2021-11-02 00:00:00 - Joint Committee on Housing
2021-11-02 00:00:00 - Joint Committee on Housing
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today.0 The committee will hear testimony on bills relative to condominiums. We have 10 bills being heard in this category. All others listening to this hearing who are not members of the committee who are not signed up to testify. May view a livestream version of this hearing on the legislature's website, which is a legislature dot gov. An archive video of today's hearing will be made available on the site within a few days for those watching on live stream. Any individual organization may submit written testimony and supplemental information on any of the bills on the docket to the committee and the committee staff here email in terms of testimony, legislators will be taken out of turn as is the tradition of the committee. We will then hear testimony from those who pre registered by the five p.m. October 29th deadline for those who are testifying today when I recognize you to speak, Please mute your audio the state your name. If you're affiliated with an organization, your position on the bills of concern and then please begin your remarks. We do not have a lengthy list of people who have signed up to testify today ordinarily would be very strict with the three minutes. But we do ask that people be mindful of the time and people will be called as they have as they have signed up on an individual panel has concluded testimony. Please remember to your microphone during testimony. Members who wish to ask a question should ask be recognized by using the chat function. Just type in I I have a question and we will recognize you to ask that question when finished. A member who has asked the question should let me know that they have no further questions and then we will re mute the microphone um com with unless there any questions we'll move on to today's docket and the first person we have scheduled to testify is Matthew gains mr gains.
[MATTHEW GAINES:] [HB1416] Thank you. Mr chairman um, and chairman Arciero as well. My name is Matt gains. I am the chair of the massachusetts Legislative action Committee for an organization called Community associations Institute. They're known as CAI. Uh CAI is a national organization with chapters in most states here at the new England chapter and C AI provides education, advocacy and resources to anybody and everybody you can think of related to a condominium from obviously the unit owners to property managers to boards. Um myself, I am as a member. That's my kind of volunteer job. My full time job as I'm an attorney in a law firm that predominantly represents condominium association. So this is what I do for a living in also volunteer on this legislative action committee. Um, we submitted actually written testimony for every single bill that you are have a hearing on today. I will not obviously be testifying on all of the hotel spirit at that time.
Um the only bill that I do want to quickly testify on is168 house Bill 1416 and act relative to electronic meetings in voting in condominiums. um c ai supports this and in fact we drafted it. We worked with the sponsor, your predecessor chair Chairman Honan as well as his office. Taylor Trenton was very helpful in drafting this legislation And um basically this bill sort of the idea that kind of came out of the COVID-19 pandemic where a lot of association struggled to hold both board meetings and union order meetings because they couldn't do them in person. And you know, most condominium documents, frankly, even newer condominium documents um require that actually board meetings and unit owners means must be held in person. So the only way you can hold212 the meeting legally by electronic means would be to amend your documents which typically require a supermajority vote and obviously221 can be very difficult to do that.
So unfortunately a lot of associations weren't able to amend their documents during the height of the pandemic when in person meetings were not possible. And so they either held electronically kind of gray line whether or not those are valid or just did nothing and didn't meet at all. And obviously that's not a good idea. So we came up with this legislation which would basically say, you know, notwithstanding what you're is in your documents, the board has the ability to meet the electronic means, you know zoom or or even conference call, whatever it is. And also to vote via electronic means. Again, a lot of antiquated documents required that boards when they're approving budgets or whatever they might be. You know, you actually have to meet in person, Everything today is over email. So why not allow boards to vote over email?
Um Same thing for unit owners meetings when you know, unit owners are electing board members or whatever else they might be272 meeting for. Um this bill would allow them to meet via zoom or other electronic means. And again, also to a vote electronically. There's many companies out there that now specialise in electronic website voting for condominium associations. So this bill would allow both of those two take place. Um despite what is in the condominium documents. The interesting thing is that typically if you speak to boards or property managers pre covid when all these meetings were held in person. Most associations would struggle to actually ever get a quorum of unit owners to attend. You know, a lot of owners just didn't want to go and you know, you'd be lucky to get 50% nonetheless, 25 All of a sudden we were hearing from our clients that they were getting 75% participation in their unit owners meetings once they were held by Zoom because folks could just log in from their living rooms.
Um, you know, unit owners said, yeah, I never went before because I got a couple of little kids. I don't want to pay a babysitter to go to my condominium unit owners meeting. So again, now they know if they could do electronically they had the luxury of just logging in from the living room. So this bill seems common sense to me. I think either 10 or 12 states have passed similar legislation in the last 18 months. Again as a result of covid locally, I think maine and Connecticut or two of those 12 states. So we kind of model this legislation off of some of those other states and feel this is the best way to do this. Pretty simple and straightforward bill. And we would urge the committee358 to reported out favorably. I'm361 happy to take questions on this or frankly on any of the other bills because again this is kind of my daily work, so happy to take questions on this or any other bills I plan on staying here for the whole hearing.
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So thank you. Any members have any questions? Mr gains
seeing none. We'll move on. Thank you very much for your testimony. Next we have matt diggin.
[MATT DAGGETT:] Hello everyone. I'll be speaking on something that is slightly different than the condominium uh docket that I know you have today. Um but it's specifically about um a bill for linkage fee in the town of Lexington. So uh first I would like to say thank you determine Cayman Arciero and vice chairman Rogers and the members of the joint committee for the honor and privilege of joining you today as well as submitting written testimony to discuss the need for special action in the town of Lexington. Um the views presented today are my own as an individual resident of the town of Lexington and do not necessarily constitute the views of my constituents increasing to whom I represent, nor are they the views of any committees on which I may serve. Um what I'm going to discuss today is the culmination of over two years of research analysis and public outreach, which resulted in this home rule petition that was approved overwhelmingly443 by Lexington town meeting town meeting on April446 seven of this year.
The town of Lexington has seen significant commercial growth over the last decade, especially within the life sciences, pharmaceutical and defense related industries and has made Lexington a very desirable place to work and live this strong growth of these local high skilled jobs. In addition to regional market factors has led to increased demand for housing and oxygen and the multifaceted impacts that come with it. This increased demand for housing has resulted in some of the highest year on year increases in housing prices in the Greater Boston area and today the median single family house price in Lexington is approximately $1.55 million. This demand is accelerated the surge of redevelopment of smaller, more attainable Holmes and two large multimillion dollar homes with upwards of 90 homes being demolished and replaced each year, resulting in just over 6% of Lexington's entire single family inventory495 having been replaced in the last 15 years.
Now, the pressure to find buildable land to meet this demand for high school commercial workers Is so great that houses sold in public sales over $1.3 million $4 million 2.5 times the size of the ones they are replacing. This impact on these trends have contributed significantly to Lexington's widening housing affordability gap in 2019, the affordability gap for Lexington, smallest single family housing and someone making the area median income was almost $1,300 per month. Now, recent zoning changes in 2020, within Lexington's largest commercial districts eliminated many of the dimensional controls and created a streamlined by right permitting process to encourage new commercial redevelopment with the goal of expanding the town's commercial543 tax base. The landowners have responded in these related changes, and so far in 2021 there have been seven proposed subdivisions of commercial properties and three new large commercial buildings proposed.
Totalling over 6600 and 35,000 square feet of new laboratory office and related space as has been well studied when a new tenant moves into a building, a spectrum of higher and lower paying jobs are created and a fraction of those who will take those jobs will want to live and work with in Lexington. And unfortunately, this demand is not uniform. It can be especially challenging for low and moderate income employees to find housing to shortfalls and available housing because of price increases in redevelopment. As we just discussed For over 30 years, municipalities such as Cambridge and Somerville have wrestled with similar challenges and have turned to commercial linkage fees to create a funding to mitigate development impacts on housing demand. And with Lexington's commercial development approaches emphasising these large life sciences development through zoning, we modeled our own linkage feed proposal after those best practices and lessons learned from Somerville in Cambridge into something that is tailored to balance both commercial growth and impacts on housing.
Now linkage fees are legal and their time tested mechanisms that are rigorously designed through a nexus study process and are applied sensitively through local municipal bodies. And Lexington's approach would apply a community housing surcharge in the form of a linkage fee to all new non municipal commercial construction, with exemptions for small businesses and flexibility for the town and its application Now to understand the impacts of this proposal and analysis effort was undertaken that modelled redevelopment in Lexington's largest commercial district after recent zoning changes and projected the potential new development of 33 properties and the associated revenues for three different hypothetical linkage fee rates. Now, those revenues were combined with three different community housing657 development models That could estimate how much community housing could be potentially produced over the following decades. And the result is these analysis that approximately 65-760 units of housing mitigation could be produced depending on the surcharge rate and housing production model indicating that housing mitigation is not only needed but possible.
Lastly, with Lexington's housing market rapidly outpacing regional affordability and the significant increases in large scale commercial development as lexi continues to be a hub for life sciences. Special action is urgently needed. Recently, the Cambridge city council had noted how they fell short on setting appropriate mitigation rates for over two decades and now we're trying to play catch up and so Lexington is trying to ensure that we don't follow uh and you're taking proactive steps now to ensure equitable opportunity for those who want to work and live in Lexington. So thank you for again for today's opportunity and your time and attention. I know this was a little out of order but I'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Thank you. Any questions of Mr Daggett seeing none, thank you for your testimony, appreciate it.
Next on House 3891 ST bill will be Representative Ciccolo Ciccolo
[REP CICCOLO:] [HB3891] Thank you Chair Keenan and chair Arciero for allowing this bill to be taken up again today. I know it740 was originally posted for last week and I had a conflict at that hearing time and this enabled me to746 provide enough opportunity for our my constituent matt Daggett to to bring his testimony forward as you heard, he is really the expert on this bill. This was a a warrant article that he petitioned our town meeting and brought forward through the process to help us address the housing crisis that we have in Lexington. I think his testimony really highlighted all of the766 key points about what's going on from a housing perspective in uh in my community. Uh certainly affordability is is at a at a crisis level for housing and this is a creative idea to move through um these language fees to create a fund that will help us address it. So, um I know that both matt and I will be submitting written testimony to the committee, so I don't want to belabor the point, but I do really appreciate having this opportunity to um to testify. Thank you so much.
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Thank you Any questions for the representative. Uh mr Sure mask. May ask the questions for the rep. Great, thank you, rep Michael again.
[REP LABOEUF:] Thank you so much for being here. Could you maybe provide a little bit more details regarding especially you know, sometimes we get home rules, there's uh in different municipalities work817 differently. But what was the town meaningful? Was there any approval or disapproval of other um boards that were involved in the process?
[CICCOLO:] Uh let me see if I checked my notes here. Thank you for that question. Um The town meeting vote was so we have 200 town meeting members. It was 100 and 34 in favor 40 against and I guess 10 abstaining. Uh and I was not able to be present at the discussions leading up to it. But in reviewing I did reach out to the town actually to see if any um select board members or staff wanted to testify and they told me858 that the vote was One in favor for against the bill, the warrant article and that the Economic Development Commission had voted 6-0 against the the bill.
[LABOEUF:] Okay. And just for my edification lexington is it a representative town meeting or an open town meeting?
[CICCOLO:] It is a representative town meeting? Yes. Alright great. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you any other questions. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Uh thank you representative appreciate it. Thanks for your testimony. Um that is all of those folks that we have who have signed up to testify today. If there are no other wishing to testify, then that means we have come to the end of this hearing and entertain a motion to adjourn motion made and seconded all those in906 favor say aye pose. No the eyes have it. The hearing is now adjourned. Thank everybody have a great day.
Mhm. And
yeah
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