welcome to the February meeting of the municipal Housing Trust Fund of Amherst Why Don't We Begin by approving or reviewing commenting on the minutes any comments Alex please yeah I had two
um first of all I I was here at the January 9th meeting and I wasn't listed as a a trust attendee um and the other one is a language thing but on the first page down under the
housing needs assessment end of the second paragraph it's talking about LLC transactions and it says indicating a potential trend of llc's I move that we strike that last Clause that indicating a potential Trend because the data we
looked at was point and time data and can't actually be used to establish a trend because we didn't have longer Contex okay good good feedback um uh and thanks for catching that that error um anyone else spot any
anything um well can we have a motion to approve the minutes as corrected um by Alex's comments one or we all in favor of okay so so done um minutes are approved thank you
Greg for keeping them up to date that is um uh a thankless and essential task so thanking it and and Alex sorry about that that's me going too quick on those I I apologize no it's okay I don't think
I said anything last meeting so especially if you were just looking at a recording or transcript it'd be easy to miss but I wasn't at that I I I I recall you so okay well now we all have a reason to check to make sure we're not getting
raced accidentally we don't get left out um do we have our guest this evening in the audience we do um and Jesse hopefully you can hear me and I'm gonna go ahead and promote you to a panelist now so uh prepare for incoming um uh
video I guess um I think you'll have to click you'll have to accept something in a moment um and and welcome Grover as well I'm gonna put Grover into as well one of our members um oh and I'll also Welcome to our audience more keen is here as well
in the audience uh trying to um uh name who's around um uh so Jesse welcome you know I'm I'm pleased to have you here tonight and I told Gest I just do a quick intro um you know so as part of our strategic plan as the trust or our
action plan I should say we talked about sort of strategic engagement with other boards in town and trying to be intentional about that um uh and I think um uh this is a great opportunity to uh to do that in a you know a low-key way um uh so Jesse major is here and Jesse I
believe you're the chair of both the planning board and also the the housing subcommittee if I just the subcommittee so don't credit yeah gotcha okay well we'll give you lots of credit regardless but we're we're um we're happy to have you and the the planning board currently has has recently um
in the relative recent past launched a subcommittee um explicitly focused on housing um and so I thought there's a natural um uh sort of uh match there to the Housing Trust to some degree so Gaston and I agreed it'd be great to invite Jesse and we're lucky that you
graciously joined us and I know you're also in the AC academic world in your your day job but we so we appreciate you doubling down here uh as a volunteer uh beyond your your existing substantial commitments as a volunteer so welcome um thank you and if there's key details about you that you that I've left out
you're welcome to share as well but uh you know sure sure um hi everyone uh I I only know Carol and great to see you again been a while um nice to meet the rest of you um yeah so just a little context uh I joined the planning board I
guess a year and a half ago uh and it's been on my mind for quite a while I've lived in Amis for 18 years I live on Cosby Avenue which is right down Town sure you're all familiar with the streets um I work at UMass I'm a professor there I'm now also associate
Vice Chancellor for research um I have two kids who go to UMass I raise my kids here I also own two other properties in ammer which I rent to individuals so I'm well versed I think in all of these issues that all of us are talking about and really the the whole reason I was
convinced to get involved with planning board was to try and save our neighborhoods my view like to to figure out ways to facilitate year round
residents over increasing flipping into student homes and I say this as much as I can I'm not all opposed to students they are my livelihood like that's obvious right and I have great Neighbors show students there nothing anti-student is completely Pro long-term resident the
things we're trying to do and particularly poignant in my neighborhood which is the sort of sunset Lincoln historic district this trend of just the percentage of rentals is just increasing increasing increasing sorry of student
homes not of just rentals and I'm really worried as our other people that we're going to reach some Tipping Point and it's already happening people will move out long-term residents are moving out because they don't want to be surrounded by student homes and so again again this
was my whole motivation to try and get involved to see how we what we could do if anything to try and work sort of against this right it certainly uh overlaps I think with the work you all are trying to do just to make more affordable possibilities in our town
right and it and and it's the same issue that I see also because the student Market drives things up so much that even a couple young professors can't really afford to live downtown right and that's what we want to try and um get
ourselves back to that place um so yeah I've been for the year and a half I've been working on this it's been up and down in in my frustration and productivity level feeling uh because you know as you all know I think better than I do this has been a conversation for 30 years in our
town and not a whole lot's happened on this front um the kinds of things so so we we've bantered around a lot of different ways there ways that other towns and similar situations have tried to regulate their minimum distance
strategies there are minimum unrelated occupants in a house there are simply defining and limiting the number of rentals per neighborhood per Town whatever all kinds of strategies um and what we realized as
the and so sorry let me back up a little bit we formed the subcommittee or I formed the subcommittee because there there was never enough time in the regular planning board meetings to talk about these issues never enough time and maybe not enough
appetite among the full board and so I was encouraged to start the subcommittee which we started maybe seven months ago um so there's four of us on the planning board who have try and have somewhat regular subcommittee meetings to sort of pick issues to work on to then bring
them to the planning board to hopefully move that forward to Town Council and CRC and you guys know the whole process which I don't need to elaborate on um and yeah so in the subcommittee we've talked about all kinds of things
what we realized a few months ago is you know to do any of this we first need our town to adopt a definition of a student home because without defining without having a way to sort of Define what we're talking about
there's no way to try and address address it right and again because we want to distinguish between uh student home which is we view as short-term residence or 9month residence for four
years most typically versus yearr round potential long-term residents and in order to make any kind of Distinction like that we really need this definition to get on the books somewhere right um and the first opportunity that that came up is really around the recent
Adu law chain change that was a Massachusetts thing um that we're trying to now add in this definition in in a sort of twist on our own Adu bylaw and hopefully that'll be at planning board next week to for discussion if you're
interested to chime in for that um beyond that we're also trying to just gather a lot of data about where rentals are um the the permitting system in town seems to be pretty good but you know
it's never going to be 100% there's lots of there's clearly a gap between how many rentals there are and what's actually showing up in the town records or who actually gets a permit but you know my guess is it's 85 to 90% correct
or um and we are currently really thinking about overlay districts as I'm guessing you've all heard you know the the first of these this is a full planning planning board effort also the University Drive overlay seems to be
moving forward at least making its way back to council soon hopefully uh the next thing we're thinking about our increasing density at already zone for apartment and multi-use properties so like there's a big stretch
in north amorist um just north of the University that we're thinking about trying to increase density and again this not a new idea this was raised 12 or 13 years ago as a possibility to as a as places to really incre increase density for student specific housing and
so we're going to try and push that forward at some point and then there's you know talk for a while about East ammer Town Center sort of increasing density there and some other little pockets where you know a lot of people imagine would be great places to
increase density rather than just relying on neighborhoods to absorb an increase density that way um yeah I don't want forget and we can come back to this if you have other specific questions uh as I joined you
were talking about LLC data and Trends and I've been really interested in that also just as a argument to make and so I just received 20 years of sales data from the state it's in an atrocious format which I'm trying to get through
um but that's exactly what I'm hoping to point out also is that it's you know these sales are a one-way decision right they're never coming back and my preliminary searching indeed back set up there's I couldn't find a single sale from a LLC to a single to a single
owner over 20 years so that's pretty compelling and I'm happy to share that kind of data with whoever wants to look at that with me um but anyway um yeah what uh maybe I'll just stop there and see if you guys have questions
specifics or great I'm sure I'm sure members have uh uh lots of questions so who wants to start off Alex please go ahead yeah um thank you so much for joining us today Jesse as full disclosure I'm a newer resident of ammer
I've only lived here for a couple of years and myself am a um MGR student um I know that I've mentioned this to the whole committee to our committee before but I really often hear this claim about students infiltrating into single family
neighborhoods um I would love if you all are working under this premise that you share some of that data as you get it um obviously using llc's as a proxy for that is rough there are other reasons that single family homes can be owned by
llc's last I looked in like as of 2023 data it was like less than 3% of single family homes in ammer were owned by llc's which is actually not a very high percentage so if that's going to be the foundational narrative for some of these
larger conversations I'd love if as you have that data you can share it with us so we can all be operating from the same shared understanding yeah absolutely and and it so it's it's agree I agree it's a little complicated right many reasons an
LLC might have property there's also trusts there's all kinds of different language or names that get put onto properties um so that's one source of dat data uh your comment about the overall percentage is totally valid and spoton um I think we also need to
consider so I've been trying to map the locations also in a in a digestible way and this is one of the first things I did when I got on plan board was I tried to come up with percentages rentals by neighborhood because there's extreme
differences and so you know my neighborhood and then north of emest I can't remember the numbers it was like 30 to 40% non-owner occupied properties versus many of the other neighborhoods in Amis which are you know 5% 10% and and I
think we need to treat them differently at least from the work we're thinking about we want we'd love to get to that point but I I totally agree with you we have to have sort of sub substantiated claims like that and yes I'm absolutely happy to share like I said that what what the what the state sent me was
every transaction has like six lines in an Excel file and so there's no easy way to sort of sort it and compress it and then do anything reasonable counting wise but I'm working on it but yeah absolutely happy to share thank you
k um hi Jesse it's good to see you I'm glad thanks for being here um I was wondering if you could say that a little bit more about what you said you want the town to adopt step one is to adopt the definition of student housing and I
wonder wondered if you could say a little more about what that would would look like sure what what you're looking for in that definition yeah so um I'm on a different computer otherwise I bring up the text but basically what it comes down to is a student home and we're
trying to really careful about the words we use right so so a student home is defined as um two or more persons unrelated by Blood marriage who live in the same dwelling who are attending colleges or universities
um pretty straightforward and and there there's a lot of twists and turns on it right um and this is a we basically took the definition from State College Pennsylvania who's had this on their records for 10 or 12 years and we assume
it's been challenged legally we don't can't see that anywhere but it's clearly held up for them and so we're trying to take a very similar approach and again it's not the to put the definition in we don't
see as a negative we see as a way to collect data and then a way for the town to intelligently make decisions based on the percent the conversation we just had the percentages and neighborhoods of these student homes and if as a town we decide okay we're okay with you know
sunset Lincoln becoming 80% student homes fine the town should decide that but it should be an intentional movement not letting invest invers decide right so it I I just so let me just make sure I'm understanding so if somebody is in
college as an undergraduate and stays at a graduate student and as long as they're enrolled it's still a student home no matter how many years it is correct two or more persons in unrelated by blood or marriage in the same dwelling okay thank you yeah
gr hi there can you hear me yeah okay great so so I have a number of questions about this one is um I guess how in the world would the city
track blood what breaking up sorry you're breaking up a little person sorry Rover maybe why don't you turn off your video okay is this better y so I'm a queer
person and only very recently like my kids were born and then I could marry my spouse so just hearing the definition that way knowing I mean for one gay marriage might go away but it just uh I'll just I'll just say to you since you're here and able to hear me that
that language concerns me um and I also just how do I say like like when like my kids go to Fort River and a number of the parents of kids in
our kids class are graduate students who and many of them are immigrants who are here for maybe two years or three years or five years um and so I just have a concern about using student housing with
this definition is also in some ways a proxy for other kinds of exclusion y considering who gets to stay longterm and who is newly arrived so um voicing that and just curious
like uh I get I'm curious about if the student housing designation is actually solving for what needs solved for um and if if something like the a number of homes that we
want owned by Mega corporations versus small home owners and you know something else or or if it should be based on conduct right because is the challenge that you don't want neighbors who are a different age and culture than you or is the challenge that people are like on
their roofs urinating and loud in the middle of the night because it seems like that is an actually solvable problem that doesn't ride right over fair housing law yeah I I I very much appreciate your comments um these are
most of these are things that we have discussed um there there's a few things I I would I would say in response um the first is is again our motivation is not at all to be
exclusionary it's really to be Pro long-term resident whatever that means right um and how the definition gets used we we so we we battled with the definition because we anticipated exactly this
worry from people from some of us on the committee too like is this just going to be a vehicle to use this in an inappropriate or discriminatory way um but but there we we at least we haven't yet come up with a different way
to try and Define what it is we want to limit which again is the percentage of student homes in neighborhoods it's not about Behavior we're not trying to use this as a way to curtail Behavior we're it's not about
not enjoying students as neighbors it's about retaining neighborhoods where that that encourage young professionals and families who might want to live here long term but again and and we're very open
to continue to work on the language um if there are suggestions from really any any aspect thank you Jesse uh and Grover algra please um I guess my question would be kind of how this has played out in State
College and what what benefits they've seen from having this kind of designation um and I guess certainly I hear Grover's concerns and I think you know we want to be very careful right
now especially with everything that's going on um with this incoming Administration um to not exclude or discriminate against neighbors based on a certain category that they might
fit into but I I would be interested to see kind of what the benefits are because I I I agree completely with what you're saying um I think the benefits are giving the town either zoning or planning board or whatever body is going to try
and essentially regulate this number of student homes a tool to do that because because if you just say rentals that's not what we want to do right we want to encourage rentals from long-term residents we want to bring
the the rent the rates down so that's possible and it's simply not possible in our town the moment because it's so lucrative to rent to students right and and because students
are not a protected class it's a it's an Avenue we can pursue to try and do that right um but yes it's thorning I I totally agree and and maybe this isn't the right wording maybe this isn't the right definition but but trying to come up with something the benefits from
State College um they I believe have done similar to what I was just saying is they have this definition and they have different zoning in different areas that say okay this neighborhood can be 80% student homes this neighborhood can
only be 20% or whatever right so they've used it as a tool to help decide intentionally as a town where they want to house this large population of of temporary residents right um who who who
again it's not and it's not a negative it's just it changes the town changes the neighborhood in terms of commitment to upkeeping a property in terms of making long-term relationships um in all the ways you can imagine and you know
anecdotally mlen Street which I think you all know around the corner for me when I moved in here probably the first six or eight houses from town coming down mcin were student homes fine now it's my it's slowly moved down toward
Lincoln and just two years ago um I'm forgetting the number I think 48 mcon maybe sold and is becoming a develop like two 4unit houses and on both sides of that the long-term residents who've been here for 15 or more years are moving right so it's just that's what
happens and that's what we want to figure out how to push back against you know we're not we're not convinced that this is the only way to do it with this type of definition but we haven't come up we haven't hit upon any other strategy that we think might be a good
tool thank you Jesse Alex yeah I will try to keep my comments brief on this one I guess thank you Grover and alra for bringing up what I think are important issues um I was sitting here like trying to Rack my brain around Cas law that I knew um the
one that's coming to mind is belter V Boris um which basically allows legal discrimination against rentals to students was essentially the case um I think I'm still frustrated with
hearing this for a couple reasons um for one the town in the town plan and the town manager goals talks about wanting to foster a really Healy turn down relationship I think one of the ways that can happen is through encouraging long-term permanent residents to be involved with institutions of high and
learning including taking classes not necessarily towards a degree program but just towards like education and lifelong learning I'd be concerned that that definition is presented is very very vague and would allow somebody to be
classified as a student household if they were two retirees who were living together but not married and taking a night class at a school for instance um I'm also frustrated that this seems
to I I suppose I'm not mentally squaring the difference or the distinction that I think you're trying to make so please enlighten me if there's something I'm missing here but saying you want to encourage new residents and you want to encourage long-term residents but then this is a classification that feels like
it can be used to prevent people from moving to town and I don't hear anything on the other side of encouraging people who come to town whether it's to teach or to study to stay and to become year round long-term residents um I've worked at Town Summer
Camps I know other people in the group have more educational experience in the town than I do but a lot of especially graduate students do have families and are a very vibrant part of the town so I'd be concerned that if you're trying to say there are whole parts of town
where people can't live purely because they're students it's going to lead to worsening relationships between towns and universities and also is going going to overall it just hurt everyone in town so I I suppose I'm looking for more information here if there's something
you can share yep I I to be honest I'm I'm the right word is not enjoying but I'm very happy this conversation's happening right because this is the kind of feedback we need and this is the like I said we we anticipated a lot of
this initial response right and I don't I don't have all the answers to things you just raised what I would say is the primary way we can encourage long-term residents year- round residents is to have affordable
rents the reason we don't have affordable rents is because there's so much money to be made renting to students I get four calls a week from cold calls from investors asking to buy my
properties I'm not being hyperbolic like it happens regularly and so I mean I would ask you please tell me another way to try and address this I don't know what it is other than to stem the flipping
of Resident long-term resident houses to student rentals right um there's zero intention by us for this to be a tool to be exclusionary I mean I gave the example of neighborhoods with some percentage and some other percentage we have no idea if that's the way the town
would want to go that's not our goal our goal is maybe to figure out some maybe it's a maximum percentage per square mile maybe it's a a a distance between rental homes we we don't we don't know how to use it
quite yet to be totally honest we don't know what will work here but I understand your concerns 100% um there's another point I was going to make which I'm forgetting I'm sorry may come back to me I guess what a point I would make to us as we keep
asking questions is to differentiate the the ends from the means and be clear whether it's a question about the the end which I understand Jesse's working towards which is basically to prevent erosion um in these neighborhoods
towards uh student rentals from where they are so that's an end and so we may disagree you may disagree with that end we should be clear about that and then there's a question of means uh if and is agreed to be erosion than what are uh effective justifiable means Carol yeah
that's a good uh segue into what I was going to say because I don't agree with the ends I don't think I do if the people who live who you said someplace between your two houses or something just it's going to be redeveloped and it's going to be four Apartments if all
those four people who lived there were students but they were good neighbors and they took care of the neighborhood and they participated in things what would be wrong with that I just don't get it I don't I think I feel like a lot
of the empathist for this comes from students who are not good neighbors and of course there are some but it's not all students not all people who've lived here for a long time are good neighbors either so I just feel like something screwed up and and students
are taken to fall for something else that's my honest opinion I I I appreciate that um and I don't entirely disagree and again it's not I have student neighbors I have no problem with that it's that I also really enjoy having 10-year
relationships with my neighbors I think that's how we keep a town vibrant is people who are going to be here who are going to go to restaurants in the summer who are going to have kids to go to school we just invested in the library we just invested in the school we're not going to have
people to use these things I mean our are how many vacancies do we have in in town storefronts I think that's because there aren't enough people who live in town walk to town and go shopping in town maybe I'm wrong but but that's sort
of what I've seen over the last 18 years right again it it is nothing nothing Mo there's nothing motivating me that's anti- student I I can't say that enough and I I don't know how to say it differently um but but I do think there
is a real difference in what someone who's here for four or five or six years brings to our town than someone who's coming here to planning to be here for a long time thank you
lra um so I guess part of me is like okay well Town gown relations seem to be really tipping in the favor of gown getting what they want and not necessarily town getting what they want
which is again why I wonder like what more could you Mass be doing to be housing their students on campus more so um I mean I went to high school here moved away for a while came back to raise my own family
and like I drive past friends houses from high school which are clearly now not families living in them and it it it does change the landscape of the town I mean I feel like when I was in high school which was in the early 2000s there there was a lot more thriving
storefronts happening I mean there were the carriage shops those are all gone now and there's a big building that costs a lot of money to live in um and so I do think I think that the relationship between students and town residents needs to be good but I think
that they're I would continue to argue that like the University needs to Pony up a little more and do better for its students and its staff in terms of housing because I do think that it's
expensive to live here not everybody who works at the university has a great wonderful salary there are people who are you know making minimum wage and working you know as you know custodians or Food Service workers that aren't
getting like Professor or Chancellor pay and those people might want to live here too um and and perhaps putting a little bit I think I think the town gown needs to go both ways and I I feel personally like
the Gown is winning in the town gown relationships in terms of like a lot of those things so I I guess I think that I see both sides like I I don't
want to be discriminatory and I want neighborhoods to be thriving and I want people to be able to live here and I think that there's a lot of other stuff going on in the budget in town that's making people have Paw about okay we you know we had this great
reputation for schools and now we're cutting millions of dollars each year and losing all these positions and how else can we attract people to live here if there's no affordable homes there's no good services and there's you know I think it's it's really a struggle right
now um so so I don't that that I I will just say that to say I think it's a complicated issue and I do think that I understand the need for both Town residents and students to have safe affordable options for
housing and and maybe we do need to look at other ways to Define that so and Brant yes thank you you just you just summarized a lot of the complexity I totally agree um I I'll I'll add two points I'm not here
representing UMass so I'm not going to speak to that I will say two weeks ago there was a announcement about a long-term housing plan that the Chancellor's initiated so we could we could read about that um the other thing you reminded me that I meant to say
earlier was we talked a lot about taxes and how maybe we could use that towards this end in terms of who owns properties and having different taxx rates and stuff like that and that's all gets into like I mean you all
might know more than I do even about the way taxes work but that was sort of a non-starter because when I first started thinking about it that seemed like a really easy way to distinguish meaning a company versus an individual who owns a property maybe we can distinguish that way again with the whole goal of
figuring out how to reduce rental rates on some properties in town anyway um but that whole thing turned into a real nonstarter and just went nowhere um and again that's what led us back towards trying to Define um you know who by by
who's in the homes Let's uh keep the the questions coming but maybe before Jesse has to go we can ask about the development opportunities that that he mentioned which is you know something that addresses all these concerns if we can pull it off
Grover um I just wanted to note that it seems like this solution is trying trying to solve a problem of like a problem of
greed essentially right like it's like the the people who are buying single family homes to charge as much as they possibly can for a room are charging students who can't really afford it they're likely going all to their
student loan debt and then raising prices so that everyday Working Families can't afford either or eding them out of the market and I totally feel that and see that and creating more exclusions or restrictions on the students who
ultimately pay a very high price to live in like they are also experiencing this hardship because we don't have as a town don't have what everybody needs it just seems
like pretty unfair to those students and it won't ultimately solve the problem it just will make more students housing insecure it'll push people further and further out to the margins we don't have a transportation system right now that can accommodate people from the margins
to come in and yeah I just just noting that it just doesn't seem to solve the problem and you said you know we want Solutions and the solutions are like like what if we were more Hardline with the investors in the llc's or you know
like what if we had strategies that invested in more um H Land Trust so that the homes were per permanently affordable and they couldn't be owned by an LLC right like there are strategies we know the strategies or even the investing in the Adu that you can rent
out to one set of grad students while a a family is living here long term in stay there are options on the table but they require our town and our partners to hold the university
accountable and the landlords you know put some some boundaries on them and not just because it's the easiest to restrict students is what it sounds like it is so so yes I would love to do everything you just
said um I would also point out that I don't think I said anything about excluding anybody from anywhere um I understand that that's a reaction and a worry with this kind of idea and I'm open to the conversation
um yes that's what I was that's where I was headed with taxation right about landlords controlling landlords but there basically there's nothing we can do legally on that front is what I've been told I'm not a tax lawyer I'm not a
I don't know you know but basically that went nowhere um I think part of the solution and this getting to Gaston's point about development is we also just need 5,000 more beds in town and that's what we're really reduce the market
pressure if we could have that tomorrow I would abandon all this talk right but that's a 10year prospect maybe and that's why we're working on the overlay districts to try and increase density intentionally in places where we believe they're the town you
know it's a good fit near near services on bus routes you know all the all the things where you'd want to have denser living and we're trying to approach that in a way of not only benefiting a dense student population but also benefiting
long-term to Residents as well um yeah yes until we have more housing it is a zero sum game so it's either the the students who lose out or or the other residents who would live there Erica I just want to say Jesse I so
appreciate you coming in talking to us because we've been talking about the elephant in the room for the longest time which has been students and UMass and not the students but UMass more so um I think you know I don't I can never get an answer of how did you Mass make a
decision to allow sophomores off campus without the univer without the town being involved in that decision it's just one one policy issue that has a huge impact on the town but for me I think you know um certainly my colleagues um you know their their
concerns about a definition is important but I think what I'm hearing you say is you're trying to figure out a unit to see in terms of density and then make a decision or or think about policy uh that includes could include us or could includes the housing production plan
because it's also looking at this in terms of we're best to build to increase that 5,000 bed space and to make sure that um all of our different areas in Amherst are not negatively affected but we all share the responsibility in
increasing you know bed capacity and trying to increase affordability for families so I mean I'm I'm a little concerned that you know we're sort of reacting towards you versus working with you because I think we need to work with you um to find a best solution because we've been discussing this for as long
as I've been on the Trust on how to manage this and again um I agree with algra the town as far as I've seen and Paul's not here to obviously defend himself I have not seeing the pressure from the town on really pushing UMass to
take more responsibility um or to come to the table and make some you know concerted decisions together um and we've tried to get them to come here to talk and you know they've given us some lines but it hasn't really gone very far so this RFP
does sound great um but hopefully the town is involved also in you know thinking about this RFP and um I think we should continue our dialogue together and maybe we can find a better definition but we're looking for units to figure out you know what are the units of students living there what are
the units of families living there some of them are student families who are going to stay here long term all of that um so the last thing I just want to say is I was a grad student who came to UMass and UMass did not have any um
place for a family we're a family of four and so we had to find a place off campus if there were more places for graduate families it would have been great to live on campus and I think there are a lot of students who would like to live on campus but there aren't
options either so again I think there needs to be pressure on the University thanks um I I would just say I'm happy for the push back and I didn't anticipate this would be the only the main topic I might discuss with you but you're not going to be the only group
who's going to react this way so so we you know again I I'm happy for this to be a dialogue I'm not taking it I'm not offended I think this is great and like we need to hear all this and and wherever this idea goes there going to be people who have the same reaction and
and I would just hope to have the conversation and try and convince you of what we're actually trying to do is not exclusionary uh thank you Jesse Alex yeah um thank you Jesse I I
apologize um if I am being ensive it's obviously a touchy issue for me personally and I appreciate you being here and having this conversation with us um I was going to say I would love to have this conversation continue into the future and working with your subcommittee more closely would be
fantastic thinking about like actionable Steps Beyond just sharing data as we spoke earlier I would also love to know if your subcommittee has talked much about the new rental registration bylaw I know there's still a lot of questions about how the town is going to be implementing that and the intent to
they're going to be implementing and enforcing that um but I know that's a new tool that the town has to try and answer some of these big questions as well so I was curious if you have anything to share about that or about resources especially thinking about as we as a trust are trying to encourage
the creation of new affordable housing units if some of them do have a rental component then this is suddenly something that was voluntary which is now a mandatory another hurdle for developers to get through to offer those units and and if you have any Clarity to offer us on the implementation of that
or resources coming that we can share with sure sure um um yeah I've been involved in a lot of conversations about the rental registry um I I would have to really defer to the to ra Moro and and the
staff about how it's going to be implemented I can't really speak to that other than but I think I know as much as you do um what I would say and actually I meant to say this earlier I think in response to something Grover mentioned about whether it's the student defin student home definition or the just the
rental registry enforcement it's a strong word but enforcement of it is really a big problem also like the town doesn't have the resources frankly so it's all volunteer information at this point whether you have even I
mean we we as a town my understanding is we don't have the ability to find and go after people who aren't registering as a rental to be blunt so it's it's it's all voluntary to some degree and any kind of definition we added on there would be in
the same situation so I don't imagine that ever get to a point of we have enough person Power to Go inspect every house in town and say oh you have five five people living here we're finding you or you have to move out or anything like that um it's and you know in our
mind it's it's both of these tools if the definition becomes real or even just a registry are are a tool to also signal to investors we're not going to let you run rampant here like like we are going to
try and push back as best we can and and again towards this goal of essentially bringing rates down right um I also wanted to mention I was reminded of another thing related to the Adu someone brought up this idea that you to
build an Adu and then have a long-term resident in one and student in the other and yes we're we're all for that um the reason this is coming to a head right now around the Adu bylaw is because part of what the state said was we cannot
require owner occupancy in order to have an Adu so you're not and that that's been our main tool in town to um somewhat limit rental density meaning people could build adus our
second unit but we we were allowed to require owner occupancy we're no longer allowed to do that which is why we're pushing forward with this idea around the Adu bylaw which if it you know the whole idea is okay you can build an Adu
but one or the other can be a student home what not both is sort of what we're hoping to put in with the the Adu bylaw just to fill out that conversation but again I'm not sure that's going to work but we that's that's the idea we're working
toward um back to the rental registry um yes I know there's been a lot of concern about it um in terms of implementation I we'll have to see how that goes I know there's two more Town staff who are going to be charged with
doing that as a as a landlord I I have no problem with the whole program I think it's great it's probably going to benefit everybody right um that's my view on it um yeah I don't have much more to say about that Jesse I wonder um among the less
explored areas for development are there any that you are bullish on you think deserve more attention any um anything that you want to encourage the trust to look at in our
mission to develop affordable hous yeah so so I haven't really thought about that context to be totally honest and and a lot of our conversations in the subcommittee at least about this issue do we often talk about what percent affordable housing do we want to require if we're going to allow more
density and and we as a group kind of go back and forth because um we don't know what we don't know what the right answer is if if we're trying to build 500 beds in a certain place that we imagine will really be predominantly students I mean
you all are probably better suited to tell us what's the right way to try and include some affordable housing in there or not or should we ask them to offset it the way some of the other projects in towns have done right like the the Hastings bar Roberts project just by buying it um that that's what you know
I'd love your guidance on that um yeah so so not really I think the the you know the University Drive overlay the full planning board took up like a year ago we're finally getting something that I think we'll go back to council the other the first what we're thinking of
as low hanging fruit are really the all the complexes north of Campus um that are already fairly dense like there's not commercial activity there it's just to maybe change zoning to just increase density a lot in those same places um the other areas that have
sort of been flagged they're a little complicated because we imagine they should be a mixed use type setting and and there are a lot more neighbors involved and you know it's just probably a slower process I don't think I really gave you a good answer but no that's fine so um
uh one uh point that was raised to us at this recent event about affordable housing was the power of is it 40R Greg do yeah yeah I heard I read something about that as well you read something about that that it it basically manages
to to clear a lot of the the obstacles for affordable housing in whatever area of land gets that designation and I guess you know at a minimum would like to put that on the
the planning board's radar and I don't know if that gives you any other thoughts um yeah like I said um maybe know Bruce C him he was just bringing this up the other day and uh the conversation didn't get very far but it's something we were going to bring back to to try and think about a little
more deeply okay um uh uh we we gave Jesse a lot of a lot of thoughts his ideas um were stimulating does anyone have any anything else Rob do you do you wna know um well you know we took almost an hour of your time and and really appreciate
it because we know you're you're putting this time in uh with the same Ambitions that we all have to make uh housing more affordable and and strengthen this community I thank you thank you for having me I'll just close with saying one thing or two things rather I'm
always open to more communication if you have thoughts please just email me find me on the street I'm riding my bike around town all the time um also our our subcomittee we'd love to have you show up and just be part of the conversation anytime um I'm trying to run that
subcommittee more as a conversation than you know a formal town meeting but we have to follow the laws too so anyway hope to see what is your do you have a regular time slot we don't unfortunately I will I will email you our next several dates and times and just so you can
circulate that okay and then um you know you should know that we have a development subcommittee a funding subcommittee and an education one and uh I guess maybe the development one has uh in any case we're we're certainly happy to have guests at these sub thank you
yes I'm trying to pick my evening selectively but you how that is yeah okay great thanks a lot much Jess appreciate your presence bye all right um that was some good food for
thought um you know we've got a tangle we got a tangle of of policy issues and and the market keeps coming after us I teach my students the the coercive laws of competition are always on your tail capitalism's always coming for
you um what do we have up next uh upcoming uh some some Town updates um uh Greg okay yeah so um let's see we're at 8ish here so I I'll try and be modest
here um so um the housing production plan continues a pace um uh two things to know about um hopefully you all got CC on an invite to an event on Tuesday um that is um sort of an add-on in that
um there's a grad student who's got a cool um uh approach called scenario planning I'm Alex she's somebody um who is studying with Camille bers you might know um um which which grad student is it she's actually I think she's
technically mostly done Janelle Franklin but now mcglasson mcglasson's her new name Franklin's her former name um um so she and some other uh uh students will be largely facilitating that Barrett will be a part of it as well um but basically that's an
opportunity to sort of like um both um imagine a little bit and also sort of consider various future scenarios you know kind of five years out but especially 10 15 years out as I understand it um and then sort of look at different housing strategies against
a variety of of of of those future scenarios th scenario planning um so that will be Tuesday at Town Hall from 4 to 6 um you're all welcome you should have a flyer in your inbox please feel free to share it um
um and yeah that one is best to come for the whole thing if you want but that that's be more table based discussion and then kind of walking around and sharing and whatnot so that'll be from 4 to six on Tuesday um and then you'll also hopefully um I think sometime early
next week we should have as well a um uh the next draft of the housing needs assessment um which we all have put some input into um and I think we'll hopefully actually have some more concrete numbers um on on on students
actually um we did get some stuff both from UMass um and I guess uh Tony kind of sliced and diced on the sensus stuff a little more so I'm excited to see um uh what more detail we have there around uh around student homes uh student
residents I should say uh in the town of amst um along with other updates uh you know along the lines of what we talked about um so that's kind of the HPP update um we have also had a few questions about a few different
properties that are um in the news or you know getting discussed a lot right now um and I just kind of put properties of interest to to kind of just be a catch all there um but uh um but so I just want to respond to a few inquiries so one um a few of you have asked about
the um jugler Meadow sort of kitridge estate which straddles um Leverett and ammer um and is I guess geographically mostly in lever um so the short answer on uh on what's happening there in the official
sense is nothing um uh which is kind of the most relevant thing that you all should know there there has been no proposal submitted to the town um uh nor have we been given a heads up to look look for one you know at a certain date
um or something like that uh so um you know so right and I don't I'm pretty sure maybe they put some sort of placeholder in with with the town of Leverett um but I I I I don't think they I don't think it's anything super formal
um so yes so there I know there's been a lot of public engagement on that one um but it remains to be seen whether can actually um you know propose something viable and you know and and if they do we consider it um I
will I will note just one specific thing I think is worth sharing you know is that that um I guess this a developer consultant or whatever has um you know has has floated 40b um as a mechanism um I think based on the numbers they could technically do a small 40b in Leverett
um because Leverett is below the 10% threshold um but they would not be free to show up in ammer and do where where and do a a quote unquote unfriendly 4 EB where they just jam it you know which which they could do if we were below a
10% threshold of affordable homes in ammer um but we are not below that threshold or well above it um so that's not an option for them in Amis of the unfriendly approach I suppose they could propose it to the zba um uh
um you know or they and they could come and ask us for support in potential affordable units as a part of that um but not neither is happened so far so um so nothing really formal there um and then there's been some questions too about um um Hickory Ridge uh and you
know I'm not sure if everyone was here last month but the the official word there is there are no sort of formal plans that are in motion for Hickory Rich um and um we heard from uh from Paul that probably the best thing to do is to pull Dave Zac into a meeting
possibly of the development subcommittee where we can spend a little more time and delve a little more um and so we'll hope to maybe do that um in the next month or two um uh with with uh with Dave um but again there's no there's not
I can just add on on Hickory Ridge that some of you may know that um uh John Hornick is a strong advocate for using Hickory Ridge for senior housing so you know one of the questions I think we have or we we would be whether the
vision for a fire department should that be something that we're to materialize is consistent with housing as well or if you know if not what are the arguments for one versus the other and and so those are the kinds of questions that we'd like to ask uh Dave to to
understand better and I you know and as I understand and I mean as I understand which I think is the deal of fire department has been or fire station I should say has been floated for that site but but in in in no sense is that a done deal at all that's that's a
proposal at this point um uh that I guess I guess Town Council officially would be considering it but but it's not like it's been a you know it's not a locked in plan um um and then the last thing I will say um unless there's you know and maybe I
can I'll stop and ask for if people have questions about specific properties the um South ammer School site uh we have um uh officially released the sort of s swq document for um a a a you know a study
effort sort of similar to what we did um in spirit with the VFW um site um so a short-term engagement with an architect or um project consultant to to vet different um possibilities of that site
um what is exciting about that is to to me is that the S swq requests kind of expressly like three different models right so hopefully the outcome from the eventual product would be that some architect would give us three different schemes to look at as opposed to just
one um you know so it might it would kind of it's not going to narrow things it will hopefully kind of broaden the you know the public imagination there and also vet what's what what is you know possible I think um and apparently that one maybe we're going to need need to figure out like you know questions of
you know of of hydrology and and uh you know maybe some title stuff you know so there's a there's there's some details to weigh through there uh for the consultant um so that's what I've got on properties but is any you have questions about any of those or can I fill in any
more detail Eric not specifically those but we we've had strong uh not strong yeah Strong Street for the longest time in the pipeline and it never seems to have moved and one of the questions was which we don't have to you know maybe you can
put on the agenda for next time was is it time to maybe sell the property and use the money for other things for affordable housing so I mean I I'm sure the development subcommittee can tackle that but it is something that's been on the agenda for a very very long time
it's never seemed to moved forward got it okay um yeah that's a good reminder you know I mean I think informally I think it's one of those where it's it's it's a small enough property with
some logistical issue use that I I think others tend to subsume it in the attention of Staff um but I think it's a good reminder that we should we should Rel look at that and maybe there's a way to sort of just partner more quickly with a smaller entity um to maybe do
more of a mix or something like that okay so that's property stuff um so then okay so if there's no more questions about those sort of more perspective uh future you know un undetermined
properties uh some updates on uh current uh projects that are more formally in our pipeline have good news and I have bad news um or good news and and you know uh blue news I'll say so on
the good news um Valley was with Mass housing um Tuesday and then again tomorrow as I understand it postponed from yesterday um but the initial they had no questions which is a good sign uh on Tuesday um and so um all indications
are tomorrow should be pretty pro forma um and Jessica emailed me today that she still has her fingers crossed that she'll start construction in April of the ball Lane Valley Community homes uh property um which is um which is super exciting um so hopefully we'll we'll
know that a bit more formally after tomorrow um when that final sort of meeting with Mass housing happens but um but basically we when we pump some money into it uh last year um you know that would um in turn pushed into this these funds they'll hook to hear about
tomorrow um which is uh which is exciting you know that we could we could leverage that um and then point and then the less um uh exciting thing but to luk you all in on is uh the wayfinders project um um they did hear from um
eohc uh that they're not going to be funded this round which is happening right now um uh which is uh too bad um there is hope that there will be a midyear round I think in part because of inflation and stuff and lots of all
these projects that are on ehc's radar are less understandable to them in this environment um uh so they're being I think a little more conservative this round um there is hope that Things become a little more clear and they do a
midyear round which they don't do every year but they'll do that um if they were to do a mid year it's usually in July um and so if there were one um uh excuse me uh Jamie want to say j Jamie advised
that his understanding is they' being well positioned to apply for the mid year and if not um to come back uh and apply next year uh in the 20 in the February 26 round um this is something that happens um uh most most PE most
project developers you know plan on um having to to go a couple rounds um with the state um you know we've had some some luck and not having to do that with everything in this part of the world but that is generally the you know you you you hope to get it on the first time but you you you don't you don't plan that uh
formally um so that's the update I did you know we did get them their comprehensive permit um in a timely way um you know so that you know I asked Jamie straight directly if that was the concern and it was not um at least as far as his interpretation uh you know
which is the best we have to go on so um you know so that's um a little disheartening but uh but but it it's not uh doesn't indicate a critical concern with the project um it's just there's a big QE at uhlc
um so that's questions there or Erica was that your hand from before or is that um I think so okay yeah I was from before sorry okay that's okay um it was probably my aura of disappointment
putting my hand yeah so you know and yeah and I think you know and we'll see I think probably they're probably weighing tariffs you know like nobody can know yet everybody knows that will be problematic nobody really knows how problematic and maybe they're hoping to have more of a sense
of that um in you know by the summertime so for those updates Greg okay so yeah I think I think that's it that's all I have for um so so let's um let's uh get
into uh I guess what has been going on in our subcommittees and in the Forum on January 23rd first of all you know thank you algra for taking the leadership with uh the with uh uh Alex right on the
education group and and making that happen um and it was very well attended for an evening a super cold evening um and I learned a ton um uh so I let why don't we kind of share some of the the
the key takeaways Alex yeah I just wanted to take the focus back to algra and really thank algra that was her project I was not um very involved in the planning or execution of that all right well um uh
yeah it was a good good first go for the education uh initiative um I mean I'll just jump in and say that I learned a ton from hearing the uh the business folks talking and they managed to make
affordable housing seem very um unsexy and boring and hard to make it happen it's slow and painstaking uh Erica um it was a wonderful Forum so thank you and and um thank you algra gastone you
were up there um uh it was really excellent it was a really excellent forum and listening to the developers I'm actually surprised of how much affordable housing gets built with all the challenges they have um and I just am amazed that these nonprofit
developers are so committed to making sure this happens I'm just really really concerned about the current State of Affairs and the impact it's going to have on affordable housing so it really puts a lot of pressure on us to put
things in pipelines um you know to really think about stacking things in the pipeline and trying to move as much forward as we can um but it was a really wonderful form it was very informative it was very engaging um unfortunately I had to be on Zoom versus being there so
I appreciated um our colleagues who were there I saw Carol and a couple other people um but it was really it was very very informative and um really so important for us to be hearing I mentioned one of my takeaways which was basically the developers
telling us if you want to help us out give us some 40R land that's um that's decent and then we can jump into action instead of waiting through the permits and uh a lot of guess work in the beginning of these projects I was just GNA Echo I think
that was my biggest takeaway um that was a new thing that I don't believe I'd heard about before so I um I hope that our development subcommittee might be able to look into that um and perhaps our
education sub commmittee at least I should educate myself a little more um but I would also like to say you know John Hornick and Rebecca frick from the League of Women Voters did The Lion Share of the work in terms terms of
advertising for the event and um I did just want to share with everyone that I think there were about 50 attendees on the zoom so it was well attended not only in person but also on the zoom so I I do think as this education subcommittee moving forward we should
definitely think about like strategic Partnerships in terms of promotion of materials because I think that's a pretty good turnout and I think John was saying it's perhaps comparable to kind of some of the education things that were done by the
trust prior to co so um yes I think that's all I had to say yeah Alex yeah more of an information gathering question for Greg and if you don't have the answer today that's okay but I think it'd be at least helpful for
me and I'm guessing for other folks if we could get it um is my understanding that the town looked at a 40R designation during 2020 and I don't know what happened with that process um and can't find a super detailed account of how that seemed to
fizzle out looking at the records from it so if you could provide a little narrative about that either today or at a future meeting I think that'd be helpful yeah I I am aware of uh that there was a shot at it I don't know the specifics of of what did or didn't work
about it um but I'll I'll name that even preceding The Forum that we had we've been talking about a 40R is something that um we'd like to insert into the housing production plan as a proposed strategy for the town to
pursue yeah R actually I'm gonna address that right now um I 40R has been looked at for earlier than 2020 I my planning that um
a couple of times and I think what the is is that um it's we're too ambitious when we start thinking about it and and we we we try to think oh well what you know we
need to put it all in a big place but if we actually Target it in small places and and and tailor the um design standards for small places and and maybe do a couple of them what the way it
works is you you can develop to design standards and then apply them to various places but if you if you make several design standards and apply them in different places it might work better um so that's that would be my advice to the
planning board and and and development committee you're thinking about that um you know I'm thinking of one property in particular that I would love to use 40R for um but but um we were
um discouraged from doing that but but I I'm not letting it go I'm talking about commun UST um you know I think I think we if we put that on small Properties or or small
collections of properties rather than zones um we'll do better and I was also the the thing that stood out for me for the um for the Forum was the cost to
build a unit is starts at 600,000 for no matter what where you are what size it is that's what it is it's only gonna go up from there that's a lot right the they reminded us that the building standards if anything are much
higher than for market rate work in many respects um all right so well if there's no other um comments about the that event right now um we wanted to uh see if the group was
interested in kind of joining forces to put on an event that would be a kind of educational um interactive fair type event for adus to try to get Banks builders for uh people
who have developed adus in town and uh prospective uh you know Adu developers I mean you know homeowners uh who who who might have interest together to uh exchange information and um I guess thinking of
something in the late spring to give us enough time but I'm you know the kind of person I need deadlines to actually kind of do things and so we wanted to see what you all think about that and if we
can come up with a vision that we can jointly deliver on Carol wondering how that would or would not could you move your I'm wondering sorry keep doing that how that water
would not um dovetail with the town's need to create a new bylaw because it seems like however that goes has a whole lot to do with at least what the future of creating adus is going to be and so I
don't I just maybe there's a way to make them work together I don't know but that's my con or concern is how did that work okay if if I can kind of Riff Off Your comment Carol um one actually us saying we're going to do this event
might light a little fire under folks um but as I understand it and and others of you please um uh weigh in here my understanding is that the impact of anything the town does is at the margin and because the state has mandated
um what has to be the case and we already have uh uh something on the books so I don't think that I I my understanding is that most people who would want to develop an Adu will know
what their deal is but the issue is at the margins for example if the planning board came up with some way that got approved to uh restrict having a house and the Adu on on its lot both be
student owned for example but that I I take to be more of a marginal case at this point but that that but I I take you know your point is well taken and I guess we would be um kind of spurring and joining the conversation although I
understand that Nate would want to have something done within the next couple months is that not the case yeah I mean I I think it's more a question of like something starting at the planning board going up to council
like zoning stuff does but but gastone I think in in in basic principle my understanding of the state law is your right like to regardless of and some towns won't pass anything or I think amoris eventually will just so we sync
with what state law is but as of today you can build them by right um in most um you know the only I think the only exception would be extremely small Lots um where backs would literally you know
Crush into each other um but other than that um I I think it's um it's viable now and it's on the town to catch up um you know February 2nd was the the launch date so
Alex yeah I wanted to Echo Carol's point about waiting on more information for the Adu bylaw and wondering if this is premature because I think the other piece that's think that I'm thinking about is my understanding the town's original Adu bylaw as written was mostly
to encourage the development of completely detach adus and that is not the same definition of Adu that's utilized within the state bylaw so if we're having an event about this I think we need to make sure we're being fair to all forms of this potential
development um I'd also wonder at this point without more information how much hosting an event or helping facilitate an event like that really does or does not align with our charge um if we're still not sure about what the implementation of that looks like or
what the actual cost or feasibility of that is on a larger scale i' question if it's a good use of our time and resources to work on hosting that without more evidence that that actually does directly have results that are affordable housing outes in the to Alex
can you just clarify what's the what's the Nexus That You Don't See between spurring the development of adus and and the trust strategy and Mission um just looking nationally
there's not been much that seemed to happen with any correlation between Adu development and affordable housing options that's not what adus tend to be at least from what we've seen nationally so unless we find some data that clarifies that connection for me I'm
still going to push that that's maybe outside of our charge when what adus have seemed to be nationally is more of investment rental properties that are at or above market rate um that don't seem to have much of a tilt towards
affordability I mean even thinking about the event that we went to with the UMass design build that was a very small home it was not necessarily very like really and fancy in terms of finishes it's a much higher per square footage development cost than other development
strategies espec looking at Standalone adus so I'm still not sure what the connection is between encouraging the development and thinking that that leads to Affordable units on the emmer housing sorry I'm freezing here um uh I missed your comments I don't know if
anyone can hear me uh I can hear you we got you Gast all right all right yeah sorry um I'll try my phone's Wi-Fi go go go ahead Carol well I'm gonna I put my hand up and you're not there to see me so I'm
gonna just talk no I can see you I can see you okay oh okay well um now I forgot what I was going to say saying all that I thought that at some point when we were talking about adus what we were talking about was could we come up
with something like here's a plan for an Adu that would could be that the town would already approve and if you did it this way maybe it would be able to be affordable if we did something like but that takes a lot more work than we're going to possibly get done by any
Springtime presentation of anything I don't even know if it's possible yet but I I thought that's what we were that we had some kind of maybe Pie in the Sky ideas but um so that we're so far away from being able to do anything like that
that I guess with Alex I'm not sure what we would do in the spring all right well any it sounds like we got a um uh revise and resubmit at the development subcommittee level so does anyone have any other initiative that they're excited to have
us do anything with Grover hi sorry everyone I'm driving so awkward but um I just wanted to say I'm on the subcommittee so it's a little like duston is also speaking for me but
I what I know about Communications is that we can't say something once to people of the town and be like that was adequate so I personally don't think there's anything wrong with having an event which when uh if you hear gustan
talk about it in detail like I made in the subcommittee I felt very excited about the possibilities of what it does to get people who are Adu curious in the room and start having conversations and exchanging information because the
process of building an Adu is very time intensive so having the initial meeting um an exchange of information I would imagine would just be an early step and then if we were able to say
coordinate with the town for a a design that would Breeze right through then that could be a second touch a year or two later um so just saying that that I I hope that we could consider it as something that we can do to increase the
development of more rental homes that isn't necessarily tax credit affordable housing thank you Grover thank thanks for uh o overwriting me I appreciate it
algra um so so I as a member of the education committee I do think I I like what Grover just had to say and I was kind of formulating in my brain before you we haven't talked about this in the subcommittee yet but I think
hearing the cost per unit to build brand new affordable housing I'd like to kind of think about other ways of getting affordable housing and maybe having a series on that whether it's work you know having the Community
Land Trust come and talk about their model and anything they have in the works or how how to support them and you know getting more people to donate their houses or whatever it might be um but I think adus kind of could fall
into that be I mean I'm imagining that you know I guess maybe maybe I'm conflating like adus and tiny homes but maybe those are two separate things that we would talk about um under this umbrella of not going through 13
different lenders to build $600,000 units um after lots of opposition and um many zoning board meetings model of affordable housing which is there's nothing wrong with that and we need that as well but I think I
think part of what you know that conversation had me think about was expanding our understanding of you know how to how to achieve affordable homes that that maybe there there's a home right there that's not affordable to a family yet and maybe
the way that we make it affordable for a family is through down payment assistance or through you know let's partner with the land trust and you know so that was my like pie in the sky idea of like maybe a
little education series that we could do and then partner with the development um group on something at least specifically around adus but I do also like the idea of what Carol was saying and I kind of remember that conversation
as well and I think that that would be helpful to S out a little more thank you algra Erica um so first of all I'd like to appreciate Alex for giving us a sense of
what the trends and the data um or studies may show uh I think that's always so important and I I was a little surprised so uh Alex thank you for raising that um but at the same time I'm thinking about um there's also a goal to
keep uh people in Amherst and I know that there are individuals who feel that they want to downsize and that they're not a lot of um potential places for downsizing so an Adu might be a place where they actually move into um and
then rent out their home or you know they might be a family member who needs a place to stay so um I think you know when we think about alternative opportunities um and I think you know at aler you just stated in terms of the
different types of uh Alternatives that we can think of here for Amherst um for all different situations you know in terms of being a senior um who might want to go move into an Adu and a smaller place and maybe have children who want to move into their home homes to get them back to come to Amherst um
or in in my situation you know having an older parent who really needs a space um to create an Adu that's close enough so I I I don't want to lose the Adu even though it might not impact affordability but it might also address the whole issue of maintaining the you know
long-term cohesion of neighborhoods uh and as opportunities um to downsize that a lot of seniors are looking at or even families who you know the children have gone off to college and thinking they want to stay um and possibly keep the house for their kids when they come so
um I like the idea of of thinking futurewise to to at least give people that information and also then thinking about tiny homes and land trust as well so all right um so I think we we've got some kind of reasons to
consider this and and and reasons to dig a Little Deeper um how about the um we we take all the feedback and consider it in the development next subcommittee and and um
see if we can sharpen the pitch and um and and go from there does that uh seem like a a reasonable Next Step Grover you want to um uh how does that what do you think of that um as a way to move
forward that works okay all right good um uh but I guess let let me take the opportunity to um uh I guess underscore that we don't want to just be waiting
for people to come to us to say yes we can help you we we want to be generating uh affirmative action by our own will um and and so you know we're volunteers here we're committing our
bandwidth and at the margin a little more band with and commitment might actually produce some initiatives and uh so I guess I'm summoning you all to uh kind of tap into your imagination of what you want to uh kind of harness our
energy uh to do um affirmatively um uh all right um uh items not anticipated anyone have uh things come up that oh we wanted to talk about the email list uh oh uh Alex
please um we can start with the email list yeah so um Carol you want to ju just kind of tell us what the issue is here there may be more than one issue there may be more than one issue like I can't can't ever remember my microphone
um anyway I have this list John started it gave it to me when Erica and I became chairs and since then I've kept it up meaning when we've had an event I've added things to it sometimes somebody wasn't have the job there are different reasons why things have been subtracted
from it now that there are three subcommittees for instance um there are different more ideas about when to send something to it is it is it just advertising the housing production plan
meeting is it for our meeting is it what is it for and who should and I don't mind keeping it and managing it and trying to keep it updated and I actually think that even if it doesn't live on my computer if somebody wants to put it somewhere where everybody can reach it
it still ought to have somebody whose responsibility is to keep it up but it also maybe needs us to think about what we want to do with it so routinely I would always send it out with here's the next meeting coming up of our trust and
here's materials whatever they are but now there's more things and so how the I think the issue to me is balancing here's this list it's a great list people want to know about what we're doing but people get so many
freaking emails we don't want to send out too many emails or nobody's going to look at any of them so how that's kind of balanced itself up until relatively Rec recently when it seemed to me like oh I just sent one and now somebody's
saying send this one and so that's my that's my story fir first thing thank you Carol for not only keeping the list and adding to it but for being judicious about its usage so that uh people still
open those emails um but I I take I take the issues Greg what are you thinking um thanks Gan and thank you Carol so um I learned a couple things uh um just sort of policy-wise and and I
think a little bit of history is relevant as well my sense is that the birth of that list or the Inception of it was when there was um a coalition effort that was in the formal sense outside of of the oses
of the trust so not that's right not a public body right um and I think stakeholders kind of merged is sense and so maybe organically like it just sort of became a an echo of trust meetings and that sort of thing um um there may be advantage to keeping it in that
informal space um uh and my understanding is like if it's not coming from me um uh even if it's a trust member you can take an independent action um best practice is to is to always use BCC and not share the you know so don't don't we don't want to
send and I don't even I for I think Carol you do do that that when when you've sent you know um but but keeping it outside of the opice the other advantage to that is you know one one one piece of guidance I got was that if we start having a
formal like notice list for the trust other than like the town calendar which is the formal meeting notice and we get agendas up and the agenda Center that you know you that show up on the Trust website if we have a separate list then that creates an obligation another whe
whether informally or perhaps formally like it creates a certain expectation among recipients that like oh I didn't get the email or whatever and so it's you know it formally embedding in the Trust might
have a downside in in that sense um um so yeah and then also too like there may be you know you know there may be potential for a reanimation of an effort out outside of the opes of the trust um
where this might be a useful resource uh you know to to to help support um um so yeah that's kind of what I've those are I it is certainly not my goal to make it be more formal and have to have more requirements and more other hoo-ha about
it that's not the point I would just like some guidance maybe and if you don't want to give me any I'll just keep doing what I'm doing to not to know you know how to balance the two things I said I I um I mean first of all it
sounds like you're you're making good judgment calls Carol second of all I think that the kind of the members here who will be most um uh likely to want to use that is
the education and Outreach group so I wonder um Carol if you could put that on a Google doc that you share with algra and so algra also has access to the list
but does you know doesn't use it without I mean checking in or I mean so I've I've started a proposal here can someone finish it what if well my proposal is that alleger and I get to talk about it or
something or other or or I go or something I mean I don't it doesn't really have to be especially formal does it we want a way so that the education committee can get benefit of the list when they need it and I bet you that we
can figure out something algra I'm yeah you should say something because I and so this is like my fault I I brought it up to Carol and then I had no answers or ideas for what would be best but I I guess I he Greg's point that like
perhaps a formal list that might at some point have to be like open meeting law or like why how did you get on the list and I'm not on the list and it's a town list um don't want that um I do think if
there was say an event that we wanted to publicize that would be a a point where I could reach out to Carol and say hey can you send it out to the list I mean I think I guess thinking forward to I
believe a few members including Carol might be you know sunsetting their time with the trust not is it this year like like in a few middle of this year yeah presumably so I guess perhaps the conversation would then be is Carol
going to spearhead the not formal out of the trusts perview but still loving affordable housing community effort or is it is it this is for life are this is for life you can't let it go you're
like this is like Survivor the guy who pushes the button every 10 minutes or is it something that you know this list belongs to the chair of the trust now and then it's
Onan tag you're it um or again I mean as the current education chair do I take it on until my time on the trust sunsets and then the next person takes on I guess the question would be like the
continuity of the list holder versus the the role formal or informal and may may I propose that Carol you email uh me and
algra and we figure it out that that work works for me algra that's fine yeah all right no objections any anyone all right we'll keep it alive um um it makes me think of like the the mother that you
use for kombucha or something you got to keep that alive souro starter all right um uh Alex please yeah um it's not for tonight it's something that I'd like to see on
further agenda but I want to put it out there that it's something I'd like to discuss I'd be happy if we could have a conversation about where we're meeting I know that this body has been meeting virtually for a while um especially as we're looking to fill the vacancy I
understand a lot of flexibility with virtual meetings I would also encourage people to think about challenges that can come up with virtual meetings um thinking about internet access privacy and spatial constraints as we're trying to attract a diverse group of people to
apply to fill this vacancy so not a tonight conversation but I'd be very happy if we could have that conversation at some point about investigating an in-person or a hybrid meeting style uh thank you for raising it it's it's actually something that I think
we're waiting for the state for the um for the legislature to tell us what we can do at this point um uh algra Carol are you speaking to this no okay so I I understand we're going to get some guidance from the state because
the provision that we're working under is not Perpetual it has to be renewed um so we are going to get some feedback the other thing I'll say is that on the License Commission we came up because the License Commission met twice a month we came up with a nice balance of
alternating and we also saved the naughty conversations for the in-person session uh which was also nice because it didn't end up in a zoom recording um so I you know I think we can be creative here and we we may have
this feedback but I uh I agree let's let's um let's let's talk about this um at us at our next session and hopefully we we get the guidance from the state by then as well that Greg do you have
anything to add on this um yeah yeah just well I yeah I had kind of figured it was a Governor's declaration that gave us the permission to meet remotely but in fact it was tied most recently to legislation the extension of the
allowance is currently in this Municipal empowerment act which doesn't seem like the state legislature will swallow whole by the end of March okay so either they'll break it out or it is conceivable we could be forced to meet
in person in April um that's not out of the r possibilities so for for your radar um uh it's worth throwing that in I think they'll get a revolution if in this from State B from municipalities but it would be disastrous in my mind
but uh you know you know not that meeting a person is bad I like meeting a person but we never see disaster in government I mean um all right um uh so your hands are from before does anyone have anything else that did agenda go ahead from before it just
wasn't about that topic I don't know what algr is maybe go ahead your first so I wasn't sure if now we were talking about future agenda items but it did pop into my brain that when I was talking with Tim McCarthy of Craigs doors about
some of the stats for the Forum he said if we ever wanted to have him come talk to us as a trust feel free to do that so I don't know if you want me to reach out to him or whatever um the future agendas look
like but that is always an option and perhaps maybe when we get closer to an understanding of the VFW proposals that could be a a good segue for that excellent Greg you've got that on your running list yep excellent
Erica oh I'm sorry Carol was next I don't know how you got in front of her in the q line but well whatever I I just wanted to say I mean algra pointed out a moment ago I think it's three of us algra and me and Rob who are have served
so many terms that I don't think that we will get renewed and that comes up sometime the middle of it's ER what Erica didn't I just say that no you say it algra sorry I've just been talking to aler too
much uh anyway car Erica and Rob right and so I want to encourage all of us to find people who want to be on the trust and then to work to encourage the town to do the interview so it's not just that we're missing one person there
won't I mean I don't think we'll leave until there's a quorum I don't intend to leave if it means there's no Quorum and who unless somebody actually kicks me off and says you can't come but it still would be good to have to to get that in the works make sure that we have some good people applying
and so there's good people going forward that's what I wanted to say thank you very much thank you Carl is I wonder if is there a like a very cheap method for us to advertise this like can we even can we have a little subtext on the
meeting announcements Greg that says we're looking for new members um that's a question for Carol I think um but yeah yes I mean in that like we don't the meeting announcements go to the we could put them in the agenda you know we could agenda maybe
we'll maybe we'll for this purpose um yeah I can I can put it you know I can embed it on the web page um okay thank you yes Erica uh so just to
respond to that uh George Ryan in his uh District uh newsletter he's District three but I'm in district one and I get the newsletter and he's always putting in there that uh that the town's looking for volunteers for committees and has a link right to it um and I also have
somebody who just moved in next door who might be interested as of June so um absolutely let's just keep on talking to people we know um because I think the personal contact will be really important and I think we also um we had talked in the past two about diversity in terms of age ethnicity Etc we really
need to also think about that uh with the three of us I think we're almost the same age all leaving um but Carol Rob and I leaving and and the the wealth of experience too um when I listen to Rob and Carol is just amazing um anyways but that wasn't what I was I wanted to do a
future agenda item really quickly I know this is probably alarmist but I think we should have a a forum about how to um think about um retrofitting your homes uh around fire issues or or the areas uh
hurricanes and we're seeing climate change um that is just you know horrendous in what's happening and we don't want to wait and you know people say well there have been no fires but there was a lever fire for five days a few years ago that wasn't put out there've been fires all over Massachusetts this past summer we're in
drought conditions so I know that there is um actually a lot of discussion uh in articles online how to um you know booster uh your property in your home because any property destroyed is less beds and less uh housing for us so
something for future to think about that that uh yes and I mean related to that is is is home insurance um um uh which is affecting people um I'm sure there are other stories in the
group um all right um good so if anyone has like specific ideas of people who would be good experts on on this question Let's uh please share them um
excellent um so I guess we have gotten through our agenda we've got our next meeting March 13 and uh you know best wishes to all
the subcommittee meetings and you know let's uh let's figure out how we make some little fires turn into good let's make some housing uh let's make some housing um and it's gonna be
very sad to to lose the three of you um Erica Carol and Rob um uh I I hope it doesn't actually happen as soon as you say uh do we have a motion to
adjourn Okay I uh second um all right uh all in favor have a good night everybody thank you thanks everybody