Climate Equity Council 08/19/26

AI-generated summary. Written by gemini-3.5-flash from the transcript below, which is the record. It may be incomplete or wrong; it does not report votes. Every item links to the moment it began.

The Climate Equity Council met to receive presentations on Medford's affordable housing initiatives and the status of recent environmental and recreation grant applications. Lacking a quorum, the council did not take any formal actions but discussed future meeting logistics and goals.

0:00 Affordable Housing Presentation — Housing Planner Katherine Buckingham presented an overview of Medford's affordable housing definitions, inclusionary zoning rules, and the Affordable Housing Trust Fund's action plan and local programs.
48:33 Grants and Projects Update — Amanda Centrella provided updates on several regional grant applications, noting that funding was awarded for a community depaving project but denied for the open space plan update and Tufts Park stormwater improvements.
55:20 Future Agenda Setting and Council Discussion — The council, lacking a quorum to take formal action, discussed future meeting topics, outreach event dates, and methods to improve communication and track council goals.

[Katherine Buckingham]: housing planner in the Office of Planning, Development, and Sustainability. I've been in this role since May of last year, actually. It doesn't seem like that long, but I'm happy to give you an overview of what I've been working on. And I feel like I'm by no means an expert in everything yet, but can tell you what I've been working on. And yeah, so let's go to the next slide.

[Katherine Buckingham]: Oh, it's funny. I see, um, I've had this issue before myself where what I see is like the presentation, but not in presentation mode. Like I can see the thumbnails on the side. Um, does it show up properly on your screen?

[O2nzoxaatsQ_SPEAKER_09]: It shows up on my computer screen, but it does not show up on the Zoom that's being presented on the TV.

[Katherine Buckingham]: Um, why don't you, why don't you stop sharing and like try to let me share my screen and just see if that works. Perfect. All right. So I stopped sharing. Okay. Um, and then let me, I do have it open. So, although you just able to share, you might need to make me a co-host.

[Katherine Buckingham]: Sorry, I'm getting a pop up on my screen. Out of habit, I just always sign out of Teams if I'm going to share my screen. So nothing pops up. That's never been an issue for me, but one time in a community development board meeting, someone was sharing their screen and a Teams popped up and it was nothing bad even, but someone who was watching was curious and did a FOIA request to see what the Teams chat said. It's just like, oh well, it doesn't seem worth it. Okay, let me try sharing. All right, perfect, we can see that. OK, let me put it in. Is that in presentation mode for you?

[Katherine Buckingham]: Is it not showing full screen? It is not on our side. That's what was happening for me. For me, it is showing that I'm doing full screen. What slide is it showing for you? What is affordable housing? Okay, well at least it's on the right slide. Let me try to... I don't... No, we have it full screen. Do you have it full screen right now? Yeah, or not right now.

[Katherine Buckingham]: Great. So, um, just a little bit of background. Um, so I'm the housing planner, a lot of what I do, but not everything is related to supporting increasing affordable housing in Medford. So, Just to give some definitions, affordable housing, in a technical sense, is housing that costs less than 30% of the income of the households who earn below a specific level. And I'll break that down. So it's typically below market rate. below market rent, excuse me. And so there's like, there's naturally occurring affordable housing. That's just, you know, if someone's not charging a lot of rent or there are various reasons why that could just happen if housing is in fact affordable. But then at the same time, there's like affordable housing that is deed restricted. It means whoever lives there has to be below certain thresholds. And that's like written into the deed. So I tend to work more on that side of the house and there are a lot of like reporting things related to that. Also, to reference inclusionary or 40 B development so inclusionary zoning is zoning that Medford has many other cities also have that says If you are building more than X number of housing units, then a certain percent of them must be deed-restricted affordable housing. So in Medford, I don't actually have the numbers in front of me, but I believe it's if you have 10 or more units, then 10% of them must be affordable. And if you have 25 or more units, then 13% must be affordable. And 50 or more, then it's up to 15% must be affordable.

[Jenny Graham]: Do they understand that need to be affordable to the residents, not to the people that own the buildings? Because those affordables, when they put the prices over there, it's really not affordable, you know. So it's like, I don't know why they come up with this number.

[Katherine Buckingham]: Let me skip ahead for a second and come back. So this is when we're talking about like the limits, the income limits, this is monitored by HUD, the Department of Housing and Urban Development. And so annually they put out area median incomes for various metropolitan areas. So Medford is part of the Boston metro region. So we base our area median income, or AMI, off of that Boston figure. And so what you can see below, at the very bottom row, is 100% AMI. So that is, if you are making that much money, you are exactly at the area median income. So one person with a salary of $115,000, they're making the AMI. So most affordable housing is usually deed-restricted to say you have to earn 80% of AMI or less. So that would be considered just affordable housing. So when we're talking about like someone renting, a deed-restricted affordable unit, if it's a single person, then they need to make 96,000 or less. If it's a two-person household, two adults, then it's 109. You can look across the chart to see what the numbers are. The state does monitor what percent of city's housing inventory is considered deed-restricted affordable. That's at the 80 percent. mark, which, as you can see, is still a pretty high income. Incomes are high in Boston. If you're making 80% AMI, you still probably have a pretty high salary, but you could qualify for those units. In other circumstances, based on how the deed is set up, based on the details of the project, you can have it set to a lower AMI. So some very low income folks are at 50% AMI. Like public housing section eight that's all the way down to 30% AMI. So, in general, as a city, we want to see that more deeply affordable units so like usually 65% AMI or below, but our inclusionary zoning currently says. you need to have units that are 80% AMI or below. So then the folks who want to rent it, there's a whole elaborate process, which I can answer questions about if you like, but it's like done by a lottery. If you're eligible, you apply, then you get a registered lottery agent to like, you know, just kind of from a list, go through and see who is the recipient of those units. And then they have to go through an income eligibility. So it's generally speaking the same process, whether it's rental or home ownership. Does that answer your question?

[Jenny Graham]: Theoretically, yes, but not the real things like when you go and see... I don't know. Yes, the answer is yes. Like about your work, yes, but like when you see the reality, you know, when you go out there, you know, like it doesn't seem... that is really following the affordable ways for people to get those places. And first of all, having the lottery, we don't know how honest the people are going about the lottery, too, and have many other issues. But I still think that the affordable is not affordable yet for us. Yeah, I don't concede.

[Katherine Buckingham]: Yeah, I don't consider it affordable. This is kind of just laying the groundwork of what these terms mean so that when I talk about it, we kind of all have the same baseline understanding. That doesn't mean that Medford is like, great, 80% AMI is affordable. We've done our job. We're looking to do more, looking to do deeper affordability, et cetera. So I might hop back. So when I'm talking about inclusionary, that inclusionary zoning, that just means that for certain developments, they are required to create deed-restricted affordable units. And in practice, that means the market rate units end up sort of subsidizing the affordable units. So that's kind of how it plays out. 4DB developments are, I guess I don't want to get too into the weeds, but if a city is below a 10% threshold, where if 10% of their housing stock is not affordable based on this definition I'm talking about, then a developer can come in with a big project. And as long as 25% of the units are considered affordable with this definition that I'm talking about, then they can build whatever they want. They don't necessarily have to follow the zoning regulations. So some of the bigger projects we've seen recently, we've had two 40B projects come in because Medford was just below that 10% mark. So interestingly enough, if you have a 40B come in and they build a lot more affordable units, then that can actually help you bump back up to the 10% line. So then you have achieved what's considered safe harbor. So if you have safe harbor, essentially 10% of your housing stock is affordable. Again, based on that definition we talked about. And then another 40B could not come in. And then subsidized housing in general is if a portion of rent is covered through government funding. So, you know, Section 8 vouchers, which you've possibly heard of, and the rent is based on income. So this is just a little bit of a breakdown of who is struggling with housing costs in Medford. Around 5,500 households are below 50% AMI. So about 2 3rds of those are considered housing cost burden. So they're spending more than a 3rd of their income on housing. That's pretty much what the definition is. And in Medford, 33% of homeowners are over age 65. The median income for seniors is 44,000. So of that senior population, they're oftentimes very housing cost burdened. And then median household income for renters is rapidly rising. So just showing these increasing housing prices. Then this is the chart that I went through again. Does anyone have questions about this at this point?

[Katherine Buckingham]: I think it was just based on a previous chart that I used. It doesn't need to be pulled it anymore. So these are various housing strategies and initiatives and the affordable housing trust fund is a Is a citywide trust fund with board members and they have identified these strategies and initiatives. So I'll, I'll talk more about that. Affordable housing trust fund, but some of the strategies and initiatives that they've addressed to combat the affordability crisis is amending zoning. building on city-owned lots as a way to make projects more financially viable, facilitating housing developments in general, partnering with non-profits, finding ways to support individual households with housing rehab assistance, down payment assistance, rental assistance, et cetera, as well as advocating for affordable housing. So on our affordable housing trust fund, we have seven trustees, including the mayor, These are the current members. We're actually looking to replace Roberta Cameron. She's stepping down. So our new trustee will hopefully be named soon. The trust is almost two years old. So it's a pretty new trust. Some cities like Somerville have had an affordable housing trust fund for like decades. So that was why they kind of did, they spent most of their first year doing a lot of research on what the needs were. And once identifying those gaps, putting together this action plan. So this is the Medford Affordable Housing Trust Action Plan and Guidelines. It's a five-year plan and generally speaking their mission statement 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. These are some of the goals of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, promoting a welcoming, diverse, intergenerational, inclusive city with a mix of housing choices, using financial property resources to address local housing needs, increasing housing production so that there are more housing options, and preserving the affordability of the existing affordable homes we have. also fostering a safe, well-designed, accessible, and sustainable housing in the city, integrating affordable and diverse housing options across the city, expanding local capacity to implement housing initiatives, and also just increasing communications about the housing resources that we have. Some of our priority actions are building affordable housing partnerships with the Medford Housing Authority, preserving and converting existing housing into long-term affordability. So that one basically means making it deed-restricted affordable housing. So that would then therefore qualify to be on our subsidized housing inventory that I was talking about, the one in which we try to get at least 10% of our housing stock to be deed-restricted affordable housing. So if you were to convert existing housing to long-term affordability, then that would be making it a deed-restricted unit. research and implement programs to support first-time homebuyers, down payment assistance and equity buy-downs, planning fundraising and resource fair events, and advocating for affordable housing development policies to maximize resources available to meet the city's housing needs. This is kind of just a timeline of what the trust has accomplished in their first year and a half. Basically, it was established to have the ordinance that made it possible to have the trust. That was back in March of 2023, adopting the ordinance. The trust was created that fall of 2024. that's when the action plan was outlined. And then over that first year, essentially there were multiple stakeholder focus group meetings to get input on what was putting together. In January of 2025, the Declaration of Trust was officially recorded with the Registry of Deeds formalizing it. In the spring of 2025, we had additional community meetings. They issued their first NOFA for affordable housing development in May 2025. Actually, no one ended up applying. I think just speaking to the fact that this is such a new trust and therefore the need to get the word out about this opportunity. Although I will say, and I'll talk about this more, we don't have a ton of resources, so we have to be very strategic about what we're doing with the resources that we have. some additional community meetings before finalizing our action plan. And then last fall, we did vote to approve our first loan to Medford Community Housing for a project that had three affordable units. The project was essentially almost done, but they needed a little bit of additional funding to get over the finish line. And then they presented their action plan to city council. And then last winter slash spring, the board voted to approve a second loan to Medford Community Housing. And then this spring slash summer, we've been putting a lot of effort into planning a resource fair event for this fall. So just talking about some existing funding resources that we have, the CPA or Community Preservation Act has a total annual revenue of about $2 million. And over eight years before the Affordable Housing Trust Fund was set up, they could use their funds to support affordable housing. So they had spent about $4 million on affordable housing in that time. Now that the trust is set up, though, the CPC, which is the Community Preservation Committee, has decided to allocate all of the funds that they would set aside for affordable housing and give them directly to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. So that, therefore, is a reliable source of annual revenue, and then the trustees will have the ultimate say on how to spend that money. There's also, for CDBG funding, 1.4 million And then there's the North Suburban Consortium, which is a consolidation, a group of eight different communities that pool resources together to support projects within those municipalities. Just a quick overview of how much funding we have in the trust. You can see that thus far, we have about 1.3 million. We did vote to approve those two loans to Medford Community Housing. Excuse me. So 200,000 total. So at this point, we have about 1.17 million. Excuse me, still remaining. And this is the loans we were talking about to this project. It's 703 Fellsway West. There's one one-bedroom apartment and two three-bedroom apartments, and the three-bedroom apartment is kind of a big deal because there aren't many deed-restricted affordable three-bedroom units in the city, so that's great for families to see more of those options. This is the resource fair that I mentioned, hosted by the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. It's going to be September 22nd at 6 p.m. in City Hall, Council Chambers. After this meeting, I'll share the information with Natalie and Sam and hopefully they can distribute it to all of you. We would love for you all to attend. If you know of other folks you want to share it with, we're just really starting to advertise it a lot more now via social media, sending out various emails. But the vision for this is that we've invited many different organizations, both within Medford and regional as well, to table to have basically information about all the resources that they offer. And then we're also going to have a couple speakers with a moderator and have a panel discussion. The emphasis will really be about the importance of finance for affordable housing. So we do hope that we might be able to fundraise a little bit, which is you know certainly would help with our revenue but we have to be careful about the way that we do that the city can't explicitly solicit funds so we're just kind of share with folks like that if they would like it we can accept donations and everyone's invited to attend and learn about Medford's housing needs at this event. Unrelated to the trust now, we also have a housing rehabilitation loan program, which I help run. It comes from HUD's CDBG funding, Community Development Block Grant. And the way that we have structured the program is that folks who need funding for essential repairs to houses that they own can apply for these loans, but they need to be income eligible, so below those AMI threshold numbers that I shared. So in practice, the folks who are low income and homeowners tend to be seniors. So it's a really great program in terms of like helping with aging in place. So if there are central repairs like new roofs, new windows, insulation, et cetera. That's the kind of stuff that people can apply for. We structured it to be loans for up to $50,000, zero interest, deferred payment. So you only actually have to repay the loan when you transfer the title of the property. So if you sell the house, then you have to pay it off. the house passes like to, if like the owner passes away and then it transfers to their children, et cetera, then they would be responsible for paying off the loan at that time. So in terms of like thinking about energy efficiency, those are some types of renovations that could be included in this program, like HVAC systems, windows, insulation, et cetera. We also have a down payment assistance program. And this is in collaboration with NSC, the North Suburban Consortium that I talked about briefly. So of the eight cities or municipalities that are part of NSC, it's Malden, Arlington, Everett, Chelsea, Medford, Melrose, Revere, and Winthrop. And so all of these communities pool their HUD home funds together so that collaboratively as a group, they can be strategic about how to make that money go as far as possible And so that program helps income eligible, which is to say low income, first time home buyers for up to $10,000 of down payment assistance. One thing we're just starting to look into as an interesting idea is home sharing. I don't know if you all have heard of this before, but our city councilor Anna Callahan is really interested in this. And it's essentially the idea that basically it's typically senior citizens who own their homes, but who now have multiple empty bedrooms if they're empty nesters. And if they are looking both for some amount of financial support and also company to have a roommate of sorts, they can be paired with young folks, usually like graduate students, young professionals who are in search of affordable housing. So this is a way that creates more housing opportunities, affordable housing options, and it can be really win-win in terms of like, creating connections between younger folks and older folks. It can really increase happiness. I know that with a lot of senior citizens, there's sort of like a loneliness epidemic. And so it seems like this has a lot of co-benefits. So like not only just increasing the supply of affordable housing options, but also again, helping seniors with aging in place. So right now there's no program we have yet, but we're looking into it, seeing what some other cities are doing. And have reached out to some other local municipalities to see if there's any interest in kind of creating like a regional program because that would sort of I think have the potential to have a larger impact. So we're connecting with other programs to learn from their experiences and also reaching out to other potential partners. So that's something on the horizon. And by the way, if any of you are interested in that, we have a little bit of a very informal working group. So that's just another thing that we've been looking into. So that's my presentation. Do you guys have any questions?

[Jenny Graham]: I do have fear. Going back to the sharing, the home sharing thing. So the city will be responsible to check those students and, you know, those young professionals, like you said over there, like Corey and drug tests and all those things for the safety of those seniors. How does that explain?

[Katherine Buckingham]: There are a lot of very different ways these programs can work. And so we have not structured what, if anything, our program would look like. There are private companies, such as one called Nesterly that we've spoken with, that you essentially hire them. And then they handle all of that. They are set up to do those kinds of things, both the matchmaking, as it were. like that kind of social component, helping with legal things, leases, et cetera, like all the kind of logistical back ends of it, that's what they would do. So if we wanted to work with them, for example, that would be one option. It obviously does cost money, so that's why we're looking into maybe if we did it regionally, it would end up costing less for each city. Other cities and or groups handle it differently. There are some like nonprofits that do it, some like almost completely volunteer led organizations. In Vermont, we spoke to one that was almost completely run by volunteers, which is very impressive, a lot of work on their part. So we don't know how we want to do it yet. We're just kind of doing research to see like what the options are, what would make sense for Medford. So it's very in nascent phases at this point.

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, I think it's a great idea, but at the same time, it's very scary. And then I think, like, especially for the city to take that responsibility, you know, like, even if you're hiding a third party, you know, to be doing all that thing, if anything happens, it's always going to fall on us, you know. But I think it's a very interesting idea.

[Katherine Buckingham]: Yeah, 100%. Yeah, that's definitely something we're thinking a lot about. And so maybe it's something that we could even just like see if there are folks in the city who are interested in it, or if we can find organizations or non-profit partners who want to run such a program. We could even just help with marketing. There's a lot of different ways it can go, and a lot of these programs tend to be run by outside organizations, not run by the city. The city of Boston did do a pilot project working with Nesterly, that organization I talked about. But it kind of got a little bit thwarted because they started it right before COVID in 2020. So just a bad time to try to get people to live together. So they ultimately, it wasn't super successful, but I've also been speaking with folks from the city of Boston about their experience and they are like, potentially interested in picking something back up, maybe with Nestor Lee, maybe something regional again, like if we wanted to work with them. So I'm just sort of talking to different cities and figuring out what the appetite is.

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: It reminds me of like, you know, how people go to Europe and they backpack and they stay in hostels. Is it something like that? Am I understanding that?

[Katherine Buckingham]: No, it would be like you would have a lease. So I mean, you could structure it how you want, but probably six months to a year lease. So I mean, in a way, it's a little bit like if you're looking for a roommate on Craigslist. You're like, hey, I have an open room. Come live with me, except it would be very intentionally structured. So like Nestorly, for example, they do have like an online platform where you could post that you have a room opening and then other folks could search to see if there are good options. Structuring it would be the role that Nestor Lee would play in terms of helping make connections, doing background checks. I mean, there's just a lot of things that go into it, figuring out how to, if there are disputes that come up, how to mediate. So it's much more robust than just a Craigslist type of platform.

[Jenny Graham]: But if even like if there was a program that just help people, not only seniors, but any people that have their home, that extra space. I have friends that have their basement, you know, that could be used to rent, but like they don't have the money to or even the knowledge to maybe, you know, see what it requires for you to be able to rent those places. You know, maybe that would be a cool thing to do too. I'm kind of scared about those strangers at home. But anyway, my other question is about rent assistance. Do you guys have anything like that happening or thinking about to provide that for the city? Any type of rent assistance?

[Katherine Buckingham]: That's a good question. I personally haven't worked on that at all. I know we actually also have a social services coordinator for the city. Jason Stone is his name, and he's actually part of the Office of Outreach and Prevention. So when individual renters or tenants have issues, he works with them more so. So I don't think we have that at the moment, but that's something that the One of the ideas that the trust had identified as a program that they could potentially support. So that's something that's like on the menu of options.

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, we would like to put in a ask over there in back for you guys to consider that. We work very closely with Jason because he's part of our office and there are a lot of people struggling, you know, to Be the ramp, you know, getting sick or losing their jobs, whatever the circumstances is, I think that would be very beneficial for our residents at least a little help and have. you know, ask for them to come. And I think the problem, Jason is great with his work, but there is no resources out there. You know, it's very easy to sit down with him and he go through everything, but there is nothing available there that he can actually help those people. So I would beg you guys to consider that possibility. If there is any funding for that program, that would be very helpful. And that is a huge need right now for our residents.

[Katherine Buckingham]: Yeah, some other cities like Somerville have like entire office of like home stabilization essentially. So for folks who are like at risk of losing housing, working with them directly, we don't have the capacity or funding at this time to have an office dedicated to that. Um, that is something that I'm like, it's on my radar and I'm trying to think about like if and how we could integrate some of that. Um, there is a group called housing families that helps, uh, areas in the NSC, the North Suburban Consortium, uh, community. So all of those cities, including Medford have, um, that's a resource that they can talk to. And I think Jason will often refer them to housing families and it's free for Medford residents. So we always suggest that. Also when folks reach out to me about if they need help with housing rehab loans, et cetera, in addition to what we do, I am always happy to share additional resources that other organizations have, so pointing them towards A, B, C, D, mass housing, even mass save actually, like if people need help with like new windows or installation or things like that, there are funding opportunities there as well. So we try to like, if we ourselves don't have the resources, we try to help point people in the right direction.

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: I have like just a more broad question. I mean, you know, we're obviously witnessing like a housing crisis and like that leads to like unaffordable rent and all this stuff. Like, what do you think is the main reason, main reasons, I guess, driving that? And like, what do you think, like, what do you think, what solutions need to put in place to combat that?

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Sorry, go ahead. It's a very debated issue, but I just want to know because obviously you have a lot of expertise in this field.

[Katherine Buckingham]: Yeah, I mean, that's a huge question, a great question. I mean, I think there are just so many factors, just market forces. One very basic sort of supply-demand thing is if our housing stock is relatively fixed. If we're not expanding, then if the supply is saying stagnant, the demand is going up, price will go up. And an interesting case study is what's happening in Texas and a lot of big cities like Houston. It's a very different landscape and there essentially isn't zoning, basically. And so it makes it really easy for a lot of housing to be built and their housing supply is increasing a ton and prices are way lower, but it's obviously not that simple. And there are problems with that as well, like thinking about Hurricane Harvey back in 2017, like extreme flooding in low-lying areas where people arguably shouldn't be living or building or having all this impervious surface where there's nowhere for the water to go. So if you're not thinking strategically about where you're building, where is a safe place to have housing, There are so many considerations, and I'm certainly not saying Texas has solved the problem, but just sort of an interesting data point. And then another point of comparison in San Francisco, housing is extremely expensive there. They have a huge homelessness problem. You know, for better or for worse, folks in San Francisco and in California have added a lot of regulations around building housing, building a lot of things, and I think it's all very well-intentioned, but as the list gets longer and longer, it's just harder and harder and harder. So it's like this really fine balancing act of how do we think strategically about how we're building and how we're encouraging building, but also like try to meet the need. So I think that's a super high level answer. Trying to think what else I would say about it. Yeah, I mean, in many cases, like the history of zoning too makes a difference. You know, like I mentioned, we have inclusionary zoning, which is saying, at certain thresholds, you have to build deed-restricted affordable units. And that's kind of a reaction to the way in which historically, decades ago, when zoning was implemented, it was very basically exclusionary, where it was prioritizing single-family homes only in certain areas and maybe having like lot size minimums, where the minimum lot size is really big. And so then, okay who can afford these single-family houses on these large swaths of land? Like not a lot of people. And so that type of zoning makes it really hard for people to live in certain areas. So that's why one of the recommendations we have like from the, actually not just the Affordable Housing Trust Fund Action Plan, also like Comprehensive Plan, et cetera, is thinking at how we can change our zoning to help accomplish many different goals. But one of them is to support increased production of housing. And so building more housing, even if it's not technically deed-restricted affordable housing, theoretically, the availability of more housing, increasing that supply should help reduce housing costs, or at least increasing the supply. It is great when we do have that inclusionary zoning for larger projects, and that means you're getting more housing as a whole, and then also more affordable housing. This is kind of in the weeds, so stop me if it's getting too technical, but we're looking at a zoning ordinance change to, it's called allowing fractional payments, so when we think about Inclusionary zoning, there are requirements that you need to build X number of units. And so then what will happen is developers will just build slightly below. So if we say if you have 10 or more units that you're building, then one of them has to be affordable. So then developers will just build nine because they don't want to build that tenth unit because then they're on the hook for building one affordable unit. And that happens at various thresholds along the path. So what we're trying to do is say, OK, in certain circumstances, instead of building a whole additional unit, you can make a payment. to the affordable housing trust fund. So some cities allow payment in lieu. So instead of building an entire unit, you can just pay x amount of money into the affordable housing trust fund. And so we never even considered this before we had an affordable housing trust fund, because it would be complicated. Where do you put the money? But now that we do have a trust, that's theoretically possible. But as a city, our stance is that we'd rather have an affordable unit than have the money. However, if we're getting to this place where people are just building less to avoid building that extra affordable unit, then maybe it makes sense to think about taking fractional payments. And so instead of being on the hook for spending however many hundreds of thousands of dollars to build that unit, maybe they pay whatever ends up being $50,000. into the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, and then they'll end up building more market rate units, which is still from our perspective, good, because we're trying to increase our housing production.

[Jenny Graham]: But what about like rent control? Like, you know, the prices, you know, you go to Everett Square, understand that you have more than $3,000, but like, if you go to the West Med for deep inside, you know, like, is there any type of, rent control of prices because I've seen residents over here also coming like, oh, my landlord decided to increase the rent for next month, you know. They don't want us to sign the contract again, but they're going to increase, you know, like, and it's between $100 to $400 more, you know, like, and that's huge, you know. So is there any type of rent control or any law that protects those residents with those or they can just increase as much as they want or?

[Katherine Buckingham]: Yeah, so you may agree. Yeah, you may have heard in the news there was a proposed ballot initiative that would go before the state if it's not actually going to happen. But the idea was it would, the state could vote to have rent control. But the Supreme Judicial Court struck it down. So that will not even be going to the ballot as an option. So we don't have any kind of rent control. The one thing, and that's for market rate housing. For subsidized housing, there is, for deed-restricted affordable housing, there is rent control in that. Those numbers, if you think back to that chart I showed, numbers are set by HUD, and it's structured that You cannot pay more than 30% of your income towards housing. So working backwards, if your income has to be below this amount, and then you can't be paying more than 30% of your rent or of your income into housing. So that is kind of a form of rent control, essentially. Once affordable housing is already created, if property managers want to increase their rent, they have to come to the city. They have to come to me basically and ask, can we bump up our rent X amount? Technically speaking, they sort of can go up to the max limit of what HUD would state. Although Medford specifically, we try to keep the rent increases as small as possible. And I know some other cities just say like, okay, well, you're allowed to charge the max rent. And we say like, We essentially say no, which, I don't know, I think they could fight us if they wanted. But what we've been looking at recently is when HUD puts out their annual numbers of the area median income, I've been looking at what percent it's increased. So like every year, the median income is pretty much going up. But from last year's numbers to this year's number, it went up 3.6%. And we are telling landlords that we don't want to see rent increases by more than 3.6%, because if that's what HUD is saying incomes are increasing by, then we don't want housing increasing by more than that percent. Like, luckily we have said that and people haven't pushed back and they're just like, okay. So that's what's within our purview. So we try to control what we can control. But yeah, I mean, generally speaking, we don't have rent control. That would be like a large picture policy thing that is very politically... contested. So there was a lot of opposition to the rent control ballot initiative before it got squashed. So anyway, I don't know. I'm not an expert on it, but that's what I can speak to.

[O2nzoxaatsQ_SPEAKER_09]: Well, thank you for that, Catherine. I took a lot of notes. That was very informative. Thank you. Amanda, I see that you are on. I know that you wanted to talk to the group. We are not at quorums. We can't discuss anything, but did you still want to share?

[O2nzoxaatsQ_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, let's tap into anything else. I know we're a little lagged.

[Katherine Buckingham]: One thing I will say is I will follow up with Natalie and Sam and give information, especially about the resource fair, because we really want to encourage as many folks to come as possible. We have one confirmed speaker. We're hoping to confirm one or two more, both of whom have said they're interested, checking their schedules. As soon as we do that, we wanted to update our flyer just to have the speakers' names. Um, so if, if we don't have that finalized by the end of this week I think we're just going to move ahead with the current flyer that I already showed you all, but then I am going to reach out to the Office of Outreach and Prevention and get translations for the flyer as well. So I definitely want to share that. If you all want any more information about any of the other programs I talked about, feel free to reach out to Natalie or Sam. And oh, well, when I share the flyer and things, I'll just have my email. So you can follow up with me directly if you have any questions. If you are interested in being on the home sharing working group to help figure out what we want to do, how we want to structure things, let me know. That'd be great. But yeah, I think that's all.

[Jenny Graham]: We have a back to school event on Monday. If you want to have some flyers for us, or I can even put in the backpacks if you want.

[Katherine Buckingham]: I'm supposed to be out of the office the rest of the week, but maybe Natalie, could you coordinate that with Izzy and see if she could get the flyers to share? Because that would be awesome.

[vIXAnO_MxfQ_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that would be great. There might not be enough time for the translated version, but maybe we can... Yeah, but I have to do something. Yeah, sounds good. Let me write that down. I saw all the little backpacks in room 207. It looks like a good stash of stuff. Yeah, almost 200. We've got almost 200 registrations.

[O2nzoxaatsQ_SPEAKER_09]: My goodness. All right. If that's all, then I will... Thank you, Katherine.

[Amanda Centrella]: I'll hand it over to Amanda. Hi, everyone. Excuse me. Thanks for having me. I, I know it's been a minute since I've been in front of you guys, and I wanted to just provide a little update on a couple of the projects that I presented and we discussed together. Oh gosh, several months ago now. So as a little refresher, there were three, I believe. One was for, so there's this grant program called the Eco One-Stop Grant, and you could apply for, it was basically like a hub for applying for a lot of different grants. I know some of y'all were a part of those applications, some other applications, and we've been hearing back on awards. It's been a really, really tough grant round. I think it was exceptionally competitive. I have not heard of many awards being granted within our region. And I know it's hitting us hard in addition to other communities. So just want to take a second to acknowledge that because I know so I imagine some of y'all worked on some other applications too. Um, so bad news. First, I guess, um, we had applied for an open space and recreation plan update. So basically funding to take our existing, uh, open space plan, which I have open here. And, um, and update it because it's, it's becoming due for something like that. And unfortunately that funding was not awarded. But I'm very grateful for you all listening in and writing your endorsement as part of the application. So we'll figure out, you know, next steps from there on that one. Um, similarly, there was a project being proposed at Tufts Park, uh, some major stormwater and drainage work, um, in addition to, uh, renovating and redesigning the playground. Um, it's in an environmental justice, uh, neighborhood in our, in our city. Um, and was part of a regional application that had a couple of other projects doing stormwater management and unfortunately was not awarded either. This came as a big surprise to me because I thought it was a very competitive application and it was regional, which was one of the, I think, priorities for the grant programs we applied for. Um, so sad to say that that one will, you know, we'll have to be going back to the drawing board a little bit. The silver lining is that we set aside some community development block grant funding to go towards redesigning the playground, which was last meaningfully redone in 1998. And so that part of the scope will still proceed. We have the funding available and, you know, we hope to prioritize making it a climate resilient space. So thinking about heat and access to water, as well as a fun place for kids and families to be. But we'll have to think through some of the bigger picture pieces for Tufts Park. And then the last one, so this is the good news. We did receive a grant for, this was the depaving project. So if this is ringing any bells, we're partnering with a couple of other municipalities and Green and Open Somerville in hosting community workshops and setting up sort of a process for when neighbors want to get together and remove hardscape like pavement from their private property and replace it with plantings or more permeable surfaces, which will be really great for stormwater management. And then in addition to that, or as part of the project, it also involves taking a look at Fairfield Street in West Medford, that part of the city, where there has been some very localized flooding issues that occur, and thinking through, you know, can we replace some of the asphalt with some permeable hard surfaces. Maybe there's green infrastructure like plantings or bioswales, rain garden type things that can help absorb water and can help mitigate some of that issue with high volumes of rainwater during storms. So we're talking now with the grant agency about that and figuring out what the next steps look like, but I just wanted to thank you for your endorsement of all of those projects and will definitely keep you in the loop on both the things that didn't move forward at this point, but also certainly on the deep paving project. Would love to involve you guys if you're interested in the outreach involved in that and how to connect with community on that program. So sorry, I just rambled at you all for a little while there. Happy to take questions on any of the above.

[Jenny Graham]: congratulations you know bad news but good news too so that's good yeah yeah we i think i can respond you know for the whole group we really enjoy being part of those you know projects and you know we love to your your ideas and you know you guys are trying to accomplish you know and give our you know our feedback and you know like think of the residents and We really appreciate that, you know, like, because we kind of feel like we kind of like the voice, you know, their voices over here. So we really appreciate the opportunity, you know, to have that chance to speak up a little bit, you know, for them. So thank you.

[O2nzoxaatsQ_SPEAKER_09]: Because we don't have quorum, we can't discuss anything. But are there things that you would like to discuss in future meetings? Did anything sort of percolate from these two presentations that you're like, oh, I'd love to talk more about that or anything else?

[Jenny Graham]: I think I would suggest that maybe reach out to Catherine, you know, my boss, and just see like if there is anybody else from the team, you know, interested to participate in the meetings, you know, I think that would be a good thing for us. But in terms of the, you know, I think I personally would like to know more about what's going on with the trash thing, you know, like, we haven't had any updates about that. Just to see where we are, you know, and what's going on, what is coming, you know, what can we do, you know, to help inform people and, you know, what is coming up, what's, you know, I think that would be the main thing.

[vIXAnO_MxfQ_SPEAKER_04]: You said Catherine, I'm assuming it's not- No, no, no, it's Ingra. Okay.

[vIXAnO_MxfQ_SPEAKER_04]: I never know how much we're able to talk about or not, but I know last meeting, way back in June, We talked about like the energy bill checkup and winter preparedness. It's kind of like future meeting topics. We definitely have some like dates secured for those events, but we can just like keep the ball rolling and talking about those.

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, but it would be good to, you know, like maybe, you know, hopefully we have enough people to go to the meeting and then you go through the calendar and see the events and why do we agree, because we agreed some dates with the brander, you know, the upcoming events.

[O2nzoxaatsQ_SPEAKER_09]: to be the same patient and like yeah don't pass like oh it's tomorrow yeah exactly yeah i don't think that we can i'll double check this but i'm pretty sure it's not breaking um meeting law if we sent out an email of like here's the next cupping upcoming events yeah i don't like you can respond and be like I'll be there, or could we do this, but just sending them out to their own calendar.

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, that would be great. Yeah, yeah. Because I think the last one confirmed was the winter preparedness in November. So we went all the way to November, so we have everything else set until then.

[vIXAnO_MxfQ_SPEAKER_04]: Yes, November 19th for the winter preparedness and then a little bit earlier, October 8th for the energy bill checkup at the senior center. So again, the email, all of those dates and times.

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, but those emails kind of get lost, you know, like so unless... I know. We are saving the dates and stuff, you know, like it kind of just pin all the emails. Do you have Medford emails?

[O2nzoxaatsQ_SPEAKER_09]: yeah so we could put things on your calendar on your outlook calendar so maybe we do that too when we send to the email so that way everything's in your calendar you know to be easy too it can just be one you know long thing and then we can put in our calendar you know like we have our office yeah like you could send a save the date or something yeah yeah or the what did Brenda use

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, it's showing you the alphabet one, right? Like a meeting invite, you can just do like acceptor. Yeah.

[vIXAnO_MxfQ_SPEAKER_04]: Would it be helpful for these climate equity meetings to have like invites instead of just like here's the agenda and like it's this day, like would it be helpful to also have that as like a meeting so it's like pops up in your calendar? I think that would be helpful. Yeah, because I know like there's just so many like dates and time.

[vIXAnO_MxfQ_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so I think the meeting invites would be good just because whenever it's like right in your face on the calendar, yeah, I can definitely do that.

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, so we can talk about the logistics of the events, you know, next meeting maybe, you know, and see what we can do. But in terms of information, like I said, you know, the trash model, I think we need to follow up with that a little bit. That's good.

[vIXAnO_MxfQ_SPEAKER_04]: Maybe I'll ask Will to attend in that case, because he's pretty involved with that. So I'd like to prepare something. Yeah.

[vIXAnO_MxfQ_SPEAKER_04]: the harvest your energy a bit coming up yeah yeah october 17th yeah we might want to discuss about that yeah did brenda call farm of the water Yes, Kyla was able to get the water truck. We talked a little bit last meeting about the Harvest Energy, but it was all the way back in June. One of the interns in our office is spearheading that and really organizing, so if you have any specific questions, Kyla is pretty knowledgeable.

[Jenny Graham]: If you could send me an email with those flyers and the dates of the stuff that is in place, that would be very helpful. And I can just copy them and put in our main calendar for our office so everybody can see too. That would be helpful too.

[vIXAnO_MxfQ_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, because I know they put a lot of work into getting those flyers. So having them sent to people is, yeah, that's great. So I can definitely write a note.

[O2nzoxaatsQ_SPEAKER_09]: Great. Cool. All right. And then I won't keep us for too much longer. We're approaching eight. I have a question for a general question, and I don't want to go in too much of breaking open meaning law, but sort of how has your experience been on this council? Like, what are the things that you really like that you do? Are there stuff that you wish you could do more of? Is there stuff that you're like, I hate when we do this? Like, I'd love to just learn about everything. Like, tell me all about it.

[Jenny Graham]: I personally think what I hate is that sometimes we leave like 8.30, you know, like late. I think like maybe we be a little more aware of the time, you know, like even if it didn't go through, maybe push that to the next meeting. But like, it's tough. It's, it's a long day. I don't want to be into 8.30, you know, like 12 hours is a long day. Um, but like, I love that we have agenda. I love that we know what are we going to talk about, who's going to come, you know. And I understand, especially when you have guests, you know, like time, you know, it's very hard to manage, you know, people, but like maybe let them know, hey, we want to be a little more considerate about time, you know, like you don't need to go through everything, but maybe can break, you know, like for you to come. My main issue with this meeting is that, You know, other than that, I think it's, I love being part of this, especially because we hear so much from the residents, even though as connectors, we are not working directly with them, but we are a lot of events, you know, like we have our liaisons who always share things with us. So we are always, you know, connected with that. So we know what the needs are there, you know, like, so we feel like we are representing everybody, you know, and So that's good. But at the same time, it's good for us to learn some stuff too, because like, sometimes they ask if it's like the trash things, perhaps, you know, a lot of people are talking about them. You had no idea what was going on. So I think maybe that communication, whatever happened needs to be, you know, it's getting better, but like, even getting even better, you know, like, like we are the ones who are working with the people. So maybe anything that has happened like that, we are the first ones to know. Because that way we don't look, excuse me, but like don't look stupid, you know, like, you know, when they come talk to me, don't you work in a city hall? I don't know what's going on, you know, like, and don't you, isn't that your job to be, you know, so sometimes we don't have much information to provide, you know, so we'll be. Great. If you know anything coming up, you know, like, Hey, just reminded this is happening, you know, like, well, if you want more information, we are here to provide that for you, you know, I think that communication I think can lack a little bit sometimes.

[O2nzoxaatsQ_SPEAKER_09]: Oh totally. Do you guys have a good understanding of sort of all what the departments do? The town that I was in previously had something called Citizens Academy where each department head did a It was like an hour-long presentation. So it doesn't need to be as in-depth, but sort of going through what each department does from the clerk's office to the sustainability DPW. So that when people would say, why isn't the clerk doing this? The residents that did it were like, oh, the clerk does this, this, this, and this. This is why they're so backed up. Do you feel like you have a good understanding on it?

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, like our manager, well, she's not a manager anymore. She changed the name. the role, but like our boss, she has been doing that. She has been bringing, you know, the department heads, you know, to our office to talk. But then sometimes things happen, you know, you want more information about, you know, certain things that they are doing, you know, that, but I think that is missing the communication with the department has to. But I think I just don't want to be seen. I think like everything else, you know, when you talk, you know, normally when you talk about an issue, Brenda used to ask, would you like to have the parking people be able to explain that to us, you know, like, and then we all agree, you know, that yes. Unless it's something that we discuss, you know, I don't want to come over here and have an hour presentation with someone that I already heard before.

[O2nzoxaatsQ_SPEAKER_09]: Oh, 100%. Your time is valuable. I don't want you to hear the board clerk set an example like what the clerk does for the board.

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, but yeah, we love to have, you know, the guests over here, but every single time that Brenda brought us over here, was because we had a discussion about something, and then we just saw the need of having a person here.

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: And we all agreed, right? Whenever we had a guest, they had a presentation, we get educated, and as a result, we share that information with residents. Like, you know, the event at the senior center. The people pay for the electrical bills.

[vIXAnO_MxfQ_SPEAKER_04]: Um, so that people weren't getting like scared because it's kind of a, like a common thing that happens. Don't do this. Yeah.

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: It's like things that we should have awareness about. We don't always have. And so like hearing from experts, you know, people who work in these departments, it's like really helpful, especially because, you know, I'm a, I'm a resident of Medford too.

[vIXAnO_MxfQ_SPEAKER_04]: yeah you know so like i i can benefit and then i can tell my friends and family and you know the residents that i work with you know yes i've only been this is only my my second meeting but i know even last time in june when we met and kyla was talking a bit about the harvest your energy like i do feel like it's a two-way learning street because you provided so much helpful information to make the event even better so it's not just like us giving like you guys are equally.

[Jenny Graham]: But if you don't have those type of things, like we don't have the opportunity to interact with each other. So we see each other all the time, you know, here and there, but like we don't know what each other, you know, like, you know, sometimes you don't even know people's name, you know, it's just like, how are you doing, you know, but like, you don't even remember people's name, maybe you heard once, you know. So it's good to this rotation of people that they always reminded, you know, what everybody's doing, where they come, where they're from, you know, and then if anything happened, we know who to look for, you know.

[O2nzoxaatsQ_SPEAKER_09]: True. I don't know if we could do that of doing, it would be a great way for me to get to know everyone too. Being new is maybe like having people come in for like five minutes of, hi, my name is Sam. I'm the climate planner. People come to me for X, Y, and Z. if you have questions, quick questions, but it's 10 minutes. So then it's not, I'm hearing the same pitch from everyone, but then you get name to face and, oh, my friend was telling me how they need to do this, which relates to that person. I now have a connection. Would that be beneficial?

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah. But like, not even like the meeting because our meeting is late too. Everybody want to go home, but like maybe one day that like the city had the HR had done this before, even the mayor, everybody goes to the chamber, you know, like it kind of gathering. But I think it's kind of like so like. Like I would love to have everybody with their name tags on and what department they're from. So I'm not constantly asking like I can see, you know, oh, I want to know more about planning. Let me go over there, you know, and talk to those people, you know. But I think that is is missing ways of how we all can interact with each other and learn about each other. You know, like it would be cool if someone someone who does everything like that in the chamber, you know, like I said, and meet everybody. I have been here, what, for three, four years, and I don't know everybody. You know what I mean? Like, so it's, that'll be good. And it doesn't hurt. And like I said, for you. Yeah, that's good. We'll all meet everyone. But, but like, I like that little introduction, you know, hey, you know, But like, we don't have it at this point. Like, oh, it's Ice Cream Social. We all come and we're at Ice Cream. We normally just go to the people that you already know and kind of talk, you know, like, hey, you know, like, I want to meet new people. I don't know. But I feel embarrassed to say, hey, who are you? You know, like, who does that?

[vIXAnO_MxfQ_SPEAKER_04]: No, I fully get that. It's like it's almost too informal or it's almost too formal, like too stubby. It's like something kind of in between. I'm, this is maybe a little too like elementary ish but I'm almost wondering like in the chambers of everyone had their little sticky notes on with their titles and it was kind of a game where it's like if you interact with residents. like kind of stand up or walk. So then you can kind of see like, oh, this person.

[Jenny Graham]: So it's like, yeah, I mean, I haven't fully the idea, but just, I mean, if you know who the people from the office of prevention outreach are, you know, go to them, you know what I mean? Like, and yeah, like somewhat a lot. Yeah.

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: They can talk about, you know, what's the day in the life of their, of their responsibilities, you know?

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah. I mean, anything that is not just showing up and, you know, like, yeah, we need a little direction, you know, that'll be helpful. A little direction, but not too, not too, yeah, boring, yeah. Yeah, but like, maybe, you know, don't you have your thing? No, it's, it's sorry. It's Amanda who's having her thing, right? But it's the same office, right?

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah. But that's open for everybody, so it's not just for the city to call. Never mind, forget it.

[vIXAnO_MxfQ_SPEAKER_04]: And I guess one quick question, when you brought up your boss, Catherine, in terms of trying to get a better sense of more people to add to the group, just so that it's a little easier to meet the core, is that something that you were thinking of doing, or did you want us to

[Jenny Graham]: No, I think you guys, you know, should be the challenger. We did talk today at the meeting because, like I said, with the funding and everything changing, you know, like how it's going to be the scope of work that you're going to be doing now, you know, and if this is going to be something that's going to be required for us to be there, because initially that's what it was. It was a requirement for physicians to be part of the council, you know.

[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: And now that the grants are changing, we don't know if it's like

[Jenny Graham]: gonna be part of our responsibilities anymore so gotcha just something to and we need people to so yeah that's something that you want to continue you know doing that it kind of reflects to the brands that you know she was able to work to pay everybody um if it's that you know she can maybe some people need more hours and maybe they can be part of this you know but it's not something that we can come and tell people like hey you know room to come for her so just let her know that we need more people and yeah like today Natasha didn't come but if we had somebody else over here we could just yeah get things done yeah I'm being aware of time I don't want to give you past eight any final thoughts that are not breaking open meeting no just reinforce the thing that you're talking about. We just need goals, you know, like, what are you doing? So we kind of see that we have been doing something, you know, like, because just come and talk about the way you actually want to see things happening, you know, like, what are our goals with this discussion? What are we doing? You know, that's all.

[O2nzoxaatsQ_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah. Are there, and I'm going to phrase this in a weird way, so we're not breaking open meeting law. Are there goals that you would love to see on the next agenda? be talked about like two goals that you would love to like as part of this group i want to achieve x and we'll put it on the agenda for next time no we can just put goals just go on the agenda and then you can kind of all right and then we can explore that together you know and see how everybody's see different yeah what we want to accomplish all right perfect i never want this to be you leave and you're like well i just wasted an hour and a half

[Jenny Graham]: To be honest, I've never felt that way, that I wasted my time, but I like to think, oh God, thank God it's over.

[O2nzoxaatsQ_SPEAKER_09]: I've been on committees where it's like, all right, I just wasted two hours, so I never want to feel like you're wasting time. So yeah, I don't know what you guys want to see. Awesome. Get out of here. Great.

[vIXAnO_MxfQ_SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, it's at least a little helpful in the summer where it's not much, but I think

Jenny Graham total time: 15.8 minutes total words: 2747