Public Comment
Agenda original PDF
Minutes original PDF
Transcript
▶ 1:18 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: pursuant to the open meeting law this meeting is being recorded and will be available on the city of Melrose website it also is being broadcast live on MMTV and is streamed live on MMTV3.org at this time is there a motion to open public comment so moved madam chair second motion to open public comment made by Alderman Mortimer seconded by Alderman Forbes all in favor opposed we are now open for public comment this is the portion of our meeting where any member of the public can come forward to speak on any item on our agenda for the 730 meeting that is an ordinance to be proposed around affordable housing you would place your name and address on the piece of paper at the table and also the rules of our board limit public comment to 10 minutes so please be mindful of that because tonight is a bit different from our typical meeting I just wanted to explain the format we'll have an opportunity for a public comment now then I anticipate that we will have our hearing on this ordinance the planning department will come forward to do a presentation and after that presentation there will be another opportunity for members of the public to speak to this particular proposal are there any members who have the public who would
▶ 2:53 Speaker 1: to come forward at this time good evening i'm james osterman i live at 54 ellis farm lane in melrose i'm the senior vice president at melrose bank and the chief lending officer but i'm here tonight to speak in favor of the zoning ordinance as a representative board member of the melrose affordable housing corporation a non-profit organization established to acquire hold and manage affordable rental housing in the city of melrose we were established and acquired we we were established and we acquired our first property back in 2004. we currently own and manage 15 affordable rental units in the city i was the co-chair of the melrose affordable housing task force established back in 1998 by local citizens to promote the responsible creation of affordable housing here in melrose we advocated for and worked closely with the city to create the current affordable housing zoning ordinance at the time our goal was that at least 10 percent of our housing stock would be considered affordable in perpetuity we were all quite pleased that in night in 2004 the melrose affordable housing incentive program was adopted subsequently a number of new developments were approved and each of these developments included provisions for affordable units or were granted a waiver and instead provided a fee in lieu of units unfortunately as we soon discovered the incentive portion of the zoning ordinance failed to keep the city's stock of affordable housing from growing as a percentage of total units the intent was great but the math just didn't work in our favor so we never really got closer to that 10 than we were when we started every unit that we added was offset by an additional unit that didn't really help the goal we knew early on that in order to make significant headway the ordinance would need to be updated so here we are some 14 years later now standing in support of this updated zoning ordinance personally i'd like to see the required percentage be more than 15 so much of since much of our available land for significant development is already gone but that 15 will continue to make a difference in our community and i don't think it's going to present an excessive burden to developers as it's shown that it hasn't in the past 14 years i also strongly support the changes to the ordinance that no longer allow a cashed contribution for projects of eight or more units and for making the option of cash in lieu of units acceptable for projects of five to seven units i also support the increase of the fee from two to three percent of the sale price or market value of all units in the project again i think as a group we'd like to see that higher because it's just never enough money to get anything done but we do understand that that two to three percent uh is a start in the right direction there are other administrative details of the proposed ordinance and those two are all strongly endorsed finally as it is noted in a footnote of the summary the board of directors of the melrose affordable housing corporation strongly request that the city make a priority to finally create the affordable housing trust so that housing organizations like ours might take advantage of the funds currently set aside from fees in lieu of units that have been created over the past 14 years thank you for your time as we make changes to our zoning ordinance specifically to make Melrose more affordable to those whose income is at or below 80% of the area media income
▶ 6:53 Speaker 2: thank you good evening to the chairs my name is Jeff Eugenio and I'm here with Jim Keene and we're both members of the mayor's veteran services advisory board and we're here tonight just to say that as you may know and as you may guess a large portion of people our community who need affordable housing our veterans and to the extent that the the board is able either through regulations or otherwise just to set aside any portions of housing units that are coming up as affordable through the development processes in the city we're strongly in support of that although the board is not taking a position per se on the zoning ordinance before the board generally in favor of any initiatives in the city to create more affordable housing to the extent that that there are veterans in our community that need such housing I'd also like to point out that just in speaking with Department of Housing Community Development DHCD as I know Ms. Gaffney is likely familiar in the board Planning Board that there's a local initiative program which is also an alternative to an ordinance as we're discussing tonight and through the they called a lit program developer comes forward it's it's almost like a 40 B but it's it's it's it's voluntary on the community's part the percentages are similar word development would be actually 25 percent income requirements in line like just like a 40 B but it's it's more of a collaborative effort and DHCD and informs us that that you can have a set aside for an affordable unit through that process be a veteran unit like it would be a red city resident unit or applicant and that sort of thing so you know to the extent that that's an option for the planning department to have developers come forward through the lip program we think that's an option to increase affordable housing beyond what amendment calls for and and if you can designate some of those units as a veteran affordable otherwise meeting the income requirements that that's that would be a great result thank you
▶ 9:15 Speaker 3: hello my name is corey allen and i live at 179 east foster street this past spring i was one of several melrose residents to take a multi-week course on racism and housing that was developed by white people challenging racism as part of this class we were able to meet with officials from Melrose and learn about the city's approach to affordable housing from this education I've come to the conclusion that we must focus on affordable housing units not fees the fees have only generated two hundred thousand dollars in 14 years approximate to the amount one single family home in Melrose has appreciated over that time and in that time no projects of eight units or fewer has created a single unit of affordable housing i doubt that increasing the fee from two percent to three percent will generate enough revenue to meet affordable housing needs and i should note it is hard to track where and how these fees will be used the affordable housing funding has not yet been covered in the extensive series of emails about melrose funding sources and services i hope it will be soon the affordable housing policy is one of the few tools that can be used to begin to correct the systemic racism that has shaped melrose minorities were redlined out of melrose no government-backed mortgages were approved for them to buy homes in our towns melrose was not open to all as recently as 1968. when i read the master plan and the new proposals for larger projects i get the feeling i'm reading blueprints for a boom in senior housing development as mentioned in the master plan developers want to build these buildings so the main challenge is making sure enough of those units are affordable but this type of development would get us no further in correcting unfair unjust and discriminatory housing practices and i believe that is the goal we should be working towards thank you thank you good evening
▶ 11:20 Speaker 4: my name is dana lewinter i'm a new melrose resident and i am the director of municipal engagement at citizens housing and planning association we're a statewide affordable housing organization but these comments are my own but they come from my background as an affordable housing professional working with a lot of municipalities on this kind of work um so i want to first of all applaud melrose's efforts to increase affordable housing units in our city i don't need to highlight how expensive the housing market is for all of you but that's in melrose and all of our surrounding communities and inclusionary zoning is one tool at our disposal to meet the needs of our community and i'm really excited to see a thoughtful process around this tool to make it as effective as possible i think this proposal does several things really well one it brings melrose into line with surrounding communities um while helping us to make quicker progress towards our state mandated goal of having a housing stock in which ten percent of our units are affordable ten percent is the to me is the bare minimum we know that there's more need than that ten percent but but we really do need to be working towards that goal and i think that melrose has been been doing great work doing that but this will help us get there in a quicker and more effective way um arlington everett peabody winchester new wuber newton brookline somerville all have 15 inclusionary housing or higher and i think it took a quick look at the the units that were highlighted in melrose forward between 2015 and 2018 minus the assisted living project which i think didn't have any inclusionary units in it that simple difference from 10% to 15% would have been an increase of 17 units going from 26 to 43 so that's that's real that's 17 families that that might have been able to afford a home here in Melrose and to the gentleman who spoke before me people who might not have had an opportunity to make Melrose their home otherwise second I think by requiring developments with eight or more units to provide units on site and automatically rounding up there's going to be more predictability for developers and it's also going to be a more seamless creation of units fees in lieu yes they're fees but creating a unit is hard work finding the scarcity of land that's out there high development costs the ability of non-profit developers to access all of the funds they need to put a project together a unit is going to be more effective at creating a unit that's built in a development is going to be more effective than than fees in lieu um and it also there's also value in providing units on site in every development as if we want to be an inclusive community there's a diversity of income ranges and housing types within each development as opposed to just city-wide so i think that's important a couple of things i want to just explore further and i'm i'm interested to see the planning department's presentation but i think the payout fee for developments with less than eight units might not be sufficient to create a unit I think that it's again with the the idea that if the goal is to you know not stifle development and not make those those four to seven unit developments infeasible we need to look at the numbers but I also think that to create an affordable unit the the 3% calculation even though it's more and I think that's that's wonderful might not be enough to actually result in the units that that they might have been required to do and the other thing i think it worth exploring whether through this provision or maybe in another another look at the ordinance is some deeper affordability several communities that surround this area set affordability some of the units at 80 percent of area median income some at 50 or 60 percent of area median income we all know it's going to be even harder for people who are lower income to find housing here in melrose and around around our community and so we can take this opportunity to explore slightly deeper levels of affordability um and lastly i i want to just make sure that we don't view this as the only tool we have at our disposal i i'm really excited to be part of melrose's community and i thought melrose forward set some really ambitious goals um to to meet the housing needs of our community inclusionary zoning is just one of those tools and we can we can do a lot with it but we also can can do more um so thank you for your attention thank you thank you
▶ 16:11 Speaker 1: good evening all my name is robert bell i live at 173 ashland street and starting off i'd like to say that generally speaking i i've reviewed it i think that the ordinance has some decent improvements and that it's workable in my opinion and the out in the general marketplace. I do want to focus in on a couple of issues that I see, but I want to start by reminding everybody what we're doing here, which is that we are taking private property for a public purpose. And in order to do that, in my opinion, there's a constitutional question that there has to be some kind of fair compensation to the developer for doing that. Otherwise, the whole ordinance is open to challenge and could get set aside. That was the genius of the original affordable incentive program that we put in. Remember that there's the word incentive there. And so if you create affordable units, You have the incentive of having available an additional unit for every affordable that you create. We've been consistent with doing that through the revised ordinance, which I think is appropriate, but why are we cutting out the five to seven unit project from that in making it that those projects only pay money, they don't get extra units? Now, as a practical matter, I think that the answer to that is probably that, for the most part, you just can't stuff another unit into the sites that we're talking about. But I think at least as a matter of what the ordinance should be, that there should be equal treatment. Because otherwise, you are definitely singling out that particular category of five to seven units, which, by the way, is a very popular category of potential redevelopment. When we redevelop, for instance, former retail stores that are in the middle of a residential area, and the convenience store or whatever goes out and it's no longer economically feasible, those properties want to convert to residential. and there have been some of those and they have been in the five to seven unit count and I think you know if you've been here long enough like Jack has for instance to to know where all these stores were most of them you know are now residential in that five to seven unit category so I don't think you want to create a disincentive to the appropriate redevelopment of those you of those properties because what we really want to do more than anything is create more units the whole idea of the housing crisis is that it's a supply demand the inequity of huge proportions so decreasing supply by disincentivizing you know redevelopers is not in anybody's long-term interest and it's certainly not doing our part to address the overall housing crisis in general, of which the affordability is a symptom and not a fundamental cause, it's a supply demand issue. I don't want to see that five to seven unit category be unfairly treated. It may be, and I have tremendous faith in Denise's analysis of the situation, it may be that there won't really be anybody who tries to take advantage of putting in a bonus unit on a five to seven unit project, but they should at least have that option, otherwise that section of the ordinance, in my opinion, becomes potentially unconstitutional.
▶ 20:36 Speaker 1: The other thing that I'd like to zone in on is this, is that I didn't follow the evaluation difference in the ordinance between rental housing and for sale housing.
▶ 20:58 Speaker 1: I assume that everybody understands that you assess those properties differently, that income-producing property is assessed based on its income stream, and for sale inventory housing is assessed based on comparative sales prices. And I think that we need to, I think that needs to be a little bit clarified so that, I don't know who's going to make this determination. Is this coming out of the assessor's office? How is it to be determined? I think that we need to focus on that or else we end up potentially ... Well, if you assess an income producing rental property, the same as you do a for sale unit, you're going to produce a real inequity for that particular property owner. So, you know, which then gives rise to, you know, the potential of abatement applications and other, you know, sort of tax remedies. Flowing back to my original point on the five to seven units, which is that the—I've
▶ 22:24 Speaker 1: lost my train, and I apologize. So I'll just end this by saying there's one more thing that I do want to get clarified, which is the effect of this ordinance on projects that are in in the pipeline the state law on the subject is that if you if you've commenced a permitting application prior to the first advertising of this ordinance change
▶ 22:59 Speaker 1: that you you are under the old rules the way that the ordinance actually reads is different than that and I think it needs to get clarified before it gets passed I think that the language on that particular point was you know what more
▶ 23:18 Speaker 1: generic and not specific enough to comply with the existing state law on the subject and you know i think that it's unfair usually the way we take we look at it is that once you've applied to the building inspector for a zoning ruling which is the first step in applying for the process of getting you know going through the permitting process he issues a formal letter stating what you need to comply with that that's normally considered in Melrose terms the commencement of the process and I just like to get clarified that that because there are I am aware that there are certain projects that would be exactly in that position and i think it's unfair you know those that means the tremendous amounts of money and planning has already been done before you submit it to the building inspector it would be unfair to those particular projects that they have to redo all their math and it could conceivably make a project that was feasible you know become not feasible thank you i appreciate
▶ 24:54 Speaker 4: it thank you thank you hi my name is mary sparks i live at 8 south cedar park and i am a melrose parent i have been working hard on the override and i'm also the vice chair of the special ed parent advisory council and i apologize i don't have any prepared comments but i happened to catch this in the paper this evening and i ran down because i am concerned that as we look to increase affordable housing in our community that that's going to increase school enrollment and i would just ask that all of you at least address how this is going to impact school enrollment going forward and i as the vice chair of the special ed parent advisory council i can also tell you that one of the biggest challenges facing not only the melrose public schools but all schools is the increase in the number of students who have social and emotional issues and that is a very real burden our schools have to deal with and when you invite more people into your community you're going to increase that demand which we are barely meeting right now so um i just hope that that is part of the discussion you're going to have tonight and thank you for letting me speak thank you good evening thank
▶ 26:23 Speaker 3: you for inviting us all here tonight i'm ellen conley and i live at 7 union street in melrose here i'm here mainly as a concerned citizen however i am a commissioner on the board on the melrose housing authority i am a member of the melrose affordable housing corporation and i work at the the massachusetts housing investment corporation which is a private nonprofit uh financer of affordable housing and economic development throughout new england but as i said i am here representing myself none of the those organizations but i have worked in affordable housing for 25 years and therefore i'm very interested in enhancing and supporting promoting affordable housing here in the city as you must all know melrose has never even gotten close to reaching the 10 mandate through the massachusetts body um the or 40 general laws
▶ 27:32 Speaker 3: of the commonwealth of massachusetts i wanted to highlight some statistics that i have looked at recently when i knew that i should come down here to talk to you i reviewed the wait list of the melrose housing authority that was just recently given to me melrose family housing units the wait list of those family people are 2281 households of which 63 percent are categorized as Melrose residents are those with a veteran's preference. In fact, there are 31 families on this list today
▶ 28:18 Speaker 3: that are homeless because of some sort of natural disaster. The elderly list has 788 names on it and 92% of those households are either Melrose residents I have a veteran's preference finally the handicapped list has 404 members on
▶ 28:46 Speaker 3: it and none of these people are getting housed in Melrose today some of the
▶ 28:51 Speaker 3: other statistics that I looked at when I went through the housing section of the master plan all the materials submitted to you tonight was that since 2015 398 units were considered under development only 26 of those units are affordable that's 6.5 percent not even close to the 10% that we are trying to achieve here in the city from
▶ 29:31 Speaker 3: the master plan also there are 32% of the households in Melrose today that are cost burdened that means that those families are paying more than 30% of of their income for housing more concerning there are 1600 households in melrose that are considered severely cost burdened those households spend an excess of 50 percent of their income on housing
▶ 30:07 Speaker 3: it's obvious to anybody that leaves any housing
▶ 30:14 Speaker 3: uh information or data that we are not serving the citizens of melrose adequately to provide
▶ 30:27 Speaker 3: affordable housing even according to data in the master plan the median rent in the city of melrose in may of 2016 was twenty five hundred dollars now how many of our seniors citizens
▶ 30:45 Speaker 3: looking for housing can afford a rent of twenty five hundred dollars
▶ 30:51 Speaker 3: i'm i'm not one of the people that wants to spend twenty five hundred dollars on a rental house
▶ 31:00 Speaker 3: So we will never really reach the 10% level that the current ordinance is designed to reach. And we will even not make really minimal progress at the 15% level unless we do something more significant. According to the master plan that we have all been quoting here, we are 250 units short of the 10% goal. I suggest that perhaps a 20% affordability requirement for larger developments might help us reach the goal, at least in the near term. We could structure the ordinance to provide for this higher affordability level until we reached the 10 level and then we could lower the level so that we could maintain the 10 level in the city so in conclusion i simply want to express my support all the changes in the current proposal and that i overall support the creation of more affordable housing here in melrose
▶ 32:31 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: thank you thank you is there any other member of the public wishing to speak on this
▶ 32:37 Speaker 1: ordinance motion to close public comment madam chair second motion to close public
▶ 32:39 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: comment made by alderman mortimer seconded by vice chair Boisselle all in favor aye aye all opposed that motion carries public comment is now closed we move now to the orders before us we have one order tonight it is order 2019-30 amending melrose revised zoning ordinance chapter 235 article 11 section 235-73.1 affordable housing incentive program madam chair i make a motion to suspend