The Medford Affordable Housing Trust Fund Board reviewed a presentation on racial disparities in local mortgage lending and received updates on Community Preservation Act funding, draft financial statements, and an upcoming linkage nexus study. The board also discussed legal ethics constraints on fundraising, draft inclusionary zoning fractional payment language, and action plan implementation priorities.
[Roberta Cameron]: Gonna call to order the Medford Affordable Housing Trust Fund meeting for Wednesday, February 4th. And I'm gonna do that by roll call, Madam Mayor. Present. Penelope Penny.
[Vice Chair Penelope Taylor]: Present.
[Roberta Cameron]: Kayla. Present. Roberta. Present. Carrie. Tetta. I see her. I'm here. And Carrie just walked in. Lisa Davidson, that's me. I'm here. And we'll go on to item number two of the agenda. And it is the approval of the minutes from January 7th. Did everybody have a chance to review the minutes from the January board meeting? If there are no edits to the board meeting minutes from January 7th, I'd like to request a motion to vote. So moved. Second.
All right, I'm gonna do a roll call. Madam Mayor? Yes. Penny?
[Vice Chair Penelope Taylor]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Kayla? Yes. Roberta? Yes. Carrie? Yes. Yes. And Lisa, yes. And so we had two sets of minutes to review. The next set of minutes is from the working group. Did everybody have a chance to review the minutes from the fundraising working group meeting? If there are no edits to the fundraising working group minutes from January 21st, I'd like to request a motion to approve. So moved. Second. All right. We'll vote via roll call again, Madam Mayor.
[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: I'm just going to abstain. I haven't had a chance to read them. I apologize. Penny? Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Kayla? Yes. Roberta? Yes. Carrie? Yes. Teda? Yes. And Lisa? Yes. So motion approved with one abstain. This next item on our agenda is a presentation from NAACP, a report on racial disparity in the home lending numbers by Corey Allen and Jennifer.
[Jennifer Yanko]: I just want to clarify that Corey works with reparations for Melrose and has done an enormous job of looking at data on a number of items through the whole Middlesex. Municipalities in Middlesex County, and that includes racial disparities in school discipline, in arrests, and in home loan originating. Am I missing anything? And he's really generously offered to come and share. some of this amazing work that he's doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we have been, I have shared a lot of this with the Mystic Valley Area Branch of the NAACP. And that is why in this presentation, you will see the six member cities, the results for the six member cities of the Mystic Valley Area Branch. So as Jennifer mentioned, I'm with Reparations for Melrose. We are a group working in Melrose to end anti-black racism. Our objective is to research and document current and historical harms with the goal of making systemic changes and providing reparations for damages done through personal and institutional racism. And in our analysis of home loan data, we were able to analyze data for cities in Middlesex County and the county overall. And again, for all the work Jennifer mentioned, which is a number of other people in the group visit reparationsformailroads.org. This, you know, today we'll be looking at home purchase loan data. And I've taken this language, it was from the website of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act requires many financial institutions to maintain, report, and publicly disclose loan level information about mortgages. These data help show whether lenders are serving the housing needs of their communities. They give public officials information that helped them make decisions and policies, and they shed light on lending patterns that could be discriminatory.
The act requires that financial institutions submit a quarterly report of the outcome of loan applications. So all of the applications they received, was the loan originated, you know, someone get a mortgage or was the application denied? The data reported include information about applicants and co-applicants, including race, ethnicity, gender, and income. In 2017, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau assumed oversight of HMDA reporting. That year also marked the addition of new applicant information, such as age, credit score, and fees paid. So we're looking at 2018 through 2024 because 2018's the first year of the expanded data.
was reported. So that's, you know, it's a richer, more information available. The key findings for Medford, the percentage of black home buyers in Medford, which is 1.6% over these years, is lower than the population of black people in Medford, 6.7%. In Medford, black applicants were 91% more likely to be denied a home purchase loan than white applicants. And we look at the reason why debt to income ratio was cited as a reason for denial at a much higher rate for black home buying applicants in Medford than for white applicants. So that's 64%. Debt to income ratio was cited as a reason for 64% of black applicants compared to 48% of white applicants in Melrose. Medford. Medford, sorry. I knew I was going to do that. last time i'll do it all right so looking again at home loan originations the mortgages for black homebuyers in this chart this is for medford the bars are the number of black homebuyers per year and the line is the percent that those mortgages represented of all mortgages originated in medford each year so uh 2021 was the best year there were 19 black homebuyers who had received mortgages to buy a home in Medford, and that represented 1.9% of all of the mortgages reported through the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. In 2024, nine black homebuyers in Medford represented 1.5% of the total. The scale on the right goes up to 7%. That would essentially be the black population in Medford, if the home buying population was matching the overall population, that blue line would be right there at 7%. So the home buying population for black homebuyers is smaller than the overall population of black people in Medford.
As I mentioned, we do look at the six member cities of the Mystic Valley area branch. And so they are shown here, again, The bars are the number of black homebuyers across these seven years of 2018 through 2024. And the line is the percent of all mortgages for each city. So the number of percentage of black homebuyers in Medford was lower than Malden, Everett, and Woodburg. You see 202 black homebuyers in Malden representing 5% of all the mortgages in Malden. Everett, 164 black homebuyers, 4.1%. Woburn, 95 black homebuyers, and that represented 2.5% of the mortgages. And again, we see the Medford total across those seven years, totaling 89 black homebuyers, 1.6% of all the mortgages.
You see Winchester, Arlington, much smaller totals in number of buyers and percent of overall mortgages. As I mentioned, when you download this data set, you have to download all of Middlesex County. So we do know the trends for Middlesex. From 2018 to 2021, and so then again, the blue line is the percent of black homebuyers. as represented among all mortgages in Middlesex County and the red lines in Medford. From 2018 to 2021, there were gains in Middlesex and in Medford for those years. And then in 2021, the trends diverged. So Middlesex County, the percent of black homebuyers has continued to rise from what it had been earlier within 2024.
Blackcomb buyers accounted for 2.6 of all the mortgages in Middlesex that year. For Medford, it was 1.5%. So again, Middlesex has a positive trend. Medford is not reflecting that same trend. And then when we get into the home purchase loan denials, again, like there are outcomes for the mortgages, you know, either they gave you the mortgage or a couple other factors, or they said, no, your loan has been denied. So from 2018 to 2024, the denial rate for black home buying applicants in Medford was 8.59%, and that's lower than the denial rate for Middlesex County overall. Again, here, it's the red bars are the percent of black applications that ended up in denial. So a higher rate in Middlesex, than in Medford. Almost 12% of black applications ended up in denial in Middlesex compared to just under 9% in Medford. The blue bar is the corresponding outcome for white applicants. So much closer, 4.49% of white applicants in Medford, applications denied compared to 5% for Middlesex. So if we're just comparing those rates as a NODS ratio, Black applicants in Medford were 91% more likely to be denied a home purchase loan than white applicants. And for Middlesex County overall, black applicants were 137% more likely to be denied a home purchase loan application than white applicants. Again, looking at the Mystic Valley Area Branch member cities, we see that if you look across all of these years and total up the rates, Everett, Woburn, and Malden had the biggest differences in rates of denial among black and white applicants. You know, just big gaps. And 90% of black applicants in Everett denied compared to 8% of white applicants. And Arlington, over these years, no black applicant and there were no denials. So a small number of black homebuyers but also no denials for those applicants. So you see where Medford falls in this chart.
This is then just taking those differing rates between the denial rates for black and white applicants and just expressing it as likelihood. And so we see there were racial inequities and application denials in every city. except for Arlington, where no black applicants had their loan denied. So black applicants in Woburn were 204% more likely to be denied than white applicants. For the six, Mystic Valley area, if you look at those numbers as a whole, 176% more likely for black applicants to be denied. Everett, Middlesex, similar numbers of 141 and 138. And then Medford, in Malden have the same likelihood, 91%. Black applicants were 91% more likely.
[Jennifer Yanko]: Can I just interject here? The Mystic Valley NAACP serves six communities. That's why you keep seeing these six communities. Woburn, Everett, Malden, Medford, Winchester, and Arlington. So that's the reason those cities are there.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, we presented this to city council and our mayor during our, we have racial justice candidate forums in Melrose. And so we presented the same data for Melrose. One question that's come up is, well, why? And that's kind of the next stage. We finally moved into this sort of analysis because when this is all reported, they do give reasons for denial. You can give up to the, and then the institution can give up to four reasons the application was denied. Most do not give four reasons. They give maybe one or two reasons. So when you look at all of the reasons given for denials, here we're looking at Medford. Again, the red bars are the percent of reasons given for the black application denied and the white are the percent for white applications denied. So if you're looking, what is, what's an area to focus on is debt to income ratio. Debt to income ratio was cited at a much higher rate for black applicants compared to white applicants. That's at 64% to 48%. And then there's a substantial gap also for employment history that was cited as a reason in 18% of black applications versus 6% of the white applications denied. If you do, Collateral was a much bigger reason for white applicants denied 31% to only 9% for black applicants. And this last slide, we will look at how Medford's distribution of denials for black applicants compared to middle sex overall for black applicants. And we still see debt to income ratios, the leading reason for middle sex overall, not as high a rate, As Medford, 50% compared to Medford, 64%, but still by far the number one reason the application was denied. And then we see Medford's employment history is much higher than Middlesex, that 18% to 6% for Middlesex. You do see collateral pop up as a bigger problem for black applicants and Middlesex overall, 20% of the reasons for denial compared to 9% in Medford.
Again, this is just to try to get context of if what can move something from denied to approved. And that's why we're just trying to understand the reasoning. And debt-to-income ratio seems to be the number one problem to address. Thank you very much. Thank you.
[Roberta Cameron]: Anybody have any questions?
[Unidentified]: I just maybe have some definition questions. When you said collateral on that last chart, what do you, what do you, or does the bank have a definition for what they call a collateral issue?
[SPEAKER_00]: Right. Uh, I could double check, but it's basically like how much money are you bringing into like the equity portion of the house?
[Unidentified]: And then the other question I had about those specific definitions, debt to income ratio, do you know if that includes, like when you add in the new loan that they're applying to, is that, or is it like current debt status entering the application period?
[SPEAKER_00]: That is great question. I don't, you know, and I was also trying to see, could a down payment assistance in some ways could help, in other ways it could hurt, so it really depends. It doesn't get that descriptive. I guess there are probably other ways we could look at what they're asking for. But yes, in general, they don't say, Which directionally yes, but that's just the, if they're saying no, that's the main reason.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. Now, I was thinking the same same thing. Like, what can we do? And if it's like a buy down or or down payment assistance programs, we would. If there's money available, then that brings it down brings up. increases the collateral, I guess.
[Teda DeRosa]: Can I just, I want to thank you for putting together all of this information. When it comes to debt to income ratio, the lender typically tells you how to lower your debt, you know, and A lot, you know, there were so many cities and towns that offer their own, their own down payment assistance programs that you can bundle up with your, like, with the MHP loan, right? So, I find it very interesting, because I actually got into real estate in 2020.
I got my license in 2020. And I started selling in 2021. And I mainly worked in like a lot of the homes that I sold were either in Boston or Brockton. And I mainly work with African American buyers. And there are so many programs out there. So My question for anyone in Medford that may be able to answer this, do we have our own down payment assistance? Is this something that the affordable housing is going to be a part of? Because I know for me, when I bought my first house, that was huge, being able to receive down payment assistance to make me eligible to purchase a home. And I know I'm gonna be speaking a lot right now. Coming from Medford, I grew up in Medford my whole entire life and I live in the house that my grandparents bought in the early 60s. And the history that Medford has for having one of the first black, middle class communities, you know, West Medford, where I live, was all homeowners, black homeowners, you know, so to see us in Medford be so low of a percentage of approvals and, you know, so high of a percentage for denials was saddening to me. And Like, how do we change that? How do we become part of, you know, changing that trajectory for the community, the black community that has always been so strong in Medford, you know, and also you know, a lot of it has to do like, when I think about when I was I, the number I paid most attention to was how many applicants. And there were so few applicants and Medford. And my thought is like, you don't know what you don't know, right. And if you don't have the information, and people aren't sharing the information with you, like, you're just not going to know what you're capable of doing. And How do you get there? So, you know, how do we push that in a different direction to bring these numbers up for our community?
[Katherine Buckingham]: Thank you, Teta. Through the chair, just to insert Tep, Trustee DeRosa's question. So NFC, the North Suburban Consortium, is a consortium of eight communities in the area, and Medford is one of the eight, and they pool resources from HUD. And one of the programs that they offer is down payment assistance. So if applicants in Medford are interested, they can reach out to me and then I'll help work through the paperwork with them. And then ultimately NSC is the one who like makes the determinations, but that is one program that Medford residents are eligible for, for first time home buyers.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. Just a follow up question on that is, Is there a web page? Is it on the program on the web page? So if people are looking to come into Medford and they're looking for assistance, like some people go for it.
[Katherine Buckingham]: Yeah. On our website, there is information about the program. And it also, if you read through it, it links to North Suburban Consortium's website, which also has a lot more detail, since they're kind of the governing entity over it. But it has my contact information if people have questions. And since I've been in this role less than a year, only one person has applied. And unfortunately, it didn't work because the terms of their mortgage didn't align with, like, they had an adjustable rate mortgage, which NSU requires fixed rate mortgages. So that's something for me to think about. Like, this person came to us kind of late in the game. So had they known, they might have wanted to structure it differently.
[Roberta Cameron]: Anyway. And one more follow-up question. Do you know the pot of money? My educated guess is federal money under the HOME program. Yeah.
[Katherine Buckingham]: I mean, that's my understanding. I believe that to be true.
[Roberta Cameron]: OK. Before, Roberta, I know I saw Penny's hand up for a little bit, but she put it down. So I don't know if you still had a question.
[Vice Chair Penelope Taylor]: I did, yeah. I just didn't need my hands up. I had a specific question, and then I guess a general question that I think is echoing part of what Teda said. And the specific question is, one of the big gaps in reasons for denial in Medford, between some of the graphs, was An inability to verify information and I, I was just wondering who is it that's verifying that information just like it as a possible area to address, like, just. wondering who's reviewing those. And then in general, yeah, what recommendations for like building in, addressing these inequities to what the priorities of this housing trust are. I would love to hear your recommendations after sharing this research. I think it sounds like you have with several municipalities. So thanks so much again for a great presentation.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know the answer in terms of who's doing the verification. Like, if it's the lending institution, that's a great question. I can try to, you know, it's not in the data, but I can certainly, there are some, lots of different ways how to fill out your HMDA guide so I can see if there's something there. Absolutely.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Roberta?
[Roberta Cameron]: I just had a very quick question about our existing down payment assistance. What is the typical assistance that's actually offered to households?
[Katherine Buckingham]: I don't know the average number, but I can look that up.
[Roberta Cameron]: Or what is the range that households can be given?
[Katherine Buckingham]: Yeah, I can follow up there.
[Roberta Cameron]: It's usually done by a formula. If they're doing a down payment assistance, if they're using home funds. I, in my work life, we do a closing cost assistance and it's done by a loan. And I've had people come through the program and it actually, sometimes it may affect their debt to income ratio. So wondering if the assistance when providing assistance through a loan, even if it is a forgivable deferred payment, forgivable loan, I wonder how, whether that will help or not help. just trying to figure out how it goes, especially if they're struggling with the collateral and then the debt to income ratio and then we're giving them assistance and how would that work?
do you know if it would affect your own? It wasn't a clear question, I'm sorry. It's been a day.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, no. No, I mean, like in my reading, I have seen on one side it may help and on the other side it may hurt. So it is exactly that. How do you, where does it come in and how does it count? But this is all, I mean, I'm a volunteer. I don't, you know, I'm doing this I mean, so I can't speak to loan, you know, specific.
[Roberta Cameron]: I've got one more follow up. I'm sorry. Just as you're answering, I'm wondering, some of these programs are targeted towards first time homebuyers, first time homebuyers who have to go through a first time homebuyer course in order to access other funding. Do they track Is that part of the data on whether or not somebody has completed a first-time homebuyer school?
[SPEAKER_00]: I've never seen that as it is all very much age of property, amount of money, rates, did you buy points, did you, you know, so it's all the nuts and bolts of the financing and not that sort of thing.
[Teda DeRosa]: No, I'm just curious. When it comes to, when it comes to the first time homebuyer programs. Sometimes the lenders have, like if you're getting a specific product, they have to take a first time homebuyers course. Sometimes it's also down to like, I know Brockton, when I sold in Brockton, they had to take their specific course, although they had already taken a course. So sometimes you're taking two courses and it could be online, but it's just to satisfy what that loan product or what that assistance is requesting.
So, you know, I know when it comes to lenders and, you know, a lot of times, like if one lender says no, there's another lender that can help you. And a lot of times people don't realize that. So they don't know like, okay, if the person who came to Medford for the down payment for the down payment assistance had an arm, they just didn't know that they could go to another lender and get a fixed rate. You know, like I've had transactions where they've changed lenders. a week, the week of the closing, you know, to get a better rate or whatever it be. But it's like, you don't know what you don't know. And if you don't have somebody who's telling you or guiding you in the direction that you should be going, you're just not going to know. So you're going to walk away and you're gonna be like, Oh, my God, I, you know, I was so close, but it didn't happen.
[Roberta Cameron]: That is so true, Teda. Thank you for sharing. And as you're doing that, as you were sharing, I wrote, I was scribbling, do we have a resource for first-time homebuyers in finding out where they can access different types? And maybe that's something that we can talk about as the trustees and building some sort of resource so people can go to help them with their first-time homebuyers, because maybe because we don't know what their first time we don't know if they've completed the course we don't like there's there's there's some things that we still don't know but we can try to fill in some gaps to help people come in with the first time because i when i bought my house i what i was not aware of any any of the things i just went in and i was like um but this was 20 years ago so very different uh different environment so Yeah, so I have several thoughts in response to your comments and Teta's comments. First of all, I'm sorry. I just want to put this paper over there. Is that OK? Yeah. I don't want to disturb you. No worry.
And so I know that in the past, Medford Community Housing has offered first time homebuyer classes. I don't know if they're still doing that at the moment, but maybe if not, that could be something that could be revived and maybe in partnership. with identifying a curriculum that addresses some of the things that we're learning in this conversation. So what do those first-time homebuyers need to know to be able to buy a home in Bedford with the advice that Ted has just been offering? And I wonder if we are developing a program, if we can get input from realtors and financers so that we can not just copy what's been done elsewhere that may or may not be working to its full potential but like learn at in the moment what is what's needed to make this program work better in this market today yeah no great great ideas. And I know that in order to access, especially home money, you have to be a first-time homebuyer course has to be certified as a first-time homebuyer course. I'm wondering if we could put a link up on the, on the, even if it's the trust, the affordable housing trust fund, there is a link that shows a whole bunch of first-time homebuyers courses where there are, where they're at happening.
[Katherine Buckingham]: Yeah, Chair, there is some information on the website with that. So we have information about the first-time homebuyer program and down payment assistance. And it says, like, you need to take the course, and there's a link. But certainly, more could always be done to highlight that or maybe advertise or, yeah.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you. Does anybody else have any questions, comments?
[Teda DeRosa]: I mean, I would ask the board, I'm sorry, I would ask everyone if that's something that we could kind of maybe have like a subgroup to have a conversation behind it because I do have a lot of resources in the real estate industry as I'm in the real estate industry. I work closely with a lot of lenders that work with the programs that are there to offer and, you know, maybe it's a conversation that we should be having, you know, especially in, you know, the communities that have a lot more of that, you know, have a lot more black people there.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, no, thank you, Ted. And that's actually something on our agenda for later on is looking at our five year action plan and prioritizing some of the things that we that we're putting in that we put in on the action plan. And If memory serves me correctly, we did, there is something about first-time home buyers trying to do a closing cost or a down payment assistance program. So when we get to that section in the agenda, maybe that's when we can talk a little bit more. Maybe that's our priority is our number one priority of looking at what we can do. So thank you.
That's just the agenda. So I'm not in front of them. Okay. Thank you. I have a lot. I am a Chi Chi. All right. So any other questions, comments before we thank our guests for coming? And like you said, you are more than welcome to stay with us or Thank you. Thank you. This was really helpful. Did you share the slides? Do we have a copy of the slides?
[Katherine Buckingham]: I have what Jennifer sent originally. I know that you just sent the link the other day with these slides. So I can double check. Are those different from what you would have sent in the first place?
[Jennifer Yanko]: No.
[Katherine Buckingham]: No, no. The link to, yes.
[Jennifer Yanko]: Or is it the link to the original?
[Katherine Buckingham]: Yeah. So then those went out of the meeting material packet.
[Roberta Cameron]: Perfect. Sorry. I didn't get to all my packets. No, no. Is the data that you have published or made public, is it available on your website?
[SPEAKER_00]: Not what I've shared with you tonight. I mean, I certainly, I would be fine to do that, but no, so far we've just put things that are Melrose related and there's, I do have a whole thing for Middlesex. It's just, we haven't, you know, we haven't found the distribution for it, but the, There is more information that exists if you want to see the granular. So we are trying to get it out there.
[Roberta Cameron]: Would it be okay if we were to use that data publicly?
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. Yes. Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: I was just going to say this data was shared in a public meeting. It now becomes part of the public record. It should be available to the public.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please, it is.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, this is great. Thank you so much. I appreciate you coming in.
[Jennifer Yanko]: All right. Thank you so much for having me and for, you know, looking for solutions to the racial disparities that are existing. Thank you.
[Roberta Cameron]: All right. Item number four on the agenda. Item number four on the agenda is update from the City Council meeting regarding the Community Preservation Act. On January 20th, the board members attended the City Council meeting for the presentation of the CPA funding. Yesterday, the City Council voted to approve our funding request. Yay! Teresa's not here, but I want to do a shout out to Teresa because she was, did all of the presentations to the committee of the whole on whatever day we went. And she did a phenomenal job. There were no questions to be asked of the application. So shout out to Teresa and Catherine too, I'm sorry.
for preparing the application. Shout out to Catherine for preparing. All right, the next item on the agenda is financial reports. The trustee Kayla, who serves as the treasurer to the board has prepared a draft financial report to present and I'll turn it over to Kayla. Sure. What else, like, once you're curious.
[Unidentified]: Okay, so I think the first page, we're going to be calling this kind of just like our forward looking funding tracking. I wouldn't maybe call this like an official financial document, but I think this is going to give us an overview generally of where we're looking and when we should expect payments. So the sources you could see listed, the first one CPA, and then we've got a couple, I'd say one-off, Contributions, the first one that we have is the tough storm, and that's an estimate of when we think that's gonna be finished. And then 600 reverse edge, again, an estimate of when we think that money might come in. Then we've left some blanks for hopefully inclusionary fractional payments going forward if the fractional language gets into the code. And then eventually affordable housing linkage fees. Again, hopefully in later years, those will start coming in. And then on the bottom, we've got our first loan commitment to Medford Community Housing.
[Jennifer Yanko]: Super exciting.
[Unidentified]: So then the next two pages, our first page is our balance sheet. I will say, Catherine, I didn't know if you got a chance to get any of the documents or if they sent any of the backup documents.
[Katherine Buckingham]: No, from the treasurer. Yeah, I've actually, asked a few times and have not gotten in touch. But going forward, just to note, we have requested that we'll get quarterly updates. OK. I have asked for previous ones and have not been able to connect on that.
[Unidentified]: OK. So we'll call these provisional, conditional, since we don't have a reconciliation or a bank account. But we're pretty sure we've got $305,529 in the bank. And then we don't, we didn't at the end of the year have any loans that had actually been sent out any loan funds that actually been sent out. So we called that reserved cash below the line. And then you can see obviously next month, next quarter, we'll anticipate that that loan is actually an asset of a hundred thousand dollars and our cash will go down to $205,000.
[Katherine Buckingham]: And through the chair, I spoke recently with our planning director and kind of gave her this overview for her input as well, and she thought maybe one thing is we should perhaps not call it free cash, since that has other meanings elsewhere. So just, yeah, to flag that.
[Unidentified]: Non-reserved cash. Yeah.
[Roberta Cameron]: That was the slice of that term, free cash.
[Unidentified]: Free cash, yeah. It's really not free cash. This was a good exercise to try to do it. I looked up at a lot of more nonprofit balance sheets, and I did. ones that I usually sell. And then the next page is profit and loss. Again, with the proviso that we're pretty sure that these numbers are correct, but we got $300,000 in from the CPA. And then there was a sales processing fee of $5,529. And that is all the activity we had from last year. I've left, we've left some, open items and expenses. Um, to date, the city has been very generous with, you know, helping fund some of the community events that we've had and the outreach that we've had. I'm imagining over time, you know, some of that might come into our purview and also, um, whether or not salary of staff members eventually has some sort of proportion that gets charged to the trust. So kind of left those as open items going forward. And Yeah, I think that's it. Just a quarterly cadence from here on out. If anyone has any questions, comments, additions.
[Roberta Cameron]: This is great. Thank you. I have a question. I think it's for city staff. I saw interest, which made me go ding, ding, ding. With the money sitting in the bank account, does the trust earn the interest on the money sitting in the bank account?
[Katherine Buckingham]: I believe so, but I'm hoping to meet with our treasurer to clarify those numbers and those questions. So I don't want to give a definitive answer, but also I noticed. Oh, trustee Tanner. Thank you. Hand raised as well.
[Vice Chair Penelope Taylor]: Thank you. Thank you. Through the chair, I had on the first tab a couple ideas, I'm wondering. To try to, I love this. First off, this is great. It's really helpful to see all at once. In the action plan, we group some types of payments together. Conceptually, it's like the negotiated developer payment. We do specifically also name Rivers Edge, but I wonder, just thinking in the future, having kind of the zoomed out categories will help us see how they shift over time. and kind of group the one-offs together. And then the other thing, I asked Catherine about this and it sounds like we will be getting some more information, but I, you know, we're not, it made me sad seeing all these blanks in the future. Cause we do have some, some things that are moving forward. I think that will be earning like the, we'll hear about them later in the agenda, but just if we have any projected numbers for the linkage fees or the inclusionary fractional and like, you know, a couple years from now. I think it'd be nice to somehow capture that just to like be able to visualize what the potential is if certain policies come through for us in the coming years. Thanks.
[Roberta Cameron]: Thank you, Penny. Roberta? I wanted to make a comment about interest that the funds that are coming, so the funds that are coming from the Community Preservation Act, it's in the CPA legislation that CPA interest stays with the CPA. It doesn't get rolled into the general fund. If the city is holding the trust funds in a common account with other city funds, then I would hope that the interest doesn't get rolled into the general fund that's coming from the CPA. I think it's right for it to stay with the trust. but it would be wrong for it to go back to the city. Do you know what I mean? I think I do. So the money came from CPA into the trust, and I don't mind if the interest stays with the CPA or if it comes to the trust, but I don't want the interest to go back to the city. Right, so it's very similar to other communities where, like other communities may have two pots of trust money, and they have two accounts. They have non-CPA trust money, and then they have CPA trust. CPA trust has its own account, So they're earning the interest on the CPA and because it is in a CPA dedicated account, they're able to earn the trust, the interest, which just adds to the balance. But if it's in a fund that's all grouped together, the CPA, CPC, CPA community keeps the trust. keeps the interest. Yes. All right. Thank you. And just my point is that I don't mind either way if the interest stays with the CBC or the trust. I just don't want the interest to go back to the general fund. Right. It needs to be. Yes.
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Can I just do a clarification because I hear Roberta say, I don't mind. Roberta, not only does she sit as a trustee here on the Affordable Housing Trust, she actually chairs the CPC, the CPC Community Preservation Committee, which that's where the money came from. Just so people understand.
[Unidentified]: Sure, so I think if there is a common account, what we could do is just ask for a proportion. So the $300,000 would be a proportion of a common account, and we should be allocated the interest based on that proportion. I don't think you would do that.
[Roberta Cameron]: I don't think you would. If it stays in a common account, because it's not separated, we'd have to work with the CPC.
[Unidentified]: Oh, so I'm not talking about CPC versus, I'm just saying, I think it might just be in like a, correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think we have a separate bank account. I think it's separate. It is separate. Okay. Well then I think, yeah, we can figure that out. I thought this was like a city general fund that would be allocated $300,000.
[Katherine Buckingham]: No, it's interesting because like with the loan that we granted, like we, the board voted to give out the loan, but then The money has to go into the city and then through finance and then out. So it's not in the city general fund at all. So it's kind of like a multi-step process. All right. So we do? OK. Well, yeah.
[Unidentified]: If we do have a separate account, then that should be easy. I don't think we addressed Penny's comment about future cash flows. that didn't make sense about kind of just calling developer contributions, just like one catch all. So not so specific going forward. Um, and then maybe trying to make some sort of budget on what you think fractional payments might be in lieu going forward. And then I guess maybe for the linkage, just see what the report comes back and says, like, this would be the suggested fee. And then we could kind of see what is on the horizon.
[Katherine Buckingham]: Yeah, and I'm sure agenda item nine is an update on the linkage. Okay, so we can talk more about that.
[Roberta Cameron]: This is great, thank you. And just to piggyback on what Penny has been talking about, when and if fractional payments become a thing, I have seen, The estimates that other communities don't necessarily do an estimate. But what they do do is they look at it and they know who's going to be who's electing to pay a fractional payment. So it's it's. It's a projected, it's more of a concrete opposed to an estimate of what's going to be coming available and looking at that, projecting that forward on a quarterly basis, assuming that there, that it does become part of the ordinance and that it is, they know they'll, the developers will make a choice and the city will know ahead of time and we'll just add that in as projected. Yeah.
Yay. Thank you. This was great. Thank you. I appreciate this. And the next time we get this in the quarter, we'll see the anticipated 550,000 bank account growing. All right. Anybody else have any questions or comments? Okay, so we are going to move on to item six, which is regular monthly or quarterly updates. During the last board meeting, it was discussed to provide regular updates on topics relevant to the board. I wanted to open the floor to suggestions on types of updates the board would like to receive. Previous suggestions were financial reports, which we talked about condo conversion, zoning updates, projects in the housing development pipeline. Are there other suggestions? Do we want to keep with this list? I might hand it over to Catherine.
[Katherine Buckingham]: Yes, thank you. So I just wanted to, since we were on the topic of going through the financial tracking, I wanted to see if there were any other thoughts about things we want regular updates on or just ad hoc updates. Penny did a great job earlier today asking me some questions. And I just want to encourage anyone, if you have questions, I didn't have time to get the answers yet for today's board meeting. But going forward, if you're thinking about something, I can help provide updates, maybe ad hoc or whatever. But I just wanted to make sure I'm able to provide as much helpful information as possible. So if people have other topics, just let me know. You can say so now. We can discuss. Or you can email me offline, too.
[Roberta Cameron]: Any questions, comments? Okay, so we're going to move on to item number seven, and it's an update from the Fundraising Working Group. I'm going to pass that along to Catherine.
[Katherine Buckingham]: Yeah, so the Fundraising Working Group, as you all know, since we've talked about the minutes, but I don't know, Christie Cameron or DeRosa, if either of you want to provide a summary, or I can talk a little bit about it, but just to kind of let the board know the results of that discussion, if there are questions, et cetera. Do you want to talk more, or should I?
[Teda DeRosa]: I can talk more. I wanted to see if Ted wanted to. Oh, yeah. I keep having to look for my mute button. Roberta, please take the floor. And if I have anything to add, or if there are anything, if there's anything that I can answer, I will be happy to jump in.
[Roberta Cameron]: All right. Thank you. So we met last week and we discussed what are some ways that we may be able to increase our revenue. And there are, you know, we would support ways to increase the revenue from the city, but we were focused mostly on the potential for increasing revenue through fundraising in the community. And what are the steps that we would need to be able to do? And the first thing we talked about was the fact that we would need to have some 501c3 to enable us to actually raise revenue that would be tax deductible. People right now could make a free will donation. or estate planning donation to the trust, but that would not be tax deductible. So for it to be tax deductible, it needs to go through a nonprofit organization. And we talked about some ways that that could happen. Some options could be to work with an existing nonprofit organization, such as the Affordable Housing The Medford Housing Authority has a non-profit arm that has not been active, could be activated to perform a function like this, or there could be maybe a fiscal agent, which we talked about some complications about fiscal agents.
came around to the idea that it really might be the smoothest, possibly the best path forward to try to invite the community to form a friends of group that is just dedicated to supporting the Affordable Housing Trust. And so we talked about some ways that we might go about inviting the community. But the first thing that we need to do before we can do that is to get um, support from our legal counsel on how we would go about, um, doing that?
[Katherine Buckingham]: Uh, yeah. So through the chair, I actually was able to connect with our legal counsel right before this meeting. And, um, one thing I did want to share with everyone, we just put it off, but, um, we kind of had an overview of, uh, like conflict of interest, uh, issues and like, I'll pass that around, but, um, in terms of conflict of interest law, like ability to solicit donations. In general, that's not allowed for municipal employees, including trust members, but there are certain carve outs where if everything is handled appropriately, if like, you know, you don't want to target specific groups, like if you generally advertise something, there are ways that that could actually be done. And so if, the board was interested in pursuing something like that, and we could talk through the nuances with legal counsel, but that is something that could potentially be an option. And also of note, my understanding now is that if people were to make a donation to the trust that could be tax deductible, you don't need it to be through a nonprofit for that to be the case. but the city could not give any kind of advice about how to do your taxes. So we couldn't really be like, yeah, it's tax-deductible. So there are nuances with that as well.
One of the other takeaways is that if we did pursue a friends of the trust approach, that actually gets really complicated, the trust's ability to work with them, because no one from the trust could help set that up, basically. And so even co-hosting an event could be really tricky, because we don't want it to seem like the city is encouraging people to donate to a non-profit. In this instance, it really is all for the public good, right? But if you think about it through the lens of, but what if it were a developer, a private company, or whatever, then the city couldn't host an event and be like, and donate. So there are things that are tricky kind of either way. But I just wanted to pass this out for folks to review. And also, as we have more specific questions, we can give that to them. KB Law, our legal counsel and retainer, can like provide us written responses. They didn't have a chance to do that for all the questions I asked them, so we just kind of hopped on a call to go over stuff like this. So yeah, but like certainly one thing that the fundraising group had talked about that I think could potentially be a great option is just like an educational event, like come learn about the trust, this is what we're doing, Um, and then we could even have, like, a fact sheet, which, uh, Roberta generously offered to help draft, which we can stack and work with her on, um, that maybe has, like, background on the trust. This is what we do. And then, like, a whole section on, like, ways to support the trust. And, like, it could include, like, donations or whatever. But if, for example, you want, someone wanted to leave their house to the trust and their will, which is totally allowed, like, we would have to say, like, consult your own legal, your attorney. Like, the city's not, going to provide that kind of legal advice.
And also just generally, as we move down the path of any specific plans, we can check in with them as we go.
[Roberta Cameron]: So thank you. That is really, really helpful, up-to-the-minute advice. And so our conclusion last week was that we really need to hear from legal counsel before we know what our next steps are going to be. stay tuned. Maybe it's a much easier, more direct approach than what we were thinking it had to be. That was kind of my takeaway. Yeah. Yeah. Great. So thank you.
[Teda DeRosa]: Thank you, Catherine. Catherine, can you email us the the handout that you just passed out with the conflict of interest?
[Katherine Buckingham]: Yes, absolutely. It's actually just a link from the State Ethics Commission. So I'll just send out the link.
[Roberta Cameron]: Perfect. Thank you so much. I know this is off script. I'm sorry. I know this is off script, but as Catherine was talking about state ethics training, I don't know if everybody got an email from the State Ethics Committee, but I did for the Medford Affordable Housing Trust Fund. So just take a look if you have to do your certification, recertification. And as you said, we can't do the donations. I went, no kidding. I just did the training.
Um, all right. So thank you, Teta.
[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Roberta. Through the chair, I know we have a great advocacy group, Housing Medford. Could we maybe see if they'd be willing to do the 501c3?
[Roberta Cameron]: I suspect that Housing Medford doesn't have the capacity to, um, take that on themselves, but Housing Medford might be a very willing partner for co-hosting an event to try to attract volunteers, recruit volunteers for an effort if needed to undertake that.
[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Okay, sounds good. No problem. Thank you.
[Roberta Cameron]: Maybe we can tap on Housing Medford for the educational event and get the word out on who we are and what we can do. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Does anybody else have any questions, comments, anything further? Okay. So we are going to mosey on down to item eight update on fractional payment and ordinance, and I'm going to pass it along to city staff.
[Katherine Buckingham]: Okay. So I think Julia is playing it up for those. on Zoom, and this is what I sent out with the edits and input from PDS staff. No one did email me with major concerns, but one thing I thought I would just specify that the biggest change really is going off of Kayla's advice, which was helpful about the timing of when to make calculations and payments. What we thought would probably be the most helpful, as it says at the bottom, is the applicant shall make their election. Well, first of all, they have to, so above, it's like option A, build the number of units, or option B, make the fractional payment. So then it says the applicant shall make their election of which of those choices to pick from prior to submitting the site plan review application by notifying the Office of Community Development and Writing, which is our office. then the payment to the Medford Affordable Housing Trust Fund shall be calculated at the time of the building permit application and due prior to the issuance of the building permit as agreed to or in a fee pay agreement. So it's like a little bit broad, like we didn't specify like all the details of what a fee payment agreement could look like, but that's sort of to give city staff discretion. But in terms of the timing, it would basically be like, You calculate what that payment would be when you apply, and then it's due before you get the permits.
And so just the next steps, you all can discuss your thoughts about this language. But once we get to a point when everyone feels comfortable, I think I can work with the chair, and she can sign a letter of support, and then we can take it back to city council. So that's kind of the next steps.
[Roberta Cameron]: I'm going to open it up for discussion. Does anybody have any questions, comments? Oh, Penny.
[Vice Chair Penelope Taylor]: Great, thanks so much. It's a little. Is it too specific specifying the within Metro Boston slash urban area? I'm just interested. I think like saying it's articulated in the plan. Is that just specifying the area or is that like subject to change is really why bringing it up? Because it seems sort of specific.
[Katherine Buckingham]: I think it's oh sorry, go ahead. No, you go ahead. I think it's to indicate like Because EOHLC, the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, is a state office. And so these numbers will not be the same across the state. So it's to tie it to the fact that our numbers are relevant to the metro Boston urban area. And so that's what the calculations would be based off of. And so then you come up with a calculation, and then whatever fraction of a unit you would multiply by that fraction.
[Roberta Cameron]: Penny, very similar to when HUD publishes the income limits and or the fair market rents, they do it by areas. And when other communities are referencing to say this is where you would go find it, then they say the same thing, the metro area. Anybody else have any questions or comments? Looks good. I'm excited. Yeah, I'm excited. This is really good. Thank you, Catherine and city staff, the rest of the city staff that worked on this. This is really, really helpful.
[Katherine Buckingham]: And thanks to all of you for your input. It was also helpful to kind of refine it to get to a place where it, I think, does a good job capturing what we wanted to capture.
[Roberta Cameron]: Do we need to vote?
[Katherine Buckingham]: It's I think through the chair at a previous meeting, we talked about like, we had a discussion, we had some edits, assuming everyone's comfortable with those edits, we can just proceed. So my interpretation is that I have, since there haven't been major concerns, I think we're good to, you and I can work with like getting a letter for you to sign and advance it.
[Vice Chair Penelope Taylor]: It sounds like you just discussed it. I was like that we we already voted on sending a letter. So I think that I consider this a courtesy, which thank you for being so thoughtful and careful about this. I'm excited for it to get us some money. Yeah.
[Roberta Cameron]: All right. Okay, on that note, we're going to move on to item number nine, the affordable housing linkage nexus study. Catherine.
[Katherine Buckingham]: Yeah, so we put out an RFP to see who would be interested in working on this study. For those not familiar, it's putting together a study on the city's ability to collect linkage payments or kind of like impact fees to pay for affordable housing. That money could come to the affordable housing trust, but in order to do that, the common standard process is to do some kind of robust economic analysis to determine what fees are appropriate. And so one person submitted a proposal, Carl Seidman is his name, and he does pretty much all the affordable housing linkage nexus studies in the region, like Lexington, Watertown, like his background, he had like 20 different cities. He bid, which is great. It actually came in significantly under budget, which is also great. Right now, we are circulating the contract for signatures. He has signed, our director has signed. There's just like six other people that have to sign off before the contract is fully executed. And as soon as that is done, hopefully imminently, then he can begin working. And the goal is for it to be done this summer. Penny asked a question about like, anticipated income and I haven't started working with him yet, but as soon as we do, I'm happy to ask him that question. I imagine he would have numbers like at the top of his head. So I'll report back.
[Roberta Cameron]: This is exciting. Look at all this good stuff happening. Thank you. Anybody have any questions, comments? I'm seeing a lot of head shaking. So we'll move on to number 10. Number 10 is the implementation of the action plan and next steps. And again, I'm going to pass this along to city staff.
[Katherine Buckingham]: Yeah, so we just thought it'd be helpful to have a little time set aside at the end of the agenda to review what we have in the action plan in terms of goals and priority actions. And obviously we have been focusing on fundraising as discussed in the meeting, but in terms of like, looking at metrics or measuring our progress. I just thought we could use time to reflect on this. And I just, for folks not in the room, I passed out page eight from the action plan that spells out the goals and priority actions, which, by the way, Juliette, I didn't get to you, but maybe you could pull it up from the action plan.
Yeah, so I don't know if people want to identify other areas we want to focus on, or if we think we've got a good amount of work right now. But since our plan is approved and everything, just thought I'd have a quick discussion on that.
[Roberta Cameron]: No, this is great. Thank you. So while Juliet's pulling it up, the priorities we set in the action plan was to build a relationship with the CPC, build affordable housing, preserve and convert existing housing to long-term affordable, support existing homeowners and first-time home buyers, fund stabilization programs, prioritize funding for affordable units to households with lower incomes, and advocate for housing development. I see Roberta going, ooh, ooh, ooh. I'm trying to sit in my hand and it just keeps going. It's all right, go for it. I just want to make an initial observation, fund housing stability programs. This year, the Community Preservation Committee decided that they were going to continue fulfilling that role with the CPA funding pool in addition to reserving, I think, 25% of their funding for the Affordable Housing Trust, that $550,000, was 25%. They also funded housing stability programs on top of that. So that might be a future thing. We'll continue like letting the CPC handle that for now. I mean, unless there's some, unless the trust wants to petition to take on that partnership, But with respect to building affordable housing in partnership with mission-driven organizations and developers, and the next two items, preserving and converting existing housing and supporting existing homeowners and first-time homebuyers, all of those things depend on partnerships. And we have supported the Medford Community Housing, which was already working on a project that they needed additional funding for. But it seems to me that a key next step is inviting developers to come and work in Medford to ask for our funds now that we have this funding, so that we can't spend it unless they ask for it. So we need to work on establishing those programs like we talked about earlier, developing a first time, Maybe not developing, but improving on our first time home buyership program, or maybe adding an additional program on top of the one that exists is an example of how we need to build those. Yeah.
So and that is sort of what we're going to be talking about is trying to prioritize and what makes sense, right? I have comments, but I'm going to hold my comments and open up the floor for anybody else who may have some comments before. Penny, I see your hand.
[Vice Chair Penelope Taylor]: I'll be very quick first off applause for our first priority actions from what I just heard really great strides have been made in on those two. I wonder. Okay, the following two preserving and supporting for some homeowners. I guess I'm curious, maybe this is a future conversation of where I was part of the community land trust conversation kind of as a member of this trust spending some time. Checking in on where that's at and what our role can be in relation to the further development of the land trust because I do think. you know, several steps were taken. There have been some subsequent conversations. So I'm just like, not sure if that's a conversation. For here, I'd like to understand what this body can do in terms of moving that forward, if this is the appropriate place for that conversation.
[Roberta Cameron]: Great question. Great question. And I don't know. Anybody have any thoughts? We're fired up. With respect to the potential for formation of a community land trust, again this is an area that just like forming a friends of group has a big legal hurdle to get over and I would love to support the community land trust conversation by pointing to existing 501c3s in Medford two of which being Medford Community Housing and the Medford Housing Authority, and see if we could approach either of those institutions, organizations, to see if we might be able to integrate the community land trust model with those existing 501c3s to be able to grow their capacity or create capacity for them to be able to build on what they're doing.
Yeah. Can somebody refresh my weak brain at the moment? Does Medford have a community land trust? I didn't think so. I think you're trying. Right, right. I was thinking, right. And I saw Catherine have her hand up. But is the ask of how can the trust help facilitate the creation of a community land trust? Because I think that's a question I don't think I'm not sure we technically can. Exactly. Thank you for saying it. I was having a hard time saying it. I don't think that that's what the Affordable Housing Trust Fund can do, other than echo Roberta and try to maybe help build relationships, facilitate relationships. But even then, it's...
[Unidentified]: I imagine when the land trust was up and running, if they wanted to, we could have a role in developing, preserving, et cetera at that time. But I think until it's formed, I don't see that we could, the missions aren't quite perfectly aligned until it's formed and they have some property to work with.
[Roberta Cameron]: Penny, I think I saw your hand open and I agree. Yeah. Penny, did I see your hand up and then go away? No, now I'm seeing things. All right. Where's Teta?
[Teda DeRosa]: Oh, there she is. Teta, sorry. No worries. I'll lower my hand now. So I'm thinking about like, how we're like tying everything that we were talking about earlier when it comes to home ownership and first time home buyers. You know, the one thing about Medford is that, of course, it's really, really expensive to purchase here in Medford. But I'm sure there are a lot of people that are from Medford live in Medford and want to stay in Medford and they stay renters because they cannot afford to purchase a home in Medford. The one thing that, you know, Boston has and they have done very well, and this is just my opinion, is that they have created homes that are specifically geared towards first time homebuyers. They're, you know, they're at a a rate that people who wouldn't necessarily be able to get into the housing market can get into the housing market. So when you talk about like, we have like these small parcels of land, like I know here in West Medford, You know, there are some pieces of land that could potentially be utilized for that, you know, like blank pieces of property, but I also know in West Medford, we have particular developers that. they're buying up all of these pieces of land. They're building houses that the people who live in this community could can't afford. So we're pricing out our neighbors, we're pricing out our community. How do we keep our community our community? And how do we, you know, push that needle? Right? Is there any way we could be part of that? Are there any pieces of land that are in Medford that we're not going to build for market rent? And make it affordable housing, similar to what the community housing, the Medford Community Housing Group has done over on the Fellsway.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, great, great thought. And the same thing was going through my mind, right, is that we need a developer to come in and build affordable housing, whether it's rental or home ownership. would be fantastic to have home ownership. I don't know if Medford has any all affordable housing home ownership opportunities. I know I see one head shake. There are other communities such as Boston, Somerville. I mean, there are some where we have the relationships with our nonprofit partners that will come in and do the development. I'm going to say, and it's going to hurt me to say, when we're talking about bringing developers in, what we have in our bank account is not enough. I mean, we really need to be able to stop focusing on the bank, even when we get the additional $550,000, that gives us what, just under a million dollars, maybe? And my math is a little complicated. Yeah.
subsidy, the average subsidy per unit per affordable rental unit right now is 600 to $700,000 for a unit. So what we have right now, like we want developers to come in and fill out the applications. But I don't, I want to be realistic because last year we did an RFP, we had $350,000 and nobody came in for the RFP because there's not enough money to sort of go in and create some housing. So I'm thinking like, yeah, I know I'm not enough. I can give my feedback, right? So I feel like we've got something, we've got, we had a great presentation to do today. And if we're like looking at what we can do with what we have is maybe looking in and prioritizing this list and looking through it. And yes, building relationships are still there, trying to up our bank accounts so we can help the developers but we have money and we should be using it. So why not work with the down payment assistance program? And I know that if it's home funded home monies, I know that there's maximum allowable subsidies that buying a home using the down payment assistance, those subsidy limits, are unrealistic when you're talking about trying to purchase a home here in Medford, anywhere in this area, I will tell you the gosh honest truth, right? Because in order to do it, the maximums is the sale price and the rehab, if there's any rehab, so if you're buying an older home at a lower cost, but you're gonna do the rehab to it, that rehab, the dollars to build it, to make the repairs and the dollars to uh for the down payment the the sales price has to be below the minimum um and for a single family home i don't remember the dollars but i know it's crazy low crazy low so like how can we do it we don't have the same we don't have the same limitations that hud dollars have we can be more we can be more uh Flexible we can we can think about these and and use some of the guides and that's why I was asking about the first time homebuyers and you know Who's out there and how can we use this dollars again? Well, we have in our bank account is not a lot of money But if we can help maybe two households because we're bringing it down and we will have an affordable housing restriction tied to the funding. I mean, helping two households purchase a home in Somerville, Medford, excuse me, is huge, huge. I see Roberta trying, but Penny has her hand up. So thank you, Penny, I see you. Got it, all the way, yeah.
[Vice Chair Penelope Taylor]: Absolutely. Well, two things. One, I mean, it's one of the lower cost things on our list of increased communication, I think. And I think Roberta's getting at that in terms of like creating that one pager and home ownership. I also think like, you know, even depending on how it relates to fundraising or not having an info fair of basically community resources where we like have those handouts, like Someone can learn in one place about like, you know, in partnership with the CPC, other stability programs that are out there or like, you know, or if they have a house, they want to donate, you know, the range of things related to housing that we could kind of package together. The other thing is that Lisa, something you were saying about both like, You know, one way I think it could develop relationships with more developers who are building affordable housing or doing fractional payments and just kind of know more is maybe getting maybe quarterly heads up on some RFPs that are out there that have the potential to produce a lot of affordable housing. Cause I think like, you know, there we've been, we work really closely with values aligned to developers, but also, you know, half of our money right now is coming out of developer negotiation. So just flagging that it seems like there's some room to get more funds or specs on development and just knowing, again, what role we can play in that, or even just getting to know more people who are developing affordable housing, whether by IZ or project, that I think it would be great to get a heads up on those opportunities.
[Roberta Cameron]: So that would be petty. I just want to make sure that I heard you correctly. Those sound like, you know, getting updates on what Catherine's list. Correct. It's on her list of updates already. Thank you. What was it? Catherine? uh, housing development pipelines, so we can kind of put in, put in for that as well.
[Vice Chair Penelope Taylor]: Exactly. Thanks so much. And then, um, yeah, you know, while we don't have a ton of money in the bank, making sure people know about the resources that are out there and like how to get in touch with us to give us information or, you know, yeah. Okay. And Roberta. Thank you.
[Roberta Cameron]: Um, I really appreciate those that that that great idea of adding resource there to informational event, because we should definitely be inviting our partners to really capitalize on 1 event to give the information to everybody. That's a that's a great idea. But what I wanted to say earlier was with respect to a. first-time homebuyer program. I know I've seen an example, I think in Cambridge, where they give a large pot of money to a first-time homebuyer household and put a deed restriction, permanent deed restriction on their housing unit. I'd love to see something like that, but I would actually, I think for Medford, it would be particularly appropriate given what we learned in the affordable housing trust plan data.
that we have so many extremely low-income homeowners today that if we were to use, instead of only focusing on first-time homebuyers, to have an equity buy-down program that would enable people to stay in their homes who are struggling, elderly or low-income homeowners today stay in their homes, fix up their homes, and then let them live on the market value of that deed restriction while that house is now captured that will be available to a low-income homeowner to follow them. So that kind of addresses displacement as well as getting more homeownership opportunities. I mean, that's something we can certainly, we can prioritize just homeowner assistance and kind of putting it in. And again, just to reiterate, just in case I wasn't clear, the down payment assistance would also do an affordable housing restriction, a deed restriction in perpetuity.
Thank you. You can only go for so many years. longer than any of us have been alive. So yeah, and perpetuity and when people would renewal, um, whatever, um, we, we can, we can sort of talk more about that on how to balance that. I know that the city, uh, Medford did, did a huge announcement of, they had CDBG money available to help homeowners do, uh, do some repairs. And so, so we can, Not today, we're just throwing things out, spaghetti at the wall, see what sticks at the moment, but maybe really think about doing something like that. And how much do we want to go in? Because I would love to be able to either help first time.
I want to help people buy. I know it's really great. I love the transaction. I really love being an investor. It's a lot of gray hair, Karen. But it is exciting when somebody is able to purchase a home. But I also understand the displacement as well and trying to figure it out. So maybe that is something where we could say, we can talk more about it and try to figure out how to do it.
[Unidentified]: Um, so I think maybe two things and not for tonight, but just maybe it's something we could all think about. I think it might be good to try to target like a percentage of what we have and just kind of mentally set it aside and just say, this is what our goal is, you know, 20, 25%, whatever it is goal year over year, try to see if we could actually get that money out. Um, and then number two would be, I think. Based on these conversations that I think we already have a little bit of structure, but maybe come up with. an existing homeowner program and a first time homeowner program. And I think the only thing I would advocate for the first time homeowner program would be to kind of fill some of those gaps that we see like the maximum mortgage amounts and the maximum income amounts are pretty low. And I think that's also why we're not seeing a lot of this happening in our town.
So maybe trying to get that right balance of flexibility and maybe be a little higher than all the other programs to capture that missing middle that I think we have. Yeah.
[Roberta Cameron]: Penny, Teda, do you have anything else to add? Not at this moment. OK. Thank you. So I'm just going to do a quick little summary of what I heard and you feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. But one of the priorities is to continue building the relationships and bringing out getting get another one is education materials of who we are, what we can do and how can we assist. The third priority would be to have further discussion on how to create first-time homebuyer down payment assistance. while working with assisting equity buy-down, is that what you called it? Buy-down program. Equity buy-down programs to help low to moderate income households make repairs to their home while they're able to stay in to help this place. I feel like those three priorities is a pretty good group. list for one year, especially given our budget, one year. Roberta, you had something. But just a quick additional observation about equity buy-down program is that it would also be reducing the value of their home, which reduces their tax bill. So it would be a way to reduce expenses for those low-income homeowners. Yeah, it's like a double whammy.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Roberta Cameron]: Because their assessed value is no longer assessed like market rate. So yay. So we can talk about the pros and cons on that. Excellent. Yay. Anybody have anything else? Did I summarize appropriately? Yeah. Should we plan to try to do another NOFA in the spring ahead of the next QAP or? I was going to ask if we could continue the conversation next month about, you know, do we want to do an RFP for development? Do we want to create a program that we were talking about first-time homebuyers and or equity buy-downs? And then based on that conversation, then talk about the RFP. Does that sound?
[Jennifer Yanko]: Yeah, great. I know I'm not part of the board, but The equity buy-down seems like it's something that would help in terms of racial disparities because there are a lot of, you know, West Bedford is changing really fast for reasons that people have talked about and there are a lot of older homeowners who can't keep up their homes and that's led to a lot of people leaving and developers coming in and building
[Roberta Cameron]: You want to stop those nasty developers.
[Teda DeRosa]: I think if I could just like add to the developer conversation, and I don't know if this is something that's like falls on that slippery slope of working with developers, but you know, there are developers here in Medford. that are buying up a lot of lands, buying up a lot of the homes, how do we get them, like maybe having a conversation about how do we get them to build affordable homes for affordable home ownership? And I don't know if that's something that we can talk about or if, you know, if that's even a possibility or do we look for developers specifically that that's what they do?
[Roberta Cameron]: Great questions, and I think when based on my experience, and I can only speak about my experience working in the housing development bill is 1st. Medford does have an inclusionary program. So there is a certain percentage of the units that are going to be, has to be designated to affordability. Right now they round up. So if there's a fractional that it doesn't matter what the fraction is, 0.1, 0.2% of a unit that has to become, they have to increase their unit, affordable unit by that. fraction, so a whole unit. And then when you're talking about trying to do something with all affordable, my experience has been they're coming, those are non-profit developers, they're not for the profit. People are coming in saying we want to do this. And it goes back to, and I hate, I sound negative Nelly, and I don't wanna be that way, but they're gonna need financial gaps. They're gonna need financial assistance to fill that gap in their pro forma. And as I said earlier, we don't have the money in the bank to be able to make a significant contribution to fill that gap, so they would have to go elsewhere. But it's a great continued of conversations on how do we continue doing it? How do we continue increasing our funds and increasing our footprints in Medford so developers know that we're here and we can go on. Catherine.
[Katherine Buckingham]: Yeah, and through the chair, just in folks who are curious, The inclusionary zoning doesn't kick in until you have 10 units. So if you're building nine units or fewer, you're not obligated to build an affordable unit. If you build 10 units, then you're at the 10% mark. If you have 11 units, then you have to build 10% of that.
[Roberta Cameron]: So 1.1 affordable units, which would round up. At this particular moment in time, that will create two units based on the current ordinance. So you'll see a lot of people stop at nine. Yeah. can reduce that number to four in that way.
[Katherine Buckingham]: Yeah actually I just was on an inclusionary zoning webinar today and like learning what other cities do but it's just a balancing act because then if you make it really low then you might not have as much development in your city or but you know there's there's always trade-offs.
[Teda DeRosa]: Yeah. Somerville seemed like theirs was kind of low, and that hasn't stopped the building in Somerville.
[Roberta Cameron]: Yeah, Somerville is four units, and it's 20%. 20%, and we've got a stall. Somerville, let me rephrase that. Somerville has a stall pipeline right now. There are a lot of developers that have gone in and gotten permits or approved by the CBA, but right now it's stalled. yeah there's a pricing disconnect but that's a topic of another exactly i don't think there's any more space in somerville right now you know we can take that offline but i i grew up in somerville and i and i started my housing career in somerville and once upon a time it used to be Some of them had no place to build and then you go look at assembly and then you go look at everywhere else and astonished on like, yeah, we do have places to build. We just have to look, like, open our eyes. There's land.
All right, so we've totally went off topic, sorry. We'll put this on the agenda for next, with monthly and for March's agenda to sort of talk a little bit more about expanding those three, one, two, three priorities. Unless anybody has any objections, I would like to ask for a motion to adjourn. We've got Penny. So moved. Anybody else? Second. All right. We got a second. All right. I'm going to take a roll call here. Madam Mayor?
[Vice Chair Penelope Taylor]: Yes.
[Roberta Cameron]: Kayla? Yes. Roberta? Yes. Carrie? Yes. Teda? Yes. Lisa? Yes. With that, we are ending tonight's meeting. Thank you.
[Katherine Buckingham]: Thanks, everyone.
[Teda DeRosa]: Thank you. Have a good night, everyone.
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