##VIDEO ID:baA1LOEo__g## okay testing all right you can hear me in the room Claire can you hear me on the zoom I can hear Zoom beautiful and we can hear you awesome the last few times we had like six minutes of technical difficulties before we get start but I think that this time we are good all right uh good evening everyone uh welcome to the November 20 24 uh meeting of the city of rever affordable housing trust fund board my name is Joe grai I serve um as mayor Keef's appointee as chair of the board we'll begin with taking attendance Joe graly chair and present Claire and zerillo present anio is lucky present Dean Harris Lori Manzo present Matt uh Wolford mentioned that he may be joining virtually tonight um or absent so I see that he's not here at the moment um Leila Petri PR and then Deb Frank mentioned that she couldn't make it uh due to a work conflict so we do have a quorum I do want to start with some brief housekeeping notes starting Claire you mentioned that we have a conflict with the January meeting could you talk through um talk through that with us yeah so the uh city clerk just gave us a heads up that um December to January I forget the exact dates but they're going to be doing AV and Technical upgrades in the chambers uh maybe with review TV not sure but they asked that we do our meeting virtually uh if you've been to City Hall physically recently you'll know that the city hall conference room that little one that we've met in before is no longer available they do have this kind of big open air cubicle situation going on behind the chambers um where Human Resources is located ated we can meet in there um we'd have to consult with r TV if they could hook up all their streaming stuff in that room but it may just be easier to join on Zoom I'm happy to meet you know in a public space with someone if they don't have computer access share my computer but whatever works best for everyone just for that January meeting as of right now yeah I I would just propose a motion for ease of Simplicity you know to make that a virtual meeting you know I think that it's really valuable and important to meet in person uh but trying to make all the AV and everything work for a site just for one meeting I think it just makes sense to do that virtually so I'll make that motion do I hear a second second okay all in favor I okay any opposed okay so we will move the January meeting to uh to Virtual we'll update that and then I just wanted to note I don't think we need to make any changes this year but I also want to just see if anyone Flags anything I know that last year we took December off as our regularly scheduled meeting time was overlapping with Hanukkah um my understanding is that we are not overlapping with any major holidays on December 11th uh and I think that it's early enough in the month you know that we should still be able to meet but I want to make sure that I'm not missing anything you know major holiday conflicts events City Hall events but my understanding is that we should be good to go for December and I think that we'll have based on the agenda that we have today we'll have some things to work on and discuss so i' propose that we keep that on the calendar and if for some reason something comes up or more than half of the board is traveling or has holiday obligations or something then we can adjust as necessary any questions about either of those kind of housekeeping notes terrific okay so we'll move on to the treasur is update uh good evening everyone my name is anoi I'm the treasurer of the affordable housing trust committee I'm going to provide the current balance as provided to me by assut Newton the assistant direct budget director uh the current balance is $663,000 78 this is due to an increase from um we we received some interest payments uh which is the which is explains the increase from last reading of the budget could you repeat that figure in I sure 66353 78 you any questions um for an i okay okay uh so moving on some critical program updates and I think these are some areas I Lena is here um if you have additional things to add beyond the top line that I provide we'd love to have you come up and do that uh but first and foremost housing production plan so some of you were on the housing production plan working group in which case you already received this notification uh but for members that were not part of that as well as anyone else in the public that may be interested uh the final draft of the housing production plan has been submitted to the rier city council for their public hearing uh which will be held on November 25th um the Monday November 25th city council meeting um this plan really is the product of many many hours of public feedback and discussion um you know folks from nonprofits from private sector long-term residents newer residents um we had an in-person session over at um believe was Rivier high school or one of the schools where people came and put their ideas on whiteboards like it was a really thoughtful collaborative process I think those of you that were part of it would agree um and the document a is interesting you know I think it it compiles some public feedback um that some of which is exactly what you'd expect and some of which might not be uh and B it's very much aligned with a lot of what we talk about and what we do here um on certainly the need to promote affordable housing on the fact that the number one driver of people away from Riv when they asked in surveys you know what would make you leave the city is housing costs right inability to purchase or even continue to rent a home they can afford um so with that um please I'll distribute the plan for everyone to read um and I encourage folks to show up on the 25th for that public hearing and certainly speak in support of this plan um having it in place will certainly help us as we continue to apply for State funding for projects um and have that as sort of a formal blueprint to to back stop some of the work that we're doing um around affordable housing development and rev L anything major related to the HPP that you'd want to add or I guess just to add one benefit of establishing and adopting an HPP is that it establishes a safe harbor meaning that um for example like with 40b uh any developer can come to the city and propose uh dense affordable housing mixed use development but we as a city have um more local power and control and needs pering decisions um although we we would like more affordable development projects it just it helps us in that sense so any questions about the HPP okay great so definitely encourage folks to check that out and participate um another major item related to housing that's going to come before the city council um for won't have its public hearing on the 25th we're going to ask them to approve it to move forward to the public hearing so it's kind of a multi-step process to get this uh done uh but we are going to be asking for a public hearing for approval to then submit to the state so I guess a third step uh adopting two um H dip zones in VR um so that's housing um Housing Development incentive program H dip um so this is a state program run out of the executive office of Housing and livable communities and we are going to try to take a kind of unique take on it so the point of this program is to Spur development in Gateway cities and certainly R you know is one of the Gateway cities um in Massachusetts uh there's two different tax incentives that are part of the program to try to encourage Housing Development and housing production um and historically including in Rivier uh this has been utilized to Spur some market rate housing uh particularly in areas where there wasn't necessarily enough demand for it you know I think that as we all know right I think in Rivier there's the there is demand and a lot you know for market rate housing we are not in the situation that maybe we were in 20 years ago where nobody wanted to build Market housing we have lots of people that want to build Market housing so part of the one of the two H dip districts that we're proposing to the state to adopt um the intention is to utilize it as a tool for affordable housing development and offer the incentives to those who include um the 20 20% threshold of affordable housing as part of the project this would be a way you know I know that we don't have inclusionary zoning in the city but to try to encourage mixed income projects um particularly focused on the shirle AV um and Green Street um areas kind of down out over to the beach so it's bucketed into two zones uh the Subic Downs Zone uh which will be the normal HD process but then that surely have kind of Green Street area um would Encompass the affordability requirements um so a little bit of you know jargon I think may have thrown out so I'll send some of the program description around but we think this is a really useful tool uh to ensure that development in that district is going to continue to in include affordable units well not continue to afford includable units probably start to include affordable units right I think uh if you look at a lot of the new development in that quarter it's mostly been 100% market rate um so the ability to add in um affordable units as part of these is something that the city certainly believes to be important and vital so the legal process for H dip um is first there needs to be a public hearing that's advertised for two weeks and we we could have just set up a public hearing kind of Standalone just for H dip but we thought it made sense to make it part of the city council process since they have public hearings anyway and the city council ultimately needs to also vote to approve it in addition to the public hearing so we're going to follow the council's schedule so the council would refer it to a public hearing I think for December uh and then from there after that public hearing uh the council would then ideally hopefully vote to approve these districts and send them to the state um um I know I kind of threw a lot up there so I just want to see if folks have questions about that program about that process but this is another reason for both ahtf members um as well as members of the public who are interested in these issues to come to the city council meeting on November 25th um it's going to be a good one to come and certainly observe but also to participate in and speak out and support if these are things that are important to you anything major that you think I'm missing from that one the right now yeah so questions on this program or this process yo I just want to flag something yes I I can't see the audience so I'm sorry if I'm cutting someone off but um we are advertising a lot of Spanish interpretation for our City Council meetings and subcommittee meetings so for the two people probably watching at home we do are we're going to be having Spanish interpretation for most if not all of our City Council meetings subcommittees public hearings which I think will help especially with the fear of talking in front of a big group of people who don't speak your language so that's just something I want to flag thank you for that other questions on the H dip so this could be really useful and interesting tool um most there aren't a lot of communities that tried to use these types of tools specifically on affordable development so we could hopefully be setting an interesting example you know in a positive way for the Commonwealth so moving forward on that um the righta if we want to just do a quick update on the first time home buyer program we'll move on to that um the short version is we have a few people that look qualified and you know they've submitted their materials we just have a few other things that we need from them to kind of move forward and and finish it off but if you want to check in with the status as of today we've received 11 applicant um and three of them have received additionally Awards um it's kind of been a slow burn because to move forward along the process they'll need a sign purchase and sales agreement um and so those are the that's like the final um step for those three conditional awards that we've made um and then we have three other uh applicants who are in our possibly eligible status who are working to compile income verification information U mortgage preap pre-approvals um and so that's where that's at it's a tough Market to buy into this year um down payments are for single family homes are probably like around 60,000 70,000 like I don't the Federal Reserve like had their statistics for the average American Savings is about $5,000 I mean it's just a tough time but we hope to give applicants 6 months to be able to come up with a purchase and sales agreement and if at that time they do not and let's say they go through the process again and um they'll just need to reapply for funding at that point any questions about that program so it's ongoing Y is there a waiting list that's a good question yeah so there's not like a waiting list per se uh the way that it's working is that it's the first five to fully complete the application and demonstrate their full eligibility receive conditional Awards um and then that conditional award is essentially held until they complete the purchase and sale uh from that point we would know you know who um has their documentation in and could be deemed eligible so I I guess we hadn't termed it as a waiting list but I think it makes sense to think of it in that way where we would know the order of who submitted their information um so if for whatever reason one of the five the first five you know became ineligible for whatever reason or they didn't do a purchase and sale or they changed their mind and they wanted to withdraw from the program we'd be we would be able to look at the other applicants um so that's a good I had really thought of it as a waiting list but that's a probably I said that just so that if folks were still interested heard it late maybe they would throw their name in a hat definitely and I'd say it definitely makes sense to apply a because there are still technically two spots even though there are a few folks that are going through the process and may get it anyway you know they might not uh and then also it's a useful exercise to gather the information anyway because they may be applying for other first-time home buyer assistance programs like the state and I think that we're going to want to do this again right so when we do do this again folks that have already put this information together filled out an application that'd have to reverifying questions on that program they have a daylight for um for this time so it's until funds are exhausted yeah yeah until funds are exhausted well we've been telling folks we since we don't have a waiting list is just that the expectation is that um there are other people um moving along with the process and whoever finishes their complete application with the purchase and sales agreement um it's like first come first [Music] serve other questions comments feedback uh related to firsttime home buyer great I think we had a pretty longer conversation about this last month to talk about how we might want to shift it moving forward or if just repeat it exactly as it is so continue to think on that you know as we kind of move through um it's great to see the success of the program it's great to see that we're going to be able to award it to five folks um but we as we discussed a lot of the challenges related to it are things that are sort of outside of our control you know the the interest rates and High um expensive down payments right now it's just it's it's a challenging time but it'll be great to be able to help out you know five folks and and help them be able to to do that here in the city so moving on um so we've been discussing the disposition of um the city owned and tax title properties this is something that we are going to push back to December before submitting to the city council due to the fact that we have both the H dip and the housing production plan to go forth um want to make sure that we're spacing these things out a little bit not sending too much to the counil at the same time I thought this would be a good time um we talked a little bit last month about some of the balancing act of you know we have these lots and it's sort of this question of do we get vids to come in that are specifically to build you know affordable housing do we want to you know look at people that would be interested in coming in and building a market rate home and using the proceeds to fund what we're doing you know at the trust fund do we want to do a mix of both um I would appreciate if people have had a chance to think through their thoughts on kind of their feedback like I'm here I'm I'll be part of the evaluation process and Lena um when people submit uh responses to the RFP once it goes out um so really wanted to just get folks thoughts on that if they've had a chance to kind of think further right I don't know if you want to add anything to us to kind of how that process is moving forward on our end I actually don't yeah yeah we're kind of still that's a bit medium burner not back burner uh but those other items kind of came first on the agenda but we're going to continue to move forward on this one so um any questions thoughts feedback on on that piece of it so I will say and i' kind of be curious as to people's thoughts then you know my ideal bid you know would be someone that wanted to to it would be a low bid but they would be then taking on the cost of doing subsidized home ownership units you know I think that if we we had that I think that would be what I would kind of prefer to see you know come in I think we want to see what the process is and make sure that any biders are financially capable and have done these types of projects before demonstrated the capacity to do them um but I think that it's kind of a rare opportunity to to use these types of parcels um you know we're certainly never going to as a trust you know be able to afford to kind of like purchase a parcel and do a new build of a home for affordable home ownership on it um that would be just way beyond our capacity financially um you know if you remember we've talked about maybe like purchasing older properties that are probably need a lot of repairs and need a lot of work and are a little bit kind of need some TLC uh so the chance to do sort of a new build as an affordable home ownership project I would probably prefer that but I certainly you know open to different types of bids that come in but wanted to just see if people had agreed with that you know conditionally agreed had questions thoughts and do I need to clarify for anyone what I'm talking about um about this RFP process chatty good no I think we're all generally aligned and on the same page so I think that that's helpful um it's another you know in a line of things that we hope to really see some action on by the end of the year um make it a really successful year for us which is great um or you know other updates from the planning and Community Development side um on other things that even if they're not related necessarily to these ahtf items but just things you'd want to update us on um and then um is there any update on um the Le's trailer park project that since the last meeting no okay yeah things are just continuing at PACE with that okay so other questions about any of these it seems like we're all kind of aligned on everything which is helpful but not the best TV for our TV viewers that's okay um great so any other items to share uh late additions to the agenda or comments no okay then my main thing that I would just want to uh leave us with then and reiterate is that that meeting coming up on the 25th it's certainly it's not a requirement for people to attend but I really strongly encourage people to do so I believe the subcommittees will start at 5: but I'll confirm that um Claire would probably know for sure I don't see her buing in so um but I will get around to everyone that calendar um as well as the housing production plan draft uh and then also the information about the HP program if you want to do some further reading on it uh as we'd really appreciate everyone's advocacy um for those two projects moving forward so yep um I just wanted to give you all an update on the complete neighborhood streets initiative complete neighborhoods program um with um MHP with Christine madora and Laura Christoper that we were working on in the Shirley AV neighborhood with um helping small businesses owners who are interested in bu building housing um be able to do predevelopment um sight feasibility so we're shifting we're planning to shift the scope of work to um just because um Laura Christopher is going on maternal leave to shift the scope to looking at our comprehensive resoning throughout the city but kind of tie it back to shirle a because that's the grant was basically what it was for um and thinking about how we can um modify our zoning to align with existing conditions um with the built form um with reducing lot sizes lot Frontage reducing parking um minimum requirements and um that these are goals also coming out of the HPP as well and so that's what we're looking to do with MHP now um the only uh place around the city is just the JF yeah when we originally applied for the grant last year the focus was on shirle a but it's basically an initiative to help spur affordable housing development um and we thought like sure shab would be a good place to start because it's like basically a complete neighborhood there's MBTA um service around that neighborhood um there's a lot more um market rate housing going up but none of it's affordable so it dovetails nicely with the H dip you know for that reason and that's one reason why Laura Christopher and I have been two ships passing in the night but we're going to connect and it'll be great to have her come to the next meeting if she's available to come and talk about that initiative and ways that it aligns with some of what we're doing so uh I'm going to invite her to the next uh meeting and I think that would be really helpful great other questions on that all right then I think we had a a tidy one today um so unless anyone has anything oh any anything any questions comments from the those in attendance I'm all right great uh we appreciate um you all being here I'll make a motion to adjourn second uh actually before I move that forward I'll also want to um send our best to Matt's dog that was a very adorable picture of the dog that was sent out um if you can hear us Matt uh thank you for the picture but then also send a picture of her in full recovery mode as well when she's running around because she's very cute we'll do thanks Joe thank you okay so motion to adjourn all in favor I okay any oppose all right we will see you in four weeks