[Roberta Cameron]: All right, Lorena, do you want to start off with an announcement?
[Alicia Hunt]: Lorena's having trouble with her internet and her video dropped.
[r8QPRIQzk4U_SPEAKER_13]: Okay, I think I should be good now. It was freezing.
[Alicia Hunt]: Do you want to start about Italian and Spanish? You can say that now.
[r8QPRIQzk4U_SPEAKER_13]: Yeah, I still can't hear anything.
[Roberta Cameron]: Well, maybe we can let, give her the chance to jump in and say that after, and we can get started with Alex.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Sure. Hello, everyone. I know we're still having people coming in from the waiting room. My name is Alex Lopenhoff. I just wanted to introduce myself as the chair of Housing Medford. We are co-hosting this information session tonight with the city of Medford. So welcome, everyone. Lorena from Community Development was having a couple of internet issues, but she wanted everyone to know that she was going to say that if you have the need, you can ask questions in Spanish or in Italian in the various ways when we get to the Q&A, and that if you do call her office at a later time, you can call and ask questions in those languages in addition to English. Hopefully, we get her internet back working later. But I wanted to say welcome to this information session about housing assistance programs. We know this is a very important topic right now with COVID-19 affecting so many people's jobs and housing situations. So we hope this info session can help you understand all of your resources. So thank you so much to the city of Medford and to all of the organizations who are presenting tonight. I wanna say that navigating these resources can be confusing at times. So I wanna encourage everyone who's here to learn to ask any and all questions during the Q&A, and we really hope that we can get everything answered for you. Before we move on to talking about the different resources that are available for housing assistance, I want to briefly discuss what Housing Medford is, the group that I work with. So we're just a volunteer group of people who are interested in affordable housing issues in Medford, maybe live in Medford or work in Medford or both. And we just do everything in our power to work toward greater housing affordability in the city. So our mission is to identify and to advocate for affordable housing solutions that can just expand options to meet everyone's housing needs at all stages of life, different incomes, abilities, wherever you are in the city and in your life to be able to afford housing. Everyone is welcome to be involved if you are interested. please just email housingmadford at gmail.com to learn more. I'll be in touch with you. We do have a general meeting coming up on Monday, May 25th at 6.30 PM. So if you're interested in that, I can send along the Zoom link. And we really hope to hear more from all of you soon. So at this point, I'm going to let Roberta speak a little bit about the first of the housing assistance programs we'll be discussing tonight.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you, Alex. So I'm just going to give a little bit of a background. I'm also a member of Housing Medford, and I'm a member of Medford's Community Preservation Committee. The Community Preservation Committee oversees how the city utilizes funds that it receives through property taxes. that can be used for affordable housing. And we have just committed a large amount of funds to enable us to create an emergency rental assistance program with the assistance of ABCD, who is administering this program for the city, as well as funding for Housing Families, Inc. who can also provide some emergency rental assistance for Medford residents. So we wanted both the Community Preservation Committee and Housing Medford to have this meeting so that we could share with people what housing resources are available to Medford residents, both in terms of emergency assistance and more long-term assistance. So the first resource that we have is the City of Medford. And so I'd like to pass the baton to the Office of Community Development, which has resources and programs available. So let me pass the baton to Alicia Hunt.
[Alicia Hunt]: Hi, I mostly wanted to say hello. I'm the Acting Director of Community Development for the City of Medford. And one of the things that we do within our office is resources around affordable housing. Two of our staff are going to speak. Danielle Evans will mention about the affordable housing production plan the office is working on right now. And Lorena Escalero will speak about the resources we can direct people to. Lorena has been having some trouble with her internet, but I think she's able to speak now. Lorena? Let's see. Yes, she's sorry. So Lorena answers the phone at the Office of Community Development, and if you can hear us, you can jump in. She gets calls and redirects them to all sorts of needs, including first-time homebuyers. Oh, she wants to know, will the meeting end if she leaves at 8? Sorry, she is actually the official host of the call this evening, and she's concerned about accidentally disconnecting all of us. So she gets calls around first-time homebuyer resources, legal counseling services, eviction prevention services, housing lottery, affordable housing opportunities, transitional resources, shelter services, and rental assistance resources. And she can speak to people in English, Spanish, and Italian about those things, and then direct them to the various service providers that Medford contracts with to provide assistance in all of those areas.
[Roberta Cameron]: Here's Lorena. Are you able to speak, Lorena?
[r8QPRIQzk4U_SPEAKER_13]: Yep, I'm able to speak. Sorry about that. I'm back now.
[Alicia Hunt]: Great. Do you want to say hello and introduce what you do?
[r8QPRIQzk4U_SPEAKER_13]: In English?
[Alicia Hunt]: I did it in English. You could do it in Spanish.
[r8QPRIQzk4U_SPEAKER_13]: Okay. Hola a todos. Mi nombre es Lorena Scolero y trabajo para la oficina de desarrollo comunitario en Medford. Esta reunión será en inglés, pero la ciudad está trabajando para obtener esta información en otro idioma. Si tiene Thank you, Lorena. And Danielle, do you want to just mention about the housing production plan that the office is working on? Sure. Yes.
[Danielle Evans]: Our office is working on the housing production plan with a team of consultants and right now we're trying to collect public input. And some of the ways you can do that is to complete the survey and you can find that on our website on the OCD's website and it's completely anonymous so you don't have to worry about those, any of your questions being traced back to you. Also, there's going to be a interactive webinar on June 4. That's at 6.30pm. Yeah. And so that'll be about two hours. The first hour will be interactive presentation and followed by Q&A. And if you can't make it that will also be recorded and will be available on the Medford Community Media website. And you can also sign up for a list to, for our email list if you want to stay updated on the process. And I realized that I don't think I even explained what the housing production plan is. Basically that is to look at the housing needs in Medford and basically to evaluate that and to come up with thoughtful ways that we can get to our 10% affordability. We're not at that in Medford, as you're probably aware. And so our consultants will be looking at various ways that we can achieve that.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Great. Thanks, Danielle. And before we move to, you know, the different organizations discussing their housing assistance programs, I just want to allow Neil Osborne to introduce himself as well.
[Osborne]: Good evening, everyone. My name is Neil Osborne. And I've been with the city almost three years now. I started as the city's diversity and inclusion director with the prior administration. And when I came on, I was given a great deal of freedom to work in the community on areas of diversity, inclusion, and equity. And what that meant was I could actually become embedded with different organizations to make sure that they knew the city found it very important that we are a diverse community and they are important to the administration. Now that there's a new administration, that freedom has not been curtailed at all. And in this role of diversity and inclusion, I knew how important affordable housing is to a community. Now, Medford isn't unique in our geographical area, but it was important that as a part of the administration, that we take a strong stance to begin to try and solve that problem. Because unless we are thinking about where people can live and who those people will be, we can't have the growth that the city needs. So with that sort of mandate or mission, being a member of Medford Health Matters, an organization that's been around for about 25 years, their goal was healthy living opportunities in Medford. We had a program of a big table where different nonprofits would come together to discuss like-minded issues. And a couple of years ago, we had a big table session just about affordable housing. And out of that big table session on affordable housing, we began to embark on creating residents with that interest coming together, which blossomed into what we are now, Housing Medford. So I take pride in the fact that I have the freedom to be embedded in different organizations that help build strong communities. So that's a long-winded way of saying, The city knows this is important. It's also important that residents become participants. The housing production plan is a wonderful way for residents to have a say about what our affordable housing plan will look like. So I encourage folks to go to the city website, and we're also gonna try to hopefully make that in a paper form, but there are opportunities abound. If you have interest in affordable housing, there are opportunities. in Housing Medford and other organizations to participate. So that's my long-winded, how I am related to this process as it goes forward.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Thank you so much, Neil. Your involvement in Housing Medford is very much appreciated and we value your presence there all the time. So now I'll turn to the organizations who are actually providing this rental assistance or administering it more directly. to explain a little bit about their programs, what they do. So I want to start with ABCD, if you could just talk a little bit about your program.
[SPEAKER_11]: Sure. So my name is Josh Young and I'm the director of field operations for ABCD. We are ecstatic to be working with the city of Medford as well as the Medford Housing Coalition and the CPC on providing, doing the administrative work on behalf of the city for the emergency rental assistance. In addition to that, for housing, we do housing counseling work. Um, as, uh, working with the folks who call our offices about their housing options. Um, we also work with folks who are about to become, um, homeless or, or evicted from their unit into, um, finding either temporary housing or, um, becoming, um, uh, being able to access shelter. And then we also, uh, run the mobile homeless outreach team, um, for Malden, Medford and Everett. I should say that ABCD is the Community Action Agency or the anti-poverty agency serving Malden, Medford and Everett. So in addition to the housing services that I mentioned, we run a number of programs that help to get individuals and families out of poverty into a stable economic situation and then work with them to prosper into a better household income. So among other things, we run the Head Start, the federal preschool for three and four year olds from Malden, Medford, and Everett. We also run the fuel assistance department of serving Malden, Medford, and Everett, where folks can call our offices and apply for discounts on their oil, electric, and gas heat. Once they qualify for fuel assistance, they're also eligible for weatherization services, where we're able to come into either the apartment or into the household and make changes to windows and the attic blowing in insulation. And in certain cases, we're able to replace appliances such as a refrigerator or a boiler that are grossly under efficient. By also applying for fuel assistance, folks are eligible for the utility discount, which means that if they, for instance, get a discount on their oil, they're also eligible for a discount rate on their electricity. We also run the foster grandparents program for the area, which is the grandparent literacy program, where we work with seniors who volunteer in public schools and in childcare, where we help children with their literacy. And then out of our Mystic Valley case management site in Malden, we provide such things as computer literacy training. We do general case management. We have immigration and citizenship services. job search assistance, where we also work with folks on their resumes. And then we can do emergency provision of services as well. So we can help folks if they need access to diapers or if they need access to clothing or furniture. So those are some of the programs that we run for the Malden, Medford, and Everett area. The one thing I did want to mention for the summer, which is, you know, we're in this situation where it's a little unclear on whether we're going to be able to have a youth program this summer that's more virtual or more real. But either way, we'll be providing a program for youth through our Youth Engaged in Action program serving 13-year-olds as well as older youth to be able to have a little bit of a stipend for doing work in the community, mostly through nonprofits and government agencies. Again, we're not quite sure whether that's going to be through the computer or whether it's going to be real, but otherwise, we will have a program for you this summer.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Thank you. And then from Metro Housing Boston, would you mind discussing your housing assistance programs?
[SPEAKER_09]: Sure. Hi, everyone. My name is Lydia McCoy. I'm with the RAFT program. I'm actually the RAFT program manager at Metro Housing Boston. The RAFT program is Residential Assistance for Families and Transition. We offer financial assistance for families who are facing a sort of housing crisis that could wind that could lead to homelessness. Some of the types of financial assistance we provide is assistance for startup if people are doubled up or severely overcrowded. We provide financial assistance for arrears, whether it be rental arrears or mortgage arrears. utility assistance and we provide a variety of assistance if it is going to benefit the family and being able to keep their housing. We do provide stipends for folks who might not be in the rears yet but due to COVID-19 are experiencing a loss of income which leads them to be 30 to 50 percent AMI. There are a variety of other housing services at Metro Housing Boston, one of which is the co-locations program. So I do know that Jason, the co-locations program manager, is on the call. I don't know if he wants to elaborate on that.
[SPEAKER_15]: Hey, can everybody hear me? Hello? Yes. Yes. OK, perfect. So my name is Jason Malenciano. I'm the manager for the co-location department at Metro Boston Housing, as Lydia has stated. What my department does is we place case managers in different communities, such as Medford, in order to process RAPT applications for those who are looking for arrears with first, I mean, I'm sorry, for rent, looking for first and security to move, utility arrears and anything of the sort. So my team comes along and is going to be kind of the streamline process for residents of Medford.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Great, thank you. And I wanted to ask one thing, Lydia, you used the term AMI. Would you mind just defining and explaining that a little bit for anyone who's listening and who might not be familiar? It may come up again during this info session.
[Roberta Cameron]: Lydia, are you able to hear me?
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes. Hi, I'm here. Sorry. Yeah, sure. Let me just pull up the chart. I don't have it memorized. We actually have it on the screen, Lydia. Oh, OK. Yes, I see it now. So as you can see, Excuse me, if a family or individual is meeting 50% AMI or below, they would be eligible if their housing crisis fits one of our criterias for raft assistance. Does that answer the question or did you want me to elaborate?
[Alex Lussenhop]: More basically, I think just area AMI stands for area median income, just in case anyone isn't familiar with that term. Right, yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: I'd like to jump in to add that for households who meet the criteria of being under 80% area median income, the program, the emergency rental assistance program offered by ABCD is able to help these families, these households. So we have emergency rental assistance that's available to people at all of these income ranges.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Excellent. Thank you. And then the Wood Housing Families, would you mind just discussing a little bit about your housing assistance program and what you do?
[Jayna Stafford]: Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me. My name is Jaina Stafford. I'm the Director of Legal Services and Homelessness Prevention at Housing Families. We have the only legal services program located in the Tri-Cities and our program has been in place since 1991. So we've been serving the Tri-Cities for a long time. Primarily, we handle eviction defense cases and any kind of housing related matters. So we offer brief advice, representation, advocacy, lots of referrals, and also direct financial assistance when we have that available, which we do through our partnership now with the city of Medford and also through the housing families HFI fund. So we're able to work with residents who may be having kind of a complicated matter going on. So they might be having a problem with their landlord. They're not sure how to proceed. They're concerned about what's going to happen when the moratorium ends. We can offer advice and some direct financial assistance, of course, on a case-by-case basis for any of those situations. We have our contact information there at the bottom of the screen, and that is our intake line, which we monitor daily, and you will have to leave a message at this time because we're working remotely, but we're fully up and functioning. Housing Families has a number of other programs. We have shelter units, we have leased housing, we have our Great Youth and Family Program, which is running a food bank now. So we have a lot of things that can connect together in our quest to end family homelessness. Thank you.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Thank you, Jayna. There are a couple other organizations that may not provide the type of emergency housing assistance necessarily, but are still existing as housing resources in this area. Is there someone from the Medford Housing Authority here with us tonight?
[SPEAKER_16]: Yes. Hi, I'm Barbara Fleming, and I'm the Director of Resident Services at the Medford Housing Authority. Can you hear me?
[Roberta Cameron]: Yes, we can. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_16]: Okay, great. Okay. I can give you a brief outline of the Medford Housing Authority and its programs. We do have two programs. We have the public housing program and we have the leased housing program. The public housing program are the buildings that we operate and own. The leased housing programs are the, there are two and we have vouchers that we can give to quote individuals and families who qualify and you would find your own unit, and then you would have your rent. Basically, your rent would be almost the same as if you lived in one of our units that we own. We have right now a total of We have 550 elderly units that we own. We have 290 family units in Medford. We have 987 Section 8 vouchers, which is the federal voucher program. And we have 18 MRVP vouchers, which is the state voucher program. We do have lengthy waiting lists. I can give a review on what waiting lists are open presently and closed. So if you can just stay with me for a moment. And you would think I would have this right in front of me. Okay, so let me try and just say this from the top of my head here. one, two, three, and four bedroom units in our family housing developments. Our family housing developments are federally funded. That list right now is closed. We do anticipate opening it shortly, but at the moment it is closed and we are not taking applications. For our elderly federal developments, that list as well is closed. But we do, again, anticipate opening that soon. In fact, we were planning to do that, I believe, shortly before the COVID-19 crisis began. We have a state elderly development, elderly disabled development, which has 143 units. That list is open. The section eight list is open. One can apply for the section eight program and one can apply for the state MRVP voucher program. I would invite anyone who is interested in getting more details about this to call me at the Medford Housing Authority. And my number is 781-396-7200. And at this time, our answering service is taking all calls. So I would ask that you just ask for Barbara Fleming and your message would be your name and it's regarding applying for housing. And then I would know that you are interested in talking about applying for any one of our programs. Everyone who applies has different questions for us. And I would be more than happy to discuss the possibilities of your applying and the length of time that you anticipate waiting. That's a question we frequently get. And I think at the moment, that covers just a brief outline of the programs that we have.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Thanks, Barbara. That's really helpful. There's just three other organizations. Maybe I don't know if we have someone here, but Roberta or someone else to briefly describe heading home, the city assessors programs or Medford community housing.
[Roberta Cameron]: Um, sure. So, um, we have a few nonprofit organizations who provide different types of affordable housing services or they own affordable housing units in the city of Medford. Some of those include heading home and Medford community housing. And I believe there are some other organizations as well, but these are some of the ones that exist here. And Medford Community Housing, in addition to owning some rental units and potentially developing some additional rental units of affordable housing, they also provide education for homeownership. And I had seen, yeah.
[Alicia Hunt]: I'm sorry. They just announced a first time homeowner's workshop that they're gonna be running. It costs $65 to participate. And since we don't have the exact information available at the moment, I would say that if you've contacted the Office of Community Development, I'll make sure that Lorena has the information about the first time homeowners workshop and she can share it with you.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. And one other really important resource that we have is to assist people who have difficulty paying their property taxes. The city's assessor has some ability to help property owners, low-income property owners, in particular low-income seniors, to be able to lower their tax bills. So contacting the city's assessing department can enable you to speak with someone in the assessing department who can see whether you are eligible for programs that would enable you to lower your tax bill. And I believe that concludes the additional organizations and resources. There are more resources listed on the Office of Community Development's website. So people should look to see what the city has available.
[Alicia Hunt]: And if I might, the best way to find it easily is if you go to the Medford website, medfordma.org, And right now you can click on the big thing that says coronavirus information. And then there are a bunch of boxes and one of them is housing. And you can click on that and there's a long list. All the contact information that we shared tonight is on there and there's additional information.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Thanks, Alicia. So now I think it's time to turn to the the question and answer portion, so we'll start just with a couple of basic questions that I'm sure everyone would have and showing on the screen right now. If you do have a comment or a question, there's a few different ways that you can put that out. One is to use the raise hand function in Zoom. If you're logged in on Zoom and we have someone who's monitoring those and can get you in line to have your question answered, you can type your question into the chat box If you're calling from a phone, you can just press star nine to raise your hand again and get in that that queue. Or if you'd rather you can send an email to housing Medford at gmail.com that will go to housing Medford email and we can put that question in as well. So the first question that I just want to start out with. is to a question that I'm sure is on everyone's mind with the COVID-19 pandemic affecting people's incomes and everything. Say I want to apply for rental assistance in Medford. How can I apply for rental assistance if I'm having trouble paying my rent? I think OCD was going to start addressing that one.
[r8QPRIQzk4U_SPEAKER_13]: Yeah, so rental assistance calls normally go to ABCD Malden right now because we have more generic eligibility requirements or just a start. So last week we were having some issues with ABCD answering calls, but we are recommending for them if they cannot reach anyone over the phone to leave a voicemail or email. ABCD email which is housing at Boston ABCD.org.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Great so of course one of the first things you can do is just to go to the city website, call OCD if you're having trouble and they'll refer you depending on what your particular situation is to to ABCD or to MHB and then kind of get you into the right place. So maybe if ABCD, if you could talk about what applying for rental assistance looks like at your organization.
[SPEAKER_11]: I'm sure. So they should, As was said, they should leave us a message on the machine. And we have returned all our phone calls and we'll continue to do so. We are working with folks over the phone. They should feel free to obviously email us as well. And we'll have a case manager call them back. And I just posted in chat, I forgot to mention that we also are able to work with clients in several different languages. So, you know, the best thing is just to leave a message, either on the phone line or send an email and we will have someone return a phone call in an appropriate language.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Are there any special requirements for people who are applying for rental assistance to meet to maybe receive that?
[SPEAKER_11]: I'm not in the housing realm, so I'm not as well versed on what the income requirements are, but obviously having documentation is always helpful because we'll ask for folks proof of income and proof of their lease. And, you know, any supporting documentation that they have on hand is always helpful. But again, one of our case managers will call them and work with them on what kind of documentation that they should put together.
[Alicia Hunt]: One of the questions that we've gotten periodically is, do people have to have, when you look at their income, are you looking at their income, and I guess this is for all the programs, but particularly the emergency housing, for say last year, last year's taxes, or if somebody's income situation is significantly different because of the health emergency, would you look at just their income today under for the past month or two?
[SPEAKER_11]: I don't know that I can answer that question. But I can tell you just as a general rule, we look at folks' income at the immediate moment. We don't look at them from the past year's taxes. And that's uniform across Head Start, fuel assistance, housing. You know, that's, as a general rule, how we approach our determination of eligibility.
[SPEAKER_16]: I can hop in from the Housing Authority. And I can say that it would be the income that one is currently earning that we would be looking at. It would be the gross income. And when one signs up for housing with the medford housing authority or family signs up for housing. I believe on the section 8 waiting list, they do have to put their income that they are presently making and we accept 30, depending upon the family size, and I believe you saw the chart up on the board, we accept people who are at 30% of the AMI on both the Section A program and the public housing program. So I hope that clarifies or is a bit helpful.
[Alicia Hunt]: Thank you. It's very helpful. I think there are a lot of people today who are concerned that they maybe were making good money, but now they don't have a job, they don't have savings, they don't have income, and they don't see how they're going, where they're going to get a job in the future.
[SPEAKER_16]: Right.
[Roberta Cameron]: Does someone? Go ahead.
[SPEAKER_15]: I'm sorry. This is Jason from Metro Housing Boston. In terms of eligibility for income for us, if clients, we generally take 30 days of income. If at the current time they are not working due to COVID, they could write a self-declaration letter that states that they are not working. What was their last date of work? And we will accept that if they cannot get anything from their employer at the time.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Do any other organizations want to say anything about what housing assistance?
[SPEAKER_16]: This is Barbara from the Bedford Housing Authority. Once again, when I was talking earlier, I neglected to say that Um, we do have our accessible unit waiting list open for one, two, three, and four bedroom units that remains open.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Thank you, Barbara.
[SPEAKER_15]: You're welcome. I could speak a little bit about the Metro housing Boston application process if you'd like.
[SPEAKER_12]: Yes, please. Yeah.
[SPEAKER_15]: Perfect. Uh, so generally when we receive a referral. It takes three to five days for a case manager to respond due to the amount of applications that we're presently receiving. Once we get the application, we contact the client and we do a on-the-phone interview for our four-page application that asks questions of demographic information, name, family size, and what is the need. In order to be eligible for our application process, you do have to have a housing crisis. And what that means is either you're living in a doubled up situation where you're living with someone else and may or may not be on their lease. You're being evicted by a landlord, even if the eviction, you may have just gotten the beginning of the eviction paperwork. We'll accept that. If you're homeless or on the street, or a few other eligibility criteria. Once we understand what that is, we're going to go over the income, and this is where we assess up to 50% AMI, depending on the area and household composition. At that point, we're asking for identifiable information, such as ID, Social Security cards, if you have one. If not, we're also helping undocumented families, income information, whether that's SSI or other employment information. And the way that we're getting that information, you can either scan it up to us via email, you could send pictures of it via email, or myself or the case manager could do a no contact kind of visit where you would place it in the mailbox or maybe directly outside your home, and we would walk up and retrieve the information. Once we have collected all of that information, it takes two to four weeks to process. We will tell you eligibility right away, but because now, you know, we have to see the amount that you're eligible for. We have to collect information from the property owner, such as W-9, which is their tax information. To prove that they're the actual owner, the process itself does take two to four weeks. If you have a market rent apartment, which means you're paying regular rent, we will at that point or can give you a stipend of up to $4,000 if you're going to owe rent in the future. However, if you have Section 8 or another type of subsidy, we cannot do a stipend, but we will pay any arrearages that you have or any utility arrearage that you have.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Thanks, Jason. Your description reminded me, I don't know, Josh from ABCD if you know the answer to this question, but are your programs available to folks regardless of their immigration status? So if someone may be undocumented, are there ways to access rental assistance through ABCD?
[Unidentified]: Sorry, yes. Great, so that's good to know, thank you.
[Alex Lussenhop]: All right, and is there anyone I'm forgetting on this question before? Okay, so I think another question that would maybe come up is, oh, sorry. Yeah, Talia, I'm gonna unmute you. And then we'll go to the next question.
[SPEAKER_17]: Hi. OK, so I'm in the midst of applying for the emergency rental grant from Medford. Like I've been talking to the ABCD housing Councilor. I just wanted to understand, is there a piece of paper or an online form that Medford has made that describes eligibility? Because I have a 17 page thing right now from ABCD and all the forms are for giving information to Boston or Metro Housing and nothing talks about the Medford program or what counts as income or like, and I'm very confused. And my related question, which is kind of for everyone, is like, for any of these programs, I am separated from my ex-husband. I have a kid. He lives half time at my house and half time at the other house. We are not divorced. We do not have a custody agreement. We file our taxes married filing jointly. So our income looks like we are three, but we really don't live together and haven't lived together for three years. So I'm not even sure how to like, is there, how do I prove how many people live here? When I'm looking at a chart on some level, it doesn't matter. Cause even all three of us, our income is low enough to qualify, but like he really pays income somewhere else. And it's not straightforward. Like who, has custody. Like, are these programs designed to allow that situation? Those are my two questions.
[SPEAKER_15]: Is he on the lease? The last question. I'm sorry, can we have the first one? Is he on the lease?
[SPEAKER_17]: We moved in in 2006. We both signed it. It was a one-year lease, and I've been months and months since then.
[SPEAKER_14]: so i don't know no and but it is so so so from so there is no lease so in terms of sorry this is jason from metro in terms of uh how we would look at the application we're going to go by who's currently on the lease or if the landlord could write a letter to state
[SPEAKER_15]: that he is not on the lease or is there part-time, you would classify as a two-family home because if he's not on the lease, then we're not going to count him as part of the household composition, unless he's there full-time and you're making him a part of your application.
[SPEAKER_17]: Okay. He's never here. He does not, he's never ever here. He pays rent somewhere else. But I would need, so I would need proof of that from my landlord.
[SPEAKER_15]: Okay, so in terms, if your landlord could prove that he's not there, or if you could show us the month to month lease that states that he's no longer there, then we could prove that, then we could move forward on your application.
[SPEAKER_17]: Yep. Yeah, got it. Yeah, that's gonna be challenging, okay.
[SPEAKER_15]: And you wouldn't name him on the application.
[SPEAKER_17]: Right. And then separate from that, back to is, is there, what are the Medford criteria for this emergency rental thing? And is it really true that if I paid my rent in May, even though I couldn't afford it, I cannot get retroactive help because it's not in arrears.
[Roberta Cameron]: I can answer, we have, this is actually very feedback in that we've developed criteria for the Medford rental assistance, emergency rental assistance program. And we can make sure that that's posted in a place where it can be accessible to people so that they know whether they meet the criteria. that has not yet been posted, but we will see that it is made available.
[SPEAKER_17]: Yeah, not only is it not posted, like my housing Councilor from ABCD doesn't know the terms.
[Roberta Cameron]: Okay, so that's good feedback. We'll follow up. Thank you. We'll follow up to ensure that that information is made more available.
[SPEAKER_17]: And yeah, and the other really big question about that is the $600 a week federally, are you including as income the $600 a week of federal unemployment? Because some programs are and some programs are not.
[SPEAKER_16]: Hi, this is Barbara from the Minnesota Housing Authority. I want to respond to your first question.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Oh, sorry. I think this is more about the... Barbara, do you want to go first?
[SPEAKER_16]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_17]: Thank you. Okay.
[SPEAKER_16]: I don't know if you were listening to the call earlier when I was speaking. Hearing your question, I would ask you just to call me and I will talk with the appropriate people at the Housing Authority and have them get back to you. And in terms of the $600, the Housing Authority is not including that in its rents at this point.
[Unidentified]: Okay, the ABCD told me they were for the Medford emergency. Oh.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Sorry, I think there's some Internet issues happening. Maybe, Lydia, do you want to address the question? Yeah, why don't you move on? The $600, how you count income just from the RAFT point of view, and then we'll move on to the next question.
[SPEAKER_09]: Sure, the RAF program does not consider the extra $600, I think that's the CARE Act provides. We do consider other forms of income as far as unemployment goes, if you're getting it, any type of SSI, disability, any kind of cash assistance, TNF, any type of child support, We do also count the expenses that you have for childcare. So it shouldn't, receiving the $600 is not something that we consider as income.
[Roberta Cameron]: And I am not sure that we have someone who can speak to the same for ABCD, but I believe that it will be the same information. But again, you probably have to speak with your Councilor to learn, but we will make sure that the guidelines are posted and are shared with ABCD so that they'll know who is eligible under Medford's Emergency Rental Assistance Program.
[Alex Lussenhop]: And those will be posted on the city website, Roberta? Is that right?
[Alicia Hunt]: Or somewhere else? The page that I was describing before, where if you go to the Medford website and you click on the COVID-19 information and then on housing, I know it's a number of clicks, but there's a lot of. You can click on business. It's actually there. Click. Roberta, are you able to share it?
[Roberta Cameron]: I thought that I had it on the screen, but it's not. Let me see if it's on. No, I don't have that. So the Medford City website, the homepage has COVID-19 information, and there's a housing link under the COVID-19 information. So that's the easiest way to find it, I believe.
[Unidentified]: And so we can make a link to our Yes. Actually, I'm going to see if.
[Roberta Cameron]: Do you want me to share it? I'll share. Hold on. So we're going to the city of Medford's website. And there is coronavirus information. And under the coronavirus information, there are a list of resources, and one of them is housing.
[Alicia Hunt]: And while you're there, we should point out that the residents needing assistance, if you know of people who need help, getting medicine from the store with their pets being walked, who have unusual needs, you can fill out that residents needing assistance form. And we have a social worker who will follow up on that. And we have volunteers who can help with a number of different unusual needs that are showing up because of this. And it's actually all just through the Board of Health and a volunteer network that we're managing. There's that. And then on the housing one, This is the housing resources and support services and click here for info on Medford's rent stabilization guidelines. I believe that that's the guidelines you were referring to.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yes, so it's there.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right, and we'll need to make sure that all the housing Councilors at ABCD are aware of this. I'm glad you flagged that for us.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Yes, thank you very much. I think, Jane, did you want to say anything else about how to apply for assistance?
[Jayna Stafford]: I think everything's been covered at this point. We're pretty similar. We're perhaps a little bit more flexible, not so much with the Medford money through the CPA, but we have another fund. We have the HFI Family Fund. So we're able to address some more unique needs sometimes. So people are welcome to give us a call. And we're pretty good at tailoring to the situation. and understanding each particular, I know everyone is, but I'm not saying that, but we're good at being flexible and kind of understanding both within the legal lens and also all the different scenarios that might come up. Cause there's lots of different variations. Like every story is a little bit different. So we're happy to talk about any cases or questions that people have with their particular needs. If it's not something that we cover, we have a, a great referral system. We know where to send people and how to connect to them. So we're happy to do that too. Awesome.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Thanks, Gina. We have a question from Justin Silva. Can unmute you if I can find you. Great, Justin, you should be unmuted.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, perfect. Are you able to hear me? So I guess I have a question that's sort of directed at the rent relief or assistance groups, and then maybe I don't know if housing families might have any input on this. So I live with four other people. We lease an apartment, and a few of them have been impacted by COVID-19, where they lost employment and affected their income. I noticed for a lot of these forms, it asks about household And I was wondering if household meant everyone on the lease or if it meant the individual's tax family household.
[Jayna Stafford]: So I can start if that's OK, Alex. Sure. So we would ask how the family or how the roommates consider their households, like how you keep your finances. So you may be five separate entities. And that's something that we would take into account as we try to figure out sorry, the screen's hopping, as we try to figure out what the situation is. So that is something that we see sometimes, and that is how we would look to start. Because we know that five people might be living independently together, especially with the housing prices, we might have more house density.
[Unidentified]: All right, thank you.
[SPEAKER_12]: Someone from ABCD, is there anyone who can speak to that?
[Roberta Cameron]: Or Metro Housing?
[Alex Lussenhop]: Yeah, or Metro Housing. I think Josh from ABCD is calling on and off the call. Lydia, can you speak to that issue?
[SPEAKER_09]: Sure. As far as who we count as being in the household,
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, because we're five individuals. Each of us are on the lease. But financially, none of us are connected, I guess, besides that we pay for the lease that we live at.
[SPEAKER_09]: Oh, that's fine. As long as you all are on the lease, you can apply as a group. Is that what is going on or is one person on the lease not able to pay and they wanna apply individually?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, there's two people and I wasn't sure if they would be applying individually or if we all would have to provide our financial information as one household.
[SPEAKER_09]: I would say that because everybody's on the lease, I'm sorry, I didn't hear your question. Is it one lease for everyone or the individuals each have their own separate lease with the landlord? Is that like a sublet type of deal or?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's one lease that all five of us are living under and then we split the rent individually, so by equally by five and send one paycheck to the landlord.
[SPEAKER_09]: Okay, I would have to, you know, normally we would have one application and everybody who's on the lease does have to speak to their income as everybody is under the lease and sharing responsibility for the rent.
[SPEAKER_15]: Okay, thank you.
[Alex Lussenhop]: And Josh, I saw you kind of falling on and off the call.
[SPEAKER_11]: Yeah, sorry, I'm having issues with my internet.
[Alex Lussenhop]: It's okay. The question, if you didn't hear it, was about what counts as a household. It's okay if you can't, but if you know from ABCD's programs, if there's five people who are unrelated living in a roommate situation, and some of them want to apply for the rental assistance, Does the household count as all five of them on the lease, or can the individuals count as households, I think is the question.
[SPEAKER_11]: Are they all five on the same lease? Yes.
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_11]: I don't know. I'm not a lawyer, so I will have to defer to those who know housing law a little better than I. But we can certainly take your information, Mr. Silva, and get back to you.
[Osborne]: All right. One second. I think that raises a really important point, that there's probably a whole bunch of people in our community living in a shared lease space, but they're all individuals. And hopefully there's some way to accommodate two or three people on a lease, because if you're looking at everyone's income, maybe their income altogether collectively says they can't, they can afford it, but two or three people in the house can't.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Neil, for mentioning that. I guess sort of, I kind of, I'm not sure if I made this clear. I don't expect to necessarily change the answer that some people have given. I mean more in terms of if they filled it out as an individual For example, if the rent is 700 per person, it's the way that we split it out. If they would put 700 for their rent rather than putting the 3,500.
[Roberta Cameron]: It sounds as though what you may need to do is to talk with the councillor at ABCD to ask whether they can look into whether your situation, they can help you in your situation. So we don't have the answer this evening, but certainly it's worth asking, trying to apply and see if they're able to take your application.
[SPEAKER_11]: Mrs. Silva, I'll leave my, contact information in the chat. And why don't you just give me a call or email me tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll give you a call tomorrow. Thank you.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Great. There was a question earlier just from from Neil actually to for Barbara about waiting lists for the different waiting lists that you mentioned. The question was, with you were sort of talking about certain lists being open and certain lists being closed, and maybe some are going to open soon, even though they're closed. Is it better for residents to get on a waiting list right now? Or is it the situation that they, they cannot even do that until the lists are open if you could?
[SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, the waiting lists that are currently closed, one cannot apply to that portion of housing. So our federal, our two family developments, the waiting list is currently closed. And the purpose of closing a waiting list is that we do purge the lists and take a look at how many people are on the waiting list. And waiting lists, when we were dealing with individuals who really are in need of housing, they frequently think, you know, what number am I on the waiting list? and they'd like to hear their number because they can judge then maybe how much longer they'll have to wait. But they don't really work that way. People who are living in our two family, or families, I should say, who are living in our two family developments, until there's a vacancy, until someone moves out, one person comes off of the waiting list to get a unit. Rents are high, as we all know, and people are not relocating out of the developments too frequently. So a waiting list can be lengthy. And in terms of the waiting list that is currently open, and by the way, that holds the same for the elderly development waiting lists that are closed as well. In terms of the waiting lists that are open, For example, the Wackling Court State Elderly Disabled Development is open. And right now, the way the application process works is that one can sign up online, and I will get into details as individuals I've invited to call me. It's kind of lengthy right now about how you get the application. We have an online application and a paper application. But right now when someone signs up for the state elderly disabled development that the waiting list is open, they will be placed on a list. They have a Medford resident preference and the state does have priorities and there's an order of priorities. And when you apply on this new state waiting list, when you are in emergency where you could meet one of the priorities, you can apply to any housing authorities across the state. However, if we have an opening right now, what we're doing is we are going to that emergency waiting list and offering a unit to a Medford resident if they are on that priority waiting list. That's that emergency priority waiting list. So that for people who are on our waiting list, because there is an emergency priority waiting list through the state, we would be going to that list before we go to the standard waiting list for Wackling Court. Does this, does Does this make sense? Yeah, I think so. Okay. So it's hard to determine how long people wait on waiting lists. Now for the section eight waiting list, I think for section eight, what can occur is fluctuations associated with the budget. Again, usually people will call us and they will want to know, again, they are waiting for housing, they'll want to know, you know, what number am I on a waiting list? And that's not something that we can give out to an individual. And it's not helpful to an individual or a family to hear a number anyway. Because, for example, with this, we have 987 vouchers and right now, I don't know how many vouchers we would have that we can pull down individuals from the waiting list. But what I can say that it is, there is a connection to the budget that we have for these 897 vouchers. And in this period of time, with a number of people losing their employment, this budget from the Medford Housing Authority for the vouchers would be affected by a turnover to funding to landlords, more funding going out to landlords to cover the rent of the people whose rent has been decreased. So again, it's hard to estimate how long one would wait on that particular waiting list. I can say that I believe the last round of individuals that we pulled down were from, I believe, and I'd rather not be quoted, I'm guessing, I think it was around January of 2012 for people who signed up for the Section 8 program. And for the MRVP program, I believe that it's similar to the Section 8 waiting list, but I would ask you to call me again for a little bit more detail so that I can get to the appropriate staff member who could answer the question a little bit better than I at this point, but I believe that that's a fairly decent overview of waiting lists.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Does that help with your question? Sure. So I'll restate what I think you, what you said, which is Neil's question was, if the waiting list is opening soon, do people need to submit now to get on it faster than it sounds like? No.
[SPEAKER_16]: or yes if it's closed no no it won't be people will not be able to submit until the waiting list is open after giving you this this outline of the waiting list i would suggest that for any open waiting list anyone apply and definitely apply for public housing because you never know when your name will be called if in fact at that time you would need housing
[Alex Lussenhop]: Great, so closed waiting list means you cannot apply and then the priority on the waiting list is maybe a little bit unpredictable. Right.
[Alicia Hunt]: How would people become aware that the waiting lists are open? Is it just pure luck you happen to contact the housing authority on the day the waiting lists are open and then two days later they're full again?
[SPEAKER_16]: Um, well, we, we are required to advertise and we have it posted, I believe, on our website and also, um, in the reception area of our office when individuals come into the office. Um, so many phone calls, um, and we're able to discuss the waiting lists with people or what, what, um, developments they can apply to or apply for. As we don't have development specific waiting lists we have an elderly disabled development waiting list, and we have a family waiting list to the public housing side on section eight. It's just one application for no matter the composition of the family.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Great. Yes, and actually you're. Your explanation reminds me of one other kind of basic question that I wanted to pose, maybe to OCD, actually, potentially, but you may want to jump in, Barbara. And that's sometimes there are affordable units that become available in Medford. So that would be units that are where the rent is restricted to people who make particular incomes. And they'll sometimes show up on their own in small developments, or sometimes when a large development is built, There's a law in Medford that says that a certain percentage of them need to be designated as having those rent restrictions. So how can people apply for those affordable units that come online in Medford?
[r8QPRIQzk4U_SPEAKER_13]: So I have started to create affordable housing opportunities and housing lottery mailing lists on MailChimp. So I've been, whenever I get calls, I'll add the members onto the list and this info is also in the city page.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Thank you. Anyone else from any of the organizations want to say anything about how to apply for affordable units or anyone else from the city?
[SPEAKER_11]: Can I, Alex, can I answer an earlier question by Mr. Silva.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_11]: So, sorry I talked to. I'm just texting back with my housing director, and she said under the guidelines on the, on the website that Mr. Silva as long as you're on the lease. You would qualify individual.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Great. Thanks, Josh.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for getting back to me on that. I appreciate it.
[Alex Lussenhop]: So we're coming up to just the last few minutes, and I think I haven't seen any other questions in the chat or anything. Again, it's very clear that this is a great need in our community, and also that it can be very confusing and overwhelming, and for a lot of reasons. So Housing Medford, as best we can, can continue to be a resource for sharing information about things like open waiting lists and when affordable housing units may be coming online in Medford to kind of notifying people. Again, please email us at housingmedfordatgmail.com to join our mailing list. We have a Facebook page, we have a Google group. Really all are welcome to participate in that. And I wanna just call back to a couple of points from earlier. The slide that's being shown right now really is just a summary of what to do. So if you take nothing else away, if you need emergency rental assistance, these two phone numbers for NBHP and for ABCD are the ones to call. And if that is difficult or if you don't get an answer back, then calling the Office of Community Development. And Lorena's here on the Zoom right now. She'll probably answer your call. And then the last thing.
[Roberta Cameron]: I apologize. The email address changed. I had fixed it, and then it went back again. So it's housingmedford at gmail.com.
[Alex Lussenhop]: So go ahead. I'm sorry. I was just going to finish with mentioning the housing production plan, this green teal box in the corner here. Really what that is, is a vision for what kinds of housing Medford should be building and producing and creating and what affordable housing should look like in Medford. So everyone's input is definitely welcome. There's a survey you can take. There's the public webinar on June 4th. Please, please take that, get involved, be involved with us. We want to hear more from you. Roberta, is there anything else that we want to say?
[Roberta Cameron]: I think that's everything. Thank you so much to all of the organizations who participated this evening. It's really helpful for us to learn more about how to access our housing resources here in Medford.
[Alex Lussenhop]: Thank you folks who asked questions. Thank you for having us. Neil is just putting one question in the chat that I'll reiterate as we leave. housing members next meeting. Yes, housing members next meeting is on Memorial Day, the holiday we did a poll the members and that was the day when most people were available. So, you know, since we're probably not all going to be having big barbecues, cookouts, necessarily this year, like we were before, perhaps folks were a little bit freer on that day than they otherwise would have been in another year. Fortunate and unfortunate for scheduling. But so yes, Monday, May 25, 6.30pm, I can make sure people have access to the Zoom link if you would like to join us. We'll just be discussing housing issues in Medford. Recently, we've really been discussing COVID-19 and emergency housing resources that we can help make available during this time, but we were active before COVID-19 just on general affordable housing issues in Medford, and we will continue to be as things return to whatever normal looks like in the future. So thank you, everyone. It was really great to be with all of you tonight.
[Unidentified]: Thank you. Thank you.