AI-generated transcript of Medford City Council Zoning, Planning and Development 09-13-23

[Zac Bears]: 22-321, Subcommittee on Zoning, Planning, and Development. Meeting notice, Wednesday, September 13th, 2023 at 6 p.m. This meeting is called to order. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Mr. Collins? Present. Chair McPherson?

[Zac Bears]: Present. The two present, zero absent. The meeting is called to order. There will be a meeting of the Medford City Council Subcommittee on Zoning, Planning, and Development on Wednesday, September 13th, 2023 at 6 p.m. in the Medford City Council Chamber on the second floor of Medford City Hall and via Zoom. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss the condo conversion ordinance paper 22-3 to one subcommittee has been invited interim building Commissioner bill 40 and Alicia director of planning development and sustainability to attend this meeting. For further information aids and accommodations contact the city clerk at 78139 32425 sincerely yours act bears subcommittee chair. Welcome, everyone. This is a follow-up meeting on our proposed condominium conversion ordinance. Councilor Collins has been working closely on this matter with city staff. So at this time, I'm going to just quickly outline the meeting and then turn it over to Councilor Collins. Goals for the meeting are to revisit the ordinance purpose and goals, review background research that has been completed, and define some key questions and action steps. So we will walk through the outline proposed ordinance, walk through research from Lily from the PDS department, talk about some of the specific goals for the ordinance, and hone how we will achieve those goals through legislative language. And with that, I will turn it over to Councilor Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Great, thank you very much. So just to quickly set the table since it's been, I think since March, since we last met on this paper, I'm sure that we all remember the key ingredients of this ordinance, but for any residents who may be watching or just learning about this for the first time, a condo conversion ordinance is a legislative mechanism that allows us to regulate what happens and under what conditions rental units are converted into condos. And there's a state version of this ordinance that sets the floor in terms of how that can happen and how it should look and what protections exist for tenants when that happens. And then many, many municipalities in Massachusetts have instituted local ordinances recently and also over the past several decades to build upon those to increase protections for tenants, to evolve with the times. The reason that this I think has come up regionally and also nationally as well as regionally, and the reason that I think it's relevant to us in our community as it is to many neighboring communities, we know, it's documented here in Medford that we have a pretty severe scarcity of rental units, we have a scarcity of certain types of rental units. And of course, you know, every type of housing has its place in the ecosystem, ecosystem of housing in Medford. But it's important to put up safeguards proactively, so that when there are incentives for for profit developers to quote unquote cash in on rental units or to speculatively invest in condo units, you know, essentially to extract value from what was our share of rental units, that the community gets something out of that as well. Because it is a harm to communities when rental units are taken off the table, especially when they're, you know, in very high demand to begin with, which is the case here in Medford. So we're essentially, this is essentially a way to, look at that issue and say, okay, when for-profit developers want to extract value out of our rental unit market, when they take rental units off the table here in Medford, here's how that has to go for it to be fair and to contend with displacement of tenants that results from that, and also to make sure that the community writ large gets something out of that, not just the for-profit developers making a profit off of it. So that's just a really quick overview why we're meeting on this to begin with. I'll quickly walk through an outline of the ordinance. When I did my initial research back in March, I found that all of the local condo conversion ordinances followed a really, really similar formula. So that presents a really helpful starting place for us. Most of them include a statement of intent or purpose section, they define all of the relevant terms, and then come in the requirements for what happens during a condo conversion. The main parts of that are notice requirements, how much notice to give to tenants for what types of tenants, if there are different conditions for occupied units, unoccupied units. All of these ordinances articulate different conditions for protected tenants, which means elderly tenants, disabled tenants, or low to moderate income tenants. This section will also cover how to rent units while conversion is going on, a prohibition on evicting people simply because the conversion is going on, tenant first right of refusal, city first right of refusal, and then relocation payments to the displaced tenants, relocation assistance to the displaced tenants, as well as other things we might include, such as a number of conversions being capped at a certain number per year per developer, renovations during a notice period, and the tenant's right to vacate during the conversion. Finally, this also goes over the establishment of a review board that, you know, this is the board through which all of this permitting and requirements are done through. So that's the general structure that we've been working with. And as for our next steps, I've gone through and kind of highlighted the parts in that overall table of contents where we have some decisions to make, where certain cities split off from others in terms of how long is the notice period? Is there a cap on number of conversions per developer? Is there a tenant right to purchase? And how long is that time period, et cetera? So what I'd like to do next is, walk through some of the other research that we've done since our first meeting, and then we can come back and flag some of those decision points and start having a conversation about how to write our version of this ordinance. After our first meeting, Lily, the intern from PDS, did some really helpful background research on condo conversion data. in Medford for the past five years. Lily, I don't know if you're interested or prepared to speak tonight, if not, no pressure. But if you'd like to, I'd love to invite you up to just share an overview of that.

[Zac Bears]: Could you just give us your name for the record? Thank you.

[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: All good? Great. Let me just pull up some of that data. It was a little bit difficult to find concrete data. Maybe Bill can shed a little bit more light on this, but it doesn't seem like we know necessarily what a conversion is, but you can look in the registry of deeds to find whether a master deed has been reported and therefore a condominium has been established. And I think most of them appear to be conversions as opposed to new builds of small numbers.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Let's see.

[Kit Collins]: And Lily, if I could just cut in, I know that you did some really awesome, pretty comprehensive research. What I found most interesting was sort of the trends on like that slight increase in number of conversions, what types of buildings those are existing in, and then any like of those major pros and cons that you flagged, I thought was like super interesting for our discussion.

[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Right, absolutely. So here in Medford, I looked at data from the last, so for the five year period between 2018 and 2022, like the complete year, and it looks like it's an average of maybe around 30 conversions or so established condominiums, master deeds per year. It has seemed to gone up, it's gone up a little bit. I suspect that the pandemic will have affected this. So I think the big caveat here is like, we don't really know what the long-term trends are gonna be and it's possible things will change now that things are getting somewhat more back to normal. So for example, in 2018, there were 24 master deeds recorded in Medford 2019 was 30, 29 in 2020, and then it's gone up. So 2021, there were 37, and 2022, there were 33 master deeds recorded. And I selected, just to kind of get a little idea of what this might include, I took one year of data, 2022, and looked at all the addresses of these master deeds to get a picture of what kind of building typologies we were talking about. And from my research, it looks like 30 of those 33 master deeds were multifamily conversions. So that's probably like the typical thing you would see in Medford, a two family or maybe a three family formally rental being converted to condos. It looked like there were two single family conversions and one small new construction condo. Again, this is very much like, this is not hard data, like the registry doesn't tell us exactly these details, but you can kind of make guesses looking at the plot plan and looking at like Google Street View, for example, to see what kind of building you're dealing with. So that kind of gives a little bit of info on what the picture looks like here in Bedford.

[Kit Collins]: Awesome. Thank you so much, Lily. That's really helpful to have kind of a bird's eye view on this. And I just saw Commissioner Forty is on the call. So Commissioner Forty, if you have anything, any insight you'd like to add at this point, of course, more opportunity for comment later in this meeting and throughout this process. But we just invite you for your comments if you have any.

[Bill Forte]: Yeah, thank you, Councilor Collins. So I did have a look at the draft. I have a couple of operative questions regarding permitting, we probably can get into that a little bit more I was going to respond to your questions and comments in the word doc that you sent or that Mr. her to be sent earlier this week I started to work on it and then for some reason I didn't save the draft but I already kind of know what I'm going to say. So, so the big thing is with this just just the the overview of what I looked at, I would say that. There probably needs to be some changes to citizen serve. So when a person is asked, you know, the purpose of this conversion, is it for rental or is it for ownership, separate ownership, that's going to be the first thing. And I guess my question is, this is if if if a developer is going to buy, say, a three family and they want to convert it and sell it into condos, they would have to have that intention up front. Am I correct on that or?

[Kit Collins]: My understanding is provisions of this would kick in when the, this would create a conversion permit, a local conversion permit, and then the ordinance process would start when that is filed. So I don't think that would necessarily have to be concurrent with the purchase of the building, but as soon as the intent permit has to be filed.

[Bill Forte]: Right, so the initial intent of the property owner would have to be known up front. I think I think what you're going to find with this is that there are going to be people that may not have their full intention or plan down pat and they and I see this as a as a problem with one person saying that Um, well, I'm going to, um, I just need to fix up the apartment, you know, um, obviously the, the obligation here for the landlord to provide a payment for, uh, you know, for, for housing a benefit for housing. Um, you know, I, I just see that, that where, you know, where this grabs a hold is when. If there's it's one thing if there's an empty building and obviously we're not talking about that so if a if a builder buys a, you know, an empty building and all the tenants have been removed. I can see that this may not apply. I'm just not sure how that's articulated. I did think that the work so far on the ordinance looks great, but I'm going to probably list and frame my questions about this after I've had a little bit better time to sit with it. Unfortunately, I actually forgot that I had a vacation scheduled and I'm I'm broadcasting live from Nashville, Tennessee. So, you know, my apologies for not being prepared but but I do plan on. digging into this one as well as the tree ordinance, which I think is coming up next week. So I will be more than happy to provide you my questions and comments. So for now, I don't really have anything to add, except that there were one or two questions on the draft that I think I can answer pretty clearly is that housing units in perpetuity cannot be changed by by deed unless the restrictive covenant set by the DCHD has been broken. And I would tell you that that's probably not gonna happen. I know that there was an attempt to rid a building of affordable units in my former municipality and that measure failed because it really is something that can't be broken. you know, there was a, you know, units in perpetuity that had to stay that way. So there was no way for the owner to be able to convert those and sell them. So anything that's on the state level that receives, you know, subsidy is subject to the covenant and the remaining perpetuity units have to stay in place. So that's the only, moment I have right now. Again, I'm going to look into this a little bit better and frame some some more substantive questions. And I think that once we get this cleaned up, you know, I'll have a little bit more to say about it.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you so much, Commissioner 40. And especially appreciate you zooming in from Nashville. We'll try to keep this moving so that you can get back to your vacation.

[Bill Forte]: I'm going to see Keith Irvin tonight.

[Kit Collins]: So that's great. Of course, we'll have I think this is you know, we're gonna This is a complicated ordinance. We're going to take our time with it. So there's plenty of time for everybody involved to take the time that they need. And we'll be following up with many, many departments through the process of putting this together, I'm sure. But thank you so much for those preliminary comments.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Excellent. Thank you.

[Kit Collins]: Yeah. So was there any other questions or comments at this time? Nope. Great. So before we dive into, like I said, I picked out a couple decision or question points that I wanted to discuss tonight. But I also just wanted to flag a couple other things that I saw in Lily's research that I thought were really relevant. I think I read, I read in other research, not Lily's research, I don't think that it's kind of a rarity for owner occupants to do conversions themselves. It's more common to sell. and have developers drive the condo conversions. And I think that that is important because I think that a goal that came out of our March meeting was to have this target for-profit developers and not people who own their homes and it's a high percentage of their overall net worth. And they're just trying to build a family asset, maybe sell to a family member. That's not the goal. The goal here is to balance when for-profit companies are extracting value from the community. One thing that I saw from the research we got from the PDS office. is that a positive outcome from other local communities that have done an ordinance like this is that owner selling to tenants has happened more often than the condo board anticipated, I think I read, which seems like a really great positive because that shows that residents are staying within the community. Maybe this is incentivizing local sales and that relocation payments over time have become better aligned with the actual cost of relocation. On the converse other communities reported that relocation payments are often still too low and actually don't cover all of those real costs of relocation so that's something important for us to pay attention to I think and you know whenever green problem with our municipal capacity that education outreach about ordinances like this or challenge which is something I think we'll have to really consider as this gets further along. So with that being said, hopefully framing the discussion. You know, we just talked about how in March, we wanted to center on targeting developers, not owner-occupants or people who are selling to. you know, close relatives. We talked about, you know, a goal being essentially I want to center on our goals and then move into the specifics of the ordinance and think about what are the levers that we can pull to try to get at these goals. So having the community derive benefit when developers drive benefit, helping tenants with displacement when condo conversions do happen, keeping residents in the community, aligning relocation costs with the real costs of relocation. and then ideally aligning the condo review board with existing city capacity. Any comments at this time before we move from the big picture into the small picture?

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. I appreciate the level of detail that's come into the work so far.

[Kit Collins]: So I thought that we would kind of just go chronologically through the typical formula of this ordinance as it appears in other communities and just see how far we get. So kind of going top to bottom. The first section in sort of procedures for common conversion in these ordinances is usually notice requirements. And this means, okay, you've filed your conversion permit, a owner and you say, I want to develop this into a condo, you file your permit with the city, what happens then? So the state law regulating condo conversions kind of sets the basement floor here. And with saying it's two years, so the state set floor for the notice requirements is you have to give protected tenants two years to vacate. get to stay in their home for two years before they have to vacate. And all other tenants, they get one year. So that's kind of, you know, the bare bones, we're looking to what other communities have done is build upon that and say, okay, that can be a little especially in this type of housing environment, when we know that our vacancy rates are really, really low, that is not really adequate to find suitable, comparable housing, especially in the same community. So what is most typical in the local ordinances that we studied is that protected tenants are given five years of notice before they have to vacate. And all other tenants are given one year to vacate, although there is an exception, Marlborough extends notice to non-protected tenants for three years. So I think that's a good jumping off point for this kind of first deliberation point. If we were to align with most other communities, that would be adopting a five-year notice period for protected tenants and a one-year notice period for all other tenants. Or we could decide to align with our more proactive local communities that have this ordinance and say, well, why not three? What's the argument for not going for three years in a time of housing scarcity? And when we know experientially how hard it is to stay in the city, you really need a lot of time to make that happen.

[Zac Bears]: I guess I don't have to raise my hand, but just a question on that. Is the notice period the same as the waiting period?

[Kit Collins]: No.

[Zac Bears]: Okay.

[Kit Collins]: The waiting period is, I'm not sure what other communities have this other than Boston. In Boston, the waiting period is like year long holding period before the notice period starts. I believe the reason that Boston did that is so that Let me see if I can phrase this correctly. I don't have the mechanism for this right at the tip of my tongue, but I think that was put up as a way to, they were seeing in City of Boston, developers were just empty, they knew that they wanted to convert to condos, they would just empty out the building so that there would be no tenants present so that they wouldn't have to deal with the issue of relocation payments or relocation assistance when they did file the intent to convert to condos. The waiting period was an attempt to disincentivize that.

[Zac Bears]: So that's separate. For myself, if the state's already setting a floor and the point of the policy is that the state law is not sufficient, I think we should consider going above the minimum.

[Kit Collins]: I would tend to agree. I hope that we can get to a version of this ordinance where the notice period is not less than two years. for all tenants I think that starting with the Marlboro model of 5 years for protected monitor for protected tenants and 3 years for all of the tenants would be a great place to start. Then on the issue of the waiting period. I think that's something that I might want to do a little additional research on or check in with our PDS department about prior to our next meeting, just to better understand how that might be useful. So moving on, just because there's a lot to cover, but happy to pause anywhere. Next in the table of contents is the tenant right to purchase or first red refusal. This is present in most of the other ordinances that we studied. I think that having this mechanism in our ordinance is really aligned with the goal of trying to keep Medford residents in Medford and making sure that when a condo is created out of a rental unit, I think that there's no reason to at least offer the opportunity to purchase that condo to the person who's already made it their home. So the thing to decide here is, one, whether to include this at all, but I think we absolutely should, is the time interval offered, the sort of the window of time in which a tenant can, like has the option to say, okay, I put up my hand, you know, sell it to me. And of course there are additional requirements around this, that it has to be aligned with the, you know, the market rate that the seller could otherwise get for the condo if they were to put it on the market. In most communities, protected tenants get a 180 day window to exercise their right of first refusal and all other tenants get 120 days. So that's like four months and six months. I think that the benefit to starting here is that would give us parity with Somerville. And I haven't been able to do the research to know if this is true, but I would imagine that the developers operating at Somerville are going to be looking at the other side of that border as well. So I think it makes sense to try to align to make sure that we don't become, you know, I would hate for our rental environment to just be more fertile ground for for-profit developers. Thumbs up. Next, we get to the city first right of refusal, and this is actually something that I think we might need to refer out for legal confirmation. I believe many of the ordinances that we looked at had a city right of first refusal, so exactly the same as a tenant right of first refusal, only if the tenant says no thank you, then it goes to the city to say we would like to purchase that, or the city designee, so maybe that's an affordable housing trust. Recently, in the past several years, Somerville updated their ordinance to include a city right of first refusal, and that was invalidated by the courts. So I think, It would be nice if that was possible, but it seems like it might not be. So I would probably like to have that commented on by KP Law to see if it's worth us pursuing. Lily, you were nodding like you know something about this.

[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Yes, I did speak to one of the staff members in Somerville who staffs the Condo Review Board. And she mentioned that because it had been challenged in court, they were removing that. provision, but I think that's something that they definitely were hoping to implement in the future if possible. And I'm not really sure what the legal grounds for that was, unfortunately.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. If I had to soft guess, I'm guessing it's an illegal taking. It's kind of eminent domain-y. Yeah, it's in like an eminent domain realm. Yeah.

[Kit Collins]: Great. Well, moving right along, so we'll follow up on that. Moving along to relocation payments. So this is another condition that is present in the state condo conversion requirements that sets the floor, and it's present in every community that has a local condo conversion ordinance. So just to draw on again, the example of a couple of our close neighbors in Somerville. Oh, and so the relocation payment is, So an owner says, I'm going to convert this into a condo. They file with the condo review board. They send out the notice. Maybe they offer it to the tenant. If they want to purchase it, the tenant says, no, thank you. Then in addition to the other requirements, they have to pay a relocation payment to the tenant that will be forced to vacate the unit because it's going to be converted to a condo. And I just want to note for anybody who maybe didn't attend our first meeting or doesn't know a lot about this, I can hear the argument in my head of like, oh, so like, this is just a payment that goes to a tenant, like, no matter what, like this, there are, there's protection, sorry, there's a protection to tenants for not, that they can't be evicted for reasons explicitly related to conversion. All other housing rules still apply in this case. Like for example, I'm sure there are many things that people can do that warrant eviction. Just being present while a conversion going on is not one of them. So of course, if outlandish things were to occur and a tenant needed to be vacated of the premises, this ordinance wouldn't prevent that, but all else being equal, a tenant cannot be removed from a unit just because a conversion is going to go on and they would be owed a relocation payment, like essentially as compensation for being forced out because of the conversion. So just to explain that before I go further. So in Somerville, the relocation payment is $10,000 for protected tenants and $6,000 for all other tenants. In Boston, it's a good amount higher. It's $15,000 for protected tenants. $10,000 for all other tenants. And here there's an exemption if the tenant does, you know, opt in to purchase the unit. Again, I think that striving for parity with our neighbors is important, one because like rental pricing is at this point, very, very comparable. Another concern I had going into this section is, you know, as we know this from many of our other ordinances in the city, it's fine to set like a dollar amount in year 2023, but what about 2030? What about 2045? Several of our neighbors ordinances articulate that the dollar amount, whatever dollar amount is set for the relocation payment is adjusted annually according to the consumer price index. And I think that regardless of the number that we settle on, I think it's very important that the relocation payment not have to be amended by a legislative process, but rather be something that evolves every year automatically.

[Zac Bears]: On that point, would it be possible for us to kind of, I mean, I see that there's a potential, inflationary adjustment, would it be possible for us to tie this directly to median rent? Like, most if you have to rent, you usually have to pay, you know, first, last security and a broker's fee. So maybe four times the median monthly rent adjusted, you know, something like that, we could try to pick whatever we think is the most accurate measure. Because I think if we were using inflationary adjustments, we would underestimate rent increases.

[Kit Collins]: Yeah, I think that's a great point. I think that it probably would be more accurate to have the time to have it be equal to four times whatever median rent is at the beginning of the year or some other way of benchmarking that. Probably better than CPI.

[Zac Bears]: And then there could maybe be some sort of specific addition for protected tenants above that. I could see that. I think doing the formula that way really ties to the intended purpose. It's basically calculating what we think relocation cost is. And the 6,000, the 10,000, the 10,000, the 15,000 numbers are probably somewhere in that range, right? But this would... be able to narrow us in a little bit more. And I think, you know, it captures the spirit of why there would be a difference for protected tenants and non-protected tenants in that protected tenants may spend more time seeking, you know, a unit that they can access and then could use the additional funds for temporary short-term housing if necessary.

[Kit Collins]: Yeah, I think that's a great line of thinking. Maybe a way to articulate that is all tenants, four times median rent, and then maybe a percentage adjustment for protected tenants.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, or a stipend or even, yeah, something like that, but yeah.

[Kit Collins]: Great. I think that thinking through what that could look like could be a great thing for us to circulate for feedback and do a little bit more research on before our next meeting. I think that's a really important part of this to get right. Awesome. Any other thoughts on this piece before we move on to relocation assistance?

[Zac Bears]: Not for me, thank you.

[Kit Collins]: So relocation assistance is the other direct benefit afforded to tenants that are present while their unit is being converted into a condo. And all of the examples that I've looked at, it's extended only to protected tenants. If a owner or their designee fails to find suitable, comparable new housing in the same community, it extends the notice period by an additional two years. So this is something where I'm weighing, is this sufficient to adopt? Should we seek to extend relocation assistance to all tenants and then step it up for protected tenants? Quickly look over my comparison from our last meeting. I think generally how this has been handled in other communities, and Lily, if you've heard otherwise, please correct me. I don't know of any examples of relocation assistance being extended to non-protected tenants. So if we were to consider that, we would be pioneers in the field.

[Zac Bears]: Mechanically, what does this look like? Is it connecting them with a realtor?

[Kit Collins]: Based on what I know, it seems like it's left up to the owner. In the text that I've read, it was just that the property owner shall assist. And I'm sure in a lot of cases, that means just liaising and setting up your tenant with broker or maybe with somebody from the city or putting them in touch with resources.

[Zac Bears]: Who determines failure to assist? I just think we should maybe try to go beyond maybe what other communities have done here and be a little more concrete. Sorry, I'm saying I think we should go beyond what the other communities ordinances have done here and try to be a little more concrete because If assistance isn't described or defined in any way, I think it's difficult to determine a failure to assist. So I'd be interested in how communities define that, who have passed these ordinances. And if they don't, I think we should try to.

[Kit Collins]: Yeah, I agree with that. I think it's important to make it really clear. at the ordinance level, what failure looks like and also what helping looks like. Because otherwise, I think that what implementation of this looks like depends on, like, first of all, what the condo review board looks like and who's staffing it. I wouldn't be surprised if in a lot of cases, this is determination of this is just left up to the condo review board. But I think it would be great to know more about what's been done so that we can work more of that language into here. I wouldn't want to go overly prescriptive with what the assistance has to look like, but maybe a good place to start here would be reaching out to the other communities that have this ordinance currently operating, trying to hear directly from their condo review boards, Office of Housing Stabilities, to learn more about what it looks like and what we might want to explicitly adopt.

[Zac Bears]: even if they just have definitions in a kind of ruby board regulation somewhere around, you know, OHS policy, I think that would be sufficient.

[Kit Collins]: Awesome, I think that's a... And then since we mentioned going beyond the kind of sample language that we're looking at, well, maybe learning more about what implementation of this has looked like in other communities will inform, if it's feasible, what it could look like to extend it to all tenants and not just protected tenants. Okay, proceeding right along. Next to talk about is if the number of conversions per developer per year should be limited. Some examples of caps that communities have put up in Marlborough, no more than 25% of units in a building may be converted per year. In Lexington, there's no numerical cap specified, but conversion licenses may or may not be issued according to public interest as determined by their condo review board and how aggravated the rental shortages. I also want to note that the way Malden has handled condo conversions is to on certain types of buildings on 2 to 3 unit buildings conversions are explicitly not allowed unless the vacancy rate is higher than 3.5%, which is kind of an interesting way of handling the problem, I think. It's a way of saying like, okay, if we're really hard up for rentals, you can't convert, sorry, they have to stay rentals. If there's not a lot of demand for rentals, then they let some more through the gate. I think it's an interesting mechanism. It worries me a little bit because of the ebb and flow of vacancy rates. And we can't really control for, you know, how many rentals will enter the market in the future, if a lot of them do get converted. So I think that there's a couple questions under this section, which is, are we putting a numerical cap on? Are we interested in putting a numerical cap on at all? Is that number of units in a building, percentage of units in a building? Is it how many conversion permits are permitted at all based on community conditions. Is it based on conversion permits will be issued for certain types of buildings, but not other types of buildings? I think one thing that is interesting to me, I think that this whole section I'd like to get a lot more feedback on from department heads. But kind of in conjunction with the conversation around what our condo review board would look like, I'm kind of interested in the Lexington example of there not being a hard and fast numerical cap, but whether or not a conversion license can be issued is subject to the conditions on the ground when it's sought. I think it's potentially problematic. It's potentially, I don't know how many denials that would actually result in at the end of the day. But I will say I'm wary about exempting smaller buildings entirely from this ordinance because so much of our rental environment is smaller buildings and not these big unit buildings that you do see in cities like Boston.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, on this point, for me, I think given our housing stock, it would be unwise to exclude two and three families. Given Lily's research, I wonder if it would make sense to, or even if it would be possible to perhaps have an owner-occupied exemption for two and three families where if someone who lives in a building and intends to stay in one of the units, maybe the second, maybe not even intends to stay in one of the units, but essentially since most of the condo conversions are happening by flippers, you know, if one out of every 50 condo conversions is someone who owns a two family and wants to convert, maybe we should treat that differently than we treat the other 49, which are, you know, flips. And limit conversions per building per year. Does that more apply to the larger buildings where it's like, if you have 40 units, you can only do a certain, okay. Yeah, because, so I think that would have to be, we'd have to have a regime for anything four plus and anything, under four. Then I guess my question on the vacancy rate is, you know, who's calculating it and how, and I want to see historical vacancy rate data, which may not exist if I would, you know, if we historically have had 5% vacancy rates, but in the last 10 years, it's been closer to 1% vacancy rates that reflects the increase in demand, you know, that would inform my thinking. around using the vacancy rate metric. And then we just want to know if it was reliable to, or if we're estimating it, or if we're using a regional measure. All of those I think are impactful.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah, I think those are very relevant questions.

[Zac Bears]: All right, no need for a motion. We are picking back up where we left off. Councilor Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Great. Well, I think that we were just tying off our discussion of how to potentially limit the number of conversions, but I think it was sort of morphing into a discussion of how to separately treat small buildings versus large buildings, apartment buildings with many units, and how to work in an owner-occupied exemption. And I think that one of my biggest question marks in this is we say that we want to make sure that we're targeting flippers, for-profit developers, not targeting owner-occupiers. And I think that this is a really important part of this. And it sounds like maybe where that will figure in will be maybe mostly housed in this section. I think where we're coming out of this is that we're disinclined to exempt two to three unit buildings because that's such a large percentage of rentals in Medford in general, but that there should be some sort of exemption for that type of building where the owner is, you know, has lived there and maybe will remain to live there or maybe not, but will retain ownership as opposed to selling to a for-profit company, selling to a flipper. And I think that's, I think this will be a great thing to bring to department heads, Commissioner Fordy, do some more research on to figure out sort of exact language for how to achieve that in the text. So the last major piece that I thought we ought to talk about tonight that we could formulate some next steps and research around is the establishment of a condo review board. So this would be, you know, the board that would receive the applications, the condo licenses, would grant the condo permits, would also be the overseer for, are you actually following this ordinance or are you breaking the rules? This is sort of the implementing body for the ordinance. So in other communities, this ordinance has established an independent condo review board. In other communities, it's been sort of a joint project between the Office of Housing Stability and Inspectional Services. or I would say in most communities, they set up a condo review board since, or I guess, and that's what Somerville did. Boston, it's their OHS and inspectional services. I think in Marlborough, it is a collaboration between the mayor's office, their community development authority, and the city council. I feel like it looms pretty large for me that we don't have a lot of extra capacity in Medford right now to be setting up additional boards. We have a lot of vacant positions on our existing boards. I think this is one where like some fairly technical knowledge is involved. And so I'm a little bit skeptical about the success of sending up an independent condo review board. I mean, if the city has the resources to really support that board implementing this ordinance. Maybe that's too pessimistic, I'm not sure. So I think the question is, do we want to talk further about that, establishing a condo review board, which could be staffed by, I think, in other communities. I think the example I'm thinking of is Somerville. And I think it's a combination of city staff, homeowners, tenants, and tenants in that protected class, all members of Somerville, sorry, residents of Somerville. That's kind of the formulation. Do we want to see, talk about going that route, or should we talk about tasking an existing department or board with these responsibilities?

[Zac Bears]: My recommendation here would be that we ask the Community Development Board.

[Kit Collins]: I was thinking that as well.

[Zac Bears]: I think it aligns with what they, you know, their mission and what they do. I don't think the ZBA or the Affordable Housing Trust Fund boards make as much sense.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Great, yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense as the next step.

[Kit Collins]: Great, well, this is the end of my to-do list for this meeting. I think we went through most of the major levers that we have from the table of contents of the ordinance and the parts where we really have to make decisions and then work on tweaking and finessing the language to essentially say, here's our goal. Here's how we think we can implement it in this ordinance. Let's see if that makes sense. Let's run it by some other people. Let's run it by other communities that have done this before. Let's ask our experts in City Hall and, you know, kind of decide on where to take this in the language of our own ordinance. And I think probably at our next meeting, we can come back and say, here's the feedback that we got based on that. We're winnowing down our field of options. We think we're going to decide this for tenant right to purchase. I think we're going to decide this for how to, you know, mediate the number of conversions per year. We think we're going to do this for notice requirements, etc. Any other comments from somebody besides me at this time?

[Zac Bears]: I have none. Commissioner 40. Lily has departed. Lily, do you have any comments? I think you're gonna have to press the button again. You're good. One more time.

[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: No additional comments, but the planning office is happy to serve as a resource and continue to reach out to other communities or do further research as needed. Thank you so much. Super helpful.

[Zac Bears]: Great. Thank you. All right. The commissioner's not on anymore. Do you have any motions before we conclude?

[Kit Collins]: Yes, I would motion to circulate the notes and records of this meeting to our Planning Department, Board of Health, Outreach and Prevention, Building Department, and sorry, I guess request assistance with, sorry, I did not phrase this very well before I started the talk. Request their assistance on research and discussion of the,

[Adam Hurtubise]: questions that came out of this discussion. We'll take them all.

[Kit Collins]: but also motion that those same city departments review the definitions of protected tenants. also motion to request KP Law look into City right of first refusal.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Or I guess provide counsel on City right of first refusal. Yeah.

[Kit Collins]: motion to reach out to the Community Development Board regarding if they could be the implementing board here. Implementing authority here.

[Zac Bears]: And finally... Can we amend that to implementing authority for this ordinance?

[Kit Collins]: Much better.

[Zac Bears]: Implementing, yeah. Reach out to the community to see if they are willing to serve as the implementing authority for this ordinance.

[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah.

[Kit Collins]: And then finally, I would motion to authorize myself as sponsor to draft a section on purpose slash intent. And to draft additional language based on this discussion and feedback from city departments.

[Zac Bears]: And that's everything?

[Kit Collins]: I think that's it for me.

[Zac Bears]: All right. On the motions by Councilor Collins that I will second. All those in favor?

[Adam Hurtubise]: Aye. Yeah, yeah.

[Zac Bears]: take them as one motion. Second. All those in favor?

[Adam Hurtubise]: Aye.

[Zac Bears]: Opposed? Motion passes. Any further discussion?

[Kit Collins]: Nope. Just thank you again, Lily and our partners in PDS and Commissioner Forty for weighing in during this meeting and also preceding it. Very appreciated.

[Zac Bears]: Not seeing any hands by members of the public on Zoom. Is there a motion to adjourn?

[Kit Collins]: Motion to adjourn.

[Zac Bears]: Motion to adjourn, Councilor Collins, seconded by Vice President Bears. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes and the meeting is adjourned. Thank you.