2023-06-26 00:00:00 - Joint Committee on Housing
2023-06-26 00:00:00 - Joint Committee on Housing
SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Morning. And welcome to today's joint meeting on housing. Our hearing regarding public housing and homelessness. I'm Jim Marc Serro. the house chairs we don't have any other housing. I'm joined today by my senate co chair, senator of the AdWords. Boston, polic meetings with order. This is a joint committee on housing's 3rd official hearing, this legislative session, as my remarks, will be brief to the high volume of people that are signed up today and then go through some logistics as well.
SPEAKER2 - They can't hear you.
SPEAKER1 - People signed up to test by this morning, so I respectfully ask speakers coming before the committee cognizant and353 aware of the time constraints that we wanna hear everyone that is signed up to testify today. some individuals have signed up to testify in multiple bills before the community today. As I respectfully ask, those who would368 have to use their time given to properly discuss all bills they are for for up against elected officials and members of the public maybe falls out of turn at discretion of the chairs of this committee. The joint committee on housing accepts all written testimony to the bills being heard today. In addition, legislative information services and the housing committee staff are on hand. Should you have any administrative questions at this hybrid hearing So this will introduce members from that house that are present here and remote. Represent of insolvent, representing the coast, representative conley, representative dates remote, and representative Ari author remote. I'm just gonna hand the gavel over to senator Edwards for any of the senators that may be present here or hybrid.
SPEAKER3 - I don't I don't think anybody is besides me. So I'm a senator Edwards. I'm the co chair of the housing committee. I'm gonna be very brief cognizant of the amount of time that we have, so I'm happy to just get started.
SPEAKER1 - It's 1st pass representative Joan Scheme.
SPEAKER4 - Yep. Okay.
SPEAKER5 - I'm actually there with some of their quite I think
SPEAKER6 - yeah. There's a454 panel. If that's all registered, you must be chairman.
SPEAKER7 - We're gonna check. Where's this
SPEAKER8 - is there a
SPEAKER9 - chair there? Okay.
SPEAKER10 - They're gonna just They're
SPEAKER11 - supposed to hop
SPEAKER4 - in the middle.
SPEAKER3 - to a chair.
SPEAKER12 - I mean,
SPEAKER13 - what do
SPEAKER1 - you do? Did you want it?
SPEAKER14 - Goodness. 2
SPEAKER15 - tallest people in
SPEAKER3 - the free minutes even standing the whole time.
SPEAKER12 - That's how If we went short, I can
SPEAKER15 - yeah. Fuck it too.
SPEAKER1 - There we go.
SPEAKER3 - There we go. Yep.
SPEAKER16 - Oh, we got 2. You
SPEAKER17 - have
SPEAKER1 - to go to the earlier hearings.
SPEAKER3 - Oh, I guess something.
SPEAKER17 - much better.
SPEAKER6 - There we go. I'll let494
SPEAKER16 - you kick off to that.
SEN CRIGHTON - SB 855 - HB 1354 - Thank you. Thank you Chair Arciero, Chair Edwards, members of the committee. It's an honor to be here today. We appreciate500 you taking us out of turn. I'm here with my colleague, Representative Joan Meschino, to testify on behalf of our companion bills, Senate 855 and House 1354. We have a number of great panelists here, so I'm going to be very brief. This legislation would create a Massachusetts flexible housing pool program, which will do a few critical things. First it will streamline the administration of services for those experiencing homelessness. By leveraging both public and private funding streams, we can provide access to housing subsidies that is flexible and responsive. Second, it will ensure that existing state programs are deployed equitably. As this committee knows, there are so many right now struggling with homelessness, and we need to do everything we can to change that. With this coordinated approach, we can provide services that are more effective and meet people where they are. I'd like to now turn it over to my colleague, Joan Meschino, who's worked tirelessly on Lee for many years on this, and thank you so much for your efforts.
REP MESCHINO - HB 1534 - SB 855 - Thank you so much Senator. Thank you for taking us out of turn. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm also here obviously in favor of House1354 and Senate 855. It goes without saying, I suppose it's a little obvious to say it, but housing is the solution for homelessness. The challenge is that some folks just need a modicum or some serious supports to be successful in their housing and to stay housed. We're really talking about people who are chronically homeless, and they tend to have experienced trauma or to be medically complex. And what this bill really does is it it605 represents a switching, a shift607 in our approach from a crisis response to creating stability for people in housing. And as the senator said, it's highly effective. And when people have those modular supports, we know that they stay. And if they can we can keep people in housing for more than a year the social determinants are off the charts.
This is the new trend across the nation. It's the trend in Massachusetts. You're gonna hear from some fantastic provider communities in a few minutes, they're doing it now. It's very efficacious. The providers basically aligned around this as the645 new model, and the flexible pool fund is the systemic reform that is required to take it to scale. I just wanted to point out a couple other points. This is the end goal. It's individuals, families, and youth. And it really is a public health model663 in the most basic terms,665 that comprehensive coordinated approach that the senator was talking about.
And it's really about reaching, using the existing services. We're not673 spending a penny more or penny less, but using the existing services to677 reach vulnerable communities much more equitably. We know it works, and we're just pleased that you give it every iteration. It made it out of686 housing last year to healthcare finance and made it out of healthcare finance to the House Ways and Means. And we're just looking forward to working with both chairs to see if we can advance it again this session. So we're happy to try to answer questions, but I promise you there are several panels coming up that really this is their work and have lived experience. So, yeah, so we just ask for a favorable report. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Thank you, representative, and711 senator. Is there any questions for the representative or the senator? Seeing on. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER18 - Thank you.
SPEAKER19 - Thanks so much.
SPEAKER1 - Representative of Simon Kiteldo.
SPEAKER18 - Hello?
REP CATALDO - HB 1301 - SB 868 - Good morning and thank you chair Arciero, Chair Edwards, and esteemed members of the panel for permitting me this opportunity to testify and for taking the out of turn. The need for a family shelter is an emerging issue in my district as I'm sure it is for all of you. That's especially true right now in Concord where this February, then DHCD opened at nearly 100 Room emergency family shelter. Over the last few months, I've had the privilege of representing hundreds of new constituents who have passed through that shelter. And I'm very grateful to this committee for helping me navigate the challenges associated with that. It is with that in mind that I was proud to file H 1301, an act to eliminate asset limits for homeless shelters. The companion bill is S 868 filed by Senator Jamie Eldridge.
799 The799 purpose of our bill is to eliminate the arcane maximum803 countable asset eligibility requirements for families seeking emergency shelter in Massachusetts. Our bill does not address income limits for those812 families, but only their so called countable assets. Chapter 23B Section 30 of the MGL, currently directs the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities823 to823 establish the requirements and standards for eligibility for emergency family shelters. Using that authority, the agency has imposed a $2500 limit for countable assets. The agency's definition of countable assets is dizzying. Prior to serving as a state rep, I prosecuted complex white collar tax and fraud cases on behalf of the US Department of Justice, and I have trouble understanding what a countable asset is pursuant to the CMR.
For example, an asset like the cash surrender of life insurance counts and so does the value of vehicles owned by the household except for the value of one nonrecreational vehicle. But the earned income tax credit in the month of receipt does not count nor do vehicles used to produce income as opposed to other vehicles. The regulations might as well require an advanced degree in double negatives in order to enter the EA system. This is a ridiculous amount of bureaucracy to impose upon a family in crisis. It's the type of means testing that could turn away qualifying families in order to address a contrived problem of families with children who are supposedly too wealthy to need the help, but who are nevertheless seeking refuge in an emergency family shelter.
Finally, it's unclear how many people are affected by this asset limit. The agency's most recent data shows that about 5% of families are denied for quote unquote other reasons, which could include having too many assets, but it's possible that some may not complete the process because of the limit. Even if it's just for a handful of families, I respectfully submit that it's worth the committee's efforts to do away with this red tape and simplify the intake process for emergency family shelters. Thank you so much for this opportunity to testify. I'm glad to take any questions you may have. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Thank you, representing, for your testimony, are there any934 questions from the members in house, senate938 seat, none. Thank you very much. Thank you.
They're now
also joined by representative Hendrix for Moe, and and represented my vice chair representative making the point. That way, we're sending Natalie Higgins.
REP HIGGINS - HB 1320 - SB 873 - Good morning Chair Arciero, Chair Edwards, honorable committee members. I'm glad to be testifying in support in support of House Bill 1320 and Senate Bill 873, an act transform the Commonwealth's emergency response system and create housing strategies to end the homelessness of unaccompanied adults. Apologies for a 10 AM mouthful. We haven't figured out an acronym just yet. We're really grateful for the Housing committee's support of this legislation last session reporting it favorably. We've worked with the folks on the ground who are doing this work every single day to refine this bill and make it stronger. I wanna share a little bit of what is happening in North Central Mass, including Vice chair Kilcoyne's district.
At the beginning of the pandemic, we realized that there was just not enough capacity for unaccompanied adults across North Central Mass. We had one shelter in the region, in the city of Fitchburg that had about 30 beds and could not meet the need of North Central Massachusetts. I have been working with the Department of Housing and Community Development for about four years up until the pandemic really urging that Leominster residents didn't have access to shelter. For someone from Boston, Fitchburg seems accessible from a twin gateway city of Leominster, but the reality for folks without transportation,1037 our most marginalized, they could not get to that1039 other city. There's also a little bit of1041 pride. Right? Folks wanted to1043 leave those resources for the folks who needed it in in Fitchburg. It was their shelter. And Leominster is the 2nd largest city in in Worcester County, and yet we never had a shelter.
The pandemic created an opportunity to convince the DHCD to show the need. Our bother's house, the only shelter in the region always had a few open beds. It was a congregate style shelter. And for a lot of my residents, it wasn't a safe or trauma informed environment where they felt they could get the support and the housing that they needed. So we teamed up with the Community Foundation of North Central Mass to go to the Department of Housing Community Development. We were gonna figure out how to fund it. We just wanted to know how do we build this shelter and how do we do a non-congregate motel based shelter the right way. And with the pandemic, it opened the opportunity that they said, hey, rep, we're gonna give you 26 beds, prove there's a need in North Central Mass because we really just don't see it from the data we're getting from your region. In the first two weeks, we filled those 26 beds.
I went to the shelter last week and got to meet some1107 of the 84 residents staying in the shelter right now. They're flexing it up to half the capacity of 101 rooms. They're taking over the entire facility with the intention of turning it into permanent support of housing. Shout out to Rep Meschino, and Senator Crighton in their good work that they're doing on their bill. We really need housing, right, permanently supportive, affordable housing. But in the interim, we're Massachusetts, and it gets cold. And there is a variety1134 of weather we've got to deal with, and we've got to1136 make1136 sure folks have somewhere to stay. And we hope that this bill will really encourage and require the Department of Housing to come up with a plan for what that looks like. In Leominster, we hope it's a few dozen beds. In Clinton, they're breaking ground on 12 beds.
In a time where lots of communities are saying we don't need shelter in our community, Clinton has stepped up and said, we absolutely do. We need to make sure that we have capacity. And just one little anecdote on how I got involved in this work and really went to the Mass Housing and Shelter Alliance to to get some help in drafting this bill. When I was in law school, I spent 3 months living in India. I'm working in India with the Human Rights Law Network, and part of that work was looking at the implementation of a nationwide commitment to shelter access. And for every hundred thousand people in their cities, they were guaranteed a 100 shelter beds. In Leominster, that would mean 45 permanent shelter beds on that scale. And that would take care of our chronically homeless so that they always have a safe place to land in the community that they call home. And we wanna see that for all 351 Cities and Towns that folks have a place in their home when they struggle in house. So thank you for your time, and I welcome any questions. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - 1.
REP KILCOYNE - Thank you Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to make a quick comment that I appreciate your advocacy and just to echo kind of what you mentioned. I know in my district, we have not had any access this transitional and homeless shelters. And there certainly is a need, and I'm happy to continue working on that issue because I think many of our communities the homeless population is far greater than we sometimes realize. So I'm thankful that we're starting to see improvements in the North Central region, and thank you for your efforts in this space. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER4 - Thank you much, Gina. Joe Colleen, any other questions? See you, John. Thank you, Kevin.
SPEAKER1 - Representators to colo.
REP CICCOLO - HB 3775 - Morning, Mister Chair, Madam Chair, members of the committee. I'm here with a panel of experts from my community, so I'm going to do very little of the speaking, but I'm here to speak on H 3775, an act reorganizing the Lexington Housing Assistance Board. This is an extremely important Home Rule Petition for our community because it will enable us essentially to move the structure of our affordable housing entity to a structure closer to a CDC, to a nonprofit 501(C)3. Right now, it's a municipal entity, and we, although we are almost the size of a small city at just about 34,000 people we still have a town meeting form of government. So that means that we can only meet twice a year. It takes us a long time to be able to acquire housing units to to rehab and take things to town meeting, which really slows down our movement towards affordable housing. You may have heard the news where Lexington just passed the MBTA zoning. It was extremely exciting in our community. We were the first community out of the gate to approve that and went far above and beyond the requirements of that zoning. But that's for market rate housing it's not for affordable housing.
And we're here really today to talk about our desire to advance affordable housing in Lexington an extremely1342 expensive community where we have very few options for people of low and1346 moderate income. So we wanna be able1348 to do that more effectively. So this Home Rule Petition passed our town meeting by a 164 to 5, which is a tremendously good number. So you can see that is something the community really wants. And we are asking for the committee to report this out favorably as quickly as possible because it was actually approved in our November fall town meeting, and we are chomping at the bid to get going. So the experts here are going to share more about how this works and what it's going to do, and I think we'll turn to Carol Kowalski. She is the assistant town manager.
CAROL KOWALSI - TOWN OF LEXINGTON - HB 3775 - Thank you, Carol Kowalski, assistant town manager for development for the town of Lexington. Thank you very much for making time for us this morning. You can tell that there, it's hard to overstate how much support there is in our community for changing the Lexington Housing Assistance Board to a non profit 50(C)3 corporation. The town of Lexington undertook the 2 related actions in 2022 to advance its affordable housing goals. And both of these are pursuant to a recently adopted comprehensive plan as well. The first is the town adopted1418 a municipal affordable housing trust. We became the 129th town in the Commonwealth to have an affordable housing trust but we see it inextricably linked to LexHAB becoming a conventional housing development corporation.
The second was that town meeting voted to have LexHAB become by a very strong percentage to become an independent 501(C)3 housing development corporation. I first came to work in Lexington in 2015. And I said to my colleagues, kind of confidentially, why is LexHAB organized this way? I got a variety of responses, but I've come to observe that it was because the town had such a commitment to affordable housing that they wanted it to be closely related to the municipality. In time, since 1983 when LexHAB was created, and they've created, I think, the number is 79 affordable housing units, we've observed that we're missing out. And we want Lexington to have every advantage to create, and LexHAB to have every opportunity to meet its affordable housing goals.
This will create no more risk and no more obstacles and will also allow LexHAB to do fundraising where donors, significant donors can donate funds, real estate, existing homes. And to be told, yes, you can write some of this donation on your taxes. Right now, that's not available to LexHAB donors. It's not clearly available. They can also on becoming a certified community development corporation that can use community investment tax credits. LexHAB has broad support, trust, and appreciation of the Lexington community and its officials. The town's commitment to affordable housing is strongly expressed by Lexington being the first to adopt the MBTA, multifamily zoning.
But also at the same town meeting, we adopted a bylaw creating incentives for developers to make smaller, attached, varied home types other than single family homes with affordable housing requirements. So we're doing other things that are kind of under the radar and not getting as much acclaim as being the first to adopt the MBTA zoning. We see the new LexHAB structure as a critical cornerstone to our housing goals. Please help Lexington by doing all you can to advance this critical petition to facilitate this new struck for LexHAB to become a nonprofit 501(C)3 Housing Development Corporation. Thank you.
JOSEPH PATO - LEXINGTON SELECT BOARD - HB 3775 - Good morning. I'm Joseph Pato, I'm the chair of the Lexington Select Board, and I'm here this morning to convey the unanimous and enthusiastic support of the select board for this petition. A petition authorized by 97% of the town meetings vote. Lexington1622 has a long history of sometimes revolutionary change, but sometimes change that's timely and needed. The petition before you today is the latter, hardly revolutionary. It speaks to our need for an expansion of affordable and attainable housing which has been a high priority for the select board for years. By legislative design, the MBTA Communities Act limited the amount of affordable housing we could require when we adopted the provisions in our zoning to accept that.
As was already stated,1658 Lexington chose not simply1660 to meet the requirements of that law but to exceed them by1664 substantial amount so that the potential for real growth in much needed housing is more likely to occur. But affordable and attainable housing remains incredibly1675 important for us, so the petition before you here proposes to reach structure and modernize our LexHAB to align it with more efficient models that are already established in other communities. We ask that you move this legislation forward speedily so that we can do our part to create affordable housing more effectively. Thank you for your consideration.
BOB BURBIDGE - LEXHAB - HB 3775 - Good morning. Good1709 morning. I'm Bob Burbidge. I am chair of the Lexington Housing Assistance1713 Board. I've been on LexHAB since 2011, and I've been chair since 2019. Joe and Carol touched on a lot of things that I have in my notes, so I'm not gonna bore you with the same details. But I would would like to point out that when LexHAB was founded in 1983, the average home sale in Lexington was less than a $100,000. Today it averages 1.6 million. We are a community that really1737 needs to address this affordability gap that continues to grow. This initiative will certainly push us in that direction. Last year, at LexHAB we started what we call a legacy campaign. We did a mail in to every resident in town ages 60 and over suggesting that, you know, we'd talked about the problems that we're having with affordable housing, and to please consider LexHAB in your estate planning.
This was inspired by a gentleman who reached out to us who gave us his home. He was elderly, he lived by himself. and he didn't wanna see his home torn down. He wanted to see a family in that home that needed housing in Lexington. So he gave us the house. He's still in the house, but when he leaves the home, we will have another home that we can put a family in. So that's what inspired this thing. The problem we have, of course, is as was alluded earlier, without the 501(C)3 status, there's a lot of money being held up. I think the donor advised fund is a perfect example. A1803 lot of folks as they get, you know, as they get older, they turn to these as as better methods of sharing their wealth. The issue with the donor advised fund though the money that comes from that fund can only go to a 501(C)3. So we see this as a tremendous opportunity once we have that status. And as Joe Pato mentioned earlier, this is something that we would like to1830 have happen sooner rather than later. We leave money on the table by not being a 501(C)3. So as soon as we can be helped, we'd really appreciate it. So thank you. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Any questions for the representatives on the panel? Hanging on, thank you for your testimony.
SPEAKER18 - I have statements here that I can complete. Just bear with me.
SPEAKER1 - Okay. Sure. Representative Hamilton.
REP HAMILTON - HB 1320 - SB 871 - Thank you Chair Edwards, Chair Arciero for taking me out of turn. I am here to testify on House 1320 and Senate 871, an act to promote housing cooperatives. And just to let you know there will be an expert1880 here testifying a little bit later on who will give you more detail on how this would work specifically, but I'm here for more of a real life experiencing what I'm hearing on the ground. As a young rep and a rep who represents gateway cities Methuen and1895 Haverhill, you know, housing is a big issue up in1897 the Merrimack Valley. You know, when I'm getting together with friends and trying to have that work life balance that we all have and not talk about politics, which unfortunately we're usually very unsuccessful with, housing always comes up.
Because when you're in the Merrimack Valley and you're out of college, you have 3 options in terms of housing. You move back with your parents, and save money, try to afford a house later on. You get an apartment which is often very expensive and along with student loans challenges you as a working person, or you move to New Hampshire? Far too often have I seen my friends and people that I had grown up with move to New Hampshire because Massachusetts, from a housing perspective, is simply not affordable. And frankly, we need to change this because for the health1943 of our cities that border and towns that border New Hampshire and border Connecticut and Rhode Island, we're losing good people, we are losing people who wanna stay here. You know, we're often told that here in Massachusetts, you work hard, you go to school, you get a good job after, you're gonna be able to do better than your parents did like, they did better than their parents did.
And unfortunately, from a housing perspective here in Massachusetts that's simply not the case. People cannot afford their parents' houses because of the crazy costs that housing has really done here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. So that's why I'm here to support housing cooperatives because they give young people, and they give our seniors, and our middle and working class families an opportunity to have some skin in the game, to afford to stay and live in the communities that they love and be active members of our society and be active members of our democracy here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. So, again, thank you for taking me out of turn. I hope you rule this out favorably, and I look forward to taking any questions if you have any. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Thank you, representative. Any questions for representative Hamilton? seeing none. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER2 - Yes. Thank you so much. Representative Connelly.
REP CONNOLLY - HB 3873 - Thank you, chair Arciero, thank you Chair Edwards for taking me out of turn. I'm here to testify in support of my bill, H 3873, an act establishing the Massachusetts social housing program. And I really appreciate you making an effort to include this legislation on today's agenda. Social housing was really the original concept for public housing here in the United States. At the very beginning the thought was the public could build housing for people with a range of incomes. And very quickly, the real estate industry and the banking industry thought to themselves, wow, people are gonna love this. And there was a concerted effort to make public housing just for those with low incomes. And I was raised in public housing built and financed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in partnership with the town of Norwood.
And the social housing concept is similar, but, again, it's about creating mixed income housing. And there's so much potential when we go down that road because then the balance sheet of the project has more opportunity, not only to provide a return to the program, but to also sustain maintenance over the long run, which is something we know we have struggled with, with our state owned public housing. So this legislation would combine some of the benefits of public housing with some of the scalability advantages of market rate development. And as I suggested, it avoids some of the challenges that have doomed our public housing programs over the years. The projects and percentages will vary based on the context, but all social housing developments will be available people with a wide range of incomes. A typical project could set aside 1 third of the units for lower income folks, one third of the units for middle income residents, and one third for higher incomes.
A public development of mixed income housing offers the potential for cross subsidization that doesn't exist in traditional public housing. And unlike our spending on so many other housing programs such as rental vouchers or low income housing tax credits, the power with social housing is that over2181 time, all of the money we invest in the program will be recouped2185 by the Commonwealth as local and regional housing authorities remit portions of their rents back to the2193 social housing fund. Our bill proposes to have the Commonwealth issue 100 million in bonds to initially capitalize the social housing production revolving loan fund. We suggest. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Uh-huh.
SPEAKER15 - Right. Yeah. And they will not do anything about that.
CONNOLLY - Our suggestion would be to ask Mass Housing to be SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER26 - Good.
SPEAKER4 - Yep.
SPEAKER25 - Thank you. So where was I here?
CONNOLLY - So our bill proposes to have the Commonwealth issue 100 million in bonds to initially capitalize a social housing fund. We are suggesting that Mass Housing would administer this fund. This is a familiar concept. There are many cases where we capitalize programs, and then we turn to the professionals at Mass Housing. I see George O'Toole is here today. We've had several really positive conversations with Mass Housing about this proposal. Then local and regional housing authorities would apply to2262 the fund for financing, and all units would be built to good labor standards without any new gas hookups. Wrapping up here, I'll just add that, you know, there's a lot of talk about the fact that we need to build 200,000 or more new housing units by the year 2030. We've seen testimony we need on the order of 175,000 housing units that are affordable.
And you know, I would suggest that we need to pursue additional modes of housing production. We can think of the fact that there is market rate housing production, there's conventional, affordable housing production often based on low income housing tax credits. There's other institutional ways of producing housing. But if we're truly going to meet those goals of producing a 175,000 affordable or more than 200,000 in general, I think social housing offers us a very powerful way to target those goals. The funds could support the production of mixed income housing to cross subsidize the renovation of public housing, and it could also play a powerful role in advancing Governor Healey's plans to leverage state owned land for new development.
So Later today, you'll be hearing from Paul Williams. He's the executive director at the Center for Democratic Enterprise. He's been working with myself and others in our community for the past 6 months drafting this bill. So we really are at the beginning of a conversation. We are in touch with Somerville City staff and city councilors. We have a meeting with the Cambridge Housing Authority in the next week. And we're really hoping to work with you, Mr. Chair, Madam Chair, and members of the committee to continue advancing this idea of this session. Happy to take SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
any questions.
SPEAKER1 - Thank you, representative. Any questions, representative, finally? Seeing nothing. Thank you for your testimony. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER27 - the senator?
SPEAKER3 - Just wanted to acknowledge that we've enjoyed my vice chair, Keenan.
SPEAKER1 - Hey, senator. Starting for the list of bills we have today, senate 850. I have 1 individual signed up Stewart Sagorm.
Stewart.
Okay. See remote?
SPEAKER19 - Yep. I am here.
SPEAKER1 - Hi, Stewart. --
SPEAKER16 - boat. Hi.
SPEAKER1 - Floor is yours.
STUART SAGINOR - SB 850 - Thank you so much, and thanks for the opportunity to testify on Senate 850, an act relative to local public housing authorities. My name is Stuart Saginor, and I am the executive director of the Community Preservation Coalition. Seems like I can't turn the camera on. Is that better? I think it I think I just managed to do that, okay good. So, Senate 850 would amend the Community Preservation Act to allow housing authorities to utilize CPA funds for extraordinary maintenance, equipment replacement betterments and additions. However, we do believe this would be detrimental to the statewide program for a number of reasons.
The current CPA legislation prohibits the use of CPA funds for the purpose of maintenance in each of the categories, not just housing, open space and recreation, historic preservation, and affordable housing. And by explicitly prohibiting CPA funds from any ongoing maintenance, it has ensured that local CPA programs have a consistent revenue source for making capital improvements and acquisitions for housing, and this is especially true across the state in the housing category. Since 2001, CPA has funded the creation of over 10,000 units of housing and the support of 16,000 additional units of housing. It's also been a leading funding source for local municipal affordable housing trusts, and emergency rental assistance programs, particularly during the pandemic.
The changes proposed by Senate 850 would almost certainly dilute the effectiveness of CPA by diverting funds away from the primary goal of new housing production, housing assistance programs, and a variety of other programs that support affordable housing. The Community Preservation Act has been undeniably successful, but it is still a very limited funding source. And the authors of the act never intended for the funds to be used for maintenance. While we certainly agree that there is not nearly enough funding available for communities to maintain their public housing and modernize their public housing, Senate 850 would severely weaken CPA's mission and purpose by opening up the housing category for a myriad of maintenance concerns. So we would urge the committee not to issue a favorable report on this bill. Thank you. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Thank you for your testimony, Stewart. Any questions from members, the house we're setting? Seeing none. Anybody else here to test 5% at 8:50? Seeing none move forward to set up
REP DECOSTE - Mr. Chair, I would like to put in a good word for Senate 850. I can tell you in my 3 towns, particularly in the town of Norwell, we absolutely could use the ability to direct the community, those2577 funds towards our2579 local housing authority, SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
absolutely.
SPEAKER1 - Thank you, representative, to coast. Any other questions? for comment. Thank you. Moving on to senate 857 enact ensuring continued rights for public housing residents I have a panel, a net Duke, and Nicole Beckel's.
SPEAKER22 - Sure. But working.
SPEAKER29 - It's gonna theme some characters.
SPEAKER4 - Thank you.
SPEAKER22 - Sorry about that. Suro Park.
SPEAKER1 - Thanks for
SPEAKER18 - Yes.
ANNETTE DUKE - MLRI - SB 857 - HB 1340 - Good morning. My name is Annette Duke. I'm a housing attorney with the Mass Law Reform Institute. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to testify. I'm here with Nicole Beckles, a tenant from East Boston. And we are here to urge you to support S 857, and its House counterpart, H 1340, filed by representative Honan. The Senate Bill is filed by Senator Crighton. What this bill does, and we'll be submitting written testimony by the end of the week. I know that Greater Boston Legal Services also wanted to testify and will probably be submitting written testimony. What does this bill do? It does 3 things. It protects the rights of tenants living in redeveloped public housing. If an entity, if the housing authority because of the need to redevelop the property transfers it to a private owner or a nonprofit, what this does is it would ensure, it would set up guardrails so that the tenant protections that were there to begin with, whether they were federal, state, or local, stay with the property.
We need to set up guardrails because this was a public investment that the Commonwealth made and those rights need to carry over. These include rents, leases, grievance rights, the right to tenant participation. These are all critical rights that need to flow with the property. Second, it ensures that the redevelopment projects will not decrease the supply of affordable housing to low income people. Obviously, this is a huge issue that everyone is talking about when they come before you and the need to provide a 175,000 units for very low income people. What this bill does is it ensures that if a property is redeveloped, the units must be replaced one for one. At least, It allows for expansion, and we hope that there is expansion because it's needed.
Third, it guarantees that tenants will have2750 the necessary support to meaningful contribute to the redevelopment process. And Nicole is going2756 to tell you about that from a resident's perspective. But the housing authorities have to delineate how tenants get technical assistance. We hear a lot about how housing authorities and others get technical assistance. Tenants need technical assistance to navigate very complicated deals with a lot of paperwork, low income housing tax credits, letters of assurances, relocation. There's a ton of issues that tenants need assistance. This would establish that tenants get technical assistance. We will be submitting with our testimony what we call the public housing redevelopment bill of rights which we created with other stakeholders, including housing authorities. We are updating it now. That document holds the principles that this bill would actually put into law. So we thank you for all of your work on this. And let me turn it over to Nicole.
NICOLE BECKLES - MASS UNION - SB 857 - HB 1340 - Hi. Good morning. Mass Union is a 50 year Old organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for tenants in public housing. And it's here on behalf of tenant organization all over the2827 state, for instance, Boston, Fall River, Quincy, Summerville, Concord, Salem, Norwood, Springfield, Everett, Dorchester, and I may have said it wrong, Worcester, just to list a few. At Mass Union, We believe that local tenant organizing will tremendously lead power to improve things in public housing. Our specialty is helping tenants form democratically elected tenant groups to participate, sorry, in the decision making which affects their homes. Mass Union provides training in a variety of skills such as election support and more to tenants group across the states so we can speak with one voice about the improvements we need.
This bill is important to me because I live in public housing 24/7. I am part of a community that discuss the effects of redevelopment, and how management's decision impact2898 our homes, which is our2900 sanctuary. I'm here because these bills would add meaningful protection for public housing residents when their homes are transferred to new ownership. And ensure that tenants have access to the technical assistance they need to navigate complicated redevelopment process. The language in this bill reflects the principle that involve from language in the public housing redevelopment bill of rights. We developed these principles in collaboration with tenants across Massachusetts, legal service stakeholders, and various coalition partners. We look forward to providing committees with the newest version of this living document soon. Thank you. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
I'm just a novice.
SPEAKER2 - That's fine. Yes. Thank you.
SPEAKER4 - Any questions?
SPEAKER1 - Thank you for your testimony. Any questions for the panel from the members of the committee? Centers.
SEN EDWARDS - Thank you very much for your testimony, and I just wanted to be clear about the necessity for the law. Having represented Charles Town's Bunker Hills redevelopment, which is a public private partnership, we had the 1 for 1 ratio, and we had the right to return. These are rights that you're discussing that were part of that project. If I understand this correctly, that's because it was just part of the project and maybe the way Boston Housing Authority does it, that this is not a statewide standard for all housing authorities and projects. So that's what I'm confused about.
DUKE - So it was as a result of Boston Housing Authority's understanding that it needed to adopt these principles. But the tenants at Bunker Hill also had the benefit of technical assistance. They had Greater Boston Legal Services at their side working on that deal. And so without that technical assistance, those guardrails may not have been there. And that's why we need to do it statewide to ensure that it's statewide. Thank you for your question. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER7 - Thank you.
SPEAKER1 - Any additional questions from panel? Thank you for your testimony.
Afren Tomino.
Which of that?
SPEAKER15 - Mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm.
Oops. Close. Somewhere. Temaino. Temaino.
CATHERINE TEMAINO - CONCERNED CITIZEN - SB 857 - HB 1340 - Good morning. My name is Catherine Tomino, and I presently reside at the Marblehead Housing Authority. I do have copies of my testimony if anybody would like them. I also have photos of everything that I am going to speak about. If anybody wants access to those that will be great. Little nervous have never done this before. So, my name is Catherine Temaino, and I live in the Marblehead Housing Authority. I left Maine with my 3 children back in Thanksgiving of 2006 escaping a domestic violence situation. We left behind a house that we owned, 6 acres of property, beloved pets, and years of physical, emotional, and mental abuse at the hands of madman. After several months of couch hopping, we were able to finally get housing in Marblehead through the emergency program after we dropped3118 off 50 different applications in 100 mile radius from my family here in North Andover.
Next thing on my list was to secure a job, which I later got as a town employee, and I work in the school system of Marblehead. I have had various jobs since then, but let's fast forward 10 years. I have 1 kid in college, 1 kid in a mental health crisis that was removed from my home because I could no longer keep her or anyone else safe. She went into a group home. That's when we first started experiencing cracks in our walls running down our hallways. We have sags where our apartment is moving and shifting and Housing refuses to even acknowledge it. Mold in my unit that has been there for over a year and I have an3181 email documenting when I notified them.
Water leak and damage that just gets painted and plastered over, never to be looked into as to where the leaks are. This is why our units are so moldy. This is a second patch of mold that is still there a year later. They have only removed one patch of mold. When we lost our heat and hot water ,this was their fix for the weekend with a house with a 4 and a 5 year old in it. Does that look very safe? No, but they expected us to live that way for over the weekend. Instead of ripping up floors,3224 they lay tiles over the floors. I have holes in my roof where rodents go in. And they live in our attic3236 I noticed them up to 2 years. They refused to replace the insulation. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Thank you for3246 your time.
SPEAKER32 - You could
SPEAKER1 - finish your thought if you'd like.
SPEAKER5 - Okay.
TEMAINO - I just I'm appalled at how we are expected to live. I escaped to better my life and the lives of my children and now I am forced to live in this. And their solution to this is to move us to a smaller unit, okay, never to return to the larger unit that is properly our house size. To punish us, to degrade us, and to smear us. If we are such horrible tenants which they are portraying in our eviction. if we're such horrible tenants, why are you giving us another unit? SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Any questions from the membership with Catherine. Seeing none. Thank you for your testimony.
SPEAKER7 - Thank you.
SPEAKER1 - Abidonia,
ABHIDNYA KURVE - CHAPA - HB 1340 - SB 857 - HB 1354 - SB 855 - Thank you to the chairs of the housing committee and the members for giving me this opportunity. I am Abhidnya Kurve, deputy director of Public Policy at Citizens Housing and Planning Association, CHAPA. I am here to testify in support of 2 bills today, H 1340 or S 857 and H 1354 S 855. CHAPA's mission is3349 to encourage the production and preservation of homes that are affordable to3353 people with low and moderate incomes and to foster diverse and sustainable communities. We believe that everyone should have a safe, healthy, accessible, and affordable home in the community that they choose. For the commonwealth to thrive, we need 200,000 new homes by the end of the decade, with 40,000 affordable, and3375 20,000 deeply affordable homes.3377 Permanent supportive housing is a key part of this strategy. Supportive housing provides affordable homes for those experiencing chronic homelessness and those with complex health challenges.
Bills 1354 or S 855 are vital to our housing solutions, and these bills can improve the coordination and delivery of3399 supportive services. Supportive services that can help people exit streets, move out of doubled housing, move out of emergency rooms from the hospitals, jails, and shelters into stable housing. These bills can strengthen supportive housing and help stop the violent cycle of chronic homelessness and high need homelessness. By voting favorably for these bills, we can ensure that our most vulnerable residents have a place to thrive and be a part of the communities. We will have a panel speaking more in-depth about the supportive housing flexible bills. I also want to testify in support of H1340 and S 857. There is no doubt3440 that we need to preserve the affordable homes we currently have. Public housing is a precious resource that provides those deeply affordable homes and fosters vibrant communities.3451
To preserve public housing, redevelopment is absolutely necessary so we can add more homes to our public housing neighborhoods. But as we enter these redevelopment projects with public private partnerships, we must center our laws around the people who live in these buildings and those who will live in it in the future. The3472 bill guarantees the same rights for residents of public housing even if the ownership changes after the redevelopment. And it provides the public housing residents with a clear path to enforce these rights and receive technical assistance to allow for meaningful input into redevelopment I urge you to vote in favor of both the bills, H 1340, H 1354, and S 857and 855 so the Commonwealth can care for some of its most vulnerable residents as we all grow. Thank you. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Any questions from the committee? Seeing none, thank you for your testimony.
SPEAKER4 - Thank you.
SPEAKER1 - Any of anybody else here sign up on senate 857 that we didn't call. k. Thank you. Moving forward, senate 868 an act to eliminate asset limits for homeless shelters. I have
Esther De Caballo,
Esther, okay. Kelly Turley.
SPEAKER22 - Okay.
SPEAKER1 - Senate 879, an act to establish
Adam Gomez Pamela Goodwin.
Pamela Goodwin.
SPEAKER33 - Hi. Can you hear me?
SPEAKER1 - Yes.
SPEAKER33 - I have a number of bills. Did you only want me to speak in terms of Adams?
SPEAKER1 - Yes. Senate 8 79?
SPEAKER33 - Yes. Yes. I'm happy to talk about that 1.
SPEAKER1 - The floor is yours.
SPEAKER33 - Okay. Thank you. And then am I called later for some other things?
SPEAKER1 - Yes.
PAMELA GOODWIN - MASS COALITION FOR THE HOMELESS - SB 879 - Thank you so much. Okay, as a member of the Mass Coalition for the Homeless, which is run by Julia and also Kelly Turley, I ask that you esteemed legislators provide mobile showers for the homeless proposed by Senator Gomez on S 879. I thought in public input by across the state using Mass Law Reform that the new sanitation code by the state included facilities for the unhoused, which would be the mobile showers, which would be the porta potties, and anything else that all of the young house population needs to be center stage. And everything else has to do with other bills. Thank you. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Any questions for Pamela from the committee? Seeing none?
Let's move on to senate 883 and act relative to creating a statutory housing restriction and providing remedies related to statutory housing. Anyone chose to sign up for3643 a senate 883.
Being none,3647 moving on to Senate 887, enact to prevent and respond to bullying of elderly and disabled residents.
I have a panel here, Michael Kane,
Donna Lee, and Rebecca,
SPEAKER26 - Sure.
SPEAKER4 - It's gonna be Okay.
MICHAEL KANE - MAHT - SB 887 - HB 1329 - Thank you, Chair Arciero and chair Edwards. My name is Michael Kane. I'm from the Mass Alliance of HUD Tenants. We're a statewide tenants union in privately owned subsidized housing. We're the sister organization, if you will, of the Mass Union of Public Housing. We're here today in support of Senate 887 and House 1329, the bill that would create a process to deal with the the epidemic of bullying in senior and subsidized housing. I'm sure that all of you have encountered this in your districts. You've heard from tenants in subsidized housing, particularly senior high rise buildings where people are bullied, mobbed, threatened, or intimidated, sometimes by other residents, often by property managers, often by property managers. We've been working on this for many years because we kept hearing about it. We were trying to figure out a way to solve it institutionally because it's an institutional problem.
So the legislature responded by creating a commission. The governor appointed3761 a commission in 2017. We were a3765 member of that commission along with a number of legislators and agency reps And the commission produced a report, which I brought copies here to share with the leadership here. Okay, alright that's it. One of the things that Commission did was a report, a survey, the first ever done by any state of this problem, the extent of it. And more than half of the 637 respondents had personally experienced bullying. These are seniors, vulnerable people. And more than 60% had observed it. So it's a very widespread problem. One of the outcomes besides the3811 report was a bill that the committee recommended that is before you today.
And the bill is modeled on the anti bullying process for schools, which requires its model and legislation in schools. And it defines and prohibits bullying, social bullying, and mobbing within public or subsidized housing for seniors and3839 handicapped people. It would require property owners and managers to develop a building specific plan to prevent and remedy bullying, train residents and building staff, and address victims rights to seek relief and enforcement. And would require the attorney general civil rights division to develop a model plan and then to be there to receive complaints, especially if it's about managed of hassling3865 tenants. So I'll stop there because I've got 2 people from a pretty pretty strong example in Beverly. So I'll turn to Donna Lee next.
DONNA LEE - MAHT - SB 887 - HB 1329 - My name is Donna Lee. I am here with Mass Alliance of HUD Tenants. I'm a committee member of the Apple Village Tenants Association in Beverly Mass. I have lived there for 5 years, and I'm a 73 year old senior. I am asking you to please pass the bill of S 887 filed by Senator Joan Lovely. I have been taunted, harassed, emotionally abused, and continuously bullied for the past 2 years for filing a complaint. It has taken a toll on my health mentally and physically. The property manager finds enjoyment of taking away our rights and stressing out the residents, especially the senior citizens. An example, he told us we could not watch TV and removed it from our community room. Then he locked us out for over a year until we fought by creating an association and working to get it reopened. Total stress we had, nowhere to go.
Now, he has sent me a notice to quit stating that I violated my lease by entering a resident's apartment and violating her privacy and quiet enjoyment. I was asked by her family to check her wellbeing. Maintenance let me in with permission of her family. We got there just in time to save her life. He makes frivolous calls to the police3966 about me. Last call he told them I was evicted and I was not. They3972 tried to remove me from my home until they investigated with the help of Michael Kane, further to find out he was lying. He has created a huge division between the tenants here. I have been bullied by them also for the past 2 years. It is so important to have this bill passed. It will be3997 so helpful to the tenants here, especially as seniors, who he stresses out with threats of eviction. I have just received an eviction notice. Thank you for your time.
REBECCA NORTON - MAHT - SB 887 - HB 1329 - Hi. I'm Rebecca Ann Norton. I'm here with Mass Alliance of HUD , and I'm also a committee member of the Apple Village Tenants Association, and I would ask you to please pass this bill. We have been harassed and bullied by our property manager and by many tenants. The property manager locked us out of our4036 library and our village store. And he actually sold everything that was in the village store without letting any of us know except for a few of his favorite tenants. The day he locked us out of the store was the day he knew we were going to have a breakfast with friends. I personally was bullied by the property manager by receiving a notice of a lease violation for bullying another tenant.
She lied about the bullying and I got several residents that were there that day to verify that I did not bully her. He never investigated her complaint. I demanded an apology from him, and I finally got one after she admitted that she had lied. I also took possession of the treadmill that another resident was getting rid of and said it was free. I put it in the room with our other exercise equipment which was also donated by other residents. The property manager had maintenance take it apart and throw it in a dumpster. We need this bill to protect our rights without retaliation.
KANE - So this is an, you're4111 gonna hear some more testimony from another building, and you could go into4115 almost any senior building more than half will have this problem. The committee has reported this bill out favorably in 2 sessions. So it's kind of, it really is a no brainer bill. It had bipartisan support before. It was the unanimous vote of the commission that the people have voted to put this bill out of the commission. It's been filed by Kevin Honan in the House, he was a member of the commission. And we just need leadership to get it passed to make it happen. We've got held up and Senate Ways and Means in the last session, probably, you know, the loss of the COVID rush at the end of the session. But we really need to get it done. This is an epidemic, and I'm sure that many of you have heard this kind of problem. So we need your help. It works in the school system to have this kind of system in place. That was the model for the bill. So thank you very much. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Thanks for your testimony. Any questions from the committee? Seeing none. Thank you for testing now. Have
Ronald, Nancy, and and Napana?
RENA GAZZINI - MAHT - SB 887 - HB 1329 - Good morning. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak today. We're here on the anti-bullying bill along with Apple Village. I'm from Loring Towers. My name is Rena Gazzini. I've actually, I'm with the Mass Alliance of HUD Tenants, and I've been living at Lauren Towers in Salem for over 30 years. And I'm here to plead with you to put into place the anti-bullying bill that would protect the rights of tenants throughout Massachusetts. As of now, many tenants including myself find that there's little to no recourse for bullying landlords. I currently, I already said that, I live at Loring Towers, and we're experiencing bullying from our management that not only affects residents or individual tenants, but also affecting us as a community of 250 apartments.
Our manager went as far as to verbally abuse tenants as well as neglecting living conditions in our building. When our building building was infested with cockroaches and mice, our landlord blamed each individual tenant and apartment. And refused to take into account any responsibility, we actually called the Board of Health. Over 35 complaints were brought to them about the situation with mice. We also have mold all of which they refused to do anything about. The landlord would lock his door during business hours, and when we knocked to speak, he would yell through the door and say, I'm busy you can't come in. So needless to say, we weren't getting much done.
Management also refused to acknowledge us as a tenant's committee and would not allow us to meet, yeah. So even in our community room, which is supposed to be for the community, they had it locked and would not give us the chance to address our concerns. I approached management several times about allowing the tenants committee to be able to meet and address our concerns. Management's response was to threaten me with a no trespass order. I cannot emphasize enough how frustrating and4364 fearful it is to live in a hostile environment where you feel that at any moment your landlord will retaliate against you with threats of evictions and no trespass orders for simply wanting to live in a humane environment.
We need your help, we need you to be the voices of many tenants that have to live through bullying and harassment by their landlords. We need you to be the voice of the people, the elderly, and the disabled in ensuring that they're also treated humanely compassionately, and that we all deserve to live in peaceful, safe, environment. We need you to hold landlords accountable who think that it's okay to threaten, harass, retaliate and bully tenants. Tenants in Massachusetts need to know that we have someone who will advocate for us in ensuring that we don't live in fear in our homes, the very place that we4438 are meant to feel safe. Thank you very much.
NANCY SWINNICK - MAHT - SB 887 - HB 1329 - Good morning. My name is Nancy Swinnick, and I reside, I also reside at Loring Towers in Salem. I am a member of the Loring Towers Tenants Committee Association. I urge you to pass this anti-bullying bill because I too have been a victim4461 of bullying by the management. It all started during a tenant meeting and I had the task of speaking about recent surveys to all the tenants and number one issue was the management treatment towards the tenants. The vice president and all the big leagues were at this meeting. I spoke in detail about the tenant's concern explaining how the office staff was poorly treating it treating the tenants. The vice president of the company came up to me at the end of the meeting, and he told me that I speak very well and that he learned a lot of what was going on that he never knew.
Soon after that, I received a cease and desist order from the management's attorney banning me from the office. And if I did enter the office, I was going to be evicted. This basically is in retaliation for what I did. Management stated the reason for the cease and desist order was because I stormed into the management office during a meeting, began to swear and abuse the office staff, which is a total fabrication. They spoke to, instead of addressing me with the issue, they spoke to another tenant about the issue and wanted this tenant to get involved in getting me resolving the problem with myself. So first of all, they violated my right and went to another tenant explaining what my personal business and they never addressed me on the issue. I had nowhere to turn. I didn't have anyone to speak to about what I felt was retaliation from the office because they all were in cahoots with each other. They were all covering.
I went to the office manager that issued it. Her boss sent it, and then the the second management's boss, I called her, and she said that I basically did the violation and told me the desist disorder list. I hate walking on egg shells. This is my safety in my apartment building. I've lived there 14 years, and I've never had a problem with anything. This is total retaliation because I spoke out at the tenants committee meeting. I have no, I can't fight them with lawyers and I have no one to guide me and help me get this resolved because they don't listen. They just want, it's in my file. I'm now a bad tenant. And I really need this bill passed because I just, I I can't live. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Well, thank you for your thank you for your testimony. You guys did a great job.
SPEAKER12 - Mhmm.
SPEAKER1 - And if you could also furnish us to read your testimony, your written testimony as well. Is there any questions from the members of the committee for the for the panel. Being on thank you. Thank you very much for your closing.
Anybody else head out of the office that's gonna be in here in here, which is sign up for senate 887. sexist. Anyone else?
SPEAKER33 - Sarah Cereal? This is this is this is miss Goodwin. I'm I'm also gonna testify about the anti bullying
SPEAKER1 - Okay. Please go ahead.
GOODWIN - HB 1329 - SB 887 - Okay, thank you. As a consultant for the Stop Bullying Coalition for about 9 years, I applaud Rep Honan and senator Lovely's Bill H 1329, Senate 887. Social aggression is on the rise especially post COVID. Mass NAHRO conferences that I was fortunate enough to attend to when I was on the Mass Union Public Housing Board, whether it be an official for the state housing authority, which would have been DHCD, or an official representing HUD, all of those conferences that I attended this is what was proposed by these people to property managers and we tenants who were there. Quote, managers are not to deal with tenant to tenant issues, tenants are to call the police, unquote. When I raised my hand and said, what about the Fair Housing Act that provides for a peaceful safe environment, the gentleman had no answer to that. That attitude by managers I would call passing the book. Since we have a Fair Housing Act, quid pro quo, that is supposed to guarantee a safe, peaceful environment.
My 83 year old woman friend on my floor, came home from 4 weeks in rehab. Her granddaughter was trying to shower her, another granddaughter burst into the apartment through the PCA across the room. The manager4793 says that she cannot control who comes in the locked building. We have surveillance cameras everywhere. We had a huge protection harassment order by one judge, both the PCA and my 83 year old friend with dementia and Diabetes 2 testified. A different judge did not provide protection. He wanted 3 physical assaults. He asked my friend over and over, did you get physically assaulted yourself? That would have been a no, but she kept stating how frightened she was.
We used the DA and got a no trespass order in 2 different locations. Verbal abuse is often more damaging than physical. A sweet disabled person in my building is always called a fat pig. She has been harassed by the gang in our building, by 4 different individuals. The police don't want to take any action about that. Managers are protecting everyone's privacy. Often the target is labeled the nuisance tenant, as you have just heard. This happened to me as a plaintiff in Worcester Housing Court, and I chose homelessness. A few months ago, a gentleman who was being bullied in Western Mass committed suicide when he was given his eviction notice. We desperately need your help in this issue. I thank you for your4882 time. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Thank you for testimony. Any questions in the committee?
seeing none, and there's 1 other individual that was signed up first, the 1 that signed up for a senate 18 7. Please come forward, identify yourself.
You identify yourself with the committee.
HEATHER FITZGERALD - CONCERNED CITIZEN - SB 887 - HB 1329 - My name is Heather Fitzgerald. So I had brought written testimony where I mean, it's, like yeah. Everybody else's testimony so I have to switch around a little bit. So I'm also involved in that housing authority, which is currently under a management agreement of the Salem Housing Authority. I wanna let everybody know that the abuse is not just happening in the elderly and disabled program. It's happening everywhere. People always say,4944 why doesn't she run, when those things happen. I'm gonna4946 tell you today that we even want. My story is probably the least of what most others have experienced, but the difference is I have been on both sides. I've worked in the system and now I've lived in the system. In May 2016, I fled from a very abusive situation. Today, as I stand before you, I honestly cannot say that my life has gotten any better. In fact, nothing got better.
Since I made the choice to protect my children, everything got tighter, lonelier, scarier, poorer, in every aspect of my life. I have hardly anything left in the person who I once was. I needed to add all that to survive and to keep my children from knowing that inside I was broken, beaten, and every day it was a fight for me to keep them alive. But like mother bears do, we persevere, and we do what we need to do for our kids. The abuse is the same whether it's the fear of speaking out, dealing with the conditions that are not healthy. You know, when my kid are still watching me be treated with the abuse, disregard, disrespect, neglections that are always being rewarded by management. What does this do to children?
Well, I can tell you what it does to me. The experience has taken my career, my family, my 60 pounds, my perfect beautiful teeth. I'm at least spent a whole life making sure I add. I drive to the most states and people. However, what it has taught me is that, how hard I fall I can always get back on my feet. And if I can't stop my children from seeing the abuse at the hands of their father, now with5038 the hands of DHCD staff, and shelters, public housing authority at least, I can teach them perseverance. Ironically, my youngest son, Jordan, who's 11, received not 1 but 2 awards this year for perseverance. I didn't do anything to belong here. I fled from an abusive situation. All I really needed was 2 weeks to stay alive, and I would have been on my own. Instead, my ex used a very, to turn people against me, and he got what he wanted. I ended up with a 51A filed on me and was forced into a DHCD emergency assistance domestic violence shelter. I was deemed a monster by everyone in my small town. Only horrible people end up in DCF. Only mentally ill drug addicts end up in homeless shelters, that's all I heard. But in the offices I needed assistance with, it was the opposite. What do you mean a girl from Maryland needs food stamps, cash? You don't have a trust fund? You rich girl. Thank you. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Thank you so much. Appreciate
SPEAKER3 - it. Thank you. online, we have Senator Joan Lovely.
SEN LOVELY - SB 887 - HB 1329 - Thank you Madam Chairwoman and Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. I write in support of Senate number 887, House number 1329, an act to prevent and respond to bullying of elderly and disabled residents filed with my House colleague, our House colleague, Representative Kevin Honan. As we know, the Commonwealth confronts the crisis of housing with affordability that hampers the ability of our children to stay in their communities where they grew up, hampers the ability of employees who look to find residence within a reasonable commute of their jobs, hampers the ability for people who search desperately for affordable housing, including our elderly and disabled residents who struggle to find places that they can pay for and meet their needs. Low income and disabled and elderly individuals particularly who cannot find suitable housing or who do find suitable housing often feel so incredibly fortunate to have found anything at all that they can afford This feeling makes these already vulnerable populations even more vulnerable to abuses related to bullying.
These 2 bills seek to protect the elderly and be disabled from in5175 person and cyberbullying alike. They have 3 major provisions. First, direct several entities, including the attorney general's office, to develop and publicize ongoing training and compile resource lists that will help multifamily units combat bullying on their premises. Second, the bill includes implementation and reporting requirements from managers5195 and5195 owners of these residents, and third, the bill requires owners and managers to report instances5201 of these abuses to the appropriate authorities to address bullying and possible retaliation. To the committee, I just hear this way too often that residents particularly in public housing are experiencing bullying on a daily basis, whether it's tenant to tenant, whether it's tenant and management.
This bill is a result of that came out of the commission. We had a bullying commission just a few short sessions ago. This bill was written as a means to that and looking to be able5238 to to get this implemented, have a resource robust resources for our tenants and and management so that they can work together, but also tenant to tenant where there there are issues every single day in bullying and abuse in public housing. I look to the committee's positive recommendation and I wanna publicly thank Jerry Halberstadt from the Bullying Coalition for bringing this to my attention. I know this5265 this bill has a lot of support within Legislature. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER3 - Thank you, Senator.
Before we continue on anymore, public testimony in
SPEAKER1 - 887,
SPEAKER3 - we'll just go to the representative to
SPEAKER1 - Representative Gentile?
SPEAKER31 - Gentile. Sorry.
SPEAKER31 - Gentile. Sorry.
REP GENTILE - HB 1320 - SB 871 - Thank you very much. Chair Edwards and Chair Arciero. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today before the committee. I'm speaking in support of my sponsored legislation, House 1320 and Senate counterpart Senate 871, an act to promote housing cooperatives. This legislation would promote housing cooperatives by establishing the Massachusetts Center for Housing Cooperatives, MCHC, under the Community Economic Development Assistance Corporation, CDEC, and allocating $100 million promote housing cooperatives providing a powerful tool for tackling our affordable housing crisis. This bill is modeled in part on legislation that I and Senator Julian Cyr and then Representative Paul Mark filed last session, an act enabling the Massachusetts Center for Employee Ownership which was enacted in 2022 as part of the Legislature's Economic Development Package. That legislation formally5354 established The Massachusetts Center for Employee Ownership, also known as MassCEO, within the Mass Office of Business Development with many of the similar provisions as this bill.
MassCEO is tasked with providing funding and technical assistance to companies that are transitioning or considering a transition to a worker ownership structure. The bill before the committee today builds a network by establishing an office with a similar mission to help tackle one of the biggest priority areas for the Commonwealth, housing. I'm committed to housing, and locally I chair the Sudbury Affordable Housing Trust, active with the local housing authority for housing. Massachusetts, we're losing our middle and working class residents to states with more competitive cost of living expenses coupled with to increase our, the current landlord tenant relationship we have is laden with issues and conflicts. Currently, there's a financial incentive for landlords who rent who low income persons to do the bare minimum required to maintain their housing stock.
Housing cooperatives offer tenants the ability to collectively own the property they inhabit. Coops reduce barriers to ownership for low income individuals and cut residents reliance on landlords. By establishing the center under CDEC, this bill lays the groundwork for the expansion of housing cooperatives in the Commonwealth. When residents of a community purchase their own building, park or space, they collectively set rent, decide when to make improvements, and have every incentive to ensure maintenance is done in a timely manner. The center would provide the necessary expertise and utilize resources dedicated in this bill to assist communities that wanna transition to cooperative ownership. The center that this bill creates will fund and manage a novel and systemic change to housing, ensuring a more affordable5471 and equitable future. Hope to see this legislation, receive a favorable report from your committee, and I thank you again for the opportunity to speak today. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - thank you representative, Gentile. Any members in the community have5483 any questions for the representative.
5485 SPEAKER425485 -5485 Thank5485 you for your time. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER1 - The previous bill that we had sent at 8 87. Just wanted to make sure that everybody was heard. Was there 1 on the individual you wanted to come up? Okay. We gotta keep testimony for 3 minutes. We gotta
SPEAKER4 - move through. Thank you.
MICHELLE PARAG - CONCERNED CITIZEN - SB 887 - HB 1329 - My name is Michelle Parag. I live under Winn Properties out in Acton, and I'm familiar with what Senator Eldridge is doing. I live in a private property previously owned by Universal Properties and bought5515 out by this island partner being Winn. Our property has had rats, mice, bill plaster falling down. Somebody talked about how it's being plastered over or tiled down. That's exactly what they did in our building. And that's coach estates, Summerhill Apartments, and Acton Townhomes. We had an old furnace, it broke. It was expired by 5 years. Wires hanging down in our laundry room that were never address by the previous owner, and it took a lot of fight basically for me to call the Department of Public Health of the town and the building code who'd department that came out during COVID because they wouldn't fix the access to stairs to the building that had been crumbling for years. They needed replacement.
I went here from Arlington where I faced the same thing after a 2 foot hole came through my 3rd floor apartment out of ta 5 Floor unit because they didn't fix the building for years or the windows that pre existed since 1968. And then I started receiving all those notices to quit. And also because I found a homeless man who came in to our building because they wouldn't fix the building locks. He had has carriage, his belongings, and everything in there. I called the police they removed him, and he had done it elsewhere. And then the ownership sent me a notice to quit because I didn't call them first. This was going on for a while. They were sleeping in our laundry room. My building, there will be none of that built in Acton or the Concord area again under the pre, they changed the bylaws.
Families aren't the only5616 homeless people. It is tragic that they have these situations. They don't deserve it, but neither do the individuals. I met Michael Kane in the 90s when the real estate bubble burst. I wasn't in there because I was disabled. I went in there under the Department of Social Services after aging out with a very severe case of epilepsy that required brain surgery. I am still fighting that disease, and to hear my voice and not be bullied by these managements that come in there because I speak up5648 and wanna live in a safe place. We've5650 been broken into in Acton, what did they do? No, nothing. My tire has been slashed on a brand new car.
What did they do? It's not our responsibility. There are drugs in there. There's another property that's not even owned by public housing, and that's not just the problem. We can address public properties. But what about the individual HUD tenants that have vouchers that can go anywhere and they cannot find a place to live because they'll put the rents $20 more than the max? Affordable housing is not affordable. It's 80% of your adjusted gross. You cannot get in there unless you have a Section 8 or unless you go through the public housing program. They don't recognize individuals. We are the ones suffering the most. We can't have families with us because we can't even have a home that's safe for just one person5697 or even find one. Thank you for your time. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Thank you for your testimony. Any questions from the committee, seeing none.
SPEAKER3 - Just wanna recognize that senator Liz Miranda is here.
SPEAKER7 - You can come for it.
SPEAKER1 - Okay.
SEN MIRANDA - SB 890 - HB 1297 - Chairman Edwards, Chairman Arciero, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity testify today and taking me out of turn in support of S 890 and H1297, which is an act promoting housing stability for families by strengthening the HomeBASE program, and for assigning this critical legislation to an early hearing this session. In our commonwealth, roughly 18,471 people experience homelessness, a number that has more than doubled since 1990. And over 12,000 of them are families with children. Since 2007, no other state across the country has seen a larger increase in families experiencing homelessness. For many of these families, the HomeBASE program has been a critical lifeline on their journey to finding permanent stable housing. But as our systems of care across the safety net have not yet fully rebounded from the COVID-19 pandemic, it is clear that codifying the HomeBASE program into state statute, and ensuring DHCD allows for home based renewals has never been more critical than it is today.
HomeBASE is the Commonwealth's rehousing benefit created to provide families who are in the emergency shelters assistance system, an opportunity to overcome some of the financial barriers to ending their own homelessness. HomeBASE can provide funds for first and last month's rent, a security deposit in a new home, furniture, a monthly stipend to5828 help5828 paid5828 rent for up to 1 year, utilities, travel costs, and many other expenses that would otherwise prevent a family from accessing a new home. HomeBASE has actually been a lifeline. However, a major problem remains that despite offering a wide range of support, there is no way for families to renew the program, meaning that many families face a return to homelessness after their 1 year of assistance has actually expired.
For too many families receiving HomeBASE support for 1 year without any option of renewal creates a perpetual cycle of chronic homelessness and instability. Many families reenter the state shelter system after 1 year and are left without options for permanent and stable housing. With layering economic crises happening across our state from our migrant brothers and sisters seeking shelter, to our veterans who experience chronic homelessness, to families who have been simply priced out of their lifelong communities with nowhere to go, our state shelter system is currently overburdened to say the least. And this legislation will strengthen the existing tools that we have in the HomeBASE program to ensure that families have a path out of the state shelter system towards permanent stable housing.
This critical and timely legislation would ensure that DHCD allows families to renew with the HomeBASE program in cases the family complied with their rehousing plan and met the requirements of the program but are still without permanent housing. And have a gross income that does not exceed 50% of the median area of income. Since 2013, the HomeBASE program's funding has been cut by nearly 65%. Attention and investment for the program could not be more paramount as our state shelter systems see such drastic increases. In one of the richest states in our nation, we have the great responsibility, but also the privilege of legislating to ensure that no child, no family, no mother or father experiences homelessness. I thank you Chairwoman Edwards and Chairman Arciero who are both leaders in this issue area and for5958 your leadership at this session. And I respectfully ask that you consider this bill and for members for a timely and favorable report. Thank you again for the opportunity. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Thank you, Senator, your testimony. Any members in the community have any questions for center. Seeing none.
SPEAKER13 - Thank you for your testimony. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER1 - Now on Leonta, senate 890,
Okay. And act promoting housing stability for families by strengthening the home base program. I have Julia Garvey, Signed up Julia.
JULIA GARVEY - MASS COALITION FOR THE HOMELESS - HB 1312 - SB 856 - SB 890 - HB 1297 - HB 1301 - SB 868 - Good morning Chair Edwards, Chair Arciero, and members to the committee. My name is Julia Garvey, and I am the community organizer slash legislative advocate at the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless. Thank you for this opportunity to testify today in support of House Bill 1312 and Senate Bill 856, an act providing upstream homelessness prevention assistance to families youth and adults and House bill 1297 and Senate bill 890, an act promoting housing stability for families by strengthening the HomeBASE program. House bill 1312 filed by Representative Decker and Senate bill 856, filed by Senator Crighton, seeks to codify the Residential Assist for Families in Transition program, also known as RAFT, and make necessary improvement to the state's main homelessness prevention program.
Currently, RAFT benefits are capped at 10,000 a year, but the House and Senate have proposed reducing the cap to 7000 a year in fiscal year 2024, which begins on July 1st. These bills would ensure that upstream benefits are available to households early in a housing or a utility crisis becoming a permanent part of RAFT. With this enacted, households across the commonwealth remain stably housed without having to receive an eviction or shut off notice to access relief and without having to experience unnecessary housing stability and trauma. The bills also seek to streamline access to RAFT, improve cross the agency collaboration among6080 relevant state agencies and regional organizations in the steering RAFT, allow households to access the resources needed to clear arrearages without arbitrary caps on assistant levels, and track and report important program data and outcomes from participant households at 6, 12, 24 months6095 after receiving assistance.
Passage and implementation of this legislation is urgent in the broader work to address the impact of homelessness on families, individuals, and promote equity. Similar to improving the RAFT program, House Bill6108 1297, filed by Representative Barber, and Senate Bill 890, filed6112 by6112 Senator Miranda seek to make necessary and permanent improvement to the state's HomeBASE rehousing program for families with children. These bills would put the HomeBASE program into state statute, direct the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities to provide renewals of HomeBASE rental assistance of families and children who otherwise would be facing a return to homelessness after the first 24 months in the program and increase the maximum benefit levels to $30,000 over the 24 months and $15,000 in subsequent renewal periods.
We are grateful that the House included this language in their version of the budget as well6146 as the Senate's language that would direct HLC to use at least $10 million to support families that need more funding beyond the cap. Given the tight housing market, excessive cost of6156 housing in Massachusetts and limited opportunities for participant families to increase their incomes, it is easy to see how6162 families can quickly exhaust their HomeBASE benefits and need further support. If such changes were implemented, more families would be remained stably housed, and the HomeBASE program would be strengthened. We wholeheartedly support many additional bills on the agenda today, including House Bill 1301, Senate bill 868, an act to limit asset limits for homeless shelters filed by Representative Cataldo and Senator Jamie Eldridge. We ask that you please give these bills swift and favorable reports and continue to actively support the bills throughout the remainder of the legislative session. Thank you for your time and consideration. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Perfect timing. Any questions from the members of committee for Julia? Seeing none. Thank you for your testimony. Pamela Schwartz,
PAMELA SCHWARTZ - WMNEH - SB 890 - HB 1297 - SB 856 - HB 1312 - HB 1354 - SB 855 - Yes. Good morning. My name is Pamela Schwartz. Good morning Chair Arciero, chair Edwards, and members of the committee. My name is Pamela Schwartz, I'm director of the Western Massachusetts Network to End Homelessness. And we are here on behalf of hundreds of partners from across the 4 Counties of Western Massachusetts working to prevent and end homelessness with a housing first approach that centers6230 racial equity, and I'm here in support of 3 bills. First, S 890, H 1297, the act to strengthen the HomeBASE program. To bring you Western Massachusetts in our most recent point in time count in January 2023, over 2,200 family members were6250 counted as experiencing homelessness in the 4 Western counties, a 400 person increase over the previous year. So suffice it to say, as I know you are aware, Western Massachusetts is no exception to the family homelessness crisis facing the entire Commonwealth.
This bill, this HomeBASE bill, by increasing the maximum benefit level to $30,000 over the first 24 and allowing for $15,000 in subsequent renewal periods would give families a markedly better chance at becoming and staying housed. And I can share in monthly convenings of our network family providers, the challenge of identifying affordable places for6287 families to live is a resounding theme. There are so few vacant units and even fewer at an affordable monthly rent. Increasing the HomeBASE maximum payment and allowing for extensions are fitting unnecessary responses to the challenge at hand. Then I wanna speak in support of S 856 H1312, an act providing upstream6308 homelessness prevention assistance to families youth and adults. Again, bringing you Western Massachusetts, every single day in our 4 counties, roughly 125 households seek rental or utility assistance to stave off eviction or utility shutoffs.
The RAFT program offers this critical resource and this bill would make RAFT more effective at accomplishing its intended goals. Most importantly, this bill would allow tenants to access rental assistance before the notice to quit is served, an option that existed during the pandemic and that made a demonstrated difference in maintaining housing stability. Receiving a notice to quit is a traumatic event onto itself, I know we know that, leading to premature exits from housing for fear of eviction and ultimately increasing the chances of homelessness. With close to 2000 eviction filings in Western Massachusetts in the first quarter of 2023 alone, a 25% increase compared to 2020, this bill to strengthen RAFT is critical.
Lastly, S6368 8556368 H6368 1354,6368 an6368 act6368 to create and implement a Massachusetts flexible supportive housing subsidy pool program. Again, Western Massachusetts bringing that to you, individuals living in unsheltered homelessness experienced the most dramatic increase of all over 150% since 2021, a total of a 199 individuals living on the street or in places not fit for human habitation. We know we need supportive housing, we know this bill works. We know it would create more efficiency and effectiveness, and I urge your support of it. So thank you for considering a favorable report for all 3 of these bills. Thank you for your time. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Thank you, Pamela. Any questions from the committee for Pamela? Seeing none, anybody in any other individual sign up for senate 890, and we didn't call your name. Okay. Thank you. Moving forward now, I have no individuals signed up for these series of bills I'm gonna read off. So senate 902 and act relative to public housing determination for veterans. Seeing none.
What was that portion? House 1297. enact promoting housing stability for families by strengthening the home based program. Buddy signed up. See none, a closed portion of the hearing, House 1298, enact relative to senior and non elderly disabled housing, seeing none Moving on to the next portion of the hearing, house 1299, enact relative to senior and non elderly disabled housing, Seeing none, moving on to house 1301, enact to eliminate eliminate asset limits for homeless shelters, seeing none, Now at House 1312, an act providing upstream homelessness prevention assistance to families youth and adults The first panel, I have Amy and Fabiola Rivera.
SPEAKER15 - I am bringing 2 people with me who just ran out to get their companions.6499 1 is an interpreter.
6501 SPEAKER46501 -6501 Okay.6501
AMY GRUNDER - MIRA - HB 1312 - SB 856 - So first off, thank you so much, Chair Edwards and Chair Arciero for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Amy Grunder, and I direct legislative affairs for the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition or MIRA and we offer this testimony in support of H 1312 and S 856, the Senate companion bill. Passage of this bill emerged as a MIRA priority last fall when we convened regional meetings across the state to understand the needs of our member organizations and the communities that they serve. Almost without exception, these organizations identified housing instability as a single most pressing issue affecting immigrant communities. When asked about RAFT in particular, our organizations have identified overwhelming barriers to access, describing it as a ponderous opaque program that consistently fails eligible immigrant families.
The upstream RAFT Act addresses some of these barriers by restoring past protections and creating new ones. I'd6567 just like to mention just 2 here in the interest of time. The first is that the bill would eliminate the notice to quit eligibility requirement that was introduced last August. This requirement is widely reported to cause informal evictions in immigrant communities. Many immigrant households interpret the notice erroneously as an eviction notice and immediately vacate. Others never receive one or receive one only after they've accumulated arrears that surpass the current annual cap on allowable assistance. Another issue is, well second, the current application process relies on documentation from landlords that is often simply unavailable to immigrant tenants, particularly those with informal tenancies or subleases, both of which are really common arrangements for immigrant households. And in these situations, a landlord often does not or will not supply the required lease, sublease, or tenancy at will agreement.
RAFT also requires landlords to supply a W9 tax form. But our organizations report that many smaller landlords refuse to supply them out of privacy concerns or because they don't declare taxable rental income. The Upstream RAFT Act would therefore allow tenants with non cooperative landlords to receive RAFT payments directly, a model that housing advocates recommended earlier this year. And finally, of course, we support the convocation of this program into state statute, which would render it a permanent part of our safety net infrastructure. And just to conclude, the RAFT program, while it's imperfect, it was one of the few safety net programs that was available to all immigrant families during the6668 recent pandemic and the resulting economic dislocation. It continues to be a necessary state intervention to prevent the rise of homelessness in immigrant communities. And I'm sure you know, eviction filings have doubled in our state since the, I've lost my thought since the protections were lifted, the emergency. So yeah, so RAFT needs an overhaul, and this is a critical first step. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
And I don't know. There they are. Come on up. My the rest of my panel is here.
SPEAKER1 - course.
SPEAKER48 - This morning, Adri. She will be speaking in Spanish, so we try to in interpret what she says.
ELIZABETH PINEDA - AGENCIA ALPHA - HB 1312 - SB 856 - Good morning. My name is Elizabeth Pineda, and I volunteer for ALPHA. In my experience with RAFT when I first applied, it was simple. But it was really a trouble for me and an issue was the landlord was refusing to send the documentations to apply for RAFT. For that same situation, the application was ended. She applied 2 more times for the same application for RAFT and it was still denied. A order saying that I need to6793 apply again, and she tried for it one more time. She followed the instructions to apply one more time and this time her process or her application was approved. It was really frustrating and stressful to try to talk to the landlords and explain my situation, and they refused to help me with that. They knew that I was having trouble economically and with health issues, and6843 they refused to help me be with the issue. After five months of fighting in the landlord offices trying to complain explain to think what happened, she got some results. She needed to go to court and pay for their lawyers and her lawyer to resolve the issue with the landlord. That's all. Thank you so much. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Thank you. Any6890 any questions from the committee? Thank you very much for6894 your testimony. Okay, we have our second panel Helena Julio and Emily.
Okay.
SPEAKER7 - to make a copy? Speaking.
SPEAKER1 - Hello? Yeah.6916 We got we did them.
SPEAKER4 - Abby, you know, that was she read that out.
SPEAKER1 - That was it.
SPEAKER15 - Also, she works directly in Seattle, but she's a near member, which is working safe.
SPEAKER1 - Okay.
SPEAKER22 - Help me this. Yeah.
SPEAKER1 - Sure. Well, if you would like to speak with,6935 you know, the opportunity, of course.
SPEAKER50 - I think Julio's on the
SPEAKER1 - line. Okay.
SPEAKER20 - Can you hear me?
SPEAKER4 - Yeah. What? He's
SPEAKER1 - Can you go first, please, and then then we'll we'll move to the second panelist. So go ahead. Can you hear me?
SPEAKER4 - Yes.
SPEAKER51 - Okay.
JULIO MEJIA - MVP - HB 1312 - SB 856 - Honorable chairs and members of the Joint Committee on Housing, I wanna thank you all for the opportunity to provide testimony in support of the Upstream RAFT Act, which would improve access to the RAFT program, restore COVID era protections, and to codify this program into the state's statute I'm Julio Mejia on behalf of the Merrimack Valley Project as a community advocate, person of faith, and also an immigrant from the Dominican Republic. I understand the critical importance of our different communities and why this legislation is so important and urgently needed. The RAFT program has consistently failed to keep eligible immigrants in their homes because of these barriers that are limiting access for some of which would be addressed by this bill. And we respectfully urge this committee to issue a favorable report for the Upstream RAFT Act in this session, and I wanna thank you for your consideration of the testimony. And please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions. Thank you so much. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER4 - k. Thank you. Mhmm.
SPEAKER1 - Any questions for Julio from the in the first time?
SPEAKER4 - Well, that should give us a call.
YVONNE GARCIA - AGENCIA ALPHA - HB 1312 - SB 856 - Good morning, everyone. My name is Yvonne Garcia from the Agency of ALPHA, there I work for immigration. We are member of the MIRA Coalition from a long time. She works as organizer for ALPHA, and she works with the community a lot, so she's in contact with all the community members. And she's sees from first hand how the issues and the troubles that they have to access to housing and the troubles that they face with RAFT. So she understands the struggles that they are passing through right now. It's difficult for the community to pay for the rent and to economically help their families facing struggles with the landlords. They are increasing rent every single time so they can't afford it. And so the families are struggling to find affordable housing. The landlords are taking advantage of the situation, and they are increasing the rent every single time. And it's just hard for the families to find and to afford to pay their rents for their families.
And they need to pay for their lawyers and they are just paying for the lawyers increase the amount of the the money that they need to pay every single time besides increasing of the rent. So it is hard for7233 the families to find the funds to pay for the rent, and the7237 landlords are not willing help them. They are making impossible for these families, and they also in the agreements they don't specify the increasing of the rent, and they are just7251 struggling to pay with for the rent. So as organizers working with the community, I can see that families are trying to pay or trying to be willing to work with the landlords to resolve the issues, but they're making impossible for them. So I've seen the RAFT is gonna help them to make sure that they can pay the rent and support their families. I just wanna say thank you for hearing us today and for willing to help us and our families. So, thank you so much. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Thank you very much. Any questions on the committee for any from anyone from the panel. See none. I now have my third panel here counselor PaaS from Waltham. Okay. And is this a this is a panel, so I have Wistr counselor, Atell, AYEA, and every counselor Stephanie Martins, you guys wanna
SPEAKER4 - sure, okay. We'll
SPEAKER50 - give the floor to counselor Martins for being there in person.
SPEAKER12 - Thank you, ma'am.
STEPHANIE MARTINS - CITY OF EVERETT - SB 856 - HB 1312 - Good morning chairs and members of the7351 joint committee. Thank you for the for the opportunity to provide testimony and support of Senate 856 and H 1312, the Upstream RAFT Act, which would improve access to residential assistance for families in transition program, restore COVID era protections, and codify the program to the state's statute.7368 My name is Stephanie Martins, I'm a city councilor in the city of Everett. A largely low income, majority minority community with multiple languages spoken. I'm here to speak on behalf of our nearly 60,000 residents. Due to our proximity to Boston, ongoing gentrification and an area median income that is not reflective of our income and different additional structural factors, our community has been heavily affected by the housing crisis.
During COVID, RAFT was a key tool to maintain many of our residents' housed and to assist landlords whose main source of income relied on the rents they collected. As the only Latino city councilor, I got to work closely with our communities of color to help individuals to navigate the RAFT process in a race against time to keep people in their homes. Housing is a time sensitive matter, families can't wait. I have personally owned, bought, sold, bought and sold homes, but became a sole income renter after my divorce also during COVID where I too had to rely on RAFT and experience firsthand the anxiety with the delays, nonsensical affordable affordability requirements and all of the challenges which led me to advocate and support the implementation of municipal rental assistance in the city of Everett so we could expedite assistance7440 with less hurdles and fill the gaps in RAFT so people could stay housed. I experienced it myself, so7446 I understand.
Although the COVID emergency has been lifted, the housing crisis still remains and continues to exacerbate, and our residents need a lifeline, this lifeline more than ever. So today, I'm here to respectfully urge the joint committee to issue a favorable report for the Upstream RAFT Act this session so the RAFT program can be codified and different barriers with the program such as having to wait for notice to quit, which puts tenants' housing stability and relationships with the landlords at risk and the requirement for landlords to be the ones to provide certain documents required in the application process where tenants have encountered uncooperative landlords to be eliminated. This bill would also replace the 10,000 annual cap on assistance and replace it with the 12 month limit on assistance. Our lowest rents for families in Everett these days are close to $3000 while our medium income for a family of 2 is 70,000 a year and 10,000 is simply not enough. Our residents are counting on your leadership, so thank you for your consideration. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Thank you.
Okay. Nice to jump. Hey. And wants to jump in. Yeah.7515
SPEAKER12 - Okay. You go cancel pass.
JONATHAN PAZ - CITY OF WALTHAM - HB 1312 - SB 856 - Thank you so much to the honorable members of the of the committee. My name is Jonathan Paz. I'm a Waltham City councilor. I help represent 65,000 families in the great city of Waltham. As part of, I think, a growing city that's becoming more and more unaffordable, as of late, we have been ranked as the 3rd most expensive city to live in in terms of medium rent we're coming after Summerville and Boston. It's crucial to codify this program and actually fix some of the issues with it. I've personally signed up constituents in my district to actually sign up for for RAFT. One, was when a family unfortunately had a fire burn their whole house down And another 1 when a single mom lost her job. RAFT is that transitional service. It's that one safety net that actually is reliable to combat this housing crisis. And even this safety net has its issues. So I would impart7587 on this committee the urgent need to have a favorable report on this and actually move expeditiously.
The Statehouse talks a big game about trying to address this housing crisis, and this is one of those ways that we can actually create a permanent patch, a safety net, if you will, that can actually ameliorate the situation. I wanna just impart these 3 big points that I think are really important about making RAFT upstream. Number 1 is the need to not make it a active instead of a proactive measure. By the time you have a notice to quit, the ball's already rolling and the odds are already stacked against tenants. Number 2, it actually provides a workaround for uncooperative landlords which can happen. Sometimes landlords don't want that money for some reason, so that cooperation is crucial. And number 3, it's the time limit, I I think, is a better adjustment instead of putting an arbitrary price cap. $10,000 is very arbitrary and maybe not realistic given the bubbling and skyrocketing prices of rent. I don't wanna go over time, but I wanna say again, please do right by the greater the cities in the greater Boston region, including Waltham. Please make upstream RAFT and codify it. Thank you so much. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER7 - Oh, can
SPEAKER53 - I go?
SPEAKER9 - Yeah. Yes.
SPEAKER53 - I I apologize. I was waiting for you to
ETEL HAXHIAI - CITY OF WORCESTER - HB 1312 - SB 856 - Thank you so much Chair Arciero, and Chair Edwards, and honorable committee members. My name is Etel Haxhiai, and I am a city councilor in the city of Worcester, representing a gateway community. I'm also the director of public education and advocacy at Central Massachusetts Housing Alliance. We are one of the providers of RAFT assistance. Before I go into my short testimony in support of this bill, I just wanna say that I also support all of the affordable housing and shelter related bills that other previous speakers spoke around. If you were to spend a little bit of time in our walking hours at the place where I work, or if you were to spend a little bit of time talking to some of my constituents, I represent an area of Worcester that's around 43,000 people, but in the city of Worcester we're booming at over 200,000 people. And I can tell you that if you had chance to talk to some of my constituents and the families that we serve and see in their faces as they try to figure out how to get rental assistance and how to navigate this complex system, your heart would be broken just as much as mine.
I recently spoke out in in opposition to HDIP, a program that would allocate $50 million or more over time, and it breaks my heart that we don't have the funds to support RAFT. An actual program that has kept our families afloat, undocumented families, refugee families, working people, people on the precipice of homelessness, and people who are experiencing housing and stability. How can our state invest so much money to build more luxury housing when our families are drowning under utility bills. So I had a bunch of remarks prepared, but I'm just gonna leave you with this. That we, as municipal leaders, and advocates on the ground rely on you to help us have the tools to help our families. And Worcester families deserve your attention, and we deserve to make raft a permanent codified bill in our Legislature, as well as support it to make it easy, navigable, and accessible to a lot of people. Thank you so much for your attention. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER4 - Thank you
SPEAKER1 - very much, and thank you to the panel. Any questions from the committee? to the panel.
Seeing none, that concludes the panels on this bill. Although, I do have --
SPEAKER33 - Excuse me. Sarah's still a sorry. It's Pamela again. And may7841 I also address what we just talked about with RAF. And I also had House bill, 13, 14, and
SPEAKER1 - 13, 15.
SPEAKER33 - I have to drive to Boston from Western Mass in a minute if you have time.
SPEAKER1 - If you could do really quickly, To get on record, that would be great.
SPEAKER33 - It's fast. I apologize. I hate interrupting. I'd rather be there in person.
GOODWIN - HB 1314 - HB 1315 - So, in terms of H13, sorry, 1314 and H1315, DHCD, housing advocates, and Mass Law Reform attorneys all agree that the CHAMP system needs a whole lot of work. I am always astounded that DHCD now with a new title and elevated under the governor, can quickly unhouse elderly, disabled, and families, at the same time as they diligently work to house those on park benches, couches, and in the streets. To7902 use a well used phrase, the system7904 is broken. When I was homeless, I applied for RAFT. It came in 5 years later and COVID was in the way, I must admit that. But still, I also, as a member of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless, and also working along with Pamela Schwartz and her group, advocate that DHCD can no longer make all these changes. What we like to say in the Zoom rooms is like,7934 at the whim of something, it changes a lot. So please7938 codify it so that it's not up to them to you know, change7944 it and then make it more and more difficult for the families that are in great7948 need. Thank you for your time. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Thank you. Any questions from the committee. Seeing none, moving over to individuals that have signed up for this particular bill. I have Helena Da Silva Hughes.
Lina. k. I have a Mark Martinez. Bark.
MARK MARTINEZ - MLRI - HB 1312 - SB 856 - SB 890 - HB 1297 - Hello. Chair Edwards and Arciero, and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Mark Martinez, and I'm a housing attorney at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute. I'm here to register my support for H 1312 S 856, an act providing upstream homelessness prevention assistance to families, youth, and adults. And also, I wanna quickly register my support for H 1297 and S 890, an act promoting housing stability for families by strengthening the HomeBASE program. H 1297 would make permanent the HomeBASE program by codifying it into statue, which would ensure that the critical programs to transition families out of homelessness would be improved and protected. H 1312 and S 856 would not only codify the RAFT program into law, but would also make multiple improvements to the current program and some imminent changes to the program.
It would remove the notice to quit requirement currently in effect, simplify the application process, provide additional support to those applying for benefits, and remove arbitrary caps. I wanna start by zeroing in on one critical change, the elimination of the notice to quit, an issue that I know Chair Edwards has elevated many times on the Senate floor. What we learned during the pandemic was that housing is app essential to health and that the earlier that we get to people in need, the better the outcomes for them and the less expense there is to the state. The current requirement tenants must have been served a noticed to quit before they can apply for rental assistance ensures that we don't get to people until they are in deep crisis. Not only does it lead to more costly intervention in part of the state, it clogs up the courts with cases that could have easily been avoided with upstream rental assistance.
It is important to note that this is not a novel approach. During the height of the pandemic, the notice to quit requirement was dropped, and we were able to assist tenants as soon as they landed in financial trouble or anticipated impending trouble. This did not just help tenants. It also helped landlords quickly access the money owed to them, and helped stay to assist more people and helped keep cases out of court. This requirement coupled with the impending decrease in maximum RAFT benefits will be disastrous for those in the most need. We'll be creating a system that almost guarantees that we cannot get to those in need until their arrearages have accumulated to an amount beyond what raft can cover. The sad truth is that $7000 did not provide much relief in the city of Boston and is providing less and less every year all over the commonwealth.
It is well within reason to believe that for many families in Boston that $7000 won't even cover 2 months of rent. That is why it is critical that this bill would focus not on figuring out an arbitrary cap on benefits, but instead allow the state8130 to be flexible in meeting the very different needs of tenants in all different regions of the Commonwealth. I know that this, of this pandemic, there are so many things that we want to leave in the past and that there are many policies that may not be necessary anymore. What we cannot leave behind however are the lessons that we learned, and we cannot abandon good policy, good ideas just because they start as a pandemic era8151 policy. We can avoid doing both of these8153 things by quickly reporting these bills out favorably. And I'm happy to make myself available to the committee to make sure that can happen. Thank you, and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Thank you, Mark, for your testimony. Members of the committee have any questions for Mark. Seeing none, I have Jill Carrier.
Yep.
JILL CURRIER - OHS8179 CITY OF SOMERVILLE - HB 1312 - SB 856 - HB 3873 - HB 1343 - Madam Chair, Mr. Chair, Committee, thank you for hearing me today. My name is Jill Currier. I am representing the city of Somerville's Office of Housing Stability, and I am in support of a few things here and in opposition to another. But right now, I'd like to speak to 1 specific part of H 1312 and S 856. Everything that folks have said so far about RAFT has been so important and critical. One piece that I think is especially important for the folks that we're seeing is the ability for prospective rental payments under RAFT. As it stands right now, with only 1 month being a possibility of a prospective payment, it is simply not doing what it needs to be doing. I have a client right now, I'll call her C, where we were able to secure $5000 in arrearages. The primary tenant passed away, and she's now8226 in an unaffordable unit.
We have a landlord who's willing to work with her, but we have nothing that is going to give her short term rental assistance to keep her in that home. She's disabled, she was going to qualify for medical emergency for state housing. We just need that bridge to get her there. RAFT as it exists right now cannot do that. We're looking for other funding sources, but she is facing homelessness and is medically fragile. So I would ask that folks are supporting RAFT to the greatest extent, specifically for folks who need that bridge that will qualify for other housing opportunities.
One of the other things I'd like to speak specifically to is Representative Connolly's bill, 3873. We need new options for housing and I think the social housing opportunity is one of the best ones that we have, particularly with a crumbling state housing infrastructure. Somerville's state8276 family housing has been in horrific disrepair for years. They are working on tearing it down and sending those families elsewhere. That process is taking forever, there's not even a timeline for this latest phase of families and where they're going to8290 go while this construction is in place. Social housing would allow folks8294 to be integrated by class, by economic status, by race, religion, mixing communities of the lowest income, middle income, market rate.
And those market rate units could be used to help fund the state housing. The $100 million in bond money that would seed it it's going to be self fulfilling once it is on the road. The last piece that I would like to speak to is, I would like to speak vehemently against, personally, as a resident of Amesbury, but against House Bill 1343, Representative Jones. This bill is asking to allow the state housing programs to not have folks who are not permanently residing here under federal law get any type of priority status for state housing. It would bar immigrant households who are lawfully here from priority status if they are displaced by emergency for state housing for domestic violence, by fire, by code enforcement. And I think it would be doing a great disservice to our immigrant households in the country,8358 state. Thank you very much. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Thank you. Any questions from the committee for Jill?
Ting none, thank you.
SPEAKER55 - Thank you.
SPEAKER1 - Melissa Terra?
Bliss is on long.
SPEAKER4 - And
SPEAKER32 - Virtual.
SPEAKER1 - Yep. The floor is yours.
MELISSA TERRA - MASS COALITION FOR THE HOMELESS - HB 1312 - SB 856 - Thank you so much,8386 committee members. for allowing me to speak. I am a member of the Massachusetts Homeless Coalition. Since 2017, I am a mom of 5, adult children. My youngest has autism, he is an adult an incapacitated adult, which I am a guardian of. I have worked with the most vulnerable population for over 20 years, homeless population, and I've helped and advocated. And because of that, I have been discriminated myself in my fields for being an advocate. and hearing all these bills and the bullying of what is going on, and I've helped many people pretty much not in jumping the bridge. And I really hope that we don't just talk about these things but put something in place.
With everything we're talking about, one of the things that needs to be done immediately is to have a process and a safeguard right from RAFT to any of these HUD programs of a reporting system of when they are being treated unfairly. RAFT, is one of them. It's not8457 just the HUD, but when you're applying for8459 applications, the process is unbelievable. The stories8463 you're hearing are true. I personally had to go through this as well, being divorced, taking care of an adult who is disabled, and not having the childcare or the resources to do the work that I used to do as a director of programs in the Commonwealth because I cannot work those hours as much anymore. So calling and asking for help and not having a landlord that can understand the process, no in person services only portal. Being hung up on the phone, being timed out, asking for a notice to quit and then saying, what happened?
And, you know, can I get some help? Like, is they're a supervisor? getting hung up on the phone when you ask for a supervisor. Saying, hey. How did this time out? There was a glitch in the system, and now it's 3 more months. Why am I being penalized? Why don't you just8520 let it go? Going to a state rep, getting involved in that way, being delayed8526 and delayed and retaliated against. I am not alone many of us are in these situations. There's no accountability. There are people that need jobs, and we have no what these people are working in the field, and again, not all of them but you're being treated like a 2nd class citizen. You're being treated like garbage. Doesn't matter all the degrees I have in my professional field. Treating me, you could imagine someone with the barriers that already feels low that cannot do this such this process or can't speak the right language, this stuff is real. So all of this of having the money to the funds we're actually rewarding these behaviors without any accountability. So thank you very much for your time, and I will continue with this. So I do support this bill, but I do ask for an accountability factor to those. Thank you. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Thank you, Melissa. Any questions from the committee from Melissa? Seeing none, I have Nancy Copeland signed up who's built. Nancy.
NANCY COPELAND - CONCERNED CITIZEN - HB 1312 - SB 856 - Good morning. Thank you all for allowing me to come and share my experience with you all, with homelessness. I'm representing the elderly, the disabled, and a METCO student. I am the elderly. I take care of my disabled niece up at 3 consecutive strokes, which gave her permanent brain damage. Nothing that she had done to cause that. She ended up with rare disorder called Moyamoya Disease, which causes uncontrollable strokes. We were in Atlanta at the time, and we found, we're originally from Boston, and my mom found a surgeon here, neurological surgeon who could do a surgery to repair her. So we closed up our homes, moved to Boston to8638 a home where we thought we would8640 be okay, and it ended up leaking all over our beds, our clothes, everything got destroyed mold. I have asthma. My great niece has asthma, and my niece that's disabled, she's 44 and also has diabetes.
And her daughter, who I also I'm the guardian of, is 8 years old, is a METCO student. We were forced into a shelter,8664 and the 8 year old who has only known her mother in the state she's in, she was wasn't even 2 when her mom had the strokes. Note we were in the house we were in for 3 years, and where are we? We can only bring this little suitcase and 1 little toy and she had signs upon our bedroom doors of her forever home. The shelter, I did end up finding an apartment, that and the HomeBASE helped us move in, and they helped us this year. But now HomeBASE is over. The rent is $2750. I'm on my Social Security and my niece's disability. They cut our food stamps because I made $99 over the limit. I can't work full time because my niece calls for 24 hour care. And I am imploring you all, the the bills that you said no one was here for, I'm here for them too. I not only need vouchers.8726 I need a system that I can talk to that will have the tools they need to assist us. My METCO student, I can't get any help from the city8741 because she's not a Boston public student so there are no vouchers out there, housing vouchers for METCO students. I'm stuck in between a rock and a hard place. I appreciate you all putting these bills forward and hearing us and helping us. Thank you. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Thank you, Nancy, for a testimony. Any questions from the committee for Nancy?
I see none. Moving forward, I have a few bills here that no individuals have signed up for testimony, house 13,8773 14, House 1315
house house 1318.
So house 1320
then act to promote housing cooperatives, Deborah Winowitz, Deborah
Hi, Deborah.
SPEAKER4 - I'll see you.
DEBORAH WINIEWICZ - ROC NEW ENGLAND ASSOCIATION - HB 1320 - SB 871 - Thank you committee chairs, committee members for hearing me today. My name is Deborah Winiewicz, and I'm the ROC New England Association director. I'm also a resident of Halifax Estates, an over 55 resident owned mobile home community in Halifax, Massachusetts. My community has 430 homes and is currently the largest ROC resident owned community in the country. In 2017, we the residents were able to purchase the community with the assistance from ROC USA and CDI Corporate Development Institute. And with their ongoing support and training, we are today successfully operating and governing a multimillion dollar not for profit corporation. Owning the land our home sits on preserves and secures a vital section of unsubsidized affordable housing for seniors and families in our state. There are 28 ROCs in Massachusetts.
Massachusetts has long been a progressive and innovative state. Mass is 1 of a handful of states with decent OTP, right of purchase laws, which paves the way for resident ownership. Massachusetts, for the first time,8875 recently contributed to a community in Wareham, Massachusetts to become resident owned mobile home park. We ask that once again, Massachusetts be a leader in legislation and pass bill S 871 H 1320, an act to promote housing coops. Establishing the center for housing coops would be a key factor in the preservation, funding, securing, and protecting affordable mobile home communities where low to moderate income residents can own their own homes and collectively8912 own that land their homes sit on. That protects them from investor, developers, who often wanna take over that land to redevelop into higher purposes but they do not want the people on that land. We ask that your support for S 871 and H 1320. Thank you for your time. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Thank you, Deborah. Any questions from the committee or Deborah's testimony? Seeing none? I have Jason Jason Brady I can hear you. Jason. Jason. Okay.
SPEAKER25 - you know,
SPEAKER4 - to or did you have to impella? Okay. Yes. I had to check this.
SPEAKER29 - Alright. And we had a person, but she's not able to make it. Okay.
SPEAKER1 - If you just provide your name, Sentra, for the record.
SPEAKER4 - No. I I think it's on the line.
SPEAKER1 - No. She's oh, is she I mean, she can't be able to
SPEAKER4 - do it. Okay. That's that's it. Okay. What's that?
SPEAKER29 - Thank you.
JASON BRADY - CDI - HB 1320 - SB 871 - Hello, my name is Jason Brady. I work with the Cooperative Development Institute as the Cooperative Housing Specialist I'm here today to speak about the act to promote housing cooperatives. Just as context, CDI is a nonprofit and federally designated cooperative development center that serves the New England region. Our work includes preserving affordable housing through cooperative ownership within the manufactured housing and multifamily housing sectors. We, as was just pointed out before, we have been involved with in supporting residents in 28 manufactured home communities transitioned from investor ownership to cooperative ownership and continue to provide them with technical assistance to this day.
I would say, given the affordable housing crisis facing Massachusetts, it's gonna require a multifaceted approach and cooperatives can play a unique role in both urban, suburban, and rural communities. While housing cooperatives can take on many different forms, our work is focused on limited equity models. In this model residents purchase a share membership and agree to resell at a restricted affordable value. The result is that they have shared ownership in the business that owns the building or land where their home is, and the model keeps the barriers low so working families and retirees have access to the benefits of ownership, homeownership, housing stability, and agency within their own housing. As a co owner of their cooperative, they participate in the democratic governance of their business or association. This structure values participation, transparency, and9094 a voice in how the business operates, and to decide on the priorities.
And while this approach is9102 very desirable, many9104 folks are seeking out these types of communities that are valuing affordability and quality of life above a return of investments. It is not without its challenges, and that's where this legislation would help address some of the concerns and help these cooperatives maintain affordability as they face obstacles looking at state financing when they look to purchase or convert their community to a cooperative and address the infrastructure needs that may have been neglected or deferred for9137 years. But despite their geographic range, the cooperative geographic range, longevity, and scale, we are gonna need these additional supports so we can help create and bring up a bigger model for affordability and housing across the state. Thank you.
PAVEL URANGA - CDI - HB 1320 - SB 871 - Thank you. Thank you for having us here. My name9168 is Pavel Uranga. I am the9170 coordinator director of immigrant services at the Cooperative Development Institute. And I am here to support this act, and I'm an immigrant. And we, as an immigrant, every time we heard about progress from the US, progress in our countries mean human right violations. Because take everything, and our governments allow it to happen that. And that's why we came here because we left with nothing in our countries and we moved to the US looking for progress, looking for advance, looking for having stability for our families. We came here with some bag and anything else. We lose everything. We lose houses, properties, and networks. And in my hometown my family used to live almost 5000 years and I don't have any living relative and not an inch of property9229 because progress, that's9234 why we are here.
And when we came here, we find progress in the hands of bad employers who uses the strategy to commit wage theft against us and harass us and abuse us. But still, we have the job done because we are community builders, we are service providers, we are creating solutions for this country. We pay taxes, we increase the national and gross income, we support the economy of this country. And we, in the Cooperative Development Institute, provide solutions for immigrant communities. We help the workers to be owners of the companies to avoid these kind of abuses. We help the producers to have the owners of the land and start producing things in a living and dignified way.
And we are trying to provide them the chance to have a dignified houses. And that's why we are here trying to help them to have that. In the9313 midst of the pandemic, we suffered from harassment and9317 bigotry from the federal government. This country has a powerful history on cooperative development. With this country came out from the great depression by the hands of cooperatives unions and communities. We need to recover that history. And getting out of this pandemic or this crisis helping the community to grow and thrive, and help the communities having this wonderful re-empowered and rebuilding of the9349 resilience by the hands with people like you. You can provide this opportunity to our communities. That's why we are here. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Okay.
SPEAKER1 - Thank you for your your testimony. Is there any questions for the panel from the committee? We've seen none. Thank you.
Now I have 1 last person on house 1320 Sarah Asetha Sarah?
SARAH ASSEFA - COWOP - HB 1320 - SB 871 - Greetings, and thank you so much for hearing me. Chair Senator Lydia Edwards and Representative, James Arciero. Thank you so much. I'm here because ownership changes the game. This is about bringing back the American dream. Many Americans wish to own their own home and are willing to work hard and be able to have a home and be able to move towards their dreams. And so cooperative ownership is one way that more of us can access that dream. I want to testify as an organizer with the Coalition for Worker Ownership and Power. We're a multi stakeholder coalition with lots of worker owned cooperatives. We met last9422 year in Lynn and in Springfield, and, you know, people were asking, what is your top policy priority? And9428 what would help us be able to be worker owners and own our jobs and contribute to our community? Because we know that when workers have a say in their jobs, the community thrives.
And people said housing is a major constraint. We can't afford to live in our houses, and housing access would help us access worker ownership as well. So we really want to see investment move differently in our community and this is a priority of our members. And so I'm sharing that with you today. Last year, had a conversation with Mark Miley, who did the research with CDI. And we have a long history of cooperative housing, providing people with affordable housing in New England. And so we can build on this research, we can build on this history, we want to see this thrive. So that's on behalf of the Coalition for Worker Ownership and Power, but I personally also just want to share on this as myself. Recently, I saw that UMass did some research that Massachusetts is number 1 in the country for income per capita, but we have net out migration of the state since 2020. So what does this mean for us?
Like, for myself, I'm very9502 lucky. I live with 3 people in my households. In a 1 bedroom apartment, both of us working adults who make well above median income, and that's pretty normal. Like, I'm kind of tired of living the 3 of us in 1 bedroom. But that's how it is, like, we're lucky we can stay in this area, and it's not just Boston. It's across the state where it's just too expensive to live comfortably in your home. Saturday,9526 I said goodbye to my favorite downstairs neighbors. Like, they're leaving the state because9530 they have a baby coming and they don't see any way that they can make it happen. So the statistics shows, you know, the stories of what this means. Like, quality of life is having your neighbors, knowing people around you, you can trust, and you've built relationships. And so, yeah, it seems we're entering this strange time. It's kind of like a new, I don't wanna say it, but feudalism, where just a few people own everything and everybody else just slaves away and works round the clock to pay the rent.
It's very difficult to participate in civic engagements, you know, when you're just working, working, working. Yeah, so ownership changes9565 the game. Cooperative housing is one answer. I do wanna say one last thing. So I live in9571 Harbor Point Boulevard on Columbia Point.9573 This used to be completely public housing, 1000 units. And our members actually 30 or so years ago, when it moved from public housing to private ownership, a portion of this was maintained as a cooperative for the people. And but very few people know about this. We don't have the bylaws and so, you know, we're not9593 using this money because people don't know. So I would like to see a standing office to help people know about their rights and responsibilities. Thank you for listening. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Thank you for your testimony, Sarah. Any questions from members of the committee? Seeing none. Moving on to House Bill 1326 and act relative to the operations of local housing authorities. I have Donna Brown Wrigo signed up.
DONNA BROWN-REGO - MASSNAHRO - HB 1326 - Good afternoon Mr. Chairman, Chairman Edwards, and the honorable committee members. I'm Donna Brown-Rego. I'm the executive director of the Massachusetts, chapter of NAHRO. MassNAHRO represents the 242 public housing authorities across the Commonwealth that own and operate 43,000 units of state public housing, providing homes to more than 70,000 low income veterans, seniors, families, and people with disabilities. Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today. I will submit written testimony on several other bills before you. But today, I would respectfully request your support of House bill 1326. This bill would amend Section 3A of Mass General Laws chapter 40A, the MBTA community statute, to exclude local housing authorities from the consequences of its enforcement. Without this amendment, local housing authorities will face an annual challenge to a portion of their operating budgets due to the acts or failures far outside of their control.
In the past several state budgets, a small percent of the public housing operating subsidy line item has been funded through the local capital projects fund. By drawing from that fund, the Legislature recognized an opportunity to increase operating funding for local housing authorities without having to rely entirely on the general fund. Section 3A states that an MBTA community that fails to comply with the new multifamily zoning requirements shall not be eligible for funds from the local capital projects fund. The definition of MBTA community in the statute uses clear and unambiguous language that does not contain any reference to housing authorities. Again and again, it uses words like cities and towns, communities and municipality. Local housing authorities are enabled by statute and created in each city and town as separate and distinct entities independent of municipal government.
MassNAHRO is a strong supporter of the previous administration's Housing Choice9742 Initiative9742 and9742 the MBTA community mandates. But in its enforcement, the statute and its present form is being misused. Municipal governments that fail to comply with the rezoning requirements for whatever reason are not impacted except for being ineligible to apply for discretionary funding. They will not see a cut in their regular operating budgets. The impact to housing authorities, however, is a decrease in operating subsidy, which is the lifeblood of their operations at a time when the current9768 funding is half of the documented need. These housing authorities are the driving force behind maintaining housing for our residents who are at or below 30% of area median income.
House 1326 seeks to protect local housing authorities from the financial harm resulting from the administration's misinterpretation of Chapter 40A, Section 3A that stretches the common accepted and well understood definitions of cities and towns to somehow include local housing authorities, and therefore, make them unable to receive a portion of their funding that comes from the local capital projects fund as the Legislature intended. We wanna see the Housing Choice Initiative achieve its ultimate objectives, but surely no one intended housing authorities to be subject to a funding reduction due to decisions that are made entirely out of their control. Impacting the Commonwealth's Housing Authority financially as consequence of a city of town's noncompliance is plainly counter to the result desired by the MBTA Communities Initiative. So I re respectfully request your recommendation favorably for House 1326, and thank you. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Thank you, Donna, for your testimony. Any member do you remember so many questions?
SPEAKER57 - No. It's all business.
9842 SPEAKER79842 -9842 Okay.9842
EDWARDS - Just really quick. I want to confirm, this concern is currently pending in the budget, am I correct?
BROWN-REGO - Yes.
EDWARDS - Right now, the budget that's pending has language that would eliminate this punishment, and that's, I think, an appropriate word to local housing authorities if the MBTA community is not compliant. And I'm wondering if this is different from that, or is it the same language?
BROWN-REGO - If this bill was passed,9870 we wouldn't have to worry about making sure that language isn't included in the annual budget annually. But we want it included in the budget, we want housing authorities9880 and the subsidy line to be included that language included in the budget because it does not rely the complete 100% of the subsidy on the general fund. The money obviously comes from the the gaming revenue, which in theory would be continually relied upon. And the Legislature has9898 a little bit of relief when voting on giving us some increases to that subsidy9902 line that maybe 10 or a smaller percent of the subsidy would come from elsewhere from the general fund. So this would satisfy. than fighting to keep that language in every single year. This would take care of it.
EDWARDS - This makes it permanent and also access to other funds.
BROWN-REGGO - Yes. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Thank you.
SPEAKER1 - Represented to coast?
DECOSTE - I just wanna chime in that number 1 that you brought this to light, and I hope Mr. Chair when we consider this we can move this legislation out favorably as quickly as possible. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER52 - Thank you, representative.
SPEAKER1 - Any other questions for Donna? Seeing none?
SPEAKER4 - Thank you.
SPEAKER52 - Thank you very much.
SPEAKER1 - 1.
House Bill 1328, an act to transform the Commonwealth Suburgency Response system and create housing strategy and the homelessness of unaccompanied adults. I have a panel of Caitlin Golden, Joyce Tavon and Rachel Heller.
JOYCE TAVON - MHSA - HB 1328 - SB 873 - Hello and thank you. So my name is Joyce Tavon. I'm CEO of Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance also known as MHSA. We're a public policy organization dedicated to the ending of homelessness, especially for unaccompanied adults. So we're here about 2 bills, but we're gonna focus for the moment on this one. I'll be back9987 to speak on the flexible subsidy pool bill. What I wanted to note, so we know we're in a housing crisis. We know that that hits hard, especially hard on those experiencing homelessness. Quick statistics from this last winter's one night count, 23% increase in those in encampments or shelters across the state. So that's the bad news. But the good news is when we have an opportunity to put together, look at data, put together a plan, and be strategic, we can make huge inroads. On veterans homelessness, Over a number of years, we reduced by more than half from 1300 down to 580. The bills we're talking about have those kinds of themes, planning, streamlining of resources, looking at data, and being strategic. I'm gonna turn now to my colleague, Caitlin, to speak to the bill.
CAITLIN GOLDEN - HB 1328 - SB 873 - Hi. Thank you Chair Arciero, Chair Edwards, and to the committee. We're here to testify in10051 support of House bill 1328, Senate bill 873, an act to transform the Commonwealth's emergency response system, create housing strategies to end the homelessness of unaccompanied adult filed by Representative Higgins and Senator Feeney. As you know, the individual homelessness system serves unaccompanied adults who are adults without children living with them. And while Massachusetts has a right to shelter for families, there is no right to shelter for unaccompanied adults. Over decades, the individual system grew out of local community responses that while the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities contracts with homeless providers it does not fully fund the system, and the contracts are10092 not necessarily matched to regional needs,10094 so gaps remain across the10096 commonwealth. But we also know the system hasn't been a place for great innovation, and that's what we're hoping to build on right now.
These bills would require EOHLC to conduct a predictive study of future shelter and housing demand and to determine the need for permanent supportive housing and shelf are both non-congregate and congregate across the commonwealth. And this is the data driven kind of planning10120 we really need to move the needle on ending homeless for10123 this population. As many of you know, that permanent supportive housing is a housing first model, low barrier, wrap around support services, and it's effective in both ending homelessness for very medically complex populations as well as reducing healthcare costs. Non-congregate shelter is something that we really saw blossom during the pandemic as communities turned to hotels and motels to temporarily shelter populations, some of whom wouldn't go into a congregate shelter and who are now able to come in out of the cold and be housed.
And then congregate shelter, as you know, are the more of mass dormitory style shelters, but in recent years shelters have moved towards trying to make more private, semi private spaces. But, really, what it comes down to is that this bill is requiring the Commonwealth to plan to really identify what is the need for housing and shelter in every municipality in the commonwealth. And that's the10183 kind of need, that's the kind of planning and prioritization of supportive housing and shelter that we really need to move the needle. So we really hope that you will again this session of report this out favorably, and we thank you for your support and your leadership. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Thank you. Any questions from members of the committee for the panel? Seeing none, thank you. Yeah. I have Paulita, Are tech, signed up, or a leader.
Perfect time.
SPEAKER56 - and is right.
SPEAKER59 - Thank you so much. I'm going to look down because I'm gonna be reading. Okay? Okay.
SPEAKER1 - Okay.
PARALITA ARTEH - MHSA - HB 1328 - SB 873 - Good afternoon. I wanna thank my God for being able to speak with you today. I'm here to shed light on the importance of why passing the bill for MSHP is encouraged for advancement. My name is Paralita Arteh, and I'm an Afro Latina native of Boston, and I've struggled with chronic homelessness since 1974. From the birth table to being placed into an abusive foster home by employees of the state of Massachusetts, I've had to endure mental physical, sexual, verbal, and psychological torture for the first 12 years of my life. I know what it feels like to be homeless on the streets, ignored, and invisible to the public's eyes. I10302 know what it feels like to think no one cares and to carry around the feelings of hopelessness through my10308 teenage years and into my adulthood when you've witnessed years of elected leaderships neglecting to mend the part that was bleeding within myself and so many others, pleading for a safe, affordable place to live where they could call home.
After aging out of DSS, currently DCF, one week after my 18th birthday, I was called into a multi service center to find myself out of10332 care, leaving my premature baby at the hospital from an unspoken rape, having my life threatened dearly had I spoken up. The apathy of many state workers seem to be a normal attribute to say and least since I was now then an aging consumer. I spent my entire10349 life running away from people who worked for the state, vowing to never trust another state10354 employee or anyone that represented Massachusetts due to the lack of evidence that provides flourishing results taken to address or repair the damage done in which I know well that bleeds in the hearts so many to have a safe place they could call home.
Permanent supportive housing is so important as it provides individuals like me who's currently stable 9 years for the first time in my entire life. I'm safe and I can call my home my home in supportive housing. I've received supportive structures, which allowed reunification with my autistic children that can produce positive results through these supportive structures by aiding elderly unaccompanied adults, individuals with disabilities, and families like mine. Supportive housing adds success to the mission of eradicating homelessness throughout our state. I wanna trust and believe we have the right leadership in government here today to help remedy what bleeds in the hearts of so many who want and desperately are in need of a safe place they could call home.
By passing this bill, it will create a resourceful, that will make an impact on so many lives of others and will help our providers focus on delivering housing and services needed, and will put less strain on them to find funders. We want people to exit streets and, the health and livelihood of many in a timely fashion than the previous years of documentation. Can I finish my last statement? Massachusetts is known throughout the history of the United States as leaders of innovative ideas, representing a Commonwealth of highly motivated leaders that merge to help our most vulnerable neighbors. By any means necessary let us restore the hope of many lives by passing this bill so we can continue bridging the gap of ending homelessness for good. Thank you for listening. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Thank you very much for your testimony. Any questions, committee? Seeing none? Thank you.
Moving on to Houseville 1329, and act to prevent and respond to bullying of elderly and disabled residents. I have a panel here, Donna Lee, Becky Amanaut and Joan Rossi?
SPEAKER4 - Okay.
SPEAKER1 - Alright. So now I'm gonna go through a series of bill, and then we're up against it, folks, just because we have this committee committee in. So if anyone everyone could just respectfully stick to the script and then try to get through the 8 minute panel in the 3 minutes, that would be very appreciative. House 13 30, I have no 1 signed up to testify, 13 37,
13391340
and act assuring you continued rights for public housing residents. I have a Heather for it's Gerald. Heather.
SPEAKER4 - Okay.
FITZGERALD - HB 1340 - Heather Fitzgerald, for the record. So I was planning on speaking for a different bill, but also this bill. But I'll try to wrap it up all. I hear a lot of talk10552 about building some new programs and spending some more money. However, we've been doing turn off a long time, and problem persists. Public housing is in every city. I mean, it's hard to imagine that it could be as hard as it is in Marblehead. My unit alone has 4 built. The town refuses to take any action or enforce any of the codes. But to see10579 and hear that there would be more money thrown at these programs to fix things that have remained unfixed for so long is a little hard10589 for me to swallow.
In terms of the supporting the public housing right, in terms of the housing authority, they have all the rights. The tenants have none. We have no representation in the courts, we have no representations, basically, anywhere. When you try to get help as10609 a housing tenant, you are told by the town they don't have authority, the state can't do anything. So at the end of the day, the problem I believe from what I'm hearing in the room and everybody is the overseeing authority, which would be the DHCD. So my goal is and my prayer is that with all of the testimonies10628 today that there can be some serious10630 investigations and oversight into the way DHCD practices and operates. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Thank you for testimony and questions. For Heather, seeing none, Moving on to House Bill 1342. I'm not seeing anyone signed up to testify. Housing 3rd excuse me. House bill 1343. No 1 does testify.
House 1352. I have no 1 signed up to testify. And now housing the house bill 1354 and act to create and implement a Massachusetts flexible supported housing subsidy program. So gonna move through these panels. The first panel I have Matt Frichard and Toronto Ellis.
That's okay to know.
TERRONDA ELLIS - JPNDC- HB 1354 - Good afternoon Madam Chair and Chair Arciero. My name is Teronda Ellis. I'm the CEO of the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation. And I had prepared some remarks sitting through what I feel is a very full joint committee on several bills. We are here in support of H 1354 this afternoon, but I will say as a resident of the city of Boston who grew up in public housing and through many of the systems that we are still talking about today, this great commonwealth has struggled mightily, but has been on the forefront of a lot of innovation, and I feel that innovation in the room today. I'm happy to be here as the CEO of a neighborhood development corporation who has really been a neighborhood supporter, a community member, and one that really does struggle mightily to think about how we, as residents of the city of Boston and members of this Commonwealth can support families.
So today, I really do look for this committee's favorable report out of expanding opportunities for families who are struggling to really work through all of the issues and all of the barriers that we are hearing today. As a developer of housing of a resident of public housing today to be here, looking forward to initiating innovation at the Shattuck community, at the former Bromley Heath Housing Project for so many, not only taking existing housing units and families that have supported these units for decades, but to add housing, to add supports to build integrated services where people need them most, which is in their housing.
Like family child care, like innovators of economic development opportunities for families who are not beaten, are not tired, and not willing to fight. But who are tired and who are looking for co located support. Looking for childcare answers so that they can go and talk to our intervention specialists or our coaches to talk about how do we come up with solutions to reduce the barriers,10861 to get the Pampers, to get the family food first, to give the kids the snacks, and to make them safe so that the parents can think about what's next. When they have keys, we can think about what's next. And that today is why I'm here to support this bill and to ask for your favorable report out. So that we can co locate a lot of these things that families need and are very, very willing to fight for and struggle for. Thank you.
MATT PRITCHARD - HOMESTART - HB 1354 - Thank you Chair Edwards, Chair Arciero. Thank you so much for having us, committee. Thank you for your staying power. My name is Matt Pritchard. I'm the executive director of HomeStart. As context, HomeStart was founded in the mid 90s as10912 HUD's first housing first homeless service provider idea. It was controversial at the time. Over the last 30 years, we've found permanent housing for more than 14000 people living in the streets and shelters and Boston and provided permanent supportive housing for more than a thousand people who have experienced most chronic episodes of homelessness.10932 The Executive Office of Health and Human Services stated by 2030, the Commonwealth will need an additional 10,000 units, housing units for extremely low income residents who require supportive services. We've heard testimony of10947 the extraordinary economic benefits. Many would say the Economic imperative, House Bill 1354, and expanding permanent supportive housing to the Commonwealth because saving, service arena and downstream arenas are significant.
We've also heard testimony about the improved social outcomes of those10967 receiving permanent supportive housing and how difficult it is for individuals10971 navigate and access our complex web of independent resources. The message I'd like to emphasize is that in many respects, House Bill 1354 represents an opportunity to profoundly improve the operational performance of the system, which will be even more important as the inventory of permanent supportive housing expands and in many respects is what HomeStart has been waiting for more than 30 years.
HB 1354 is, put simply, a smart administration. Practically speaking, even within the walls of a single organization like HomeStart, it's very difficult for professional colleagues across prevention diversion, housing search, and stabilization teams to understand and navigate resources available for particular, clients within particular profiles and demographics. The creation of an intermediary provided by HB 1354 would create the perfect opportunity for improved data and service integration, coordination, communication, reduce the information silos that exist across the system. Again, it's critical now, and it'll be even more critical as the inventory of permanent supportive housing increases. It creates program efficiency, reduces financial costs across the system, and reduces unnecessary trauma. Thank you so much for your considerations, Danielle.
DANIELLE FERRIER - HEADING HOME - HB 1354 - Honorable chairs and committee thank you so much. My name is Danielle Ferrier, CEO at Heading Home. We are a housing and shelter and permanent supportive housing provider. We serve families and individuals. So I first wanna go on the record for Heading Home as saying we oppose any bills that only target one population. We support bills that look at a person throughout the entirety of the development of their life, right, whether they're individuals, families, elders, couples, etcetera. So prior to Heading Home, I worked under EOHHS both in the government and providers there. What I would say is critical and for me is the fine point here to drive home is that we as providers are your builders. We cannot build our way out of this system. The housing system makes Health and Human Services look brilliant, fiscally quite honestly. Without a true finance overhaul, we cannot execute what either the Legislature or the governor would like. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Is there any questions for the panel from the members committee? Seeing none. Thank you for testimony.
11119 The11119 second panel I have is Lindya Downey, Barbara Warren, and Daniel Ferrier again.
SPEAKER4 - You're good. Okay.
BARBARA WARREN - COMMUNITY TEAMWORK - HB 1354 - Good morning Chair Edwards, Chair Arciero. Vice chair,11151 Keenan, Vice chair, Kilcoyne, and esteemed members of the Joint Housing Committee. My name is Barbara Warren. I'm the division director of housing and homeless services at Community Teamwork which is out of Lowell. Thank you for the opportunity today to speak on behalf of our families in the Commonwealth currently experiencing homelessness in our emergency assistance family shelter programming. It's no secret that family homelessness is on the rise and that a lack of affordable and sustainable housing is the main reason for this. In Lowell, Mass we have seen a significant increase in the fair market rents where a 3 bedroom apartment FMR is now at $2379. When I began this work 13 years ago, we were able to place families directly out of shelter into their own market rate apartments.
They received supportive services, HomeBASE for 1 year to help them increase their income and be able to pay their full rent on their own, and they were successful. Today, moving families into a market rate apartment is not an option for most of our families. We are moving fewer families out of shelter and the average length of stay has increased to 578 days. That's nearly 2 years for a family living in shelter. We are currently serving just over 240 families, and of11235 those 240, only 14 have a Section 8 or MRVP voucher that'll allow them to move on their own into permanent housing and not pay more than 30% of their income toward that housing. The impact on families and children staying in shelter for so long are many. Research has shown that children experiencing homelessness have greater instability in education and higher levels of emotional and behavioral problems.
The experience of losing your housing and then entering the family shelter system is stressful for all family members, but especially for the children. They often miss a significant number of days or weeks in school each year due to unstable living conditions prior to entering the family shelter system and then being placed out of their district. Parents often need to make difficult decisions about transferring their kids from one school district to another based on the amount of time they might spend on the bus each day. The transitions from one school to another, from one community to another, and the instability that comes with living in shelter, and not knowing where or how you'll be able to have a place of your own in your own community has a direct impact on a child's ability to learn and develop. The11310 need to ensure coordination of supportive services is evident in the work we do every day. It is my sincere hope that you will recognize the immediate need for this legislation and fully support it. Thank you for your time and consideration.
BEN PHILLIS - BEACON COMMUNITIES - HB 1354 - Thank you, honorable Chair Arciero, Edwards, and the committee members for the opportunity this morning. My name is Ben Phillips, senior vice president for development at Beacon Communities. I'll speak a little bit about the importance of the flexible subsidy pool for addressing chronic homelessness among individuals. Beacon Communities mission based company operating about 15,000 apartments, primarily affordable housing. We build service enhanced communities in close collaboration with local governments. Because our strength is in leveraging services and because of this public service approach of our work, we're always interested in being at11367 the cutting edge of delivering on the expressed11369 needs of the communities in which we work.
And we now have11373 hundreds of permanent supportive housing either in operation or under development in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland and New York. As11381 others have testified, permanent supportive housing is an evidence based solution to chronic homelessness, but it is too scarce in supply. It is not uncommon for doctors and other clinicians who work with chronically unhoused clients11394 who typically also suffer from severe and persistent mental illness, addiction, or both to complain that the most effective treatment they could prescribe is too scarce, a home. Not a refuge, but a home with the clinical and social supports necessary for success. Not just doctors and clinicians, but healthcare insurers, hospitals, and other provider networks are increasingly seeing housing as healthcare, particularly in the context of chronic homelessness.
Population health and patient outcomes are now centered in state and federal policy and providers are seeking more effective ways to serve this covered population. Not only are effective treatments for11435 unhoused patients the right thing to do, but increasingly in the healthcare system, it is economically incentivized. Permanent supportive housing at scale is a natural aggregator for effectively serving unhoused patients. Unfortunately, while there is wide agreement that permanent supportive housing is the most effective intervention for homelessness, there is no room at the end, so to speak. This is because permanent supportive housing is not surprisingly more difficult to develop, own, and operate than traditional affordable housing, which is already in too short supply.
And not only does such effort face obviously higher nimby hurdles, they also require complex financing strategies, including capital subsidies, rent11479 subsidies, and services funding and mechanisms sufficient to meet the very high and diverse needs of residents. Real estate development always entails taking outsized economic risks in which not just the return on investment, but the risk of that investment itself, the recoupment of the original risk capital is pushed out for years. This inherent uncertainty of whether millions of dollars risked with repayment dependent and whether or not a given project ultimately comes to fruition, it means that developers are always looking to minimize that risk. Inherently more complex, permanent supportive housing is therefore always11521 the riskier choice. I'll wrap up quickly.
The flexible subsidy pool will help level the playing field of incentives toward the permanent supportive housing, and it will optimize our health system investments and the well-being and most vulnerable and housed patients. By leveraging private and philanthropic resources, the pool can help bring healthcare payers into the system. The flexible nature of the pool will allow the funds be coordinated with other components of our financing system for the affordable housing11549 production, making the choice to develop permanent supportive housing a little easier to make, a little less risky, allowing more developers to choose to do the right thing so that we can build sufficient permanent supportive housing and effectively end homelessness in the commonwealth.
SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
very much for your testimony. Any questions for the panel from the members of the committee? Seeing none. Thank you. Thank you. We now have Tim Doherty and Jess Laura Shell.
I have them signed up as coming together,
it all works Okay.
SPEAKER22 - Grahams, hope that's okay. The record.
BRIANNA SILVA - NA SW-MA CHAPTER - HB 1354 - SB 855 - Good afternoon Chair Edwards, Chair Arciero, and members of the Joint Committee on Housing. First, thank you for giving me the opportunity to provide testimony in support of House Bill 1354 Senate 855, an act to create and implement a Massachusetts flexible supportive housing11609 subsidy full program. My name is Brianna Silva, and I am a social11613 worker in here on behalf with the National Association of Social Workers' Mass chapter. NA SW-Mass Chapter is a membership organization of near 1400 social workers across the Commonwealth. We support this bill because it would establish a Massachusetts flexible supportive housing pool program. This would create one unified flexible funding stream to support trauma informed service delivery and coordinated integrated services.
Supportive housing is intended for11641 individuals and families with chronic illness, disabilities, mental health needs, substance use disorders who have experience long term or repeated homelessness. Social workers often encounter the devastating impact of housing instabilities on individuals and families through our roles as case managers, therapists, clinicians where we work in diverse care settings such as hospitals, schools, and nursing homes to name a few. In the everyday, these impacts range from children having to11670 miss school time, to folks losing much needed benefits, to additional trips to our already packed emergency rooms. We have a critical role in advancing policies and programs that support stable housing opportunities such as this one.
We can't be successful in our work at the clinical level if we aren't making sure that good policy is being passed at the state level. We are only able to place a band aid on the existing problems without meaningful policy solutions. We know that stable housing provides a sense of community and peace But beyond that, stable housing is positively correlated with mental health and wellbeing. We understand that if we want healthy communities, we must first start by providing our community members with their basic needs, which include stable housing. This is why I respectfully ask that you report this legislation out favorably. Thank you for your time and consideration.
JESSICA LAROCHELLE - MAMH - HB 1354 - SB 855 - Chair Edwards, Chair Arciero, honorable members of the housing committee, my name is Jessica Larochelle, and I'm the co director for public policy at the Massachusetts Association for Mental Health. And today I'm gonna focus specifically on the benefits of bill for people with severe and disabling behavioral health conditions. Housing first11746 and permanent supportive housing are key for people with behavioral health conditions to engaging in treatment and achieving recovery. You've heard from my fellow panelists and people who testified before me about the data around permanent supportive housing. And I'm going to focus on a few aspects of this bill11768 that is extremely thoughtful and well crafted.
The first is that the funds in the pool can be used flexibly to help people secure housing. That flexibility is so important for people with behavioral health conditions. Why? Because of the nature of their disability, they often have less resources for upfront costs in securing housing. They've often11794 had less ability to build credit history. And to be blunt, they often face more stigma. The pool can be used flexibly to pay for rents above fair market rents, for security deposits, and for holding fees. And these flexibilities can provide big incentives for landlords and can make all the difference for this population that experiences greater barriers to securing housing. I'd also like to talk about the portions of the bill that not only help people secure housing, but people maintain housing. And those are all the supportive services that you heard about before.
Those are the housing supports, the tenancy supports, the clinical supports, the social services supports. And the bill also emphasizes trauma informed service delivery. If you think about the chronically homeless populations, so many people have experienced trauma, multiple traumas. And this bill makes a difference in that it offers a culturally responsive approach. This bill will help the over 2300 individuals in our commonwealth who are both homeless and have severe and disabling behavioral health conditions. But it will also help other people with severe and disabling behavioral health conditions who have been failed by our behavioral health and our housing systems. Where are they? They're in our hospitals. Did you know that 10% of people in Department of Mental Health psychiatric hospitals have been approved for discharge but they're stuck because there aren't supportive housing placements for them in community. They're in our criminal legal system, and often they've been picked up for crimes of poverty. and they'd be so much better serves by therapeutic community based placements. So not only will this still help people who are on the street and in shelter, but it'll have a ripple effect to other parts of our system. Thank you. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - you very much for your testimony. Is there any questions from the committee for the panel? Seeing none, thank you11927 for your testimony. I11929 have signed up here Carol.
We have Frank Cannell,
FRANK CONNELL - CARITAS COMMUNITIES - HB 1354 - HB 1312 - Good morning. Thank you to the members of the Senate Housing committee for holding his hearing today, and I I'll try to keep my remarks brief. I can hear the crowd outside. Oh, my name is Frank Connell, and I am here representing Caritas Communities. We are a nonprofit organization headquartered in Braintree, Massachusetts. We own and operate approximately 900 Units of Housing. Our footprint stretches from New Bedford in the South to Salem in the Northeast and Bedford in the Northwest, with most of our units concentrated in11984 the Boston area. For 38 years, we provided deeply affordable housing to Boston's most vulnerable residents. Our average income of residents currently is around $24,000 a year. And we endeavor to set our rents at an affordable rate for12002 those at that income level. I believe currently our rent is charged at somewhere around 650 a month.
Of our entire portfolio of 900 units, we have about 27% with project based subsidy assistance. You know, we've recognized in the last few years that this is not a sustainable reality. We are forced, due to the lack of vouchers and subsidy for residents living in our units, that we have to often make the choice to use private philanthropy to cover capital repairs to cover supportive services. And so we are fully in favor of H 1354. This is a bill that would allow us in future development and existing development to provide those critical resources to our residents. You know, we have the housing piece in place but we recognize that to make this stool, as the analogy goes, fully stable, it needs 3 legs, and those legs are housing, rental assistance, and permanent support.
We have a lot of houses developed over the last 38 years. We've seen what a one legged stool looks like. We have a few that are 2 legged stools. And what we're endeavoring to do is to really have those 3 legged stools so that we're seeing housing stability that we're seeing people not simply have 4 rooms and a ceiling, but the ability to stand on stable ground and look toward a better future. And if I might add a plug for one more leg to this tool, making it an honest to god chair, the H 1312 bill regarding RAFT and emergency rental assistance. We know that things happen in life and people fall behind. And the enhancements proposed to that particular bill would go a long way to helping our residents, you know, not have to face the fear of being evicted. And continue to work on more than simply their housing to look further up that hierarchy of needs to improving their lives. Thank you. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Great. Thank you, Frank, for your testimony. Any questions from from the committee or Frank? Seemed none. Thank you. At Mark, Indorel, Indorely. excuse me, Mark,
done. Seth Kleinman, Seth,
SETH KLEINMAN - DANVERS PUBLIC SCHOOLS - HB 1354 - Good afternoon Chair Edwards, Chair Arciero, and distinguished12148 members of the Joint Committee on Housing. My name is Seth Kleinman,12152 and I'm a public school social worker in12154 a K to 5 school in Danvers, Mass. Of the five K to 5 in Danvers, mine has a relatively large caseload of housing insecure families so this feels like an area of experiential expertise for me, so I am here to offer strong support for this bill. In the role of school social worker, I occupy a unique position which requires that I interface with many different disciplines in a school community, which are connected with many different aspects of a child's wellbeing. This allows me to see the many different ways that housing insecurity negatively impacts children and families. In working and collaborating with classroom teachers, I see how housing insecurity causes12194 underlying and persistent anxiety that forces children to deprioritize academics in favor of more basic existence needs. I see how environments where they are living prevent doing homework, maintenance reading, and other critical academic support tasks. And I see how students cannot participate in many aspects of being a part of the school community.
In working and collaborating with school nurses, I see how students' physical health needs are not as easily addressed by caretakers when housing instability is an ongoing struggle, as well as the health impact on students of perceived lack of safety, anxiety and depression, and strained family dynamics. In working and collaborating with my principal and other administrators, I see how housing instability is correlated with significant numbers of absences as well as behavioral dysregulation and result in disciplinary action. It is not hard to connect the dots as to why. And in my own work as a school social worker, the social, emotional, and behavioral impact of housing and security can be far reaching. This past year, one of our homeless students, one of many students who were living in a small hotel room with their large families came to us at the start of the year with cautious but present enthusiasm, but over the course of the year, she was infiltrated with challenge after challenge.
A sibling assaulted in the laundry room of the hotel, significant absences and lack of participation in school community building events all due to transportation challenges, fast and enduring development of depression and social isolation. These are burdens upon whom no one should be visited. So why is this bill critical? It will take a comprehensive whole view approach to supporting homeless individuals and families. It is systemic. It understands that housing insecurity impacts people in many different ways. It will take a trauma informed and mental health informed approach to supporting homeless individuals and families. It understands that the incidence of trauma experiences and mental12310 health struggles are significantly higher in families with housing insecurity. It will streamline and simplify the process of securing housing. It understands that confusing unnecessarily time consuming, disjointed processes are a major impediment to completing important steps. This is an accessibility issue, and this bill addresses that. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Thank you for your testimony. Thank you. Is there any questions from Arpin, the members of the committee, seeing none. Thank you. Thank you. And the last on this I have, Sasha Israel. Sasha.
SASHA ISRAEL - CONCERNED CITIZEN - HB 1354 - Hi. Good afternoon Chair Edwards, Chair Arciero, and members of the committee. My name is Sasha, I'm a social worker, and I'm here to offer my support for this bill.12357 I worked for several years in early intervention doing home visits with families from a wide variety of backgrounds. And many of the low income clients, we serve face housing12367 instability due to problems with the safety of their apartments, struggles with mental health and substance use, and domestic violence, among other reasons. And these parents were working so hard to ensure that their children were healthy and had what they needed. And they often had many services in place both for themselves and their children from behavioral healthcare to daycare vouchers, to medical specialists for children with disabilities. And if their housing destabilized, everything they had worked so hard to put into place would fall apart.
When they moved away from their home, to stay with family or friends or in shelters, they had no way of getting their child to that daycare. They were now out of the catchment area for those behavioral health services, and the more their services fell apart, the more difficult it became to find12412 stability again. In my work, I often saw families struggling with the complexity of the support system which would require clinicians like me to take time away from helping their children learn and develop in order to help them navigate that system. Streamlining the funding sources would make it much12428 easier for families to stay housed long12430 term.
And by creating a flexible funding pool for supportive housing this bill would not only help parents access support quickly enough that they don't experience that cascading crisis, but would also ensure that they're housed stably and with the right supports to put all those pieces back together and get back to focusing on their health and mental health, sobriety, employment, and on raising their children. We know that if we allow people to live in chronic homelessness, we wind up paying for it in hospital stays, incarceration, and long term use of shelters. This bill allows us to direct our funds away from those expensive stop gap measures and gives the Commonwealth a real pathway toward ending homelessness. And that's why I'm asking you to report this bill out favorably today. Thank you. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Thank you for your testimony, Sasha. Any questions from members of the committee or Sasha's testimony? Seeing none? We are the following bills don't have individuals who've signed up for them. House 1361. House 1369, house 1373,
house 1341,
and that brings us to house 1365, enact facilitating the appropriation expenditure of community preservation for community housing purposes in the town of Chatham. I have Charlene Davis and Gloria McPherson signed up.
SHAREEN DAVIS - CHATHAM SELECT BOARD - HB 1365 - HB 1366 - Hi there, I'm Shareen Davis. Thank you so much. In the matter of timing, I'm also signed up for the House bill 1366, which was to authorize to establish a housing trust fund for community housing for Chatham. So I'm gonna do this together to be brief, and thank you for your time, and thank you chairs and committee. I'm12542 Sherry Davis. I'm on the Select board of the Town of Chatham. I'm also a 13th generation descendant of the founding family of Chatham. People came here in the early 1600s and created commerce and trade during the 18th 19th century, and they built their homes, families, and their wealth in our community. When I was growing up in the 1970s, my dearest friends found their way here to fish and start businesses, and actively participate in our town, living year round in affordable homes and neighborhoods. Now many of them are leaving expeditiously.
The need for community housing is to help to create the same dynamic opportunity for our community members and for those who wish to find their way here in the job market that we've had in the past. The middle income, young population year round, retired community, faces specific housing problems that affordable housing cannot address. That's why we're supporting these bills, we have to introduce these bills. Professional trade people who don't qualify for affordable housing are looking for community housing. Our retirees who are real estate rich12613 and cash poor who wanna downsize don't have housing options in12617 the community. And12619 I have an example of my elderly family member who worked his whole life12623 in Chatham and lived in a home12625 in a very sought after neighborhood. And he struggled with the cost of maintaining it and paying taxes. He eventually took a financial route that left him without equity, and eventually the house was foreclosed on, and he lost his home.
Had he had the opportunity to downsize in his elders years, it would have solved his needs. But it was difficult in era of 2010, which was the flip and buy house era after the housing crisis that sort of created this run on real estate that we've seen in our coastal communities. So we're rapidly changing in Chatham and what used to be a very balanced year round modest retirement12660 and second home community, tourist community has now been saturated with short term rentals and investment12668 properties that has created a year around housing shortage. And I know we're not alone in in Massachusetts. Now I hear from young people who are facing housing insecurity and no place to live and competing with a cash, no contingency real estate market, and rental properties that are being turned into 3 month seasonal workers' rental locations.
I understand personally what it means to be insecure, housing insecure in a family, and what that12698 can do to a child's wellbeing when they are12700 family couch surfing, or living in a basement, or camping for the summer in Nickerson State Park. The Cape's an affluent area and we can, you know, we've been told we can solve our solve our housing problems but we need the help, and we need, like, slate of help that will change some of our rules and regulations, and we're working on these solutions. Our Select board has prioritized housing. We know there's no silver bullet. We need several tools in our toolbox, and H 1365 and 1366 will be part of that toolbox and help to bridge a gap. in our housing inventory shortage. And thanks for your time. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - If you can just thank you so much.
SPEAKER12 - Thank you
SPEAKER4 - very much.
SPEAKER1 - Okay. I've
the following bills, I have I have no individual signed up as well. House 1366,
House 3775,
house 3810,
And that brings us to senate 871, an act to promote housing cooperatives.
SPEAKER64 - Hello. Hello. Mister Chair, our -- Okay. Our town did not finish its12769 its statements. Thank you.
SPEAKER1 - Okay. So on the same bill --
SPEAKER51 - Mhmm.
SPEAKER1 - -- on the same bill,12777
SPEAKER65 - Yes. If that's -- Okay. Please. -- with you.
GLORIA MCPHERSON - TOWN OF CHATHAM - HB 1365 - HB 1366 - Hi. Good afternoon distinguished members of the Joint Committee on Housing. My name is Gloria Macpherson. I'm the director of housing and sustainability for the town of Chatham. I come before you today to convey the town's strong support for 2 bills. I'll speak on both, House bill 1365 and H 1366. The town of Chatham is committed to expanding our supply of both affordable and attainable housing. Attainable is something12810 that we define as up to 200% of area median income or AMI. And we've made tangible progress toward that goal in the past year. Town's purchased 2 properties through a land acquisition RFP process and converted the use of 2 additional town and parcels through town meeting vote for municipal use to housing use all for the purpose of creating affordable and attainable housing for our community. These 2 bills would provide 2 additional local tools for Chatham to address the range of our housing need.
Currently, our affordable housing trust can fund projects up to a 100% AMI, but the town has a real need for attainable housing as well to help keep our generational young and working families in Chatham. H 1365 would allow CPA funds to be used for attainable housing up to 200% AMI. And H 1366 would create the framework for which these funds could be used under a single expanded, affordable housing trust, which would be able to better12868 serve the full range of need of the community12870 and help Chatham achieve its goal of providing year round affordable and attainable housing. The unrestricted housing market in Chatham cannot meet the needs of the vast majority if any of our work force at this point. 5 and 10 years ago, it made sense to focus strictly on affordable housing, 80% AMI and below. But now housing the range of Chatham's workforce including people who earn up to 200%12893 AMI has become a critical issue.
Local businesses, including12897 healthcare, tourism related businesses, and our culturally and economically important fishing12902 industry, as well as our municipal government are facing increasing difficulty12906 in attracting new hires even12908 at higher wages. The last few Chatham Fire Department hires all live over an hour away, which is the closest place they could afford reasonably priced housing. Chatham's economic and social12919 sustainability is tied to the availability and attainability of housing. Housing stock that's traditionally housed our workforce is no longer available to them because12928 of a steady inflow of second12930 homeowners, retirees, and short term rentals. driving home prices to historic heights. This has significantly impacted our community's socioeconomic character and housing mix with seasonal housing now more than half of Chatham's housing units and declines in younger residents of working age.
Recent losses to our local schools have been directly related to the loss of housing for our working families. The average annual wages across the top industries in Chatham are significantly less than the income needed to buy a median priced home unless there are multiple earners in a household, not 2 earners,12965 but multiple. This includes jobs in households that are between a 102 100 percent AMI. Recent sales data from the MLS indicated that there were no single family homes or condos sold within the last year that would be affordable to low moderate or even higher income households earning up to 200% AMI. The salary necessary to afford a medium price home in Chatham is12988 now $363,000 per year. In order to SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Corey, you're gonna12992
SPEAKER42 - have to
SPEAKER1 - cut it short a little bit. You just have to get12994 everybody before kinda up against it. So thank you for your testimony. Is there any questions for the panel? And the committee seeing none. Thank you very much for your testimony.
SPEAKER37 - Hello?
SPEAKER57 - Hello?
SPEAKER1 - Hello?
13010 SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER6613010 -13010 Yeah.13010 I I have I I'm Carolyn McClellan from the Chatham Community Housing Partnership. I'd like just 3 minutes to speak on.
SPEAKER1 - If you if you could just briefly put forward your your support for the for the piece of legislation. We're just up against it on the timing.
SPEAKER66 - I understand.
KAROLYN MCCLELLAND - CHATHAM COMMUNITY HOUSING PARTNERSHIP - HB 1365 - HB 1366 - Thank you very much. So I'm here to advocate for 1365, which is asking to increase our community preservation fund AMI limits and 1366 about our housing trust and AMI limits. Here in Massachusetts, we all know that lack of housing is reaching a critical tipping point. The Massachusetts Taxpayer Foundation recently published a report or revealed that our state is suffering the highest level of of out migration as seen in 30 years with 26 and 35 year olds representing the biggest loss sector which is a concern for State's long term workforce. A recent Cape Housing Summit was reported that the Cape legally loses for a 10013063 households of those making up to a $100,000 a year, and that 50% of the people who work on the Cape commute from another county. And households making a combined of 200,000 are facing difficulty when trying to rent or buy homes on the Cape. These essential workers, people with good paying jobs, full time jobs, can't afford to live on the Cape anymore.
The average price for a single family home on the Cape is more than $650,000. That means a family would need to make more than $200,000 to buy a house. It's forcing workers from all industries and all income levels off the Cape. Chatham is a small town, 40 miles from the bridge on the elbow of the Cape. I don't know if you've ever driven to the Cape or to Chatham the traffic is always horrific. It's worth it for a fabulous vacation, but can you imagine doing that every day for your job? The median home price here is not $650,000, it's $1.2 million. Homes are being scooped up by investors with no future year round occupant ever in the equation, decimating13113 the housing stock, for year round13115 residents. At this rate, a generation or so, only the folks who live here will be13119 those who already live in deed restricted properties.
Our town needs to move quickly and take advantage of any and all opportunities for land acquisition and development to build our year round housing stock. In Chatham, we legislate by town meeting, which unfortunately means we have no ability to move quickly on any land purchase. It's only through our housing trust that we could have any hope of increasing our number of year round households because they could buy parcels without waiting for town meeting. We were asking to increase our AMI limits for our housing trust and our community preservation funds. The current model for the CPA allows for housing to be capped at a 100% AMI. I realized there's much resistance to increasing the AMI from this fund, but the Mass Housing has focused on workforce housing, which they define as to up to 120% AMI. And they have to mean that necessary to stabilize the workforce and the economy.
The regional intent of affordable housing fund was to help mitigate the gap between what was affordable and what wasn't. The gap has grown at an extraordinary rate in our community to earn more than 200% AMI to afford a home. So I certainly13176 hope you could increase the CPA funding limits to at least a 120% AMI. The crisis is an existential threat to our economy and the sustainability of our community. We know there are many place our employees can work without commuting 2 and a half hours a day.13190 Our goal is not13192 only to provide homes for those in need, but also develop housing for multiple AMI levels to stabilize our community and retain13198 our workforce. Thank you. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Thank you. I13203 guess I should preface this. Is anyone from Chatham13205 who needs to speak? I think you guys are good. Thank you very much. I'm gonna go through the piece of legislation where individuals have not signed signed up for testimony.
House bill 3775, house 3810,
house 871,13225 house 3873, and that would be an act establishing13231 Massachusetts social housing program.13233 I have Paul Williams and Henry Wortes James Cordero, and Ravi Yani as a panel.
seek the panels13249 here first. Okay.
We'll start with Paul. Is that is that you, Paul? Yep.
SPEAKER67 - Can you hear me?
SPEAKER1 - Yep. Let her roll.
SPEAKER67 - Okay.
PAUL WILLIAMS - CONCERNED CITIZEN - HB 3873 - Good afternoon to the committee and the chairs. Thanks for having me today, and thanks for giving this bill a hearing. I'm glad to have an opportunity to talk briefly about House bill 3873, which is a bill designed to help address13282 one of the core constraints on affordable housing production in the United States and in Massachusetts. The the primary constraint on affordable housing production, as we all know, is the availability of subsidies, either capital subsidies or rent subsidies, loan compounding tax credits and vouchers, which mostly come from the federal government but also from appropriations from state budgets. So housing authorities and state housing finance agencies around the country are always looking for new innovative tools that allow them to produce additional, affordable units beyond what those scarce subsidies would allow them to produce on their own.
One such innovative authority is the Housing Opportunities Commission of Montgomery County just outside of Washington, DC. That agency is kind of a combination housing authority and housing finance agency, which, you know, in housing finance agency and public housing authority circles, Mass Housing and Montgomery County's agency are often looked at in a similar class of being innovative and some of the best agencies in the country. What that agency, though, did a few years ago was create this kind of innovative tool that's a revolving loan fund13361 that they use to make short term construction loans into mixed income projects that don't require any loan compounding tax credits, any vouchers, any bond volume cap, any state subsidy, but is still able to get them about a third of those units at 50 to 60 percent AMI level, low income level. So, for example, in a 250 or 300 unit multifamily development They're getting about a 150% AMI low income unit. That's a whole 9% loan compounding tax credit projects worth of affordable units that they're not spending a dollar of subsidy on. The important thing about this is that this is an additive tool.
It's not replacing any existing programs. They continue to do tax credits and vouchers and public housing traditionally. This is a tool that they're able to use to produce more on top of whatever federal subsidy or state subsidy happens to come down to13420 them that year. So, you know,13424 there's a lot of momentum around the country as people have seen this tool put into action and housing authorities, housing finance agencies looking at implementing these kind of revolving loan funds for mixed income housing production. The city of Atlanta is exploring it. Other states around the country, Michigan, Maine, Rhode Island just passed an appropriation in their state budget to put toward a revolving loan fund. So there's13453 a lot of momentum, and this is a tool that Massachusetts could explore to help reach that 20,000 or that 200,000 unit goal over the decade and get additional affordability that your tax credits and vouchers aren't gonna be able to reach. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Great. Thank you for your call. I have Henry. Any questions for I'm a committee for Paul. I've seen none. I have Henry Wardis.
SPEAKER4 - Let's see him13487 on the screen.
SPEAKER1 - Okay. James Cordero.
1 up James.
JAMES CORDERO - BTU - HB 3873 - So I just wanna thank the honorable chairs and honorable committee members for your time and allowing talk about the housing crisis and ways to tackle it. I'm James Cordero. I am a public school teacher and member of the Boston Teachers Union's housing justice committee. So, really, the way housing impacts my life and what I see is that people want to stay in Massachusetts. Families and students have a sense of community here,13524 but they are being priced out and moving away. We are losing people who are ordinary, who are working class people, who are the reason that our entire economy works, bus operators, paraprofessionals, domestic workers, and that is really the crisis. And this solution of social housing is really what would allow many more people to stay.
Because I think Paul explained it, but I just want to reiterate it as well, is the benefit of social housing is simple. You have a portion of units that are market rate, and the profit from those market rate units help subsidize the maintenance of the building and keeps rents low for those who are in the lower income and moderate income units.13569 So that way if times are tough the building still has its own revenue source and does not simply dilapidated the way our own traditional public housing has. The other benefit to this is, again, the bill has great standards for labor. You would have good paying union jobs that would again help grow our economy. The last point I really wanna make about this bill is, the good work that you all in the Legislature have been doing has helped ensure that residents of Massachusetts have freedom in areas where they don't have anymore in other states.
Here, women have reproductive freedom, here, members of the transgender community have freedom and rights that are being restricted in other parts of our country. But people cannot be free if they cannot afford to stay in our state. So I really implore you as a Legislature to advance this bill forward so that we can be creating affordable housing for all ranges of incomes in a sustainable manner, growing our economy with good paying union jobs and making good on the work that you've done to ensure that we in Massachusetts can continue to enjoy our freedoms. Thank you. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
SPEAKER1 - Thank you, James. Any questions for James from the committee? seeing none. I also have Robbie Yani. It's called
Robbie going once.
Don't see him. Okay. So we're just going to a few other pieces of bills here. Send at 873. I have no 1 signed up for that as well and sent at 855.
I have 213676 individuals signed up, but didn't sign up for or 3, actually. I didn't sign up for a particular bill. Drew Allison. I just wanna make sure it was heard.13684 Sagliario Guerrero
and Rita Maria Fernandez.
seen none. That's everyone we have signed up to testify.
SPEAKER57 - Mister chair, we'll take a
SPEAKER13 - motion to adjourn. It's all moved.
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