 Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the housing forum this evening. So glad to see everybody here tonight and looking forward to a robust presentation and dialogue for q amp a about the housing draft plan. I want to thank staff Kelly linema, the assistant director of the department of planning and community development, the housing plan implementation committee, as well as our consulting team. Barrett planning group and horse Lee Whitten group who are here this evening, and who will be making the bulk of the presentation. So tonight, we are starting a little bit early, and then we'll get into the sort of, I think what everybody's really anxious for is what's going to start actually at around 8pm. But in the beginning, you're going to hear a presentation by Judy parrot from Barrett planning group, who's going to talk about sort of a little bit about the public planning process. What exactly a housing plan is and what it will do for the town of Arlington, and also summarize the engagement opportunities that we've created. We will then go into the bigger presentation which will get into issues around the housing affordability, understanding fair housing issues in Arlington, and introducing us to sort of the needs that we have in order to build capacity to create and preserve affordable housing in our community. As many of you know this is a an updated five year plan. We have a current housing production plan that was active in 2016, and it expires this year. And so we're looking forward to having a new housing plan that will guide us in the future. And your input has been critical to that process. This is an iterative process and so we're building out the parts to the plan. There is not a current housing draft plan that anybody has reviewed that is in part what is happening this evening is sharing with you the research and information that's been taking place, and giving you an understanding of that engagement process. So with that, I think what we're going to do next is I'm going to turn this over to Judy Barrett from Barrett planning group, who is going to introduce us a little bit further to what is the housing plan what will it do for the town. A little bit more about the planning process and engagement, and then we'll move into the further the deeper parts of the presentation this evening. Thank you everybody for your participation if you've been participating all along we appreciate it. If you're new to this you'll learn a little bit more tonight, and there will be plenty of time for q amp a as we get along throughout the night. Judy. Oh, and actually real quick I'm going to jump in and do a quick. Okay Kelly sorry. That's all right that's all right so I'm Kelly line of mind the assistant director of planning and community development and I've been working with the housing plan implementation committee on this plan for a while. So, just for tonight, just a few guidelines I think everyone is fairly familiar with us at this point but just to be clear. Everyone's muted by default if we if we are hearing a lot of background noise and we have to mute somebody just to kind of allow everyone to hear the presentation please don't take it personally. I just want to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to hear what's being said. And when we get to the we're going to have three sections of q amp a so when we get to those sections we're asking people to use the raise hand function. And that way we'll be able to identify who has a question or a comment. If you're comfortable turning on your camera is a great way to better connect with everyone. Feel free to use a digital background if that helps you feel a little like your home is a little, but kept private from the rest of the group. But it is kind of nice to see everyone's faces just like we would in a in a regular public meeting. As I mentioned before we do have three q amp a sessions plan for tonight. So again we're asking people to use the raised hand feature to be called on. And then you can ask your question. I will also be paying attention to everyone's screens which is another way it's nice if people can keep their cameras on. So if somebody is having a hard time or technical difficulty in getting that raise hand finding that raise hand feature. I'll try to pay attention and make sure we give you an opportunity to ask your question. And then finally, this meeting is being recorded and it will be posted to the town's web town's website in a few days. And then later on in the presentation. I know a number of people have asked about reviewing the draft plan and what comes next and so we'll be sharing that before the close of the meeting tonight. And just zoom 101. Once we get to the q amp a the mute and unmute buttons are in the lower left hand corner of your screen. And the raised hand feature is kind of right in the middle of your screen there's a little smiley face with a plus on it for reactions. And at the very bottom of that is the raised hand feature. And if you're calling in by the phone star nine controls your mute and unmute and star six is to raise your hand. So you can go to the next slide. So that's a solid overview of what we're going to be discussing tonight so at this point I'm going to hand it over to Judy Barrett and Barrett planning group to really get us started on discussing the project background and what we've done so far. Alexis next slide. Thank you Kelly. So we're going to start by doing kind of a review for those of you, especially who have missed any of the previous meetings a little bit of a background about the housing production plan and what it's comprised of. And kind of the work that's gone on both in terms of the technical analysis as well as the outreach and community listening that's been done. We're asked by the town to prepare a housing production plan in accordance with DH's Department of Housing and Community Development Guidelines and among other things that means that we have a plan that will that has three kind of basic components and the first one of every housing plan is the needs assessment, where we look at, you know, current demographics, you know how is the community change kind of looking at where the community's been, where it is today where it seems to be going. In terms of household makeup, race, income, family size, a whole variety of things that relate to the kinds of housing that that community has and may need, and the extent to which the supply as it's evolving through ordinary operations of the market, may or may not address the needs of all the types of households that live in or want to live in your community. The needs assessment also looks at what are the development possibilities and constraints and how the constraints might be mitigated and what that means is, you know, if you have a disconnect between the housing needs that exist and what is actually being produced within the market to try to understand why and what is it that makes it challenging for developers to build what appears to be needed and and how might those things be addressed through some mechanism or another. And then we also look at just what's the infrastructure capacity of the town, the roads, the water and the sewer and so forth, you know, is there are the utility or infrastructure constraints that would impede the town's ability to provide housing for a variety of families and even come levels. From that, we develop a set of goals and per DHCD guidelines there are two types of goals. One is sort of what kind of housing do you want to see. If you're trying to address the needs that are identified the needs assessment. What is it what does it consist of. And then, centrally the sort of housing production goals now bear in mind that under DHCD guidelines, a housing production plan has a five year life, and that the overriding purpose of the plan at DHCD's point of view is what is the town going to do to try to work toward the 10% minimum under chapter 40B, which means 10% of your housing stock is affordable to lower modern income household so the numerical goal is tied to the sort of what can you do to keep working toward that 10% as you also then try to encourage a particular mix of housing that you'd like to see in your community, or that you need. And that we then develop implementation strategy so you understand the needs and you have goals. What are you going to do to try to address those goals and those typically involve zoning or other types of policy changes that might help to better align what's being produced with what the needs are. So we find particular sites or areas in the community that would make sense for a diversification of housing, and perhaps even higher density of housing and it exists today. What kind of characteristics, would you like to promote if you're going to be making regulatory reform changes in your community kind of how would you like to encourage not only supply but a supply of particular mix, which relates back to that mix of housing types goal that I referred to earlier. So the aspect of implementation is typically thinking about where a town has opportunities to connect with its neighbors to perhaps address regional need, bearing in mind that ultimately the purpose of chapter 40 B is to address regional housing needs, and those are the barriers that exist at municipal borders. So what opportunities are there for a town to pursue some kind of regional strategy, and also to recognize a community's own contribution to what may be regional barriers. So those are the three key pieces of a housing production plan. So we were asked to, you know, first and foremost, create a plan that would be approval by DHCD so that we have the opportunity as a town to potentially qualify for what's called safe harbor which we'll talk about a bit more as we go on. But if the town is creating additional or moderate income units under an approved housing plan, the town gets to request some credit for that, if you will, that might make it a little bit easier for the Board of Appeals to manage the chapter 40 B comprehensive permit process so that's one of the reasons to to seek DHCD approval of a housing plan. But more than that also is, you know, what's realistic in the market area that this community is located in what would make sense, what will help to address unmet needs for affordable housing. And what kinds of strategies will help to ensure that the housing that is produced is equitable across all income levels. So those who are low or moderate people who are whose incomes are higher than perhaps the income limits under the subsidized housing inventory but whose needs are nonetheless not being met again by existing operations of the market. And then also to discourage concentrations of affordable housing in any one particular area or areas of town. So equity and affordability and choice are all very much knitted together in informing kind of the framework for this plan. Next slide please. So we began with, you know, sort of developing a community engagement plan for what, what we would do and what your community would do to try to reach out and ensure that people with an interest in this topic would have access to developing the plan or contributing their ideas for inclusion in the plan. We did a tour of the town. So, you know, those of us who had not worked in Arlington before had a chance to kind of get become familiar with the place for at least one of us on the team that was, you know, coming back again and seeing how things were going. There were questionnaires available for people through the town website to ask questions or offer comments. We conducted interviews or, you know, small group and individual interviews and a couple of blocks during this process, one being in May, it was a pretty intensive couple of days of almost nonstop interviews with different people. And then again in August, there were some additional interviews that were conducted. We offered a tool called a meeting in a box sometimes called a kitchen conversation. It's basically a way to give a community a box full of materials that one would use for a meeting in their kitchen, or their backyard as the case may be for a cook out with their friends and their neighbors to be able to kind of ask people questions very similar to questions that we asked in the community meetings. And the advantage of a meeting in a box approach is that not everybody can sign on to a meeting at this hour of the evening. It's even harder when they were all face to face but some people are just more comfortable talking in smaller groups some people are a little more comfortable when they're in an affinity type group so which we're trying to kind of broaden the opportunities for people to contribute their thoughts to this plan through a combination of interviews. Survey, you know, online forums, and then this meeting in a box process which I believe there were a total of eight done if I'm not mistaken Kelly I'm looking to you because I know you have all these numbers right very clear in your head. We actually offered the meeting in a box in a couple of intervals during the planning process. So those of you who may have participated or hosted one of those. We very much appreciate your efforts. There were other community engagement efforts as well. There were staff I think reached out to the farmers market a couple of times to try to talk to people who participate in that activity in the community. We had an online mapping exercise where people could access a map of the town and identify locations that they thought might be appropriate for some type of different type of housing, dense or different type, you know, whatever but just to be able to comment on potential locations that might make sense. We had a couple of community forums along the way as would be expected one was in June and the other was in September. At the June meeting we kind of explained in much more detail than I am now. What's a housing plan. What are we doing here. Tried to kind of present some high level findings at that point and get some input from folks about what we were seeing and maybe things that we have missed. But again in September to think about what the goals might be for the plan as well as, you know, here are some goals that we think might make sense what kinds of strategies might help to achieve them. And in both of those sessions we had kind of a large group presentation followed by some breakout session interviews with, you know smaller groups of people which was very helpful to us. These assessment of course is as I said it's a really very much a rich collection of demographic and housing data. Looking at market trends we tapped kind of several different market sources to try to understand the market in your community. And then you know all of this kind of feeds into the goals and strategies which really is the focus of what we want to present to you this evening. Can I please. So I think with that I want to kind of get into a little bit of an overview of planning 101 if you will. And then how this particular housing plan fits into the structure of really any kind of planning exercise and so whenever we start working on on on a plan with a community, you know the one of the questions is just sort of what's the problem and what are the problems that you want this plan to to address. And as we get into understanding those problems. We try to figure out with you and on our own through research sort of what are the underlying causes of the problem that we're being asked to try to speak to. And what have been the contributing factors to some things are causal and some things are contributing and it's important to try to sort out what what those are. I think the community has to address the problem or the problems, you know what are kind of potential solutions if you will, and which ones might be most effective so there's usually a range of possibilities but some things are probably going to be more effective than others. And then when you sort of can figure out what solutions might make sense. Do you have the resources that you would need to do this. And if you don't, what resources would you need to actually have a more effective housing agenda in your, your community to address affordability and other needs. What's standing in the way, which gets to the heart of the barriers analysis, and what can be done to overcome those barriers so that's really the architecture of I think any planning process. I think it very much informs kind of how this housing production plan is organized. Next slide please. So, looking at the goals and the strategies, which is really what we're going to focus on tonight I think the problem identification phase of the process is really sort of determined through the needs assessment. And what we saw there are really kind of I think three key things as a shortage of affordable housing. There are housing choice and fear housing and there are capacity limits in the town that that probably need to be addressed as well and you'll find very shortly that we've sort of organized the goals for the plan around those three key topics, where there's an inadequate supply of affordable housing. There are impediments to housing choice, which is another way of saying their fear housing issues that Arlington needs to address. And then there are capacity issues that also need to be looked at, largely in the realm of leadership for affordable housing. The response to the problem is kind of well what are the goals for this plan and those should I respond to the identified problems which we think they do. And how do they align with DHCD criteria because again bearing in mind that what the town has asked us to do is to prepare a plan that DHCD will accept and approve. And the strategies finally are designed to address those goals and also be in alignment with DHCD criteria DHCD has some fairly prescriptive review standards for housing production plan so we have to make sure, as we're identifying what those requirements do, that at least some of them will address the DHCD requirements for review and we've tried to kind of stay within that framework. Next slide please. So, looking I guess really at this first set of problems. You know what we found in the underlying issues are, there's a shortage of safe and decent and affordable homes in Arlington, especially for low and very low income I think that is really kind of an overwhelming need that comes through and just about all the data. And it's not the only group that has needs, but it's a very obvious deficiency in the supply of housing in the town. And I'm talking not only about affordable but affordable that is safe and decent and priced to be affordable to people who are in the very low income levels. The town has very few options for first time home buyers as well to find a home that they can afford to buy. So, you can kind of see as the home prices in Arlington have accelerated. You can kind of understand why then therefore the town's household incomes are rising tremendously as a result because people that have the cost of the housing in Arlington is a barrier for many people to choose to live in the town. Many older adult households in Arlington are housing cost burden but that means is that relative to their income. You have a lot of older adults who are living in housing and spending more than 30% of their gross monthly income on their housing costs, and you can kind of see this fairly acutely among many of the senior households in your community. The other thing too that we found is that the town doesn't really have today, the regulatory or financial tools needed to reverse those conditions. Next slide please. As a result of those kind of overarching findings from the plan, a set of goals emerged, one of which is to increase rental ownership housing for extremely low to middle income households. There's a broad brush here but the supply in really all of those ranges is constrained in some cases severely to create and maintain and preserve permanent housing for people with disabilities. What we found is that there really is a very limited inventory of disability housing in Arlington and it's something that the town would need to work on as well. That is both a supply issue and also a fair housing issue, but I just chose to park it in this group for purposes of this presentation. And then preserving and improving in the town's existing supply of affordable homes to provide healthy, safe and stable living environment. So those are the kind of the three key affordability goals that we addressed in the plan. Next slide Alexis. There are a number of strategies in the plan that address these particular goals. One of course is you have a, you know, newly formed to soon to be activated affordable housing trust which can be a really important asset for the town in addressing this plan and meeting its affordable housing needs. One of the things that a housing trust can do is to provide enhanced home buyer assistance so a very commonly used and very effective program for first time home buyers is from the mass housing partnership one mortgage program which essentially offers a reduced very low interest rate mortgage for for first time home buyers and some others. But in some communities that the city or town also puts money into the one mortgage program to, to further write down the interest rate on the loan, or to hold some of the purchase price back and what's sometimes commonly known as a second mortgage that is just there it's not having to be repaid on a direct basis like a regular mortgage. What that does is it increases the buying power of the of the home buyer. So that is a fairly common strategy out there for providing moderate income. First time home buyer opportunities and that's something the housing trust can do. Another thing a housing trust can do is to provide lower no interest loans to to to write down the purchase price of affordable rental units so if you have a rental development coming into your community, where the rental income is lower priced for say 80% of median income which is for many of you probably know this already but that is generally the upper limit in upper income limit for subsidized housing inventory units. Well you can use affordable housing trust resources to buy those down to say 50% of area median income. And the advantage of course is that when you're already when you're trying to buy down a rent from 80% it's much easier than buying it down from market. So if you're trying that is available we do have some housing trusts in Massachusetts that have done just that. The housing authority also could be making use of housing choice vouchers for homeownership. That is another strategy that's available in the community or it could be available in the community to do to encourage homeownership housing. Providing capital grants to the housing authority we know this is kind of already in discussion and part of the town's plans for using recovery at funds, when you think that's great but of course you also have community preservation that funds. DHCD has a preservation and modernization program. There are resources out there that the housing authority could take advantage of they're going to have to ask for them but I mean that is certainly a possibility as well. The town currently has provisions for short term rental tax meaning a tax that's paid for so called Airbnb units and we were just trying to make the point that although that's not a huge money generator. The town does have the ability to just put that revenue right into the hands of the housing trust. And that's probably important thing to do because I can tell you, housing trusts are really most effective if they have financial resources to work with. Next slide please. CPA funds can be used to acquire and support development of group homes for people with disabilities this has been done in several towns and I just want to put in a plug for this. Every unit or every, every, every unit for a person in a group home counts as a unit on the subsidized housing inventory so if you have a single family dwelling, a large one that is renovated for a group home for say six occupants that building counts as six units on the subsidized housing inventory not one. So there are some SHI advantages if you will to doing this but really it's about need. So, that is something that you could embark on that often is is received fairly well in neighborhoods because you're not really creating a very large structure often it's simply acquiring an existing one perhaps doing the modest addition to it, but using it for a very legitimate and serious housing need that's hard to address. Providing architectural barrier removal grants for property owners to address disability problem disability access problems. People who have a family member with a mobility or self care impairment being able to do ramps to do lifts to do you know to make sure that there's a clear path of travel to the home. Those things all really matter as part of a disability housing strategy and those are other things that that the town could do. There are regional organizations that also provide housing for people in recovery. Cascap is a good example they have a number of homes in your region that are designed for people in recovery and is what you probably know this already but people who are in recovery from substance abuse are fall within the definition of disability. So, all of our communities I think I've never worked in a community where people didn't know someone who had died of an overdose so thinking about how do you provide care in your own community for people who are trying to recover from substance abuse is an important aspect of meeting housing needs. Some communities have used their own general obligation bond authority to provide funding for affordable housing. Nantucket comes to mind it's probably the best example I can think of it's not the only one but they've just decided to literally put their money where their mouth is and they are investing heavily in the acquisition of property for development of two to four to six unit buildings. And some projects up as large as 30 units, but they're doing that with their own revenue. So that's another possibility. And then providing financial support for multifamily development, I think we just think that's a terribly important thing if you're trying to deal with a shortage of supply, you kind of have to be efficient about it. The housing trust could have a set aside of funding to provide resources for our lower moderate income rental development. And that would be an important thing for them to do as well, again to address needs identified in the plan. Next slide please. So, as I think we alluded to earlier, we are taking like little breaks here for a few questions here and there. So we'll take that now and we'll take some for a few minutes, we'll then go on to the next section and take some questions and then, you know, at the end if anybody's got questions we haven't gotten to in these few kind of intervening moments, we can pick those up at the end. So, we'd be happy to take any questions from people. I'm not sure. Yeah, I see that Don Salter has his hand raised. Great. I just think it would be a little useful if you could define in dollar terms what is meant by moderate income, low income and very low income, just so that we're using a common point of reference here. Sure. I'm going to give you general numbers. Don, if you think of a moderate income household at 80% of median. I was trying to get away from talking about percent of am I just a dollar figure. Oh for income you mean. Yeah. Well it's going to range between, you know, probably 30 or 40,000 and 110. There's a wide range of need. So when you when you're talking about moderate income households. You're talking about $110,000, 90 to 90 210. Okay, and low income, you'll consider to be what 60 to 80 maybe. And then low income would be low, less than 60 then. Yeah. Okay, thank you very much. Welcome. I see Calpurnia has her hand raised. Hello. Hi, Calpurnia. Thank you. I was just curious when you say that you see that seniors are house burdened. What are the implications of that? I'm just curious, is it that their destitute and house burdened, or is that they're tapping to the equity of their homes to survive? Do you have any ideas of what that may mean? Yeah, that's a good question. It's a little hard to get at because the way the Census Bureau reports housing cost burden, you can look at, you can kind of get your arms wrapped around tables that look at households with a current mortgage and those which don't. It's about the closest you can get. There is also, there are also a couple of tables that try to break down housing cost burden by age. I think it's probably a mix of people who are probably continuing to live in homes that they may have a really significant amount of equity in, but they just don't have high enough income to support the house. There are other people who are, who are not in that situation who don't have equity to take advantage of. It's both, I think. Thank you. You're welcome. I'm just standing down here to see if anyone else. Yeah, I think you could probably see it better when I can. Yeah, I don't see anyone else with hands raised or kind of waving. So, thank you people one more minute. I think we could move on to the next section. Okay. Alexis, can you switch to the next slide. The grouping of goals and strategies revolves around bear housing. And some of the problems that we looked at include the existing inventory of affordable housing in Arlington tends to be concentrated in areas that were once described a very long time ago as definitely declining. And the ways that are near the Arlington's borders with Summerville Medford Lexington and along Mass Avenue. And what that's referring to is the way that properties were classified. When the homeowner's loan corporation, mortgage loan corporation was active in the 30s and 40s and trying to frankly, deal with the massive foreclosure crisis that, you know, was taking place in that period during the depression. So, you're probably all familiar with this but for those who are not the whole program, largely relied on local sources to identify areas in each community where, where the mortgage risk was very low. Mortgage risk is low because property values are relatively high, predominantly white population, predominantly single family homes. Whereas other places perhaps were not quite so highly where they were seen as higher mortgage risk if you will higher higher lenders risk, because they were more multi family or the housing units were older, or people with different races or different ethnic backgrounds or different ancestries were living in a particular intended to be concentrated in a particular area so Arlington kind of had this pattern of definitely declining areas and we can still continue today to see traces of how that kind of why all of that sort of happened and unfortunately or unfortunately, you can kind of also see that pattern reinforced, perhaps not intentionally but nonetheless reinforced in much of the town's existing selling. The other thing that your zoning does is it pretty much freezes in place. The inequitable residential land use pattern that existed. And I'll just share with you I don't think this problem is unique to Arlington I've worked in some other close in suburbs around Boston where in the early 70s communities early 70s to mid 1975, which was the last time the State Zoning Act went through any kind of major reform. A lot of zoning was kind of rewritten in that period, and what tended to happen was that people who were worried about change and worried about kind of loss of character and loss of fabric, essentially put zoning in place that froze what was there at the time. And, and so when you have that, and the economics kind of don't support that sort of pattern anymore. It just becomes a real problem in terms of trying to respond to market opportunity and frankly provide for a variety of needs and interests in housing so. So those are kind of problems that impede the create the provision of housing choice in Arlington next slide please. One of the ways that we sort of see the reinforcement of that old pattern is just where the subsidized housing is so this map just sort of shows you where you're existing chapter 40 B subsidized housing tends to concentrate. And I don't think this is any big surprise to anybody but again it just sort of relates to where were those areas that were considered to be declining and where are the areas today where in this part, it's a pretty much single family zoning scheme, where you really don't have much for the housing. There's a concentration here and so from a fair housing perspective, we would want to try to think about strategies to not not further that that perhaps there are development opportunities in these corridors which you would want to pursue, but there's also your entire housing production plan on just that. How do you then think about equity in the distribution geographic distribution of affordable housing. Next slide please. So these are just maps that show kind of where your existing zoning districts are and if you look at the map that is, you know, up that first map that's most on the upper left. You know those are really your single family districts. And so, you know, those are not really the areas where you tended to see a lot of the subsidized housing, and those are definitely not the areas that were once considered to be in decline. When you get to the maps on the lower band on this slide. What you can begin to see is that the availability of any kind of mixed housing lies in areas that are fragmented. There would be difficult properties to try to assemble anything and create a good development site. And that's kind of contributing to what I mean about things kind of being frozen in place. So when you look at the regulatory scheme, the, the distribution of affordable existing affordable housing, you kind of can begin to see that there's this real difficult way to try to overcome these barriers and to overcome the concentration of lower lower income, you know, lower income or lower value housing stock in the community. So that's a concern, because part of what you want to do in any affordable housing plan is think about choice. Next slide please. You know, the. We've seen some elements in our work in Arlington of or some some real voices of support for for fair housing and for equity. I don't know that the ideas are broadly recognized or understood it's been hard to see that in our work with the town. Another thing that I think just people probably would benefit from understanding is it certainly informs our work is that housing insecurity which is like the not really being able to rely on having safety since an affordable housing. It's not evenly distributed across the population it disproportionately affects people of color, older people and people living on lower very low incomes. In your own fair housing action plan. The authors note that disability status was one of the most commonly reported basis for discrimination of housing discrimination complaints 11 out of 24 involve discrimination disability so when we think about why would be why would disability housing be such an important part of increasing your supply. It's because that's part of the problem. And, and that is a population that frankly struggles to find good housing choices in many in all communities that I worked in. So, Arlington is no exception but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do something about it you really definitely should. High quality stable housing it's kind of central to the health and well being of families with children. There's relationships and opportunities limits chronic stress and reduces food insecurity and by that we mean when people actually have housing they can afford that's good quality than other aspects of their life are kind of on an even keel. And when that's not the case. It becomes very difficult for people to. You know they start making very difficult choices. I mean I'll stay in my house no matter what other things are going to give medical care food, food security and so forth. Next slide please. We put these images in just to kind of draw some content from the plan to present in this presentation. Just to sort of show what the income distribution is the boundaries on the map and the upper left are based on what's called census blocks they're sort of just defined by the Census Bureau so if it's any help to you you can probably see intuitively that the darker the area the higher the income of the household. There are some areas where the Census Bureau doesn't report a median because there's insufficient data. The highest areas are kind of a not not really, you know, not reported but for the most part you can see just as the subsidized housing distribution tends to be concentrated that the areas with the lower income families and individuals in your community also tend to be concentrated as well. They're not broadly distributed. There's certainly a big income gap between your households based on race. There's a lot of households living in Arlington and also households that self report as other race, which may be, you know, it's just what people declare so they're not necessarily declaring that they're black or Asian they might be you know Native American or something else but there's small numbers of households for for whom they're very low incomes living in your community extremely low incomes I would say. And so the other chart at the lower right is simply, well what does median household look like income if you look like relative to age, and you can kind of see in that last that last band, why older and adult households might be feeling the pinch, and many of them reporting housing cost burden households under 25 also have very low incomes. Your highest out incomes not surprisingly tend to fall in those kind of child wearing the years where the households tend to have to wage earners and it just those are that's really where your family households are. So you have two ends of the spectrum here where where people are struggling based on age. Next slide please. Housing prices are out of sync with the wage levels paid by local employers including the town, by the way. So housing prices are not only just generally getting more unaffordable but even people who work in the community would have trouble finding housing that they can afford. The housing prices that may have been affordable ones to families with modest incomes. As much prices have just gone out of sight they're just, it's just what's happened with your market, even since I was there working on the master plan a few years ago. It's pretty significant to see how housing prices have changed in Arlington in a fairly short period of time. Housing has your households become more affluent housing choice declines, because it's really the strength of the higher income market that's driving what's being built. Arlington has not used tools like chapter 40 are to create affordable housing, and has opposed chapter 40 be development that could increase supply and choice. I'm very aware that not every community I work in loves chapter 40 be I can accept that, but there are other tools available to Arlington that seem to not have been used that really could be important tools to address the lack of choice, and certainly the lack of supply. Next slide please. The suggestions for strategies in the plan to address their housing issues one is providing equitable access to affordable home ownership and rental homes suitable for a wide variety of households including both seniors and families with children. We see these these needs and the needs assessment integrating affordable homes in all neighborhoods through reuse of existing structures, redevelopment of underutilized properties, especially if they're within walking distance or vehicles or parks and other kinds of amenities. It's really important to review your zoning and other housing policies to encourage development that increases affordability. Improving development opportunities along major corridors to include a greater mix of housing options. Access to share green spaces and a healthy living environment a priority for the sighting of affordable housing, and also of course for the sighting of any future Parker recreation facilities at the town they decide to create. Next slide please. Can Dr racial impact study and evaluate whether your current rules disproportionately affect black people and other people of color. I think the town needs to be doing this. When you look at your zoning policies. It's, it's not enough to just say well that's what we like it's who is who benefits and who's farmed. It would be good I think for the town, I think you may already be working on this to kind of expand the data that are available about your subsidized housing units. I think there's a little more about what's in that inventory. It's not just the number of units but also how big are the units and how many bedrooms are there and how many actually are accessible to people with disabilities. Understanding how much of your housing supply may already have a restrictions associated with it. And understanding just kind of the condition of the units that do exist I mean we certainly heard plenty of comments about some housing condition problems in Arlington and it would be good to kind of put a little bit more detail on that in the databases that you have. The town could easily make two family dwellings and allowed use in all residential neighborhoods. I was a little bit surprised not to see that in the zoning but that would be a fairly simple thing to do that would increase supply in a way that's not incompatible with single family neighborhoods. Changing the zoning map to consolidate some districts and create realistic options for parcel assembly or getting back to the maps I showed you earlier, where you have a multifamily district to be sure but the parcels. And I think it's very fragmented that there's really no meaningful opportunity to find a development site or create one. And also thinking about designating some areas for so called missing middle housing, interspersed with commercial centers missing middle is this idea that that somewhere between single family homes and gigantic apartment buildings. There's this continuum of different types of structures and with different numbers of units for six, eight, you know, 20 unit buildings but just a range of things so that there's more choice. Next slide please. We're moving regulatory barriers to multifamily development we think is going to be critical for Arlington to address the housing needs that it has developing zoning for multifamily housing near the existing and planned T stations. You're probably going to hear more about that as the states as regulations and guidelines for the state's so called housing choice bill evolved over the coming months. The town could adopt a 100% affordable housing overlay I mean we heard a lot of people talk about why one of the things they didn't like about existing 40 B development is that we get some affordable units and then a lot of market affordable units. Well you could encourage 100% affordable units in your town just as Cambridge is doing. Just thinking about where, where would it make sense to do that, maybe in some of the desert some some streets in your existing lower density neighborhoods and it knows along Mass Ave and Broadway where again there are you know make sense to think about your corridors but not limiting everything there. How can you get into the neighborhoods with more choice. There's no overlay now as you may or may not know an overlay district doesn't impose a requirement on developers to create 100% affordable units but if they want to take advantage of the density and height relief and the other things that come with it. Then they have to build 100% affordable housing so if you really want to get that, make it possible for developers to do it on an as of right basis with very clear rules. They're working with nonprofit and faith based and for profit developers to put eligible developments in the affordable housing overlay. You know, community more communities are looking at what the Cambridge is experiment now and thinking about how they can apply it in their town so you wouldn't be alone and looking for opportunities to do that. They're purchasing a reserve account for the housing trust to acquire existing single family homes and redevelop them as two family dwellings with an affordable unit. I mean that would be a great way to think about opening up some of the land in those lower density zones to to not fundamentally change the character of the neighborhood of two family homes is not certainly in a front to a single family drawing. But if you're going to try to preserve some of your existing supply, why not think about perhaps allowing some additions that would create an affordable unit. Instead of ending up with an outright tear down on a very large expensive home in its place. Next slide please. There are existing parks and conservation land throughout town, especially in areas where there are existing concentrations of low income or minority neighborhoods and ensuring long term access to public recreation. So if you have opportunities for green space on site. Think about things like requiring newer better sidewalks or bike paths or trails to access the nearest park or open space you know how can you make up perhaps for proximity with making it easy for people to get to the open spaces and parks that are available to them. And that's your current parking requirements and parking design standards it's one of the most important things you can do to liberate sites from being undevelopable or unusable for increasing supply. And then increasing use of green infrastructure to minimize stormwater runoff and reduce flooding and heat island effect. I had some experiences about a year and a half ago in a community that had seen a lot of mixed use redevelopment in and around their town center. And I was interviewing town staff about how they saw the impact of those projects and it was the conservation administrator who spoke up and said I love them, because they helped remedy stormwater problems that have existed forever so when somebody has an older site and redeveloped it there's actually an opportunity to improve the environmental conditions associated with with that property is something to think about. Next slide please. That's a lot on fair housing so again I think we'll stop for a few minutes and ask if people have any questions about the goals or the strategies associated with them. I was looking here to see if anyone has their hand raised if anyone has any questions, please feel to please use the race hand feature. As you do discover. Hi, I was wondering if you could clarify what you meant about the changing zoning districts so that you can have parcels or something like that. Yeah, when you have a district that's only one small parcel, you don't have a good development site for redevelopment. So, there was actually a reference to this even back in the master plan about looking at the configuration of those existing districts along Nassav and and Broadway and thinking about how you might be able to create something like changing the district boundaries, perhaps, merging some properties into a single zone for multifamily development, or mixed use so that you end up with better development sites. Okay, thanks. You're welcome. Mary Ann you had your hand raised did you have a question. Yeah, hi. Thanks Kelly. Actually, so I had changed my mind because I wasn't sure I was completely clear. I was looking at the map, and I saw discussion where I saw the areas where there is already subsidized housing a lot of it is the Arlington Housing Authority sites. But then I saw also the graph showing the need for older folks for seniors to have housing. I'm wondering if part of what is being said in the presentation is because we want people to have choice. If there is actually space and land that is available in the Arlington Housing Authority. It's really something at Drake Village for example. Is it still kind of looked at like, we wouldn't want to put anything there because we want to disperse it more throughout town. I don't know if that makes sense I hope that does fair it's a fair question and it does make sense. I think what you're going to hear from us is that there isn't one strategy. What we would not encourage you to do is think about just focusing your efforts on developing additional housing on an existing housing authority site. There may be opportunities some other towns have done that they've done that with mixed income development. One of the towns I work in, I got special permission from DHCD to make some land available on the existing public housing site to do a home ownership development. So, you know there are opportunities to pursue but I wouldn't put all your eggs in that basket because then what you really don't create is equitable choice. That's why there's a lot of different strategies being discussed here because I don't think one is going to do it for you. All right. Next we have Patricia. Thank you. Thank you Kelly. I'd like to have my husband speak first. He is registered but we're both using the same computer unfortunately. So, I will put him on. Thank you. Thank you for a little bit of musical chairs here. She had a more comfortable one but now I've got it. John Worden Jason Street. Tell me remember from precinct eight and former moderator. A couple points that I should like to raise about the previous presentation. One you talk about the 10% goal we know. But just be aware, I hope that there's an alternative goal which is 1.5% of land area. And we have actually met that with the 40 bees, if you include the 40 bees now pending, which are about to get their permits. And I bring this up because Arlington is already the 12th densest community in the whole state. We are the second densest town in the state. And if other communities would do stride for even half the density that we have already provided to provide housing. We won't have the so called housing crisis. So I think you really talk about regional solutions. Let's let's look at some of our neighbors, even Medford has a lower density than Arlington does. Let's look at Lexington Winchester Belmont. They all have much lower densities. And I think they could do more to provide for these housing needs. We talked about affordable housing and that's something that we've been very concerned about for a long time. And you mentioned doing basically turning single family houses into two family houses and allowing that throughout the town. This is the last town meeting, because the so called ADU article allows anybody in any zone to turn their house to add their housing, add to their housing unit, a second unit. So practically no regulations, no permits, no nothing. And we asked in town meeting, recognizing that maybe some some good could come out of this. Otherwise, dumb idea. Make those make those those ADU affordable. And that that would go a long way to solving this affordable problem, but but that was opposed by the town officials, and by a majority of town meeting members. So, kind of some people speak out of both sides of their mouth. I do also point out that the the another another initiative that we've tried to impose but can't get official support is there are a lot of small houses in Arlington. Some of them are small capes that were built, starting going way back in the 19th century up until the post war period early part of the post war period. By the war, I mean World War two, by the way, that isn't clear to you younger folks. And a lot of sort of ranch houses, one level one and a half level houses of built in the post war period in the 50s and 60s. Those houses, although there are a lot more, plus a lot more in the used to those are relatively in a relative scale, those are affordable. And we have urged that steps be taken through zoning to protect those houses from being torn down and replaced by these these mega mansions that that the developers love and and the rich rich people from wherever. They don't seem to want to want to buy in Arlington, thus forcing up the prices. But again, we've not been able to get support from from the town administration to do something about this. And there was an article to the temporary moratorium for a couple years to study the problem. No, no. There are initiatives that have been proposed to deal with the affordable housing situation, but you got to get everybody on board, and they're not just say, Well, the solution is 40 views all over the place. So that's not a good solution. And one final thing I should like to mention that a lot of older people are being forced out of town. Because the taxes are so high, and something that you have to crank into your computations which I heard no mention of is every person who moves into town additional person moves into town. And it's twice about twice as much in in services as as as as the as the taxes on their, their house or residents provides. So those are some factors in Arlington they may not be unique to Arlington but they're very particularly here. Those are some things that they need to address if we really want to find some solutions to this problem. Thank you. Thank you, John. I think just to summarize what I heard and Judy, I don't know. There's anything you want to respond to here but questions about the 1.5% general land area minimum AD use impacts of a moratorium and taxes as an impact as an influential factor for particularly senior citizens. Kelly, I would like to make sure you hold on just a second because we want to give the consultants a chance to respond. Thank you. So I think I'll try to respond to all of that. I just do want to point out, if the town reaches the 1.5% general land area minimum you don't need the housing production plan anyway. Good. So, I think that's all I would have to say about that. Okay, thank you. Patricia and then Jean and then probably want to go on to the next section. Yeah, thank you Kelly. I just want to make a point that maybe ask a question that in your map for you show this the subsidized housing units where they are distributed in town. You know that that of course it looks rather localized around the central pathway. However, you must remember that that does not account for the section eight subsidized units, which are an excellent scattered side solution that is not recognized by official 40 be documents in any way, but it is subsidized by the taxpayers and we have quite a number of them in Arlington that shouldn't be just ignored. And they are all over the place. They're not just in those more dense areas. There are some not here in Jesus tree I have friends that I visited for in section eight units in this area. So that is that really we're not casting a complete picture of how we take care of the needs of affordable affordability here in Arlington. Thank you. Jean. Yes, thanks. And thank you, Judy for all of this interesting and thought provoking information. I have a few questions. I'll do them. One at a time. I wonder if you took a look at the lot sizes in our R zero and R one zones, and whether we should take a look at reducing the sizes to realize the reason I asked is because the lot sizes are greater than you have in smart growth building districts for R zero R one and R two. So I wondered if you had taken a look at that. And if you had if you would comment on that. No, I didn't look at I mean we look at the lot sizes but I think that where we landed on it was that it would just make more sense to allow two family dwellings than to work then to try to change the lot sizes because you still end up in a situation where you may not end up with an actual developable piece of land. Yeah, I mean part of the reason I asked about that is because one of the things that's driving the cost of housing here is the cost of land. So for most of us, and I'm in the R one district, the assessed value of the land is about twice, I think, more or less the assessed value of the house. So if you could build two houses on the property instead of one, you'd be splitting the value, and therefore getting theoretically at least a reduction in cost or you could put, you know, to two families, instead of one to family on the lot. So, I don't know I just think you might want to take another look at that and compare it to the state requirements for smart growth zoning districts. Another question. Another question I have is how do towns balance commercial development versus residential development because you know what we hear a lot in town is not only do we need more affordable and more missing middle housing, we also need more commercial development and a greater commercial tax base. And in a sense, the housing competes with the commercial development for the developable parcels. So I'm just wondering how communities balance those. Not well. That's probably a flip answer but I don't need to be flip it's a very serious question. You know, I, I think that you really have to kind of look at what's happening in the market and do you have districts that may just be inappropriately zoned in the first place or may or the zoning for them may be obsolete. And if it really is obsolete if it just isn't going to work for, say industrial development or something then you know it may make more sense. Physically, as well as just, you know, taking advantage of land that's being underutilized to think about allowing some housing. You know, amidst use development bylaw that works can preserve Brown for commercial space and actually out to enhance it by virtue of people living in the district. You know, I don't know that Arlington is all that well cited and situated in terms of just the road network and so forth for a large amount of commercial development I think it is a struggle for you guys. But I certainly would think the town would want to do what it can to make sure that you can support the commercial centers that you have. And housing is not a bad way to do that, to be honest with you. But I think really, you probably are going to want to make sure that your mixed use zoning is actually going to work. And I'm not sure that the jury is still out on that I don't know if Jeff or Nate on this call may have some other, our colleagues from Horsley Whitten Group may want to even chime in on this. Well, I think you're right, Judy. This is Nate Kelly from Horsley Whitten. The, you know, if the devil is in the details on mixed use zoning, and to your to your points, what we are seeing everywhere now is that a residential component is really necessary to make a commercial component Bible, both in the, you know, in the life of the business, but even in the underwriting the way the financial institutions are underwriting. They're they're not really willing to underwrite the commercial components and a lot of cases and any robust manner but they are the residential, because they know that the market is so strong and commercial markets are not strong and all they were weak in many cases before COVID and now in many cases they're weaker. So residential developments, which is often in a mixed use and then multifamily setting is tax positive, by the way, is is really a smart fiscal decision in the community. Yeah, I mean, thanks for that help. I mean, I think one of, I mean, I think we're seeing that in the mixed use developments in town that you know we've been told, at least in some instances that the residential component really carries the commercial piece and the other point I think it's important that you made is that not every new residence in town costs the town in terms of taxes, you know, most of the development we've had in town in the past few years has been tax positive from the town, not tax negative. Okay, one other question it's about the affordable housing overlay. Some of us attended a zoom a few weeks ago with some affordable housing developers and who are building 100% affordable housing and every one of them said that the only way they were able to make it work was the city or town basically gave them the land for zero or almost nothing, and that they wouldn't be able to financially make it work if they had to pay the cost of land so I mean can you comment on that in Arlington and and how do we combine your suggestion for the affordable housing overlay with the high cost of land in town right now. Oh, I think it's very difficult. I mean I think that if you, you know, if your housing trust is able to be a real agent of development, then you may in fact be able to acquire some sites that you are selective for reason, and making those available within the overlay may give you that ability to essentially write down the land cost and get some development. You know, it all it's developers want to do a what's going to make some money but be is going to get an approval with the least amount of hassle. So, if the economics work because the fact that the dimensional regulations work, and their subsidy and the deal which is the other part of it that I think is critical. And, you know, it becomes more possible to have a conversation about whether 100% is going to work but I think it's it's going to be it's in land price it's in. What kind of housing is it, and can you get other sources of subsidy. So, I just couldn't work better if you can't write down the cost of land that let's say a 50% affordability overlay zone. Yeah, you could I mean you could certainly look at that certain sure. Okay, thanks. You want to make sure you're not inviting some unintended consequences. I mean, yes, I mean you certainly could think of it in those terms. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you. So I see we have three other people with their hands up and I think what we want to do is, is go Joanne, Don and then Neil, and then we do have this third section to present so I think if we could start with Joanne and then we'll go to Don and then Thank you. Joanne Preston. I just want to caution people not to conflate creating housing with creating affordable housing. I live in the web coward neighborhood, which is a zone to family. We do have many single family homes, but they have been brought up by developers for between $600,000 $800,000. Architecturally, by the way, and they were torn down and we call luxury duplex townhouses replaced the single family house with two luxury townhouses, which sold for well over a million dollars each. So that is increasing housing that is not increasing affordable housing. Often people look to economics 101 or what they think is economics 101 to say, the more housing you have prices go down. But Arlington that hasn't happened in Arlington. It's in a regional housing market. So more housing in the case of our neighborhood means more expensive housing. I'm not sure how it's tax positive. Actually, my single family house is pie shaped. So we have some land in the back. We pay taxes, the same amount as the people in these luxury duplexes. And I know them, I like them. They all have two and more children who are going to public schools, public schools are 40% I last saw of the town budget. So, I don't want to take up time with that now but I'll talk to Jean about it sometime, but please let's not think that changing one family zoning to two family is going to result in more affordable housing. It will result in luxury housing, not affordable housing. Thank you. Joanne. Don. Thank you. I'd like to go back to your introduction. I think you had listed as one of the priorities retaining what affordable housing we have in town. And I thought I would hope that would include our older less expensive homes. This is sort of a touches on what Joanne was just talking about. One of my concerns is that we have several thousand of these houses in Arlington, and as they come on the market. Normally they would be affordable to moderate incomes. But a good proportion of them when they hit the market are being bought up and redeveloped at basically twice the selling price of what the builders are buying them for. And this is just normal market for forces. It's hard to control but do you have any solution to this as far as trying to retain this type of housing stock. Sorry you're on mute. Your town and every town, I think there are people who would like to preserve that housing stock. First of all, I have to tell you, I think that trying to preserve an existing dwelling unit is the most expensive way to try to create affordable housing, because you are competing with what's going on in the market. So what we where we landed with this was, instead of just replacing an existing older home with a very large expensive single family home, that perhaps some targeted acquisition of older homes that could be within with an addition turned into a two family dwelling with one affordable unit might be something to consider. I mean, legislation or zoning laws that require that the tear down and redevelopment of a single family into a two family would have to include at least one affordable unit. I don't think so. I don't think you can do that. Well, I mean, it depends on your objectives. I mean, I know that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about creating an opportunity to create additional supply. Instead of losing an older home to a large single family home, perhaps thinking about ways that you create something that's moderately affordable as a second dwelling unit. It would be nice for that to happen but what we're seeing is a single family home that is in an R2 as Joanne said is it's being bought up for $7,800,000 and being torn down and converted into duplex condos that go for $950,000 and higher each. That's not that's going in the wrong direction. Thank you. Neil. Yes. Thank you Kelly. Let's see I think it's, I just want, I just wanted to say I think it's really important in these discussions for the presenters and everybody to be as honest as possible, and to be to not either. Kind of hide information or not, or shade information because housing issues I think are so complicated, ranging from policy to urban design to economics. And so I just think it's, it's really important that we, we all try to be honest with each other and straightforward. Along that in that vein just just a quick correction I think Jean, you said that there was a forum a couple weeks ago with some developers that have produced affordable housing, several developers and I was on that panel. I'm on the board of the housing corporate Arlington. And we've done and we're just, just about finished with a new development, 48 units of affordable housing. But you said that all the developers had said that they could not have done the development without the town or city, giving the property to the developers for free or providing it for free. And just to correct that in Arlington, the housing corporate Arlington, which we now are coming up on having 150 units of affordable housing. We've as much as we'd like it we've never had any property given us to us for free. It's, it's, in fact, we have to pay and compete with the market which is one of the many challenges of doing affordable housing in a town like Arlington Arlington is expensive. It's just expensive. It's, we're not going to change the fact that it's, it's an expensive town relative to many, many other towns. And so subsidy dollars, and in order to do the development and subsidy dollars to pay for the land and subsidy dollars to help clean up the hazardous waste on sites that have to be cleaned up so that they can be used is the unless somebody has some other idea I just wanted to clarify that that we've never been given any property for free. And I, and just a quick question I wanted to ask regarding the idea which I think I'm, I'm very much in favor of trying to convert and purchase existing housing and fix it up and preserve it as affordable rental housing. The Housing Corp of Arlington has 14 to family buildings that are affordable properties. And I think it's great that they integrate into the neighborhoods pretty well, very well I would say, but they are extremely expensive to manage from a property management point of view. So I wonder when you know it's one of your strategies that you listed Judy is to be to convert single families to two families or I'm wondering what you're thinking in terms of property management of those and ownership of those I guess. I think we were thinking of them as owner occupied with a rental unit. So with no, no actual income restrictions no, and others they would be you'd be, I guess, as some people say they'd be, you know, affordable in the wild or wild affordable units and others that they're, they're native they're not there's no subsidy attached to them. Right. No, I mean, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. No, no, I forgot to say that last word so the restrictions part of it is the part that goes. Yeah, no, I mean, it's not the kind of strategy that's going to create the very low income housing that an organization like yours is so good at. I'm looking at this question of the tiers of affordability so you know the second unit in a two family dwelling in, in, you know, in a district that's otherwise single family, you know, is probably not going to be a subsidized housing inventory unit. I mean, we all struggle with what to call these things but the sort of over modern income. You know, some unit kind of restricted and that that in some income range of I hate to fall back on percentages again but you know 100 220% or something like that, I mean, that is not an unheard of program you just don't have it in Arlington. I certainly wouldn't put all the eggs in the basket of a program like that. We're just saying we've heard about people being concerned about losing existing single family homes to large McMansions, and all we're saying is, you might be able to get some additional supply, and I'll be it in a, you know, not sh I affordable context but tears of affordability that people have expressed concern about in a scattered site kind of way. That's really all that's it's about, but I certainly respect what you're saying it's. It's not it's not a strategy to create a lot of deeply affordable housing it wouldn't. If people have their hands raised I really want to get to this third section of the presentation and then we do have a another section of Q amp a after that so let's let's move on to that and then I know Jean and Joanne you do have your hands raised so we'll get to you at the end but we do want to go into this next section. Okay. So the last kind of grouping of the goals and strategies is around capacity. Advocacy for housing seems to be fragmented and not very well organized. It's been a pleasure to talk to people in Arlington who who are really you know true soldiers of affordable housing but there aren't a lot of them. There's a lot of misinformation about affordability and housing development and you know developers in particular market what's happening with the market, and also local governments responsibility for housing affordability and housing justice or just seems to be an awful lot of misinformation. We've heard it pretty much from the beginning. There doesn't appear to be a consistent or generally understood or respected policy framework for increasing the supply of affordable housing. So that's kind of a problem statement that we saw with with capacity next slide please. So there are some goals in the plan around a competing increasing capacity to produce housing through leadership development advocacy and increase in staffing and funding and relationships with nonprofit and for profit developers. So the variety of ways that a town can increase its capacity to provide housing. This is really about the town's capacity internally and in terms of the relationships that it has. It's for affordable and fair housing needs within Arlington in the larger region and Arlington's role in addressing broader inequities which really has to do with some communities in the region are shouldering a regionally unfair share of the housing need burden, and what can Arlington do that contribute to perhaps improving, you know it's, it's status as a provider of affordable housing in the region. So that's one of the goals in the plan. Next slide please. So there are several strategies talked about in the plan to get at this and one is building relationships and encouraging nonprofit housing organizations and CVC is to build an Arlington in addition of course to the affordable housing corporation I just want to make it clear we're not talking in the AHC we're saying it's kind of hard to do what what is being done without kind of broadening the reach to perhaps some additional CVC is that do work in the suburban metro area, and they have had some very successful relationships with towns. Thinking about establishing a community land trust to support the development of permanently affordable housing. A community land trust of course owns the land may create ownership housing owns the land as that housing continues to sell so that what's happening with the land market doesn't end up driving the cost of the housing as it's resold in the future. So working with community economic develop development assistance corporation and list to identify potentially interested CDC sometimes we work in towns that would like to form relationships with nonprofits but don't know where to start. So those are two organizations that have active relationships with community development corporations and nonprofit housing developers, really all over Massachusetts and tapping into that resource to find potential partners would be a good thing to do. Sponsoring round tables for you know the nonprofits of CDC's and for profit developers and subsidizing agencies to provide public education about the cost of developing and managing affordable housing. You know to Neil's comment about the expense of managing kind of scattered site to family it's true it's very expensive way to proceed. But people don't always understand that so these parties that are kind of really essential to production could could help to increase the knowledge base in your community and maybe try to even out some of the pretty significant misinformation that exists. Next slide please. Support advocacy and tenant organizing efforts within the housing authorities homes and AC and other affordable housing developments. We, we had an interesting interview yesterday for a hot another housing plan we're working on and one of the interviewees made the point of talking about how there's a big difference between advocates and stakeholders. And it's just important to kind of recognize who you're talking to, and what their interests are when you're trying to think about affordable housing so organizing the real stakeholders is probably going to be an important thing for the town to think about what can the town do to support that appointing affordable housing advocates to town boards and commissions is really kind of basic. You want to be able to build advocacy capacity you need to actually put it on your boards and committees. Scheduling periodic and predictable conversation meetings with the redevelopment board the housing plan implementation committee and you know these other groups to set an annual housing implementation agenda consistent with this housing plan. You know why is this in here because I think in many towns, at least where we've worked. And that advocacy for affordable housing is either non existent in government, or it's very fragmented. And it's frankly not a very sexy place to be if you want to get involved in local government most people aren't raising their hand and saying I want to be on your housing trust or your housing partnership they want to be a select board they want to be a school committee they want to be a finance or advisory board and they want these sort of jobs that have a lot of visibility. And serving and housing ought to be just as attractive as that and there are a lot of things that public officials in a town can do to send that message that's not happening in Arlington today. Next slide please, encouraging organizing people to speak at public hearings and meetings about the needs and benefits for affordable housing shouldn't just be people who are opposed, but people who are supportive. There's a lot of things that can be scary, especially in a town where there's a lot of opposition to chapter 40 be and subsidized housing can really scary to supporters to get up at a public hearing and speak in favor of housing development. That only happens because there's an active effort underway to cultivate that group, those groups, and make sure that they have just as much space to speak at a public hearing as the people who are opposed. So understanding your education about affordable housing and equity is very important that the image on this slide was something we did for another town, where we basically took jobs that were in the existing employment base. Look at what they're making, and crazy sort of handouts on. This is what people who work in your town can actually afford, and they can't find housing in your community that would fit, you know, that would meet their needs and yet they're serving you every day. What does that say about the kind of community that you actually are engaging town officials to confront and address disinformation. This information is just, I don't understand disinformation is I understand and I'm going to distort the message. And that needs to be addressed as well. Next slide please. I think that maybe it on the capacity issues and I'll take more questions at this point. Great. And just in the interest of time. I think what we want, what I, what I'm recommending that we do is we have Jean, and then Joanne, sorry, if Joanne you do have a question and then I do want to just share the next steps and that way, if anybody else if any other questions come up as part of this than anybody who needs to go because we are 10 minutes over can go but I do want people to understand what happens next so Jean. Yeah thanks and I want to thank Neil for correcting me I think all the other people on that panel said that the cost of the land was bought down, but not HCA. So thank you Neil. I did have one question for Judy talking about the need for community land trust in Arlington. I'm also interested because I'm in on a nonprofit board in a small city that's just creating community land trust. And I'm sort of wondering in Arlington. What's the purpose of the community land trust if we already have the housing corporation of Arlington where it's niche that HCA doesn't fail. I think that, you know, some of the land trust I'm familiar with focus on doing ownership housing. So, you know, if you have the ability to control the price of the land that has a big impact on being able to preserve the intended resale value of the units as they sell. I don't think I want to make this really clear. We're not advocating, creating competition with or replacing the housing corporation of Arlington, we get it that they do wonderful stuff. And so what we're talking about is increasing the town's capacity overall to do a variety of housing types. It's really hard to address housing needs and a nonprofit world when you've got one entity that's carrying that burden. So, I just really want to make that clear. I somehow I'm going to get this across in the plan to we're not we're not talking about creating competition for or somehow dismissing the importance of the AC we're talking about giving them more partners. And it sounds like also the role of land trust would be to put together affordable homeownership. Yeah, I think that really was what we had in mind. You're welcome. Appreciate it. I know Joanne you had your hand raised earlier did you have a question. Yeah. Oh, sorry you're on mute. Now I'm not. So that's my general question which I'm going to partially answer is the comment that we're now in terms of affordable housing it's fragmented and not well organized. Well, how did we get there. I just want to quickly say, I'm on the board of the Arlington housing authority, which has over 800 units of and houses more than 1000 residents. We have low income housing, which means that we can take people from homeless shelters, who have no income, and we take people who can no longer afford affordable housing. So we have a particular niche in terms of housing in Arlington. One thing I want to bring up is what's happened historically, especially since the Reagan administration is the been a major retreat from public housing and state and all kinds of funding of public housing. I've become, since I've been on the board, a real fan of public housing. And I think that it's been so constrained in being able to create more truly low income housing. That's, that's one thing that I think is important to remember that we used to have, like in some of our units were built in the 1950s, but since then it's been public housing has been defunded. One of the advantages of public housing is we don't have to pay profits to private developers, even nonprofit developers get 20% of profit, so that all of the money that's put into housing, affordable low income housing for public housing is spent on that purpose. So, I want people to become aware that that is an option in terms of all these other options. And it's a very organized one. And it's one that meets the needs of the people who are the most desperate for housing, which are low income residents. And I hit one other thing. The other part of this is the big picture. The most profitable investment in the United States right now is in creating and owning residential housing. Google Corporations Single Family Housing, you will find that there are corporations who own 300 single family houses, and they make a lot of money on it. They invest them. One realtor in Cambridge a couple of years ago about a pamphlet which somehow came in my mail. They said that 300 over 300, it was 304 single family homes in Arlington were owned by outside investors. I think it's very important to put this in the context of what is driving a lot of residential housing, luxury housing development. So, anyway, it doesn't need to be fragmented. The housing corporation of Arlington has its own niche. We have ours. And that there should be more emphasis on nonprofit and public entities in terms of housing. That's it for now. Thank you Kelly. Thank you Joanne. Thank you. And then we'll do the next steps. And then if anybody else has a question, we'll go to that. Okay, thanks Kelly. I just wanted to quickly say, and I don't want to speak too much, but I hear what you're saying Joanne and one, I think one of the great regrets that I have about having been involved with affordable housing in Arlington for 25 years, is that we have not been able to craft a relationship between the housing corporation of Arlington and the Arlington Housing Authority, and that we haven't been able to entrepreneurially work together. And I just, I would hope that in the coming years that we can find ways to maximize the land that the housing authority has and the resources that the housing corporation brings. So I agree, it's a terrible thing in a town like Arlington to have two committed organizations to affordable housing. And for any of the efforts towards affordable housing to be considered to be fragmented, we really need to, we can all work together. And I think I really hope that we can do that in the near future. Thank you, Neil. If you could just quick go to the next slide Alexis. Do you want to give a quick overview here of next steps and then Jennifer I see you have your hand raised so we'll go to your question. But just to understand the next step so Barrett planning group and Horsley Whitten are completing the draft of the housing plan. We will have that publicly available at shortly after Thanksgiving, and then that will be available for review through when that is presented to the Arlington redevelopment board we have a presentation of the draft plan to the Arlington redevelopment board on December 16. And the board at that time will have some time to review the draft plan and then come back out of meeting shortly thereafter, and make some comments and approve the plan. At that point it will be presented to the select board tentatively scheduled for January, January 3 and 2022 other we have to confirm that date. And then it would be presented to the select board most likely a second time for their review and adoption and after that point it would then be submitted to DHCD. But I do want to be clear like when we when we have this draft plan, we will be posting this on the town website will be sharing out through various communication channels that it is available for public review and how people can provide comments so it is coming. And we, you know we really appreciate everyone's comments tonight. We appreciate everyone's working with us on this plan throughout the entire planning process and particularly before we get to these next questions and if we end up closing here I'm able to say this I just really want to thank Barrett planning group Judy Barrett and Alexis and also thanking Nate Kelly and Jeff Davis from Horsley Whitten for their work on this and also many many thanks to the housing plan implementation committee for the many meetings that they have attended and the comments that they've shared in the drafting and of this plan and in the development of this planning process. So with that I do want to go to Jennifer I see you have your hand raised I think what we'll do is, I've got about 10 minutes for questions and then I think in the interest of time we should probably wrap this up. So, thank you, Jennifer. Yes, thank you. So, I'm part of a group of people who advocates for more housing in our community both more affordable housing or middle income housing, more housing in general. And when I'm often struck by I mean on many many occasions is how much sort of my anxiety mirrors the anxiety of people who I think are arguing against more housing. So, so that the worry that our towns become un affordable, the word the look, you know, when you look at a smaller house that maybe once affordable torn down and built in a larger house replaced and feeling that that's changing our town and changing sort of what we value. And, but but where we often differ is what do we do about it right and so I don't think that continuing the process of exclusionary zoning, trying to keep things small will do much in terms of preserving affordability given especially that the houses cost depend a lot on the housing values and so if you restrict how much can be built on that that how that sorry the land values, if you restrict how much can be built on that land, you don't make houses more affordable. So, and I've heard this talked about as sort of the supply skepticism that people have. And so I guess our duty for other people I'm wondering, how, how can we talk to people who who I feel we like we often share the same thoughts, and yet we sort of have just sort of fundamentally different ideas of how to address these concerns, but but we're all concerned about our town right I really feel like we're in the same community concerned about very very similar things, all really caring people. But we just sort of differ on sort of how we fundamentally look at it and I'm wondering how we can talk to each other. If you have any ideas. Nate I think I might punt this to you. Well, I was going to say, I think the, the idea that you're starting with the absolute simplest premises is really fantastic. But it is worth saying, we all care about our town and started there. And then there are other, you know, and then you sort of just, you know, one day you step at a time. That's sort of how you speak and what you're speaking about. I think the other piece is that, you know, I think you touched on this a bit is, you know, providing places to speak often. And, and, and so you know that on the town side. And that means, you know, educational material and those passing issues that Judy talked about leadership issues, you know, and speaking, you know, checking it off and having all boards. All missions or all groups, you know, talking about this at their, at their regular meetings. So, you know, sort of leading it into the culture. And that means, even if people continue to disagree, the fact that it's happening again and again and again kind of takes the emotion out of it, you know, and I think really helps with the tenor and conversation. I've worked in a lot of communities who do disagree a lot disagree in a healthy way that's just because they do that. And they understand each other, they keep working, you know, try to find solutions. I think some of the things I heard tonight, but it was really interesting was, you know, there were, there were folks who were drilling down details of some of this and showing that you would have maybe like an unintended bad outcome sort of the two family discussions that we had tonight and so, you know that those are great observations and a million portents, but it's not a thrown the baby out of the bathwater situation. So, you know, these things often take a couple of swings in order to get them to work. And when they do, you know, that's, you know, that's a great thing, maybe it's transferable to other places. So perseverance is really incredibly important with these kinds of things. You know, start out slow with the principles that you agree on. A lot of times, for example, there are issues where we talk about this a lot because if you notice with our firm we're very environmentally oriented, but we're also very housing oriented as well. And a lot of times, unfortunately, environmental groups and housing groups seem to find themselves at odds. But they really haven't taken a moment to talk about the things that they do agree about. So I think I like, I love the fact that, you know, Judy has asked us to talk about in the fair housing section, you know, the issues around open space and connectivity and healthy communities and these types of things, because that helps to get at other dimensions of housing that aren't often talked about. So I do think there's a lot of room for people to agree on more things. And just, you know, persevering, having leadership talk about it again and again, having the talent continuing to highlight important information so that the disinformation doesn't take three. And these are all things that have to happen to create a sort of a culture of conversation around difficult topics. I guess if I could just add one more thing, I think we agree on what we're worried about. But I think we fundamentally disagree on the solution that I feel like the solution is to add more housing. And then other people feel like the solution is to restrict housing. But I think we are agreeing on what we worry about. And I have to just one more thing about what I agree, I 100% agree with John Preston that the federal government has aggregated its responsibility towards affordable housing in the last 40 years. So that's another thing I completely underrepresented agree with. But I just feel like we are fundamentally at odds with what we think the solution is I just do not think the solution is to continue to restrict supply. And I'm not sure how to cross that barrier with people who feel who see the single family being torn down to luxury to families being built and think that somehow increasing supply is a problem. You know, all the evidence all the research papers say that's not true, but I just don't know how to cross that barrier in terms of communication. And I'm sure there are things I believe that aren't true too so I'm just, I'm just not sure how to cross that barrier. Thank you Jennifer. I do think we all have a lot of many more conversations to have about this. And it's not something we're necessarily going to solve tonight but I do, I do think we need to keep talking. So, I have three people here and then I think we're going to have to close for tonight so just to name you all don Len and Karen, and just one quick correction I see on this slide here. And I think maybe we could probably close this after this but it's a submission of the final housing plan and just to clarify. It's a submission of the final housing plan on Monday, November 29 it's, it's the sharing of the draft housing plan that'll happen on the 29th. So, I think with that we could probably close this so we could see everybody's faces a little bit and then we'll go. Don Len and Karen and then we'll wrap it up for tonight. Thank you Kelly. In the spirit of cooperation I want to share with everyone here and easy way for any of us to immediately help the situation. I recently found out I think it was from when L Evans is attending about the community investment tax credit, and the housing corporation of Arlington as a participant. What I found is that you can make a tax deductible contribution to them, and there's a special program in which Massachusetts is going to give you a 50% tax credit on your contribution, which is just fantastic. I recommend anyone who wants to make such a contribution to contact the housing corporation and find out the details of how you can do this. Thank you. Thank you, John. Sorry, Len and then Karen. Thank you, Kelly. You know, and so on with respect to the presentations to select board. I think our next schedule meet our schedule meeting first schedule meeting January is going to be on the 10th. That isn't the same we can't do something on the third, but what I would like to suggest is that maybe we try to use the presentation of this plan as opportunity to have a joint meeting with ARB. The chair may have something else in mind the chairs of both boards may have something else in mind so of course I defer that but I do know that there is a desire me for both of those boards to get together. And given that select board agendas can get pretty jammed at times that they could be good if we had separate meeting that was devoted to this and maybe other housing and zoning issues. That's it. Thank you. Great, great meeting for. Thank you, Len. Karen. Hi, thanks. Don, thank you for the shout out about the community investment tax credit I like that you offered it in spirit of cooperation. And if I thought it was at all productive to draw a line down the sand and say there's two teams here I'd say we should have a friendly competition to see who can make more contributions to the housing corporation of Arlington so let's not draw that line but whatever side you're on and courage you to be in touch with the housing corporation of Arlington if you do your end giving there is no better tax benefit nor better way to support affordable housing in Arlington. That wasn't what I was going to bring up though. It feels like we want the market is a huge part of our challenge here right and we are a part of a regional market we are not a market that as a town you're a market as a region and as a country and as a globe actually. We can't really stick our heads in the sand right so affordable housing is about a math problem that doesn't work it's about people who don't make enough money to afford the price of housing in our economy. And that's what we're working against and it's really, really hard. And it's a math problem that doesn't work and we talked earlier about subsidy being required to make it happen. And so I just want to kind of stick it to be the last comment or to ask about how we can think about our resources and which ones we can leverage because I think we're at a pivotal moment where we have a lot of common desire to create more affordable community and we can argue about which ways and what levels but we share that and I would love to see us act on that and we can find common ground to act on that, but we do need resources, and we are a town that is heading into some challenging times. And we have some resources at the table now that we could leverage so I know that the town is already making some decisions about its ARPA money I am putting in a plug to all of you to engage in the process of thinking about how those funds are spent because you know how we could better serve the people, the low income people who've been hardest hit by the pandemic then by taking steps to create more affordability in our community. My question for you Judy is, how do we best leverage those resources and other ways that we can and that we are actually leveraging the market, because for example we may not love 40B but guess what we're about to get 60 units of affordable with zero subsidy from the 240B deals that were referenced earlier. That's no subsidy whatsoever it's cross subsidy from the market. So, market take it but it can be leveraged to give something back, and it's one tool, it's not the only tool by any stretch of the question. I hope we won't take it out of the box but Judy how do we leverage the resources we have as a town, because we don't have we're not Cambridge we're not Boston we don't have the same commercial tax base to draw on nor do we have the kinds of entitlement resources coming from and you also don't have the seasonal housing tax revenue that comes into places like Nantucket either so you know I mean realistically I'm going to say it's probably not going to be very popular but in a market like yours, you really have to think about the ways that mixed income development creates that cross subsidy. And so, you know tools like chapter 40R which really doesn't necessarily require any subsidy sometimes developers will will get a subsidy but I mean chapter 40R rests on the assumption that mixed income will cross them sometimes. What that doesn't do is get deeply affordable housing. So I think that there isn't going to be one strategy here that fixes the whole thing. The, the sort of the, the moderate income group can be assisted with with mixed income type of development reserved therefore your resources, but little you do have for for providing for deeply affordable housing because mixed income development is not going to reach that unless you try a strategy of buying down. Pardon me for getting into, you know, 40 be nomenclature here but buying down 80% units to something less I mean that's a possibility but the need is in the most deeply affordable unit so I would say, you know, don't frustrate the ability of developers to do mixed income development because it's going to help to boost supply. Therefore, what you would be doing is focusing your financial resources, your land acquisition your, you know, your free land as a result by land you make it available to nonprofits. You know, you're, you're throwing you're putting CPA or housing trust funds into projects that are that need that money to compete for low income housing tax credits. So focus that on the lower income need, and I think that you're going to need a multiple strategy here it's not you're not going to do one size fits all in this town, you just can't. I worried the most frankly Karen about the need for the deeply affordable housing because it's there. And I don't think the chapter 40 chapter 40 be simply a permitting law that's all it is a toy guarantee affordability that needs money. And, you know, I hate to see the town kind of spending money on intervening in strategies that could get you 80% affordable units when I think the market can take care of that if you simply give them the regulatory tools to do it. I don't know if you agree with me but I think that it's the deeply affordable housing whether where there's a real real problem. I think what you need to focus, whatever you can on on using your own, your own dollars to leverage state resources, such as CPA and housing trust funds being used for projects that need tax credits. It's just an example. I mean, I'm not sure that's a very helpful answer to your question Karen but to me it's, it's tears of tears of need and different strategies work well with different tears. Yeah, thanks. I'm, we're just looking for ideas and I'm not committed to any one strategy I think we all the tools in the toolbox. Right. Great, thank you so much. Thank you again, Alexis, Judy, Nate, Jeff members of the HPIC and thank you to everyone who came tonight and really engaged with this discussion I think housing is critical and critical discussion in town and I think we're going to continue to have it. I can touch as the draft plan is a publicly available and we look forward to your feedback so thank you all for participating tonight, and I look forward to continuing the conversation with you as we move into the rest of this year. Have a good evening all. Thank you. Good night.