Affordable Housing Trust Fund Board of Trustees - Regular Meeting

An item that we have is for LROP, but Amy hasn't joined yet. So next item we have is Durkee Farmhouse. And I was going to ask if we could go proceed with that to start with. Mark has Laura. Is she in the waiting room yet?

She's not. Amy's there. I've asked. I've allowed her to talk. I promoted her twice and it keeps getting declined. So I assume that's on Amy's part.

Amy, can you hear us?

She's muted currently.

Yep.

Amy, can you hear us? We cannot hear you. Looks like you're not muted anymore, but we cannot hear you.

Okay.

Okay. Let's go ahead and proceed to strategy 3.2, item 2C on our agenda, which is the RFP for the property. We did hear back from Kim in procurement, and she forwarded some updates from legal counsel on the RFP that we had proposed. So I will forward that to everyone for review to get your comments back. I think we're proceeding on that. That's happening in parallel to several other activities that are going on. So I would say this one isn't the highest priority, but I will forward it to you to get your feedback and we can decide on some dates that we may want to publish that. And again, I think we mostly just want to have that available for the time when we do or we do become aware of a property that could be interesting to us. So any questions or comments on that?

No.

Okay. Okay. Mark, still no sign of Laura or another request from Amy? Mark, you're muted also now.

No. Amy's permitted to talk. The only other person in the waiting room is Rob Rhodes.

Okay. So we'll shuffle things around here a little bit. We'd also need Amy to talk to the small grants program update. Let's skip over the budget approval for a second first and move to board member updates. Who would like to go first?

Sure, I'll start. Uh, so today I was at the Chapa housing round table, the, or whatever work, I forget exactly what I signed up for, but this was the, uh, 10th of 12 meetings. Um, we talked about today's topic was like how to do, um, public outreach, you know, and to get support, you know, you don't have to get a hundred percent of the vote. You just have to make sure you get the percentage you need and, make sure you're targeting the right people and strategies for doing that. On Thursday, I will be going to the magic, uh, affordable housing meeting. I believe it's in Lexington or no Sudbury. I don't know.

Wayland.

Wayland. One of those towns that direction. So, um, I'll be going down to that. Um, I signed up for the conference in Worcester in June. Um, I think that's all I can think of at the top of my head at the moment. I think there's the Aspect Regional Housing Consortium holding a meeting soon as well, which I won't be able to make. I don't know if someone else is going to attend. Oh, and Yigby, Yes in God's Backyard, has made it into the budget bill, I believe for the Senate was reviewing it. It's in a very, it's much condensed from the bill that I originally saw, which had a whole bunch of things other than Yigbe in it. But this just basically allows religious institutions to build housing by right on their property with certain income restrictions on it. So it's in the budget bond bill. CHAPA has reached out and asked people to support it. I can send her on that link for the CHAPA stuff. I think I sent it to you, Marianne, or I might have sent it to Marm. I can ask it to be circulated to the rest of the board if people want to write it as something to support it to their legislatures.

Yeah, I did receive it, Mark, and I sent it in. So I guess if people are interested, we can send it out to the trustees. Do you want to receive it? Yep. Okay. You can send that out. Mark, just before this meeting, we got a message from Carolyn Reed at Habitat for Humanity, and she says that she has an update to provide. So should we invite her to our next meeting? Okay. So we'll add Carolyn and 87 to Harawan to the agenda for our next meeting.

I believe she is speaking at the Acevedo Regional meeting that's coming up. I'm trying to find the date of it.

Yeah, I think I saw that as well. Okay, good.

June 10th. It happens at 930 in the morning.

Okay, I'm gonna try to go to that. I should be back. So learn to attend. Susan, do you have any updates to share?

No, I don't.

Okay. Angus. Any updates?

No, not me. Thanks.

Matthew.

No, no, nothing for me.

Okay. we're going to plan to fill up all this free time that you're going to have now with, with having relieved your, your responsibilities on select board. So, and yeah, that's yeah. Thank you for all of your years of service on select board. It was yeah. Tom was lucky to have you serving so long.

Thank you.

Bartlett, I know we have one update. Do you have others to share before we talk about our visit?

Only a minor note from the planning board that the Lupoli companies have changed the numbers of units in the big apartment building that is in front of the planning board. What I'm mostly interested in is that the number of three-bedroom units has increased by five the number of two-bedroom units has decreased by 10. So now there are 19 three-bedroom units in that building. And I'm not sure if the number of affordable units, I think that's still 13. I'm not sure how they're going to be distributed, but I was pleased to find that there are more family units there. So that's I think really pretty much it for me.

Okay. So Bartlett and I have an update to provide. We had a site visit today to senior housing in Brookline at the invitation of Mary and Sal Lapoli and Morgan Pearson. And so, Bartlett, do you want me to start and you can provide the commentator?

Sure, go ahead.

Okay, so Lepoli is looking to partner with an outside organization to develop senior affordable housing. So the partner that they're looking at right now is HSL, Hebrew Senior Life, and that's the facility that we visit today. Of all of the or in the industry, it seems like they have the most successful track record. So I think that based on what we saw today, they would be a good partner. The site that we saw today in Brookline was all senior housing. It was a combination of affordable and some market rate. We visited properties with three buildings with each had 70 to 90 units, all on one city block. We went for, we looked at different apartments that were about 640 square feet with full kitchen, one bedroom, living area and closets. I would say the really interesting part was the amenities that they have. So they have full-time staff. In addition to maintenance, they have an activities coordinator. And then within the facility, they have a hair salon, a shop called a bodega. They had a library, a fitness center, a room that they use for movies and presentations, laundry facilities. It's a very engaged community. The activities coordinator, we talked to her for quite a bit about how they build that community, how they keep tabs on the folks there and make sure that if people need help, that they're referring them to the right resources. But a lot more amenities, I think, than I expected for independent living. HSL does all kinds of units. They have several facilities in Eastern Mass. They have some continuing care that starts as independent, assisted memory care, but this facility in Brookline was just independent living, and they still had a lot of amenities. So anything to add on the Brookline site, Bartlett?

I want to also then talk about... Well, I certainly was impressed with the number of services that they provide and some of it they do and some of it they partner with other organizations so they bring in a huge amount of resources for the residents which is very impressive and they talked a little bit about the financing and their dealings with the state and their method of dealing with the state and how successful they've been They have a lot of facilities. It was a very impressive organization, I thought.

The methodology they had for really building the community and for keeping in close contact with the residents, they call 3R. I don't know if it's trademarked, but it's been successful enough that they offer that as a service to other facilities. So they currently are, in addition to their own properties, they're using their employees and their staff to build out that process and that support system for other housing properties.

Yeah, Sal Lupoli did seem very interested in working with them just because they're big and they're successful and they provide a really good service. And that's what he says he's aiming to do in Littleton. Sort of in general terms, he wants to have a lot of senior housing. HSL says that, you know, they're... their process sort of ends up with facilities of sort of between 70 and 90 units. That's the economics work and the scale for resources works with those kinds of numbers. And we didn't talk at all about, you know, the specifics of how that would work in Littleton, Sal seemed to think that 70 to 90 units was reasonable from their point of view. And it just was an impressive meeting.

Yeah, and it was a shift in what we had been thinking initially about affordable housing, right? Because this would be 70 to 90 units, all affordable. The location would be 410 Great Road, right? That's what Sal's looking at right now. So that was a change. So not on 550, but across the street. The HSL people really like that idea of the proximity of the seniors being located together, but right across the street from all that 550 offers. And here, we asked some questions, and here are the answers that I noted. So we asked about the levels of affordability. And they said that that would depend on how the numbers work, that they would, uh, they would want eight to 16. That's generally the number of project based. So that's where residents would pay 30% of their income and the rest would be AMI dependent. So up to 80, but probably more in the 30 to 60 range. But again, um, as, as we've seen a lot of that depends on the numbers and what they can, what they can make work financially. Um, Bartlett asked a question about making this project a combination of affordable and market rate. And they said that that's really difficult to do with the way that the numbers work. So it would be all affordable.

Yeah, the finance industry just can't cope with anything that complicated. They're bankers.

We asked about having a percentage of the units preference given to Littleton residents, and they said, yeah, that's common. They said the max the state allows is 70%, but most communities are lower than that. 40 to 50 range, I think, is what they referred to. We asked about timeline and they said that that depends. You know, the upfront work with the town, they had asked about that. We had one question that I didn't know the answer to. We talked about funding and they said that they're there would be an expectation, Mark, as you told us, that Littleton and through the Affordable Housing Trust or CPC would invest something. And they said that at a minimum, that would be to signal to the state our support. And they said that's very important that we show some skin in the game, that we're excited about the project and that an investment from Affordable Housing Trust is a good signal. So the question I had was, would that have to go through town meeting? It seemed like that cost them some time in Stoughton because they had to wait until May. I think everything was lined up, but then they had to wait for a town meeting vote in May. So do we know if we were to make a recommendation to fund this project, if we would have to go to town meeting?

So technically, I don't think we have to. because we have a lot of money sitting in our coffers. But politically, it's probably better to do it in October at the October town meeting and get the funding there for it. There was a lot of pushback from the FinCon before about the Affordable Housing Trust having a lot of money sitting in their bucket and being not being accountable to town meeting for spending it. So I think going to town meeting and spending our money is we don't, technically we don't have to, though I think it might be a wise decision to make. It doesn't necessarily slow anything. I mean, it's October, November. We don't have to wait a full year for this. We don't have to necessarily ask for more money from CPC. And since it's already money allocated to us, it's probably not a big deal to get it through town meeting, but.

I'm wondering what we actually are asking for, though. Like, I mean, we have permission to spend the CPC money that's in the housing bucket that's been allocated to the trust. The trust can do it unilaterally. Like, what are we going to say at town meeting? And what if people voted down?

We're just dealing with Steve Finuti, who is nervous about people that he doesn't know well enough. spending a lot of town money. So I think if we go to town meeting and just say, you know, we've got this money and we're working on a partnership with Sal and whatever other company is involved, and we're going to be putting some of the money that we have into this process. And I mean, it's just as information, really, not even asking for a vote to reallocate it. think that would keep people happy.

And technically, Matthew, it's not the money that's in the housing bucket. It's the money that's already been allocated to the affordable housing trust. The money in the housing bucket is still Oh, right. Okay. Right.

Okay, okay. So and if we decide that we need to put in more money than we have cash, we can we can you know bond it we can borrow some money and that would require a town meeting vote i think yeah but that would be a way of leveraging something

And we made no commitments today about anything, right, as we can't. But we did say most likely we would be willing to contribute something, but we also said we're not Brookline, you know, so we don't have those kinds of funds.

I mean, does SAL have a sense of the scope? Yeah. And the budget?

Not yet. And I think, honestly, that will be HSL that will come with that.

Okay. Right. But we can, I mean, there's round numbers associated with, you know, building units in a big building. And, you know, if he's talking 80 units or 70 units could multiply, you know, the five or $600,000. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So before we go into too much more detail on, you know, kind of the mechanics. What's your reaction to this project and for having a 100% senior center or senior assisted affordable housing at 410 Great Road?

Personally, I'm excited about it in hearing your description of it. How it goes over is... Another issue, we had that one meeting where people aren't looking for rentals, they're looking for ownership, which isn't going to happen. I mean, maybe we have to be the people who tell them. You're not going to be able to afford selling your house, your house that you've lived in for however many years, and buying something somewhere that's affordable. That's the reality, but a lot of people aren't facing that reality. Yeah, they can sell and use that money, invest it, and use it for rental. That's sensible, but some people don't see the sense, unfortunately. And, you know, I'd be... Personally, I'd be hesitant about talking about it at town meeting. But maybe that's just me being scared to be shut down. Because, okay, I get we don't need a vote. But are we going to create a bigger hornet's nest? I don't know. That's just my brain, sort of. My old brain.

I think it's a valid concern, yeah.

Yeah, I was going to say, you know, that was my initial reaction, too, and sort of the reason I asked the question about what are we going to say at town meeting. I think my initial reaction is that If this thing came together the way it's described, I'm 100% in favor of it. And I'm just kind of skeptical of Sal, honestly. You know, he's a big developer, and I just don't trust that he's altruistic. So I think one of the big questions that we're going to get right away is local priority for units, right? That's the first thing that people are going to say as well. We're doing all this stuff in Littleton and building all these units in Littleton, but then no one from Littleton moves in. Right. So we'd have to sort that. And if we get the state involved, I think that makes it much harder.

Yeah, I think... One benefit of this is I feel like, and Bartlett, correct me if you had a different impression, but I feel like we'd almost be taking it out of Sal's hands and putting it into the hands of HSL, Hebrew Senior Life. And they're very concerned about their brand, right, and the quality of the product that they deliver.

Right. I mean, from what I gathered, you're right that it would be an HSL project and Sal would be involved in some extent. but it would be an HSL project and they are subcontracting to sell. The issue that I see is if something like this goes ahead and we end up with 60 or 70 or 80 of these senior units across the street, I'm worried that SPAL will say, okay, the planning board asked for 81 or whatever the number is, affordable units, the 10% for the 550 site. And he's going to say, okay, here are all your 80 units. And there's only 13, which he's committed to doing. There's only 13 at the 550 site. So That's going to be a hard negotiation, that he can use 40 of his units over there and the other whatever number are a bonus. But I would really like to see a mix of affordable and market units at 550. Hmm.

I'll say I kind of agree with you, Bartlett, that I don't want, I think developing the 80 senior units is a great thing, but I wouldn't want to do it at a cost of not developing any affordable family units.

Right. Well, he does have to provide some family units, and I think he is committed to 10% of the affordable units being family units, but... I just don't wanna see almost all of the units go across the street.

But that would mean like 72 senior units and out of the 800 that he builds eight family affordable units at 550 and the rest at 410. Potentially. Yes. Potentially, right? Like if he plays it the way that you expect him to play it. And I think that was the fear that I was sort of trying to put my finger on earlier.

And I think that's real, right? Because I don't think he's going to offer more than what he's committed to. And I think that will be part of the negotiation. And that's something that we did not talk about today. Part of the reason is, you know, today was a partnership meeting, right? And apparently HSL is a very highly sought after group to put these in and they can kind of take their pick of which project where they'll invest. And so we, you know, Bratlett and I were very cooperative. We asked a lot of questions. But the discussion about what happens at 550 and what that number is, that's between us and the poli. That doesn't have anything to do with HSL. So we didn't want to really muddy the waters today. But knowing that that would be a future discussion. And something that I think we'll have to talk about and be prepared to make a recommendation, right, to planning board, you know, what if Sal comes back and says no more or that there'll be, you know, exactly that number, the, the 10%. So 80 senior affordable, and then the remaining family units on five 50. Right. Will we accept that or what will we accept? So I think we don't have to decide that now, but I think we have to anticipate that that's going to be, we'll get to that at some point. But it sounds like everyone likes the idea of this HSL-type center. I think it would be good at some point for others to visit it. I mean, it's an impressive place, and I think it would be great for the seniors in town. And, you know, they like a lot about the site as well. It's right off 195. They talked even in Brooklyn. They said we have so many trips that they make to Market Basket. The fact that it's right down the road from Market Basket is huge. We mentioned that it's also the proximity to Senior Center, to the library. I mean, it's a good location.

Yeah.

Oh, and Sal did bring up the fact that he is not pursuing at all 37 Shattuck.

Interesting.

Did he give any explanation of why that was? The town meeting vote not to declare it surplus.

He said he personally has received a lot of email from residents.

Hey, email, you're taking our town hall away from us.

Jesus. People. I think he didn't feel that he had the support of the town, I guess is the summary.

Right. I would have to agree with him. I think it's a good site for senior housing, but I don't think the town is ready to make a deal on that.

Agreed. Sorry.

Okay. So I took some notes here. I talked through most of them, but I'll send them out just so that you have them as well. And or I'll just have actually have Sophia put them in the minutes and we can we can follow up. There's actually there's another meeting tomorrow to talk about 550 King Street that I was invited to. I think it's a follow up to this to the meeting that we had today. So I'll send around a note after that and let you know what happens there.

That's just one quick piece. I think hearing everybody's feeling about SAL and certainly knowing feeling in town about it, anything we do, we should be sure that the organization that is building it or providing it, it takes center stage, not SAL. You know, whether we go to town meeting to do it or just publicity or whatever, it's this organization that likes our location or this location for their services. I know you can't leave them out because he owns the building, but don't tie it into expanding what he's doing.

I agree with you, Susan.

Yep. Yeah, I think HSL has a really good branding also, right? So why not leverage that? Independent of what people think of Sal, I think that that's a really strong brand in senior living. So why not use that?

Right. And the services that they offer and all of that. Stress that kind of piece more if we can.

That's good input. Thank you for that.

So Marianne, both Amy's on and Laura's on. I can promote Laura now.

Okay.

Can everybody hear me?

Yes. Yay.

So sorry about that. Did you want me to go ahead or do you want Laura to go first?

If you don't mind, Amy, I'd love to have Laura go first since she's nice enough to join us on a Tuesday evening. Thank you so much, Laura, for joining us. We really appreciate you being on and welcome back. It's good to see you. Thanks.

Good to be back. Sorry, I've been in a waiting room for a half an hour, so I hope you had a business to get to.

Sorry, we waited initially for a bit, and Mark's been on the lookout, so sorry for that miscommunication.

I just saw you appear a couple minutes ago.

I think I was in a Teams meeting.

Oh, that could be the problem.

I finally went to the website and got a different and saw that it was a Zoom. Anyway, sorry for that.

Well, thank you for joining and thank you for all the work that you did on the RFP. It looks amazing and we're happy to talk through it here.

Sure. So I guess if there's if it through you, Madam Chair, if there's questions or edits. I think it's probably, I don't know if it's easier. And I apologize if there was some formatting errors. When I opened it up today, it looked like there were blue lines where I don't know where they came from. Anyway, hopefully yours wasn't like that. I can either share it or Someone else could, I don't know if I have sharing authority.

I think you should be able to share.

Okay, let's see if I have it up. Okay, hold on a second. We had it up earlier.

And that's what it's saying.

There it is. Okay. Sorry. We got it.

Are you able to share, Laura? Would you like me to pull it up?

Maybe. It didn't seem to come up. Let's see. Is it there?

No.

No, share, share. Yeah, it doesn't seem to want me to share. No, it's not sharing for me.

Is it sharing for me? Yeah. Okay. All right. I have it up in Adobe. Is that big enough for everyone to see? Yes. I can see it fine, yes. Is there someplace you'd like to start Laura? Do you want to walk through the, the contents or do you want to start with questions people might have? What do you think?

I think probably start with questions unless it, it's more efficient to go through, you know, line by line. I don't think there's too much that's different, but, um, you know, obviously there's more background and, and, um, Yeah, so why don't we scroll through unless someone has a burning question?

I have a couple, but I can wait till we get to those sections. I think we can do it that way.

I'll do that in case. Okay. So the invitation to bid is just kind of standard boilerplate, but it goes in here. And, you know, through the work of the engineers, the septic capacity came out to 30, 32 bedrooms. If you get approval from the conservation commission to use the 1.3 acres of upland in the adjacent

um uh conservation land um I think it's 28 without that um without that land um right does does do those numbers include the um the three that are the three bedroom septic system that is there now or do they exclude that

That is excluded. Okay.

So this is in addition to the three-bedroom?

In addition to the three-bedroom, yes. Perfect.

Great. Thank you.

There was a chart where they subtracted it off, but then when they added the 1.3 acres, they didn't show it. It was a question I had, too. So the invitation to bid is just that. And then the proposal submission, it's basically just laying out that it's subject to Mass General Law 30 and where and when you need to submit. And what you need to submit goes to the next page. when there's questions, there's a time limit on when they can ask, the kind of anti-liability, so that saying it's your responsibility to undertake your own review and analysis. And, you know, we're doing this for informational purposes to make this, you know, more consistent. But you may find something we didn't find. Okay. Site tour. There's always a site tour. Voluntary. But no one takes notes. People ask questions on the site as you're walking around. And so it's to their advantage to do it. You try and you know, not get too deep into the weeds, but it's an important part. And it gives you an idea of who might be interested in responding. The background section, I think, was new or at least expanded to talk about what's on the site and your desires to retain people. both buildings and retain and rehab both the house, I probably should use rehabilitate, both the house and barn. And that, you know, basically giving the developers and architects the ability to be creative and not locking them into any one scenario. I think that's probably the broader, the better. So I did give an example, but made sure that it was, you know, that they are, I was clear that it was an example of what they could do. So any questions around that? Cool.

So I know you address it in the criteria, right? For the unacceptable, you know, And I was just wondering, um, and maybe a question for the trustees, like how, how important it is for us to keep the house. Um, cause I know we went back and forth about that a while ago and there was questions about the historical significance. And I know the unacceptable column said demolishing both the house and the barn, right. That that would not be acceptable. Um, And so I'm just wondering what we feel about demolishing the house.

I think we shouldn't be too precious about it. I think that old houses are expensive and hard to retrofit, especially to meet code. And we would be spending, we potentially could be spending a lot of money to make something that isn't, you know, to jam a square peg into a round hole.

That was kind of my feeling too, Matthew.

I agree. And that house is in really tough shape. It's been empty for probably close to 20 years and The last three years, the sump pump has been disconnected, so there's been different times there's been water in the basement. So I think it's going to be a hard building to salvage. I would much rather keep the barn.

Yeah, I mean, I think we should acknowledge the political realities that you know, there might be pressure, definitely might be pressure for us to, to save it and use it or at least the envelope, but it's probably not cost effective.

Yeah. And I'm just a little afraid it might scare people away if they feel that they have to, um, rehab the house. What do you think, Laura?

Um, um, I agree. We didn't go into the house when I was there to look at it, but you could see that it was in really rough shape. you know, it certainly would open up the development so that it wouldn't be so dense on one side and it would allow for parking a little bit more parking that I think was going to be a concern. So happy to adjust it. And you know, either to, you know, I don't know, if you want me to leave the option open to rehab it, but not, I don't know. That's about it.

Yeah, I think keeping the option open, but making it clear that there's not a huge penalty for taking it down.

The house, I'd really like to preserve the barn if possible. But the other comment I was going to have then is we need to, if you do something with the house, like remove it, that doesn't affect the 32 bedrooms, right? There's still three or four bedrooms for the house. All right. So we just need to make, I don't know how you make that clear.

Yeah, I think the three-bedroom system would be abandoned. And so you'd add the three bedrooms to the 32.

Yeah, I don't really care how it's done, but it just means that it's not a maximum of 32, it's a maximum of... 35, including the house.

Okay. Sue, do you agree? Mm-hmm.

Okay. Sorry, Marion. The three-bedroom system is effective. Well, I mean, I don't think it's ever been used, right?

Right. It's never been used. It's brand new.

Well, it's a 15-year-old brand new system.

No, it was put in a year or two before, before we bought it. They put it in as part of the part of the donation to the town, the developer installed that.

Okay. Okay. So Laura, you're okay with making those changes? Yep. Right. So then would this change to 35?

If we're going to keep the option open, I'll just put language in that says 32 with the house, 35 without the house.

Got it.

This was in the other one about conducting three community engagement sessions. I don't remember talking about it. So I highlighted it to see whether that was something you were planning, if you were ever planning, or if it was a ghost from another RFP. Do you think it's important to have those? I guess how interested are the neighbors? That's kind of where it usually, you know, having an, having an, open meeting to answer questions prior to the rfp going out at least they would be educated about it um i don't think you need three honestly i think i think you you know maybe one you could do it in one You just have to be prepared, you know, for the questions and have a little, you know, I mean, well, I can't offer to help, but I can offer that, you know, we can put a MHP can help. I not probably the best time to bring this up, but I'm retiring July 2nd. So I'll be passing you off to one of my colleagues next month. So we'll get you mostly there, but they would be able to help you with a community engagement session.

I think having a meeting with the immediate neighbors or that neighborhood I mean, it's a fairly defined neighborhood. I think it would be useful to see if we could defuse any opposition, at least some of it.

Do we need to advertise this in the RFP, though, or is this just something we can do independently?

I think you can do it independently. I don't think you need to do it independently.

So we could plan to have the session, but just not just remove it from this document. I'd remove it from this document. Yeah.

Okay.

And just pausing for a second, Laura, congratulations on your retirement. We'll certainly miss you. It's been a pleasure working with you. I guess it's just over a month away.

So I know it's creeping up on me. You know, so anyway, let's see.

All right.

Moving on, we had talked about doing a ground lease. I assume you're still in favor of that, a ground lease versus a straight conveyance.

Remind me again why we want to do a ground lease versus a conveyance. Is there any advantage or disadvantage?

It's still a conveyance. It's considered a conveyance. It usually is looked upon more favorably by neighbors that you didn't give the land away. You still have some control over it. You don't have very much control over it. Otherwise, it would trigger public construction. But it would still be an asset of the trust. The land would be. And the lease is in the first position for recordings. And so the affordability is usually locked in there. So it does give you some protections on any kind of foreclosure or issue. You have the rights to protect your land. It's really, you know, your choice. Most municipalities and trusts now and even housing authorities are going the ground lease way.

And one of the reasons would be that that removes the purchase price of the land from the whole development process.

Yes. But you can, typically what I do is I put in a first year payment that would repay the trust for your work on the project. And it's usually, depending on the size of the development, it's like $50,000 to $100,000. And then it's a nominal fee going forward for the lease it's not you're never going to get the value of the land RFPing it for affordable housing but it's a way to get some money and we'll put in whatever you think and then we'll and it's paid it's usually paid when the lease is signed so that's usually at construction loan closing when they've got everything together okay well a ground lease makes sense to me

Agreed.

I'm fine with it. I'm good.

Yeah. Okay. And take the yellow off.

Yeah. Affordability. This was something that... We had talked a little bit about you'd had a small amount of CPA funds going into this project, but I don't think it's enough to trigger 100%. And you had the opportunity to pay it back if you wanted to, to be clear. But it's really... It wasn't the cost of the land. It was really to... I'm not sure why it was done, but, um, maybe for the affordability, but, um, so you have the option to have either all the units have to be affordable at a certain area, median income, um, or, um, or a percentage. And that can change, but you can say there has to be a minimum of X. And then, um, you know, the, the, uh, The scoring then can be, well, if you do at least whatever it is, 50%, then it's advantageous. And if you do 100%, it's highly advantageous. You can play around with the numbers. I don't know what you've been thinking, if it's... In the prior RFP, we said all of the units have to be affordable at or below 100%. I think we agreed that they'd have to do a 40B, so obviously there'll be some below thoughts.

Do you have guidance for us on this, Laura? Because I think we're not well-versed in the complicated math that goes into this process. So I think we want a combination of making sure we have enough affordable, but also making a project that's going to be attractive for people to submit a bid.

Well, subsidies are only given on the ones that are affordable. But affordable can be up to 100%. And in some cases, 120% for the workforce. But that translates to really high rents, just so you know. So I would have all the units in the highly advantageous and 75% to 100%. at or below 100% AMI in the advantageous. And anything less than 75% would be unacceptable. That's how I would do it. Gives them some leeway if they wanted to market. Right now, market rents aren't really paying for the construction anyway. So most of these projects will find You know, maybe they'll have some up to, you know, 10% up to 100% AMI, but they're going to want to get the most subsidies.

So I think restricting to 100% AMI is not ridiculous and works fairly well. I forgot to mention, I don't know if everyone else got this, but they just came out with the new HUD numbers. this week or last week, I guess. And a single person, 80% AMI for Littleton is $96,000. So the average median income is $164,600 for our area because we're part of Boston, Cambridge, and a bunch of other towns. Our AMIs are really high. So 100% AMI is actually a very high rent still, I believe.

It is. It's 30% of that.

Yeah. So a lot of people are going to qualify, but the rents are going to be high.

At 100%, a lot of, I mean, a family of four, 80% of AMI is still $137,000. So, and 30% of that would be... over $3,000 a month, right?

Why don't I plug numbers in like we're talking about and then have those charts so you can see, you know, the numbers up to 100% and we can adjust them if you think. Isn't that fair?

Yep. Yep, sounds good.

So if I understood you correctly, Laura, if we said 100% AMI, we'd still meet all of the units at 100% or 120% of AMI, we'd still qualify for all of the income credits or whatever? It doesn't have to be 80% AMI or something?

No, it does have to be. Okay. It does have to be. So there would be a range. Okay. So you'd say all of them have to be at or below 100%, but you want to range from 30 to 100.

But by capping it at 100% of AMI, we're better off than leaving it to say market rate.

Yes.

That was my question.

Yes.

And I think 100% of AMI is still a very high rent for our area.

Yeah, I agree. I agree. And I think From 80% and below are where you get the real deep subsidies. From above 80% to 100%, it's not as robust because you're getting more rent. But some developers and some communities like to have some at the 100% because it, you know, firefighters and policemen usually are in the 100% range.

Makes sense. Okay. I don't know if people had comments on the unit types or the building design and aesthetics. I thought that looked great.

Are we going to leave a lot of that up to whoever responds to the RFI?

You do, but if you don't put any guardrails on, you want to make sure that you're not getting something that would be totally out of whack with Littleton. And you want to make sure there's storage. common spaces and recreation places. And, you know, the native landscaping is, you know, kind of noticeable around Littleton. And then the sensitivity, the neighborhood and adjacent properties. We always throw that in just so they're not going to have, you know, five foot frontage or side yards. And I know there's not a whole lot around this, but there still needs to be some consideration that they're not going to have a parking, you know, the parking so that the lights go right in their house and stuff. So it was, this is kind of the minimal that we put in. And then we just leave it up to their creativity. Energy efficiency, pretty much. I'm not sure if you have the stretch code, but...

I think we're stretch code, but not super stretch.

Okay. So this is just saying, you know, there's also... still good incentives, financial incentives for doing this. So besides that it's the right thing to do, in my opinion, it also helps. It can get paid for by grants. Then it's just a little description. I had the existing conditions survey highlighted because I'm not sure that I have one, but I had it in the last one, so I may have it and I didn't get back and check, but I will. The permitting, we kind of agreed it was going to be 40B. It's probably the easiest way through. Rental management, we put this in so that they know that they need to have 24-hour maintenance service and someone who's there on the property, obviously not 24-7, but that there's an office and it's not just left to a drive-by. financial feasibility, just showing that it's reasonably feasible at this stage with appropriate sources of funding. And then we have the deed, the zoning, the utilities, the ground lease, And then the submission requirements. This is what they have to put in their proposal. And it's, at this point, it's kind of boilerplate. It's a lot, but it's the same pretty much for everyone.

Is there anything specifically you wanted to jump to? Should we go to the evaluation table?

Yeah, I think that's probably it.

Okay.

But there really wasn't anything else that we got the ground lease.

Okay.

The developer experience and capacity, I think... I think we said they needed to have five years of experience and experience with private septic. That's something if they don't, it can be a surprise. So they have to at least show that they really either Had a development with energy with private subject or that they have someone on board. And we'll. Yeah, so any questions about. The experience. Okay, affordability will.

Clean that up.

Okay. Site design. Are underground utilities a want? Well, you don't care. I don't know. I can't remember if the rest of it has it.

Okay. I don't remember discussing it before. Does anyone have an opinion on this?

I think Durkee has all underground utilities, but I don't know that Grimes Lane does.

Okay. Okay.

Well, yeah, the electricity right now is by overhead wires, but I think the rest of it, I don't know. I think there's gas there. I know the water is there underground.

Yeah. All right. So we'll leave it in? We'll leave it in. Okay. Only needs to be in there once though, because I saw it was in infrastructure too. And this is all pretty standard infrastructure and site design, including office space for management I kept in there.

This is what we talked about earlier. You'll reward this.

And I'll work that. Financial feasibility is kind of my standard. References, site visits, and the price proposal. I don't know if that went to the next page. Oh, it didn't. Okay, I'll fix the price proposal, and you can tell me how much you think we should put in for a first lease payment.

Little lots extravagant.

I'm sorry?

Nothing little extravagant, yeah.

Yeah.

I had a question back on the earlier on the site. I think we were giving extra points for passive house type things. Are we giving extra points if you, you know, like fossil fuel free? Is that in there too? Or is it separate? I didn't scroll. It's down from there. Yeah. It's in site design.

Site design. Oh, no, right there. Infrastructure. Oh, there we go. No, but I can.

I mean, if you're doing a passive house, you almost have to or you would. And I don't know if an LED LED requires can still do gas or not, but.

I don't think it does. It's interesting in the new state qualified. What is it called? The QAP, which tells you what you have to do for state funding. They now allow. Energy Star to get the same bonus points as Passive House, which I think is weird. All right. I could do that.

I think we should have something in there. I was interested at the meeting that we went to, Marianne and I went to earlier, he said that All their new buildings are passive house standard. So they're into that, and I think that we should encourage it.

Yeah. This is a site that lends itself to modular, and modular is doing passive house almost all the time now.

Yeah. I think a smart developer would do a passive house and just include your utilities in the cost of your rent because your utility use is going to be so cheap for them.

Yeah. That's smart. Okay. Anything else you wanted to look at in detail?

I don't think so. You've seen the due diligence report. That's really the most important in all the attachments. I'm not sure I put it in this. The attachments weren't. I think I sent the attachments separately.

Yeah.

And then there's a basic form of lease and land disposition agreement. They're just standard forms that, you know, that gives basic terms.

So that's about it.

I can make these changes and get them back to you before when's your next meeting? June?

We haven't decided yet, but probably June 16th, around there. That's the third Tuesday. Okay.

Okay, well, I can get these back a lot sooner than that.

The little changes in it. Is there anything that gives you pause, Laura? Anything that you feel about this project that if you were on the Affordable Housing Trust, you would change?

No, I think the barn is going to be the question. But I think having just the barn and not the barn in the house makes it a more feasible project. And I think that there are some funders who are incentivizing smaller projects and they have tax exempt funding and some other things to make it work. And if there's a nonprofit, they can make it work even better. So I think I'm more positive about the financial side of it. You know. And definitely just, even if they just use the barn as a, you know, community room, community space, I think getting it rehabbed and having, you know, maybe not having apartments in it, but having their community room there and an office for a manager may be the best use of it.

Yeah. Well, I could live with that.

Okay.

Well, thank you so much. We appreciate all that you've done. And we'll be in touch for sure before July 2nd. But congratulations again on your retirement.

And I will try to, if I have a little bit of time for your next meeting, because I don't think we'll have too much else to discuss except, you know, but I can bring Carson or Emma, whoever's going to take over this, bring them just to introduce you. Do you want to?

That would be great. That would be great. So I was going to ask, is there a reason to wait until our next meeting to post this if there's minor changes? Do we just want to allow Marianne to work with Laura to finalize it and get it going? Or do we want to wait to review the whole thing at our next meeting and then approve it and get it going?

Who are you asking, Mark?

The board. Okay.

There's no reason to wait as far as I can tell.

No. No, I think for a change of pace, I think we ought to See if we can move fast on this. Yeah.

So I guess, Laura, whenever you make the changes, you can send them to me and Smaran, as you have been doing. And then we can take it from there and work with procurement and fill in some of the Littleton-specific details and work with them to get it published.

So, Matthew, do we need a motion to allow Marianne to go? How about I just make a motion to allow Marianne to negotiate to finalize the agreement with Laura and get the RFP published.

Second.

You're muted, Susan.

I second. I think someone else did too.

Yeah. Okay, so I guess we'll go around. So Matthew, do you? Yes. Bartlett?

Yes.

Susan?

Yes.

Mark?

Yes.

And Marianne approves as well.

And Angus.

Oh, sorry, I don't see Angus's video. So Angus, you approve as well?

Yes.

Okay, thank you. Sorry about that. Okay. then we will move forward.

Thank you so much, Laura. All right, thanks. Take care. Bye-bye.

I should have stopped sharing so I could see all the names. Sorry about that, Angus.

Just for clarity, Marianne, I mentioned that I have the AMI report. I'll send that around so people can see what the AMI is. I wasn't sure who received the mail and who didn't, so... I'll send it out. I'll have it distributed.

Great. Okay, let's circle back. Amy, thank you so much for your patience in waiting for us. You sent us a LRAP application. And can you still hear us?

I can still hear you. I didn't touch anything to make sure I didn't lose connection.

Life is good. So if you could go ahead and walk us through this latest application, that would be great.

Great. So I did send another one over. Did you get did you get the second one too? There's two new Alraps?

No.

Did everybody receive the one that I sent over yesterday?

Yes.

Did you receive two Angus? I think I only saw one.

Well, I may be I may be making a mistake. I know. I know. I know one came in yesterday.

Yeah, I think it's attached. I sent it in an email to Maureen and Sophia, and then I think I copied you in it, Marianne, if I'm not mistaken.

I will look again. I was looking at the packet. So if, Amy, do you think you could share them? Would that be possible to pull it up on the screen here?

Marianne, it is in the packet. It's at the very end.

Okay, perfect. Okay. So yeah, so LRAP 46 is going to be first. So this is a single individual annual income coming in at just over $29,000 with a monthly rent, which includes the utilities coming in around $2,200 a month. Recently lost their spouse and is seeking support from the LRAP program to help get caught up with some increases in her expenses and a loss of income in the household and hoping to utilize the program to help her get back on her feet. Reference points 11.

Sounds like something we should do. Yep.

So there are another one that's on the cusp of whether they can actually afford to stay where they're at. So are we working to figure that out, help them figure that out? Even with our help, I mean, at $2,200 a month, it's pretty close to their income.

Yes. So they came to me right at the end of April. We were able to get in... for a fuel assistance application. So that should help with some of the outstanding expenses related to the oil. I have been speaking with her about getting onto, I think we've already started working on our applications. Yes, when we met back in April, we started working on applications for deeply affordable housing and looking into more affordable units. But I think at this moment, I think moving is not really in the question for her, and she's just trying to remain in Littleton for as long as possible while she's sorting everything out and figuring out where she's going to be standing with just her income now. She is still working, by the way.

Okay. Thank you.

I I move we approve LRAP 46.

I second.

Okay, go around for approvals. Mark, do you approve?

Yes.

Bartlett? Yes.

Matthew?

Yes.

Angus?

Yes.

Susan? Yes. Marianne said yes. Okay, so LRAP 46 is approved. Let's go on to LRAP 47, which, thank you, I did find that at the end of the packet. Let's go through that.

This is a family of four, two adults, two children. One parent is working. The other one is struggling to gain employment. The spouse that is working is working multiple jobs, just trying to get ends to meet. So we are exploring many things as far as job fairs and everything to help gain employment and bring more income into the household, but also looking into other public benefits. And they're hoping to utilize the program just to keep their heads above water, essentially. What's the income and what's the rent? Oh, I'm sorry. $31,194. And the monthly rent is $2,700 with utilities.

I'll just point out that their income doesn't cover their current rent. Yes.

I did mention that as a concern to the applicants. So with the intention of keeping the household in Littleton and with the children being in the home I'm hoping that the trust can allow me some time to work with them and try to help them get more income coming into the household or find a more affordable housing situation. The mobile voucher programs and the deeply affordable housing options that are out there, they're all frozen. I want to be able to provide some support to this family. I feel really awful for them. they're doing everything right and just not able to make any headway.

I agree, Amy. I move a motion to approve this.

Before we do that, I mean, in the past when we've done this, we've approved them for shorter than a year because this is one that, I mean, I feel for the family and I understand that they need the money, and desperately need this money, right? But it's not a sustainable model. I mean, you're basically, we're giving them for lack of a better, I mean, we're paying for their food for the month, right? Well, because all of their income is going to everything else, right? All of their income is going to their house. It's not a sustainable thing for them unless they continue to work with Amy. and find something else. So I'm okay approving this, but I really want to, I mean, in the past when we've done these, where the rent exceeded the income, we approved it for a shorter term to help encourage them to keep working with Amy and see if we can find us some solution. So I'm in favor of approving this. I would rather do a shorter term than a year though.

So I think the one encouraging point for me with this particular case is that there is another adult that could start earning money, right? A lot of times when we have these, it's a senior who's retired or has social security, but it's fixed. Whereas this, I feel like that's a possible solution, right? Or at least they have a path to becoming sustainable, right? Right. And I think that that that encourages me that they can get out of this situation where they're underwater. Any other kids school age? Are they in Littleton public schools?

One child is the other one is like still young enough to be going into like a pre-K preschool. But with the one parent home there. They're able to save money in that way, at least where they're not having to pay for child care.

Right.

How does everyone else feel about shorter than one year?

I would rather vote for the full year in order to give the family a chance and give Amy a chance to work with them.

Yeah, I think I feel the same way. I'd rather not do a special case, you know, And I do agree with Amy. This is one where it does feel like there's a chance of things improving.

I agree. It may take a while. So I'm comfortable with doing it for a year.

Angus?

A year. But they do need time.

I fully agree that they need time. I am opposed to giving them a year because they are underwater, right? And I think giving them less than a year kind of almost forces them to keep working with Amy, right, to figure out a path forward, whether that's finding a place with lower rent or helping find more employment for one or both jobs. Of the parents. And in the past, when people have been underwater to this level, we've done shorter term. So I'm sticking to the we shouldn't give them a full year. So I fully agree that we should give them money. I won't vote for to give them a year.

May I just suggest in the cases that we've approved less than a year, usually we don't have underage children in the home. They're usually elderly people or old enough to fend for themselves. Here we have. Two underage children in the home, the constant anxiety of not knowing what the status is, where there's one burning parent in the home, is just too much stress under these circumstances. So I think that perhaps we should give them a little bit more slack, give them a year. I agree with Angus.

I agree. Mark, I think that... are $500, it's not going to do enough for them to feel like they can slack off looking for other places or other jobs. This is not going to take away their motivation to work with Amy.

I agree with that.

I agree too.

Okay, do we have a motion?

I'll make a motion to approve OVAP 47 for a year. I second.

Thank you.

So we still need to go around, Amy. So Matthew, do you approve? Yes. Matthew is a yes. Bartlett?

Yes.

Mark?

I'm going to abstain.

Susan?

Yes.

Angus? Yes. And Marianne's a yes. So motion is approved. Thanks, Amy. Thank you.

Okay. I have another question about the whole LRAP program. We're coming up into the end of June. I know it's only May, but... June's coming. How many of the people currently being assisted will be running out at that end of June? How many of them are going to be our three-year deadline? And then we're back to that discussion again.

Eight households will be coming off of the program, yes. One other, another one came off this month because the spouse passed away and they are moving. So they will, we are down another one after this month. So going into June, I think we have, I think we're back to 14 in the program. I'll have to double check, but we did lose one this month.

Okay. And is it the trustees understanding that at the end of that three, we're not doing anything for them? Or are we going to look at extenuating circumstances? Or are we back to where we were?

We're back to where we were. I don't think we ever really resolved that.

Right. I didn't think we did either, but I didn't want to say that because then I thought somebody would say, no, Susan, you don't remember it.

You remember.

I remember we're back to where we were. Yeah. Okay. So that's another... topic for next month.

Okay. Going back more board business, Amy, we have small grants program update here. Is there an update there? I think we've basically burned through the entire grant. Is that correct? Or is there some funding left?

So I have one participant that we've hit a wall or a barrier with the contractor not following up with the agreement. We have hounded him as much as we possibly can and received no feedback regarding the agreement or moving forward with the project. So I don't think that there's enough time for us to get, this was a chimney repair. I can't remember the grant number. And it was for just under $4,000. So that one, I just don't think that there's enough time to get another bid and move forward with it and utilize the funds that were allocated and have them have enough time to finish the project and submit for a reimbursement prior to the end of June. So that's the only one that is kind of on my radar as the one that won't be completed by the June 30th deadline.

Well, that seems like a shame. There's no way that we could try to fast track that?

I've tried. I've reached out so many times. She's reached out and now we're just getting, they're not even responding to us. I've sent the agreement over four different times by fax, by email. I've contacted the secretary and told her that I was looking for a callback. She said she would leave the message with the contractor and still nothing. I'm wondering if there's more to the project that was not really outlined in the details. It sounds like the resident did try to get another quote from another company, but the quote came in almost at $25,000. So I think that there's probably a concern of the integrity of the chimney being a much more... complicated repair than anybody feels comfortable touching. I could be speaking out of turn on that, but that's my thoughts after her telling me that another company came in quoting her at $25,000.

Well, it's unfortunate, but it sounds like there's not much we can do about it.

You're probably exactly right, Amy. That's exactly what happened. I mean, nobody wants to make Henry angry, right? No. So the contractor knows what's going on and yeah.

Okay. I know this is a long meeting tonight, so I think we can move on to a couple of topics we kind of skipped over. Amy, you're welcome to stay with us as always, but also understand if you'd like to drop off at this point. Thank you. Thank you. So we skipped over the FY27 budget approval that was included in the packet. Any questions or comments on that? No? Okay. For board member updates, just wanted to make sure, did everyone get a chance to give an update? I know Bartlett and I ended with a really long update on 410 Great Road on the senior affordable housing, but anything else that anyone wanted to share? Okay, then let's move on to minutes. The March 17th minutes were amended. I think Bartlett had a couple of comments. I had a couple of comments. Sophia was nice enough to reflect those comments and she redistributed those. So do we have a motion to accept the March 17th minutes as amended? We have a second?

Second.

Second. Okay. Go around. Mark, do you approve?

Yes.

Bartlett?

Yes.

Matthew? Yes. Angus? Yes. Susan? Yes. And Marianza, yes. Okay. We'll do the same for the April 14th minutes, also included in the packet. Do we have a motion to accept the minutes as presented? So moved. Okay, who made that movement? I wasn't watching. Matthew. Matthew. Okay. We have a second.

Second.

Second, Susan. Let's go run and vote. Mark, you approve?

Yes.

Bartlett?

Yes.

Matthew? Yes. Angus? Yes. Susan? Yes. And Marianne's a yes.

Before we adjourn, the budget actually says it's for review, discussion and vote. So do we have to vote on the budget? And the other thing is it doesn't include any money we'd be giving to Habitat for the house. So I don't know if that needs to be in the budget or if it's something we allocated from an FY26.

I'm pretty sure we didn't allocate anything to Habitat last year.

But we put it in the contract that we were going to So that we would give them up to, I don't forget if it's 50 or a hundred thousand dollars for the project. So we probably need to put that in the budget.

So Marcus saying we need to add a line item here for 87 to how to one. Yes. Okay. And what was the commitment that we made to them? Did you say?

I thought it was up to 100,000, but it could have been up to 50,000. I don't know if Bartlett remembers, or Matthew.

I don't remember.

I believe 100,000 sounds more like what was discussed.

It was, we were talking about 60,000, but I think we ended up up to 100,000.

So we can just put in and it's up to a hundred in the budget.

Okay. And who is, um, who's maintaining and submitting this? Is that me?

A budget?

Yeah.

Um, I don't think we have to maintain her. So I think it's Marin that's maintaining it.

Okay. So I'll just, I'll send a message to Marin and let her know to add a line item for up to a hundred thousand for 87 to Hadawan.

Yep. Okay. And I'll make a motion to approve the budget as amended.

Second. Second. Okay. All in favor. Mark, approve. Susan.

Yes.

Bartlett.

Yes.

Matthew. Yes. Angus. Yes. And Marianne's a yes. Okay. Thank you for that, Mark. Appreciate it. And then the last item we have is scheduling our next meeting. The third Tuesday would be June 16th. I could make that. I'd rather not. If you could make it the 17th or the 15th. What does everyone's calendar look like?

Either one of those is fine with me. Any three, any of the three actually is fine with me.

Matthew's got a lot more free Mondays now. I would prefer the 17th over the 15th, but I can do either of them.

I would prefer the 17th also.

All three are good for me, so it doesn't matter.

Angus, the 17th? Does that work?

Yes, please.

Okay. Let's make it the 17th then, and thanks, everyone, for the flexibility.

And can we be sure we put on the agenda for the 17th those eight people that are coming off of LRAP?

Yep.

Thank you.

Yes. Okay. I think we can adjourn.

Motion to adjourn. Second.

Okay. All in favor?

Aye.

All right. Thanks, everyone.

Good night.