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HomeMy Public PortalAboutAffordable Housing Trust -- 2022-07-07 MinutesBrewster Housing Trust JUIy 7, 2022, 5:OOpm Virtual Meeting Housing Trust Members Present: Donna Kalinick, Tim Hackert, Maggie Spade -Aguilar, Madalyn Hillis -Dineen, Vanessa Greene, Paul Ruchinskas Others Present: Robert Tobias -Finance Committee liaison, Jill Scalise, Housing Coordinator Absent: Ned Chatelain 1. Call to Order: Chair Hackert called the meeting to order at S:OOpm, read the required notice for virtual meetings, and declared a quorum. 2. Citizen's Forum: Glenn Casey submitted an email to the Trust that was in the packet. Chair Hackert said we would comment on that during the Millstone Community Housing Agenda update item. Glenn Casey stated that he felt we were in a black hole regarding the Millstone Community Housing project and wanted to know if he should contact Peter Lombardi with questions and about where we were in terms of the proposed timeline and milestones. He also asked about the Cape Cod Sea Camps and whether the Trust would be involved in Community Housing needs there. He asked what the difference between Community Housing, Affordable Housing and workforce housing. Chair Hackert said we can address that in the Sea Camps update. 3. POAH &HAC proposal for Millstone Community Housing update- Ms. Scalise said that the Select Board, Preservation of Affordable Housing and Housing Assistance Corp. are still in negotiations for the Land Development Agreement and Lease with town legal counsel involvement. Ms. Scalise had a site visit with the Department of Housing and Community Development. Chair Hackert responded to Mr. Casey's email. He said that POAH and HAC have not updated construction costs because they are nowhere close to doing that. Ms. Kalinick said if you look at the timeline that was provided with the proposal, it puts bidding for construction in July 2023, a year from now. Chair Hackert said the project is still in execution of lease and LDA and they are behind in that milestone but could potentially make up time later in the process. The Trust and Housing Coordinator will be involved throughout the steps once the lease and LDA are executed and there will continue to be updates at Trust meetings. 4. Housing Production Plan Update -Jill Scalise thanked members who attended the Community Forum on June 16th, there was about 30 attendees in total. There was two weeks of public comment after that. Barrett Planning is now making final adjustments, based on comments and then, it will go to the Select Board and Planning Board in a joint meeting for final approval on July 11th. We have received a lot of input over the last 5 months. This is really an update of our current HPP that we have used as a guidebook over the last few years. Mr. Tobias said he thought affordable housing was up to 80% AMI, Community Housing or Workforce Housing is 80% to 120%. Ms. Scalise said that in the HPP, affordable housing is low to moderate income housing which is eligible to be 1 on the SHI and is up to 807bA1V1I. Community Housing does not have a specific definition, but it generally is up to 110%AMI which is the limit that the CPC and Trust are allowed to work on. Chair Hackert said that workforce housing is generally used as a more palpable way to describe housing. Ms. Scalise said workforce housing can be 80% to 120% but it is a difficult term as people are working at all AMI levels. 5. Housing Trust Goals and Priorities Update- Ms. Kalinick, Ned Chatelain, Mr. Lombardi and Mimi Bernardo, our Finance Director are the work group for the financial planning goal. Ms. Kalinick met with Mimi to go over the type of spreadsheet that they will use. Once she is past the closing of the fiscal year, Ms. Bernardo will work on the worksheet and then, their team will review that before it comes to the trust. In the meantime, Ms. Kalinick will provide an end of the year statement of expenses and revenue, as she did last year at the next meeting. This statement also informs the report that must be filed with the CPC for reporting purposes to the State. She will have the expense report in August and, hopefully, the first draft of the financial plan spreadsheet in September. Ms. Scalise said for the Trust guidelines, Maggie and Tim suggested they use the Eastham guidelines as the starting point. Ms. Scalise shared her screen and went through the sections for Trust members to comment on. The document starts with the Trust mission statement, goals, priority initiatives and roles and responsibilities as defined by the Trust bylaw. Next is eligible activities including preservation with the use of CPC funds and examples of what they can be used for. The next activity is the Brewster Emergency Assistance Fund. This was only used once for an administrative issue. Mr. Ruchinkas had commented that this was situational, and we shouldn't include it. Ms. Kalinick said that she would like to look at the Chatham guidelines where they had something like this that may have been a little broader. She is concerned there maybe instances where a need doesn't fall into another category for assistance, and she would like further discussion on it. Chair Hackert asked how much money is in the fund. Ms. Scalise thought it was $10,000. Mr. Ruchinskas said he thought it was $5,000 and he thinks this was a one-time situation and we don't need it. Chair Hackert was concerned that we might need a rainy -day fund and asked where the money would go if we didn't use it. Ms. Spade -Aguilar asked if this was CPC funds or not and was it housing related or was it more in line with the COVID relief fund. Ms. Scalise said it was $5,000 and was to aid homes on our SHI with administrative housing issues. Ms. Dineen -Hillis said she recalled this was a specific issue that we needed to remedy, and we may not need it anymore. Ms. Scalise said it was created to address any situation like the one that occurred regarding taxes, but we have worked hard to avoid situations like this one. Ms. Kalinick said we decided to use non -CPC funds. Ms. Kalinick said she pulled up the Chatham Guidelines, but they have grants for people with housing problems. She will look at with Ms. Scalise and bring it back to the Trust for review. The next section is support programs which includes the Brewster Rental Assistance program, run by the Trust, the Buy -Down program run by the CPC with a link to the ready buyer program and the CDBG program with links to the home rehabilitation program and the childcare voucher program. The following section is for creation of housing to include rental housing and homeownership. Ms. Kalinick asked if this would include assistance with the purchase of land for use of development of affordable housing and if that is something we want to do. Chair Hackert said this is about site control. Mr. Ruchinskas said he would be very cautious about providing money to acquire for rental housing. Mr. Ruchinskas asked if we were considering this for support of ADUs as well. Ms. Kalinick said Paul has a lot of expertise in this area and she would defer to his expertise in terms of funding land. Ms. Kalinick said for funding ADUs, we could only do that if there was a deed restriction. The Town had a ADU bylaw for deed restricted units and it did not produce units, so we went to an ADU/ACDU bylaw that did not require a restriction. Ms. Kalinick also suggested that we run the final draft by legal counsel. Ms. Spade -Aguilar said that under the creation programs, we were using the Trust creation guidelines so we would be funding rental housing like Millstone Road and she is not sure how involved we get in Habitat homes or homeownership opportunities. Her mindset was that we have our mission statement, priorities, and guidelines and these are the programs that fall under that, and this is how someone might go about applying for funding for the activities. She likes naming it guidelines and priorities, not just guidelines. Chair Hackert asked if we should include deed restricted ADUs. Mr. Ruchinskas said all the towns changed their ADU bylaws to remove the deed restricted portion and he knows that CDP and HAC both have some funding assistance for ADUs, and we should monitor that and revisit this in future use. The next area is funding guidelines, modeled on Eastham. It defines that CPC funds must comply with the CPC act. Preservations of homes already on the SHI would be $25,000 per home and would be in the form of a forgivable 15 -year loan. Ms. Scalise noted that this is Eastham's, and it is actually for homes that are not on the SHI because they do not have CDBG funding. This was removed from our draft guidelines. The next section is for funding of the creation of new rental units. Mr. Ruchinskas asked that we include homeownership in this section. The amount per award is $100,000 per unit with a deferred loan. Ms. Scalise said this is a question about how much the Trust wants to provide per unit and what the mechanism for the award would be, deed rider or other. Ms. Kalinick said let's put this under the lens of Millstone Rd. She asked if the $100,000 was what Eastham had. Ms. Scalise said it is, but we have general provided $100, 000 per home ownership unit but around $30,000 per rental unit. Mr. Ruchinskas said the CPC has an unofficial amount of $100,000 per the Habitat units but it has been less for rental units. He recommended that we have an amount with an up to total maximum per project. He also said that these are not usually handled as loans but as deed restrictions. He would also advocate for having language that provides flexibility so if the Trust wants to give more, they can. Mr. Hackert asked if we should we cap it at 1 million 3 with $100,000 per unit. Mr. Ruchinskas said it depends how much money we have. Ms. Kalinick said she likes Paul's idea of having a maximum amount; she thinks it might be higher than 1 million. The Trust financial plan should help inform this decision. Ms. Kalinick wondered if we will have put language in here that awards over $50,000 must be approved by the Select Board or do we want to talk to the Select Board about removing that provision from the Trust bylaw. Chair Hackert said why don't we put in language about the maximum amount determined by the Trust and we will have to talk to the Select Board. Ms. Scalise asked that members read through the draft and send comments to her before the next meeting. Ms. Kalinick thanked the working group of Jill, Maggie, and Tim. She is excited that we are going to have guidelines and an application which is appropriate at this stage in Trust. We will take this item up at the next meeting. For the housing forum, Ms. Hillis -Dineen and Ms. Spade -Aguilar didn't have a chance to collaborate but she likes town hall or the library as a potential place for the forum as it is neutral. As for a date, she thinks we should stay away from September, maybe after Indigenous People's Day. Maggie Spade -Aguilar said we should look into what date/day we held it the last time and what works best for the participants. She thinks the Housing Production Plan will greatly inform this. Ms. Kalinick said that town meeting is tentatively November 14th. Ms. Spade -Aguilar and Ms. Hillis -Dineen will look into dates the library is available as well as touch base with potential participants. Ms. Scalise said that the last forum was held in late May, after Town meeting, on a weekday night. There was a discussion about a weekend date. Ms. Kalinick said she thought it would be hard for some of the social services agencies on a Sunday. The last one was at on a Thursday night at 5pm. A Saturday might be possible. We had about 70 people the last time, we did a lot of promotion, and it was the first event the trust held. Ms. Scalise said that we did it as a housing fair first then the forum. There were a lot of different agencies who were there. 6. Select Board Strategic Plan discussion and FY23-24 Plan input from Housing Trust- Ms. Kalinick said the Select Board will be meeting on the 27th for their annual strategic planning retreat. There is an area that addresses housing. The current approved plan was in the packet, and we are being asked to weigh in on the housing goals, particularly where we are a responsible party for 2 of the current goals. For current goals, there is the financial planning goal. In the updated HPP, there is a goal to do the financial planning then analyze if future funding streams are needed. The second the goal is to the complete the Housing Production Plan which we are almost done with. The third goal is to develop affordable housing off Millstone Rd. We should keep that one but add more language. Ms. Kalinick has a few goals she would suggest: attain Housing Choice designation and review zoning as it relates to increasing and expanding housing opportunities. Trust comments will be submitted to the Select Board to consider. Mr. Ruchinskas would also like to see some language about zoning to increase housing 12 choice. Mr. Ruchinsl<as asked if we should have something about CDBG. Ms. Kalinick said we can suggest as many goals as we think are important and that for CDBG whether we continue to be the lead community which is a Select Board decision. Chair Hackert proposed that we adopt Donna's comments with Paul's suggestions included to be submitted to the Select Board. Ms. Spade -Aguilar said should we include explore looking at existing structures for re -use, both municipal and private. This is also a proposed strategy in the HPP. 7. Housing Coordinator Update including Serenity at Brewster and Brewster Woods and Town Meeting -Ms. Scalise said for the CDBG, TRI has chosen to be the housing rehabilitation sub -grantee. For the current grant, there were 8 Brewster projects and $276,000 was encumbered to complete those. We have been receiving thank you notes from participants who are thankful for things like not having to worry about their house when it rains which is great to see. With the change in the 2022 AMIs, there will be people who qualify who did not last year. We will be doing outreach. For the childcare, 10 families covering 13 kids were recipients. Ms. Scalise was inundated over the last month with inquiries and calls for assistance for the affordable lotteries for Serenity and Brewster Woods. In terms of Serenity, the work is progressing well, there were 70 applications for the 27 affordable units. We are waiting for a date for the lottery drawing. Brewster Woods looks to open in September, they had about 250 applications. Ms. Scalise was there today, and they are working hard on the interior. There was a nice article in the Cape Cod Times about Brewster Woods and Serenity. 8. 212 Yankee Drive update, discussion and possible vote on next steps -Ms. Scalise and Ms. Kalinick are going on a site visit tomorrow with the Building Commissioner. We have pulled together all the information that we have compiled over the last few years, going back to 2019 to determine what needed to be done to preserve this home. After the site visit, we will have next steps to bring to the Trust. Ms. Kalinick said we will need to develop an Invitation to Bid which takes about a month. There are advertising requirements and usually a site visit. We must pay prevailing wage rates. It is important to have the building department involved as their knowledge and oversight will be important. We will develop a potential timeline for the bidding process, work to be done, and next steps. 9. Cape Cod Sea Camps updates- Mr. Ruchinskas was not at the last meeting but noted that the area on the Pond Parcel that is closer to Route 137 is in a Zone II water protection area which develops tend to avoid and you would probably not develop near the pond. He thinks that the Bay may be better for housing. Ms. Kalinick said the Pond Parcel Committee has not really discussed housing yet in part because the Town is in the process of hiring a consultant who will do discovery to make informed decisions. Also, Ms. Kalinick noted that in terms of the Bay Parcel, it would be re -use of existing structures, not building new. Ms. Kalinick said at the Bay Parcel, the new First Light Beach has 51 spaces and opened July 1St. For the committees, we have a voting E member, Paul Ruchinskas on the Pond Parcel and a liaison on the Bay Parcel Committee, Maggie Spade -Aguilar. Maggie noted that they are still in the beginning stages, electing officers and starting to throw out ideas. The focus was on getting the beach open. Ms. Spade -Aguilar as a liaison can provide input. There is one building that has apartments in it and it is unfortunate that we can't use it with the housing crisis, but we have to go through the planning process. Decisions about Community Housing will probably not be discussed for a while. Ms. Kalinick said one of the items in the scope of work of the consultation is to assess the buildings to see which could be re -used. She also noted there will be a robust community engagement process. 10. For Your Information: Flyer for the next Lower Cape Peer group meeting. 11. Any other business not anticipated: None 12. Approval of Minutes from June 2, 2022: Madalyn Hillis -Dineen moved to approve the minutes of June 2,2022 with technical comment from Chair Hackert, Vanessa Greene second. A roll call vote was taken. Donna Kalinick-Yes, Maggie Spade -Aguilar -Yes, Vanessa Greene -Yes, Madalyn Hillis -Dineen -Abstain, Paul Ruch inskas-Abstain, Chair Hackert-Yes. 13. Next Meeting: August 4, 2022, at S:OOpm format to be determined based on State and Select Board action. 14. Adjournment: Paul Ruchinskas moved adjournment at 6:27pm, Madalyn Hillis -Dineen second. A roll call vote was taken. Donna Kalinick-Yes, Maggie Spade -Aguilar - Yes, Vanessa Greene - Yes, Madalyn Hillis -Dineen -Yes, Paul Ruchinskas-Yes, Chair Hackert- Yes. Respectfully Submitted, Donna J. Kalinick Assistant Town Administrator Meeting Packet: https•//portal laserfiche com/Portal/DocView.aspx?id=173227&repo=r- 153f9d98 Approved August 4, 2022 D