Affordable Housing Commission - Regular Meeting

and call this meeting to order at 5.05, ouch, 5.15 p.m. Sorry, in your lap. No, it's, again, all the doors are locked. Well, we tried to keep you out, but apparently you found a way, so clearly. All right, we are calling to order.

All right, so you may recall last meeting we had discussed

closing the door on the small pieces of land here and there that might be feasible and to look to something that would allow us to build potentially more affordable housing units for just to bring people into a vibe and to get to that 10% that we're like eight and a half percent away from. It was suggested at that meeting that we get some people in maybe to talk to us. And Ross and Fred took off. And we are welcoming Mr. Andrew Woodward here from Echo. Woodstock. Oh, I'm sorry. Woodstock. My bad. We'll fix that. From Echo to educate us. And Fred has, I guess, coming next month as well. So welcome, Andrew. He's going to turn right over to you.

I guess the first question I have is what do you hope for?

I think really the question that came up, and anybody jump in with this, is how do not-for-profit developers go about this? If we had a building, let's say, that we wanted to consider turning into an affordable housing, you know, a set of units or, you know, two family homes or whatever, How does that work from a nonprofit development standpoint?

Well, basically, we seek funding from government agencies, CDG, CHI, part of the housing in general, plus some private loans that, you know, we already greatly depend on a lot of people that are lending money to nonprofit development for this very purpose.

But what is the smallest that you do?

We actually finished a program about two years ago with single-band housing. Can you give us, just walk us through the financing, how that would work? Okay. Typically what would happen is, I'm assuming this would be a town-owned property. Yeah. What we would do then is apply the funding probably to the Department of Housing. that is a bi-yearly application in what's called the development engagement process. You develop a plan for, you know, what you want to do, basically, bring into this development engagement process, and they basically review it and say, yes, maybe, or no.

And in that application, do you set forth how you're going to fund it and how much it will cost? Right. where the funding sources you anticipated coming and all that stuff.

So that's basically what I need. You know, somebody's screened.

It's sort of a financial nuts and bolts. If you have a property, a single family home, get the land for free, I assume?

Not always. Not always. For example, right now, remember the church that collapsed in New Orleans? We purchased that property. We helped the city clean up the site, and we're just about to start a 46-unit building there. The other properties that we've done, as I said, we just finished a single-family first-time homebuyer program in London where we purchase a either a foreclosed property or dilapidated property, completely rehab it, and get funding for the rehab. That funding came through CHFA in this case.

So you're saying you might buy one house. That's a very small project. You would do that? Oh, absolutely.

And so as far as identifying the properties, so... if, like for example, the dilapidated properties, are those already HUD-owned properties? Or are they?

Could be privately owned.

Could be privately owned.

We pick up a lot in foreclosure, which, you know, could be a bank. Could be anything, credit union, VA, or something like that.

Who's identifying those properties?

We usually buy them through a real estate transaction.

Okay, so I'm a real estate broker, so I'm just trying to figure out, like, how you know, most foreclosed properties, if they've already been foreclosed, they're now a lot of times, right? You don't see them before that.

Actually, HUD has a program that allows non-browsers to come in prior to... Before they go onto the HUD store. Right.

Okay. Because the HUD store is limited, sorry, but so foreclosed properties, once the bank is taking possession, they usually clean them up. do a very minimal sort of overhaul to make sure that they're safe. And then they put a padlock on them that licensed brokers in the area have the keys to. You sign in, go in and see them. But in order to put an offer in, you have to go on to what's called the HUD store, which the public can go on to. But as an agent, you go in and you have to do the application. And if it's not an owner occupied, then it it's limited to investors. Like, there's a period of time where somebody who's not buying it to live in it doesn't have the ability to bid on those properties because they have lots to do, right?

So you're saying before they even hit that, you have the opportunity to bid on it. Very interesting. We've also done a multi-family property test. In general, I'm thinking of a good example. On Bayonet Street in New London.

Yep.

Yeah, right on the going up the hill on the left. Yeah. As you, I don't know if you remember, but we purchased that property. That was that problem by somebody that tried to develop it. So we purchased the property and took down the old houses. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, in Old Lyme's case, we don't have any big factory buildings or churches or anything like that. That's the case. And I don't think we even have any property. So the best thing we could do is roll land. Let's say we town-owned property that we give to you. Can you just walk us through the financials?

Well, typically what would happen is we would do a purchase and sale agreement. In order to access most of the funding, we'd have to have site control of the property.

You would buy the property?

We would buy the property, but the purchase and sale agreement isn't the transaction. That's just allowing us access to the property. Right. Right now, we're doing this on our property in Ledyard right now behind Holdridge Garden Center. We'll take possession of the property. In this particular case, they want to develop it as a village section with commercial properties on the first floor plus some single family lots. In the single family lot case, we'll probably retain ownership of the entire property do a land lease so that we can set up first-time homebuyers to purchase the property, build some equity, and then sell it and move on. We'll also have rental apartments above commercial units. A lot of different models. Oh, yeah. You know, you could personally have that in command with a similar project in Langer as well, where they're building, you know, multiple townhouse-style units.

So if there was a If there wasn't land available, raw land that was free, then we would have to identify properties and then apply for funding to purchase and then renovate those properties. So it doesn't matter really what the properties are.

And it doesn't necessarily need funding to purchase a property. You can get the owner to agree to a purchase and sale agreement so that we have control of the property for a period of time and apply for funding.

So if an owner, so if an owner, did you hear the guy the other night, did you hear the guy the other night that owns 35 acres?

Say what?

The guy the other night that owns 35 acres. I thought I heard somebody say that. That he can't develop the way he wants to. So I didn't fully understand the restrictions, but he expressed his frustration. So if we went to this private owner and we said, Echo wants to buy your land, and go could theoretically buy that land and develop. Absolutely.

What's your, in that case, so this gentleman is saying he can't, he's unable to develop, we don't know what the, what he's run into, but, so it sounds like the first, the first thing that you do is enter into a purchase and sale agreement. And then you, that gives you access to the site, so that you can then get all the testing, see what can be done there, what can't be done there, set the water, all that stuff.

It starts with an easier conversation. You know, somebody comes to us and wants to sell the land, we take a look at it from what he's willing to share with us.

Are you offering a market price?

It depends on, you know, it is a negotiated contract. And sometimes we have to walk away, you know, with a lot of owners.

Right. Like I need to say. Like I need to turn back. Right. But it's not like you were asking, I'm going to say, the owner say, we'd like you to sell it at half your asking price.

No. Okay. Absolutely not. It has to appraise. Right. So we have to have two appraisals that are in all different degrees of property value. If he has to price it way over the appraised value, then that's an issue.

Cool. Let's say we give you free land and we want the idea to build a single family home. Why do you anticipate the total cost to build that single family home?

Well, the first question I'd ask you is the purpose of this for a first-time homebuyer or is this for? For the house. Okay. Is the person going to rent or buy? They're going to buy.

Okay. Is there a big difference?

Well, if they were going to rent, we would actually purchase the property. We would hold it, manage it, and be the property manager for it, handle all the rental. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And keep it full.

And that would influence the cost of the project?

Yeah. In what way? It depends on, you know, what the transactions, you know, buying raw land. In general, what we'll do is take, you know, one of the things I do is take, you know, what somebody gives me and come up with a way to do it. And the costs vary greatly depending on what we can fit on the pond. In Old Lyme, you're going to be putting septic systems in well soon.

In general, I mean, if you're going to build a house of 1500 square feet or 1200 or whatever it is, there's a cost to that. And in general, what is your costs?

Don't we have that figure from the two houses that are about to?

Yeah, we're checking.

We don't really. Well, we have an estimate based on the ARPA requests. We have estimates that were proposed. I'd be very curious to hear his answer.

$250 a square foot, I think, which is high. 250, usually 175. Right, what do you guys think?

Well, it depends on, you know, what we're doing. For example, we could put a modular house on there. Okay. Or say, you know, three bedrooms. We'd probably need $150 to $165 per square foot. Okay. If it goes much above three bedrooms, then we're getting a little complicated with the subsistence, the well capacity. So what do you think you could build a house for? Times the square footage, right? Times 1500 square feet?

That'd be like $250,000 plus septic, plus well, plus... Yeah, whatever. Manscaping plus drug, whatever.

It's where no one is over the weapons, it's in your blood zone, it's in your, you know, there's a lot that goes into it.

So, but I, so that either rental or purchase money that's coming from the buyer or tenant will only support so much.

And we have to go through the same crazy process. We sold it afterwards, you know, we're going to have to trade it for ourselves.

so if you for example if you're selling them and let's say they become for example like a workforce unit right which is based on the median income of the town and they come with like I don't know 30 or 40 year deed restriction that says that they can't be sold for more than whatever that median might shift but whoever buys the property they can't buy it for $200,000 and then... Sell it for $500,000. Exactly, exactly.

Yeah, there is a deep restriction.

Now, the appraisal, this is where I get confused. Does the house have to appraise at... So, normally, the house has to appraise at purchase price, right? Which means there's positive equity if you're doing something like an affordable housing role. So, appraisal, it's based on what loan value, right? Yeah. So... Is it 100% financing?

Or are you... In some cases, we do down payment assistance programs. Okay. In some cases, they don't come up with a minimum down payment. They're required to go through an education program. Right. Typically, home ownership, a lot is...

do because frequently you'll have a buyer that has to back out you know something else and then we introduce carrying costs into the right so the house with the cost would have to get built and then the price that it could be sold for as an affordable house have to be at least that right not necessarily If it's below that.

We have lost money on many houses.

But then that loan to build the property, once the home is sold, that money is used to pay off the loan, correct? So that the commission or the town doesn't have to pay on a mortgage.

You're assuming that we're using a mortgage to purchase it, not grant. Okay.

But grant money doesn't have to get paid back. Right.

You must have a long way to this. Right now, well, preface this by saying we have 283 housing units all over East Street, Connecticut. We have about 300 people on our opening list.

And they come to you?

Yeah.

So there's, in my recommendation, there's generally a shortfall between what it costs to build it and... That sounds formal? Yeah. Or the cost to... build and what the mortgage or rental payments can support.

So depending on how well we do our job and how the appraisal comes out, you know, we may have spent $300,000 building this house, but it only appraises for $208,000.

Right. So where does the, where generally, where does the shortfall come from?

It usually comes from something stupid.

You know... Who covers the shortfall? Yeah, we cover the shortfall. And they get public... That's what he said. They're supported by federal and state funding and private funding.

Not specific to the project.

Well, it depends. You know, for example, we could do a... Go to CHFA and say, O-line is looking to do, you know, multifamily housing all over town. We would like to get sell it to first-time homebuyers or low-income people. A component of that might be we'll do this multi-family house over here and we'll hold tight to it, keep it as low-income housing with deed restriction and rent out the units and we'll manage that for the next 50 years.

In your experience, CHE gives grants, meaning you don't pay it back, for affordable housing, a loan card, whatever it is. And about how much do they give for a unit?

It actually isn't based on units. We will apply for a set amount of money and then they'll...

It could be millions, right?

It could be. If you example at any given time, you have between $30 and $60 million in our pipeline. In what form? In our pipeline. What?

Pipeline. Pipeline. Pipeline.

Yeah.

I believe in here. You know, for old line, we have lots, we're building single family homes that may change. And as far as I understand, the rent or mortgage will support like 100, maybe $150,000 of mortgage. So as far as I understand, the house will cost like at least $400,000 to build.

Well, if you're building a $400,000 house and selling a $150,000 house, there's An inequity there that has to be dealt with.

Right. So that's that inequity, if you want to call it that, is what I'm curious about. You know, where does that money come from?

Well, if it comes from the board, if it's being done correctly, there won't be that big of a gap.

It just shouldn't happen. Well, it shouldn't happen. I mean, by definition, I would say it has to happen. Well, because... People, rents, affordable rents, or rent to own, almost by definition, their ability to pay is whatever, $3,000. Based on their income. Based on their income. So that's not going to support a big mortgage, if you will. Their ability to pay will be limited. But the cost to build the house is considerably more than that. It's considerably more than their ability to pay. Does that sound right?

I'm going to let you respond to that. I intervened.

It shouldn't be that considerable a difference between 150 and 400. It's a large problem. It shouldn't be that much. The people that buy these houses go through a mortgage process. They have to qualify for a mortgage. We assist them with that. Sometimes we do a down payment assistance program as part of these applications. When they do a down payment assistance, there's an education involved in it. It's a home ownership school. They really have somewhat limited choices in the house, because by the time they qualify for their mortgage, we're already 90% done with the property.

Is it better to just buy land if it's development, even though sometimes land can be pricey?

Well, you know, land is always pricey. It's going to depend on where it is and what the subdivision regulations are, you know, with the zone that we're building in.

Has anybody looked at five-state approach in the thoughts of this room? Has that property been looked at? I don't know. I, yeah, we don't look. In person, no, but I've looked at, I think they're about 94. 135 acres for sale right now. Not listed at open. Oh, that's not, oh, sorry. I didn't really look at Canada. Yeah, no, this is on the market right now. Yeah. And has been on the market for a long time. Yeah. I'm just out of curiosity. So, like it's listed for 2.3 million.

Those are building lots.

This is right. So it looks like some approvals are already done. So like there's some demographic area, there's a topical survey and other, you know, so raw land means nothing's been done versus some land, you know, has already, some people have gone in and done a PERC test and a survey or whatever, which makes it more valuable.

So I would assume there's no subdivision.

It does not say that there's subdivision approval, but it does say that it is a mixed use currently. Multi-based residential platform.

Yeah. Are you looking at the real estate listing? I'm looking at the listing. Does it have the code for zoning in the listing?

So it is zoned. Here it is.

Not that I have it memorized.

It is subdividable. There's 30 lots.

30 lots, okay. There would probably be bigger lots than we're talking about. 30 lots. 135 acres.

On the current zone. Yeah. Where is that?

I don't know. So, in the interest of time,

and to make sure that we are clear on how we would utilize an organization like ECHO. If we had town-owned property that the town was looking to sell for affordable housing purposes, we would call ECHO, we would call you, because you'd be our contacts, and say, how can we start this process? And the money... In terms of funding, I mean, we as a commission have a small budget annually, but we can't afford to do the deed. So do you have a property? Not necessarily. I'm just thinking in terms of if it's...

It was a gravel pit. I know that property very well. I almost bought it.

Oh, yeah.

It's got four ponds, gorgeous ponds that were gravel pits. And then it has large... cliffy rocks on it. No, it's not. It's off of Boston Post Road, very close to the turnoff, or very close to Rustic Cafe. That big 93 turn is right there.

On the east side of Boston Post Road?

On the west side of Boston Post Road. On the west side. It has gorgeous ponds on it. They're crystal clear and lots of big rocky... There are very few actual buildings on Ritter Road, except on the right-hand side. There's no way they gave $30,000. And the stump dumps on the other side.

It's very possible there's not any town on property that is developed at all. Most of them are about 20 to 30 acres.

Well, that gorgeous town happens on Ritter Road.

Exactly, yeah. Right, right. For multi-family set, that's what I'm saying, yeah.

Yeah, it used to be that way. Yeah, well,

In order to, just to make sure we're clear, because of what Ross just said, and it sounds like with what Kent is knowledgeable about, maybe something could be built there, but potentially not that many properties. However, if something could be built there, maybe that is something to take a look at, I don't know. But what if we had, what if there was a privately owned current commercial property space that is zoned for mixed use or allows residential use, and we had a conversation with the owner or owners of said existing property and building, I assume you would be involved in that as well. That could be something you come in and you could turn it into livable units. And how do we at the Affordable Housing Commission ensure that if this is all happening for affordable housing, that it remains in the affordable category. So the deed restriction. The deed restriction, is that, okay, all right.

Most of the funding agencies will be part of that. And it's only going to return from 20 to 50 years of any money agency.

So nothing can be done other than, okay. And that's where you also prevent a person from like, you know, they hit the lottery and now they're going to sell it for, yeah, or whatever.

Yeah, they're going to have stay in for, usually they stay in the house for a certain period of time and then when they go to sell, it's in an aid label.

There's a percentage in the fleet that they can leave on their original purchase. There's a percentage that's available.

And how often are you engaging in the beginning of this process with affordable housing commissions in towns?

Most of the affordable housing AND HOUSING AUTHORITIES THAT WE WORK WITH HAVE BEEN ESTABLISHED. THE 60 IS ONE MOST OF THEM WERE ESTABLISHED. IT'S UNUSUAL FOR A TALENT TO START AT THE SAGE ON AN INFORMAL HOUSING PROGRAM. On the other hand, like.

Say it again, just stay with me. What's this date?

This late.

2026. Well, we started in 2020.

You know, I think Fred was a founding member.

So you think everybody's had enough?

No, actually, a lot of the wealthier towns haven't started yet. Oh, okay. When you get into the bigger municipalities, that's been the matter, of course, since the 60s. But when you get into the towns, you know, between Milford and New York, you know, there's very little affordable housing. You can probably go to Milford now. It's a consulting job for a bed house, which is a homeless shelter and a zoo kitchen. We often work for other nonprofits who don't have a good grasp on construction and financing to get them through the process of building.

You're working with the Homeless Hospitality Center on a residential building that we were initially going to buy, and then you guys suggested that you buy it.

We have a few projects with you guys right now. It's a conversion artisan home.

Yeah, that's the thing I was talking about.

Yeah, this is going to be a residential care facility. We're also working on the last So what would our role in either those whether it's land whether it's a for a single family home potentially.

you know, a small number of maybe two family units or something where we could put them. It kind of depends on what you want for all the people.

Okay. We were talking before everybody came in about establishing a housing authority. It doesn't align much at the point where they establish a housing authority. Does a portable housing condition work into a housing authority? Right. At that point, we would basically be making applications on a program-wide basis through some of the same sources, the Department of Housing, THFA, Bureau of the Atlantic, low-income tax credit. There's multiple different avenues for funding on these types of projects. The one in London is a 9% tax credit debt. we have basically a sponsor board that receives the tax benefits for it for the next 20 years.

Okay, so with us not being a housing authority, if we could do as, and I'm not looking to do little, but we could do as little as find the private owner And they're ready to have some conversations and get you connected with them. Or we could do as much as how do we help secure funding? How do we follow the process? I mean, if it's town owned, I would imagine the expectation is that we would be as involved as we have to perhaps add up to this point. Private owner, probably very different. You know, hey, might want to have a conversation with them. But you only do affordable housing and beyond.

Some of our will go up to 100% area. We do occasionally have market rate that there's no units, we also have support as. You know, they had partners, I think the student partners that support, they have various physical or mental ability to share. In that case we maintain an office for. on your property management basically yeah you do all that you know subcontractors okay yeah yeah okay do you um do you have your own crews um for major builds we actually have a general contractor but we have our own maintenance crews that maintain the problem you know typically you know people oh yeah Our engineers, whoever it is, you are our projects in the basket very pro maybe 20,000 to base on where to announce about 25 million. It is a lot of what you do if you guys have a piece of town property that you want to see an example of the sun. Okay, all right, let's see what let's do again.

That's great. It might be a good exercise.

Yeah. Just for learning, if nothing else, and maybe it turns into something. But when we get enough time in our agenda, I ain't going to move us along. George, you or Jimmy, do you have any questions for Andrew while he's here?

Not tonight, but this is very, very helpful.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

George, we can't hear you. That's nice. He was saying something. Maybe he was talking to somebody else.

Do you know the property you call after the big Y between George Southern? No, going the other way. Across from the post office.

Sorry, I don't have any questions. Very useful. Thank you.

That's right. What was that? I don't know. Is it crazy?

Yeah, we're gonna stick to the agenda for now.

And thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for coming.

We'll talk about what would be a wonderful one to start with in terms of learning. And what's your role with ECHO? I'm the director of real estate. Lovely to meet you. Thank you so much for coming.

So nice to see you.

Right, so we are going to move right on. It's really, the rest of it should not be meaty. Thank you, Andrew, so much. Okay, I'm going to move this along. And then if we have, if we want to talk specifics, maybe we consider just some leg conversation afterwards. Moving on with the agenda, the approval of our July 1st minutes. Those are links there. I'll give you a couple of, I'll give you like 40 seconds to breeze through it. And once someone is ready to make a motion, we will accept a motion.

I will make a motion to approve the July minutes.

Thank you, Ross. Is there a second?

Second.

Oh, look at that. Is there any discussion? None. Hearing none. All those in favor of approval of the July minutes, please say aye. Aye. Wonderful. Any opposed or abstentions? Motion passes. Thank you. All right. Eastern Connecticut basically started with him. I should have done the minutes first, but that's okay. All right, public update. All right. Here's where we are. Now I feel like we're all up against a category. I'm gonna pop over to the other side. Basically talked with the attorney who's handling the closing. Talked with Martha after the conversation with the attorney who's handling the closing. So, there's still a couple of things that need to happen. So last month when we had the one, I don't remember what the title was, but the issue where the Board of Select Persons had to approve something and then it had to go through planning, both groups did expedite that and that went through as planned. And our understanding is it's all good So, attorney Cody came back with, we have to have a public hearing over the sale of the properties. And it was explained to him. I shared with him all the documentation I had about all the steps that were in different email cards. I put them all together and said, this is what we have. And basically, Havitat's attorney So apparently we did a combination public town meeting and public hearing back in April of 2024 when this whole process started to kick off. And according to what we're being told about the Connecticut state general statutes, those have to be separate. And their attorney is being a stickler about that. She wants us to have a separate hearing about the sale. And she wants to ensure there's a clean deed. So she is the habitat. Yeah. What was that last thing you said? She wants to, she wants to be assured that they clean the meeting. Like there's nothing that it's going to come back and bite anybody.

So that work hasn't happened yet. Doesn't that happen earlier in the process normally?

So the hearing happened way back in the beginning. Yeah. But because it wasn't done specific to Connecticut statutes, she wants it done that way. And what Martha is saying is as a small town, Martha believes that we have an ordinance written in, or hopefully not, but an ordinance that was added, being a small town, that we could do that combination if needed, and that that's how we've always done these types of things. So, Martha has a call out to both Rich Cody, our attorney who's doing that closing, and their attorney, Victoria something or other. In speaking with Rich, and sharing with him our concerns about this thing moving. He said that we could certainly, if this is another piece of the puzzle that has to happen, it's going to be another month because of time constraint. You have two weeks to get this out, two weeks to wait, whatever that is for this kind of a public hearing. He said that we can enter into an agreement with Habitat that he and their attorney could work out an agreement so that they could start their work. Now, I don't know if they've done anything. I know that Habitat moved right before our last meeting. And I was out of town for a week and out of commission for the week before that, getting ready to be out of town for a week for my business. So I have not called Sarah over at Habitat. I was waiting to talk to Martha tonight. So I talked to her and reached out to Sarah and see where she is with this. But apparently... Victoria and Habitat is still in the process or waiting to do, forgive me, because I don't understand this process, the title search. So I don't know what that process entails.

The title search is that their title searcher is going to come to town hall, down to the town clerk's office, and they're going to search that property back 42 years. Okay. And what they're looking for is an unbroken chain of ownership. That's the title search. Which should have been done a while ago. When is that usually done?

Way earlier.

When you apply for the financing or when you go under contract. So when you go under contract to purchase as the buyer, right, the buyer's attorney orders the title search. Okay. Okay. Or they have their own title search.

I mean, a lot of that should have been done because the town bought it from McCulloch not too long ago. So, and this is the same law firm.

Right. They had to do a title search when the town bought it. So if nothing should have changed, if they got clean, if the town got clean title. Yeah. Right? They were really in title insurance too, I would imagine. But if the town got clean title and took possession of that property, then it's safe to say, assuming that they were able to trace it back 40 years. Otherwise, the type of deed that the town took possession There's probably the same order. Probably the same order before you probably have spent it.

Okay. So what you're saying is town should have record of the 42-year ownership.

But still, because it's an undersell, it's still under title service.

What number McCulloch is it?

It's, I don't think their numbers are McCulloch. I think it's, because now their price is on the local level, like 101 or something like that. So that's where we are. Martha and I spent a little time together after her last meeting and after my last email to a bunch of people. And I think she's finally as frustrated as we are. So according to Rich Potey, they should be able to move forward with their work. So I will check in with Sarah.

Would that include setting a date for a public hearing if we have to do it?

If we have to do that, that's going to be done yesterday. I expect to hear from Martha tomorrow on where things stand with that, with her conversations with Rich and with the attorney for Habitat. So that's all I have on that right now. I will update you as I move on.

So is there anything going on? I mean... the funds, the property needs to be conveyed by the end of the year. And that money needs to be spent. But the money's, nothing's happening.

I feel like the pressure is off as far as I'm concerned. Could we get the money back if they don't get, and frankly, the project they're working on, and I mean, this is kind of small business now, They're working on like a $22 million.

Right. So no one's from Berner except us.

Exactly. That's what I'm guessing. Yes. They have a very big, in Landier, right, yeah.

When you say we get the money back, though, I thought the ARPA funds were, like, they're gone. They're gone.

Yeah. No, no. That money goes back to the town.

Oh, that social service. Yes.

It does not go to our Florida housing. Oh, okay. But it goes back to the town.

Yes.

But anyway, they don't leave.

Well, and I said to Rich Cody, I said, you know, the bottom line is this money was awarded four years ago, three years ago, however long it was. And I said, as the Affordable Housing Commission, we're going to sit there with pie in our face if that money then goes back and is not used for what it was supposed to be used for. And so he said, there's no reason that if we have to do the public hearing and take these steps, there's no reason that they wouldn't be able to start their work. Now, I'm not gonna call Sarah until I hear back from Martha. Because then I can get a sense of, if we say go, and if our attorneys come up with an agreement before the closing happens, are you ready to get on the property and start? And that's what I would want to know. Okay? Anything else about that? All bills have to be submitted before about . Yes, and. I mean, Martha can say to her, Martha can say to her, look, you gotta get them out. I'm not gonna, I don't wanna go crazy over that timeline, but at that point, we should have it all out anyway.

You know what I mean? We should. Is it fair to say that the law firm's doing nothing now?

I think it's fair to say that they need Depending on what I hear tomorrow, I'm going to set up regular meetings with Rich Covey. That's what I think needs to happen.

They're not drawing up the dates.

They're not. I can't say if they are or they're not. I can tell you that we can interpret what's happened and happening. After I hear back from Martha tomorrow, if need be, I'm going to set up regular checkments with particularly. That's what Mike Juliano was doing. Mike Carey happened in the beginning. I learned, so.

What's the total acreage on a local property? Is it 2.2 acres?

It's like three acres. Each one's like an acre and a half. All right. Website information. So we are very, I know I've put this on every agenda and it keeps getting kicked down the road. And last time you said, you guys just, find somebody who's interested in working with me on that. So that is my question. Is there one person who I could set up a meeting with, it could even be virtual, where we look at the website together and we make some determinations as to how we want to reorganize information?

Why do we have a website?

Well, it's not a website, sorry. It's a web page. A section, yes. Our web page. It's very outdated information. Some of it will stay because it's the original plan and mission, but goals need to be updated. We talked about definitions. Will you work with me on that? That would be lovely. Yay. Yay. So Heather, outside of this meeting, we'll find the time that we can sit down together or hop on a Zoom or a team room. Okay. Lovely. All right. Thank you for that. Thank you. Okay. New business. Ross, Fred, I saw you both. I saw you at the...

I didn't see you, but I heard you. You heard me? When I said, what, we agree on something?

Yeah, we attended the workshop series and maybe you guys were there. I don't know if... George, I think you were there as well. I think I saw you at one point. Yes. For the zoning and housing workshop.

Yes, I sat through it. Well, yes, the housing meeting to hear from the public. Yeah, yeah. August 10 is a focus group on that, but I'm not sure that that's going to be accessible by teams.

I don't think it will be, but that's what I think. That's on the minutes right now, on the minutes side of things. Oh, you guys don't, you don't see the minutes. Let me see the agenda. All right, so within the minutes, I have pasted the information from an email that I received today from the zoning chair. And he's basically asking for me It says me or a designated representative from the commission. I'm going to say me and a designated representative. I really think it would be helpful to have another set of ears and another voice there for that. It is zoning commission and it is the housing and residential zoning focus.

August 10th at 6.30 p.m.

Please hold on.

Yeah, you got it.

Just so.

Yes. We have a few people who.

Go to the river. And there's. Also, is there not a.

Another small.

Advisory. Couple groups.

But you. A group that meets with Martha.

Yes, that's the group that George and Jimmy agreed to be a part of, and it sounds like the meetings are hard for Jimmy to get to because they're in the afternoon. The meetings are typically in the morning at 9, which is

a highly unusual time for any town meeting to occur for anyone, regardless of who you are or what you do. So anyway, despite my best efforts, yeah, I have not been able to get to many or be very helpful. I'm sure George has been, but I have not been. What is that group called?

Do you guys know what you're called? Just so we can understand. So it's like Martha's group.

Martha's group? Martha's group. Oh, sure. We'll go with that. And then there's in the memorandum, it calls for a... Housing Strategic Planning Steering Committee.

HSP. HSP. Housing Strategic Planning Steering Committee. LRB. So just before we end this.

Yeah.

The idea for this was to try to have a group that can talk across the three or even four economic development as well commissions. And we've asked Martha to consider getting two people from the Economic Development Commission to serve on this too. But if Jim really cannot make these meetings and they are very inconvenient,

for him um you know martha would like to have you sheila or the or the commission designate another person to sit on this yeah that would be prudent but but there's no so it is is jimmy the only person having a hard time getting to the meetings like it sounds like at night in the morning a lot of people do work like and don't have the flexibility is it just jimmy Because if it's not just Jimmy, I can talk to Mark and say, did you change the time? But it's not that.

I'm not sure. Yeah, I don't know the answer to that. Do you know the answer? I think the request, though, because I got that email, too, today about designating someone. I think that's a separate group. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's a separate.

No, that's the same group.

Is that a separate group that she's asking for or same thing? Okay. All right. Forgive me. Thank you.

Okay. So in my conversation with Martha tomorrow, Martha is going to be out all next week. So we're trying to get some stuff done tomorrow and Friday. So in my conversation with her tomorrow, I will ask her about that timing change. Assuming that that time cannot move and it's on us to assign someone in Jimmy's place, is there anyone who's available? How often do you meet? Like once a month?

Yes.

once a month. And I remember when it started, it was supposed to be a few meetings. Sounds like it's turned into more than that.

Yeah. I thought it was going to be something different. Um, and which, which is fine. And I've been very upfront with Martha the whole time. Like, Hey, you know, I thought this was like, we're going to meet, you know, three times and round table some things. And, um, anyway, um, She's aware that I'm not really able to do it. And I'm very agreeable to having someone take that spot. And I think they're probably halfway done. Right, George? It's probably about halfway done at this point, I would think.

No, to the contrary. The idea here is to work through the next year when decisions are actually going to have to be presented. Okay. We won't know what some of those decisions are really until next spring, although part of the idea is rather than be hostage to River Cog giving us a housing plan and having no coordination between that and what we're trying to do with the zoning rewrite is to try to steer this a little bit to determine what it is that the town wants. Yeah. and clearly based on the last month or so of, and the crowd that turned out for the, for the workshop on housing, you know, there's very strong suspicion and anxiety about any kind of new housing whatsoever, at least among some portion of the people energized to come out two weeks, a week ago, two weeks ago. So, uh,

And I would like to know, to George's point, there is some anxiety, there is some concern, but amongst that there's interest and there's people that are listening and they're gaining information and they're educating themselves. And until now, it's been very difficult to do that. So that's a really good thing. And I think the intention of all of this, all these efforts is to get the information out there and inform people, and I think that's happening. It seems like it is.

I could be wrong, but... Well, I think that the focus group is going to help us, which is why we thank you, Ross, for agreeing to go.

I didn't get this. August 10th.

Monday night at 6.30. Here. Okay. Yeah, here. I'm probably in the meeting room. All the more reason that, you know, it's important for us to be a part of that. You'll see in the minutes... that I have linked the documents that I was sent in email. So you'll see the summary of the meeting topics, you'll see the presentation information, and you'll see the, what was it? The informal in-person survey that they did, like this or that. 47% said this and 53% said that. You'll see all that. And I would suggest I'll check to see if anyone else is interested in being a part of that. Let me know. And I can check to see if they're keeping it limited at one to two people per commission or if it's open to commissioners or other committee members. So let me know. If I don't hear from you, I'm not going to do that. I would just say, please take a look at those links if you weren't at the meeting, even if you were. And if there's anything that you want to make sure that Ross and I are guardians of, if you will, or conveyors of, just send us that information in email or text call. Okay? All right.

Sheila, one note about that. I think the most I can't be at the 10th because I'm out of town, so I won't be able to listen in. I think that it'll be very interesting. But I think that the most useful piece of information here that I don't believe we all have yet is the results of the town survey that people can sign up for, because that's a pretty good sample of what interested people. You know, it's going to be a broader sample than the people who just showed up last week. Yeah. And much more detailed questions, I think. For people who filled that out, it's a really good survey. And so I think it will give a pretty good picture of what at least the people selected to fill it out. think about many of these issues, how tolerant they are about multifamily housing, how strongly they feel about the threat of development generally, and so forth. So it'd be good if we could convince the consultants who are doing that to make the at least current calculations.

Presumably, yeah.

Yeah, public as soon as possible.

Well, I think, yes, we can certainly ask Zomian about that, George. My initial response to that is I think that in order to get, I mean, maybe not, but we know how, we'll say, small towns work. And when things are made public in process, whichever way it's going, then people tend to rally troops, so to speak. And I'm not suggesting that we're not transparent with the survey, but I think that they're doing everything they possibly can to get the opinions of people who are taking the time to fill out that particular form. And so, you know, I could see them saying we're not going to make anything public until we close the survey. But to your point, it would be helpful to know preliminarily where is it looking. Yeah.

You're right. You're right. There is a tension. I mean, you'd like to sort of encourage everybody and anybody who wants to weigh in on this to do it before you do the results. And I don't know whether they're thinking about doing this a month from now or four months from now. But it would be interesting to know how they see that tension.

Yeah. Yeah. And I can check with... It's all over the place. It's on the website. I'll send you a link. I'll send you a link. It should be. I looked it up.

Yeah, it's on the website. And Martha, in every one of her letters, she's encouraged people to fill it out and so forth.

Yeah. All right. The last item is really about Andrew's presentation. So I'm just going to put in the minutes to see the notes under item four. And then next month, Fred has also contacted someone who's going to come and talk to us about their process. CHFA. CHFA. And what is that? Housing Finance.

Finance already.

Okay.

They're a state agency. Yeah. Not San Seppo. I also, if you want to go further, I can identify, there's a very big project, and is it, did you say Tolland or Tolland? I don't know. Tolland. Tolland, by Tolland. That's a different nonprofit developer. But let me know if you want to go into that further.

I mean, I don't see any reason not to understand who's out there, because if we do, our conversation around looking for more bang for the buck, so to speak, we are not, as a town or as a commission, going to be able to purchase anything. So having the people that you've met with and we are understanding their process, having them in our Rolodex, I think, and having met with them to understand them, I think that we can get, hey, this over here, why don't you talk to these people? I mean, it was everything I had to do to not mention... 220, whatever we heard about last meeting, because it's like, this guy is talking about affordable housing, right? So, but it didn't. So we'll leave it at that for now. But yeah, I would say yes. Let's get, let's invite somebody for September. Thank you.

I have to get, I have to get off.

I'm afraid. Okay, George. Thank you.

We'll finish it up, Jimmy. We'll be done here in just a minute. That river cup does not want to come talk to us. Do I recall that? I don't know. I thought they said they didn't have the time.

They didn't have the time.

Right. They sent, well, I don't know if you received what they sent. I thought you were the one who received it. No? Oh, I don't know. I received, we didn't have a meeting last month, and they sent some town-specific data that they gathered. I'm not sure yet.

I'll just tell you. What I'm interested in, you know, I mean, not what their specific plan is, but hypothetically, how could this be done? Give me some broad outlines on how you see this maybe happening. Are you talking about from RigorCop? Yeah, from RigorCop.

Because everyone's coming up with a plan, so they must say, well... Do you want to reach out to Eliza Presti and ask if she can come to me?

I absolutely saw some emails bring that someone said we don't okay anyway you know what i i emailed her about getting together with her for my own benefit so i'll take that okay eventually they have to come together with us because they're the ones we they are the ones that are going to write the plan not in the back page but we decided we're not writing our own plan well we didn't decide enough what that's that committee's for okay

We're trying to, it sounds like the overarching goal of that is to determine, do we need to hop on the river column? Can we come up with our own housing development?

So that's going to be kind of a challenge that fully, you got to have a little better understanding of how this all happened before we make that decision. Right.

So I think we just move forward with like our informational education sessions and we'll go through the year. Although my term's up in January, so we'll have to wait then. And I'm not saying I'm leaving, but we'll see. We just need to move things forward. You guys have been great to work with. So with that, is there, I'm sorry, I'm yelling.

I feel like I have to be loud. I'm still working on trying to figure out what these pieces of property are from probably 90% of the way there. Mm-hmm. It doesn't look good, but there was one piece, the one that you and I looked at, that was the old quads that were for cabins. Is that what you're telling me?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That's the only one so far that I see that has any potential.

Right.

So where's that?

So those are the old Grandview and Chimney properties. Okay, okay. Behind the fire station. No, on this side, though. Up the hill, yeah.

Yeah, they're not.

I mean, it's kind of odd, but.

Do we want to use one of those properties to give Andrew the address and he say, hey.

Theoretically, theoretically, right? Yeah. It's like,

I've not seen them, but I know they're less than 0.3 acres. So far, that's the most. Yeah, there's no slam dogs. Do you have access to those addresses somewhere?

Do you mind reaching back out to Amber? They're in there somewhere. No, on the town line or whatever that's called.

The map. Oh, the GIS. Do you mind sharing that with me? No. Here's our theoretical point scenario. No rush. Yeah, no.

Just for learning. Nothing else. Okay. I do think it sounds like the way Andrew said it, that they would and have and do go to a private owner and say, you do this much, and then it gets to go.

I mean, just comparing that with habitat, it seems like it's a much cleaner model for us, because if they take it over, they take the deed and they do everything. Right. You know, habitat, even after they take the deed, it's not so clean. We still need to, like, help support them every month. Yeah.

I'm going to start, and I apologize. I get antsy at the end because there's so many things I want to talk about, and I feel like I'm still learning the whole, you have to have this here, and you didn't do this, it's not on the agenda, you can't put it in the minute, blah, blah, blah. I'll start adding in other at the end in case there's anything else that we need to bring up. And again, let me just say, actually, let me just call forward. Is there anyone who would like to make a motion to adjourn? Thank you, Fred. Thank you, Heather. Second, any discussion before we adjourn? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. I'm sure he says aye.

Okay. So also the next meeting is September, September the 2nd at 5 p.m.

Cool.