[Danielle Balocca]: Hey listeners, this is Danielle. And Shelly. Shelly is a radical Dravidian and racial equity activist. And Danielle is a community mobilizer and change maker. And this is the Medford Bites podcast.
[Chelli Keshavan]: Every two weeks, we chew on the issues facing Medford and deliver bites of information about the city by lifting the expertise of our guests.
[Danielle Balocca]: Join us in discussion about what you hope for the future of Medford. And as always, tell us where you like to eat. Alright, I'm here with Shelly. Hi, guys. Thank you all. We've got a big group today. So, um we'll start with some introductions. If you don't mind saying your name, pronouns, and a bit about who you are.
[Alex Lussenhop]: So, I'll go first. My name is Alex Lesson Hop. Uh you see him pronouns. I live in South Medford. Um and I am the chair of Housing Medford which we're going to be talking about today. I'm originally from five or six years ago, and I've lived in the Boston area since 2011, and I work at the Museum of Science in my day-to-day job.
[Chelli Keshavan]: Great, thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hi, everyone. My name is Cassian Fonte. I use she, her pronouns, and I live in Haverhill, Massachusetts, and I'm from Lawrence, so longtime Merrimack Valley native. My background is actually in education policy and organizing for education justice. I was an elected school board member in Lawrence. still near and dear to my heart. But now I have transitioned to housing advocacy and I'm the associate director of operations at Abundant Housing Massachusetts. So I basically oversee our statewide organizing work as well as the internal operations of a growing nonprofit and I'm excited to chat more about that.
[Roberta Cameron]: All right, and I am third and last on your list today, Roberta Cameron. I've lived in Medford for about 27 years. I serve on the Community Preservation Committee. Since 2017, 2015, I helped to run the campaign that adopted the Community Preservation Act. And I've been a planning consultant for about 25 years, mostly working in Massachusetts, doing a lot in housing policy, as well as other areas. And for the last couple of years, I've been working for the city of Somerville as their Community Preservation Act manager. So, experience both in Medford and beyond, and excited about this conversation.
[Chelli Keshavan]: We're thrilled that you're here, all of you. Thank you.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thanks for being here. And so every episode we ask our guests the same question to sort of ease into the topic and break the ice a little bit. But if you all could share, perhaps we can go in the same order, just what your favorite place to eat is in Medford and what you like to eat there.
[Alex Lussenhop]: I think I have to say Chili Garden in Medford Square. And as far as things to eat, so I usually like to get, we usually order off their Sichuan menu. Although if you have a craving for like the classic American Chinese, you know, it's all there. I like the like dry diced chicken. It's really good. And we used to joke that we ordered from them so much when my wife was pregnant with my oldest child, my daughter, that she was probably like 25% Mapo tofu by the time she was born. So we ordered a lot of Chili Garden when she was pregnant. That was her like main pregnancy craving was Mapo tofu from Chili Garden. That's gotta be my answer.
[Danielle Balocca]: Shelly is a chili garden fan.
[Chelli Keshavan]: I'm also a chili garden fanatic and had a 6 year pregnant relationship with the menu. So that resonates.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thanks Alex.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I really love that. I'm definitely going to check it out because I don't have a lot of dining experience in Medford since I up in the Merrimack Valley, but I do just want to plug my favorite restaurant. It's also a really great just community space and bookstore, independent bookstore in the city of Lawrence. It's called El Taller. It's spelled, it looks like Taller, T-A-L-L-E-R in English. And it's just incredible Mexican, sort of Dominican fusion food. They have the best crispy double fried tostones, like smashed plantains in the world. I keep telling them they need to trademark it. But yes, I need to make a plug for them. Thank you.
[Chelli Keshavan]: I love it.
[Roberta Cameron]: And I'm going to call out Kushari Grill on Boston Avenue. I really love a one-dish meal, and so their hawashi hits the spot for me.
[Danielle Balocca]: Okay, great. Cool. Thank you all. So we were just kind of hoping you could, it sounds like we have some perspective from the state level when we talk about housing, and then also from the more local Medford level. So we're wondering if you could teach us a little bit about the genesis of housing Medford and abundant housing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. I'm happy to start with that. And so Abundant Housing is an organization that was founded only three years ago now. I had to count because like with COVID, the years kind of run together. But we were founded three years ago. And our motto is building, you know, making Massachusetts for everyone. We know that that is not the case because the housing crisis is so palpable across all groups and income levels but really affecting most poignantly, you know, our BIPOC and lower income communities. And we saw a specific need in the advocacy space for a statewide coalition that would bring housing advocates from across the state together on specific issues. Because the reality is that housing development, land use decisions, zoning, those Um, by and large happen at the local level, of course, with the help of state regulations that that really sort of dictate what happens to some degree. But Massachusetts is a very parochial state. We really believe in local control and local government for better or worse. And You know, abundant housing saw this need in the advocacy space to have a statewide network that would particularly focus on what we talk about as the housing shortage. We know that one of the systemic issues that contributes to the lack of affordability for everyone is the fact that there just aren't enough housing options. There isn't enough housing for the amount of for the population change, and so the amount of people that are here and want to move, or the amount of people that want to move here. And the housing production has just not kept up with the pace of demand. And so what that does is it creates a strain, and it puts people in situations where they are bidding each other out for housing. And in that circumstance, lower income people will always lose. And we're seeing that, I think, exacerbated even this year the increased interest rates, and we're even seeing that in rental units in the last couple of years. And so we felt like there was an opportunity to really focus on the housing shortage, because we didn't necessarily see that being talked about in sort of the dominant conversations and narratives. And we, you know, we do understand that when we talk about the housing crisis, I like to talk about it from the perspective of the Othering and Belonging Institute out of Berkeley has this really great report that deconstructs the housing crisis as actually 12 different crises, many of which intercede, but some of which don't. And the parts that we're really focused on are not just the housing shortage, but also zoning reform. I will say personally, I barely knew what zoning was before I started this job, you know, a year and a half ago. And now I'm a, you know, board of appeals member in Haverhill. Zoning is basically how we decide we use our land. And zoning historically has been used as a tool of exclusion, has been used as a tool to create, you know, really wealthy suburbs with high opportunities, schools that, you know, property taxes that go into our schools and create all these opportunities for kids. But then in places like Lawrence, we don't have that because it's concentrated in economic poverty. And so we are all about changing zoning laws so that it's easier to build multifamily, what we call missing middle housing. And all that's meant by that is, you know, housing that is more naturally occurring affordable in the marketplace, so we're talking about duplexes, triplexes, things that are not large single-family homes, because the reality is that another thing we talk about is there's not enough suitable options for different life stages, you know, for elders, downgrading, well, not downgrading, I'm sorry, but, you know, what's the term I'm looking for? Downsizing. Thank you, downsizing, not downgrading. Very different. And there's not enough sort of starter homes, right, for folks that are just getting into home ownership, which, for better or worse, is one of the primary ways that historically people in our country have built wealth. And so, so many are left out of that. The last thing I'll say, because I know I'm going on and on, is we do also support and understand the importance of tenant protections and development without displacement, and so we don't feel that development is something that has to happen. We don't feel that those are, you know, those are two topics that are at odds with each other. And so we support legislation that would, for example, allow tenants the first right of refusal in purchasing a property if their landlord is selling. We support eviction ceilings so that no one's housing record you know, negatively impacts them when they're looking for a job, for example. And so, we really try to take an umbrella approach. And one of the ways we do that is by bringing in local pro-housing groups, like Housing Medford. We support them in really building their capacity as advocates to engage at the local level and bringing them together with other groups across the state. So, I do at this point want to make space for Alex and Roberta, as I like to say her name. To talk about housing Medford.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Thanks, Cassie, the housing Medford actually. Redates the creation of of and housing Medford was established around. I want to say 2018 with the assistance of a different organization called. Which stands for the citizens, housing and planning association. And Chapa is an awesome organization. They're also statewide advocacy and they really focus on advocating for affordable housing in particular. So that term can get. pretty fraught, I think. Like the way that we use the term affordable housing, really we mean housing that is, or generally what we mean, we can mean a lot of different things, but one thing that is often meant is housing that is like restricted to people of below the median income or at a particular income, income-restricted housing. There's also housing that just happens to be affordable to you, whatever your income is, and those can be different. But CHAPA really seeks to encourage the production of that income-restricted housing so that there's something in place there for people who don't make the median income in our community, which is pretty high. So CHAPA had an initiative that was to go to different communities like Medford, and Arlington was another one that they worked in, and helped to just establish Housing Medford as a little citizens group, you know, residence group here in Medford. And we worked with one of their staff members for about a year. Her name is Dana LeWinter. She was awesome. She helped us kind of write a policy agenda for the first year, helped us try to figure out what we wanted to focus on, and we actually had some I don't know, I would say some pretty big wins early on in our sort of existence as a group. We've always been a pretty small group, but we've had a strong voice with the city. And so one of the things we did early on, I think it was in 2019, we helped advocate for the passage of something called inclusionary zoning here in Medford. So Medford didn't have an inclusionary zoning ordinance on the books, but we helped advocate for the creation of one. Basically, what that does is that for any multifamily development over a particular number of units, the developer has to designate a certain percentage of those to be income restricted at certain levels. It's different depending on how many there are. It's a different percentage. But that just basically ensures that there's some level of, you know, below market rate units that are available in any of these larger developments that get built. And so if you look around at any of the, you know, newer, bigger multifamily buildings in Medford, like the Lumiere or the Madeira or something, you probably have some, you know, 10, 15% of those are income restricted and available to people who make less than the median income here in Medford. Roberta, what am I missing about housing Medford? We've existed since about 2018. Here we are now.
[Roberta Cameron]: So, I mean, I'll pick up in the first year we talked about the inclusionary zoning. And then in this past year, one of the things so we there were some things that we were advocating for in this past year that were really we felt important to advancing affordable housing in Medford. Those were for the city to adopt a housing plan. They had prepared a housing production plan in the last couple of years which needed to be adopted by City Council in order for us to be able to make that housing plan public and show the development community, show our community at large what kind of affordable housing we want in the community and to begin to implement the the strategies that are identified in the plan. So we needed City Council to adopt that housing production plan. We were asking for City Council to establish an affordable housing trust which is Like a commission, it's similar to the community preservation committee. It's a commission who has control over a pool of money. That's to be used specifically for affordable housing and that money can be raised in a number of different ways. It can use community preservation act money. It can use. pilot money. It can receive tax title property that that the city has that can be repurposed for affordable housing. There are a number of different ways that that money can be collected but money is collected by the affordable housing trust and then used for affordable housing. So we were advocating for the creation of an affordable housing trust in the community. Many other communities around us have affordable housing trusts. We're Somewhat late to the game and establishing this tool. And then finally, the 3rd thing that we wanted to see the city do in the last few years was to hire a full time housing planner so that we could have capacity in city hall to support and. move forward affordable housing initiatives. So, all three of those objectives, I would say, have been accomplished in the last year, just in this year. So, last year, the city council approved the housing production plan and just in the past month, they have Um or they're currently in the process of moving forward the establishment of an affordable housing trust. So, let's look in the near future for the affordable housing trust to begin getting off the ground and finally, we have right now currently posted a position for a full-time housing planner in City Hall. So, if you know anyone who has the qualifications, we're Um, but we have looking forward, um, in in the current time, what do we need to do? What is housing Medford trying working on doing now? Um, I'd say that there are 4 areas of. of our agenda that we need to work on for the city of Medford. One is leadership, filling that staff position, making sure that when boards and commission positions open up that we fill those board and commission positions with people who are friendly to affordable housing and to housing development. they can play a critical role in blocking or opening the door for affordable housing development. And finally, community organizing. What we need to do most of all is to get people talking positively across the community about affordable housing and participating in planning initiatives, coming out and speaking up for affordable housing. So we need help reaching people. And so we're brainstorming and trying to find ways that Housing Medford can better reach the public. So thank you very much for having us on Medford Bites today. One more way that we can reach out to people. Secondly, we need to participate in planning. The city right now has a lot of zoning initiatives that they're looking at, implementing the city's master plan, that housing production plan that I mentioned, to create affordable housing opportunities. And we also have neighborhood or site planning going on. Just today, I saw an announcement that the city is inviting people to participate in planning for the reuse of the parking lots behind City Hall. So, re-envisioning Medford Square with those being the prime opportunity places. So, let's talk about building more affordable housing in Medford Square. by participating in these planning activities that the city is doing. So advocating for development projects, as I mentioned, coming out and speaking up for we have 40B projects that are in the pipeline and other housing projects that are in the pipeline that we want to speak up for. And as Cassie mentioned earlier, There may be housing stability ordinances that the city is considering that we want to support as well to help people to be able to afford their housing and stay at their housing and finally advocating for state initiatives that promote affordable housing. So, that's a lot already and I'm only through two out of four. The next area that Housing Medford is working on is building resources, raising money for the Affordable Housing Trust. So, looking for ways that we can increase the funding that the Affordable Housing Trust has to use in committing public land to affordable housing. Like I mentioned, the parking lots behind City Hall, And potentially parcels that could be used for affordable housing through the land trust advocating again to the state legislature to increase the money that's available to us to spend on affordable housing. And then finally, the 4th area is that housing Medford is looking to support partnerships, recruiting nonprofit developers to build in Medford and recruiting. non-profit organizations to come and provide services to Medford residents where Medford is currently a social service desert and we're a child care desert. We're missing a lot of services that residents need and it's all related to our living cost and the cost of housing. So we need to work on bringing organizations into Medford to provide services. So that's
[Danielle Balocca]: Incredible working on today, you 3 are very prepared for just that 1st question. I think you covered a lot. So, you took us 80% of the way through the podcast, but incredible.
[Chelli Keshavan]: you know, you've experienced multiple wins, you know, in a variety of spaces. And I think while you're all speaking, my mind goes to process and wondering sort of, you know, where their spaces in cultivating a relationship with the city that felt like areas of strength where their positives what felt more difficult. And I think that. You know, folks want to participate, or they would like to think that they could participate, but then what does that mean? And what kind of time is involved? And will I be politically chastised or, you know, just do folks who look like me speak like me read like me also participate. So, maybe if you might speak to what it's felt like in the moment, and maybe what you've taken are their takeaways.
[Alex Lussenhop]: I've personally felt like everyone at the City has been incredibly receptive to our group. And I don't know all the things that have contributed to that. I feel like having people like Roberta involved who are really active with the City and people already know them, there's kind of an element of trust. And so when I sort of jump in and say, yeah, I'm here from Housing Medford, they know already who we are. And it's been a very positive relationship with know, the mayor, the mayor's staff, the city council, like everybody has been just very, I don't know, open. And not to say that there haven't been disagreements or we haven't, you know, not wanted things to go a certain way that they've gone, but in general, I felt like things have been very positive. What has been a little bit harder and can be really scary, but is also one of the kind of easiest, easiest, no, I'm not going to say it's easy, but least time-consuming things to do is speaking up at public meetings in support of affordable housing or even just housing in general. I don't know how many folks listening or how many of you, I know people, my fellow housing organizers have been up there at a public meeting, but they're very negative, especially when housing gets talked about. And I think I thought this stuff about housing 10, 15 years ago. I'm not sure if it's just knee-jerk or whatever, but you get up there and people are yelling, it's too big, there's not enough parking, too much traffic, it's going to overcrowd the schools. It's a very negative environment to be in, and if you're up there and you just want to say, I would love to have new neighbors in my community or like, this corner has been like a dead zone for 25 years. Do you really think that like, having a small apartment building with, you know, even a bank on the bottom wouldn't be a little bit better, like make it a little livelier? It's very scary. And so I, you know, that's been something that's been a little bit scarier for me, but working with the city has not been something that's been Negative, it's been very receptive to us and to our entire group.
[Danielle Balocca]: I mean, did you have something?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, can I just say some, I want to just like reaffirm what Alex is saying with like a quick sort of historical anecdote because before I started working in housing, I didn't quite realize how resistant communities were to new housing or development in general. even affordable housing. And I think, you know, there's some great research out of Boston University from Maxwell Palmer and Katie Einstein on what they call neighborhood defenders. And they really do a good job of contextualizing the fact that we have a system, we have a local political system that prioritizes and privileges majority homeowners, majority white males, older, and I think that I would like to think that tide is changing and a lot of the pro-housing work we're doing But it is scary. And I think that what we emphasize, and I say scary because I've been in a space where I'm the only woman of color in the entire room and it's deeply uncomfortable to hear people who don't look like me saying things that are very exclusive and frankly racist and classist. And then I'm one of the two or three people that I brought with me getting up standing in support of an Accessory dwelling unit ordinance, for example. But I think to Alex's point, the city is really receptive to that because they're used to like all the negative neighborhood defenders. And it's really refreshing when they see people supporting something, supporting positive smart growth changes in their neighborhood. And in Haverhill, we ended up passing that ADU ordinance. And partly not because of everyone that showed up to speak in support, but I got some of my friends and family who probably you know, they didn't feel safe, frankly. They didn't feel safe testifying. They didn't feel comfortable. They just wrote an email or they, you know, texted their city Councilor. Even those small points of contact really matter, even one email. And so at AMA, and I think in the work we do, we really try to emphasize everyone can be an activist. There's activism opportunities for everyone. It's a tool for social change. Your voice matters. and you can find that medium that works for you. You don't have to always be the person testifying.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, so, well, we have a long list of things that I've just rattled off that we're watching and working on the most of the people who participate in housing Medford are simply on our email list and they hear an action item come up and they can contact the city Councilor or contact the mayor. So, they may, or they can write a letter to the board or commission. They don't necessarily have to stand up and be that lone person at the Mike in a big public meeting. There are other ways to advocate. And so we hope to, as a group, be able to tell people where their voices can. It can chime in.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you, and you mentioned sort of how folks can get involved being on your email list. What's the best way to find you or to like get in touch?
[Alex Lussenhop]: I would say there's a few different ways. If they want to get on an email list, they can go to housingmedford.org and there's a contact page that has just a little sign up form for the mailing list. Pretty low volume because it's mostly me sending emails a few times a month, if that. So don't worry, I won't spam you. We also have a Google discussion group that you can access and probably the best way is just to email housingmedford at gmail.com, which is like a little bit more if you want a little bit more email kind of back and forth talking about stuff that's there, as well as our social media. We're on Facebook. We have a page group. We have a very inactive Twitter because also I'm a little bit nervous about tweeting just stuff into the ether, but I'm trying to get better. So those are some easy ways. And I'm always happy to just have conversations with folks who are like, I think I might be interested in Housing Medford, but I don't really know what I want to do or what you do or what I can do. So housingmedford at gmail.com is a great way to just kind of make a touch point with me and then go from there.
[Chelli Keshavan]: Awesome. Thank you. I love it.
[Danielle Balocca]: Well, we want to be mindful of your time and we're thankful that you were able to meet with us on a late night. But before we kind of wrap up, I'm wondering if you have anybody has anything else that they were hoping we would ask about or wanted to share.
[Roberta Cameron]: I don't know, like, this is something that you can use or not use in in your podcast, but I thought that I could maybe say a few points about, like, defining the housing crisis in Medford and, like, why are we talking about affordable housing? So a couple years ago, I started to put together some data. I just actually updated what I could and reported on it last year. But the data that I have is primarily from 2021. The average condo price in Medford then was $575,000. So that's the average condo. We're not even talking about single family home. That would require an income of close to $140,000 to be able to afford to buy a condo in Medford. And By comparison, about one third of the jobs in the Boston metro region put people into this income bracket. So no matter where you work in the Boston metro region, only a third of people can afford to buy a condo in Medford. And these aren't Medford jobs. Medford jobs pay on the lower end of the Boston metro region scale. So then also 2021 data, the average rent for a one bedroom in Medford was $2,500 a month, which requires an income of $100,000 for that to be affordable. That means that excludes about 37% of the Boston Metro workforce from being able to rent an apartment in Medford. And so then looking like where do people live then if they can't rent an apartment, they can't buy a condo, the income needed to be able to rent a room at market rate, which is about $1,000 a month, is $40,000. So there are a lot of service workers, especially in food service and hotel industry in the Boston area, who don't make enough money to be able to rent a room. So that just puts in context the housing crisis that we have in this area that we're responding to in trying to advocate for affordable housing development. And we really need every kind of housing of every description. You know, everything from rooms to houses, home ownership opportunities, senior Senior housing that will enable people to downsize and be able to stay in the community housing for people with disabilities. Housing for families, we just need every kind of housing. So. That's what that's what we're working for.
[Danielle Balocca]: Right? Yeah, I remember when we were buying a home in Medford that we were benefited from the first time home buyers program. And I remember learning about, depending on what city, City of Boston had their own program, Cambridge had a program, Medford didn't have a program. So it was like a statewide thing. So I wonder, is that any part of the agenda or is that something that has come up?
[Roberta Cameron]: We would definitely like to see more resources for home ownership. I should add that Medford has been able to establish resources to help renters. We had rental assistance during the pandemic, that program has completed, but we have a move-in assistance program where people who are moving into Medford who are income qualified can have the first and last month's rent. Paid through a grant that's administered by ABCD. This is funded by Medford's Community Preservation Act program. And when we say that we're trying to recruit organizations to provide more services in Medford, we're reaching out to more. organizations like ABCD to ask that they also use Medford's Community Preservation Act money or CDBG money to extend services to Medford residents. So, you know, a Medford resident might not think to call ABCD. They might reach out to Somerville to say, can you help me? And Somerville will say no, because they're only supporting Somerville residents. But if some if the organizations locate based in Somerville Accessed our funding then they could say yes to Medford residents. There's no reason why they have to be limited by the city boundaries. So That's one of the ways that we can expand but yeah, we it would we would like to be able to see more homeownership opportunities in Medford
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, we talked to Kit Collins a while ago, one of our city councilors, who is, I think, a big advocate of, like, supporting renters as a renter herself. And she brought up some really interesting points about how maybe those folks are, like, don't rank as high in priority because they may not be here, you know, they may not be here forever. They may be sort of a transient kind of population to the city. So, it's really, I think it's really interesting. It sounds like really important work that you all are doing, and thank you for doing it. I wonder if there's any other comments before we wrap up for today.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Yeah, no, I did want to kind of piggyback on what Roberta said a little bit, just kind of hearing you describe the scale of the problem, like how bad the price problem has gotten. It's not just in Medford, you know, anybody who's lived anywhere in Massachusetts can tell you it's really bad. And I guess it's really easy to get discouraged because of that, because of just the scale of the housing problem. But something that I've learned and that I've tried to remember is that we didn't get into this mess overnight We're not gonna get out of it, you know tomorrow. There's there's also there's no magic policy There's no like I can't snap my fingers and tomorrow one bedrooms are gonna be $500 a month and single-family homes are gonna be $200,000 like that's not gonna happen. There's nothing we can do quickly overnight to do that so once you let go of like a the idea of some sort of perfect policy or some sort of quick fix, you really realize that, like, there's no such thing as perfect in housing advocacy. There's no perfect policy. There's just a lot of little things that we can do, a lot of things that we can change bit by bit, one by one, community by community, state by state, that make it a little bit better. And every little thing we do, you know, I sometimes think about that adage about planting trees. Like, the best time to have planted a tree was 20 years ago, and the second best time is now. So the best time for us to have fixed our housing problem was decades ago. Failing that, we can start doing it now. And every little thing we do, every affordable housing unit we get is a win. Every family that doesn't have to move out because of a rent increase or whatever, every family that can access their tenant rights is a win. That's one thing I would say that really keeps me going in an advocacy area that is really hard. It's really complicated. It's really technical. There probably were words that we said in this podcast that listeners have no idea what they mean, or acronyms that are like, wait, what's that? And frankly, if you jump into one of housing Medford's meetings and it's just some of our regulars there, you might be like, what are they talking about? And I have to own that. Absolutely. It's really confusing. But there is a place for everyone. Housing is on the policy level really complicated, but it's also extremely simple and extremely personal. Everybody has an experience with housing. And so there's a place for Anybody to get involved. Maybe you want to learn some terms. Maybe you don't, but there's something you can do to advocate for making housing more affordable here in Medford or wherever you live. But, you know, we're here in your tree.
[Chelli Keshavan]: That's right. Thank you so much. This has been amazing. This is awesome.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you very much. And hopefully we'll hear more from you in the future. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[Chelli Keshavan]: Thank you guys. Yeah.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. The Medford Bites podcast is produced and moderated by Danielle Balacca and Shelly Kisherman. Music is made by Hendrick Guidonis. We'd love to hear what you think about the podcast. You can reach out to us by email at medfordpod at gmail.com, or you can re-interview the podcast on Apple Podcasts. Thanks so much for listening. Guys, what's the name of the podcast? Never Bites. Never Bites. Good job.