[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: We're going to call to order the Affordable Housing Trust Fund meeting for Wednesday, February 5th, 2025. I'm going to take a roll call. Kayla Lessin? Here. Roberta Cameron? Harry Weaver? Penny Taylor? Here. Lisa Sun? Here. And Lisa Ann Davidson? Here. Um, has everybody had an opportunity to review the minutes for the December meeting? If there are no edits to the minute meetings for December 4th, I'd like to request a motion to approve the minutes. Anybody second? Take a roll call. Penny?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Lisa? Yes. Approved. How about the January 8th meeting? Did everybody have an opportunity to read January 8th?
[Penelope Taylor]: I had an edit, and I'm seeing it might actually have been in... Roberta's last name is spelled incorrectly.
[Moogoor]: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[Penelope Taylor]: And I think it might have been in the December I saw up there, but I didn't notice it in the January. I don't know if it was there. Go back in time. Let me just see.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: December seems to be right. And Jan...
[Moogoor]: Yeah, this oh, yeah, it's just yeah. Even though December seems to be wrong. Yeah, it's the typo. Yes, thank you.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: December as well.
[Moogoor]: Yes, December as well. Oh, that's January.
[Penelope Taylor]: Oh, I see. Yeah, I apologize. I only got on the January.
[Moogoor]: Yes, December.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: because I copied from the same piece. All right, and then, does anybody want to make a motion? May I ask for a motion to request as edited for January 8th, 2025 minutes, meetings?
[Maria D'Orsi]: Yes, I do, ma'am.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Anybody second?
[Maria D'Orsi]: I second.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Roll call, Lisa? Lisa and minutes are approved as edited. The next item on the agenda is the community land trust study focus group session. The city is conducting a feasibility study and developing strategic plan for the community land trust in Medford. The study is led by the city's consultants J. M. Goldstein, LLC, and is expected to be completed in June, by the end of June, June 30th, 2025. As part of this study, the consultants is facilitating a focus group session with stakeholders including community land trust experts, affordable housing developers, advocacy groups, municipal boards. Austin Smith from Community Plans from J.M. Goldstein-Bolson is here to facilitate a discussion on the Community Land Trust and Affordable Housing with the Board of Trustees. Austin, thank you for coming. Thank you for joining us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for having me. So this is fun. I love working with an owl because you get to see some people sometimes. So I think in the interest of keeping this casual and more conversational, I'll start off by just introducing myself a little bit. You've heard a little bit about how this project and how we are meeting what the city was asking for in the RFP. So I'll give a little introduction myself, and then I'd appreciate if we could go around and just say hey to everyone. That's awesome. Sorry, can you hear me?
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Now we can, yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I've been having some problems with my microphone, so stop me at any time if you lose me a bit. So my name is Austin Smith. I'm a community planner for land use and long-range planning at JM Goldson. This is one of a few projects that I'm working on, but it's kind of my secret favorite. Don't tell my other clients. But community land trusts and that kind of affordable housing development and community control have been one of my kind of personal motivating interests into going into planning in general. So I'm super excited to be working on this project and hopefully getting another community land trust started in Medford. So if we could go around the room and I'll let whoever start. Give a brief intro and tell me a little bit about yourself and how you came to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: We'll start this way, I guess, and go around. All right, my name is Lisa Ann Davidson. I'm the chair of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. The Medford Affordable Housing Trust Fund is a new entity. I think we're in nine months. August of 2024 was our first meeting. How did I come about on the trust is, I saw an advertisement, and I have been working in the housing industry. For quite some time, I've worked with the non-profits in housing the unhoused in the Somerville area. Then when I left the non-profit, I started working for the city of Somerville on their housing division, where I serve as the deputy director in working with creating housing. This interested me in Medfords.
[MCM00001763_SPEAKER_00]: Hi, I am Lisa Sun, and I joined also because I saw an advertisement, but I work as an architectural designer. A lot of my projects are public housing, doing renovation work, decarbonization, so I am really passionate about this area and also thinking about how we can make environmental decisions that benefit these communities that typically get shafted in a lot of these projects. So that's why I'm here.
[SPEAKER_03]: Hi, I'm Carrie Weaver, and I also saw the advertisement. I don't have any background in real estate or anything to that fact, but I grew up in low-income housing, and I just was, I've always been interested in it and trying to bring it into Medford, where I currently live, and also trying to break that cycle with my own family, who seems to be continuing with that, just to see what it involves and things like that.
[Penelope Taylor]: I'm Penny Taylor. I'm the vice chair. And I guess I started on housing work, doing community organizing in Union Square and Somerville and helped win the first community benefits agreement for Citywood Developers, which included housing elements. So that was really exciting and been involved in organizing in Somerville and Medford and I also work for the City of Somerville in the Office of Housing Stability and I run mostly anti-displacement programs so it's been exciting kind of seeing how the land trust there emerging works with other things we've set up and works really well. So I've also been meeting with your colleague Noah as part of that. other groups, so I'm going to give others a lot of space because I think I've had a lot of opportunities to say what I think about Land Trust, but I'm very happy that we're at this point here in Medford.
[Maria D'Orsi]: I am Kayla Lesson. I am an attorney with background, don't practice, although I did get to write the declaration this year, which was fun. And I've worked for a mixed income affordable housing developer for 14 years now, working with them on some new developments recently, but mostly before that compliance regulation and refinances.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for that.
[Roberta Cameron]: Hi, my apologies for calling in remotely today. I just was not coordinated enough to get into City Hall at this time. But Roberta Cameron, member of the Affordable Housing Trust, and I also am chair of the Community Preservation Committee in Medford. I helped to run the campaign that got us the Community Preservation Act back in 2015 and have been really passionately working in the area of Community Preservation Act ever since. I now am the staff person for CPA in Somerville, in addition to my work on the committee in Medford. So that's what brought me to serve on the Affordable Housing Trust was wanting to have the opportunity to continue guiding funding on both sides of this program.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: All of us on the board, right?
[Moogoor]: Yeah. Yeah, I can. Hi, I'm Aditi Mulder. I staff the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. I'm also the housing planner with the city. I manage and coordinate the Community Land Trust. Hence, we are here bringing two groups together. Thank you, Austin, for facilitating the discussion.
[SPEAKER_01]: I see two folks that are online, maybe members of the general public.
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, if you want to introduce yourself as a member of the public, feel free to do so. We're just going to have a little kind of casual conversation about starting a community land trust in Medford, talk about what it would entail, what the kind of community needs are. So if you want to participate, that would be great.
[Matthew Page-Lieberman]: Yeah, I can speak. My name is Matthew and I'm part of the community land trust working group. And I'm looking forward to hear what everybody has to say. And then we'll be having report back on Monday at our meeting.
[Moogoor]: Thank you, Matthew.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right. Well, I think we can start. So, what does everyone think their general level of familiarity with community land trust as a concept is? Because I think there's a kind of a technical thing. So, I know there's some folks in the room that are more familiar with housing advocacy and housing policy. Where should I start if I were to start describing community land trust? Should I start at the beginning? Get everyone on the same page?
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: I would suggest the beginning because this will be posted, right? And so members of the community may want to see it and they may not know what a land trust is.
[SPEAKER_01]: In general, a community land trust is a nonprofit organization that acquires and holds land for long-term community benefit. So it can be done in a number of different forms or one of a number of different goals. There are some community land trusts that purchase and steward land for the purpose of providing farmland, affordable farmland for people. There are some that just focus on housing. And there are some that kind of spread their goals out over a few different kinds of land stewardship. There are some CLTs that own parks and gardens and farms and housing and have small business space as well. So it's a kind of general concept of a nonprofit that holds land for community-driven purposes. So, the CLTs are generally as a nonprofit, they have a board and the board structure is usually 3 parts. There's a 3rd or thereabouts that are members of the general community that the community land trust is aiming to be responsible to. That's a geographic area. A third of them are usually people that live in the community land trust housing if it's a housing community land trust. And the 3rd are generally community leaders from around the area. These can be elected officials. They can be leaders of local nonprofits, local advocates and people like that. So it aims to be kind of a. A model that is able to pick up on people's interests in the community, both people that are living in the land trusts as it grows and people that are in the outside community or our local leaders. So part of how community land trusts aim to keep housing affordable perpetually, which is different than some other forms of affordable housing stewardship, is that they separate the cost of the land from the cost of the buildings on land. So the community land trust holds the land as the nonprofit, and then they're able to either rent out or sell the building on the land. When we talk about how unaffordable housing is, how unaffordable things are basically in this region and in the country, a lot of that is the land value because it's so expensive to buy land. By divorcing the building in the land, the CLT is able to offer homes for purchase that are a fraction of the cost of what they would be on a private market. They're usually also sold with resale contracts so that given a certain period of time, there's some calculation that limits the amount that a property's value can escalate. So for example, a person could buy a home from a community land trust at a discounted rate and then live in it for 10, 15, 20 years and sell it after that and be able to make a certain amount of appreciation that is limited with the community land trust. So that's one of the ways in which it aims to find a balance between giving people the ability to accrue that kind of generational wealth, but also limiting it so that they don't get that wealth at the expense of the people coming after them. So that's a really important piece, and it's one of the kind of very technical aspects that aims to keep a community land trust perpetually below market rate. Does that make sense so far? So I think one of the main maybe confusions or uncertainties people have about community land trusts is they often get confused with CDC. corporations, which are another nonprofit that's aimed around usually building affordable housing, sometimes owning it, stewarding it, renting it out. But generally, CDCs often function more as developers, and it really depends on what the mission and the bylaws of the Um, so they often have somewhat of a different, but overlapping purpose, but not necessarily the same. Strict purpose of stewarding affordable housing in a community directed way for perpetuity. So there's some, some more specificity of a community land trust that they're aiming for that. There's also sometimes confusion with municipal affordable housing trusts, because they've both got trust in the name and they're both going for housing, but. And you all know that because you're part of the Affordable Housing Trust Board. But I think sometimes in the general public, people think the Community Land Trust, okay, they hold housing or they hold funding or something. Or if they're less connected with affordable housing policy, they might think that the Municipal Affordable Housing Trust holds the housing and rents out housing themselves. But of course, that's not the case. So it's an important way in which this project through the kind of materials that we'll be creating and the way in which we'll be trying to communicate with the community about the land trust is very specific about it is and what it does and partnerships will be required for the community land trust to get started and to continue flourishing. Because as you know, getting things started is very expensive. by particularly with changing political priorities and other things like that, having good local support through advocates, through donors, through other nonprofits that can be like a knowledge bank resource and also a funding resource for a community-led trust to get started. How does that all sound so far? Does anyone have any questions? If anyone has questions, please feel free to just shout out.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: I have a question. You said the Community Land Trust can hold land for several different reasons. Is it safe to say that what is being investigated here in Somerville is for the Medford Community Land Trust to hold the land for affordable housing, or are you looking at it more broadly and thinking about parks and the other
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely. That's a it's a good question. So part of what we What we were responding to in the city's request for proposals was specifically geared towards housing that is a From by design kind of specifically addressed to meet affordable housing needs in Medford and also part of our Part of our contract is to do some financial feasibility work to understand what the community land trust would need in the coming years to really make it a financially feasible venture and actually have some success. So, studying other existing that are built around housing that are either.
[Moogoor]: So, yeah, so we couldn't hear you for a few seconds.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so sorry, getting a new laptop is on my list but I. of those maybe next week things often. So yeah part of the focus is really on housing and the financial feasibility of and understanding really what the community land trust would need to be successful. Of course it is a community land trust is a non-profit so it's Sorry, I just missed what you said.
[Moogoor]: We froze. Can anyone hear us? I can hear you.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Okay. We got them. It looks like we all froze for a minute on our end. We've got a couple of public meetings going on here at City Hall, so maybe the broad... Yeah, we're using Wi-Fi instead of LAN.
[Moogoor]: And to add to what Austin said, we received a community planning grant from the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, which required us to specifically focus on affordable housing.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: That was my educated guess. You know what they say, we want to get it right. Thank you. I appreciate that. And then you also said the feasibility, you're going to be looking at like the financial feasibility of what is needed for the affordable housing trust, excuse me, land trust to operate in the city of Medford, correct?
[Unidentified]: Absolutely. Yeah.
[Roberta Cameron]: I have a question. I wonder whether the part of the community land trust model could be to hold long-term deed restrictions on properties in the city, however those are acquired. and focusing on acquiring land on properties.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think I missed a little bit of the middle of what you said. I think you cut out a little bit.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Roberta, do you mind if I ask what I think you may have asked? Did we freeze it? Sure. I think I heard Roberta asking whether or not there are going to be affordable housing deed restrictions placed on the properties. Was that it?
[Roberta Cameron]: Actually, no. What I wanted to ask was whether the community land trust could focus on acquiring long-term deed restrictions rather than acquiring land. The aim of the community land trust could be to acquire the deed restrictions to make sure that units are affordable. However, those deed restrictions are acquired.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the short answer is yes, there is some flexibility in what the community land trust can do. The typical form is to hold the land, so there's more kind of community driven control over the entire use and stewardship of the land. But yes, a CLT can hold just the deed restriction, but not the land. And part of the flexibility to their earlier point about what the main focus of the CLT would be is that I think the focus of this study at this moment is geared toward housing. But once this project is kind of over, and if the CLT does get started and incorporated as a nonprofit, They'll be separate from the city and they'll have the power to make their own make and revise their own bylaws and mission statement. And if they decide at some point in time, they want to expand to. Parks, open space, farming, gardens, playgrounds, et cetera. They can do so at that time.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: So I've got a follow up question to Roberta's question. So if the community land trust owns land and they build on this land to offer affordable rental units and or affordable first time home buyer units, Let's go for homebuyers because it's easier when those when those units are are sold on the land. Those units are sold to the new owner and those that. that unit has a deed restriction and or a deed rider that sort of explains that this is for the purpose of a household making whatever AMI designation it is and that the resale price calculation, there is one sort of what you were saying earlier where there has a calculation. So it doesn't go, It keeps the affordability of the unit based on CPI and or any other factors that go into calculating the resale price, right? So there would be a deed restriction on the unit that is sold and the owner owns the unit, but the land trust would own the land.
[SPEAKER_01]: Correct yeah, so the way it usually works. It's like a 99 year lease of the land for some, some kind of nominal upkeep fee. But then the other rest of the cost is just the building itself. Yeah. And to my knowledge, different community land trusts do it in slightly different ways. So that can be something that's catered to Medford's situation, like the specific resale value formula.
[Roberta Cameron]: Another question, as part of the feasibility study, will you be providing us with perhaps models or examples of the legal language, legal instruments that some different community land trusts are using? I feel as though that could be helpful to kind of understand how these sites might be structured.
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely. So we've been in conversations with several different existing community land trusts in the region, and it's a really great community because everybody is kind of coming from a policy and advocacy space, and they're very eager to share. So all of the conversations that we've had have been very fruitful and have been sharing their They're kind of their spreadsheets and their draft language and their bylaws and things like that. So that all, I mean, as their nonprofits, a lot of that is kind of very accessible on their websites. But the more detailed is something that we're looking into in the near future. Yeah.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: And then another follow-up question. The land trust, the Medford Land Trust, I know you're early on and you're just sort of kind of grabbing and investigating right now. Focused on home ownership or rental? Are you leaning towards one more so than the other or open for either?
[SPEAKER_01]: So and as far as I'm aware, the status now is that it's still kind of being narrowed down. I don't think they're. Stage where they really want to say certainty with certainty that they only want to do 1 specific thing. I think some of that self definition is still still ongoing. And could evolve, of course, too, if. If. I think a lot of it depends on the support, the potential support that the community land trust would receive from important people and groups in town. So if there's something that the affordable housing trust fund or the CBC, for example, is going to dedicate through their goals and their funding, then It's part of the partnership that if it's if it's within the goals of the organizations that are looking to do some funding, then I think there's some congruence with what the CLT could be. Could be doing that specifically if there's like amounts of money that are for specific purposes. And I think some of that will come up when the time is right. Like, if there's a specific parcel that the CPC or the Affordable Housing Trust Fund is looking to buy, and that comes up quickly, and the CLT doesn't have the money to purchase it themselves, they could be conveyed parcels at different points in time for different purposes. And I think part of it is the goal of the CLT would be to have some continuity. If a building is purchased and it is like an ownership building, it's probably likely that it would be kept that way just as an anti-displacement and kind of just drama minimization effort. Thank you. So I guess I want to kind of open it up to what you all think are the most urgent needs in Medford's affordable housing landscape. Because some of it, we're in like the policy space, sometimes we get so focused on the numbers and the AMIs and the census data. But there's, I think, so much more that a community organization that's kind of directly responsible to people in Bedford can do than just target specific AMI groups or respond to specific needs that are visible in census data. So I think I'm, my question is a little more broad about what you think are kind of the most targeted, needs in terms of affordable housing? It's a very broad question, but I do want to open it up to really get your feedback on this.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Somebody want to go before me? Because I have thoughts. Roberta?
[Roberta Cameron]: I'll jump in. Sure. So this is what what prompted the first question that I asked was that in looking at the data that we're preparing for the housing trust action plan, one of the populations that we've identified that has really like very stark needs for to address is low income elderly homeowners. So this is a population that is experiencing increasing housing cost burden. They bought houses in Medford when Medford was a relatively affordable community and their incomes have stayed the same while their homes have many, many times over increased in value. This is a large population in Medford, something like 30 percent of our homes are owned by low-income elderly homeowners. I would have to go back and look at the data to get the number exactly, but it's a surprisingly large number. The two groups that jump out is that group and also The people who can't even move into Medford are the median income of renters is going up way faster than statewide. And that is because it requires such a high income to enter Medford as a renter that anyone who doesn't make that income can't come into Medford or they're being displaced and pushed out. So those are the two things that really jump out. And of course, running into people all the time who work in Medford and can't figure out how to live in commutable distance to their jobs.
[Penelope Taylor]: Yeah, I think my thoughts are on the record, but I'll just say a couple quick things. So I love a combination of organized tenant group and community land trust power combo. So I do know I've been super excited by organizing happening in Medford. I know there are buildings where tenants are coming together to push against rent. Hikes and things like that. Um, so I really do love land trust acquiring rental situations and then not displacing the tenants and everyone. It's like seems like such a win win. Um, I also Um, you know, I think preserving some of our, like, there's a lot of, or there's still some naturally occurring affordable housing in Medford. And so thinking about, I guess it kind of goes along with the tenant organizing, like, buildings that exist that haven't, the rent hasn't gone through the roof, like, how to keep it that way, or kind of keep it so the folks that live there can keep living there. I'll just throw those in.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and I'll piggyback on both Roberta and Penny. And I'll add, it's hard for me not to think about AMI levels, knowing what the city of Medford's inclusionary starts at 50, 80% AMI, which is a high percent leaving out so many residents who are not making the 80% AMI. looking at other communities is starting at 50% AMI. So I'm looking at, I look at, I'm sorry, I'm a numbers person. I look at it and I'm going into the affordable, when I'm thinking about affordable rents and how people, how residents or renters, the ideal is not to pay more than 30% of your income towards rent. You're living in the lap of luxury if you are paying 30% or less in rent if you're not living in subsidized housing. I think that we need to get there. I really do think that we need to focus on that. I don't know the data as well as Roberta does, but families need to have family units that are safe affordable family units and a new construction and making sure that they're thought of when we're building all of these new constructions or we're thinking about new buildings and developments and making sure that we get those households that are below 80 percent of AMI. I'm sorry, Roberta. I know you wanted not to stick with the AMIs and stuff like that, but it really is. Those are the income levels that people are struggling with, and I would love to see more housing that way.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, thank you, Lisa and Penny. I want to echo the need for family housing, which is driven by the fact that right now our rental housing stock is priced per bedroom. So the families cannot afford to occupy housing units when every bedroom is valued at what a middle income individual working person can afford. So, you know, if you're trying to house people who aren't middle income working adults, then you are at a disadvantage in the housing market. So we need to give special attention to being able to house families. And just building more two and three bedroom units doesn't do it because more roommates are going to occupy two and three bedroom units without putting some kind of control on this.
[MCM00001763_SPEAKER_00]: I think the audio cut off and I spoke over you a little bit. But on a different note, I don't know exactly how connected our community is. I haven't looked very closely at public transit bypass at all, but I think it's really important to make sure that A land trust is has property or is located in a place where the people who live there are well connected via multiple modes of transportation. I feel like a lot of public housing or affordable housing. I see is. a little out of the ways and hard to connect with parts of the city and hard for them to be involved with the businesses when things are happening in the city. Also, that's something I personally think is important. I don't know what priority that is to Medford itself.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: I do think it is important, and I add on grocery shopping, because if somebody doesn't have a car and trying to get into getting their grocery shoppings can be difficult on a public transportation, so those two.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I can definitely understand. I think a lot of the points that were made. I live with my partner and we made in a family size unit because we couldn't find a one bedroom that was affordable to us. see house and have a roommate to help balance it out, just because we couldn't find someplace that was more our size. It's a problem down where I live in Dorchester too, just as it is just nearly everywhere. I do appreciate the reference to the needs of elderly low-income homeowners. That's a huge issue. it's so difficult to deal with. I think a really powerful way that a community land trust could help support elderly and long-term homeowners just in terms of anti-displacement and being able to age where they are, if it's a unit that really is kind of meeting their needs in terms of accessibility and everything like that, is that they could sell their home to the CLT. and then it would kind of function as a leaseback program where they could then be given a reduced rent for the next 10, 15, 20 years or so, because that's something that the CLT would be able to offer. Of course, that would require a heavy amount of subsidy, but would be one of those things that when the unit does turn over, that that affordability could be passed on, and it would be more than short-term assistance programs and things like that. I think those kind of targeted anti-displacement application programs that function as leasebacks are really a powerful way that a community land trust can operate in those kind of circumstances.
[MCM00001763_SPEAKER_00]: question about what you just said. This might be implied, but you said that they could pay rent to the CLT after they sell their home to the CLT. Could they sell their home or sell the land but keep their home within that structure?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes. Yeah. So it could be a rental situation or it could be retaining ownership on the house itself. I think it would be like some two-step process where they technically sell the house and land, then purchase the house back at whatever discounted rate. I'm not sure exactly what technical steps in that process would be, but yeah, it could be rental, it could be ownership. Yeah.
[Roberta Cameron]: My vision and the reason that I asked the question before is that I wondered whether they could just sell a long-term deed restriction and maintain ownership of the land and their property, but selling a long-term deed restriction would make it permanently affordable and give them cash. to live on to meet their cash needs in the short term. And it would reduce their property tax bill because the house would be not valued as high as an affordable unit. So it would meet all of those objectives and maybe require less cash than actually acquiring the property. But I'm also swayed by Penny's point that focusing on apartment buildings might help a lot more people with per dollar invested in a unit. I mean, it would be a lower dollar per unit investment to be able to help a lot more people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, I agree. And I think both of the situations that we're talking about with elderly low income homeowners and like tenants associations in a building are kind of like specific opportunities that would come about even suddenly and would require, I guess, to make that kind of action. I think I heard that with the proposed that we just was talking about acquiring the
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: trust or the CPC and maybe not the SCL or Medford Community Land Trust. Is that what I heard? You broke out a little bit. I heard trust and CPA, CPC.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm sorry about that. The new laptop is moving right to the top of my list. I was having trouble earlier today, too, so I'm sorry about that. Yeah, the point generally that I was trying to make is that I think those situations sometimes come up fairly suddenly. Like, if an apartment building owner is looking to sell, like if my landlord was suddenly looking to sell the house, it might be a short-term thing, and I would be hoping that there would be some kind of entity with the ability to marshal funding quickly, which is probably not a young community land trust. And it's perhaps not even an older established community land trust, but it's more like a community preservation committee or an affordable housing trust fund that has more funding built up more dependably and is able to I guess, marshal it a little more quickly and when those situations come up.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Just throwing out there as you're thinking about the planning process and implementation, very similar to another program that I know of is that the CDC was going to owners of properties and say, hey, here we are, if you're interested in buying. in selling and maintaining affordability. Why don't you sell to us. And that way it's not coming up at the time in the market and trying to build a plane as it's flying. You can start the conversations with these larger rental or even smaller. owners and selling to the community land trust who may be interested in affordable housing and have the luxury of time to be able to work out the details about how it would work selling the property to a community land trust.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's that's a very good point. Um. Because I think some people, I mean, especially, like, in the advocate space, when people that are advocates and also on their own, they're often very interested in making that kind of contribution. That's something that came up just the other day. We were conducting an interview with someone that. kind of works more in the advocate space in some of the moment for, um, and he said that his, that he's a part of gets those kind of, those kind of like emails sometimes like, Hey, we want to sell our house. Is there someone that is looking to buy it or some entity that's looking to buy it? Um, is there a community land trust we could sell it to kind of questions like that? Um, so yeah, those situations definitely come up. The next question I have that I'd like to get some of your feedback on is what you think the biggest challenges would be for the community land trust getting started specifically?
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Money. The word right out of my mouth, Roberta.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Yeah, I think competition, right? Competition, it's a very small, not small market, but it's relatively small pieces that you're going to be looking for and competing with people for those pieces will be very difficult. Yeah.
[Moogoor]: Yeah, CLT comes before the Affordable Housing Trust, so CLT would be competing with other CDCs to solicit bids.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: You're also competing against the market price and weigh in if somebody sells. If you're going to buy something in the market, I don't know if the real estate market is slowing down as much as people think it is slowing down, but let's say it is. Let's say it's not. Like somebody puts their, you've got to be able to act quickly. So have it, and finding the funding, securing private funding in addition to what other public funding that may be available. Assisted because as far as I know in my experience working in the housing industry is usually you're not going to get all public funding to acquire a property. So the ability to secure private funds as well. I'll add another. Sorry. No, go ahead, Roberta.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, I'll add another challenge that is not about money or competition, but that is that Medford doesn't have the background, the population of nonprofits and advocates that some other communities have. And so being able to create something from scratch in a community that has been historically disengaged in this arena is going to be very challenging. Maybe I underestimate our potential. Maybe there are people who are waiting to burst out of the woodwork, but I I have concerns about our ability to find people to carry this torch.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's a good point. Volunteer capacity is 1 of those, like. The toughest nuts to crack, especially when it's something. Yeah, like volunteers to be on the board and to be canvassing, to be helping prepare engagement materials and things like that. All the pieces that have to come together. It's a long, long-term thing. So it's either that there needs to be some people that are in it for 20, 30 years that really carry it through, or there needs to be enough people supported in the same amount of energy.
[Roberta Cameron]: It's volunteer capacity, and it's also relationships between nonprofit organizations, you know, and relationships among advocacy groups that are lacking here.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: So Roberta, are you referring to like developers, the lack of the, like you might see the community land trust as not necessarily a developer. So if they purchased a vacant land, then they would have to try to work with a developer in order to develop that land for affordable housing. Is that what you're referring to?
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah. That or maybe something that I don't even imagine, but we just don't have an ecosystem of non-profits that exists elsewhere to support each other in this work.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Then this is a public meeting. I did see somebody write something in the chat and there's different rules around chats in public meetings.
[Moogoor]: Matthew, would you like to share what you commented just now?
[Matthew Page-Lieberman]: Well, I guess, Roberta, does that reflect what you were saying? I mean, my understanding was you were referring more to CDCs, institutional organizations that could do real advocacy work rather than just a lack of volunteers. We certainly have volunteers in the city, but it doesn't seem like we have a real big infrastructure, a non-governmental infrastructure to do a lot of this advocacy work.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. I really feel it's both, but I appreciate that.
[Moogoor]: Can you hear us? Can you hear us? Okay, great.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Something just happened on our screen over here. It looks like we got logged out, but we're good.
[Moogoor]: Keeping up with the agenda and time, we have another two, three minutes to wrap up, if you don't mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I really appreciate this conversation with you all. So if anybody, I won't take too much of the time. If anyone has any last thoughts that they really want to get out to you all in the group or to let me know about something important, you all have the floor.
[Unidentified]: Hands go up.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Well, I guess I don't see any hands up, so I'm just going to say thank you for coming and talking to us about the Medford Community Land Trust. I keep getting, like you said, Affordable Housing Trust and Community Land Trust is way too much. But thank you for coming and talking to us. We look forward to hearing more.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, thank you so much for all for making the time. So my email is austin.jmgolson.com. The project manager is noah.jmgolson.com. So you can shoot either of us an email at any time. We're here, we're happy to chat, happy to listen, and really appreciate you all making the time tonight.
[Moogoor]: And I can share your contact with the Board of Trustees. Thank you. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_03]: Have a good night, y'all.
[Moogoor]: Thank you. Bye bye.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Okay, the next item on our agenda here is the working group updates, the trust action plan. We've got the focus group session updates, and then we have a community meeting updates. Do you wanna?
[Moogoor]: Yes, I'm making sure that Roberta and members of the public have access to this. So some key takeaways from the focus group session that was conducted on January 17th. I think securing affordable housing funding on time was highlighted, making sure that. The projects receive funding on time to apply for state funds and ensuring that the trust provides on rolling basis applications rather than having a stipulated application window for affordable housing developers to apply. There were discussions about how to incentivize affordable housing developers to come to Medford, but I think clearly nobody discussed what those incentives would look like, but they said that's really important. Yes. There's a lot of conversations about studying city-owned parcels, specifically doing the feasibility analysis and then issuing an RFP and also making sure that the community is engaged during the entire process so that the developers do not have to spend more time making sure that the project gets accepted on time. I think Newton had an example of how – sorry, Newton did have an example, but Hudson was cited as an example, which is in the next point. Am I moving? Okay. And the fourth point that was discussed was what is the role of the Affordable Housing Trust because Somerville acts mainly as a municipal entity that's a municipal banking entity which provides funds, but Newton, I think, focuses on feasibility of city-owned parcels and then issuing RFPs as well as providing funds. Would a trust also include advocacy policies as one of their primary roles or would it just be a financial provider? This is something that our trust should also outline. Then the fifth point was cost of creating affordable housing units. I think one of the participants mentioned that it's about $500,000 to $700,000 per unit, and there is a lack of awareness among the community as to what is the actual cost of developing affordable housing units, and if the trust could sort of educate the community around this issue was also discussed. The sixth point was funding strategies to support affordable housing. I think the focus was on how rental housing can apply for LIHTC. And then the affordable housing funds could help support home ownership units because rental unit projects could apply for LIHTC. And this is one of the strategies that the participants discussed. And the seventh one was exploring strategies for affordable housing development. Again, I think the city-owned parcels being RFPed was discussed. Once again, looked like that was one of the main ideas. And the second one was partnering with local housing authorities to identify any projects that they would want to develop. Yeah. These are some of the key highlights of the focus group's discussion.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: And if I can just add an asterisk, LIHTC is low income, low, wait a minute. Low income housing tax credit. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Just in case anybody took over this. Yes, thanks. And then we're going to do a quick update on the community meeting updates, which is. Penny, myself, and Roberta, we met recently and we're talking about our next community meeting. Thank you. And thank you, Aditi, for doing this beautiful flyer. We are trying to do our community meeting on November, not November, March 5th. At the D. P. W. Roberta any do you want to provide any more information on that, or I can kick it off and then can fill in some detail.
[Penelope Taylor]: So we are holding it at the time of our next of our March meeting. So you might notice that you already have that time blocked off. That was intentional. So. uh effectively this is the next step in our plan we did some stakeholder meetings and now we're in a community meeting and kind of both introducing ourselves and what we can do and getting presenting some of the information we've gathered so far and then really mostly asking for feedback um and so there's a couple different ways that um we're thinking folks can participate and contribute so um I wasn't there for the drafting, but there is a really great survey that we put together that we're going to launch with promotion of this community meeting so people can start responding right away. And then there's going to be a QR code there. encourage people to actually come to the meeting and participate in that as well. And then at the meeting itself, we'll do a little short survey just to understand like who's in the room and participating that way to capture some capturing information in a bunch of different ways from the community. So I think a very important thing is for all of us to invite our people and networks and share the good word to come to this meeting and to do the survey. So if someone can't attend, please contribute ideas through the survey, because that will really just be a huge bulk of information on what the community wants to see us do. You know, at the meeting, we'll give the context of what we can actually do. So, like, you know, some things could be pie in the sky that we can't take on, but it would be good to know. I think just what's in the ether that people are wanting to see. Excuse me, we have really great support from the city. I would just say from the planning process, both in terms of. Translating the flyer and the survey and all the city languages and helping with promotion. Um, but again, I really, uh, promise to get us all the PDFs so you can share them out to our groups and post them up in the hallways and things like that. Yeah. But I think it'll be really great and I, you know, we're going to, we have all the stakeholder feedback but instead of sitting around down and be like these other people said this, it's going to be kind of the data overview that Roberta has prepared and then mostly getting feedback. So I'm excited. I think it's about 40 person room. So let's try to fill it up and really get the survey in everybody's hands, regardless of if they can show up or not.
[SPEAKER_03]: So next month instead of coming here.
[Moogoor]: Yes, yes. And we haven't. begun the promotion yet because I was just waiting for the short survey to be ready and just an hour ago, I received the translations. So once that's ready, I'll generate a QR code and hopefully by end of this week, we'll begin the promotion and I'll share it with all of you. Okay.
[Penelope Taylor]: And then I guess just to remind everyone. So the timeline involves like another community meeting a couple months out from that once things are drafted and then we're kind of presenting like, can we listen to all of this and then here's what we heard. So, this is kind of the big info gathering with like, also, their first like introducing ourselves to the community I think it's pretty exciting. Yeah, it's a lot happening at once, but I think we've set up a couple different converting the word streams of involvement for people to jump into and tell us what's on their mind. So outreach is key. So please, please invite folks, everybody, neighbors.
[Moogoor]: We have translations in four different languages, Haitian, Creole, Brazilian, Portuguese, Spanish, and then Arabic. I believe the CD board meeting is also on the same day at 6.30 PM, and I'm not sure they might be discussing Salem Street Corridor. I'm not sure yet, so we'll have to figure out how to.
[SPEAKER_03]: make the promotions right.
[Moogoor]: It's at 6.30, but the schedule is not ready yet, so I'm not sure what's on the agenda.
[Penelope Taylor]: The survey is evergreen or it will be open.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: All the more reason to get people to participate in our survey, so if they can't be there physically, at least their voices can be heard through the survey.
[Moogoor]: Or they could attend the first half of the community meeting. Jan's had 30 minutes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Roberta, we can also make sure that our meeting is broadcast on our cable media afterwards so that people can see the presentation, even if they aren't able to come to the meeting. Because taking the survey will be extremely helpful to get that input from people. But I think that the survey will also, I mean, the presentation will be informative and would love for people to get that message. So I don't know if there's any way that we can promote that and make extra sure that the presentation gets broadcast.
[Penelope Taylor]: Maybe that looks like both promoting that and keeping the survey open for like a week afterwards. People can watch it and then take the survey or something like that and determine.
[MCM00001763_SPEAKER_00]: Will the city have physical flyers with the grounds?
[Moogoor]: Yes, yes, yes. Hopefully by end of this week. Yeah, yeah. And I'm just wondering what's the best way to hand over the physical flyers to all of you? Because the next meeting is when the community meeting is going to be.
[Penelope Taylor]: Tell us when to pick them up.
[Moogoor]: Okay.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: I'm okay if you email it to me. Okay. I'm fine with getting it printed and kind of putting it out that way.
[Moogoor]: I'm going to just send soft copies and then the physical copies will be here. Whenever you're free, you can come and collect it. Thank you. Thank you.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Roberta, did you want to add anything? Did we miss anything?
[Roberta Cameron]: I think you did a great job of describing the public engagement for this. The only thing that I would go back to is our schedule for for the action plan and our entire board's work will be after this meeting next month. Then we'll spend the next couple of months after that, however long it takes, going through what will be the meat of the action plan. So, you know, we've been gathering input from the stakeholders, doing this data collection, learning from P. D. S. what they have been doing for housing policy in the last. couple of years, and then we'll be getting all of this public input. In our April, May, possibly June meetings, we'll be working together as a whole group to develop the plan based on all of those inputs. Then we'll come back and have a second public meeting after that to present the draft of what we come up with together.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Perfect. Thank you. Does anybody have any questions?
[Penelope Taylor]: I just want to thank the DT again for all the coordinating work you've done. You're welcome.
[Moogoor]: I think Lisa, Penny, and Roberta have been very helpful. Roberta sent us the survey and then it was just easy to transfer that survey to other languages.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: And the next item, excuse me, the next item on our agenda is funding, I can't read your scribble, for affordable housing. Aditi, you wanna? Yeah, let's go.
[Moogoor]: Yes, the city council approved 250,000 CPA funds. So yay, we're gonna open our trust fund account finally and have $250,000 soon.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. With that, refresh my memory. I think I did remember seeing that when we got the announcement that we'll be signing an MOU with the CPC, correct? I think so. Yes.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Yes.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Okay, the next item under funding for affordable housing is strategies to identify funds for the nexus study discussion on transfer and conveyance of the McCormick Avenue parcels. Penny, do you want to?
[Penelope Taylor]: Yeah, I can kick off the, so at our last meeting, I believe it was the mayor presented the idea of I'm sorry, thank you. Transfer and authorizing a couple parcels of land the city owns that, as I understood, were kind of in difficult to develop places, basically selling the land and giving the money to the land trust. Not the land trust, giving the money to us. I'm all trust confused now. So there was this, it was the city council topic, and I guess I saw like half the meeting and was curious about an update and where that's at. Yes. Thanks for providing this request.
[Moogoor]: Yeah, this is the request that went before the city council from the mayor's office. I think the main topic of the discussion was the language that's included in the request. It doesn't clearly outline that the proceeds from this parcel will support affordable housing trust fund. It just says it supports affordable housing and also city property to for the benefit of city property to generate taxes. I think that's what the other language is. Having these two separate languages in the document, the city council was not sure how exactly these funds would be appropriated. This is something that the city council wanted to clarify. Would this directly go to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund or would it be used for other purposes? And another concern was that would the abetting property owners have the first right of refusal? And I believe Attorney Sharon mentioned that according to the 30B procurement procedures, You cannot provide certain preferences to abetting property owners. Anybody can bid through RFP process. That discussion was clarified. But there was confusion between affordable housing trust and community land trust. One of the councilors suggested why not convey this property to a community land trust so they can build affordable housing, but I think they had some confusion that the Affordable Housing Trust and Community Land Trust are the same or are working together. And Councilor Leming did clarify that Community Land Trust has not been established yet, and there's a study going on, and that's going to be a different entity from the Affordable Housing Trust. Somebody else raised a question, why not convey this to affordable housing trust so that they can build affordable housing in this land? I believe that there's ledge in this property, so I'm not sure if it's feasible to build affordable housing. If at all it was feasible, then one could build just one unit as per attorney Sherrin's comments. And if that's the case, you know, we would rather go with the proceeds of funding the nexus study and adding affordable housing linkage rather than just supporting one affordable housing unit in that parcel. Another issue or rather clarification that attorney Sherin provided is that once this gets approved, what would happen to those funds? So apparently it goes to sale of lots account, and then the city council would need to appropriate those funds once again. So they would still have control over how these funds would be dedicated to different users, even after they give approval to convey or transfer the passives. And then Yeah, so these were the main discussion points, and I think in the end, the city council felt that this needs to be explored further, and they tabled this conversation for an upcoming committee of the whole meeting, but it wasn't decided when. They do want the Affordable Housing Trust members to be there at the discussion and, you know, provide our reasons why we would need the funding and so on, yeah.
[Penelope Taylor]: Can I ask a question and then I guess make a comment? Are we currently in the position to receive properties? I know we're talking about vulnerabilities, but are we at this very moment?
[Moogoor]: I have forwarded the declaration of trust to our legal counsel who said they would record it at the registry of deed. So once it's recorded, we would be able to acquire and transfer property.
[Penelope Taylor]: Okay. I see Roberta has a question, so I'll take my comment.
[Roberta Cameron]: No, please finish your comment.
[Penelope Taylor]: Okay, my comment was going to be kind of given that it seems a difficult property to develop and that we don't have any other money in the bank to develop properties. At this point, I feel like building up the funds that we have is a little more valuable. It makes us more flexible when we are given, but that is just my personal opinion.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: I second that. It makes sense to get the proceeds, have the proceeds be able to be used to fund the nexus and then add linkage and then the trust has a more steady stream of funding coming in so we can finance more affordable housing. That's just selfish.
[Penelope Taylor]: Yeah. My probably forgotten calculations, but whatever this sold for, the nexus wouldn't be like the fall, wouldn't make up all the money.
[Moogoor]: I think this was valued at approximately $600,000 and a nexus study just to add affordable housing linkage is about $60,000 to $70,000. or $70,000 to $80,000. It's just to add affordable housing linkage, not the other linkage buckets.
[Penelope Taylor]: Thank you.
[Moogoor]: Roberta, do you want to start?
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah. My question is really about order of operations. If I understand correctly, and I don't really know anything about the law with respect to the city disposing of property, So, if the city council disposes of this property or votes to dispose of the property, the money then goes to a city account, and then the city council would have to appropriate that money to the Affordable Housing Trust. But could the city council dispose of the property, transfer the property to the Affordable Housing Trust first, and the Affordable Housing Trust sell the property? Would that provide a guarantee that the money goes for the purpose that's being discussed? And I'm sorry, one more part to that question. Would the Affordable Housing Trust be allowed to do the nexus study? Or is that beyond our powers?
[Moogoor]: I can answer the second question first. So the Affordable Housing Trust Fund can do an exit study. I've seen Maldon's Affordable Housing Trust Fund doing an exit study. So it's, I think, within our realm. Yeah.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: As long as it's not funded through CPA dollars. Yes. If it's funded through trust dollars, you can do that. Yeah. And to answer, yeah. I have thoughts. concerns about whether or not transferring the parcels to the trust. It's just out there thinking about it. If the parcels were transferred to the trust, the trust would then have to issue the RFP. The trust would then have to evaluate the RFPs that come in and then make a decision on that piece of it. if the city is gonna do it, right? The city would be issuing the RFP. That's one thing off of the trust to actually go put out the RFP, evaluate the RFPs and put it out where the city has the staff, dedicated staff that might be in a better position to do that. I mean, that's just my first thought.
[Moogoor]: Yes, I think the city would or the affordable housing trust would have to hire a consultant to draft an RFP and issue the RFP and that would require the trust to provide some fee to the consultant. Yeah, right.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: But that's just my first thought, like not really taking it all in. Because, Roberta, I was thinking about the same thing, having what would the parcels being transferred to the trust or the proceeds being transferred to the trust. But I, yeah.
[Penelope Taylor]: Can I ask a question? Is the trust subject to the, and maybe I didn't read their laws close enough, but is the trust subject to the same rules of disposition that the city is? I think, I think it is. Yeah. Yeah.
[Roberta Cameron]: I was going to ask that as well. I think CPA is not subject to it, but maybe other trust funds or trust resources are.
[Maria D'Orsi]: I think it is.
[Roberta Cameron]: I think it is.
[Maria D'Orsi]: I think we're too municipal to not. I mean, we could we could ask. Yes, I might not be a bad question, but.
[Penelope Taylor]: I guess maybe also in terms of process. So, and again, an eye on when this Council, the whole meeting will come up because they have expressed that they would like to have housing trust members. Um, do we, I mean, yeah, I would also, it's a little, I guess we should talk about it now, just kind of like what we would want to go and share from our opinions. Like, do we all need to agree now on kind of what our stance is on this so that when we speak, just thinking our next meeting in March is the community meeting, so we won't have an agenda to discuss it. So just wondering if there's anything we kind of want to, like, do we, like straw poll, do we all kind of feel a certain way about this process or do we need more time to think about it? And like, when do we make sure we have a similar page that we're showing up and presenting? I guess that's my question.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Those are great questions. Thank you. Great questions. I prefer to try to have a little bit more time to think about it and kind of go in. I mean, the mayor's if I were to be like, put my blinders on and just kind of go in, the mayor's already making a proposal that the city do this. And that when the city transfers the property, then the proceeds would be transferred to the trust. My first inclination would be to kind of go along with what is being asked of the city council right now. Like instead of going in and saying, oh, no, let's do it this way. But I would need that. I would feel better with more time to think about it and having.
[Moogoor]: I think that's fine. We could propose a time and date when we would want to go before the committee of the whole and I can communicate that with the president of the city council, if that's okay, and whenever you decide you want to have this conversation.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: I don't remember the Declaration of Trust. We could call a special meeting. As long as it's still public.
[Penelope Taylor]: I'm inclined to, just because otherwise it's two months until our next meeting with this. I feel like money in the bank soon or later or efforts towards that would be great. I wonder Not to add layers to this, at least I feel like that's your approach sounds good, but just. Yeah, yeah, I probably think about it more kind of sketch out, like, not an MOU, treat us in the city, but kind of what I would imagine, like, the details that aren't in this that we've kind of talked about and heard and understand, like, lay that out, wrap my head around it. But yeah, I don't know if we, I think a special meeting to talk about this between now and April makes sense because otherwise we don't have one.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah is that's all right so I think we might need a vote. We might need a vote. I think we might need a vote to do a special meeting.
[Maria D'Orsi]: special meetings may be called by the chair of the trust or by any two trustees.
[Penelope Taylor]: So you can call a special meeting whenever you feel like it. It has like a kind of a broad, like a special meeting have to be super specific topic or kind of be kind of the same agenda item that we had for this. So we can discuss this and anything else that's come up in the interpreting. Yeah, we'll figure it out.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: I think a special meeting along as long as the agenda is posted if we're doing a special meeting, whatever the agenda items are. Okay.
[Penelope Taylor]: Yeah, it's the meeting this special not the topic person. Exactly.
[Moogoor]: And I can drop the agenda and send it to Lisa who's and as a church, you can approve it. Sure.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Okay, all right. So, Roberta, are you okay with the proposing of a special a special meeting?
[Moogoor]: Okay, and in terms of the timeline, are we going to decide later when would this special meeting be held? I'm looking at all our calendars and then I can send an email out.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Does it make sense to try to nail down like the, especially, I'm just spitballing, I'm not even, I got my calendar open actually, let me see. I can't access my calendar, no. Would the second Wednesday of the month, Roberta, I think you have, I don't know. I feel like there was a conflict on a second Wednesday with the CPC.
[Roberta Cameron]: No, the CPC is the second Tuesday.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Okay, perfect. Would the second Wednesday of March work for everybody? Presumably? We could do a tentative date for the site that that means two Wednesdays away from our homes. Just a little reminder. And it's not. I'm not sure if we're going to be able to keep that as tentative. We'll do a tentative March 12th, 6 o'clock. We'll confirm it through everything, but at least we can hold the time if that's okay with you.
[Maria D'Orsi]: There's chapter 30B. Yeah. We are exempt when we're dealing between ourselves and the city and other agencies and other boards, but when we're, I think, dealing with the outside public, we are.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: That makes sense.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Yeah. I mean, I had it in here. Thank you. So efficient.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: All right, um. I think there was 1 more item on this and it is yes.
[Moogoor]: So, we have a nonprofit developer who's identified a privately owned parcel and interested to develop affordable housing units. And. The purchase and sale agreement, whatever they've decided to buy, is valid till July 15th. Between now and then, that is 90 days from the time of agreement, they are required to secure a return financial commitment. So they are looking at local funding support and considering that we haven't decided how our application process is going to be, and they're not sure if that's going to be ready within the next couple of weeks or months. I just wanted to put it out there and see, is there anything we can do? And since we have to follow the RFP process, I don't think we can just... Hold on.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: So this property is a privately owned property, it's not a city parcel. It's not a city parcel. And the CDC or non-profit developer is looking to acquire this property. They have. To develop and what they're looking for is financing to help develop? Yes, funding. Okay. Yes. So we wouldn't need an RFP for that, right? It would be like an application.
[Moogoor]: Yes, yes, that's true. We would just need an application, but then how do we make sure that it's a fair ground?
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: We just got money. This is a timeline thing too. This is a July 15th. How many units are they?
[Moogoor]: 16 to 20 units and they're planning to go for a friendly 40B or a lower amendment. 16 affordable units. 16 to 20. That's what they're looking at. 16 to 20.
[Penelope Taylor]: Do you have an idea of the range of funding that they're seeking? I did ask them. They said they didn't have a specific number.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: if it's okay, and thank you for planting the seed. It is exciting, we might have an application to fill stuff. Yes. We have money, we just don't know when it's going to hit our bank account because there still needs to be some I's dotted and some T's crossed before it gets into, I assume we have a bank account.
[Moogoor]: We will have a general trust account, and then there are different sub-accounts for different trusts. We just have to create a sub-account.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: We have to create it.
[Moogoor]: Yeah.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: It's funny that we, not funny. It's exciting that we have this possible funding opportunity to come in, but we're still working on our action plan. Yes.
[Moogoor]: We don't have the application guidelines ready yet.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: It should be have to sort of yeah, so I don't even think we even that's in our action.
[MCM00001763_SPEAKER_00]: Question about the application guidelines. Just so I can understand is the thought behind that. If we have an application guideline and we have applications coming in, some get rejected, some get accepted that the rejected ones and then you try to dispute it. we like is it because of a legal protection that we have the guidelines in place?
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: I think I can say based on my experience looking at funding applications you really want to make sure that the numbers work. That's what we're looking at. We're making sure that the It's been a while since I've looked at a funding application, but it's the debt to income ratio sort of is 1.15 over a 10-year period.
[MCM00001763_SPEAKER_00]: So not so much that it's fair to applicants. A little bit of that, but more so to make sure the investment is being wisely. Right.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: And also based on based on my experience, it would be like, of course, my experience, first and foremost, is coming from an affordable housing trust fund that has been in operation since the 80s. So when we didn't have to pump out saying, hey, we got money comes come come visit us, come apply for money. So I think that that's the quandarum that we're here now, is that we're just getting our feet wet and we're already getting, somebody's already planting the seed to come and get money. And I think I know what developer this was because I think he was in one of our stakeholder meetings. We were very clear at the time, We had no money. It is exciting. It is exciting to be actually having to be able to entertain an application coming in front of us and looking at, you know, the number of units and based again solely based on my experience, I would be looking at the performer, I would be looking at how many the acquisition costs, the development costs, the developer's fee, etc., all the other fun stuff, and then looking at how many units, what are the rents that the proposed rents that are coming in and whether or not it's actually coming, going to That'd be a viable contract at the end. Roberta, she had a question.
[Roberta Cameron]: So, I just wanted to suggest that we might be able to make our timeline work to be able to have an actual application process if we arrange so that the period that are. That our board is going to work together to develop the plan and the application process is all of the months following March. So we could begin in April to have a draft application prepared for us to discuss and maybe just. Turn the order around so that in April we discuss our application process and and and. approve an application in April or May so that we can Um, have a way for them to apply for funding and I don't know if the, yeah, I, I remember that when we, we, we faced something similar with the community preservation committee and early application came in before we were ready for it. And we allowed them to apply as an off cycle application. But in this case, we may not have a cycle. So. I think it'll be more of a first come, first serve situation. So we can make it fair by advertising that this is available, although we haven't yet developed our priorities as a committee, but we can make the funding application available.
[Penelope Taylor]: I wonder, I first wondered if we have kind of models or like technical assistance or if any of us have in-house experience with things like this, Lisa, it sounds like you've certainly dabbled with them, but if we can spend some time at that special meeting talking about that so that at the April meeting we've got more, we're further along. Just kind of given it's like June 15th, okay, we say the rules are there and then open and advertising and reviewing and everything, I would love to make good use of that time. Um, especially.
[Maria D'Orsi]: I had one suggestion, which was I think it sounded like Roberta was also trying to maybe work on that as well. And I just wonder if that might be an opportunity for someone else to work on an application separately that would then still be reviewed by the whole. But I think you guys have your hands full, not to tell you that you have your hands full, but you have a lot of stuff going on. And that could be its own little project as opposed, and it could still incorporate the values and the priorities that we're talking about. but it could also just be separate standalone document that we start. So at least we're hit the ground running when you guys are ready to fill in some of those blanks.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: So let me just rephrase what I think I heard. The possibility of creating another subcommittee to create the application process.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Sure.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: I love that idea. I love that idea. Because I do think, like, I don't know about, and Roberta is a godsend. Thank you, Roberta. I hope that you're OK with that. I mean, she's done all this pulling up of data and really kind of doing a lot. Same with Penny and everybody. I appreciate it. I don't know if we can add another. item on our plate to be able to because they're going to need funding by on or before July 15th. And not only do we have to think about an application period and creating an application or reviewing period, I've got to assume as I scribble down to a DT loan documents A loan agreement, promissory notes, are we going to charge due interest and how long, like, what are our loan terms? All of these fun things that we haven't even started to think about yet. So, yeah. Do I have volunteers to work on that committee? A working group? Well, I think we have to be careful.
[Moogoor]: We want to be careful. It's not a working group. They're just doing it independently.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: So here's the thing. If there's more than one person, I love the idea. And thank you for the reality check. If there's more than one person, it becomes a, public meeting and subject to the public meeting laws and we'll have to follow posting of agendas and notes taking and making the conversation available.
[Maria D'Orsi]: So if it's just one person in a room.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: It's just one person in the room doing the research.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Yeah.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: We don't have to look for volunteers right now, we can put a pin in it, we can put it on the agenda for the special meeting.
[Penelope Taylor]: with the decision tonight or do we not feel ready? I don't want to, yeah. I don't want to work on it. If someone's meeting with a draft or some research done, I guess this may be what I'm curious about. I feel like that would get us one step ahead.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Yeah, but I just don't want to put anybody on the spot. I suggested it with the idea that I would be back to do it.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: All right. I didn't want to put you on the spot, but I was hoping that's why you're suggesting it, but I did not want to put anybody on the spot. We have a volunteer to start doing some research on doing that. I can share some tools with you if that's something that you're interested in, unless you already have your tools working with whatnot. I'm happy to share some of those. That'd be perfect.
[Moogoor]: Thank you.
[Roberta Cameron]: I just am aware that we are putting together what is looking like a full meeting agenda for the 12th. And we have this meeting, the public meeting scheduled on the 5th for which there's a major conflict. And I wonder whether we might want to consider swapping the special meeting and the public workshop.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that might be better, because the Salem Street corridor is going to be a big attendance. Yeah, yeah.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Roberta, can we get back to you on that? I can send out an update on whether or not we should switch. I don't want to put anybody on the spot right now. Location availability. Yeah. Yeah.
[Penelope Taylor]: and make sure that schedule's really set. I heard that conversation was the fifth, but just, yeah, make sure or not.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, we don't want a big conflict because we do want to make sure that we are being as transparent and as welcoming for feedback as we possibly can. We want as much people there as possible.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: So can we let a decision be made and DT can send out an email if not by the end of this week, early next week. Is that okay?
[Roberta Cameron]: Absolutely. We'll just need to set that date before we put out the flyers. Yes, yes. Perfect.
[Moogoor]: All right, and Kayla, I was just going to say that I do have some application examples that I've got from other communities. So I can share that with you. Thank you. Thank you. And just to clarify, I think they're also seeking state funds. So I'm not sure if they want to get local funds before they usually so that means probably sooner than later. So.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: I'm sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, but does that mean that they already put their prelim application into EOLHC and have been invited back to do an application? I don't know yet. Can you find that out? Yes.
[Moogoor]: I do believe they have some support from cooperation for supportive housing, which is a New York-based nonprofit organization and CDAC.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Okay. They'll probably need our commitment.
[Moogoor]: I think they also have some support from Massachusetts Alliance for Supportive Housing, which comes under ARPA. I'm not sure if they've already received those grants or not.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: I know. I know. Sorry, I got curious. All right. So in that case, in all reality, if they're going to be putting in F. other funding opportunities, even though they'll need the money by July 15. You're actually talking about a conditional commitment letter, most likely in June.
[Moogoor]: Yes, March 15th.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Exactly. So yeah, we'll speed up a little bit.
[Moogoor]: All right.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Exciting.
[Moogoor]: Another thought, I know we've already decided to go for the NOFA, but another thought is could we or the developer approach CPC, apply for off funding cycle, but just a thought.
[Roberta Cameron]: I would welcome that, but you'd need to check with Teresa on funding availability. I think that the CPC may have committed all of its available funds until the end of the fiscal year.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Okay, but that just means we can spend the money that we just got and go ask for more.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Is that how it works or first?
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: All right, well, this is exciting. This is a fun way. I bet this is my thing to celebrate for today. 2020 February 5th is we have a possibility of a funding application. So that is exciting. Any more business? No. I'd like to move to a joint. I'll move to adjourn.
[Moogoor]: Sorry. I can't. Sorry. This should have been discussed under the action plan agenda. I just missed one point that CHAPA has agreed to provide some sort of technical assistance. And I do want to share something quick. They have created a flyer. a one-page flyer, which would be part of the community meeting promotion. I can share this with the board of trustees, and if you want to provide any comments, then Chapa can again, you know, make those edits.
[Roberta Cameron]: That's exciting. They should call us city and not town. Yes.
[Penelope Taylor]: They should call us Medford instead of parenthetical.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, that's true.
[Moogoor]: And then that's page two. Again, it's not done yet.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. No, this is really nice. I like the fact that it showed in the page one, like a teacher, what a teacher makes and what they, because you can't live in your community that you're serving. And I think a lot of communities are like that, that, that, that they're, they're,
[Penelope Taylor]: I was a real mentor jobs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: This is perfect. Thank you. Okay, now we can move to adjourn. So we're burning you first. You made the motion to adjourn. Did I hear that right? And then roll call since we are here. We got Kayla. Yes. Roberta. Yes. Perry. Yes. Penny. Yes. Lisa-san. Yes. And Lisa Ann Davidson. Yes. Thank you. Thank you guys.