Amherst Affordable Housing Trust to Receive Intensive Technical Assistance
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Source: amherstma.gov
The Massachusetts Housing Partnership (MHP) community assistance team has selected the Town of Amherst to receive support through its intensive technical assistance program for local housing trusts. Amherst was selected to receive up to eight months of direct technical assistance for its Affordable Housing Trust from MHP’s community assistance staff.
Town Manager Paul Bockelman said, “The technical assistance grant will support the trust’s Board of Directors in developing an action plan to identify and prioritize the many needs in our community. Specifically, the technical assistance will support the trust in identifying goals, strategies, and necessary procedures to focus the board’s efforts in the coming years.”
Housing Trust co-chair Erica Piedade added, “The trust has actively engaged with the community by sponsoring and participating in listening and educational sessions on affordable housing, including how racial equity and climate change are connected with affordable housing. From the June 20 community engagement that included an in-person listening session and the ability to submit feedback via the town website, residents and those seeking to be residents provided a range of ideas for what the trust in collaboration with the Town Council, the town, and other housing advocacy organizations should do to increase affordable housing. We want to incorporate this valuable information into our work.”
Housing Trust co-chair Carol Lewis noted, “The trust’s mission and the actions that can be taken for increasing affordable housing are very broad so defining where the trust can be most effective in collaboration with the Town Council, the town, community housing advocates and residents is critical. That is why this technical assistance from the Massachusetts Housing Partnership is so important to us. We thank the Massachusetts Housing Partnership for its commitment to helping well-established trusts – like Amherst’s – move forward to meet the needs of our community.”
The Trust will kick-off the planning process in December, laying out the scope and plan for working with the MHP over the coming months with the goal of having an action plan for the next 3-5 years completed before the summer. Input from the community, the Town Council, and advocacy organizations will be a critical part of the process.
MHP’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund Technical Assistance Program builds upon MHP’s long history of helping communities start and operate effective affordable housing trusts. This effort began in 2005 when the state legislature passed the Municipal Affordable Housing Trust Law, simplifying the process of establishing a local housing trust fund.
Since then, MHP has published trust guidebooks and reached dozens of communities each year through direct technical assistance, large trainings and targeted local workshops. Today, over 125 communities have adopted municipal trusts.
Town Website link: https://amherstma.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=3468
After our Housing and Sheltering Committee disbanded due to single party dominance (my individual assessment, not validated fact) we began on building the Housing Trust. Meeting in staff offices, I had not seen the forming document. Coming late I scanned it and in my typical fashion blurted into the meeting “but there’s no funding for this, included here or otherwise.” As out of place as usual, folks went on with their meeting, sparing me the embarrassment of a response. Later when covering the document by agenda item and commenting about forming this new organization I cast off another spur of the moment idea “What if funding came from a 1/16 %, 2% or some other charge on those properties, currently changing hands in town?” We heard the staff/expertexperienced comment “That is currently illegal”. I see our state senator is working on developing this very thing 8 yrs later . I meant it for the whole Commonwealth, not just our town (municipal trusts are state wide).
Mass Housing Partnership (MHP), the sponsor of these trusts (I believe they came in to train us in set-up and maintenance of same), has this program of some use. But no funding! They suggest dedicating 10% of a city’s Community Preservation Act (CPA) funds go to a muni-trust. This at least is one possibility for a separate entity that can move a little faster to respond to gentrification by student conversions of family homes by absentee landlords than the city proper can. But that’s still not fast enough. And that might rob our lowly CPA of dollars for historic preservation, and community housing. David Ziomeck has assured us that one third of our town area is open space (the preservation of which is also a CPA goal). But these goals work at cross purposes. More open land drives up demand and price meaning less affordable housing.
Ten years after MHP developed the Trusts, we joined up. Little has accrued since. I’d say be careful as citizens to what MHP says can happen. The record is not good. They are better at straight funding of projects than advice about what can benefit our community. I for one would like to watch them closely
Can a town build on its particular identity to nurture and fund its needs without space age-looking, cookie cutter buildings that are for downtown student housing and create urban canyons, where round-a-bouts are built for young people to speed up when approaching to ‘get through first avoiding the need to slow down for others? One or two builders dominate permitting while others are by-passed? A state’s most expensive library is the city’s richest resident’s showpiece for the “Book and Plow town”. And our anchor institution gets a pass on contributing real funds in proportion to their real costs to our community?