Committees - Regular Meeting

Hey, everyone, welcome to the. The housing board here, we have a very full agenda tonight. So. 1st thing is just to check over the minutes from last. Meeting April, you guys have the draft flip it over for a 2nd and. Tell me what you think. one second second favor all right so let's prove those written um we have with us tonight uh the town social worker alexander hakeem Who's joining us and I asked her to come just to talk about what she's seeing on the island in regards to housing. She sent us a list of questions. She had a look at those. It's a lot of really good questions. I said, I don't have the answer to all of these, but they are all good questions for us to think about. And especially as we move forward with our housing needs assessment and. So I'm going to just turn it over to Alexandra and let her give us her take on what she's seeing in the community. You're on mute, right? You're on mute.

Okay. Hi, everyone. Nice to be here virtually. If you have any questions, please just ask me because I don't know exactly what to say. But I went through all of my cases. And so I just to kick off the conversation, I have 64 clients or families on Shelter Island. So if I see a whole family or if I see a couple families, I counted as one, you know, family. For my job, I see everyone for free as long as you're a resident of Shelter Island. And I see a mixture of children, young adults, middle-aged adults, and the older population. But so for the 64 clients I have, I did a tally and this is what I found. Four of them have reverse mortgages and Three have applied for ADU grants and two of them got them and then rejected them because it just was way too expensive, even with the free money. Seven of them are an adult child living with a parent. Them are older adult parents living with their child. Four of them have life estates. So once they die, their house will go to someone else. Nine are renters. Three are hoarders. I don't know if that... Two of them live with older non-related people and take care of them in order to have housing. Two of them rent out their homes in the summer in order to afford their house during the year. Three of my clients have been squatters. Actually, two of my clients have had squatters. Two of my clients have been left homes that they most likely otherwise couldn't have afforded unless they were left in a will. One owns but has roommates to help pay the mortgage. Four families have left Shelter Island because of the cost. Two are selling. One person had to go to a homeless shelter, three families have been evicted and one family lived in corporate housing, a restaurant or something.

Wow.

Yeah.

So, I mean, it's great to quantify it. It's interesting because we sort of. have the sense that all of that is happening. But it is really good to have some documentation and know what the circumstances are.

Yeah, it's not abstract in this context.

I mean, yeah, I reached out to you because Meg Larson had mentioned that you were in touch with, like, think about four families in the school that were all having trouble finding places to rent or getting, you know, rents were increasing and they would have to move or something like that. So that's really why I wanted to bring you in and just kind of not put names or faces on it, but just to hear from professional about what you're seeing.

I would say, just so I can get this in there, I think this reverse mortgage thing is affecting more older people than we think. And I don't know, I'm not, I actually was a commercial real estate attorney, but I literally quit to become a social worker. I don't know anything about it, but I don't think that's like the best idea unless you have no heirs, right? And these people do have heirs and some of their heirs live with them. So I don't know why this is being suggested to people as an option, but maybe some information about that would be good education. But as for the renters, it's not just families with children in the school, which there have been several, but it's also 80-year-olds who have to move off island after spending 60 years or however, or their whole life, but like, you know, a huge chunk of their lives on Shelter Island and have to start anew because their rents have been raised and they're all on fixed incomes. So it's, that's, that's really upsetting also.

Yeah.

Did you get any feedback? I mean, if you've lived here your whole life and you have to move and you're a senior, I mean, life at that point is really about community who is supporting you in loneliness? Did you get any anecdotal information around that situation?

Yeah, yes. The people that, so it's been more than one, and these people have rented from friends, you know, or family friends, but these family friends want to renovate their house second homes or third homes or whatever and raise the rent and so they do that's that's within the right because i was then talking to michael desantis because i do have other people that rent houses that aren't you know registered um that are not in great shape and so i was talking to michael desantis about that i was asking him something and he sent me um the town list of rentals and so it says that there are 154 homes registered as long-term rentals and I everyone asks me all the time like can I find you can you help me find some like some months I feel like a real estate agent you know it's like can you find me a house and I or a room and I put it on Facebook and I get the same two responses from the same two people you know and but it Apparently, there's 154 long term rentals on the island and I'd like to know.

I would like to ask what does he consider long term? Well, the round would be long term. I have that list to those. Those are people who rent seasonally.

Well, it says long term rental and vacation rental. Yeah, I'm just saying.

Yeah, he has 154 license people who have permits. Correct? Yeah.

And the rental permit. from is like a one-page thing all we're collecting is we're not we don't know the rent no um which would be an interesting thing I know in Greenport they ask the rent um just as we're thinking about quantifying all this stuff for our housing needs assessment um so would you say of the I think you said 64 clients you have is that right or like

They all have different types of housing instability. Would you say all of them, of all your clients? I didn't calculate each one, but each of those things is not stable housing per se. How many do you think of the 64 that it counts for?

I think I have 20 that have stable housing and the rest don't.

So two thirds. Alexandra.

These are my, you know, these are the social workers. Yeah. No, no, no. Absolutely. Thank you.

I imagine that not everybody who could benefit from your services is a client of yours. Do you have a notion or would you venture a guess at what the real number of, you know, people that are in need would be on Shelter Island?

So I see Julie Lane's here. I don't want to be quoted. I don't.

Okay.

I think that there is a huge, not a huge, for Shelter Island, I think there's a significant percentage of the population that lives in one home with many families. And I think these homes are probably not registered with the town. And I think that these people can be easily taken advantage of. And I don't think those people come to me. I don't speak. A lot of these people are Spanish and I don't speak Spanish. And I think we've I've had Spanish clients who do reach out. But I think a lot of Spanish people don't reach out to me because I do not speak Spanish or maybe know I exist or whatever. Yeah.

It's good to hear it, but it's disheartening.

Very. Yeah. Now, do you have access to the town translator? And can you make use of her? Or is that outside your reach?

I have an intern. Well, his year has ended, but he's starting in September and he speaks some Spanish. I mean, I do. I can get it to work, but I'm not. So I've I've had Ola come to the shelter round every year to introduce themselves, put themselves out there. That's a totally. Latino based and organized group, and they they also help with housing and so does EOA, Economic Opportunity, EOC, Council, because I am also mainly a referral source. So if I do get a one-off client, which I probably haven't recorded, I would refer them to EOA, OLA definitely, if they're Spanish speaking, and they would get help there.

raises uh one issue which is mentioning multiple families living in a single house is you know to them so they're doing what they have to do it's completely unacceptable by every code law measure you know statute um trying to even pry into that situation would could be precarious ask because the only thing that you could conceivably reveal is that they can't do this right that's why they wouldn't come forward and what position does it put everybody in right up to five people non-related that's that's the allowance but if they're if they're all related then Well, I'm hearing multiple families all within the same house, which could be an occupancy issue. Correct. And so that's sort of a landmine, right? That.

Yeah, that's a correct assumption, I would say.

There's a reason they're not coming forward.

And yes. And there are – so just this year I've had some people not be able to pay their rent, and so we go to the Lions Club or CAST and get rental assistance, or the churches are fabulous, but they do for one month. They're not going to help you more than one month because it's a lot of money. They have a lot of people to help. But the state of New York will help you with your rent only if – You have a job, which has been a huge problem. But also, if your landlord agrees to submit a W-9. And I've had two landlords refuse to submit a W-9, which I'm unclear what that really is. I think it's showing.

Yeah, it's on the count. So basically, they don't want to claim the rent income.

Right.

Right? Like, that's what it is. So if you submit a W9, then. That would mean that basically the state would basically send them a. 99, which would mean that they would have to, which means that they're probably their landlords are renting to them. To them under the table. Yeah.

So opens up a can of worms too.

Yeah, it opens up a can of worms. Yeah, but if the landlines aren't going to give it to you, then they're not obligated. Because they're often, you know, one of the things that I see in that is sometimes they're not going to offer a value judgment on it, but because the landlords are not paying taxes on their rent, that's maybe why they're offering it at a reasonable rate, right? So it's a little,

Can I also just say Social Security in general, which is an island of older adults, the max I've had any family get is $2,200 a month, right, of my 64 clients. you can't rent anything and eat food and pay for your phone and your car insurance and what have you. You can't rent anything for a thousand dollars anymore. I mean, that's like unheard of, you know? And so everything is 3000. Well, three is just as bad as 7,000. It doesn't, it's unreachable. So I think that's another thing.

Yeah. Great. Well, I mean, I think this is eye-opening for us. It's really valuable to hear it coming from you. And I think the questions you asked us and the information you give us is really great. I encourage everyone to visit the social worker. There's a page on the town website, and there are a list of resources there and Alexandra's contact number and email. So I think we should all just know that she's here as a resource for the town. If there's anything else you want to share with us, Alex?

I think that's it. I do wonder what's going to happen to Shelter Island. I do think there needs to be maybe some education or some active education about these reverse mortgages. these life estate trades that people are doing? Because if you have heirs, it's not the best idea.

Yeah. Well, that's something we can think about doing as the housing board, do some sort of education around that for everyone.

Ongoing education, really, handouts, flyers, things for people to take where if you get this in the mail, You know, read this, yeah, there's probably more predatory practices on out there and anybody knows.

I'm dealing with a situation now where the kids don't even know that the parents took out. Reverse mortgage, and it was a shock.

Oh, my God, I think there has been some influence by. People on the island to influence others to get reverse mortgages and I think it's. You know, I don't think it's a good idea.

I see that as free money. Oh. And if you have 300,000 dollars to play with, you know, and then it goes. That's okay.

Yeah. Yeah. You need help it. Don't.

Have they can use that don't have it. Nobody wants to talk about that.

As Alexandra said too, if there's no heir, that's a different story, right? If they can just spend it all for as long as they can, then it's different than heirs. Yeah.

And they have, I believe it's once they pass away, you have one year to pay that back, get it paid back to the bank or else they start proceedings.

The reverse mortgages I've recently read said, no, just when you die, we get the house. And so I am wondering, will house prices come down on Shelter Island when all these reverse mortgages hit? I don't know.

I believe the estate has a year to pay it back. And then you start getting the nasty letters. And they'll actually come to the house and knock on the door and put Post-its and everything on there. Yeah.

Yeah, it's not good.

Great. Thank you for talking to us tonight.

Thank you. Please, if you have any questions, just email me or, you know, let me know. I'm always available.

Yeah, I'd love to get that list that you, you know, your numbers of your 64 cases just kind of as documentation for us. I think that's helpful. TAB, Mark McIntyre, yeah and we'll I mean we are in the process of doing an atu program which is hopefully going to provide some. TAB, Mark McIntyre, More apartments to rent and we're in the process of building out these rental projects which you know will be coming in the next few years so we're trying trying to. TAB, Mark McIntyre, Create more housing opportunity here and it's just it's good to hear what's actually happening out there. so we know where to focus our work well and so just one other thing that you might

The North Fork Alliance is who it's in Greenport. And that's if and when Section 8 ever opens, that's for Greenport. That's where we would go. I have so many seniors on these senior housing federal wait lists that are, you know, all in New York and Long Island. No one's ever gotten off a wait list. And I have clients that have been on Section 8 wait lists for literally 20 years. So these are all like fake waitlists. kind of things that perhaps people are relying on getting and it might not happen. So it's just very worrisome, you know, if you don't have someone to, if, if you don't have sufficient savings, which I think is my clients don't.

Right. Yeah. I think those wait lists, I mean, it's just the capacity isn't there. So I think it's tough to like put people on a wait list that doesn't have The ability to.

Yeah, but these are just like false promises that people.

Yeah. It's a very complicated situation all around. So I appreciate your work.

Thank you very much.

Yes. Thanks.

Talk to you guys later. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Our next item is going to be our consultants with Nelson Pope Voorhees, Taylor, and Eve, I believe, are going to come just introduce themselves and talk about our process moving forward with the housing needs assessment. So welcome them to our Housing Board meeting.

Hi, thank you for having us. I would start my video, but it says it's disabled. There we go. Okay. Hi, thanks. Talk to just a box, right? So my name is Taylor Garner. I'm a project manager and senior environmental planner at Nelson Pope Voorhees. I've been with the company for about 11 years. I have done some work with them on Shelter Island. We were involved in preparing your first community housing plan and needs assessment, and we came out there and did the public outreach. So I'm excited to be back and get to kind of take it to the next step, the next level. I'll let Eve introduce herself next. Hi, I'm Eve Marks.

I'm an environmental planner at Nelson Pope Voorhees. I've been there for about three years, and I also worked on the first housing assessment, so I'm excited to work on the update now.

Great, thanks.

And we do have one more kind of main member of our team. He's not here tonight. He's abroad. But Kevin Dwarka will be a sub-consultant on the project. He's a housing marketing expert, does a lot of market analysis. The economic piece is able to really bring that to the next level. So he will be involved throughout the process, reviewing materials. You guys will meet him at a meeting one day a little bit later on in the process. So that's really the three of us from our team. I'm happy to talk about whatever you guys want to talk about. If you want me to kind of go through what our scope is of the project, I could do that.

Sure. Yeah, I think just a little overview of the scope and maybe what our next step is going to be in terms of putting together the survey or scheduling any public outreach meetings, stuff like that.

Sure. There's a few different pieces to the scope. So one of them is updating the needs assessment that you currently have. The original needs assessment was based on a lot of publicly available data from the census, American Community Survey. We use Esri business analyst software as well for demographics and housing trends. We also worked with your tax assessor to get information specific to the town. So part of it will be updating all of that. So some of that data goes back now three to five years. So we'll be able to kind of start tracking the trends of these things over time. So that's one piece is the data collection. And then the other big piece is the community outreach. So for the first housing plan, we had a survey. We did an open house. And, you know, the idea would be to do those again. So I think the first step would be launching a community survey. And, you know, one of the things that we talked about with the first housing study is it's hard to quantify how much housing you need, right, how many units you need. And that's the answer everyone, you know, wants to know. How many do we need so everyone knows? can have a place that they can live and afford that wants to. And part of the reason it's so hard to track that and answer that is because the people that have already left have left. And how do you get your input? You don't know where they went. So for this round, we'd also like to do more in-depth interviews with business owners, other stakeholders, You know, like the presentation we just had by Alexandra is great getting to hear from people who were on the ground in Shelter Island and learning from them. So in addition to a community-wide survey, we also are going to put together stakeholder interview packets with questions that are tailored more for those people. And that's something that Kevin will be a big part of. And then, you know, we do have us coming in person to Shelter Island for two different events. So, you know, we can talk in more detail about that as we, you know, go through the process. But one idea is we have another open house type situation that Eve and I would come to. We also could try to schedule a bunch of stakeholder interviews, kind of back to back, and we could do that for days of activity. Um, so that's something to think about as we go through the process, but, you know, I do think the community survey is kind of where we should start. I shared, um, the original survey question and results with brand. So he can share that with all of you. Um, and then, you know, we'll have our ideas for new questions, but there's probably some questions from the old survey that it might make sense to ask again. So if you all want to look at that as well, we can coordinate via email on the questions if you guys want to mark it up or say what you definitely want or if you definitely don't want. Open to being very collaborative if you have other ideas for questions. We'll come up with more questions with Kevin, too. But I think that would be the next thing for us to focus on. We do have... um translation services included in the project as well so you know the sooner we get the questions figured out in english we'll get them translated into spanish and then we'll prepare um you know an online survey we'll prepare flyers with a qr code so those can be posted around we'll also prepare a version that's easier to print it's nice usually to have some copies you know at Town Hall or at the library, other community places if people want to take paper copies versus doing it online.

Awesome. That sounds great. Yeah, I shared the survey results with the board, but I'll recirculate that and maybe just start a new email that's like, let's give our feedback and edits or, you know, new questions that we want to have asked in the next like two weeks or so. Sure. So you guys can get started writing and compiling that survey.

Do you envision the stakeholder interviews of the business people to include, and I don't think this happened the first time, but include the extraordinary measures that they're taking to retain people because of the housing situation?

Extraordinary measures, meaning they're trying to help find housing for their employees.

I just wrote a check for one of my employees to subsidize their rent because they couldn't afford it on their salary. We wanted to keep them, so we decided to pay their rent.

Yeah, yeah. I think that's a great thing to ask. I want to make sure to rephrase it in a way that it doesn't make people sound nervous, like we're trying to get them in trouble, like, you know, if they're doing something. We don't want to do that. That type of feedback I think is very valuable. And you know, because a housing crisis does eventually trickle throughout the economy and affect everyone. So yeah, I think that's great to include.

Yeah, I'm sure those stories will come through in any interviews. I think interviews are really, will be a really strong part of doing this. Doing this assessment, and I think, you know, employee years employees. You know, residents, I think they'll all have kind of pieces to share. I am going to also send you a. Housing needs assessment that I found online that's from, like, the count of Davidson, North Carolina. But I thought it was really interesting. They really went and quantified, like. And this may be over the scope of what we're going to do, but I think it's interesting to look at. They looked at all the jobs people have in the community and what kind of salaries they were making or, you know, what kind of income they had and, you know, what they could afford. And really we're looking at the real estate, the whole real estate market in terms of like how many apartments would be available to these kind of people, these people at this income bracket or whatever. So that kind of like wage gap versus housing affordability, I think, is kind of like what we're trying to quantify here.

Sure. Yeah, I think that sounds great. Please do share it. We did have like a version of a gap analysis in the first one, but it was based more on know what is the median selling price of a home and what's the median rent and how does that compare to median incomes just because we didn't have you know the level of detail that it sounds like they had but this is the time where we do get to dive in a little deeper yeah i mean i think if we if we go to those the bigger employee employers in town and you know what are your employer employees making

Would they pay for a two bedroom apartment? All that. I think that's kind of like what we want to answer.

Sure.

Or do they need a subsidy from their boss like Ben just provided?

Yeah. I don't know if this is the time, but do all of you maybe just want to say kind of your name and what your backgrounds are in?

Yeah. Sorry. We should do introductions. I'm Brann Docherty-Johnson. What am I telling you?

In one sentence.

I'm the chair of the committee. I've been on this housing board for a while. I don't know, five years. And I am, by profession, a graphic designer and animator. So I work sort of self-employed freelance and remotely from the island.

I'm Espen Siegel. I've been on the island for a decade or a little over a decade now. My background is project management, owner's representation for a multinational company, development management, pre-development management, that sort of thing. And now I've calm down and just out here and doing home building and, you know, just getting deep appreciation for everything East End rather than working everywhere else in the world and just residing here. So I joined the housing board, I don't know, a year ago. Yeah. Yeah. just because you know like that yeah yeah exactly um so just because it was brought to my attention uh through friends of mine that it was a good opportunity that there is an issue that needs to be addressed i felt my skill set suited some gaps that were in the board at the time um and uh yeah and here i am great thank you

I'm Bill Mastro. I am a retired attorney and executive. I was general counsel to a large health care organization for quite a long time. I've been on the island for about nine years. I've been on this board basically since the time of we passed the referendum because I saw what was happening in the community and we just got it passed by the skin of our teeth and I said I wanted to help Liz at that time and I came on to help and generally have been mostly working with our outside council and trying to help in those kind of capacities and helping with process within here and what takes place here.

um i'm my name is matt mccarthy um i was born and raised on the north fork and i moved to shelter island probably about 10 years ago now um and i have been um i've been working in hospitality for much of that time and um i would probably wager i'm the youngest person on this board since its inception i would guess um because i felt um my demographic was uh underrepresented on the island specifically. And I, just like everybody else here, I felt I could help.

Oh, sorry. I didn't introduce myself before. I was sort of talking head. My name is Benjamin Diet. I'm a town councilman and one of the liaisons to this committee from the town board. My history, I was a real estate corporate attorney for a bunch of years, and I was an entrepreneur for a couple of decades. Ran off a bunch of different businesses. And I've been on Shelter Island for about 35 years. And I love it. And I'm just trying, now that I have more free time on the island, I'm just trying to help.

Great. I'm Liz Hanley. We know each other from the first round. Nice to see you again. It's good to see you too. I'm just being a different chair now. So I'm former chair of the community housing board. and now on the town board, and housing is my passion. You know, I was, I grew up here when I was a summer kid, and now I'm back with my family, my mom of three. And so I really think about housing in terms of like, whether my kids will be able to be here. And I'm an accountant, I have my own firm.

So I have a national kind of like boutique accounting firm.

So I tend to really focus on the The math of it all.

Hi, I'm Nadine Male, new to the board. My background is in affordable housing and development and affordable housing systems, working with municipalities throughout the country, both on access to housing and on the supply side as well. And I was trained as an architect. That seems like eons ago. I'm happy to be on the board.

Excuse me, Peter McCracken. I'm in the real estate business. I've been on the island for about. 35 years and on the board. 5, 6 years, maybe a little longer longer than that before you. Yeah.

7 or 8, let's say, so that's it.

All right, well, I'm Mark Mobius. I grew up here, moved away for 20 something years and have been back for about 15 now. I'm an ecologist by training and trade for a while. and um i think what drew me to this board was the realization that i was able to move back here because my parents had managed to hold on to their property a lot of the friends that i grew up with their parents moved sold because they could do so and move somewhere else and retire on that money and there's not a chance i've been able to move back here we're not for that situation and my friends Cannot move back here for the same, you know, because they don't have. A place already anchored here. So. Yeah, I'm very interested in this and, um. I was very interested in the, the idea of that Ben just brought up of. The extent to which employers go to keep people here. Buying properties, renovating properties. For staff housing, and it's a huge. business here. And I don't even know how big it is, but it seems like a lot of the properties that could be available to people are either tied up in that or seasonal or whatnot.

I actually just came. The reason I was late is because I was at the chamber annual meeting and literally talking for an hour with employers about this exact subject. It's crazy.

Yeah. Well, we're going to talk to them.

Yeah.

Well, thank you for introducing yourselves. That was really helpful. It sounds like we've got a great group here, so I'm excited to get to dive in with all of you. A few just other little things I'll mention from the scope. You know, I mentioned having a big open house, but we will also prepare kind of what we call a meeting in a box. where it's a lot of the same, you know, maybe it's only one or two posters, a handout, some quick questions. And the idea for those would be, you know, sometimes it's hard to get people to come out to an event, but maybe just over the summer as community events are happening, you know, we would prepare the materials and then a couple of you could also attend those and kind of have your own little booth or station.

Yeah, we can do those kind of pop-ups at different events. Events that would be happening.

Great. So we'll definitely assist with materials for those and then just something to keep in mind with the survey is the 1st. Go around of the survey was a lot about the housing fund and if the housing fund was to be approved. How does the town want to spend the money? Right? That was some of the stuff the state wanted to see. So we asked a lot about. what types of housing, rental for sale, is it single family, is it cottage communities, is it ADUs? So in the information you all have learned in the past couple years, we might be able to move past some of those questions or some of them might still be relevant in terms of what it is exactly we wanna learn from them. So just as you're reading through it, there's a lot about what the housing should look like.

Yeah. Yep. I think, you know, we talked about this a little bit a few weeks back. I suspect and I think once we all look at those questions that our focus is more on kind of assessing people's needs. um and then letting our board and the town board figure out you know what those goals are in our next housing plan so i think our focus here is really more like demographic and uh uh you know i don't know just sent it's like we're doing a census we're we're trying to find out where people are at Right. Yeah.

Cause it'll also be the work the next summer of doing the plan. So, you know, yeah.

Yeah. Or more like analysis and question asking them, like asking people for the answer, I guess. Yeah.

Yeah. I think that makes sense. Yeah. And I agree. I think we're on the same page there. I just wanted to point it out. Cause I didn't want you all to read the survey and be like, This is not what we want to ask anymore. There was a different function for the first one since it was very much related to the fund.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I have a quick question. I'm not sure who it's for. Do we have an updated time schedule? At this point, in terms of for for this project for them. That would be helpful to get an update. We have a loose like, yes, I know we had a month, but I thought maybe with some.

Maybe maybe that's something we could put together Taylor is kind of like, just a timeline of when we're going to do the different things.

Sure, that review, because some, some of it's going to be iterative and we're going to want, I think, based upon. Some of the data and information we gather, we're going to have. Oh, we need to do this. We need to find out that.

I think the 1st step is for us to review the survey, the old survey kind of come up with. Edited list of questions. Taylor, Eve, their team are going to take that feedback and develop the survey. Once they get the survey back to us, we'll have it up for like a month or two.

I mean, if you could put, it doesn't have to be perfect, just a draft working kind of schedule that we could, so we could say, ah, we're on time. Oh, we're falling back, you know, something like that.

Or even if it's just duration and sequence, not specific date.

Yeah, that's even... It's been wants to make us a Gantt chart.

So it's like, it helps.

Yeah. So that's what we'll do.

Well, one thing that will affect the schedule would be for that, you know, kind of main open house is that, you know, some communities definitely don't want them in the summer months when they have, you know, a big summer population because they want to hear from the year-round people, or if people are traveling and then they don't want people to say, I missed the meeting. So, you know, we have some communities that say, you know, we have the public meeting in June or it has to be in September. I don't know if you guys feel that same way. OK, within July or August, that'll be something, you know, June would probably be pushing it for us since we're already in the middle of May and you got to advertise it and do all the planning for it. Yeah. So I don't know if September is on the table for an open house or if you'd rather do something July or August. And you don't have to answer now, but just that's one of the big pieces that will affect the timeline.

Yeah, let us think about that a little bit. I think, yeah, the most important thing is just kind of get the survey up and live. We do want to publicize it. I think that meeting would be helpful in publicizing it.

yeah let's we'll just circle back to you on that sure when we think we can schedule things like that people have the thing i was thinking about but for like consideration is um in the summer months i think a lot of our year-round residents are working a lot and so also we would want to make sure that we are considering their work schedules in that because you can get a decreased response if you had it on a separate day. Yes, absolutely.

And check the fishing forecast.

Definitely want to be mindful of that. And hopefully the meeting in the box pop-ups kind of help with that too, where you're getting people where they're already out at events.

But yeah, yeah, and I we have 3 or 4 of us will also make a point to attend, you know, kind of community meetings or target different groups like go to the firehouse, go to the Chamber of Commerce, go talk to the lines, and you know, make sure we can share the survey with them. They can talk to you know their community. So we're gonna try to target people as much as possible in smaller. groups with the same information.

Great. That all sounds great.

Awesome. Well, thanks for coming to talk to us and kick this off. We'll get back to you in the next couple of weeks with edited survey questions. And we'll start getting that written.

Great. Thank you. Thanks for having us.

OK.

Thank you.

Thank you. Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Awesome.

Moving forward. OK. I am going to try to share this screen. Yes, who does?

Slideshow.

We've already moved through a lot of these. Oh, we'll come back to that. 80 plus one program. I have a very quick update. We are, I think, almost in the same place as we were last time. We had a quick call with Casey and his team. We have four complete. We have two under construction. We have three in their design start phase. And six people are approved. Their applications are in some process. Not all those people have signed on the dotted line. So that sometimes takes a while. I know we do have one slot open out of that 16 number. So we do want to fill it. And we are, Casey and I are talking about doing an online or possibly in town hall meeting in the next couple of weeks. It might be around June 3rd. We're checking on everyone's availability and just to do a kind of question and answer period open to the public. and on zoom so i'll get that information to you guys next week anyone welcome to attend um it might just be me and casey talking and uh trying to you know drum up a little bit more interest um get some more people i mean i know we have more applicants coming in all the time we talked about a few people last time but whatever happened with the one that was going for the variants i know it was tabled yeah it's in the process up in the air so uh i'll get back to you guys with that date but it might be the week after memorial day um Rental projects with CDLI and partners. I just threw this together from your documents, Espen, but we are working on our contract drafts, which includes our ground lease, our development agreement, our management agreement, our declaration of covenants and restrictions. Moving forward with the process of writing all of those, right? We will go into executive session at the end to kind of talk through some of the contract stuff. So we can talk details there, but we are, we have a timeline checklist and we've been talking to CBLI and partners about they're doing a feasibility study. We're still waiting for that.

I talked to Glenn yesterday.

With bated breath.

I don't have anything to share yet. It's coming.

Anything else to talk about publicly on this? OK. Cool. We'll do the fund update. Unity Housing Fund. We are lucky enough to get 0.05% of real estate transfers What? Is that right? Half a percent. And we, in the last month of April, made $30,000 in purchases. We started with $1,663,379, added $30,000. Our dividends for our fund is just making money. Almost $5,000. We end with $1,698,933. 930 and 29 cents.

Liz, do you get the list of one of the payments to us like Amber used to get it?

No, I don't get it anymore.

Do you get it, Ben?

No. I'm sure.

Yeah, just so we get an update of I know and maybe Amber got it just because she sees because we did have a huge sale. So I'm just waiting. I don't think it probably, it takes I'd say six weeks, eight weeks.

It takes a while for it to post because it like it goes and then it goes to the county and then it goes back to us. It's a process. It's good to know that there's cash coming, though.

Yeah, but it's a little slow right now. We're in a little slump. We have about $10 million in contract.

Okay.

So that's about another $48,000 coming in.

That's a big month.

No, it's actually, well, it's not a month. It's on a rolling basis, yeah. April was $30,000? Yeah.

Almost $31,000. $31,000.

um and i know we're providing these numbers for taylor she also asked about any spending that we're doing right jess yeah did you see my response to that when i checked that i do believe that it will come but my understanding is it's not going to happen until the end of the year yeah so there's no set numbers to provide them gotcha

OK. How about a liaison report? Do you guys have anything?

I don't have any liaising to tell you about, other than that I check in with Gwen all the time, just because she thought she was going to have that financial model to us by the end of last week. But she said it's just taking a little bit more time. She's like, it's just tight. And I think they were just kind of waiting on what the governor's like. You know what I mean? There were two is asking me questions and stuff like that, so I would expect that we have it soon, but.

The town board also passed the pro house.

I go, so we finally, thank you brand for bringing this up. We finally, finally just do the thing and pass the pro housing. Uh, communities resolution, which has been. um i thought we weren't eligible at one point well here's the thing we could we could either do it based on what we'd actually already built which was just qualified yeah that's our issue or we could just say that we're basically it's a non-binding resolution to say we would like to address our you know you can read the resolution but basically we're a pro-housing community just saying that publicly um but that was do and so we're really excited that we were able to get this done um so this is going to potentially help us with funding for both our projects here um but also the town white but other projects yes um so anyway you know there's a bunch of grant programs that

We would now be eligible for they're listed here. Who knows what all of them are, but we'll find out.

Yeah. And then there's the governor's budget and stuff. But we now can look at this money. So first we couldn't before. So this is great.

So that's good. Yeah, I think it's going to help with our and partners project. In that, in that we're now eligible for those kind of things. OK, I think that's it for me for sharing. And does anybody have any old business? New business I will just share that East Hampton is doing an edu program that's alone. That Liz and I were talking about copying, so I'm going to talk to all the towns housing. funds next week or the week after, May 27th, whenever that is. So I have a call. I'm going to quiz East Hampton about that and see if, I don't know if they have details on their website. I was poking around today. But anyway, I think it's a $100,000 loan.

So it doesn't cover more? No, it would cover a down payment.

Well, it's an ADU. It's for ADU to offset it, right? Yeah. And so that's like, but we just thought it was like interesting. Yes, to get like some details.

Here's my quick and dirty proposal that we think about adopting as our ADU Plus One program maybe winds down, is that the Community Housing Board creates a perpetual ADU loan and or grant program at around the same level. We do two or three a year. We make them sign a special community housing license or whatever it is to ensure that it's rented affordably year round. So people could get our own loan grant, build an ADU, renovate whatever, get the ADU, get the permits and we keep that going with a little portion of our fund. So I'm gonna find out details about what East Hampton is doing. I know they have a million dollars to spend. We might say we wanna do two a year, but if we do two a year for 10 years, you know, it might be a good thing to just put in our... Yeah, and I think it'd be interesting to find out when you get that information

Like I feel like that would be the tricky part. So once we figure out what they're doing, then we can figure out like logistically how to make it work because the compliance in it, because yeah.

I mean, creating a loan, we will rely on someone smart to do that.

We'll need a partner to do it. But not impossible, but we'll be there.

There's like land trusts where the community shares whoever's doing the oversight or whoever's administering the programs and just share them.

Definitely possible. And there's a bunch of organizations that we could partner with. I think it's just like maybe seeing what East Hampton's doing, seeing if that's like a good choice for Shelter Island, and then just kind of figuring out how to set it up.

So I think it's an awesome idea.

Just to be clear, so your vision is as the grant program sunsets, this will come into your placement?

Yeah, or if, I mean, if the ADU Plus One program keeps going forever, which I don't know if we're going to be eligible for another round, I think it might go to other places.

We're on the list for another round, but they have to offer it to other towns first. Yeah. They don't pick up on it then. I think we're still ahead of everybody.

yeah we're still very far ahead yeah yeah exactly uh you know just just to um and even if it does continue to do this as well yes right because i what i think this would do that we want to do is to actually create affordable right adus and that we would kind of have a little bit of oversight over yeah so that we're you know we can also say

create adus and you know we know that these are being rented affordably at you know whatever the fair market rate yes and at the edu the edu plus one program you know continues that it would be something to consider if you wanted to be able to stack them because like you know alex was saying like you know she had families that it would help but you know maybe they couldn't fully do their renovation but if they had double that maybe they could renovate it I mean, I don't know, you know, maybe they could they could actually finish the renovation. And keep it affordable. So, I mean, I think there's, I think there's a lot of interesting things to think about.

As we've seen the 125,000 dollars doesn't go that far. No. So. If you put them both together, maybe you can actually.

Yeah, a lot of people like the. separate structures where that's a lot of money. But finishing off the basement, it's not a lot of money. So I wish, you know, we should encourage everybody to apply no matter what their financial situation is. And we go in and say, well, no, that's not really economically feasible, but if you do this, it would be. And they would be like, well, we never even knew we could do that type thing, you know.

Cool. So Anything else in new business? I see a hand up in the audience. So Steven, you have a question? It's muted.

Yes, good evening. A process issue? As I think at least some of you know, recent application to the Zoning Board of Appeals represented that the applicant had qualified for an ADU grant. In fact, the applicant failed to meet two or three of the eligibility requirements listed on your website. The application was subsequently withdrawn, but if I heard a comment a little bit earlier, it's still in process, particularly since the application was public.

Sorry, are you saying that her ZBA application was withdrawn?

Yes.

Okay. We don't have anything to do with that.

I think we're talking about two different things.

Yeah. I don't think we're talking about two different things. I think we're talking, and perhaps I'm wrong, about the application that you referenced a little bit earlier as being still in process, although it had been withdrawn from the ZBA.

Oh, I think we were all just saying it's in process because we are not on the ZBA and don't know. what the application status of it is.

Okay, well, I can tell you and you can confirm that the application has been withdrawn. But in any event, particularly since the application was publicly supported by some of you, the public deserves to hear the process by which your board and CDLI go about evaluating whether an applicant is in fact qualified for a grant.

Well, I can tell you that our board does not evaluate that. It's a CDLI and state application process, and they're looking at people's income and The, I'm sure those all those qualifications are.

Listed in in the application, it's the state mandated process. So there's not a lot of flexibility in it.

It sounds to me that it might be that everything works on CDC side and the state side financially. They need. But the property isn't zone for it, and they went to zoning and we're probably turned down because. So there's completely separate processes. One is the qualification of the owner. The other is the zoning approval. That's what it sounds like we're talking about.

But just so I understand, in other words, your board does nothing to verify or investigate whether, for example, the property. That's correct. We do not. even when you publicly support an application in front of the ZBA?

Any of the applications have had to go to ZBA for variances of different, you know, size restrictions. We've had ones that were slightly undersized and things like that. So, you know, I'm not sure what your...

I went to the board meeting, the ZBA meeting, and I supported both of the... ADUs that were asking for variances because I believe that we need more year-round housing on the island. And it's that simple. That's why I supported it.

Your website contains requirements, in particular a CDLI document. The requirements or prohibitions include one, property not be in the near shore overlay. As to that, perhaps that's something the ZBA can cure. a defect that it can cure. But if that's true, how is the public supposed to know that what's on your website is not in fact what goes on? As to the other two requirements that were in play, the website clearly says that grants are not available if the property involved is less than 40,000 square feet. This property was a fraction of that. There is also, and that I don't see how the ZBA could cure that problem. Finally, there's an income requirement and a serious issue as to whether the applicant was within that. Again, that I don't, how can the ZBA cure that defect if in fact it was a defect?

There's two things I hear you talking about. There is like zoning requirements, which of course and ask for a variance. I mean, you may or may not get it, but you're welcome to ask. That's literally why the CBA exists. As far as the financial requirements, that is all state mandated and is facilitated by CDLI. This board, neither the community housing board nor the town board is going through applicants and that whole process is state mandated. So that is not happening on a town level.

I don't know if that answers your question. We're not the gatekeeper. We're just the facilitator.

We're the gatekeeper. Yeah. Well said. Thank you. I don't know if that answers your question.

Thank you.

Okay, anyone else? Julie, do you have any questions for us?

I just wanted to jump in briefly. We had an inquiry this week from somebody complaining that he doesn't understand why there's no affordable housing of the 10 that were announced as though they had disappeared into the air. And my first reaction was sort of, excuse me, these people have been totally transparent. They meet regularly, openly, and make it clear. Certainly, there have been reports at the town board meeting. We write about it, and I think, where has this person been? However... In talking with my editor about it, we decided we're going to do a piece on it, but I'd like to have a chance, Bryn, either tomorrow or over the weekend to speak with you, just to certify that things that I say in the story are absolutely correct. Yeah. I was a little shocked by the inquiry because I think this is one of the boards that I particularly like because you guys move forward, you do things, and when there's a holdup, you explain why. You know, you explain what's going on. So I just, you know, as I said, I want to make sure that nothing that we say in the kind of response to this person, you know, is off base. But, you know, again, I don't think it's any fault of anybody's here. I've been covering these boards since before this particular board existed. back in Mary Faith's day. And I always found total transparency and felt that everybody's working very hard. So I didn't have a lot of sympathy, but, you know, it is what it is. And I understand that people have busy lives and don't always have time to, you know, listen to every meeting. That's what I get paid for. Yeah.

Yeah, I'll just say it just so we have it on the record here at the meeting. Our 10 rental unit project is proceeding. We have three properties slated for development with CDLI and partners. And we're working on some contract stuff with them. We're awaiting some feasibility studies from them and hoping to start seeing some plans and construction timelines in the next couple months.

So that really sums it up. And I assume that there are issues of financing also being worked on. Yes. Exactly.

Oh, yeah. We're waiting to see how that all shakes out. And we'll let everybody know when we know.

And that's what I've observed. And I said, I really love these committees that actually, I mean, there are some that talk a lot, but they don't necessarily do a lot. There are, you know, a bunch of them that actually do some wonderful things. And this is certainly one of them.

Thank you.

Thank you, Julie. I didn't see it as a criticism. I thought nobody's listening, and if they don't listen or they don't read, I can't, you know, do they want me to come to their house and read to them?

Great. Anyone else have a question for us? If not, we have...

Make a motion to close. Yes.

We're going to go into Executive 7.

But we have to close this meeting. Close the meeting. So I make a motion. So OK. OK.

So now the meeting is closed.

Thank you, everybody. Thank you.