Brunswick Housing Committee releases $50K to Habitat, hears housing data

[0:09] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: Welcome to the Housing Committee meeting. I am calling the meeting to order. Was the meeting properly noticed? Yes, it was. Thank you. Let's start with introductions as usual. Sarah, can [0:24] Sarah Singer, community member and secretary: you, we start with you, Sarah Singer, community member. Focus auto community member and secretary. [0:34] Corey Peralt, Town Councilor: Corey Peralt, Town Councilor. [0:37] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development and staff to the Housing Committee. [0:42] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee. [0:45] Chrissy Adamowitz, Economic and Community Development Project Manager: Chrissy Adamowitz, Economic and Community Development Project Manager. [0:50] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: Celestia Aquanas, Vice Chair of the Housing Committee. [0:53] Ramona Tini, District 6 Town Councilor and liaison to the Housing Committee: Ramona Tini, District 6 Town Councilor and liaison to the Housing Committee. [0:59] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: And online we have Abby. Abby King, community member. Thanks, and Ben will be joining us at some point, but so we'll see him when he gets here or on Zoom. So we do still have an opening for a renter on the committee, so if anybody is interested in applying for that or knows anybody who's interested in applying, I would encourage you to do so. Okay, sorry, I didn't have my, there we go. So we need to approve the minutes from both July and August. The agenda mentioned August, but this morning I realized, whoa, wait a minute, it, we didn't have a quorum last month, so committee members, you have the July minutes in front of you. They were part of last month's packet, pretty straightforward. Does anybody have any corrections to the July minutes? Okay, all in favor of approving the July minutes? Thank you. And then the August minutes, so the minutes from our last meeting, hopefully everyone has had a chance to look those over. They were part of the packet, and does anybody have any changes to those minutes? Okay, all in favor of approving those minutes, the August minutes, and that's okay, great. Then are you, welcome, could you please introduce [3:04] Ben Gaines, Brunswick resident: yourself, we just, yeah, I am Ben Gaines, I am as a Brunswick resident, all right, [3:16] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: great, thank you. Okay, staff updates, we've got a bunch with the financial report. Yeah, thank you, [3:27] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: Chair Donald, if Chrissy, if you could pull that up for me. So every meeting we go over what's in our affordable housing support fund. We haven't really had any action on this for some several months, but of course we are accruing interest. I suspect that we are going to have a few requests coming in the pipeline. Chrissy's going to talk about the Hawthorne School redevelopment and the selection of the development team, and they did have a request in there as part of their, or included that as a source. So we anticipate they're going to come to us with that request. We also have a clock on our Community Solutions Grant funds, so those will be the ones that we look to Target to get out the door. We have recall, we have an extension on those until March, but that's important to show progress and get those out the door. And also the Golic Thomas Point, 23 Thomas Point Road project, we're going to give a little update on that later, but that just so people know in the public that was awarded but has not been dispersed, so that's making its way through planning and development. And also the ZBA, the Habitat for Humanity funds, we're going to hear from the new executive director, Ian Toevel, who came to our another meeting, our last meeting, and we're going to hear a request on the, we allocated 50,000 to their efforts for critical homes repairs, and with a kind of a look at the first year and to see how they were doing about whether or not we were going to release a second 50. Since that time they've had some changes in their organization, including a new executive director, and so he is going to be coming back with that progress and making a request later in the meeting. So I think that's about all I have for financial report. Any questions? So on to the other, so on to the staff report. So as you know, we have the town council passed the mobile home park ordinance, and part of that was to set up a rent review board, which is set up and we've had two meetings. We actually have our first hearing coming up on October the 13th, and that is with Bay Bridge, and so that, if anybody wants to attend that, you know that is an open, to the public. Who will be at that meeting? Sally, what's up? Who do you expect to be at that meeting? Bay Bridge, so they have come in with a request for an increase above the, landlords. Yes. And do you expect the tenants to be at that meeting? Yeah, the tenants can be at the meeting as well. Yeah, I just wanted to make sure I understood. Yeah, they, but it's on the burden and the proof is on the landlord. You know, the ordinance says that it's the last published CPI as of June 1st, and so it goes way back to April, but they're asking for above the threshold that's allowable by the ordinance. Have they disclosed how much they're asking for already, or just? They have. I don't know that I can get into it. Okay, that's fine, but [6:52] Sarah Singer, community member and secretary: They are above the threshold. Okay, thank you. Can you remind me, since this is our first one, at what, at what point in the process are the standards reviewed for any safety concerns? That was part of [7:05] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: the ordinance right that yeah so the rent review board is completely separate from the property piece remember there are two parts of the ordinance which are one is related to the property piece and making sure that you know it meets all codes Etc that we have hired a new codes enforcement officer i don't know if they've started yet but we have started the process of you know ex you know going and inspecting and you may have heard of some of them one of them is zo court is one that we are started those inspections, but the rent review board only, their only, you know, mission or, you know, that is just on the rents and making sure [7:46] Sarah Singer, community member and secretary: that those rents are only at CPI. So but if I remember the ordinance correctly, there's two parts. You need to prove that it's needed, which is what the rent review board, and you have to be up to date on any code violations and have those code violations addressed and safety. So at what point is that checked? That will be checked before the hearing. Okay, so it's before for the hearing. Okay, hearing, yeah. Okay, thank you. Sally, what time is the meeting that day? [8:18] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: The meeting is at five o'clock, and is it in council chambers? It is, I think in 206, but I can, I can double check that. Thank you. I think it's in 206 because of the elections, we're going to have a lot of moving around in meetings upstairs. Yeah, I would like to confirm that. Oh, okay, she's confirming. Thank you, Chrissy. Yeah, great. Okay, anything else on that? I will say that we felt really good about the fact that we only have one that was, that we know of, that's above the threshold, so we feel like that is working well. The property piece, of course, is going to take some time, but I think between that and the rental registry, I think we're going to really have a handle on keeping our units safe, which I think is really important, up to code and safe for the public is very important. So we've got some things in place now to do that. Okay, the next thing is actually the rental registry. I just wanted to give a little update on that. So we're having pretty good progress on that as well. We had a recent mailing That went out in August. That was to 233 properties that we had not heard from, that had not registered their properties. This is from Joshie and the deputy fire chief. And out of those 233, 80 had already sent in their, had already registered. So you know, you can take that down a little bit. So the 60, there were 64 properties that were identified as being exempt. And I asked the question why they were exempt, and they're either no longer a multi-unit, ie that came, like if somebody was had a unit that they were no longer, like if they had a garage or something they were renting, or a unit above, they've taken it off and they're no longer renting, or they are renting to a family member and that's exempt. So those in those two instances. And so really it kind of comes down to they're monitoring about 83 properties. There's also about 10 violations. So we have picked up some things, which are, which is really good. And we also, the really big thing is we've also made another hire that's going to help us with when we, when we pass these laws, there's a lot more work that's on staff and a lot more paperwork as well. The rental registry is one of those cases where we knew we were going to need some additional help on that. And so we've hired Megan Lawler. She's in the clerk's office, but she is going to be the record management specialist. So she's going to be helping out with the rental registry and the foyer requests. So I think that she will be very good at keeping us organized and hopefully, yeah, you know prompt in our responses on those two things and that's about it so i think we're you know i think you remember that we decided that this year because it was a lot of fits and starts in terms of making you know getting everything up online and making sure our community understood what was required being the first year we didn't feel like we should really come after people if they were late so we 've really sent a lot of notifications we've had a lot more contact and Communications so that next year, you know, we'll be a little bit more, I guess, strict on the violations and the timing of any, fees and fines. But right now we do, we do expect that they will meet the violation. So if there, if there's a code issue that's uncovered, and there have been a few, so, that's good. So that's it with the rental registry. Okay. Oh yeah, any questions on the rental registry? Okay. Sorry, I am just wanted to mcog, use one of those acronyms, but the Midcoast Council of Governments is the economic development district that we're in the mid-coast region and just hired a new executive director. Her name is Joanna Bonette. She has run a few non-profits and we think she's going to be a great fit. She's coming from Freeport and she starts on October the 13th. So we're really excited. I think it was a really good process. We had 24 applications for so I think we had a really good pool of candidates. So I just wanted to let people know about that. I'm gonna let Chrissy talk about the next one the Hawthorne School redevelopment [13:10] Chrissy Adamowitz, Economic and Community Development Project Manager: So let's see so there was there was a big week last week. The town council awarded the Hawthorne project to a developer. Their name is Dooryard. This developer I think I alluded to in the last meeting but they scored really high. Their application really reflected the desires of the community which leaned pretty heavily on affordable housing and they proposed 26 affordable housing units between 80 and 100 AMI. They also want to do they propose some infill which is exciting and the back parking lot or the west parking lot a smaller outbuilding that's really sleek and nice and fits in with the main aesthetic very well and would fit into the neighborhood very well and they do a high quality product that's built in Maine and everything. So it's it's exciting. The proposal as it is right now the council awarded the project but we'll be doing going through a negotiating process where we try to sort of create a purchase and sale agreement that solidifies some of the community's desires into a legal document. That's the same process we followed with the fire station for those of you who are around for that and it's something that we would that's typical of this process. And one of the things part of that is doing their due diligence and honing in on their financial package and that brings us to the housing committee because as of now their financial package does include a $100,000 request for the affordable housing support fund. This is good because we have a deadline with the with Main Housing to use the funds that they gave us three years ago now, I think might actually gonna be for by the time of the deadline, which is in March, to use the money they gave us to build 25 affordable housing units, so new construction, and this will help us meet that goal. So that, you know, there's money in the fund from Main Housing, and then the match that the town has put in, and so we can use that Main Housing portion to reach that goal. So that's exciting. We're just getting started. We had our first meeting this week, and we're going to start weekly meetings with them also in talks about doing a workshop about the community use that's on the ground floor, separate from the housing. The housing is going to be the housing that'll be protected, but this workshop is about the more the squishy sort of part of the program, which is, but is it a daycare, is a community space, if it's the daycare, how would that work, how would traffic, all that stuff. So I think that's that kind of sums it up. Sally, do you have anything to [16:01] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: add? No, I would just say that the affordable housing support friend request, they are, that is for the, they've got the two different parts of the project, one being the Hawthorne School itself. They are looking to that to use Main Housing rural development funds, and so when, just like we did with the Thomas Point Road one, an affordable housing support fund or municipal contribution helps on the scoring. So like a smaller amount, when I say a hundred thousand, it is a lot of, it is a lot, but compared to what it's leveraging it really helps them get a good score if they've got the municipality behind them so that 's likely going to come [16:46] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: pretty soon. Questions? No questions? Seeing them, okay. Any from our online folks? [16:59] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: And just a little quick thing about the community meeting, because we want everyone to come to that. It is, it is likely to happen in the third week in October, I think. Yeah, is that the 21st or 20th? [17:11] Chrissy Adamowitz, Economic and Community Development Project Manager: 20th. We're looking at the 20th, but we haven't solidified it yet. Okay, so just stay tuned on that. [17:17] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: One a little bit on the policy update. So since we last met, the Main Street overlay district ordinance was passed by the town council, and this was really significant because it does a number of things. It is, it asked for some amendments that would allow new buildings and additions fronting Main Street from Mill Street to Noble Street, and it encourages high quality mixed use mid-scale development and upper stores story housing, which really housing is one of the biggest predictors for commercial. Making commercial viable and really productive. I mean, a lot of people think it's the other way around, but actually it's the housing that really does make the difference in terms of kind of the economic development component of this. But also bringing more housing, more supply is really important. You know, you probably all heard and see the JJ Cleaners and how that is, of course, the counselors know very well we've had a conversation about contract zones, but we'll allow that to get the additional. Height. So one of the big things of the overlay district is that it allows for additional height, but it also provides a lot of different design standards related, relating to the streetscape, so bringing the buildings out to the commercial corridor. You said from Mill to Noble, I just was wondering, I'm sorry, yeah, no, Melton, Noble. [18:46] Milton Noble: Milton, Noble. Do you know what the other boundaries are, like where is it, Federal to. [18:52] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: Union, Federal. You know, I, was sort of racing to get here and I didn't bring the map, but is it online? What's that? It is online. Yeah, I'm going to try to find it, I just wanted to see, but I was, I just pulled up the planning board memo and I thought it would have a map in there, but let me see if it does, see if I can find it. Tell you it's a little bit off, but it's, it's primarily Main Street and just the, you know, the commercial corridor there, so it does, so it has, you know, the brings the buildings out. To, you know, within a very small setback of the of the right of way, and but the other thing that it's doing, and I think some of the counselors really like this, is it has some open space provisions, which I think, you know, we don't want this big wall out there, we want to have, we've spent all this money on streetscape, we want it to be pedestrian oriented, and so there are some elements around that. The one thing that didn't pass in it was lowering the parking requirements, so that was something that. We're still and we've got a lot of work to do on we know that we've got whether it's real or perceived I think we do there the I think the main thought around our parking is that we don't have enough but we did a parking study that said we actually do we just don't manage it well so between those two things we don't have enough parking but there will be some things coming up I think that potentially this overlay district might bring forward with higher density development that would have Potentially a parking garage so we'll see if that materializes but that was and that is actually not right on Main Street it's but it is in so it's not covered by the overlay district but it just might also encourage this developer to move forward with that proposal so with that any questions I would say what was the meeting that the overlay zone was passed at it was yeah it was the September 8th August 17th September 8th September 8th that's right it went again yeah I forgot about that it went Back yeah got pushed back thank you anything else that's when the overlay zone was approved yeah it went back they came twice I just don't see it in their [21:24] Milton Noble: Agenda I was trying to find though I see the contract zoning but I was just [21:32] Ramona Tini, District 6 Town Councilor and liaison to the Housing Committee: Looking at the 21st if you go back to the agenda from September 8th which is like the third meeting shown on the website it's in the packet okay I just wanted to add one thing about the Main Street overlay parking situation which is that the reduced minimums were still higher than the current minimums for affordable housing so the situation with parking flexibility is already in place for affordable housing we're just talking about commercial spaces and market rate housing that would have had Reduced minimums if that [22:15] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: Had been left within the proposal yeah thank you and also we know that if we get anything over 15 units IZ kicks in but for instance on the J those are condos so that's not and it's it's not you know it's not going to be pertinent on the affordable housing side and also [22:35] Corey Peralt, Town Councilor: The housing for the residents in the J is it does meet the requirements so that each unit has the appropriate amount of parking it's just the reduction would be in for the commercial places [22:51] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: So and they, so they have, you know, their condos, so they do have parking, but we are losing, my understanding is, two spots because they're going to, they've suggested go to parallel parking there, so we could find some, we could work as staff to find some, parking like we did with the Lamont block where we turned town hall placed and we picked up five plus two loading zones. So I think that it's possible we could, and we should work towards replacing those two because every parking spot is really critical there. Anything else? I [23:31] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: just I went to the, well before you do that, I went to the Planning Board meeting last night and they are sending forward, they are recommending the contract zone for the, that for the J, so that I guess we'll go [23:51] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: to your next town council meeting. Yeah, I'm not sure what that, yeah, I think it will go to the next time, I have to check with Julie, I'm not sure, I think they'll be another public hearing, right? Yeah, they'll definitely have the public hearing, so to least go the town council ran for two meetings. Fran, do you want to [24:10] Corey Peralt, Town Councilor: answer that public hearing and then a vote and whether or not we do it that same night? [24:15] Fran Smith, Town Clerk: friend smith town clerk just to clarify you just gotta have an agenda meeting we'll be setting the council will be setting their public hearing at your next meeting and then it will come back and the second meeting october again subject to whether you chose to vote that [24:31] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: night or move it forward. Wait, the, we'll set the public hearing at the next meeting, so it'll be [24:39] Corey Peralt, Town Councilor: the first meeting in November that we have the public hearing. Yeah, because we don't, yeah, we [24:43] Fran Smith, Town Clerk: don't have, we have, it's on the 19th and no, but we have the, we have a meeting on the 5th and that's when we would set the public hearing, which is, and then the night, the 19th, there would be one. Oh [24:54] Corey Peralt, Town Councilor: I'm sorry, I was thinking we had another meeting in October, but it's the first meeting in November that will set the public hearing for the second meeting in November, right? The first meeting, oh No, this is September, I'm so sorry. [25:06] Fran Smith, Town Clerk: I really wish it was already past November, but no, it's not. [25:10] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: October 5th and the 19th, yeah, so the 19th may be the day. [25:15] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: Okay, we do not need to get into winter any sooner than that, 's okay, all right. [25:25] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: And then I have one more thing which Carol reminded me, I had on my notes here as it relates to MCOG. yes i wanted to tell you about the new executive director but i really more pertinent to this committee is that i wanted to provide a update on the adus you know the program that we have for the adus brunswick did very well it's still going on but we have six families enrolled to date five are in brunswick one in rockland so we only our goal was to get five in each community three communities being bath rockland brunswick and we've done well there's been a real need so I'm not sure what happened with the other ones but you know we've been able to get additional units so that's really exciting and two families have completed their ad use and had subsidies of $10,000 paid from the grant and both of the units are in Brunswick so let's see and yeah we've got an extension on the through the end of the year to spend the subsidy fund so hopefully these other communities will use the rest of the subsidy but this was really a pilot program i think because it was fairly successful i think there's some things we can change. A lot of people, we originally had them be loans, but we ended up pivoting to credit line, and that seemed to make all the difference. So I think if we go back, we being MCOG, I'm on the board, if we go back to the state, it's likely that we would go back with some, you know, modifications to our existing program. But I think it was, you know, fairly successful, at least for Brunswick. Okay, so did you want to comment on, I'll do that later. Yeah, okay, all right. [27:20] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: Okay. I do not see Ian online. Oh, here he comes. [27:28] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: Why don't you explain what he's here for? [27:30] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: are you going to so ian tova who's the executive director of habitat seven rivers is here online to give us an a second update on their the funding we've given them and the request to release the second troach of funds for them so ian you are muted and i think chrissy has the presentation hello all right and chrissy's pulling up the presentation perfect [28:13] Ian Tovel, Executive Director for Habitat for Humanity Seven Rivers: Thank you. Yeah, so thank you. I said I'm Ian Tovel, I'm the executive director for Habitat at Humanity Seven Rivers here in Maine, to kind of give an update on the critical home repair grant that was given to us and also for an ask from the committee. Slide. Yeah, so similar to last month, kind of what I went over, you know, since the grant was given to us in 2024 in Brunswick, we've done 50 home repairs, which kind of resulted in about $40,000 of that first initial $50,000 grant that was awarded to us. So obviously, we have about $10,000 left within that grant. And as we kind of are looking ahead, as of today, we have about 18 jobs that are in the pipeline in Brunswick. And that means they're either waiting to be assessed, waiting to get started, or they're scheduled for repair already, and we're just kind of waiting for them to get there. Just kind of to give some background, our average cost for each job that we do is roughly around $1,100. It's kind of where we've fallen in the last few years. But we do budget from our standpoint about $2,000 per job to make sure that we're able to do everything that we need to at a house. So for us, those 18 jobs as we look at it can now range anywhere from an additional $20,000 to about $36,000 and committed work. As of today, and that could change. You know, and you know, get three more from Brunswick tomorrow. So kind of just gives you a good idea of where we're at within Brunswick, you know, thanks to a lot of help with this committee and BDA and the chamber, we've been able to get the word out there a lot more. And recently I just met with the biggest mobile home park in Brunswick, and now we'll be getting, I think, an additional at least another 10 applications from that mobile home park. You know, she didn't know that we existed or had the ability to do this type of work. So you know, as we're continuing to try to grow and market, you know, we're really trying to make sure people know that this exists and that critical home repair is something that we are able to do and that we're able to extend in Brunswick. So while I'm here, I would love to have the remaining 50,000 of the grant released to us. You know, again, 18 jobs currently in that pipeline, which will basically alleviate the initial fifty thousand dollars with the first two or three jobs and then be able to make sure we can continue them in Brunswick with the remaining funds being released. You know, for us it's, it's really important, especially as we're gaining momentum, to just be able to continue that commitment to Brunswick, that we're here, we're doing as much work as we can, especially as, you know, 40 degrees this morning, so it's getting colder sooner it feels like. So trying to really get as much done before that first snowfall, that first frost, or that we kind of get into a little more indoor things that, you know, happen over the Winter, but work will continue through the winter. But for us, you know, as I said, there's, you know, 18 jobs currently. I think by the end of the year we'll probably do an additional 20 jobs in Brunswick. So now between the end of the year we're probably looking at another roughly 40 jobs. And so this additional grant money would really go a long way for us to, again, continue the great work, continue the, you, the partnership with the town, which has been awesome for us and amazing to have the support, Especially for critical home repair, and kind of just allow us to keep fighting the fight and keeping people in their homes. Happy to take questions or anything like that. [32:53] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: Yeah, I'm going to start with a couple of comments. Thank you very much for the work you folks do. It's really amazing in helping us keep people in their homes, particularly for allowing people to age in place. It's amazing work. And really a great return on our investment. I'm also wondering about, as we get to this winter and the expectation that heating costs are going to be much higher, if you may see a spike in people looking to have more insulation or, you know, weatherization. I guess is what I'm wondering about. Do you have any thoughts on that right now? Yeah, I mean, I think that's definitely something [33:44] Ian Tovel, Executive Director for Habitat for Humanity Seven Rivers: That we're thinking about, and you know, as we assess homes in Brunswick, it's one thing, especially now as we're in this, you know, September cold, getting into that colder weather, really looking at and making sure that everything, this is weatherized as possible, especially if we're already going to be there for, you know, something else that they're looking to get done. Yeah, but I think it's top of mind, and we're always looking to try to make sure we're staying ahead of people, ahead of things, so that Way, you know, if we go to Jim's house three months from now, he's now like, oh, XYZ isn't working, or, you know, oh, I actually need more insulation in this area. We're trying to really, when we do assess, trying to look for all those things to get ahead of it. But yeah, I do feel like we'll probably see an increase in requests as it gets colder and people start realizing maybe their insulation isn't as good as they thought, or, you know, you start feeling those wind gaps, which are great when it's summertime. And you want that cool air coming through, but not so great when it's wintertime. And so, you know, I think we'll kind of handle those as they come. But, you know, something that's, you were cognizant of and trying to alleviate any of those before they [35:07] Sarah Singer, community member and secretary: happen. Great, Melissa. I was gonna make a motion. Can we move? Do we have any other [35:15] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: any other questions or comments for us? I just had one comment that, no, this couldn't come at a better time. We were hearing from our director of human services about fuel costs and wood and everything else. And I'm just curious about how, what's your, like, do you know your average length of time it takes to do these critical home repairs? And like, are you ready to roll if we were to quickly, you know, disseminate? Like, yeah, just hoping you can address it quickly. [35:43] Ian Tovel, Executive Director for Habitat for Humanity Seven Rivers: Yeah, I mean, it, for like an average job, if it's not super critical, you know, we're working, we're assessing it within a week or two, and then it's getting on the list to be able to actually get done three to four weeks after that. Being said, we always have these fires, if you will, that come up where, like, we just had someone who said, you know, my toilet fell through my floor and now I'm, my bathroom is completely exposed to the elements because I'm a mobile home park and, you know, cold air is just running through. So we have the ability to shift priorities if things like that happen, or if it's a heat thing in the winter, we shift things to make sure, you know, things that are immediate are getting done very quickly. And especially, we even now have more ability to do that because of the construction project manager that we hired, which is a new position. So now if something like that does happen and, you know, we can't necessarily, maybe we can't get a couple volunteers, rana, right away, we have the ability to send him over immediately to take a look and see, is it, you know, enough that he can do it on his own, or, you know, can we get a volunteer the next day to come and help him? So we do have pretty quick response time, especially if it is one of those emerging, like, emergencies where, you know, it's not making them safe, dry, you know, to, you know, get in there and fix it as fast as possible. [37:28] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: Great. All good to hear. [37:30] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: I have one other question that your question prompted me to think of. So I know United Way has a lot of information on heating assistance. I'm wondering if you are in contact with them. They may also be a source that hears of people who need energy, you know, need assistance with getting their weatherization done. Yeah, we have a great partnership with United Way. [38:01] Ian Tovel, Executive Director for Habitat for Humanity Seven Rivers: Work together really well. They kind of help fund this critical home repair as well, so really work well with them. And again, going down more avenues with them too to figure out, is there a way, like if they get a call, how we can get that information, or how they can disseminate that to us, so that way we can be proactive and try to, you know, get a hold of that person. But in other ways, yeah, always been a great partner. And you know, for us too, whenever we go to a house, we always try to add more services. Or promote the services, a lot of things, if we see the need. And something that too we're working on, as different coalitions happen here in the area, trying to figure out how can we, if we go to a lot of houses, how can we make sure that they know that there's all these other non-profits that have these services available. So something too that we're very being mindful of and trying to make sure when we do go to the houses, kind of keeping track of other things that might be needed, and kind of letting. Other non-profits know, or giving that homeowner those resources to be able to utilize. [39:10] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: Wow, that's really fantastic. Thank you for doing all that. So any other questions or comments before I turn to Melissa for a motion? Okay, go ahead, Melissa. Can I have clarification? We're. [39:23] Sarah Singer, community member and secretary: Releasing 50 of the total hundred, right? Yes. Okay, thank you. I move that, is that correct? I move that we released the second installment of 50,000 to Habitat 7 for Community 7 Rivers for critical home repair out of the affordable housing. Seconded from Sarah, by Sarah Singer. Yeah, I was just raising. [39:44] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: My hand a second, that's what I thought. Okay, I think we, for voting on this, we go around the table, right? So Sarah, yes. Alyssa, Celeste, Abby, yes. Ben, yes. And the chair is a yes. So that's unanimous of the committee. Great, congratulations Ian, and I look forward to hearing next the next progress report. I'm sure you're going to be really busy. Yeah, well, thank you very much, we really. [40:21] Ian Tovel, Executive Director for Habitat for Humanity Seven Rivers: Appreciate it, appreciate the town support, yeah, and critical home repair and trying to keep people in their homes. It means a lot to us, and I know it means a lot to the residents of Brunswick because I'm sure you all know. So again, thank you so much, really appreciate it. And so yeah, I look forward to, you know, giving an update next time on, you know, the progress and how we've been able to grow [40:43] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: it from this moment on. Okay, great, Ian. Somebody, Abby? No, thought I heard somebody else trying to speak. Okay, you are welcome to stay on if you want. We have a presentation from Jamie Dore regarding Midcoast Youth Center, and then after that, Andrew Lardy is going to do a presentation on Tedford, but you're welcome to go on with the rest of your day if you do want to stay with us. So thank you so much for giving us that update. All right, thank you. Okay, so I want to introduce Jamie Door, I think many of us around the table know her, but for anybody who is watching online, Jamie Door is the executive director of Midcoast Youth Center. A couple years ago or so, we made an award to the Housing Resources for Youth program, which then got rolled into Midcoast Youth Center. And so they assumed the rest of that grant funding and have put it to good use. And so Jamie is here today to give us an update, and I'm just gonna turn it over [42:06] Jamie, youth outreach provider (Midcoast Youth Center): to you, Jamie. Sounds great, thank you all so much for having me here today. We, as Carol mentioned last year, we assumed the outreach for homeless youth that the Housing Resources for Youth had been doing and Midcoast Youth Center. I'll just give a little bit of background. We are a youth hub physically located in the city of Bath, but we have outreach staff that are in all local school districts for RSU 1, MSAD 75, Brunswick School District, and also Richmond School District. So we reach a lot of young people right at their school. We take referrals from social workers, guidance counselors, McKinney-Vento liaisons, which are typically the assistant superintendents. And we work with the young people to really help solve any sort of challenges that there are, barriers that they're facing in their lives around homelessness or being at risk of homelessness. We have the BATS first transitional housing. So we have housing right here on our campus for 18 to 24-year-olds that would otherwise be experiencing homelessness. And we have two dorm-style units, so 12 beds all together. That was something that Maine Housing helped us to build back in 2023. In addition to that, we received a pilot student homelessness prevention grant last year that allowed us not only to do this outreach in all four school districts, but also pass through state client assistance directly to youth and families that were experiencing homelessness. Last year we paid out over $300,000 of that state assistance. Nearly $250,000 of that went to rental arrears. So we worked with local landlords such as the Brunswick-Topsim Housing Authority, private landlords, Bath Housing. We worked in partnership with Tedford Housing, with case managers, to just make sure that if someone was at risk of being evicted, we were able to solve that problem, but then also provide support to figure out how to prevent that going forward. In addition, we paid out over $35,000 worth of utility arrears payments to turn lights back on, to get heat back to folks. We worked with a local contractor here to help make sure that families had heating. There was one family that had been out of heat back in January for about three weeks. And if you remember how brutally cold it was then, all the pipes were frozen. It was a big project, and we were able to help that family get back to being warm, and also their student was going to school every single day. So one of the things that we're able to do, too, is work with young people who are considered unaccompanied youth, and that's really sort of our niche or how we're different from, say, Tedford Housing. And we reach folks that are doubled up, staying in unsafe places, whether they're, you know, out on the streets or where they might be. So last year, through all of the funding that we received, we worked with 80 students. And that included 80 students plus about 200 people that would be in their families. So siblings and parents, grandparents. And I want to share with you, if I can, a screen here. Case workers, the really great thing about what we do is, let's see if I can talk and present at the same time. A lot of what we're able to do, the schools recognize needs to be done, but they're not able to typically because of policy liability laws, but really what we aim to do is to come in and work with a young person, whether they are unaccompanied, sort of living on their own, or if they are part of a family unit, and say, what is it that we can do to help support you to solve the immediate need, but then also how do we connect you to additional supports? Whether that's the Midcoast Wood Bank or Tedford. Housing, we are very grateful for our partnership with Tedford. We moved a family that had been experiencing homelessness that was living in a hotel directly into their new family shelter as soon as it was opened, and that family today is housed stably, they're thriving, they're doing incredibly well. And so we're able to do lots of different things with this grant. We were just re awarded this grant for this upcoming school year. Our emergency financial assistance is only about a hundred and fifty thousand, so certainly not as much as last year, but we're certainly grateful for what it is that we do have access to, and the funding that we received through the housing resources for youth was extra special because there are certain limitations of the things that we're able to pay for using grant funding, but as you might suspect, when we're working with families, there aren't always typical scenarios that we're working with. So it might be that we're helping young people get access to a prepaid phone so that we can have constant communication, or we are working with case managers to provide transportation for that young person. We're getting haircuts and work boots if they're part of a technical program, or sneakers if they need them, any sort of item that a young person might need that a family member might have typically taken care of, we're able to do with that flexible funding. So I also wanted to share with you one more screen here, and I apologize, it's a spreadsheet, it's not very pretty, but I thought you would be, it's kind of impactful to see how many students and the amount of funding that we paid out per school district. Can everybody see that okay? [Carol O'Donnell: Yes. Okay, wonderful.] So this is, again, this direct client assistance, and you can see that we, the different types of buckets of funding that we're allowed to spend, definitely gift cards from Shaw's are not allowable, which we did find out, but what we were able to do is for RSU-1 on paid out about $80,000, MSAD 75 was about $2,000, and we're working on why those numbers were so low, because they should be similar to what we're seeing across the region. For Brunswick, it was about $144,000 that we were able to pay out. And again, you can see that breakdown of utility, rental, assistance. The other great thing that we're able to do with the funding is rent a U-Haul and pack up a family and move them to where they need to be. We can help with security deposits. We can help with if someone needs to get birth certificates for everybody in their family for housing applications. All of those types of fees add up fairly quickly and we're able to help with those costs. costs. And then you can see for Richmond, we were about $73,000 and had only $3,800 left over and were able to roll that over into this school year. So for the numbers for Brunswick, I have, we had 42 students in Brunswick that we worked with and the number in their household was a total of 65 families that we worked with. And we're excited to continue doing that this year. In addition to the homeless prevention program through Maine Housing, we also found out yesterday that we've been selected by the Maine Continuum of Care to receive funding for transitional housing and to expand our transitional housing and what that looks like is right now we have our 12 beds but this will allow us to rent five scattered site apartments that will allow young people who can live more independently to have that independence and work with local landlords with that in addition this year. Our goal is to establish 10 host homes, which is a program that the Housing Resources for Youth had begun, and that is really finding local families who are vetted, who are willing to open their home for a young person that needs security and a safe place to stay. It's not a perfect fit for all young people that are experiencing homelessness, but it's definitely one of the tools that we like to have in our tool belt so you'll see more about that hopefully coming down the pipe great [52:48] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: thank you does anybody yeah does anybody have any questions or comments the work that you do is great i was involved with new beginnings in the lewiston auburn area And I wondered if you do any collaboration with them and also Do you have an association with Sweetser because I know They have services that are more quickly available than some other places [53:25] Jamie, youth outreach provider (Midcoast Youth Center): They do Sweetser is often one of the first places we stop Especially with our unaccompanied youth that have maybe been out on their own for longer periods of time and then as far as new beginnings absolutely we work with Preble Street and new beginnings when there's a young person that needs shelter who's under the age of 18 we still don't have a perfect solution for that in the bath area bath Brunswick area I hope someday that 's changed we that's why we're getting the host home project up and running. It is difficult sometimes for a young person, especially if they're 14, 15 years old, to make the decision to leave their community and go into a larger community like Lewiston or Portland to stay in a teen shelter. And then the other challenge becomes, how do we get them to school? Students that are experiencing homelessness have rights, and they have a right to stay in their school of origin or their district of origin. And so when we've had young people placed in Lewiston, the challenge is always how do we get them to and from Morse or to and from Brunswick High School not the easiest challenge although we did one year we had the bath YMCA veggie van making that trek two times a day to make sure that this young person could finish out their senior year so we definitely partner with a lot of them we learn from a lot of them especially new beginnings and prebble street teen shelter there's a wealth of knowledge and we everything that we can do to have like i said a number of tools in our tool belt. Those shelters are certainly a big part of that tool set. [55:22] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: Great, you know, thank you. Any other questions or comments? Yeah. [55:29] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: Sally. Yeah, Jamie, thank you for coming and explaining how you're using the funding. The host home program was really kind of the core thing with HR, why, I think was really kind of eye-opening for this committee, and that I think a lot of people don't realize that how many young children are couchsurfing and all that. It's kind of a hidden problem that really is concerning, and to see how much you've, and not just our funding but obviously other funding, how many families you've been able to assist, it's really great. So I'm not sure what your needs are, you know, in the future, but yeah, we appreciate how you've taken over the this and gotten and helped deploy that final funding that we had allotted for HRY. So yeah, thank you. And really our needs are typically those more [56:25] Jamie, youth outreach provider (Midcoast Youth Center): Flexible spending dollars, as many of you know, grants typically come with very strict rules of what you can and cannot do. So it's the funding that we can get from folks like you that we've had in the past that really help us meet any need that comes on our way, especially for those that are [56:45] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: very much outside of the box. Yeah, and I think also it's kind of a carrot to the host families because it is, it can be a lot taking somebody in. So a lot of those things that we understood were being picked up, or like backpacks and school supplies and transportation and all of those things that you know we do for all of our own children, but when you bring in somebody else, you know, it's exponentially more and maybe people can't afford it. So if we can offset outset some of that. Right. [57:19] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: Thank you all. Jamie, thank you very much. All right. Andrew, is that on? There's a little button. [57:40] Andrew Lardy, Executive Director at Tedford Housing: Good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for the opportunity to be here. I'm Andrew Lardy, executive director at Hedford Housing and a Brunslook resident, and I think Jim has my slides, hopefully. Oh, great. Chris, he's got him. Okay, first I just want to start by thanking our co-chairs Celeste and Carol just for the opportunity to, you know, have some conversations informally on the side and figure out what's the right way to begin building a little more crosstalk between Tedford Housing and the insights we have to offer and the committee and all the projects and important work that you all are doing all the time to try to make sure that the town is safe and accessible for the great diversity of people that we've always benefited from. And so the road map here in the next few minutes is, I don't have a lot of content here. We're just going to sort of do a big picture of context zooming way out first for some federal policy things and how those are trickling down into the state level landscape. And then some state level landscape things and how those trickle down into the very local context. And then what we're seeing, sort of what's new at Tedford as far as impact and changes. And then what the outlook is in the near term, so hopefully fairly intuitive and surely riveting. Next slide please. Of course you all know that Tedford's housing mission is to empower people to move from homelessness to home. We started here in Brunswick with a, as an organization called Tedford Shelter, where he started with one building that was in a shelter for adults, and since then added a bunch of different programs. For example, if I'm lucky, do I remember the sequence. There they are. The most efficient intervention we have is homelessness prevention in outreach case management, which lets us pretty efficiently, as far as dollars and cents, help people stay in their house when they're at risk of eviction. And then, of course, there are the shelters, both for families and for adults. And permanent supportive housing, we have 37 units across five towns. That includes eight units. We have eight tenants for whom we are the landlords here in Brunswick who are long-term tenants, and of course in the seasonal programs we have the warming center here on Tenny Way and the Warm Thy Neighbor heat assistance program which goes back to early 2000s. So one thing that's worth noting here is across all these different programs and different ways you might encounter a person, the real core of what we do is always this one-to-one relationship with the case manager, and that's important because you notice that the case managers trying to connect a person with whatever resources are going to address the obstacles that they face to stable housing, and of course health care and education and things like food are relevant to that. Everybody knows that poverty is a braided stew of do we have enough resources to go around, and so one of the things you'll see here in a minute is me touch on a little bit of federal policies related to not housing, because of course it impacts people's housing stability. So we'll start with the feds with housing and urban development. The notice of funding opportunity program funds community continuums of care, which is like the sort of a big bureaucratic blob of people related to housing in any given state or city. Many states have a whole bunch of different COCs. In Maine, we're so small that we have a single statewide COC, a continuum of care. So they spend four billion dollars nationwide, and in the state here it's a couple hundred million. And historically, COCs have spent most of their money on the solutions that are the longest term for stabilizing people with complicated needs. And the current, and I'll just kind of try to avoid reading the whole slide here, but the 2025 Notice of Funding Opportunity was shut down in the courts, and they just said you have to renew all these contracts and flat fund it. The changes you're trying to make are not legal. Now there's an FY26 NOFO that has been stalled in the courts, restarted, stalled again, you know, so we're in the process. You just heard Jamie mention that the state scored her application highly to possibly get some COC funding only if the process ends up restarting and proceeding again. Right, so we'll see. That's also true for a collection of shelters like Tetford. So but what's happening right now is sort of moving priorities and moving what kinds of things are able to be funded and where funding ends up going. So the first bullet you see there, shifting funding away from the renewal of existing subsidies for expensive programs down toward this sort of more flexible tier 2 competition, where they might decide some of the tier two money from Maine should go to Alabama next year, actually, and then we'll just lose it. Capping on the dominant strategies that have been seen as effective, including permanent supportive housing and rapid rehousing. Fortunately, Tedford isn't, even though we operate a thing that we call permanent supportive housing, we aren't subsidized through HUD, and so ours is insulated from that. Most of them are larger scale. And of course, trying to push people and providers to offering programming that is really trying to force compliance and measure people's participation in the programs that you want them to take a part of, as opposed to a housing focus metric, which has been the industry standard for a while now. And you'll see there at the bottom, the lion's share of how Maine spends its dollars are indeed connected to permanent housing. Housing. So the idea here, just to kind of connect the dots, is if a policy like this is enacted, they would expect that a lot of the permanent supportive housing for hundreds of people in Maine would become not fiscally viable. Those programs would end and those people would be back on the street where they used to be, which is I think the estimate right now is something like 6 to 800 people. Next slide I think is about SNAP? Yeah, SNAP. So you all know that people have been responding to the fact that SNAP has been cut so much, and it impacts a lot of Mainers, tens of thousands of Mainers. And, of course, when people's food becomes more insecure, then it complicates their ability to manage the family budget and keep going in general. That might impact how they access medical care, transportation, housing. So I don't need to read you all of that stuff. Medicaid is more impactful in a direct way on housing, right? Right. So when you try to make it hard for people to keep health care, then you have more people who are going to have a hard time sustaining their housing. And you're going to have more people going into, for example, famously in this country, bankruptcy related to medical bills and then not being able to keep their housing. So, you know, the impacts on our medical, on our health care system are pretty profound. And, you know, we worry about loss of hospitals, but we also just worry about a lot more people coming to agencies like ours. As these, of course, these Medicaid work requirements take effect after the elections coming up. So over the next 18 months, we're really going to see how this all plays out. And, of course, all the systems are trying to prepare for those coming changes and mitigate the harms to our residents. Okay, so quick picture. It was helpful that this past year there was a study commissioned over the past year and a half that was released in February that looked statewide. It was a big audit of how many humans are really expected to be homeless in Maine and how many resources are really available across different kinds of interventions and how close is what we've got to what we need. And there's a lot more to it than this, but what they observed is that they expect in this current calendar year 17,000 people in Maine will be homeless at some point, not the whole year necessarily, and the amount of money that is needed to actually provide the kinds of interventions That would actually respond to all those situations is about, well it isn't showing here, you can see that the gap here is 136 million dollars a year and what we spend every year is about 125 or 28 million dollars a year. So basically we have a system that is half as big as it needs to be based on our current understanding of how many people are out there in need of these kinds of services. So it's kind of a daunting conclusion to draw, you know, what's the thing you do next when you know that you're so far away from what would be enough, what's the most value add you could do with limited dollars, yes I just had a quick [1:05:41] Milton Noble: question is that 17,000 like your number based on like a prior year, are you accounting for policy changes and that number growing or is that like kind of our baseline without these policy changes, that is kind of an actuarial number found in 2025 looking [1:05:59] Andrew Lardy, Executive Director at Tedford Housing: ahead to 2026 because it took them that long to create the report and it looks at a bunch of different data sources, so like the data on households seeking protection from domestic violence is walled off and separate from the larger federal database of counting people who are experiencing homelessness and then there are separate numbers for youth and they publish a little cute, that's not cute, it's they publish a handy word doc like one page kind of accounting for all the different demographic categories, adding them up and saying, this is where we got it from. You don't have to agree with every part of it, but at least here's showing our work. [1:06:28] Milton Noble: But that number does not account for what you expect to be an increasing number based on federal policy changes in the last year. Absolutely. That's an old number, not a new number under the changes. I just wanted to make sure. I would see that as a minimum. That was like our floor without negative policy impacts. Absolutely. [1:06:50] Andrew Lardy, Executive Director at Tedford Housing: And so if we go to the next thing. That's right. Right, so you might know that homeless services are organized and kind of organized on a medium local way across nine chunks of the state, they call them hubs, Brunswick sits right on the scene between hub two, which is most of Cumberland County, and hub three, which is kind of the counties of the mid coast, and this is just a table that adds up the cost of all the things that were in this study, how much is each county spending or is each hub spending roughly how much should they spending BE SPENDING IF THEY HAD ALL THE RESOURCES THAT WE THINK THEY NEED TO SERVE MORE OF THEIR POPULATION AND HOW BIG IS THE GAP BETWEEN THEM AND UM THE COLORS KIND OF WASHED OUT IN THAT FOURTH COLUMN BUT WHAT YOU'LL NOTICE IS THAT THE COUNTY THAT HAS THE BIGGEST GAP IN TERMS OF DOLLARS IS CUMBERLAND COUNTY KIND OF MAKES SENSE THEY HAVE THE LARGEST POPULATION THERE'S THE MOST NEED THERE'S THE MOST ALSO AVAILABLE BUT HEY BIG GAP THE COUNTY THAT THE HUB HERE THAT IS THE most overstretched in terms of kind of, you know, how far they are from the optimum, like the current as a share of the goal, is hub three, which is only about a quarter as big as they would prescribe it needs to be, the people who wrote the study for the state of Maine. So it puts us in a spot where we know, as ever, demand is going to outstrip supply here in this community, in the region that we serve. Another just look at the same phenomenon as far as statewide. This is figures from the State Department of Education that I got the summer going back before the pandemic. The number of students who were experiencing homelessness and were noticed by their school in the course of a given school year across the whole state was maybe 1,200 kids per year. That was fairly stable, and it was mostly people who were doubling up, a really tiny shelter in that navy blue on the very top, a really tiny sliver of unsheltered, and as the population of families experiencing homelessness with kiddos has exploded, you've really seen the biggest growth percentage wise in that share of people who are experiencing true unsheltered homelessness, that navy blue on the top. You can see for last school year it was 350. This past school year it was down a little bit to 314. I credit the school-based rental assistance like Jamie's been deploying and other places around the state for a lot of pulling us back from that upper trajectory. Now that's totally anecdotal, but I think it makes sense that it's a lot of money and they're putting into the pockets of people based on the fact that they've got a kid in school, right, so here's the impact of that. But still pretty unsettling to imagine these 350 kids or whatever it is rolling out of the car in the morning and trying to get their way to school. Sometimes I've, you might have seen a me show a picture like this in the past, that set a safety net for 40 towns, we're really glad that this past year a permanent state subsidized shelter for adults opened up in lewiston which had not had one for a long time and so it kind of as we try to figure out what's a fair way to measure our catchment area across different programs that have different you know nearest neighbors if you will you know the different nearest neighbor for family shelter than for an adult shelter i'm sort of conservatively pairing this back to about 25 towns but of course it includes out of all of sagatok county most of maybe let's say half of lincoln a lot of northern cumberland county and even some slivers of kennebec and andrew scoggin and you can see which is just a little sense of what kinds of people are accommodated in which kinds of shelters so going up the coast to our east north and east you see the home or the shelter that takes care of families but not adults so that just means that more of those adults are going to be coming our way if that makes sense that's just big picture a little more locally, you guys are all very familiar with the Alice study that United Way keeps tracks of. This is the most up-to-date information that they have published as of 2026, and we know that a court compared to our neighbors, the share of households in Brunswick that are working but either below the poverty line or below the sort of I can afford the basics, transportation, medicine, food, housing, heat, that Brunswick really does have a greater share of its population who are struggling in those ways, and that shows up in Tedford's statistics as well. [1:11:01] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: AND BEFORE YOU GO ON, I WANT TO POINT OUT THAT HARPSWELL, TOPSOM ARE BOTH PRETTY HIGH. so and Bath yeah so we're kind of surrounded by towns even though we're highest we're surrounded by many towns that have high need so just thought that was worth pointing out before we move off that slide [1:11:26] Andrew Lardy, Executive Director at Tedford Housing: Well I think the biggest thing that people find surprising on this is that there are, there seem to be almost no towns that aren't in a scary place, right? People are shocked to see this number for Yarmouth, for example, right? We think of Yarmouth in a certain way, you know, you know, we can, we try to quibble with the details of their methodology, but even if there's something that you might question about, you know, how many renters in Yarmouth really are there and how are they all doing economically, I think the contours are probably valid of where there's more [1:11:52] Sarah Singer, community member and secretary: And where there's less, I just wanted to add to Sarah's point that this Alice data is at least a year old, so I'm afraid that's even higher, especially due to the rising fuel costs, the heating costs, so 46 again is probably the floor of what we're seeing currently, and we're going to see, I think, the impact this winter. [1:12:10] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: Thanks. Good point. Jacob, go to the mic. [1:12:18] Jacob Sesker, community member and board member at Tedford Housing: You know, one thing that I would add as well is that... [1:12:22] Milton Noble: Can you introduce yourself just in case people are watching at home? [1:12:24] Jacob Sesker, community member and board member at Tedford Housing: I'm Jacob Sesker. I'm a community member and a board member at Tedford Housing. But one of the things that I think is really interesting is to see that the cushion that families have when you're looking at national, you know, household level financial data is really has shrunk, right, so we're entering a very difficult year at a period of time when household savings are at some of the lowest levels they've been at in recent memory, when households are falling behind on their credit card payments and payments for things that are important, like, you know, beginning to see people falling behind on car payments and things of that nature, so when you look at the data that is compiled by the federal reserve about the health of the average American household, it's really telling a story that indicates we're not prepared for whatever it is that's coming up, households are not do not have the savings that they had as recently as a couple years ago [1:13:29] Andrew Lardy, Executive Director at Tedford Housing: So here's just some basic descriptive statistics on where Brunswick residents fall in the universe of who Tedford serves. Based on that revised, slightly shrunken catchment area that I suggest, that I just showed you in the picture earlier. I think the tally of population shows that Brunswick would be about 15% of the population in our catchment area, which is a decent share. But you can see consistently about a third of our clients across all the different programs, and maybe the most, of course, in the warming center. Center and what I want to say about this, I think it's just an important thing to keep in mind, and I'll just review maybe the adult shelter is most notable, right, so over 40 percent of our requests for adult shelter are coming from Brunswick, those are turnaways, right, and we say yes to as many people as we can based on how frequently a bed flips, and so you know Brunswick has always been Tedford's home and Brunswick is a place where there's not an it's And it's not a coincidence that the agency was Founded here in response to the phenomenon of local need. And I think the warming center is its own phenomenon, to see how many people there are looking for a place to just stay, get out of the elements in the winter. And so this shows, I think, just how embedded we are in the community. And of course, how much collaboration there is in this community in support of each of these programs. And I don't want to spend all the time enumerating all those partners, but it's a lot of different faith agencies and other nonprofits, people like the United Way, of course, and, of course, the town staff and the police. You know, really just everybody's carrying this together. [1:15:11] Milton Noble: I just wanted to ask you another question. As a housing committee, and we're always, like, thinking about how to tackle problems, has Tedford or any of the shelters in Maine, do you guys ever operate or look at sort of SRO style housing, like very basic rental, like that kind of transitional housing? Do you operate that, or do you seek to build it? And I'm just curious, I know I come from California, where that's a common, there's a common sort of half-step housing, where it's really just almost like subsidized motel room style housing. Yeah, well, so I would say that's [1:15:46] Andrew Lardy, Executive Director at Tedford Housing: more of a question for a housing developer. And even though our name has become Tefford Housing, we don't think of ourselves, and we don't think of housing development problems from day to day, mostly, right? I mean, it's been a while since Tedford built some new housing. I think it's a great question, I think it's a fine suggestion, and in fact, it's in a quirky way, I live on a street here in Brunswick where there's somebody operating SROs. It's really cool, a little, a little informal situation, and it's you know, I think the housing first model is very much SRO style for the most part, not always, yeah, and that comes with tons of services that go along with it, and of course only a few of those are able to be built every few years as the funding becomes available. So I guess to me, maybe a slightly related question is, what do we, if we, if [1:16:31] Milton Noble: We could pick what gets built. What would we be building? Yeah, I guess that's my question, is like, what's the half measure? Like, we're trying to solve housing problems, so we look at like subsidizing, creating, supporting affordable housing. You're in the shelter business. Like, have you seen a model in Maine, anywhere, or anywhere that you think that our committee could think about or support that's even a transitional between an independent studio and a shelter? Do you think that's a missing piece of our housing puzzle? I just think as a committee it's helpful to understand, like, if you had somebody who could sort of transition out of shelter but might not quite be ready to take on a year-long lease, like, where do you transition people to? Or what, I'm just curious about that kind of the spectrum of housing, because I am not aware of much of that kind of housing stock in this county. [1:17:21] Andrew Lardy, Executive Director at Tedford Housing: Yeah, I wish I had a more sophisticated understanding of both the kind of social work side of it and the housing policy side of it. And I don't think I have a great answer for you, but I would say transitional housing is certainly one species of the continuum. And in this case of agencies like ours that are state subsidized, after somebody exits your shelter, your case manager is following up with them for six months through a year as long as the person is interested in engaging whether they're going to be renting somewhere that's subsidized or market rate or they're in a different kind of situation so that accompaniment is there 's a little bit of a scaffold but you know doing it in a in a more dense way where you know the thing that you're renting is actually smaller the thing that you're accountable to maintain and clean up is smaller i think that's a fine suggestion and i'm sure, it's a little bit less visible than it really actually is prevalent, right? So SROs are real. Single room occupancy is real. But I think it's not present in the conversations that I'm a part of a lot on the state level. It doesn't come up much. Interesting. Maybe I can help with this part. Hi, Andrew. [1:18:25] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: Katie, I was about to call on you, but I wanted to. I've been doing this for a long time. Hold on a second, Katie. [1:18:30] Andrew Lardy, Executive Director at Tedford Housing: Sarah, the short answer to your question is that there's a mixed response in terms of the law. And at the municipal level, most municipalities have zoned SROs out of existence because they are seen as unattractive housing options. So in places where they have historically existed, particularly East Coast cities, you don't find them anymore. It's very difficult to get somebody with a voucher or housing subsidy leased up in an SRO for a whole host of regulatory reasons. And there's not a lot of investment in them in large part, particularly in the last 10 years. If we could overcome the barriers to zoning in municipalities. There are the issues of the cost to build and the return on investment just isn't where most developers want to see it, particularly if you haven't got a funding stack. act that includes guaranteed vouchers and we're at a really a hard between a rock and a hard place when it comes to the availability of housing subsidy there's another issue here as well which is the misperception that people aren't ready for housing actually all people are ready for housing we've got an abundance of really good randomized controlled trials on the housing first model that does exactly what it says it puts people into historically scattered site housing normal market rate housing with housing subsidy and the success rate for people who have the proper supportive services in place including a weekly home visit is extraordinarily high and this has been done across the globe the problem is here in the United States we've never funded the services. So, just like Andrew's amazing earlier slide that showed, we are really have half the investment in homeless response that we would need to meet the need the housing 1st program outside of these randomized control studies, where there's strong fidelity to the model. They have not had the services funded and so we see less satisfaction with it. And that's part of the shift we see with continuum of care right now that Andrew was also referring to shifts in housing are moving away from empirically sound interventions to a little bit more. I guess you would say, doctrinally satisfactory for Republicans and conservatives. It doesn't have an empirical base, but it makes them feel better. to move towards these less empirically sound models. So that is sort of the short and medium answer. They don't exist because of a lot of municipal regulations and Supreme Court decisions that allow those things to be zoned out of existence, and there's not a lot of funding to build them. And there is a real desire when you talk to people experiencing homelessness and others to move towards normal housing as opposed to short-term transitional. [1:22:06] Milton Noble: Really about is there anything that you think from your housing perspective is missing in the equation that we should be incentivizing and I fantasize about. [1:22:15] Andrew Lardy, Executive Director at Tedford Housing: Becoming a landlord and building SRO because it's so relatively cheap you're talking about square footage right talking about humans and I think to myself if this cute lady across the street who's 75 can do it so well and have all these lovely neighbors in my neighborhood why don't we do more of it I think it's a great idea but almost like Katie's almost like boarding house. [1:22:35] Milton Noble: Style which is a little bit different SRO I think the SRO I'm familiar with on the west coast is more hotel style and maybe what you're describing with your neighbor might be more like boarding house yeah but that might be a. [1:22:50] Andrew Lardy, Executive Director at Tedford Housing: Difference of scale rather than a distinction of what it is yeah can. [1:22:55] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: I just add something that we actually did we had some developer come to us wanting to build SROs or micro units and which we really pushed for and went to main housing to see if we could get them could use some of the community solutions grant money and they said no so I feel like that's something that we could lobby for on the policy side like would be that would you know when we talked to you the other day Jacob and Andrew like that's something that we all should kind of work towards the. Narrative and explaining the need and also that developers are willing to put their investments into this and then again Of course, we have to work with them the laws and the local side as well. [1:23:35] Milton Noble: Yeah, I have a friend who works with the tiny house group in LA that's building micro housing for to solve like homelessness So they're not really a service. They are like tiny little Apartments, but they do have some comment. They have supportive services on some common areas so I was just curious if you were aware of anything between the apartment and the homeless shelter if there were other solutions that you thought towns should be working towards in addition so thanks you know i think i want to just restate one sentence that. [1:24:05] Andrew Lardy, Executive Director at Tedford Housing: Katie made right, which is they've been zoned out of existence, and then you lose that species. [1:24:11] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: Yeah, Celeste had a question, and then Counselor Teamy. My, it's not a question exactly, but I agree with Sarah. I read about a project in San Diego where they were building, I don't know, like very small, almost like storage size units that a homeless person could use, and they would be able to lock it so that they had privacy and safety. I presented that to a board meeting at Tri-County Mental Health, and it was sort of vilified because then they're saying that you are discriminating against homeless people because they can't have an apartment, but yet you're giving them shelter. One thing I'm looking into or thinking about is the University of Maine is coming out with 3D printed houses, and I'm thinking, can you partner with them? That I have heard about developers that have done homeless developments, and they've done luxury redevelopments with 3D printed housing. So is that maybe the future of what Sarah's talking about, that could be more affordable and quickly doable? Huge, I'm [1:25:28] Andrew Lardy, Executive Director at Tedford Housing: happy to respond. Yeah, I think, you know, that aligns closely with what people are talking about with more manufactured housing, more modular housing, just finding ways that things can be built off-site, built more quickly, built more efficiently. And the professional developers are ready to gobble it all up and build whatever is going to be viable. So I think that's fine. I think back to the sort of slightly larger question of what, you know, number of square feet is acceptable and wise versus scary and bad. The question is just how do you create a life experience and a community integration experience that gives a person dignity and hope and just a sense of actually being a whole person with relationships and, you know, something to look forward to every day. And obviously, like stuffing yourself into a locker with nothing around you on a parched landscape surrounded by a bunch of people who are struggling and no supportive services is not the right recipe, but you've got to find a way to get to something that is that more people thrive, that's all. So I think it's worth being skeptical about some of these developments that we see in the news, and yet, you know, as long as you're centered on this question of dignity and support for a person's humanity, you're gonna be, we're gonna get to an [1:26:37] Ramona Tini, District 6 Town Councilor and liaison to the Housing Committee: An outcome that's manageable. Concertini, two things. One, which I think I already see the answer from looking at your slide, but I just wanted to sort of dry it out because I know that there is, you know, there have been people who have voiced frustration at the amount of the funding for, you know, various services that goes to like Brunswick people versus not Brunswick people. Would you say that the warming center provides the most direct support for Brunswick residents of the Tedford Housing programs? Interesting. I mean, this number kind of [1:27:15] Andrew Lardy, Executive Director at Tedford Housing: suggested, I think there's, there's plenty of smudge in the data, right? We know that almost half of the people who access the warming center in a given year don't want to answer any questions about anything, and so your data have a lot of big, have big air bars around them, and you also know that the question you ask a person, you know, where was your last table residence, where did you sleep last night, you know, those are different, those will get you two different answers, right? So I don't want to pretend that these are tidy, but we, you know, we received a handwritten letter from somebody in September asking for heat assistance for this year, and it shows how much desperation there is about this winter already, and I think Jacob already touched on that nicely. So I think the warming center is vital for the, for I wouldn't say quality of life, but for the continuation of life for more people in this community than is comfortable to really contemplate. [1:28:07] Ramona Tini, District 6 Town Councilor and liaison to the Housing Committee: Thanks. Another thing that was coming up during the discussion of SROs, there was what is allowed under zoning, and I don't know all the history of what has been worked on in this committee, but it sounds like we should certainly be looking at what is allowed under Brunswick zoning code and what should be allowed to allow this to be like approached with solutions across the town, because if we are, you know, it's already hard enough to get funding for these things, if it's also not allowed under zoning, even if you can find the funding, you can't build it. So I would hope that, you know, as a committee we could ensure that the right things are allowed [1:28:51] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: under our town zoning code. Andrew, I want to give you the opportunity to finish. [1:28:59] Andrew Lardy, Executive Director at Tedford Housing: Your presentation, we'll come back to questions, but okay, follow briefly on that last remark. It's worth noting that there was the thing, you all know this well, the state did approve some sort of like prefab ADU designs that anybody could put anywhere and every town has to accept them, and that's like a step in that direction, right? The question is sort of how many of those ADU variants are available for a question is how many variants, how small can they be, and so on. So it's, I like that we're getting close, but I think you're also right that we need to look as carefully as we can about making things possible. And meanwhile, some things that we've been busy with lately, so I mentioned homelessness prevention is the way that we reach the most people with the fewest dollars. We've been trying to, we've had some really skillful staff person there in that role for the past year and a half or so helping us serve more people. And most notably, I've been really excited that this is a program that as far as you know, the top stack of the bar is like personal resource navigation, you know, you're paying for case managers wages and they're having relationships with people they encounter. The bottom part of the stack is households where you're paying cash payment and rental assistance and help them stay housed, just same thing that Jamie was discussing before. That for us in a given year, we might have spent let's say fifty, sixty, forty $40,000 on that wasn't much. This past year we received a $250,000 grant from a corporate foundation that's allowing us to, let's say, triple the scale of that program starting this earlier this spring through next spring. So we've been talking it up in our catchment area to make sure people know, hey, you might have been turned away from this request in the past at Tedford Housing. But this is the year to refer that client over to us. And of course we want to stretch it as far as we can and make the most good that we can. And for us, 200,000 bucks out the door is a huge amount on this program. Numbers that you know the state is making available through Jamie's program, it's just mind-blowing, and I'm excited for that. 's one of the bright spots, and I know we said no more [1:30:49] Sarah Singer, community member and secretary: Questions, but can you just put a question? Do you measure and could you share? So that's how much you gave out. Do you have a measurement of how much you could have given out if you had the funding, sort of that, you know, that gap between what you have and what's being requested for that, for the deposit and assistance? [1:31:07] Andrew Lardy, Executive Director at Tedford Housing: I've asked about this. So I think this program is not one that turns people away if they qualify, which is interesting. But the question is going to be, how much can you give? And when a person, if you hear from somebody who's $6,000 behind, I mean, the question of how much could you give out is a really hard one, right? Because some of these cases, it's sort of like with a CMP bill. Oh, I'm $10,000 behind on my CMP bill. Well, what would be the fair dent that we put into that? So mostly what we try to do is collaborate with, you know, their local churches and different sources where we can couple together the amount that the landlord needs and, yeah, it'd be great if we can just sort of top it off ourselves, but every time we collaborate and give less, that stretches it further. So it's, I find it to be a hard question to answer. Okay, keep going. All right, this is how many households have been through the shelters. Obviously, what we say, we're gonna expand our shelters by 60%, we should see everything go up by 60%. That's gonna take a while. It's gonna take a while for us to get the moot to flip all the households that have already, you know, we're here to start from. And crucially, the number of households you can serve in a given year in any shelter is going to be dependent on how long people spend there. And that's where it gets to something more interesting here on the next slide. This is actual data, I believe. Yes, so rental assistance, you know, this is one of the main lubricants of the system. It lets people who don't have enough money to afford market rate rent be some place and pay their rent by paying 30 of their income. That's a federal program. And as rents have gone up way more, way more quickly than wages and then payment standards on the vouchers, it has meant that the state had to really slow down or in some cases completely freeze for extended periods the issuance of new vouchers. So, you know, the state was pushing out 850 a year for quite a while and then that orange is sort of when hud announced like hey everybody all of your vouchers are costing us more money than you've actually gotten budgeted for this so stop giving out new vouchers and then you've seen what has happened since then and it just means that people are stuck in shelters longer and this has been the case for 18 months so this takes us to the next slide you know the length of stay is going in the wrong direction and if we're going to be able to make good on our commitment to serving more of that households, we have to find ways to make get people into positive exits from shelter quicker, both of those things. And there are things we cannot control, but we try to do what we can excellently with what we can control. One positive thing about our families being in the shelter for so long this past year is that it also meant that they were staying in the shelter until they solved their situation. And one of the ways to make your length of stay stats look good is by kicking people out all the time, and that happens sometimes. In fact, this is an important thing, the standard, the federal standard for sort of a quality shelter is that you will be kicking people out when they exit 70% out of the time, and only 30% of your exits will be positive. So like that's the standard, right? You expect, especially for a single adult shelter, there are ways that shelters just, you know, can't accommodate what a person is going to be acting like. So length of stay is important. I don't even know what is next. What's next? Turn aways, of course. Turn aways are going in the wrong direction. I think, I think this past year the notoriety around the opening of a new shelter meant that we got more calls. I'm surprised that we didn't get more family calls. We mostly only got more adult calls. Not sure what to make of that, but that's what we've got for the data. And this is just a little bit of a reminder about what's the ratio of the people you say yes to and take care of versus the people you say no to and don't take care of. And it's not something we're comfortable with, and we just want to continue to try to figure out how to make it better by getting people into positive exits faster. Okay, I think that's it. I had a couple of things that I don't see, nope, we talked about that, about that, it's close to everything, yeah, second to last slide. [1:35:09] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: Really just hits me in such a terrible way when you say you have to turn them away. You have no, these are people that are just going back out on the street, right? Or you, or do you turn them away with like, here's an alternative? Or I know sometimes you're able to make a good connection, but can you talk a little bit more about that slide? Sure. That's a really upsetting slide. There is a lot under there. [1:35:33] Andrew Lardy, Executive Director at Tedford Housing: So you might call eight shelters today trying to find a bed, and the eighth one has a bed available to you, and you drive to Holton and stay up there, right? And we turned you away, so this is not, like, deduplicated across the entire system. There's a lot more statewide coordination that I would love to see, but this is not deduplicated across the system. And it's not really practical, I mean, how much info do you want to give me on that first phone call about yourself and to be entered into the computer, right? So there might be that outcome. There might be that you are trying to get out of an unsafe situation in your home, but you can't, so you stay, right? So you're still housed, just in a bad situation. You could be doubled up, living in a hotel-motel, not necessarily unsheltered, but sometimes unsheltered. And we might refer you to our outreach case manager to say, okay Carol, well, what are you contending with that we can offer you some support on? You know, do you have Medicaid? Do you have Medicaid? Do you have a main care? Can we get you into a doctor for that leg, right? And you might accept that support and get some of that process, those things moving forward in the right direction, or you might say, no thanks, this isn't what I called for. Does that help a little bit? [1:36:40] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: Yeah, it's just, it's, it's unsettling to know how many people have to be turned away, you know, and just how much we need more than, more shelters. Well, I'll make it worse [1:36:52] Andrew Lardy, Executive Director at Tedford Housing: for you if you don't mind. The 63 that we, so 562 is how many called in a calendar year. The 63 who we served in that calendar year includes a bunch of people who are actually already under the roof in the prior calendar year, so it's actually inflated, if you will. Does that make sense? Like, the number of people we actually admitted in that calendar year is less than 63. But it's hard for me to get the records in a way that I can easily see who entered in the year. [1:37:17] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: And who called me, you say, getting people transitioned out? You mean like, because there is obviously a huge problem with there's not enough vouchers out there, and then also the secondary thing is that not everyone has to accept vouchers here, which is not the case in every state, so that is another thing [1:37:36] Andrew Lardy, Executive Director at Tedford Housing: That I think needs to be worked on. Yes, and Katie and worked on, it's on our, it's on our short list. Katie was involved in a bill last year we were trying to advocate for [1:37:45] Ramona Tini, District 6 Town Councilor and liaison to the Housing Committee: That bill to pass, but the landlord representative is the go-to person on source of income discrimination. [1:37:53] Sarah Singer, community member and secretary: Yep, thanks. I just wanted to clarify, I think something you said, Sally, just looking at a bigger picture. Yes, I see this and say we need more beds, but I think we also, I also look at this and need, we need a pipeline, because you know, I think we'd all agree that this is not where we want people to be. We want that service, but we really want is to give a resource to Tedford to help get those 63 served discharged into housing, and so I feel like it's the Sarah's point, I feel like I would rather have beds And more places like that gap. What's that gap between what we are funding and that shelter, because the subsidy, we don't have anything that's affordable with a subsidy, so where can we build where those six, where it can they can land, get settled, and then get out, so that we need fewer beds, because they're allowed, they have the resources to do what they do best, which is get people happy. Yeah, wouldn't it be cool if there were shelters where [1:39:00] Andrew Lardy, Executive Director at Tedford Housing: Every now and then there was just a couple empty beds, you know? Right, exactly. I think it was [1:39:04] Sarah Singer, community member and secretary: For a week, right, while they get settled and you work with them and then you find a place and then [1:39:09] Milton Noble: The next time, and it was one of your data points, that part of the reason for your turn aways is that you have people stuck because you can't, they're ready to move out but there's nowhere [1:39:16] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: To go, so absolutely there's nowhere affordable to go, and that's what they had vouchers to make up the difference, and if people could not say no, we don't want you, because if they have, they should be able to go anywhere if the voucher makes up the difference, so preventing in the first place, right [1:39:30] Sarah Singer, community member and secretary: Then you talk about preventing the right part, keeping people, so I want to keep us moving [1:39:36] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: Because we are running a little late here. Sorry about that. But no, it's not your fault. It's it's us. It's our fault. It's me. It's our fault. I know Katie wants to say something, but before I go to Katie, I just we have a lot that can came up through this presentation that and to think about how we what kinds of things we want to do in the future. And Celeste, Sally, and I are already talking about sort of figuring out what some of our goals might be, so that's a conversation that will come back to the committee. So and I think this gives us some food for thought too as well. And I want to point out for anybody who isn't aware of Community First in Austin, Texas, that's an interesting model, and we did a presentation about that what, five years, six years, seven years ago? Yeah, a long time ago. And then the other thing I wanted to mention, this goes back to your point about Medicaid, just yesterday the Trump administration ejected 750,000 people from Medicaid from Obamacare markets claiming Obamacare right. I'm [1:41:07] Sarah Singer, community member and secretary: sorry. Let's say if let's not call it Obamacare, ACA. Thank you, ACA. So you know [1:41:14] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: there's there's a I don't know how many of them are in Maine, but that is something that and they're looking at more so. And the reason I heard this morning was because they hadn't filed any claims, so they figured they'd be too healthy. Right. So anyway, okay, Katie, then Ben, then we gotta wrap this portion up. [1:41:45] Andrew Lardy, Executive Director at Tedford Housing: There's a lot of things that municipalities can do to address this issue besides rely exclusively on shelters or vouchers. There's I mean there's so many different creative things that we should and could be talking about over time. For example, we have a general assistance system that hobbles along but could be empowered to be much more effective at preventing homelessness and certainly capturing whether that is the young people who are under the age of 25, if we could correct for provisions of the general assistance statute that make it incredibly difficult for young people to get general assistance. So looking at general assistance, we could be doing things like incentivizing local landlord landlords to accept vouchers. We could do our own program on source of income discrimination. So I don't want people to think and let me just say first off that Andrew's presentation is amazing. Like you need to send this to me and you so that I can utilize it. This needs to be widely seen and multiplied to the state level. But I just want to encourage this committee in particular not to think that we are bound simply by the availability of the housing choices that we currently have, or the number of shelter beds that we currently have, or the core utilization of vouchers that gums up the system. Let's put this on the agenda going forward as something that we should be solutions focused, and there are lots of creative things out there. ADUs, for example, really is a community driven solution to a lot of housing stock, the absence of sufficient housing stock in communities, and with a lot of local work being done but also state level work being done, we're seeing that program really take off. Same thing with the mobile home parks. There's things that we can and should be doing right now, but we kind of get stuck in the scale of it all, and I'm just suggesting let's not get stuck in the scale of it all, and really take a look at both what is effective, but I'm also going to suggest what is ethical, because there's a lot of unethical, unvalidated, non-empirical work being done out there, and because people experiencing homelessness are often not in these committee rooms, their perspectives get totally left out of the conversation. So lots of work to do, and let's center the perspectives of people with lived experience and really good data as we hopefully chart a course for the next decade that looks a little bit more robust than what we have to deal with in this decade. Thank You Katie. [1:44:41] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: I look forward to hearing more, having more discussion. Ben. [1:44:55] Ben Gaines, Brunswick resident: Announcements, but it is relevant here I just wanted to make sure that everybody here is aware that main housings Eviction prevention program is online as of Monday This is a program that main housing ran a pilot for last year It provides up to $9,600 in funding to cover arrears for tenants who are behind in their rent and up to $800 in forward-looking rent for tenants who are paying over 30% of their current income on rent. Eligibility is limited to tenants with household incomes below 60% of area median income. But we saw a lot of success with the pilot program and are very excited about this coming online now. Now you can learn more of the application website is evictionprevention.mainehousing.org. Also, I can try to email out some program materials. The project home is administering this program, got the contract to administer the program for Maine housing and, Liz McClellan is, their staff who's running the program, who's done a lot of great trainings, and has a,, videotape training, that's available that I will try to email out when I figure out how to load a list of attendees into my work email but or I'll just email Carol and Carol can share it out so it's not up [1:47:00] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: yeah and send it to Sally and me perfect great then could you give me a date I [1:47:07] Sarah Singer, community member and secretary: think I sorry when did when is the when can people apply is that already open yes it is thank you I missed it yeah I saw that notice too yeah and they've [1:47:18] Ben Gaines, Brunswick resident: processing applications first come first served and they already have 350 [1:47:25] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: applications as of earlier today so how much do they have in the funding bucket [1:47:31] Ben Gaines, Brunswick resident: there so that's great it's 11 million and we'll be going back in for more in [1:47:41] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: the next legislature and so the 9600 in arrears and 800 is that just for just [1:47:47] Ben Gaines, Brunswick resident: one month no so 90 it is 9 600 is their total bucket for a household okay now they have some ability to negotiate with landlord where there are larger arrearages because it is difficult for landlords to recover arrearages for tenants they evict who are judgment proof roof. So 9,600 will often be better than zero. And so they have had success kind of negotiating a settlement to clear all of the arrearage with that 9,600. And then the tenant is eligible for that total $9,600. So if after clearing the arrearage, the tenant also has a portion of their rent that exceeds 30% of their income then they are eligible for up to $800 in forward-facing assistance oh that's great thing all [1:48:56] Milton Noble: right thank you yeah I had one quick question since you said we should have a follow-up discussion about this I just had one question to leave you with Andrew which is do you have any kind of program or could we help facilitate a conversation between landlords who are interested in becoming transition partners for you like could the town facilitate a kind of opportunity to help in your community and i'm just wondering like if there's any way to enlist new people who think i have a building i Have a few units in my building. I wonder if I should become a partner, or if that's something we could incentivize. I was just trying to think creatively, to Katie's point, like there are a lot of different ways to solve this problem. And I can imagine that if you were a landlord thinking, I would like to help somebody who's had housing struggles, but I don't really know what I'm doing, so maybe I'll just keep doing what I'm doing. And you know, maybe Tedford. I don't know if you have like a landlord, I don't know, relationship coach or somebody who kind of, you who could, they could talk to. I'm just wondering if somebody was, I know a bunch of people that own buildings and I have multi units and I'm just wondering if you wanted to say is there someone at Tedford they could talk to, say I'm interested in potentially becoming somebody you contact when you're looking for housing. I'd like to understand more. This person might have not perfect credit or might not have the full security deposit or whatever, if right. Is that, is there programming on your end where you help landlords know, so on our, on our, on our wish list of like? [1:50:24] Andrew Lardy, Executive Director at Tedford Housing: Shelter program enhancements to kind of put more meat on the bones of, you know, this or that aspect of the life of the shelter and the case management that we provide, beefing up housing navigation and specifically landlord outreach, if not actual landlord incentives, which requires dollars. That's like number two on the list probably. And it's been a matter of capacity to devote some labor to that in a focused way. And the board is trying to figure out how to, whether we can do it with volunteers or if it needs to be paid staff. And so if there were other folks in this town and the resources of the town, helping build that connective tissue in the relationships and the kind of deep demystifying different aspects of what it means to take on risk of a certain kind of tenant, I think we would love to be close to that work and we need it. And you know, there's so many different levels of just a lot of relationships, which is amazing, and then like relationships plus some dollars for some incentives and some kind of insurance which I think is [1:51:17] Milton Noble: Important too, so just a quick thought. We have a rental registry as a town. We have a potentially in the future the ability to communicate with a large group of landlords, and maybe we could facilitate a workshop, or maybe through the housing group we could think about, is there a financial, is there a financial incentive the town could offer landlords? Hey, would you like to be part of a new program? We would and have some sort of discussion. Remember the rental registry discussion we had? We had a lot of landlords show up. Did you know you could get a property tax break if you participated in this program? Or like, should we think creatively about how to reach landlords? So [1:51:51] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: And two years ago at the Preble Street Conference on Homelessness, Andrew, you may remember this. One of the presenters talked about how they engaged landlords to accept more people. And I, my recollection is that what was, what was significant was having a person that the landlord could rely on to help the tenant be a good tenant. That's right, or to intervene when there was a problem. And what that says to me is it may not be so much a financial thing, incentive, it may be a support incentive. But the key to me is, okay, and I think you're touching on this Sarah, is to engage the landlords in saying we would accept more people if you did this or if we could count on this. In other words, reach out to the people who are not doing what we 'd like them to do, to find out what the obstacles are and see if we can address those obstacles. That was a message I heard from that conference. And go ahead Katie. I think Celeste wants to say something, and I want to make sure that if there's anybody else in the public who wants to speak that we give, we give some time for public comment, okay? Because I do have that guy and I [1:53:30] Andrew Lardy, Executive Director at Tedford Housing: have to pay a lot of money to keep that guy. It is helpful having somebody who can do that work, and having a good person do that work is extraordinary. But there are two other financial issues that really need to be addressed, and they are both pre and post lease up. So pre lease up, one of the significant barriers particularly for vouchers is that a lot of units are not going to be able to comply with the HUD addendum. This is required of every voucher. The main housing has an addendum and there's codes that have to be complied with. So a lot of landlords are prohibited from participating even if they want to because there's going to be some upfront investment in getting their units up to code. So for example, if you have an older unit and a fully geared up firefighter can't get through the window, that window needs to be fixed, right? The second thing is post-leaseup, when somebody moves out there's always repairs that need to be done. This is the stuff of nightmares that most people have heard about and this is exactly where a lot of landlords want some financial guarantee that they're not going to be left with a $20,000 or $30,000 bill. So get a person and then address those pre and post-leaseup financial constraints and you have a very successful landlord engagement program. [1:54:51] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: And Katie, that's a really good segue to what I think Celeste would like to speak to. Yes, I am sure, Michael. No, it is, I'm very interested in that issue of landlords and letting people in with the vouchers and I was talking to people, we had Genesis here last week and I was talking to somebody about having a fund for landlords to help with damages and I've started researching it and how to incentivize landlord so I'd like to be that volunteer person that would work either with you and with housing over time and to see how we can incentivize and get things like that going. Okay, great. So is there anybody on zoom in the public who has something they want to share? I can't, I can't see if we've got anybody other than, huh, okay, nobody, okay, not for a closing sentence. Sure, yeah, I just needed to be sure that absolutely allowed for public comment [1:56:08] Andrew Lardy, Executive Director at Tedford Housing: there isn't any so go ahead that the constraint from us being more ambitious with some of these visionary ideas that are vital and we have models to follow out in the world is that we haven't yet proven we can pay our basic bills in the new or expanded facility. And this year, we have to fundraise $800,000 to break even on the shelter program. So some of our programs are heavily subsidized and some are not. And until we know we can pay our bills, it's harder to say you have to chase discretionary money for something new because it's a way to fail. So that's the balancing act that we're in the midst of. But obviously, having other players taking on and sharing that burden makes it less of a risk and more of a thing that we have a reason to find a little bit of bandwidth for. [1:56:59] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: Thank you for that reality check. Thank you, Andrew. Thanks for that presentation. It was excellent. Okay. Any other comments from the committee, or did you want to talk about the pipeline at all? [1:57:15] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: What do we have, five minutes left? I guess I can. And I thought we were passing this out, but I guess they didn't get passed out. I did. Oh, you did? Oh, okay. Yeah, okay. So just didn't get a chance to review the pipeline in the last meeting. So a couple things showing on here that weren't here before. So you can see, you know, we break it approved, under review, pre-development, and what's affordable, just to see how we're doing. And this is from 22 all the way to now, are basically, you know, last time this was updated was 8 11. So a little bit, a little bit more. But the, but the things that we've picked up that are on hold that would have been affordable are, you know, they're the two things from 2024, the 25 River Road and 41 River Road. Those are on hold, so we'll see if those can materialize, but that's 58 out of our 147 units. And you can see some of these things we've realized, most of what's in this pipeline on the affordable, so we really do need to keep working on incentivizing the affordable, I guess, is the message that I'm trying, to bring forth here, is that, you know, we're, we have our IZ, but we just haven't had a lot of properties coming in that are over the 15 units, so it hasn't triggered more affordable. So just to say we're working on this and we need to be continuing to work on this, given, you know, what all of the data is showing, all the presentations we've had today, but even just what MCOG showed us in that we really need to pivot to looking at housing, producing housing, preserving housing, and direct assistance for families or 80 area media income, you know, and below, right, because that's really where the highest need is. And I'd really, I really look forward to having that, the Alice is new to me, I really, we were trying to get a speaker to come in during, Doreen was not [1:59:23] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: available this week, but she is available in October, so we hope that we can get Dorian Fournier from United Way on the agenda to give us some updates and overview about Alice. [1:59:37] Sarah Singer, community member and secretary: For a quick accuracy of the minutes, can you share, is Katie now a member again? Not yet. Okay, so in process. Okay, so, okay, so I will, thank you. Yeah. [1:59:51] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: I had invited Katie to participate today in to sort of bridge the hope that she will be joining us starting next month, and I think that's likely to get through. [2:00:07] Sarah Singer, community member and secretary: So maybe I'll say yes, Councilor Timmy. Thank you. Yeah, so I'm just the [2:00:19] Ramona Tini, District 6 Town Councilor and liaison to the Housing Committee: inclusionary zoning thing just came up. I was speaking with Council Chair McDonald after the last council meeting, and he asked whether the topic of inclusionary zoning had come up in the housing committee. I believe it was talked about while he was the liaison on housing committee about like potential changes to that program, expanding to like not just rentals, and that kind of got me thinking about different pieces of that, including just the fact that like we have this new comp plan which has changed how we are looking at the town, you know, refine that, which might prompt different opinions on how to approach inclusionary zoning. So okay, good point, [2:01:02] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: and while I have you, maybe either you or, can I just answer that? So we go ahead. We have been, we were, we were looking at this and we had been studying this. We even had an intern working on it one summer, but we have just not gotten, we just not solved it in a way that we're comfortable with. So we do want to resurface that, but it is, it's just, it's a lot more fraud, it's not as straightforward. You're talking about the home ownership piece, right, home ownership versus rentals? [2:01:30] Ramona Tini, District 6 Town Councilor and liaison to the Housing Committee: Yeah, or just generally, I mean, you know, the number of units or all different types of things that might potentially allow that program to give us more affordable units. I will say the one thing we [2:01:42] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: didn't mention was that obviously Chrissy mentioned the Hawthorne, but that is that, you know, the one that was selected by the town council is 100 affordable, so that's at least units that are coming on the main building, and then the other one is 80 to 100. We're, you know, we're still working that through. I hope it will be under 100, but for sure that's, you know, that's 24 units, so that is a good win for the community too if that goes forward. Okay, would one of you [2:02:12] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: the town councilors address the award that our comp plan [2:02:22] Ramona Tini, District 6 Town Councilor and liaison to the Housing Committee: So I forget the organization that awarded it, but our wonderful new comp plan was awarded best new comprehensive plan by, I think it might have been like the American Planning Association. [2:02:34] Corey Peralt, Town Councilor: It's a regional, it's a regional award coming up. They're gonna be attending and [2:02:39] Ramona Tini, District 6 Town Councilor and liaison to the Housing Committee: receive the award in person, so we've done an amazing job with our comp plan committee and we should be very happy with our comp plan. Yeah, good one thing I [2:02:53] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: Want to just add is I attended the planning board meeting last night and the planning board approved the revisions to the Golic plan. And a lot of update comments that the planning department provided. So that is now, as I understand it, going back to the Zoning Board of Appeals. And so I don't have a date or time or location yet but it might be helpful if any of us are available when that comes up to the Zoning Board of Appeals to just be there. It do you know what the appeal is it's it's extensive it's on [2:03:49] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: saying not meeting some of the design standards for Cooks Corner okay yeah that was that was the main part of it they already had a approved plan and then they came back with an amendment so it's on the amendment okay which just [2:04:02] Milton Noble: got approved and they had a fight they had a financing do you think the [2:04:05] Allie Costello, Director of Economic and Community Development: financing is improved I'm working on that okay yep okay [2:04:11] Carol O'Donnell, Chair of the Housing Committee: Anything else we're over time do I have a motion to adjourn Sarah motion to adjourn okay all in favor well we don't have a quorum anymore I am saying we are adjourned