[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Good evening. We have a Medford Affordable Housing Trust meeting Wednesday, August 7th, 2024 at 6.30 p.m. This is a hybrid meeting, so it's in-person in room 207. We have a sign on 201 in case anybody enters and needs to make it down to room 201. Second floor, Medford City Hall, 85 George P. Hassett Drive, Medford Mass 02155, and you could also join us by Zoom. Good evening and welcome to tonight's first meeting of the Medford Affordable Housing Trust Fund. I'm going to take the roll call. And if I do not pronounce your name right, please correct me. I'll do my best. Kayla Lessig. Here. Kayla, welcome. Thank you. Roberta is not present yet. Roberta Cameron. Lisa Ann Davidson.
[Roberta Cameron]: Here.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Hello, great. Welcome Lisa, Carrie Weaver. Here. Carrie. Penelope Taylor. Here. Pennyworth. Penny. Okay. Lisa Sun.
[Danielle Evans]: Here.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: And myself, Maryann. We have six present, one absent, and we'll be joining us in a few minutes. First up on the agenda is an introduction. So we'll start with an affordable housing trust fund overview. I'm going to turn it over to Aditi. to give a short presentation about the trust and Medford's housing data. Thank you.
[Moogoor]: Thank you, Mia.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: And just maybe to let everyone know your title.
[Moogoor]: Yes. Good evening, everyone. Quite excited to have the first meeting. I'm Aditi Mughal, staff planner for housing. I'm going to provide a short presentation on affordable housing trust fund and an overview of Medford's housing data. What is an affordable housing trust? It's a public entity. It acts as a municipal bank that can collect funds and use those funds to create and preserve affordable housing. The trust is led by a board of trustees. There's a state law. a statute that allows local municipalities to establish an affordable housing trust. That's how Medford was able to establish an affordable housing trust. And the statute outlines that the main purpose of the trust is to provide for the creation and preservation of affordable housing in municipalities for the benefit of low and moderate income households and for the funding of community housing. What can the trust do? The trust can provide financial support to develop affordable homes, rehabilitate existing homes to convert them to affordable housing, increase affordable housing development projects. develop affordable housing in city-owned lots, preserve properties faced with expiring affordability restrictions, and then provide rental assistance for low and moderate income households. These are some of the activities that the trust can support, but the trust can also act as an affordable housing advocacy and policy development agent. So what does the Board of Trustees look like? We have a seven-member board, which includes the mayor. We have one member of the Community Preservation Committee, and the remaining are the residents of the Medford City. The Board of Trustees are appointed by the mayor upon confirmation by the City Council. The trustees have a two-year term, while the initial terms are standard. We require a four-member board of trustees to form a quorum and a quorum will allow the board of trustees to approve any motion. If there are vacancies on the board, for example, if there are two vacancies, then the board would require to have three members to form a quorum. So there are certain powers and rules and regulations that are outlined in the state statute. And it's also outlined in our affordable housing ordinance. So some of the powers listed here are the board can accept and receive property, purchase and retain real or personal property, sell, exchange and transfer property, execute, acknowledge and deliver deeds and other instruments. The trust can also employ advisors, agents, consultants, even full or part-time staff. So for more information on the 16 powers set forth in the trust statute, please feel free to scan the QR code or it's available on the city's website. So as I mentioned earlier, the trust acts as a municipal bank, so the trust would require to look for funding sources. Here are some of the examples. Community Preservation Act funds is the most popular funding source. We also have inclusionary zoning payments. At this point, the City of Medford has inclusionary zoning ordinance, but we don't have inclusionary zoning payments yet. There are also possibilities of acquiring private donations, municipalities general fund, tax title sales, payments from special bylaws or ordinance, and self-tavern lease payments. Since the trust works for the benefit of low and moderate income households, HUD outlines what the income categories are for low and moderate income households. The current area median income of Medford is at $149,000 approximately. So low and moderate income households income are set at 80% of the area median income or below. So that amounts to roughly around $130,000. A very low income household would be at 50% AMI. and extremely low income household would be at 30% AMI based on the hard income limits of 2024. So what does Medford's household income look like? An owner-occupied median household income is around $115,000, and a renter-occupied income is around $94,000. So if you look at the income graph, there's about 35% of the households that earn $115,000 or more, whereas nearly 65% of Medford's households are at 80% or below, so they comprise of low and moderate income households. So there are 35% of the households that earn $150,000 or more income, but based on HUD area median income, which is set at $149,000 nearly, so that would equate to nearly 65% of the households in Medford are at low or moderate income households.
[MCM00001763_SPEAKER_00]: Thank you. Can I ask a quick question as well? Yes. So for the high number, is that also a family of four from the previous slide, I'm assuming? Yes. Yeah, this is a family of four. Okay.
[Moogoor]: No, but the area median, yeah, that's also a family of four. Okay. Yeah.
[Unidentified]: Gotcha. Great question.
[Moogoor]: Moving on to Medford's housing characteristics, The majority of the household size is a 2% household followed by a 3% household. So we add them together. So 64% of the households consist of one to two person, while we only have 15% of the units that are studio or one bedroom units. So this seems to be a mismatch between the household size and the unit size. Similarly, 36% of the households consists of three or more persons, but we only have but we have like 85% of the units that are two or more bedrooms, so which is clearly a mismatch between household size and unit size. In terms of housing types, majority of the housing types are townhouses or two to four family units followed by single family, and then we have multifamily units and five or more units per building. Looking at the housing occupancy, 95% of Medford's housing are occupied, out of which 53% of them are owner-occupied and 47% are renter-occupied. Looking at housing affordability, 29% of Medford residents are housing cost burdened, which means these households spend more than 30% of their income on housing cost. If you look more closely, 16% of them are moderating cost burden, which means that they spend over 30% and less than 50% of their income. And those that are severely cost burdened are 13% of the households that spend over 50% of their income. It will affect housing cost burden by income level. nearly 70% of extremely low and very low income households are housing cost burden. This is almost 80% of Medford's total households and nearly 44% of low or moderate income households are also housing cost burden. And proportion of cost-burdened households by tenure, it's the renter-occupied households that are cost-burdened more than the owner-occupied households. The Massachusetts state has a, the Massachusetts state's housing agency has a subsidized housing inventory which allows municipalities to measure the housing, affordability housing stock. So Medford currently has a total of 2,433 affordable units on the state subsidized housing inventory, which accounts to 98% of the affordable housing stock that are rental units, while only 2% of them are ownership. Medford would require to produce 132 more units to reach the 10% affordability target. As you may be aware, Medford has a housing production plan which outlines various housing strategies that would enable us to produce more housing, specifically affordable housing. And one of the strategies was to establish a municipal affordable housing trust, which we have. And the action plan has also outlined one of the strategies that the trust could consider, which is examine affordable infill on city-owned lands and, when appropriate, develop affordable housing on city-owned lands. This is something that the trust could consider when the trust develops its own action plan as well.
[Unidentified]: Last but not the least, we have various housing resources, housing toolbox, a great source to understand our client.
[Moogoor]: DataTown has resources on housing data, and then there's Max Housing Partnerships guidebook and operation manual to operate affordable housing trust. And we also, the city has a page on affordable housing trust. This presentation will be uploaded on the webpage if you'd like to refer in the future. Yeah, this was a short presentation, but we also plan on inviting a staff from Mass Housing Partnership for our next meeting so we can have one-on-one training on how to operate equitable housing first.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Aditi.
[Moogoor]: You're welcome.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: That was a lot of information to take in.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: We'll let the record reflect that member Cameron, Roberta Cameron, arrived at 634. And thank you for the presentation, DP. We're going to now go around. And if everybody wants to, can everybody at the table just state your name and tell us a little bit about yourself and what makes you interested in form housing and being on the board. So, DP, we'll make sure you think about it.
[Moogoor]: Well, I'm a renter myself, and from my lived experience, it's been hard to find affordable housing when we just had a one family member earning. And that got me interested in now finding out more about affordable housing. And given my planning background, I thought, why don't I focus on housing and specifically affordable housing? So here I am.
[ea2kg9eBURI_SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for sharing. Yeah, thank you.
[MCM00001763_SPEAKER_00]: Introduce yourself.
[ea2kg9eBURI_SPEAKER_00]: My name is Derek. I'm working in the planning department as an intern this summer. I'm originally from New York. I have an architecture and background in architecture. And so that's kind of why I'm interested in affordable housing. I'm from Brooklyn, and I've seen a lot of gentrification happening in that area. And so I'm really trying to focus on how we can help families find affordable places to live.
[MCM00001763_SPEAKER_00]: Hi, I'm Lisa's son. I have a pretty similar education background to you. I have a master's in architecture and also a master's in urban planning. But I'm particularly passionate about environmental justice. So having resilient communities against climate change means thinking about the environment, like the fiscal environment, but also the economics of it and the people who are getting basically the brunt of it are the ones who can't afford it. So that's what I am passionate about.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Lisa.
[Roberta Cameron]: Roberta. Roberta Cameron. So many things. I serve on the Community Preservation Committee, which we got established um through a vote in 2015 in Medford and have been very that I had been a planning consultant before that and did a lot of work around um affordable housing among other things and I really I affordable housing really hit me deeply especially working in suburbs and seeing the disconnect between the what people were willing to do and the assumptions that they made and what the needs were and the reality. So that gave me a lot of feelings. So I've been working very hard on affordable housing since then and on helping Medford to establish more resources for affordable housing and I work for the city of Somerville relating to the Community Preservation Act.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Hi, my name is Kayla Lassen. The last almost 15 years I've worked for a for-profit developer who focuses on mixed income housing in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I also am a lawyer by education, not so much by trade, though I've had extensive experience with HUD, mass housing, a little dabble with mass development, and yeah, just looking to get back and contributing.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: So it's not, whoever you work for is not an affordable housing developer, but they do mixed income levels?
[Maria D'Orsi]: They were at one point an affordable housing developer, 100% affordable, and then the 80s programs changed and focused a lot on mixed income, so 25% percent level, sometimes 40 B's. So yeah, thank you.
[MCM00001729_SPEAKER_03]: Hi, I'm Carrie. I'm Medford resident. I was interested in joining the board. I thought being a low income resident, I actually, you know, interested in, was hoping to buy, purchase here in Medford, but unfortunately, things have just gotten so out of control. That doesn't seem to have going to happen, but so I thought maybe, you know, just get involved. I could learn a little bit more things and also maybe bring some information to the table where I am as well. sharing with us.
[Penelope Taylor]: My name is Penny. I am a renter, so I think probably got into this through lived experience as well. I was living in Union Square, Somerville, and got involved in community organizing to prevent displacement. Just first looking around seeing my friend getting displaced and then realizing I could try to do something about it. So got involved, helped found a neighborhood council there that had been negotiating community benefits agreements with developers for things including affordable housing. That was one of our Big wins and our 1st CBA since then moving to Medford looking around to see a lot of people who've also been displaced and found themselves in Medford and want to keep at their home and not get displaced again. So that is kind of the local and I also work for the city of Somerville in the office of housing stability. So, for 3 years. I was a rental assistance advocate from 2020 to 2023, helping people access funds and legal support to prevent eviction, and now I run housing programs and healthy.
[Theresa Dupont]: Happy to be with all of you. Thank you. My name is Tracy DuPont. I'm the Community Preservation Act Manager here at the City of Medford. I've also been a renter myself, so I have plenty of lived experience of talking Communities having to, you know, so, but yes, more directly, I managed the, I helped support the CPC here. So we're really looking forward to seeing what this group's going to do and help support in any way that we can. Great. Thank you, Theresa.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Lisa, do you want to say hello online?
[Roberta Cameron]: Hi, I'm Lisa Davidson, and I've been doing housing my entire career, actually. Started off with the City of Somerville in the 90s, and then went and worked with the unhoused population with the Somerville Homeless Coalition for years. I found myself back at the City of Somerville's housing division and now I'm looking at funding affordable housing properties that come into the City of Somerville. So I'm very interested in housing. I think it should be affordable for everybody. Everybody has the right to housing. So I'm looking forward to seeing what the Affordable Housing Trust Fund can do here as well. And I'm sorry I'm not there in person, but thanks for putting the Zoom link. I appreciate it.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Absolutely. We'll try to do this each time now that this room is set up this way. Sounds great.
[Unidentified]: And Brianna, the mayor,
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: I've been, I have been a renter, I'm lucky to be a homeowner, and I hear from all walks of life, the issues that our residents are facing from our seniors to our low income, to our students trying to find housing, to our people who want to downsize. So I'm very interested in trying to do what we can to hammer up the needle. And thank you for all taking your time. I know we're going to meet monthly, and we really appreciate you being on this board with us. So it seems like it's Medford residents who work in Medford and Somerville, so. Not too far. So we're ready for a vote. Good. We'll go on to number two. Like I said, we're going to try to meet monthly. That's our goal. We're hoping to meet the first Wednesday of each month, and we have some options for times. We have 5.30 to 7 or 6 to 7.30. We can set a time that works for everybody, or we can do it by plan, but we'll be able to just block out your first Wednesday of the month. and it's hard to get here by 5.30, just speak up and we'll make sure we go to 6.00.
[MCM00001729_SPEAKER_03]: I was going to say, it'll be a little difficult for me to get here by 5.30, but I could definitely get here by 6.00, 6.30. If 6.00 says has to be, I can do it by then. I would prefer the 6.00.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: So 5.30 is up. Press that up. We're going to try to meet between 6.00 and 6.30, depending on if we need an hour, an hour and a half, a few hours. Okay, great. One thing we do have to do, and I don't know if that'll be today or not, but we have designated officers. An affordable housing trust can include a chair, a vice chair, a treasurer, and clerk, which a clerk is optional. The chair facilitates the meeting, guides the trust activities and meeting agenda, makes sure agreed tasks are carried out, ensures decisions are carried out, delegates tasks, and so on. The vice chair assumes the role and responsibilities of the chair in her absence. Treasurer works with the city's treasurer to set up a trust fund account, maintain financial records, and report it to the trust. The city's treasurer will have access to the trust financial records, and the trust treasurer will act as an intermediary between the trust and the city's treasurer department. And the clerk, which is optional, is responsible for taking and circulating minutes, preparing agendas for meetings, in consultation with the chair, distributing information to members. This is an optional role. The city staff will also support the trust's administrative work. I request that the trustees think about all the different roles and your potential interests in taking up any of these above roles. And you can inform a DP over the next month or next week. It looks like a week. So hopefully in the next couple of weeks, we can see who's interested in which roles. and vote on that next time.
[Moogoor]: Please feel free to write to me if you're interested in any of these rules.
[Penelope Taylor]: Can I just ask a clarifying question? I believe I read that municipal employees cannot be the treasurer of this. Is that correct?
[Moogoor]: I'm not too sure.
[Penelope Taylor]: Okay, yeah, so you just double check for that.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. That leaves one or two options.
[Roberta Cameron]: I wonder whether that's intended set specific municipal employees of the municipality.
[Penelope Taylor]: Yeah, that clarification would be super helpful. So thank you. Yeah.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: OK, we'll get that answer. But you all have a DPC email, so if you're interested in any of those positions, please let her know in the next week or so. Any questions about how meetings will be run or on any of those positions? We're going to go into number four, establishing working groups. The trust could have two working groups that can meet once in two weeks to work on the following draft of the Declaration of Trust. The trust can execute the Declaration of Trust, which includes the trust's authority, rules, and regulations. The trust should be reported to the Registry of Deeds. While the declaration is not legally required by statute, it is recommended. The report declaration will provide notice of establishment of the trust and its power and authority to hold and convey title to real estate. A declaration is required when a housing trust applies any interest in real property by deed, restriction, or mortgage. The declaration of trust must be reviewed by a legal counsel. The board can set up a working group of one to two trustees who can draft a declaration. Once reviewed by the full board, the declaration should be reviewed by a legal counsel before reporting the declaration. Trustee suggestions, Gail Lessen has legal background and could be one of the board members.
[Moogoor]: Yeah, no, that's great. Yeah, we do have examples of other communities, so I'm happy to share them with you.
[Unidentified]: I think you support in any way. We won't put pressure on you. With the development strategy action plan.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Creating an action plan can illustrate the board's goals and priorities, usually for a period of one to five years. Mass Housing Partnership, or MHP, a quasi-public agency, suggested that we have an action plan for a period of two years. Communities have drafted an action plan in-house, forming a working group, subcommittee, and others have hired consultants to draft an action plan. MHP recommends that we draft a two-year action plan in-house with two to three achievable goals. So those are the two working groups that are being suggested that would probably, again, take another week to review. And if you're interested in any, please email Adeepi.
[Moogoor]: Yes.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: And we'll try to get probably three member working groups.
[Moogoor]: Yeah, four members will form a quorum. So maximum of three. Two to three members. Yes. And probably to draft a declaration of maybe two members maximum, and then three for strategic plan development. and we probably guess that working groups can meet more than once a month so that we can report back to the trust.
[Unidentified]: Thank you.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Any questions there? We didn't see none. Five, we have finances. A, funding sources. The trust will have to identify funding sources to support the trust's activities and goals. and B, CPA funding application. Ms. Teresa DuPont, our CPA grant manager will, she's gonna briefly talk about CPA funding and how these funds can support the trust's rural housing goals and initiatives. And then DP will provide a status update on the CPA application that we have and next steps. Yes, Teresa.
[Theresa Dupont]: Hi, everybody. So I just wanna give like a quick elevator pitch on what CPA is. If you're familiar with it, I'm really, really sorry, tune me out for the next 30 seconds. So Community Preservation Act funding, as Roberta mentioned, it was voted in here in Medford in 2015 by a ballot and implemented in 2017-ish. This funding comes from a surcharge on top of folks' property taxes, about 1.5% right now, which at the end of all of it, the math ends up being around $2 million each year that we can reinvest back into community projects. So it's a local tax that's raised locally, and we spend it locally. We invest it locally, all local. The three areas that we can spend CPA funding on is historic preservation, open space and recreation. So if you've seen all these beautiful big park projects happening, CPA was very much involved. And the third one, more important to this group, is affordable housing. So CPA, in our young, time together. We have funded housing projects that include like the Walking Port redevelopment that's happening. We've created some systems at Lepree's Village. We have funded three condos, affordable ownership condos that are being put in on Bell's Way West. I'm hoping that those wrap up sometime this fall. And then we also have been funding our housing support resource programs for housing families, So like our rental arrears and moving startup funding assistance programs. So that's what we've done with housing. We're really excited about the housing trust because I think this is a vehicle that gives a little bit more, you know, oomph behind it. So how CPA funds can be used on the affordable trust side of things. The three real big things when it comes to how you can spend CPA money is on acquisition, preservation, creation, and support. I kind of, and maybe Roberta can have an opinion on this, but preservation and support, it kind of can muddle the lines.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, so acquisition is easy, creation is easy to understand, but support means to help households be able to access housing they can afford. So that's a very specific kind of support. So we use it for rental assistance and we have a move-in assistance program in Medford to help pay first to last month rent so that people can access apartments. So that's what the support category is. And the preserve category is tricky with affordable housing because it's We're only supposed to use a CPA fund to preserve affordable housing if it was created with CPA in the first place. So we're not supposed to use CPA funds to fix housing authority billings. That's not the purpose of CPA. We're supposed to use it to create more affordable housing. expanding, but if we, for example, we used it to build the units at Bellsman West, if in 15 years from now something was in disrepair and they needed to put more funds back into those buildings, they could use it to preserve those buildings.
[Theresa Dupont]: One couple of just notes to throw out there early about CPA is any property acquired or bills with CPA dollars must have a perpetual deed restriction on it, which is another way for us to protect our affordable housing inventory here in the city. In perpetuity. In perpetuity.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Perpetual, yeah, sorry. I messed up that word. Oh, no, just, yeah, because I think in the past, Back in the day, there weren't any. We need to make sure. Especially this board needs to make sure.
[Theresa Dupont]: And that might be a task that the board addresses, because we do have inventory on our subsidized housing inventory, SHI listing, that, as the mayor alluded, had deep restrictions, but they were only for 15 to 20 years. So we've got a couple next year that are falling off of that. As they try, you know, it's not a whole heck of a lot, but it's still it's sad to lose any units. But the 38 we don't measure somebody. And I feel like it's it's one of the extensions. The water's clean. But, you know, there's another one coming up in like twenty, thirty two, which three this one. Yeah. Yeah. So we just you know, CPA could be used to help protect that. I'm not exactly sure how it would look like, but if there's dollars that need to be spent for preserving those restrictions and sending them. CPA could be used for that. We have rules from the Department of Revenue on what we can spend the funding on. So any funding that does go to the trust would have to be very carefully recorded, the files and record keeping and everything like that. But I would be working with whomever the treasurer is and whatnot for helping keep that straight. So if there's any questions on CPA, I know that was a little bit longer than 30 seconds, Good. Any questions? I don't know what that is. I'll leave my cards with everybody. So even if you have a question over the weekend, I'll shoot me an email. I'm happy to take that up.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Unfortunately, Aditi, thank you, President Bears, for being here with us.
[Unidentified]: Oh, sure.
[Penelope Taylor]: I was holding my phone at that age. Pay attention. I was like, CPA. I've never heard of it.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes, CPA has been great. We've got a lot of projects done at CPA. Thank you, Teresa. Thanks for being here and being supportive.
[Moogoor]: And speaking of CPA, CPC put out a funding application in July. And on behalf of the trust, I went ahead and filled out a form to determine our eligibility, the trust's eligibility. So that was the first round of the application form. And in September 1st week, there's a full application form that's due. So we're hoping that the trust can apply and receive CPA funds. So the initial application that I put out was requesting funds for $250,000. I'm hoping that by September 10th, we can fill out a full application. And I'm happy to have a draft out there and share with the trustees for my feedback. As a follow-up question to Roberta's comment on support as one of the CPA categories to support affordable housing, can we use CPA funds to develop an action plan for the trust?
[Roberta Cameron]: Oh, that's a very good question. That would fall under the CPA and admin category. So we have a very limited amount of funding that can be used for activities that help to determine how to spend CPA funds. And that's in the admin category. So we don't have a lot of admin funding available, but we could see how much we have. That would be a qualifying expense for admin.
[Moogoor]: Okay. given that the trust doesn't have an action plan yet, but the CDA on funding applications due next month, just wondering how can we fill out the application form?
[Roberta Cameron]: There is no application form for admin. Admin doesn't have to go through the application and accounts approval process. Okay. So that's a direct decision by the It's been made by the CPA manager, by the CPA officers, or the CPC officers, or just by the CPC as a whole. Depending on the amount that we are agreeing to spend, different parties will have discretion to make that decision.
[Theresa Dupont]: And as for the full application, I know we're very young. Inaugural meeting happening right now. I would think that the committee would acknowledge that in the application. Some of our applications that come through, we're really deep diving into the details with this. Again, it's not up to me, it's up to the committee, but I think that they would factor in the very newness of this group into the application. And we'll have presentations in October, so maybe by that time we'll have a little bit more meat that we can discuss on the group, and then you can share that during the presentations. So.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: But it can be a little bit more open-ended for things we might decide to do or talk about doing in October, November, December and into the future. Hopefully just get a lot of money to have some spending ability, right?
[Theresa Dupont]: And again, up to the committee, but I feel like I know that they're very supportive of this group and the work that we're going to be doing here, so.
[Danielle Evans]: I just want to know. Lisa asked. Oh, Lisa, yes, sorry.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, no, no, no, thank you. Um, just to clarify and question actually, maybe 3. I think I heard an applications due in September for the CPA CPA monies. Um, and I think I heard them the amount 250,000 dollars. I assume this could be wrong, but when you're doing an application, there has to be some sort of idea on what you're going to spend the funding on. And as I heard, I'm sorry. I forget her name from the CPC. Teresa, thank you. I almost called her Terry, so I knew it was a T, I'm sorry. Anyways, I think I heard that you're already funding other nonprofits through the CPC application. Is that correct? That is correct. Rental arrears, startups, when we're filling out an application for the trust, do we have an idea on what we would be using the $250,000? I mean, $250,000 is, if we're gonna look to help with development, $250,000 is not a lot of money for development, right? I mean, it's, I mean, in Somerville, we're doing, there's a lot, it costs a lot of money right now for development. So I'm just kind of wondering, where the 250 came from and if there was an idea on what it would be used for. And I know we're early on in the process, but September is going to be here soon, right?
[Theresa Dupont]: I can answer definitely the first part of your question there. The 250 kind of came out because in CPA land, We have to spend a minimum of 10% for each of those three categories I mentioned. So based on our budgeting that we allocate, we actually allocated 15% this year towards affordable housing. So the 250 is almost what we've kind of allocated for housing anyway is our minimum. It also does, this is pure happenstance, that it aligns with what a lot of other communities have done for their housing trusts. I think it was Lincoln, Harvard, Genoa, not local, but those are examples I was able to dig up, that when their affordable housing trust first applied, it was also for about $200 to $250. So I hear you that it's not a whole heck of a lot of money, but it's something to at least get us started, to get something in the bank. As for not being able to necessarily identify exact tasks or assignments, if you will, for what this trust is going to do, I think that we're just in a tough spot right now, but I think for the sake of the application, if we can identify a couple of items that we're going to come out the gate with, in terms of tackling, I think that that would be sufficient. I do also happen to have one of my chairperson here right now who maybe has other opinions, but I will see the floor.
[Roberta Cameron]: I just wanted to point out that we have, that the CPC has in the past banked housing, money for affordable housing, but when they didn't have an applicant that round, they just carved off money and said, we'll use this in the future.
[Unidentified]: So I see this as a similar thing.
[Roberta Cameron]: money and saying that we'll use it in the future, even though it won't buy. It's a start, and potentially it will double it before we even have a concrete plan of how to move forward.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: And we do have, I think Theresa mentioned that 2.4 million applications have come in. for the CPA funding, and we have only have 2 million to disperse. So the committee is going to have to make those decisions in September, October, November. But yeah, this is a good start, considering we have so many applicants with a number of projects, many of which are city-method projects, too. So, yes.
[Theresa Dupont]: Did I answer your question, Lisa?
[Roberta Cameron]: It doesn't. Thank you. Just trying to like wrap my head around it. So thank you.
[Penelope Taylor]: Yeah, I just, um, is the due date September 1st or 10th? Okay, cool. I love the deadline. So that's good to know.
[Theresa Dupont]: Okay.
[Unidentified]: It's on Monday. Thanks.
[Penelope Taylor]: The Monday after Labor Day.
[Roberta Cameron]: It sounds as though to complete that application, what will be most helpful would be for you to draft the application and then the committee can all or the trust board can all review the draft and make comments and updates to it. Sure. I can also help guide you through it too.
[Moogoor]: Yes. because we don't have, the trust doesn't have an action plan yet, and I assume it will be at least end of the year for us to come up with a complete set of strategies and goals.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Of course. Just be careful not to wiggle the meeting along.
[Maria D'Orsi]: I was going to say, you can't email it to us and we can't all comment. No, you know. It would be in our meeting packet.
[Roberta Cameron]: In your meeting, yes. In our meeting packet, and then we have one meeting in which to discuss it. Sure. Yep, yep. That's what I'm saying.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yeah, it's a little time because with September 1st, Monday, 4th, 1st, Wednesday.
[Moogoor]: Yeah, so September 4th, we ideally have the next meeting.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yeah, but you don't need to finalize. Yeah. Yeah. So I think if you have ideas or, you know, something that someone's done or a different community, send them to what you think. You can organize them into what the draft. Yeah. We have a final reading. We'll be able to get in our packet a week prior. And then we have a final discussion on and on and forth.
[Penelope Taylor]: So I think it lines up pretty nicely. Are you able to share what you submitted before? Just I think you said you had to upload it or share it with like, is it just kind of a placeholder paragraph or like what's out there already?
[Theresa Dupont]: It's an eligibility, eligibility determination form. So that's just, it's like a one and a half page just to make sure that your, your project can be eligible for CPA. If somebody comes and says, Hey, I want to buy an ice cream truck. That's not an appropriate use, but somebody wants to establish an affordable housing trust. So just to prevent people, have you ever written a grant where it's like, you've gotten all the way to the end? And I said, Oh, you can't do that.
[Moogoor]: I didn't share that at all. That's a reading package.
[Theresa Dupont]: I hope it makes sense.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: have any questions or comments from the board. reviewing city-owned parcels to see what's available. I like the idea of trying to build some affordable housing on some. I also like the idea of selling some lots so that we can, the sale proceeds can go into the trust. So that is something, I just signed up the contract on that recently. Those are some of the ideas of what we could do with the 250,000 consultants we could hire to evaluate what other cities and towns have done, give us some bids.
[Penelope Taylor]: I have two questions, I guess, about on the topic of studies, which like you do need that. So, yeah, yeah, I guess. Has there been a nexus study for housing nexus in Medford?
[Moogoor]: So we've been having this conversation because the city of Medford has the linkage program, which includes collecting linkage fee for the development of parks and recreation, police and fire, water and sewer, roads and transportation. We have an act that establishes this linkage program, which includes affordable housing, but we do not have that in our ordinance yet. The City Council brought this up a couple of months ago to include affordable housing linkage. but we were also trying to see if we can update the existing linkage fee as well as include equitable housing linkage along with that. So to conduct a Nexus study, it would cost us nearly $200,000 at this point. So we are figuring out how to identify the funding to do this Nexus study. Yeah, we've been in touch with a couple of consultants who are willing to do this, but it's sort of a conversation that's ongoing.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: And I think it was a certain amount of money to include affordable housing in linkage. And then another portion of money to update all the accounts we already have. So that's something maybe this committee can put in our application as a possibility of how to spend it. Yeah.
[Moogoor]: So if they were to include affordable housing linkage, so that would amount to $16,000 roughly. But updating the entire program would amount to nearly $200,000.
[Penelope Taylor]: Understood. And then if I could, if there's a follow-up question, another study that was mentioned, I think in the health and production plan, just kind of to check in on the analysis of impediments to fair housing. It said the most recent one had been 2012. I guess I was just wondering if since that report came out, if one's happened or if that's still something on our list, to-do list.
[Moogoor]: I'm not too sure, but I think that's something on our list.
[Unidentified]: Okay, great. Thanks so much. That's helpful.
[Danielle Evans]: I think the home consortium might be working on something that's regional in nature. I don't know if that's a good question to ask them, since they're working on a, is it a consolidated plan they're working on now?
[Moogoor]: Yes, there's a consolidated plan, a five-year plan that NSE is working on. Yeah, and it's just, the PICOF meeting was today, so we'll have to wait to know what that entails.
[Penelope Taylor]: Amazing, and last moving forward for this, they just approved, I think, an Office of Fair Housing, so I think there will be a lot more happening around that, but anyway, okay, thank you, Sharon.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: And we're missing only two, and we can maybe also, and then I'll just speak We can also state in the application maybe for some matching money because the $5 billion bill just got signed yesterday by the governor and then Senator Warren had a very big press conference last week with money she's going to be trying to get to cities and towns which is going to be pretty broad and open-ended like how do you how can you increase and support affordable housing and there's going to be it's going to be pretty open-ended for us so I don't know it could be any matching money we need for any of anything that's coming down the pipeline but um all good news on on that front so uh and maybe after reversing maybe you can just explain to the committee what the home is so that everybody's educated
[Roberta Cameron]: Okay, so two things. First of all, the nexus study would not be an eligible use of CPA funds. So I like to be serious to look at other directions for where to get funding for that. And then queuing up Danielle talking about the whole consortium. I'm curious what the timeline is for the consolidated plan. And to, I think it'd be useful for this board to know how their funding could align with funding that we have to support the same projects?
[Moogoor]: To respond to Roberta's question, the timeline for the consolidated plan is February next year, based on all these meetings, and they plan to finalize it by May 2025. I think the first draft is in February.
[Danielle Evans]: Okay, yes. and Daniela who's the new planner. I'm sorry I was late, I had a meeting about the board meeting that I was having. So the home consortium, so the city of Medford is part of the North Suburban Home Consortium, which is comprised of eight communities. So it's Medford, Malden, Everett, Chelsea, Arlington, Melrose, what am I forgetting? Revere. Revere. What's the other one? Oh, WinFIRST. Yeah. So basically, those eight communities basically get an allocation from HUD based on a formula. I think Medgar probably brings the lion's share of the funds there, but it's all pooled. And so it's any developer, mostly nonprofit developers, comes to the consortium and can apply for funding. There are many of those state communities and it's rolling, so you can come anytime and ask. So if the funding cycle for the trust is rolling, then they can be aligned pretty well.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: One of the projects in Medford that the home is supporting or did support is the three units that are being built on the Bellsway, and you can actually see them being built right now, structures up.
[Danielle Evans]: And Walgreens is going to get some of the home ARP, which I'm very glad. I encourage them to apply for it. If they haven't yet, don't apply for it. That's fine.
[Moogoor]: Can CPA funds be used to study city-owned blocks to develop affordable housing?
[Roberta Cameron]: That's a question that I would need to think about. CPA funds can be used as pre-development for a development project. So if we're certain that those city-owned lots are candidates for developing affordable housing, then yes. If we're not certain, then that might fall into the administrative funding category.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: And when you say it cannot be used for the NEXUS study, does that mean just increasing review of increasing the buckets we already have and could we use it for the $60,000 just to add affordable housing to the linkage?
[Roberta Cameron]: So seed money to help us make more money for affordable housing doesn't fit into any of the categories for CPA. Acquire, create, support households to access housing they can afford, but that really has to be tied to specific households or to preserve or restore.
[Penelope Taylor]: Is there already a map of the lots?
[Moogoor]: We've identified two or three lots. Yes, but there's a huge inventory, but they've not identified to build affordable housing yet.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Okay. We have a listing of, and I received it recently from the assessing office of all municipal owned lots, so. Okay, yeah, okay. And it's a couple pages long. And another piece is the inclusionary zoning that was passed, and I believe finalized and passed in 2019. So it's been five years, so that's something maybe we could pick up, not even necessarily with CPA money, but just reviewing that and seeing how we can strengthen it without deterring development. Um, yeah, I always, I always talk to Danielle about, about how a developer will do build one home and the next six months, six months for them, buy another home and, and, you know, start developing that. And it just goes on and on. So I always in mind when they do that 15 home or 10 home, that one should be affordable. And so that's one way I'd really love to strengthen it. Cause we have developers that can do flip a two family home and another two family and another two family, but never. add to our affordable housing stock. And I think that's something that needs to be looked into.
[Danielle Evans]: And I'd like to see us being able to do fractional payments. So a lot of times, so if they round up, but the way that developers will plan a project and they'll, you know, cut off enough units where they don't have to round up because of the entire factory unit, you know, it's, you know, a big chunk of change that they're subsidizing. But if say it was, you know, fractional payments, just pay like 10%, I'd say it was, it rounds up, say 6.1 units divided when you do the math, our organization has to round up to seven, so they'll reduce their unit count, so they only have to get six even. Yeah, so it'd be a lot of fractional payment, that could be some funds I could come to trust.
[Unidentified]: So good ideas.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Let's start again. If there's no other questions or comments or ideas, we have a few tasks. Like we stated, so you're gonna let a DP know if you have any interest in the chair, vice chair, treasurer, or potential clerk. You're gonna let a DP know of any ideas you might have for the CPA funding. and whether or not you want to be the one or two members to help draft the declaration of trust, or the one, two, three members to help develop a strategy action plan. So within the next week, maybe two, please email DPM and let her know if there's any interest in any of those. Otherwise, please hold September 4th at 6 p.m. If we change that to 6.30, we'll let you know, but please hold 6 p.m. to 7.30 is no further comment or question on anything that's listed on the agenda, then I'll await a motion to adjourn. So moved. Motion to adjourn, seconded by Kayla and Penny. Motion to adjourn by Kayla, seconded by Penny. All those, actually there's somebody on Zoom and I haven't been learning everybody's name by tonight, so I'll call the roll on the motion to adjourn. Kayla.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Kay.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Roberta. Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Lisa Ann. Yes.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Carol. Carol. Yes. Penny. Yes. Lisa. Yes. Myself, yes. So that's 70 affirmative, zero negative. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you again for joining us. And we'll see you on September 4.
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