[Katherine Buckingham]: Okay, hello everyone. We're gonna start the meeting. So we're gonna go ahead and start recording.
[Frances Mitchell]: Recording in progress.
[Katherine Buckingham]: Sorry.
[Frances Mitchell]: Recording stopped. Recording in progress.
[Katherine Buckingham]: Okay, great. So now we're recording. Just real quick for those on Zoom, can you confirm if you can see the slideshow we have pulled up? Okay, wonderful. All right, well, just a quick welcome. I want to thank you all for joining. For those who are interested in pulling up the action plan, we can drop a link into the chat. And I'll just turn it over to the board if you want to introduce yourselves. Thank you.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Thank you all for logging in, for coming in person today. My name is Lisa Davidson, and I am the chair of the Medford Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
[Penelope Taylor]: I'm Penny Taylor. I am the vice chair of the Medford Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
[Roberta Cameron]: And I'm Roberta Cameron, a member of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: And all three of us have worked on the action plan. We're part of the action plan committee, the five-year action plan committee. Thank you for all coming in. What we're going to do today is we are really excited to share our action plan What you're gonna expect from today is an introduction, which will include a survey, a presentation about the affordable housing trust fund background, some data that we used in developing the action plan, affordable housing definition and resources, and then we're going to jump right into the action plan and then talk about next steps and questions.
[Penelope Taylor]: All right, so we already talked about some of the members of the board who are here today. I also want to mention our great city staffer, Catherine Buckingham. And then we have a survey on the next slide. I do also want to say we have three other board members who aren't with us here. I'm not sure if they're online, but hello if you are. So we are, you know, as part of this process, we're gathering information along the way. super curious who's in the room with us right now. So there's a survey right here. If you can scan it or type in the code to just give us a little bit of information. It's stuff like renting and owning and just give us a sense of who's in here and who's contributing to this conversation throughout. That would be really helpful. You can take a minute and do that right now.
[Roberta Cameron]: And I wonder if we might actually be able to stop the presentation for a moment and just be able to see the participants. Hello. Thank you. Just if you can make a list of participants. Has anyone who is participating today been here for the previous public meeting that we had?
[Penelope Taylor]: All right. And I do see we have a board member who is online, Mila Leffen, and another great city staffer, Theresa DuPont, both contributed lots to this plan. So thanks for being here. on this exciting occasion. Thank you very much. You can go back to the presentation.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Great. All right. So hope everybody had a moment to take the survey. Thank you for participating in the survey. Now I'm just going to go right on to give you a little bit of background about the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. The next slide.
[Unidentified]: So just the presentation is not being shared on the Zoom. Thanks. Perfect. Thank you.
[MCM00001821_SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, Kelly.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Good. All right. So the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, who are we? Well, how did we get here? In 2024, the Metro City Council established the trust to address some of the ongoing, growing affordable housing crisis. The trust is made up of seven volunteers. There is the mayor or a designee. There is somebody from the Community Preservation, no, yeah, Community Preservation Committee, a member, and then there's five residents that join the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Volunteers were appointed in July 2024, so we have been going for a full year now, exciting. And we are supported by staff through the Medford Planning and Development and Sustainability The purpose we're here for today is really we're going to be addressing or what the trust is here is to address the affordable housing needs. Today, we're going to share the data, as I said earlier, we're going to share the data that was used in developing the plan, and then we are going to roll out the affordable housing or the action plan, excuse me.
[MCM00001821_SPEAKER_02]: I am excited.
[Katherine Buckingham]: All right, so I just gotta give you a recap. Sorry, for some reason, what we're seeing on our screen that we're sharing, we can tell is not updating for the folks on the Zoom. Teresa, can you tell us what you see on the current slide?
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah, I'm seeing the internal view, so I'm seeing, I'm not seeing the screen full screen. So if you hit from current slide, I wonder if that'll take it full screen.
[Katherine Buckingham]: So we just did that, and it shows it full screen on the computer we're sharing from. But for some reason, we can tell on the extra computer we brought that it's not going into full screen mode.
[Theresa Dupont]: I might recommend to stop sharing and then try to reshare. OK.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you for.
[Theresa Dupont]: Thank you.
[Roberta Cameron]: Sorry for jinxing it when we had it all worked out. Yeah.
[Katherine Buckingham]: It's still not sharing. It's strange because it's full screen, and we shared it on the computer. So if you don't do full screen, does it share? Oh, I just mean like we hit Play Slideshow. But even so, it's just showing the internal, you know, this.
[MCM00001821_SPEAKER_02]: What's the slide control up that way, up on the top menu?
[Theresa Dupont]: Worst case scenario, we could always zoom in in the control window on the bottom right. With that 55% right now, perhaps make it a little bigger there if the full screen sharing doesn't work.
[Katherine Buckingham]: Sorry about this. We had it working and don't know why it's not doing the full screen version.
[Theresa Dupont]: Got it, there it is.
[Katherine Buckingham]: Okay, thanks, Juliet, for fixing that.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Okay, sorry, Lisa, please go ahead. No, thank you, thank you. Everybody can see that we are now going to talk about the process of the, how we came across the, or what we did in the five-year plan. September through December, 2024, we worked, the three of us worked together. We evaluated the market data and policy context. From December through January, 2025, we conducted focus groups with affordable housing stakeholders and those stakeholders included nonprofit agencies and it included developers around the community. The February through March, we gathered public input for the community meeting and surveys. We held a community meeting in March Was it in March? It must have been March. In-person or hybrid meeting, very similar to this. And then April through June, there was the draft plan that was presented to the entire Affordable Housing Trust Fund. And here we are today, we're doing a public review of the draft plan. Right now, the Affordable Housing Trust Fund has $300,000 available to fill gaps in developments, housing developments, so people can apply to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund for additional finances to fill the gap when they're developing their housing, $300,000. In May, excuse me, we released an RFP. In May, we released the RFP, the Housing Construction Grants. August is when applications are due. And then in September, grants funds will be committed. And I want to publicly say thank you to Roberta, who did a lot of the heavy lifting when it came to drafting the plan and collected the data. So thank you, Roberta. And on that note, I am going to let Roberta do some speaking.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. So to set the context for developing this plan and for establishing the Affordable Housing Trust, the city, there were numerous steps that happened before this group even formed. First, the city of Medford adopted the Community Preservation Act back in 2015. This created the first pool of funding that could be available for affordable housing that the city had outside of federal funding. It's the first local funding available. And to decide how to spend Community Preservation Act money, the Community Preservation Committee talked with stakeholders and talked with the community. And one of the things that they learned in that process is the need for an affordable housing plan to show what does the community even want for affordable housing. So the city undertook to develop the housing production plan, which was adopted in 2021. And at the same time, the city was gearing up to undertake its first comprehensive plan, which was a community-wide effort to think about what do we want the city of Medford to look like in the future? And that was completed and adopted in 2023. in implementing the recommendations from the housing production plan and the comprehensive plan, the city has been undertaking the zoning initiative that we've heard a lot about this year. So the first phase of zoning was adopted in 2023 and subsequent phases have either been adopted or under discussion right now or anticipated in the near future. But aside from zoning policy that defines what can be built across the city, one of the other bits of feedback that we've heard from stakeholders is a need for more money to support more affordable housing. And so to help to make that happen, the city established the Affordable Housing Trust. which was adopted in 2024. And this committee that manages the Affordable Housing Trust was appointed about a year ago. So we've spent the first year trying to figure out what are we going to do to create more affordable housing. So that's what brings us here today. And then there's more ongoing. We're just a step in that process of trying to address the needs. Next slide. So more on housing strategies and initiatives that we've undertaken along the way. The city, as I mentioned before, is amending the zoning. They're looking at potentially building on some city-owned lots. They're looking at facilitating housing development in partnership with nonprofit organizations and with the Medford Housing Authority redeveloping some of its properties. and the um yes yes yes thank you for coming yes thank you I'm just providing some context right now talking about things that the city has been doing that this effort, this affordable housing trust is contributing to. The city is also looking at ways of supporting households. No, no, please make yourself comfortable. and advocating for affordable housing. Oh, thank you, Lisa. That should be open anyway. So these are, and I've highlighted on this slide, some items in purple. I hope that you can see the difference between purple and black that are things that the affordable housing trust may be.
[SPEAKER_09]: The screen. Oh, exactly that.
[Roberta Cameron]: So the items that are in purple are things that the Affordable Housing Trust may be able to provide some leadership, take some initiative to do some of these things. That includes building on city-owned lots, potentially facilitating the development of affordable housing in partnership with nonprofit organizations, providing support to households with down payment assistance, rental assistance programs, housing rehab programs, and identifying additional sources of revenue so that we can expand the money that is available to support affordable housing. So those are the kinds of policies that we are looking to for to decide. on a direction of what this group is going to focus on. So some highlights of the data that we found in the process of preparing this report, some really interesting things. The first is that Medford's population has grown from 2010 to 2022, it grew by 11%. And really interestingly, most of the age groups There was some growth among seniors, but other age groups, like children, older adults were kind of flatlined over this time. The largest growth that we received over that period was young adults, ages 25 to, or ages, I think, 20 to 35. We gained 4,000 young adults over that period, really remarkable growth. And most of those were in non-family households, a growth in roommate households over this period. So I just included this picture on the left that I swear is a picture of my new neighbors who moved in last year. It's just so representative of the new neighbors who we're seeing moving into Medford. There has been a slight increase in people of color and immigrants in Medford over this period of time. Smaller proportion than statewide of people with disabilities in the city. And that could be because of the quality of housing units that we have. We don't have housing units that really accommodate people with disabilities.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Sorry, we were late. Oh, that's okay, welcome. We were looking for a park, sorry.
[Roberta Cameron]: Next slide. So the next we look at what does Medbird's housing stock currently look like? This slide, and it's a very complicated graph. I encourage you to look at it in the report and spend some time with it. I don't know how well you can see it in the presentation, but there are hard copies of the report if you want to, to take a look at it more closely. Our housing is diverse. We have all the different colors on this chart are representing different types of housing that we have. Single family, two family, three to eight family is the dark pink. Nine plus units, large apartment buildings is the purple strip. Light green is condominium. And then orange is public housing, and there's a thin strip of just other housing. This comes from Medford Assessor's data. And you can see the bars represent a period of time when the housing was built. So the largest share of our housing was built 1900 to 1920. And that's also when we had the most diverse type of housing being built. Over the 20th century, the housing development dropped significantly, and especially the small multifamily, the more diverse housing, Styles dropped away over the 20th century, and we've increased again. And since 2000, we've seen more housing development with a large increase suddenly in large apartment buildings, which we weren't having before. So our housing is diverse, tends to be old. The housing units are large. We saw that there are more housing units across the city that have two or more bedrooms and a lot of households of single person households and people, roommates who would probably like to have their own apartments but have to combine because our housing units are larger. And our housing is very expensive. I can get into how expensive the housing is in a bit, but we've seen really significant increases in housing cost in the last 10 years. Go ahead. So who is struggling with the housing costs in Medford? Around 5,500 households are below 50% of area median income. Area median income is a measure that's created by the federal government that looks at for different sizes of households, what is the median income in the region in which we live? which for us, that's the Boston region. So 50% of the median, that means you're below half of what the average household is. And we have about over 5,000 households that are below that 50%, of whom two thirds are housing cost burdened. Housing cost burdened means that they spend more than 30% of their income on housing. a large number are spending more than half of their income on housing. So 33%, a third of all homeowners are over the age of 65. And the median income for seniors over the age of 65 is $44,000. That means we have a very large population in Medford, a large share of very low income homeowners in Medford. which is kind of a unique situation that we see. So that being the case, seniors are experiencing the highest rate of cost burden in Medford. Median household income, meanwhile, for renters has been rising rapidly. And that likely reflects what it requires to move into Medford. So as the rents go up, it requires a higher income to be able to afford those rents. And that means that the median income of renters is going up really quickly. And that's a reflection of displacement. households with lower incomes are being displaced and moving out of Medford, and so they're not reflected in our median income levels. And I've got another even more hard-to-read graphic on here, but it's a really fascinating graphic. Again, I encourage you to find this in the plan. But in this graphic, the bars represent different industries that people work in in the Boston area. the vertical bars. The horizontal bars represents what it costs to have a house in Medford. The orange bar represents home ownership. There isn't a single industry in the Boston region where the average wage is sufficient to buy a house, the average house in Medford, with a single income. So it requires multiple incomes at the average wage to be able to buy a house in Medford. The red horizontal bar represents the cost of rent in Medford. And we can see that it's at the very bottom it says 64% of jobs are in a bracket In fact, only 29% of jobs can easily afford to rent an apartment at market rate in Medford on a single income. The rest struggle to be able to rent an apartment or they have to combine with roommates to be able to rent an apartment. On the leftmost, we can see the green line is the cost to rent a room in Medford. The average room rental price is $1,000 a month, and there are Many jobs in the arts and recreation, food service and hotel industries who struggle to be able to afford a room at the average wages in those industries. So it's very telling. ahead. So switching gears a little bit talking about like what is affordable housing? What is it that the Affordable Housing Trust is here to to address? So naturally occurring affordable housing is housing that's less expensive than typical market rate units, but it's not protected or guaranteed. Very often it happens to be naturally affordable because it's been owned by the same person for such a long time that their mortgage is paid off and they haven't had to make an investment in the property in a long time. And then there is capital a affordable housing, which is defined as housing that should cost less than 30% of the income of households who earn below a specific level that area median income that I described earlier. And the rent for an affordable housing unit is typically below market rent. So this is the area that the Affordable Housing Trust is trying to provide assistance to developers to create affordable housing. Then we also have some other types of affordable housing that the city is addressing. Inclusionary or 40 B development provides some affordable units in mixed income developments through zoning or through permitting that requires some of the units to be affordable while other units are market rate. And then there's subsidized housing, which is predominantly what the housing authority provides, where a portion of the rent is covered through government funding, and the rent is always based on income. And just to provide some context of what we mean by area median income, go ahead to the next slide. I provided just as an example what the income limits for affordable housing were this year. So 100% of area median income for a family of four would be $148,900. And so looking at different household sizes, 80% of area median income that for a three person household would be just over $100,000 a year. So that is the income that, um, the maximum income to be able to access affordable housing that the, uh, that the housing trust would likely be, um, the funding. Go ahead. And so we looked at what does the subsidized housing inventory look like that the city has today? We have just over 2,000 affordable housing units in the city, which is 8.12% of our total housing stock. Of these, 851 are public housing units. That's the Medford Housing Authority. There are 700 project-based Section 8 housing units. The households have a Section 8 voucher, which means that they pay 30% of their income, but the units are in a privately owned building. About, I think a little over half of the units that are counted in that 700 are actually affordable and some of the units that are counted are not affordable because the way that the state counts units on the subsidized housing inventory allows some market rate rental units to be included if a majority or if a percentage of the units in the development are affordable. We have 289 units that are in 40B. They're under the process of being permitted to build mixed income housing developments through the state's comprehensive permit or 40B process. Those units haven't actually been built yet, so that 289 units, only 25% of them will be affordable, and none of them exist at this moment. 170 units are in mixed income developments that were created during the pandemic. by development agreements. When those developments were built, the city asked them to provide some affordable units. So we have that's where those come from. 30 units are owned and managed by nonprofit affordable housing organizations. And there are 49 units that are for people with disabilities that are administered by the state. And there are also many about Just under 1,000 mobile housing vouchers that the Medford Housing Authority administers, which are not counted in our subsidized housing inventory because they're held by the household. They're not attached to the housing unit. And we also looked at what are the funding resources that are available right now for affordable housing in Bedford. The Community Preservation Act, as I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, provides some funding that's available for affordable housing. It generates about $2 million a year, and that is spent on affordable housing, open space and recreation, and historic preservation. So it's split between those three different purposes. Over eight years, the city has spent about $4 million on affordable housing. So about a quarter of the CPA funds have been spent on affordable housing. And the CDBG is federal funding the city receives that can be spent on affordable housing. It's used to help low income households in a variety of ways. The city receives about $1.4 million a year in CDBG federal funding. And also we're part of a consortium of communities that receives 2.3 million in total split between eight communities. That's all for affordable housing. Thank you. So that's all of the data. That was a lot. I apologize for so many words, but I'm going to pass it back to Penny to talk about what we learned and what we concluded. Thank you.
[Penelope Taylor]: Thank you so much, Roberta. And thank you all for being here. So this is why we're here tonight to show and share our action plan. And of course, we considered all the data and information that we just went over. But just to remind you all, we had focus groups with stakeholders, developers and service providers. We had a public meeting in March where we kind of presented the same data and just kind of asked generally, What people wanted in or it was really generative conversation and then took all that edited together. And now we're very excited to present this to you tonight. So, 1st off. One part of our action plan was solidifying the mission statement of our affordable housing trust because it's brand new. So we needed to make sure we had our guiding principles down. So our mission is to create and preserve community housing, including affordable home ownership and rental opportunities and other forms of housing assistance for low and moderate income residents in Medford. Next slide. All right, so we have the mission statement, we have some goals, and then we have our course of action. So just to go over some of our goals. Promoting a welcoming, diverse, intergenerational, and inclusive city with a mix of housing choices that offer diverse options to residents with varying needs and preferences. Use financial and property resources to address the local housing needs and meet production goals established in the housing production plan and to preserve the affordability of existing affordable homes. The naturally occurring affordable that we mentioned is in mind here. Foster safe, well-designed, accessible and sustainable housing. Integrate affordable and diverse housing options throughout the city. Our goal is to expand local capacity to implement housing initiatives by building partnerships with mission-driven organizations and developers seeking to build affordable housing and to increase communication about housing resources across the community. So you all being here, we hope to continue that conversation and that communication with everybody. So we have some priority actions. We want to support building affordable housing in partnership with mission-driven organizations and developers seeking to build affordable housing as well as the Medford Housing Authority. We will preserve and convert existing housing to long-term affordability. We will support existing homeowners and first-time home buyers. We will fund housing stability programs and we will prioritize funding for units affordable to households with lower incomes. We have some more prior. There's a lot of work to do. We will build a relationship with the community preservation committee. As Roberta mentioned, that's a lot of the funding for affordable housing in the city has come from that source. So working closely with the CPC. and advocate for affordable housing development and policies that maximize the resources available to meet our city's housing needs. So this includes exploring and acting upon funding opportunities for the trust, working with developers to build support and navigate the approval process, work with partner organizations to establish programs that meet local needs, supporting initiatives that expand tenant protections and stabilize existing tenancies, and to provide guidance on affordable housing projects funded through the CPA program. So as I mentioned, all that came out of all the conversations that we've been having and the data we're looking at. I did mention revenue sources because that was echoing something that's already come up in this meeting. What we heard over and over again, there's a lot of interest in building affordable housing. There's not a lot of money to build affordable housing in Medford. So we heard that a lot. So some potential revenue sources, we have anticipated resources, including the Community Preservation Act, which we have already secured $300,000 for the trust this past year. inclusionary zoning ordinance, linkage payments, and negotiating payments from developers are all on the table. Other potential sources that have either been recommended or that we are exploring, pilot, which is a payment in lieu of taxes for nonprofit, large nonprofits, appropriations of funds, special ordinances, voluntary donations and contributions from individuals, loan payments and resale of affordable units, affordable housing resale fees, other municipal revenues, a real estate transfer fee, and sale of city-owned properties. So just a few examples that came up over the course of our conversation. So we just presented a lot of data to just like, here's what we hear we need to do in our long list of goals and items that we are really eager to take action on. And there's some next steps in this process. So first off, you being here, seeing this presentation, taking some time with the plan, reflecting and letting us know what's missing or what you think needs to change. We're taking comments until August 7th. So you have about a week to reflect on this and get back to us and let us know, because you're the community that we're serving, right? Once we get comments and finalize that action plan, we're gonna present it to the city council in September. All of this, we have a website and all this information updates will go on our website. So we don't have the date for the city council yet, but we would sure love to see all of you there supporting our plan and our work. Um, we do meet every month on the first Wednesday of the month. Actually, we have August off. So, uh, there's a bit of a false alert, but starting September, we'll be back at it on the first Wednesday of every month in this very room and online. So please, continue to join us, continue to be part of the conversation and the work that we're doing. Cause that is how we will succeed. To that end supporting initiatives when they come up, you know, if there is one of those potential funding sources is a conversation and city council, we'd love to have you join and help build that support. So we can, we can make all this happen and keep Medford affordable. And then if you want to get involved, we actually do have an open seat on our affordable housing trust board. I believe the links to our website, I think it's on the flyer. Yeah, and coming up there are some other links as well. But, you know, this room is comfortable. If you like being here on this Wednesday evening, we certainly invite you to apply because we're currently accepting applications. And at this point, we want to open it up to questions. Obviously, it's a hot day, there's a lot of information, but we're eager to hear from you and folks online as well. Please let us know questions. And then it looks like you're about to say something, Catherine. Pass it to you.
[Katherine Buckingham]: One thing I just wanted to say, we have some new folks in the room and potentially on Zoom as well. So at the start of the meeting, we asked if people wanted to fill out a survey just to see who's in the room, who's participating in this discussion. So are you able to just... Okay, so in the chat, we just dropped it in. You can share the... code with everyone later if you want to do QR code, but. Can you just flip back to that slide? Yeah.
[Maria D'Orsi]: It was that one. Yeah.
[Katherine Buckingham]: So that's the, you can use the QR code or that shortened link, and then it'll take you directly to the survey. If you want to fill that out, we would love to get that information from all of you. So thank you.
[Unidentified]: So this is the Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
[Maria D'Orsi]: My name is Lisa Davidson and I'm the chair of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
[Penelope Taylor]: Beside you is... I'm Tanya Taylor and I'm currently vice chair of the trust.
[Roberta Cameron]: And I'm Roberta Cameron. I'm a member of the Affordable Housing Trust and I'm also a member of the Community Preservation Committee.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: So, and there is the, I'm not sure if you were here when I was giving a little breakdown of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, but there are seven members on the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. One is the mayor, one of the mayors is me. somebody from the Community Preservation Committee, as well as five, if I do my math right, yeah, five Medford residents. And I do believe we have at least one other trustee on, attending the meeting today. Yes, yeah.
[Unidentified]: Yeah. Hi, hello, I'm Kayla Wesson. Sorry, my internet's a little spotty, so I've tried to keep my video off. But I'm Kayla Lesson, also a trustee on the board. Thank you, Kayla.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: And we didn't take off this live show because we had such a hard time getting it back on.
[Unidentified]: No, fair, fair. Thank you.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Sorry, do any of the current members fall under, like, underrepresented categories? I find persons of color and disabled are recipients of what we call the telehealth allowance.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Yes, there is there. I don't know if it's broken out, like, how many seats that are supposed to be on actually preparing for today. I went back to the to our declaration. double check to see, like, are there designated seats assigned? And I didn't see that.
[Roberta Cameron]: I could be. I could be. I think the I think it lists qualifications that they're looking for. And so that includes people who have certain types of professional experience, lived experience. So it's looking for both.
[Penelope Taylor]: Oh, crap. No, I believe the board members live in. Oh, yeah.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: But as we said, we're looking for another person. So if you are interested in joining, joining the trust, there is, I think applications are. Yeah, so.
[Katherine Buckingham]: I think we have the link later in the presentation, but also my email is at the end as well. So if anyone has questions, I'm Katherine Buckingham. I'm a housing planner for the city of Medford. My email is listed, but it's kbuckingham at medford-na.gov. So email me with questions. I can provide you with links or the forum or whatever. So please reach out.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Do you want to advance to the slide that has the bathrooms that I'm getting from? Should I look around some more?
[MCM00001821_SPEAKER_02]: It's going to be lots of questions. Yes, at the very end.
[Maria D'Orsi]: And I do see a bubble in the chat.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: OK, we have a question here, too. So maybe. And there's a question on the chat. Is that? I think it was just someone coming into the meeting. All right.
[Penelope Taylor]: It looks like there is something in the chat, but in the meantime, maybe we can take a question from. Yeah, the chat just has the links that we shared. Oh, OK. So people can put.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: If anybody out there in hybrid land has any questions, please use your, raise your hand and we're happy to call on you as well. Do you want to go ahead?
[SPEAKER_09]: So, do you use it in bringing this action from your school The one can be here, online, or in the city. And I, for myself, have been flying mostly since 1999 with my dad, when he gave the lecture for New Year's. And you also own a business called Mystic Arts, which is the patient flying school. And all my siblings are seven of us, even before. And, you know, I'm quite influential. And now I'm raising my four boys. And I want to stay here. I want to be buying things to buy from here. And so, in a way, when it comes to income-wise. And even though I live in the housing now, I can't afford it. And even though I work for jobs, they say, okay, I still can't afford it also. And every year when they do the assessments, to renew my lease, they cut off. If I tell you that I live in a public housing, I'm paying $2,062 every month, people would think that because I live in a public housing that I live for free with my four kids, people would never believe that I pay that amount of money every month. And most of all, food-wise, buy everything. And then all the activities you put the kids in is also expensive. But one thing I want from this thing is to make it more convenient for young people, persons like me, that because I want to stay in Medford, And then, because my kids, they, you know, this was a fun day, things were easy with friends and school kids. But if I moved down to another city, now the culture is tough for them. Yeah. Because the way we can take the orange line, the red line, it's so accessible and really convenient. But I'm planning to move somewhere else because I can't, since I don't have the, or the big fan where you have the house and dog and all the perfect life. It's not that perfect if you have soul anyway. And one question I have is that, who can, how you can believe, openly from applying to this funding, what do someone like me need for that grant? And how would I use it? And where would that be accepted? Because most people, when they say, oh, you have a grant, they probably think, oh, it's not that opulent to them.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Could you repeat the question too when you answer just for folks on Zoom? I just want to make sure. Thank you for sharing and the struggle is real, right? Even when living in subsidized housing, such like the Medford Housing Authority. The question, as I understand it, please correct me if I'm wrong, is, some background story where you are looking, you're probably moving, you're looking to moving, you want to stay in Medford, your perfect world would be to purchase a home here in Medford, correct? So the question as I understand it is, how could you or anybody come to apply for funding through the Affordable Housing Trust Fund to help you meet your goal of becoming a first-time homeowner? That's the question. Thank you. And that's a great question. And we are in the middle of starting up. It's been a year. We have limited funds right now. The action plan right now is kind of looking at development housing. We are talking about of programs and assisting people like yourself to purchase a home. However, we're just starting out. We haven't really worked out those processes yet. There may be other resources available to you through other agencies that are funded through the CPA or the CPC. And I unfortunately don't know those off the top of my head. but we can try to get you that information. If you reach out to Catherine, who's emailed contacts there, and if there are resources, she could certainly share those resources with you. Did I?
[Roberta Cameron]: I could just add that if a person is looking for assistance with moving into a rental unit in Medford, It could be somebody who's currently a Medford resident looking to relocate in Medford or someone who lives outside of Medford looking to rent an apartment in Medford. The Community Preservation Committee right now funds a program that's managed by ABCD. So someone can apply through ABCD for move-in assistance for first and last month's rent. a person who is having experiencing a rental, you know, maybe in danger of eviction, who has rental arrears. Housing Families, Inc. has a program to help prevent homelessness. by paying those rental arrears. And so those are two programs that the Community Preservation Committee funds right now. Thank you, Roberta.
[Penelope Taylor]: I'm hearing that need and also the need for clarity around application when it's ready and what someone does to access, especially when we talked about different programs of supporting first-time homebuyers and things like that are what we want to be able to do. But they're not quite set up yet, but certainly Thank you for affirming that that is one of our goals.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Before I take, I see a second chat up there and I assume it's not something that we put in the chat. Is there a question?
[Katherine Buckingham]: I think, yeah, sorry. Okay, so the question says, can you send me the presentation? And then is there a city councilor who has taking an interest in the issues I should talk to. I don't know if you guys have thoughts about sharing the presentation and also.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: This is a public meeting, so all the materials should be made available. I think they do get posted on the Affordable Housing Trust Fund's website. Am I speaking out of turn?
[Katherine Buckingham]: Well, we can definitely post them online, the way we share, like meeting minutes and things like that. And I'll double check the process if it goes directly onto the Trust Fund website. But regardless, we can make sure we post it. And also, for the person who left that comment, again, feel free to email me, too, if you want to make sure you get it sooner than later.
[Roberta Cameron]: Did we leave, did we put the link to the plan in the chat at the beginning? So a person who joined late might not have seen the link to the plan in the chat.
[Katherine Buckingham]: Yes, so we just shared the link again. So there's the link for the plan and then also the link for the survey. Those should both be in the chat.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Perfect, thank you. And you had a question.
[Maria D'Orsi]: I did, so my team, my partner, Sully,
[Katherine Buckingham]: Actually, really quickly, if you're willing, it would be great if you might be able, because I know the people online can't hear you. Oh, OK. Maybe I still bring this over.
[Maria D'Orsi]: I'm sorry, what was your name? My name is Susan.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, Susan. Susan. My parents also moved to Medford when I was in college.
[SPEAKER_10]: I actually grew up in Kingridge, and I can kind of remember. as somebody who works as an educator, and I don't know if the panel is like sort of prioritizing this, is you talk about like natural affordable housing being made available, but sort of the issues that are happening with affordable housing were definitely, you know, over time historically engineered. So for instance, if there's like an awareness, for example, like of the racial makeup of the city of Medford in that, there is a reason why there are less children, less families who can't afford to live in Medford. And a lot of us are either living in apartment buildings or moving out of the city of Medford. The fact that there's a lot of like non-family or roommate households, you know, being because of the building of the transportation and the expansion of the MBTA system, the colleges and universities, a lot of the tech jobs, for instance. And I know some of these issues are like bigger than Medford because you don't necessarily make up like the area median income, you know, those are more like federal numbers. But if we're looking like at the census and what people actually make in the city, that map that you're showing as far as what is considered affordable, if I'm working as an educator, if, you know, I'm owning a small business, if I'm, you know, working as a waitress, I can't afford any of that with three children or two children or whatever the case is. And then also even further back, like, you know, with redlining in Massachusetts, when my parents first looked for a house, the first house that they looked for, the owner would not allow him in the household and called him an N word. And, you know, he was with a white realtor that was in 1999. So that person very possibly, you know, benefited. And this is why we have an elderly population in Medford who is making $44,000 a year and a homeowner because they were able to benefit off of the history of redlining that excluded people that look like myself and that look like Woodland, some of the people in this room, maybe some of the people on this chat. So all of that to say that, you know, as much as like we can, or the panel can say, or even some of the shareholders and organizations, I myself, a recipient of affordable housing, I do notice the difference, you know, I live in a mixed income unit. I do notice the difference when myself goes into the leasing office versus, you know, my dog-owning neighbors that are paying, you know, $5,000 for their unit. There is definitely a dynamic that happens with that kind of experience. So as much as I know there's maybe some good faith efforts and you know, sort of the bird's eye view, but when we kind of look through the weeds and at the roots, there's other issues besides just sort of wanting it to happen. There's a lot more, I think, engineering, I would hope, that is also a part of the conversation and intentionality in addition to the money, of course. So that's all I wanted to ask is whether some history is a part of that, too.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Thank you.
[Penelope Taylor]: Thank you. And I want to, this is not, necessarily purview of this presentation, but just something each of you has said. The state has a strong fair housing office and something that you mentioned of someone turning down a subsidy or funding that you got, that's illegal. We have a source of income discrimination law. So just to say that there,
[SPEAKER_10]: There also are state offices of fair housing that, you know, I think raising in front of, like, for example, when I applied to my unit, I was told that I didn't have ideal credit. And I had to pay an additional $600 security deposit to get units. So it's not that they said no, but say, for instance, I didn't have the resource of getting $600 cash on hand, in addition to the security deposit, the first month's rent, and being able to keep upkeep, I would have lost that affordable unit, if that makes sense. It does. So those are ways that they, you know, it's like a fancy way of redlining without saying you as a low income person, you as a single mother, you as a black person cannot rent here. They make it inaccessible by saying, you as somebody who does not have access to more liquid assets, if that makes sense. It does.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: And we're hearing that a lot of when people are doing credit scores or credit checks, when they're looking for their housing. And I know that there is a big effort in places that are trying to disband or stop going in for credit checks because it is, or could be, I should rephrase that, could be a form of discrimination because there are a lot of black and brown people, minorities, that have poorer credit scores than they may not have.
[SPEAKER_10]: They're not just minorities, but yeah, it's not like, I don't want this to be framed as people that are descendants of Africans or descendants of Latin America that we all have that credit. Yeah, that's not me. Yeah, that's more. Yeah, I don't want that generalistic thing, but it's more that, you know, it could very possibly be that the other applicant, you know, didn't have that offer because I didn't see that anywhere in the lease or any part of it in that $600. I don't know where it went. It definitely wasn't a part of my security deposit cachet, if you will. And then even for parking, for instance, after three years, suddenly parking was being charged 150 every month when the first three years it was free. That's another instance in where the market rent, you know, for them, they're making $200,000, you know, working at Google, it's a drop in the bucket. But if we're a part of the affordable, you know, portion of units, that $250 a month for a parking spot is a lot of money. So again, thinking about these more intricate details, we're slowly becoming, I don't know, New York, pretty much. Nancy was pretty smart, except for that entrance. But sorry, we want to get all the questions over to everybody.
[SPEAKER_09]: Thank you. Did you have another question? Yeah. So I have two questions. I don't know if you guys will be able to do it. I am a member of the Maha. Maha, when you said October 7, which is the group of African-Americans who create this affordable housing system where you take a class with them, I did, and you receive a certification that allows people to get funding from SASH, different, like, last week I went to a open house for housing with a bunch of senators of Beacon Hill, where Mayor Woon was there, and Josh Puff, the new, wanted to be the next mayor of Boston, Maha is pretty diverse and especially Medford needed diverse, different culture of other ways to learn or maybe listen what's going on when it comes to buying or renting. Maybe if you listen to Maha groups, I have contact. I can give it, I can share it with you guys. So maybe that can give you an idea how you can benefit people that live in Medford, that want to stay in Medford, or how you can collaborate with them to, because I know they're open, because with Medford, they get community, even though there is a lot of funding that has been distributed to Dorchester, where people that live in Dorchester are supposed to stay in Dorchester, but they're using that funding to stay in Boston. But because Medford is a gay community, Medford cannot get that funding. because I asked, because they cannot fund me because I live in Medford. If I need to get that fund, I have to stay, live away from Medford, go to Boston City, go to the Boston where they entered that category, but ask me in the gay community. So me, if I gay, they're not going to fund me or her or anybody else that live in Medford. If you want to, have a conversation with the group of people. They're very nice, and they will listen to any needs Medfone might have, or they might open the affordable food Medfone, and at least, like, anybody can afford, but there's a $3,000 maximum you need to have in your account if someone need to have this funding. There's more to it. I don't know if this group needs to listen to the panel more and learn about it, how Medford can bring MAHA into Medford City. At M-A-H-A? Yeah.
[Roberta Cameron]: I would like to learn more about that, whether, I don't know if it's something that the Affordable Housing Trust could partner with, or it's something that I'd like to just learn more about in general, about how we can advocate for more partners to work in Medford.
[SPEAKER_09]: Because Somerville wasn't in it, but now, because Somerville now is more diverse in it, so now they just add Somerville into it, and now they're trying to bring MedModern and with the population of Asian and more than, now they want to sweep that opportunity to bring the Asian community where they can have more house everywhere, every part of the Massachusetts, so. Yeah, I would like to exchange contact information. I don't know if that's a good idea, because I work at Tufts, been working there for like Since like 14 years, my ways never really grew up, even though I wrote down letters after letters saying, I started this, I'm doing this, I'm doing that, I'm doing that. I did several ways, but no one was listening. What about if the City of Melbourne, people that work in different areas, so City of Melbourne, if I work for you, they should be able to pay me certain leaving that meant for Muslim equal to the rent or the to buy housing. I don't know how that going to work, but that's what I'm doing, that they make the place to work for pay more taxes so that they can afford to to distribute the funds to people that need to buy housing and this and that.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah. On our list of potential funding sources, one of the things that was mentioned was pilot payment in lieu of taxes. And that's exactly what you just described. If Tufts, a large nonprofit institutional employer, if they were to increase the amount of money that they voluntarily give to the city of Medford, specifically to the Affordable Housing Trust, so that that would help to provide funding for housing for their own employees.
[MCM00001821_SPEAKER_02]: I just looked it up the same thing in my textbook.
[Penelope Taylor]: Do we have someone online? Is that a question in the chat?
[Maria D'Orsi]: It's a comment from Teresa.
[SPEAKER_04]: OK, great.
[Katherine Buckingham]: So Teresa shared Medford move-in program administered through ABCD and funded by the Community Preservation Act, which helps with first slash last rent for income eligible folks moving to or within Medford. And then she shared the link to that organization. For those in the room, if you want to talk to me afterwards or email me, I can share that link. And then also she shared another resource, Housing Families, administers Medford's Rental Arrears Program, which assists income-eligible Medford residents with back-to-rent slash facing eviction, also funded via CPA, and that's housingfamilies.org.
[Penelope Taylor]: And I also wanted to acknowledge Councilor Ferris, who has joined us, and that reminded me of a question that came up, I think, online of which city councilors folks should get in touch with about this. And I would say all of them, because we need support of everybody. We want everyone to be on board with the plan. So I would encourage just to follow up with that question. And the mayor does sit on our board as well, but it's always great to hear from supporters of this plan and our efforts. So thanks. Thank you. Just wanted to say that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Any other questions?
[SPEAKER_09]: I don't know why, because I think the ABC doesn't work. I, myself, sit at a payco right now with Medford Housing. I went to court with them. And even though there is a stipulation where they have a program, each time, each month, when you pay your rent, they put something into an escrow. And the escrow, after five years, you can get that escrow. It's been five years, and then the amount of the money They got the NDS school. It's my account. It's so past what they supposed to receive, maybe 5,000 because they charged me a lot. And now it getting into a long amount. So now they owed it, that money. They supposed to be giving it this month. They still not holding it because I all that money because I have to pay before I can get that money. And without giving them the lowest amount that I owe them, they will still hold that money until I finish paying. It doesn't begin to be five years from now. I might be still, they still holding that money. that money, it could be doing me a good favor. I told them, why don't you minus what I owe and then give me the rest of that money so that I can just put it down on a house? And then Medford would benefit from that money. But Medford Housing still holding it. And if I do not have the money to pay what I owe, even though I'm paying the rent, which is almost $3,000 plus an additional of the money that I owe, which is $200 added to that. And then even though when I get my income tax, I put all the money down, it's still, I think there's no way the interest is going to go down because it's still the same thing. So, So, you know, and then I applied for ABC, they didn't approve me. I don't know why. Because if I did receive that ABC, that will give me a greater amount to reduce that and get that money from the housing so that I'm able to afford it to at least put it down for hours or something like that. So I don't want to lose that money. Because that's a bit of money that I might never be able to have it again. But it's not in my hand, but it's closed in the bank. And then I cannot get it.
[SPEAKER_12]: Can I say something? So basically that account is called an FSS account. And if it's the same as the sum of them, it's like, let's say you start your rent at $99, just an example. And then you get into that program, whatever. Every time your rent goes up, that amount of money goes to that account. It's yours. So after five years, they have to give it to you. But they don't give it to you like in your hand. They put it into a bank and like a CD account. And after three months, you can do whatever you want with that money. That's how it's supposed to be.
[Roberta Cameron]: What I wonder is whether housing families rental arrears program might be able to might be able to Jeff is the lawyer when we went to court with him.
[SPEAKER_09]: He's the one who said that you work so hard because they know that I have no time. He says you work so hard I cannot see myself let them take that money from you. yeah with your four kids and stuff like that i've been paying more than five years and then they still holding is like more than eighty thousand dollars in the bank so um they've been holding and then i'm afraid to get a lawyer to family case because i don't know because you know i'm a female uh with no see if they'll order and I don't know if they're gonna erase your profile that's why they owe their money because it's too much for them to give it to me back you know what I mean? store well that could be a case that's why I'm here that's why I'm here because I need to know what to do I know you can advise me on any of this but at the same time I don't want that money to get wasted is there like a person that works for housing that you sit down with
[SPEAKER_12]: like, and he saw them?
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes, I have a great deal of, um, um, um, uh, can be white nigger. She's a very good lady. She's working so hard to finally get me that money. But there's this lady called, whatever her name is, um, she's unlimited. Don't want to give me that money because she said, um, there's one, there's a one white lady. I don't know if she has something against me. but she doesn't want to release that phone. Yeah, she's the one who hold that, because I'm not alone, but I know Sandy always call me, let me know what's going on with my case. Sandy is retired, moving to another location, but before she moved, she wanted to give me that money, but she's still, because she has not, did that, really owning their account hostage.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's actually the problem, we think. I mean, not this exact story, but like, it's not, um, it's the story of White House. I'm so sorry about that. I do think
[Penelope Taylor]: Greater Boston Legal Services does cover Medford and they have an intake line. You could call and see if they can take this case or if they have any other recommendations that would be free. Just an idea that might be good to consult with them.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, right. I think you should go.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you for sharing this story. It's really hopeful for all of us to understand what kinds of housing issues people are encountering so that we can have a better understanding of how to prioritize the resources that we have.
[MCM00001821_SPEAKER_02]: Are there any other questions?
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Again, we want to thank you all for coming out tonight. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for your questions. Please, there is a link on the chat as well as if you do this QR code here, brings you to this, I'm sorry, the Medford Affordable Health and Trust Fund. that will have the action plan as well as Catherine's contact. So if there's any other questions, we're looking for comments. So please, thank you.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Thank you all very much.
[UHZzywcUcK0_SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Recording stopped.