for, did you have a follow up question? No, that was it. Thank you. Thank you. Nandana, I'm sorry if I pronounced that incorrectly. That's okay. Thank you for, thank you for. There we go. Thanks for, oh my God, I'm sorry about the screen. This is my sixth greatest computer I'm using. So I have just a couple of questions. I mentioned that in Somerville, there were alternatives at the time considered to this tax, did Arlington consider similar options or other options and how did how did we narrow it down to this particular one. So we're continuing to we're continuing to consider other options. As has been pointed out, this is one of the tools that can create a sustaining and renewable source of funding for the affordable housing trust, but certainly there are other options within the community to fund the affordable housing trust, whether that's an application to the CPA committee, or asking or requesting community development block grant funds. There are ways to tailor our inclusionary zoning for fees to go into the affordable housing trust and then other sort of other revenues that I had mentioned that I think at the top of the hour relative to to marijuana fees or to short term rental so there's a number of ways that the trust could be funded. This, this, this option has a has a pretty long lead time as I had mentioned so I think the goal was to get this underway and then to consider those other options for sure. And, and move forward from there, of course, the, as I had mentioned a couple of times the Board of Trustees for the trust fund could consider those other options that have, you know, quite a shorter, shorter lead time and potentially just an application to one of our fellow committees. Thank you. And my second question is, what is the effect heavy that we've seen on the housing market and the rest of the town, once something like this is passed like does it need to increase in housing prices for, you know, which in terms of affordability, then kind of dilutes the whole point, you know, the whole issue. Yeah, if I could ask our panelists. Ellen had referenced a report that RKG associates had completed for the city that she could she could speak to that that expertise that was went into that report and it looked like rich had something to add as well. So the report, I mean, just because we don't have a transfer theory we can't speak to empirical evidence of what happened once it was implemented and in that but in that report which we're happy to also share with you they did conclude that based on series of interviews based on data gathering etc that that their professional opinion I can't I really can't say exactly everything they did to come to that decision right now but was that it would have a pretty negligible impact on sales, just to note that something that's come up over time is, you know, realtors to often charge right for five it used to be even higher percent on sales and while there's often a lot of opposition those those fees have not sort of collapsed the real estate and CPA to the best of our knowledge has not had a significant detrimental impact on the volume of sales or sales price, you know, or, or a huge inflationary impact on sales price. It's so hard to separate things out as you know prices are going so high, all the time that to really be able to tease out. The impact of a CPA on that is incredibly is incredibly difficult, but prices are rising at somewhat equal rates, despite whether or not it appears whether or not people have any of these related fees so RKG did come to the conclusion it would have a negligible impact on unit prices and on development rates but we're happy to share the report with you. I haven't read it in detail in quite a little while. It's been a few years. Ellen's right there's no example of a transfer fee for housing, but there is an example in the state of a transfer fee for open space. And as far as I can tell, there's no evidence that the real estate markets in Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard and Barnstable County have grown slower than the rest of the state. Sure, there's a demand there. And that's why they did it. But the fact is if the demand is there. It's pretty clear that in those cases I think it's 2% go into the conservation fund. There's no evidence that that's held that market back. Just the one thing I would add to that because we did do some research to the extent that a fee was put on the buyer and you spread out over time what the impact of that would be over the life of a 20 or 30 year mortgage it was incredibly small. And that's where we were able to when we were determining how to and I how to, you know, how to allocate that to you that was one of the things that we looked at was that it was almost negligible in the overall context of the rates of sales we were talking about and what kind of monthly payments would have to be made to absorb it because obviously we're concerned about prices going up and not wanting to hurt people trying to come into the market. But when you can advertise that it really has a negligible impact. It just sounds like it comes down to how you know that the devil is in the details right how this is really implemented to the past and sort of the constraints around. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. I'm sorry can I just comment on the real estate tax. I mean the real estate commission and the expenses to sellers. The real estate has a documentary stamps stamps tax for sellers, which is really synonymous with a transfer tax so, you know, the sellers being hit with that that from the state $4 and 56 cents per $1,000 on the sale price in Barnsville County it's higher than $1,000 and 20 cents per per thousand. And they've got the realtors commission, and now this proposal of a transfer tax on a local level to percent is quite high. There's not a burden on the seller. And as some reveal has kind of worked out I mean it does seem like it would be more equitable to share that that cost. That is a good point there, you know, purchasing and is a home is not an inexpensive proposition in the greater Boston area and with additional fees added on to it. And, you know, can, can make it a reach for a lot of families. But I think, relative to the homeral petition and Arlington. I think we, I think it provides sort of a equitable request in terms of what had been mentioned earlier is that it's, it applies to all community members in the community in the same fashion. Again, this, if the homeral petition is passed by the legislature, you know the Arlington community will need to vote on this through a ballot. So, so there is a lot of work to be done relative to a public process and really sussing out the needs of the community and what actually works for Arlington. I do have another question, you had had your hand up earlier. No, sorry that was, it was just about the documentary stamps tax that's great that's already in existence. Thanks. Great, thank you. So, there's a couple more people with hands up. I just want to check if there are folks that haven't had a chance to speak, or ask a question. If there are, otherwise we'll, we'll take these last two questions and then wrap up for the evening. So, I'll give some folks a quick moment to, to find the raise hand feature. Okay. So, Patricia for the second time. There you go. No, thank you very much. Just a very quick comment. I just wanted to say that over the years, Arlington has been extremely generous with its community development block grant funds. This won't be of interest to Frank Feely, but it might be to Ellen Schachter we have literally given millions of dollars of CDBG money for affordable housing. And we, if we indeed do obtain a good buy law for transfer tax, really say transfer tax, it would alleviate the burden on the CDBG funds, so that we can, we can use them for other pressing needs. I have really felt bad over the years as a time meeting member and whatnot to be seeing the CDBG list of awards where they really gave crumbs, just crumbs to very worthy endeavors of volunteer groups and others in town. So it would really see the CDBG funds for very worthy causes. Thank you. Thank you, Patricia. Jonathan. Sorry about that. Yeah, I just wanted to say so I am a realtor. I'm a flipper. I'm an investor, and I'm a risk taker in Arlington. And I think I have multiple apartment units so I provide apartment housing. I help provide housing for people at different levels, different price points, and I'm also working with investment into the town. I think that if we can as hard as it is to have money quote taken away from anybody. I'm also an investment in our community and in our future. You know, and maybe we don't fully understand affordable housing but it could be a fireman it could be a teacher could be somebody else that also contributes to our community that would like to live in our community. So as painful as it may seem to pay an extra couple to five $10,000 at closing. Again, I think if you split it between the buyer and seller. You have a buyer is vesting in the future of the community and the seller who actually probably got more than they would have gotten another community if we didn't have such a great community so I think it's I think it makes sense. And also will definitely help us with affordable housing, because it's very expensive. You know, and how do we create a balanced community without some of this housing. So anyway I just want to again thank you for your input tonight thanks. Thank you, Jonathan. And last but not least, Steven. Thank you. I just wanted to talk about at the margin, this 1% or realtors fees are any extra costs. There are unseen people who are excluded, because that raise costs, it moves them into where they can't afford the house. These costs do not have free ride for people. And then again, as I mentioned, there's no split of the costs. The house doesn't become 1% more valuable because you have a transfer tax. It's worth what it's worth. And it comes out of what the seller gets ultimately. And I just like to thank Patricia one for her decades of work for Arlington. That's a thank you. Thank you. Jonathan. Can I just interject real quickly so as a realtor on the front line. Honestly, this is not going to detract people from moving to our community, and it's not going to dissuade people from selling a property. That's just the honest reality. And I contribute more probably than anybody on this board every year to this, to this tax so just putting my two cents in so it's not going to affect anybody Arlington's a great community I have rental property in Somerville, Concord's fabulous so it's just the reality of living in a good community period. Thank you. Thank you. And I guess last but not least, Annie. Thank you for raising your hand. So I just did want to comment on sort of the other sources of funding that we have for affordable housing that I'm familiar with which is CPA funds and CDB gene. The CDB gene funds that we receive are about a million dollars a year, maybe a little bit more. And those funds we are required to spend in particular categories and we max out each of those categories. So, we would not have more money in CDB gene to spend on some of the worthy causes that Patricia mentioned because we're maxing out the amount of money we're allowed to spend in that category. We're also able to redirect some of the houses, some of the funding in the area of housing that we're spending now, there's something slightly different if we had the transfer fee and we didn't need it to support the development of new affordable units. I, I'd have to go back and get the rules to know exactly what that would be. And similarly with the CPA we have the same problem that Concord has which is that the CPA can grant money on an annual cycle to a project. And put money into the trust fund to be used on a flexible basis. And the real reason that this trust fund and funding this trust fund is so important is because we can make decisions as products come up step by step and we don't have to wait until a funding cycle which both CPA and the CDB gene are subject to. Thank you so much for those points. It's a great way to end the evening. And I'll just reiterate the fact that the affordable housing trust will be able to act more nimbly than the regular funding cycle with town meeting. And be able to provide additional funds to the community for these worthy causes, not only affordable housing, but the preservation and development of it. So with that, I'd like to thank everyone for joining us this evening. I, I'm sorry, the, the, the recording will be made available through ACMI. It will likely be early next week when it does become available. I will post my slides that I had on the housing plan implementation committees page on the town's website. The video will get posted there as well and we'll circulate some of this information through the town's social media channels and other communication channels. And with that, I really want to thank our panelists, Rich Feely, Ellen Schachter and Hannah Carrillo for joining us this evening. And the, the representation from the various boards and committees and town meeting members that joined us this evening. Thank you so much for taking, you know, just under an hour and a half out of your evening, really appreciate it. And with that, I will, if, if there is interest, I can put up the slides again. But again, those will be posted. And thank you everyone for joining us this evening. I hope everyone has a great evening. Thank you so much.